Frank Derrick's Holiday of a Lifetime (23 page)

‘Like Mr Derrick,’ Frank said.

‘Thank you, Mr Derrick. Now—’

‘He used to work with Basil Brush.’

‘I’m sorry, sir?’

‘Basil Brush.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

‘He’s a fox. He was on television and he always had a human straight man.’

‘Yes, sir. If I could just—’

‘There was a Mr Roy and a Mr Rodney and a Mr Derrick. I think there were others more recently. I haven’t watched it for some time. It’s a children’s programme.’

‘Yes, sir, I—’

Frank interrupted Arnold every time he tried to speak.

‘He had a catchphrase.’

‘Sir, if I could—’

‘Boom boom. Do you have Basil Brush in America? Actually, do you have foxes?’

The past week had been the longest Frank had been without a cold call. At home, the cold callers could be the only people he spoke to for days on end. Even though he complained constantly about them, and in spite of putting his phone number on a list to stop them from calling him, sometimes when he was feeling a bit lonely, a sales pitch from an energy supplier or a market research company could feel like cognitive therapy.

‘Perhaps I could call back later?’ Arnold said.

‘I leave on Saturday.’

After the phone call Frank took his wet shirts out of the washing machine and put them on coat hangers and hung them in front of the window of Laura’s room, hoping that the sun would dry them.

When Beth came home after picking Laura up from the salon, Frank told them both that he’d done his washing without flooding or breaking anything and that the shirts were already dry and hanging in the wardrobe. It was difficult to tell who was proudest: Frank, Beth or Laura.

In a lengthy game of Scrabble after dinner, Frank lost by such a large margin that they didn’t bother to add up the scores. Laura hadn’t been so far ahead of him, having played low-scoring words such as ‘love’ and ‘wed’. Even ‘reunion’ only scored her a seven. Frank thought that Laura must have been looking at the letters before she took them out of the green cloth bag. The game that Laura was most interested in winning wasn’t Scrabble. Just how far she would go to make the project a success wasn’t clear and Frank expected to see her walking around the house in her mother’s wedding dress any day now.

21

Frank wasn’t looking forward to a second day on his own in the house. The novelty had worn off pretty quickly. Beth left a sandwich in the fridge again and gave him the same instructions as the day before. She told him to use the sunscreen if he sat outside and to try not to lock himself out. As soon as he was alone the telephone rang. It was a different man asking the same questions as the day before but Frank wasn’t in the mood today and he put the phone down while the man was still talking. Why had no one rung when Beth or Laura had been in the house? It was as though they knew when he was alone.

Frank switched the TV on and started going through the channels but couldn’t settle on anything. He felt restless. He thought that he was wasting his holiday by sitting indoors. He was in California and the sun was shining and it was hot enough to grow oranges. In a few days he’d be in England where it would be raining and everything was imported. He kept expecting the phone to ring or for someone to knock on the door to try and sell him armchair covers or a walk-in bath. It felt too much like being at home.

He went over to the window and watched the occasional car drive past. He sat on the sofa and flicked through a magazine. He moved to a chair by the table and then back to the sofa. Every time he changed position Bill looked up thinking that it was breakfast time again or lunch or dinner time. Frank would stand up and the cat would prepare to follow him into the kitchen and then Frank would sit back down again in a different seat.

What is this? Musical bloody chairs?

When Frank felt this way at home he would go for a walk. He’d been in Los Angeles for a week but he still hadn’t walked anywhere that didn’t begin or eventually end in a car park. He wondered if Santa Monica had a charity shop or a library and how far away they were.

He went into Laura’s room and sat on the bed. His feet were bare as he’d run out of clean socks. He should have put more clothes in the washing machine. He put his Liquorice Allsorts flip-flops on and walked around the house, remembering why he never wore flip-flops. He flat-footed between rooms, going into the bathroom and rearranging the shampoo bottles and the shower gel. Ordering them by shape and size just like Jimmy would do if he was here. He went into Beth’s room and looked at the action figures. He came out and then darted quickly back into her room, expecting to see the toys out of their boxes or noticeably in different positions; Superman next to Batman, Robin standing behind Captain America. He went into the kitchen, ate half a sandwich, sat on the sofa and fell asleep.

When he woke up it was the afternoon. He went over to the window to see if the Mexican boy was there. He should sit outside. It looked like a hotter day than yesterday. The phone rang. It was too hot for cold calls. Frank ignored it and went into the kitchen. He opened the cutlery drawer and took out a pair of scissors and went into Laura’s room. The telephone was still ringing so he shut the bedroom door. He sat on the bed and began to cut the legs off his cargo pants. He started on the left leg, cutting about ten inches off from the bottom and then did the same with the right. He put the trousers on and stuffed his zip-up document pouch into the right trouser-leg pocket and his map of Los Angeles in the back pocket and he looked in the mirror. One leg was quite a bit longer than the other. He stood at an angle to try and even them up and almost toppled over. He took the trousers off and cut another inch or two off until he thought both legs were of equal length and he put them back on. They weren’t perfect but he decided they would do as he was running out of trouser leg to cut. He sat back down on the end of the bed and put on the socks that he’d been given on the plane. They were bright red. He put his navy-blue deck shoes on. He opened the wardrobe and chose one of his loud shirts and put it on over the white T-shirt that he was wearing, leaving the buttons of the shirt unfastened.

He came out of the bedroom, put the scissors away in the kitchen, and scooped some food onto a plate for Bill. The phone wasn’t ringing but he didn’t remember it stopping. He picked up the door keys and took the map out of his pocket and threw it on Laura’s bed because it was uncomfortable and he didn’t want to look like a tourist. He stepped outside, flipped down his clip-on shades and walked across the patch of grass to the tree and then he carried on going. He stepped onto the sidewalk and, watched by people all over the world on computers in Fullwind library and through observatory telescopes and the Camera Obscura, he started walking along Euclid Street. Keener viewers would have seen that a blank-faced cat had walked out of the house behind him.

Frank didn’t notice Bill and the cat didn’t follow him as he walked off in the same direction that Beth had driven to the grocery store and to the beach because it was the most familiar to him. The street was deserted. There were parked cars but no traffic. The road ahead was dead straight. He thought he could see hills or mountains. He was in California and the sun was shining; it was hot enough to grow oranges. It felt good to be walking.

A few hundred yards away from the house he stopped and bent down to pull his airline socks up. There was no elastic on the socks and they’d already slipped down into his shoes. There was a short siren blast and a flash of lights. Frank stood up. A police car had stopped next to him and two police officers climbed out, one male and one female.

‘Good afternoon, sir,’ the female officer said. ‘Is everything okay with you today?’

‘Yes, thank you very much.’

The male cop spoke into a radio on his shoulder. Frank couldn’t work out what he was saying.

‘Where are you off to today, sir?’ the female cop said.

‘Oh, nowhere really,’ Frank said. ‘Just going for a walk.’

‘Maybe we can drop you somewhere, sir?’ the male cop asked.

‘Thank you but it’s all right. I’m not going far.’ Frank was aware that he was staring at their guns. He’d seen armed police at Heathrow Airport and at LAX but never this close up on the street. Fullwind’s police community-support officer Maureen tended to leave her firearms at home when she was on duty. He tried to focus on something else. He wondered if the car was the same one that he’d seen passing by when he’d looked the street up on the Internet in Fullwind library. He couldn’t see the number on the roof.

‘Where are you from, sir?’ the male cop said.

‘England,’ the female said. ‘Am I right?’ she asked Frank.

‘Yes. West Sussex.’

‘Vacationing?’

Frank thought that wasn’t a word but kept it to himself. They’d been very friendly and polite so far but they were still armed.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m staying with my daughter and my granddaughter.’

‘And they live in Santa Monica?’ the female cop said.

‘Yes, just back there.’ Frank turned and pointed back up the street. ‘They’re both at work today. They’re probably glad to get a day off from me.’

The male officer spoke into his radio.

‘We’re needed,’ he said to the female officer. He climbed into the car.

‘Well, you take care today,’ the female officer said to Frank. ‘Be safe, be seen.’

‘That shouldn’t be too difficult in this shirt,’ Frank said.

The woman laughed. ‘And remember we drive on the right side of the road here.’

If Frank had been talking to Beth he would have corrected her by saying, ‘I think you mean the
wrong
side.’ But like Maureen, Beth didn’t carry a gun.

‘Have a good day, sir,’ the female officer said.

‘Thank you.’

The female officer climbed into the car, there was another burst of the siren, a U-turn, and the car drove off down the street. Frank watched them go. When they were out of sight he heard the siren. This time it stayed on.

Frank thought that he should go back to the house but he started walking again until he came to a crossroads. He waited to be certain the road was clear and he crossed. He decided to carry on going until he reached the end of the street and then he would turn back, but when he was at the end of the street he didn’t feel that he’d been any distance at all. If he’d been at home, he wouldn’t even be at the library yet. He turned right and walked along Santa Monica Boulevard in the direction of the sea. There was more traffic and occasional pedestrians going in or coming out of shops and walking back to their cars. A woman jogged by and she said hi to Frank. He imagined himself slowly picking up speed and breaking into a run to race the woman. It had been such a long time since Frank had last run. He pictured himself as the young Forrest Gump, shaking the calipers from his legs.
Run, Frank, run
, people would call out to him as he went by, picking up speed, overtaking the jogging woman with ease until he was at the end of Santa Monica Boulevard where he would run under the archway sign that led onto the pier. He’d run past himself from a few days ago, sitting on the bench outside the Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant, having his picture taken by Beth. The woman jogged so far away ahead of him that just the thought of catching up with her made him tired.

Frank had joined Sheila a few times on one of her early morning runs around the village. He always ended up telling her to go on ahead while he stood doubled over with his hands on his knees and a stitch. Frank was always a few steps, strokes or wheel-spins behind Sheila, whenever they’d run, swum or cycled anywhere. Sheila would be halfway to France while he paddled through the seaweed at the water’s edge and Sheila cycled up Fullwind’s only hill at the same speed that he came down it. Sheila ran Olympic rings around Frank as she effortlessly triathloned her way through retirement.

Just past 5th Street he sat down on a bench outside a bank and wondered whether the bench had featured in any films. He looked along Santa Monica Boulevard. He could see the sea. He’d walked more than halfway to the beach, which he decided was now his destination. He’d sit for a while there and buy a cold drink before walking back to the house.

When he reached the beach, Frank sat down on a seat whittled from a tree stump next to the bike-hire shop and looked at the beach and the sea. He was out of breath. From here the Ferris wheel and the roller coaster on the pier looked even more like a giant Mouse Trap game. It was impossible to think of Mouse Trap without also thinking of Smelly John and the times they’d played, but very rarely completed, the game together in the dimly lit communal lounge of Greyflick House. Smelly John loved board games and especially those that involved chaos or collapse: Jenga, KerPlunk or Buckaroo! Anything to disturb the peace of the other more resigned residents in the lounge of the sheltered housing complex. On the day that Frank found out that Smelly John had died, he was on his way to take John to the park to play on the huge board games that had been set up there. There was a Connect 4 as tall as a man, Jenga bricks the size of house bricks and an enormous Mouse Trap game, but it was nowhere near as large as the one that Frank was looking at now. Frank wished that John was here to see it.

He looked at the men playing chess on the beach. They must have hated having their centuries-old game of skill and strategy, the game of kings and scientists, looked down upon by the garish colours of a game renowned for its inability to ever achieve its object, to trap a mouse.

He got his breath back but he felt quite tired. Frank had once asked Sheila what would happen if she ever swam too far out to sea and was too exhausted to make it back to the shore and Sheila had said that she only ever swam half the distance that she was capable of. She always saved enough energy to get back. If she had ever miscalculated and swam past that halfway point she would just keep on going until she was in France. Frank had passed his halfway point somewhere between 9th and 8th Streets but he’d kept on walking and now he thought that he might not have left himself enough energy to walk back to the house.