Frank Derrick's Holiday of a Lifetime (27 page)

‘And Laura has the car,’ Beth said. ‘Unless you wanted to walk?’ She looked at Frank, perhaps expecting him to answer yes, but he said that he never wanted to walk anywhere again. ‘And I really don’t think we should go tomorrow either,’ Beth said. ‘A theme park is probably not what the doctor ordered for you at this time.’

Frank had dearly wanted to go to Universal Studios but for the moment at least his aches and pains forced him to agree.

‘You should still go, though,’ he said, a little too knowingly selfless and heroic. ‘You mustn’t waste all the tickets because of me. I know they were incredibly expensive.’

‘Let’s wait and see,’ Beth said.

Frank took a large drink from his teacup. He placed it back on the saucer with as much assertiveness as he could muster, to show that he was about to mean business.

‘Elizabeth,’ he said.

‘Yes?’

‘Do you know how you said that you were an unhappy number on an unlucky street?’

‘Oh don’t worry about that, Dad,’ Beth waved her hand to emphasize how far she had moved on, ‘I was tired and emotional.’

‘I know that. It’s just that I think I’m more of an unlucky number on a happy street.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve had such a wonderful time here. Really wonderful. The weather’s been glorious and so have all the places that I’ve been to. I couldn’t have asked for a better holiday. Even yesterday’s walk was enjoyable for a while until I didn’t know where I was – and fainting and breaking that man’s whiskey and all the rest of it, of course.’ From Beth’s puzzled expression Frank remembered that he hadn’t told her about the homeless man and the smashed bottle but he forged ahead with his confession. ‘Apart from you and Laura,’ he said, ‘and Mum, of course, I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly lucky man,’ he paused. ‘I’m not a winner, Elizabeth.’ He took another sip of tea. ‘I didn’t win on the Premium Bonds.’

‘What?’ Beth said. ‘What?’

Frank put his hand in his pocket and took out the cheque. He unfolded it and handed it to Beth and he told her everything, only pausing so that she could ask him to repeat what he’d just said and to check that he wasn’t joking, surely he must be joking, he was always joking, it wasn’t funny but he must be joking, he couldn’t have made himself homeless for the sake of a holiday, where did he expect to live? He said that he hadn’t really considered that at the time. He agreed that yes he’d been foolish and he knew now that it had been a ridiculously rash decision and he should have asked her for her advice or opinion at least; at the very worst, she might have been able to haggle with the landlord and get ten grand. Most of all, Beth couldn’t accept how, after all Frank’s bragging about how he always so expertly and amusingly dealt with the window cleaners and roofers, the insurance and equity-release salesmen and women and all the other hustlers and doorstep flimflammers, the legendary banisher of bunco artists, the scourge of swindlers, the all-great and powerful Frank Derrick would just give his home away on the doorstep.

‘He gave you the cheque and you gave him your home? As simple as that?’

Frank nodded.

Beth had to stand up and walk around in circles for a bit to come to terms with it and to assess the damage from his latest bombshell. She couldn’t seem to stop shaking her head; every time she thought of another consequence she shook her head again. Bill walked into the living room, disturbed from his elevenses by the pacing. Beth looked at the cat and shook her head again. He would be homeless too, or equally culpable.

‘What am I supposed to do now?’ she said.

‘You don’t have to do anything,’ Frank said.

‘
Really?
’ Beth said. ‘Jesus, Dad. Why didn’t you ask me for the money?’

‘I didn’t like to. You have one less pay cheque at the moment . . .’

Beth interrupted him, ‘Don’t try and use me as your excuse and you didn’t know about that until I told you this week.’

‘You were ill,’ Frank said. ‘And I’m old and I was worried I might not see you again.’ There was an audible lump in his throat.

‘What’s the time?’ Beth said.

Frank looked around for a clock but Beth was asking herself the question. ‘What’s your landlord’s phone number?’

‘I don’t know,’ Frank said. ‘It’s in my address book.’

‘Here or at home?’

‘In my overnight bag. Do you want me to get it?’

‘Stay there,’ Beth said. She held out her open hand in case he didn’t understand. She went into Laura’s room. Frank regretted his confession. If he hadn’t told her she never would have found out and he could have taken his secret back to England and moved into a new home and, as long as he kept the same phone number and went back to his old flat to collect his post twice a year on his birthday and at Christmas, Beth would never have known. She came out of Laura’s room holding the address book. There was a strong sense of purpose that had taken her over. It was almost frightening and Frank was afraid to speak.

She picked up the phone. ‘What’s his name?’ she said and opened the address book.

Frank couldn’t remember the landlord’s name. He wasn’t sure that he had ever known it. ‘He’s in the book as the Godfather.’

Beth was too focussed on whatever it was that she was about to do to question why he was called the Godfather. She turned the pages of the address book and dialled the number.

It was the evening in England. Frank’s landlord was eating his dinner when he answered the phone. The serious tone of Beth’s voice very likely put him off his pudding. She asked him what he thought he was doing; did he realize that her father was in his eighties? How did he feel about throwing an old man out onto the street? Did he have a father or a grandfather? How would he feel if he was made homeless? She said she wasn’t sure that what the landlord had done was even legal. Had he recommended that her father should take legal advice? Were there witnesses to his signature? Why had he given him a cheque when he had no intention of honouring it? Was he trying to bamboozle an old man? Yes, bamboozle. An elderly man living on his own and vulnerable? Her calm assertiveness reminded Frank of Sheila when she was resolving issues and disputes – often financial, usually created by Frank. Beth’s voice was obviously more transatlantic than Sheila’s and she seemed to exaggerate her Americanness, because to Frank it made her sound more like she meant business and it must have sounded the same to the West Sussex landlord on the other end of the line. She spoke as though she had a billion-dollar team of hard-ass lawyers in the room with her instead of just one single five-thousand-pound dumb-ass. Even when she wasn’t talking, Beth was still the one in charge of the telephone conversation. She ended the call with, ‘I’ll be expecting that today.’ She didn’t say goodbye. She put the phone back on the desk next to the address book.

‘Done,’ she said. ‘Whatever money you have left after your taxi fares and anything you need to get you home, you’re going to give that back to him. I’m going to wire the balance. You can pay me back. He’s tearing up the agreement that for some cockamamie reason you signed,’ Beth said, knocking Laura’s ‘I’ll pop the trunk’ into second place as the most American thing that Frank had ever heard outside of a film.

‘Just like that?’ Frank said, summoning all his remaining willpower to not do a Tommy Cooper grunt and hands gesture.

‘How much of the money is left?’ Beth said.

‘About half, I think.’

‘I’ll transfer the full amount from my account and you can pay me back. Soon. Before you spend it on a trip to Paris or a romantic weekend in Las Vegas with Bill.’

‘I’ll get a job,’ Frank said.

‘Yes, Dad.’ Beth sat down heavily on the sofa like a sigh. She didn’t say anything for a full minute and then, ‘I told him you’ll be dead soon and he can have the flat then for nothing.’ She gave one final shake of the head. ‘Numpty,’ she said and Frank could only agree.

They sat together on the sofa. Frank apologized again and Beth said that he should shut up about it now and although she was angry with him she was far more angry with the landlord and Frank should take advantage of that before she changed her mind.

The room was at last calm and Frank was surprised, considering how little he’d been looking forward to returning to the flat, how relieved he was to know that he could. When he did go home, even if it was covered in snow and his flat was a supermarket, Fullwind-on-Sea was going to seem frightfully dull.

Beth might still have felt more like killing than caring for Frank at the moment but she spent the rest of the day nursing and waiting on him. She put after-sun on his nose and his forehead and she repeatedly rearranged the cushions on the sofa when they became familiar and uncomfortable. She made him breakfast and lunch and cups of tea and rummaged through the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and the cupboards and drawers in the kitchen until she found painkillers that he could swallow – ‘the ones that aren’t shiny get stuck in my throat’. She tied his hair back in a ponytail and cleaned his glasses because he could still see the thread of a spider’s web. She made him open his eyes wide so that she could try and see a loose hair or a speck of dust. She told him to close his eyes again and she blew sharply on his eyelids. With the ghostly spider’s web gone Beth put on a TV channel showing old black-and-white movies.

She stood by the sofa and looked at Frank and she thought about how he used to tease her that one day he would become so old and infirm she would need to look after him. She would have to have to wheel him around in a bath chair, bathe him and feed him and change his underwear.

‘I thought when I put five and a half thousand miles of land, sea and border control between us I’d managed to escape this,’ she said. Frank smiled back at her. Like the
Jurassic Park
dinosaurs, Frank Derrick had found a way.

Between Laurel and Hardy and
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
films they talked about when Beth was ill and off school and she’d spend the whole day on the sofa like Frank. Sheila would send Frank out to the shops to buy a colouring book and colouring pencils and a bottle of Luco-zade wrapped in gold cellophane and then he’d have to go back out again as she started to feel better to buy the banana ice lolly and mandarin oranges that she craved as her appetite gradually returned.

‘It’s all Gatorade here,’ Beth said.

‘I don’t think I know what that is,’ Frank said. ‘Is it made from alligators?’

‘Yes.’

Frank wished that he’d been there to buy colouring books and unwrap sugary drinks when Beth had been recovering from her cancer. He had no doubt that Laura had been more than adequate in fulfilling that role but he couldn’t help feeling guilty for being so far away.

‘Will you tell Jimmy now?’ he said. ‘About Lump?’

Beth was surprised to hear him using Laura’s nickname.

‘One step at a time,’ she said.

There were steps! Frank couldn’t wait to tell Laura that there were steps.

‘He could always have my Universal Studios ticket,’ Frank said.

‘Maybe,’ Beth said, casually answering so soon that she must already have considered it herself.

Frank had so much to tell Laura.

26

Ever since seeing Beth’s photographs from when she’d first moved to America, Frank had wanted to go to Universal Studios. It was the one day of his holiday that he’d planned himself. Laura’s itinerary was just a reminder. Frank had taken two different brochures home from the travel agents and he’d watched videos on the Internet of strangers enjoying themselves on the rides and in particular on the studio tram tour and he’d imagined that the videos were of him and his family instead. Frank felt that he knew his way around the fake streets of Universal Studios, quite clearly better than he did the real streets of Los Angeles. There were thirteen city blocks and four acres of fake streets with names such as Alfred Hitchcock Lane, Bing Crosby Drive and James Stewart Avenue that he’d looked forward to being on, and a century’s worth of former movie sets on the vast studio backlot that he wanted to see in real life and try to guess which films and television shows he recognized them from: Cabot Cove where Jessica Fletcher lived, Courthouse Square from
Back to the Future
and the fake cobblestones of Little Europe and the Court of Miracles, where
Dracula
and
Frankenstein
had been shot in the 1930s. When the tour tram slowed or stopped for a bridge collapse or an earthquake in a subway station or for King Kong or the
Jaws
shark to jump at him, Frank would have screamed with exaggerated surprise or fright and when the Jurassic dinosaur spat water at the tram or there was a Mexican flash flood, Beth and Laura would have laughed because they’d made sure that Frank was the one sitting in the outside seat of the tram where he was guaranteed to get wet.

When he read the warning signs at the entrance to the rides:
Persons with the following conditions should not ride: Heart Conditions or Abnormal Blood Pressure, Back, Neck or Similar Physical Conditions, Expectant Mothers, Motion Sickness or Dizziness, Medical Sensitivity to Fog Effects, Claustrophobia, Recent Surgery or Other Conditions that may be aggravated by this ride
, Frank would have insisted that none of the warnings applied to him. He would have held his head high and kept his back as straight as he could and on the ride he would have tried not to hold too tightly to the bar across his lap as the promises of high-speed tilting, dropping, stopping, climbing, accelerating, spinning, tilting and jarring were fulfilled. He would have hoped that nobody had noticed that at times he had his eyes shut or that his lips were tightly pursed because he feared that his dentures might fly out, ruining the ride for everyone when a member of staff had to turn all the lights on to look for Frank’s false teeth and they all saw that they were just being shaken about in a chair in front of a film screen. Frank had really been looking forward to the trip to Universal Studios. But as he stood on the doorstep watching everyone leave without him he was happy to be taking another one for the team.