Frank Derrick's Holiday of a Lifetime (29 page)

‘Oscar’s my boss,’ Laura said. ‘He’ll be your barber today.’

‘If you’d like to step this way,’ Oscar said.

Frank followed Oscar to a row of barber’s chairs in front of basins and mirrors. It was still early and there were no other customers. Oscar stopped by the furthest of the chairs and motioned for Frank to sit down.

‘Looks like you caught the sun there,’ Oscar said, looking at Frank’s face reflected in the mirror.

‘Frank tried to walk all the way here from our place,’ Laura said, which seemed to get everyone’s attention as it sounded no less crazy than if she’d said that he had tried to cartwheel all the way there. ‘He was stopped by the police.’

‘They don’t like walkers,’ Henry said.

Frank watched Oscar in the mirror. He was standing behind him with a hot towel in his hands and then everything went dark as Oscar placed the towel over Frank’s face. After a few minutes he removed the towel and started to work up a lather with a brush in a large mug of shaving cream. He applied the thick white foam to Frank’s chin and neck and his cheeks and under his nose. He swirled the foam into peaks and painted it on like he was icing a cake. He wiped away the excess lather and left it to settle while he took out a leather pouch that he folded open to reveal a row of impressive and incredibly sharp-looking cutthroat razors.

The last time Frank had been to a hairdresser’s there were black-and-white photographs on the wall showing the only three haircuts available: numbers one, two and short back and sides. There was a spinning pole outside and it had cost him a pound.

Oscar stretched Frank’s skin and held it in place and began shaving.

‘Is this your first time in the States, Frank?’ Oscar said.

‘Yes it is,’ Frank said. ‘I did nearly go to Canada once when I was evacuated in the war but the ship was torpedoed and we had to turn back.’

‘Wow,’ Henry said.

‘I didn’t know that,’ Laura said. ‘Is that true?’

Frank nodded, almost losing an ear. ‘We were put in lifeboats and taken to Scotland in an oil tanker.’

‘How old were you?’ Zoltar said.

‘Eight.’

‘
Man
.’

Frank didn’t like talking about the war. Not because the memory was painful, he remembered much of it as an adventure: guns and bombs and uniforms and hiding from aeroplanes. It was just that it had happened such a long time ago and it made him sound like he was a stone-age man. But as he was pressed for more of his war story he started to enjoy himself and he began to embellish the tale, describing the weather and the smell of the oil tanker and the colour and width of the stripes of the pyjamas that he was wearing when the torpedo had struck the Dutch cruise liner and he had to abandon ship.

Oscar carefully and expertly shaved around Frank’s earlobes and levelled his sideburns so that they were perfectly symmetrical. He had to pause as Frank became particularly animated describing an explosion or a wave. Every ‘gosh’ or ‘wow, man’ from the others in the salon encouraged Frank to add more colour and detail to the story, remembering things that he’d forgotten, some of which were now so vivid to him that they might have actually been scenes from
Titanic
.

He didn’t notice Beth arrive. She sat on a chair near to the door with Bill on her lap in his travel box. She’d heard Frank’s war story before but never told with quite so much relish or passion. Frank had been inspired by Troy at the planetarium and Robert on the minibus tour and everyone else whom he’d met this past fortnight to give his childhood adventure a Hollywood remake.

When Oscar had finished the shave he rinsed Frank’s face with a cold towel and smoothed aftershave balm onto his skin. He refused to accept any money from Frank. He said that the story was the payment.

For the twenty minutes that Frank was in the salon everyone fussed over him like he was a sick child at a pop band’s meet and greet. They laughed heartily at jokes that deserved far less, angled a fan in his direction when he said that he was hot, and offered him drinks and food, pointing to a glass partition on the far side of the salon through which Frank could see a chef spinning a flattened-out lump of dough like a circus plate. When it was time to leave, Beth went away to get the car and Frank shook hands with Oscar and Henry and when Zoltar – whose name was Greg – held his fist out, Frank gently punched it, amazing his granddaughter one last time. When they heard Beth honk the car horn outside, Laura told Oscar that she wouldn’t be long and she stepped outside to say goodbye to her grandfather.

They hugged on the sidewalk by the open door of the car and Laura put her hand on Frank’s hair.

‘If you ever need a haircut,’ she said, ‘we’re open seven days a week.’

‘I’ve got your card.’ Frank patted his chest even though there was no pocket on the sweatshirt and the card was in the suitcase in the trunk of the car, the words long since rinsed down a Euclid Street drain.

Laura moved her hand from his hair to his cleanly shaved cheek to feel how smooth it was. She stepped away from the hug. Frank touched his cheek. ‘It feels like somebody else’s face,’ he said.

Beth had got out of the car to help Frank in and, not wanting to be left out, she leaned over and touched Frank’s face too. Passers-by must have wondered if he was some sort of shaman or lucky totem.

‘I’ll email you,’ Laura said.

‘Not if I email you first,’ Frank said.

A young man cycled along the sidewalk towards them and they had to step aside. As the cyclist passed by he rang the bell on his handlebars. Frank looked up to the heavens. ‘Attaboy, Clarence,’ he said.

It wasn’t Frank’s greatest-ever Jimmy Stewart impression but it was good enough for Laura to recognize and she almost cried, her David Bowie eyes visibly wet. She said goodbye quickly to stop herself from crying and went back inside the salon.

Beth and Frank drove through the back streets of Venice until they were on Lincoln Boulevard again, which took them almost all the way to the airport. Frank was now blasé about the boulevards, the highways and freeways. He hardly noticed the liquor stores, the gun shops, the drive-thrus or the huge roadside billboards when they passed them by. The cop cars and yellow school buses were just cars and buses.

Beth parked outside the cargo building and they took Bill inside and handed him over to Joan or Jackie Collins behind the high counter. They exchanged paperwork and the heavily made-up woman took the pet carrier through the door behind her. Beth waved to Bill but the cat didn’t wave back. Frank bought a Milky Way from the vending machine knowing that it was actually a Mars bar. He would never be that surprised by biting into a bar of chocolate again. They drove to the airport, Beth parked the car and they sat outside the building for a while because they were too early to check Frank’s suitcase in.

‘What time is it in England?’ Frank said.

Beth counted on her fingers. ‘It’s ten after eight,’ she said.

Frank nodded.

They sat in silence for quite a while, looking at the other passengers being dropped off from taxis and stretch limousines.

‘I could never eat ten After Eights,’ Frank said.

‘Oh I think I could,’ Beth said. ‘I think I have.’

When they went into the airport building the airport announcements and in particular the deep and dramatic movie-trailer voice warning of the destruction of unattended items was one last piece of Hollywood showboating before Frank left.

‘Has your name ever been called out over a tannoy system?’ Frank said.

‘I don’t think so. Has yours?’

‘I can’t remember it ever happening. But when I hear an announcement, I always expect to hear my name being called out and I get an awful feeling of dread.’

They checked his suitcase in and walked together to the security hand-luggage scanning area. When they’d gone as far as Beth was allowed without a ticket, they stopped.

‘Make sure you call me as soon as you get home,’ Beth said. ‘Even if it’s late.’

‘Of course,’ Frank said.

Beth put her arms around Frank and she didn’t release him for such a long time that they were like a new sculpture on the airport concourse.

Almost 604,000 flights on 70 airlines, serving 87 domestic and 69 international destinations, take off from and land at LAX airport every year. Over sixty million passengers pass through the airport, all watched from hundreds of different angles by over three thousand CCTV cameras, relayed to a vast wall of monitors in a security-camera control room, where, as usual, there was nothing worth watching, just another passenger in a souvenir sweatshirt saying goodbye to his daughter and about to have his bag and his shoes X-rayed, hopefully without his trousers falling down. Today he was travelling under his Native American name, Old Man Going Home.

28

Frank sat in the waiting area at the departure gate psychologically profiling the other passengers and speculating who he might be sitting next to: ‘Teenage Boy With Loud Video Game’ or ‘Sniffy Woman’. Perhaps he would meet Dustin Hoffman in
Rain Man
again. He wouldn’t mind that.

A woman in an airline uniform walked over.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ she said quietly with a smile to let him know that he wasn’t in any trouble. ‘Are you travelling alone?’

Frank thought for a moment, wondering whether to include Bill in his sums or not.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘We’re a bit empty today. We’d be happy to offer you an upgrade.’ She asked him for his passport and his ticket. ‘Would you like to come with me, Mr Derrick, and we can get you on board.’

Frank stood up and he followed the woman to the gate.

‘Have you been on holiday?’ she said.

‘Yes. I came to visit my daughter and my granddaughter.’

‘Oh that’s nice. Did you have fun?’

‘I did,’ Frank said.

The woman made a note and scanned his ticket and Frank walked through the enclosed walkway, once again denying him his Beatles moment, and onto the plane.

Frank sat in a seat that was more comfortable than the one waiting for him in his living room at home. He had a complimentary glass of wine in his hand and an English newspaper on his lap so that he could catch up on anything important that he’d missed while he was away. He would just browse the headlines, look at the pictures and guess the rest. The seat was soft and wide, with a leg rest and leg-room. He didn’t need women’s tights to prevent deep-vein thrombosis in this part of the plane. His meal would be served to him on a tablecloth with stainless-steel cutlery and his complimentary items would come in a faux-velvet wallet.

He wondered where Bill was on the plane in relation to him. If he got down on the carpet and called to him in a voice like Beth’s or Laura’s, would he hear Bill reply in four-letter meows from the hold beneath him? Frank didn’t even know whereabouts on the plane the hold was.

He relaxed. He folded the newspaper into the seat pocket in front of him and browsed the inflight entertainment guide. There was a new Scandinavian crime show that he hadn’t seen yet and a film that Laura had recommended. He looked out of the window. The sky might never be this blue again. There was music playing and every now and then it was interrupted by an announcement. Nobody paid any attention except Frank. He didn’t feel as anxious as he’d felt on the outward flight though. He was a frequent flyer now. Soon they were up in the clouds and then they were above them. He was suddenly very tired. He closed his eyes and he thought now, now would be a good time to go, while everything was just perfect; he could take his final bow and quit while he was ahead and still at his best, like
Fawlty Towers
or Buddy Holly.

What was actually keeping him alive? Apart from the pilot, the co-pilot and the autopilot there was the air outside the plane and the system of regulating valves, heat exchangers and mixing chambers that brought the air into the cabin and if all of that failed, there were the masks that would drop from the ceiling. There was an inflatable slide that would fall from the emergency exit if the plane landed on water and there was a life jacket under his seat with the whistle and the light. There were the highly trained cabin crew and all the search-and-rescue teams that would come from all over the world in helicopters and Naval cruisers to find him if the plane went down. There was so much keeping him alive right now. Most of all, he’d promised to Beth that he’d phone her when he got home. In his suitcase there was the tablet computer that Jimmy had given him before he’d left after inflating Laura’s bed with his kick-drum leg. Jimmy had shown Frank where the built-in camera was and he’d set up a webcam chat account so that Frank could talk to his family whenever he wanted to. He’d had nothing to give to Jimmy in return and had asked Laura if she minded if he gave Jimmy the Spider-Man that she’d won by throwing a ball through a hoop at Universal Studios. It was too large to fit in Frank’s suitcase and Laura said yes, of course. Jimmy thanked Frank and acted far more delighted with his gift than he could possibly have been, seeing as how the over-stuffed toy looked so little like Spider-Man and wasn’t in a sealed box.

Frank looked at the tiny plane on the seat-back screen as it began its return journey to Heathrow. He wondered if anything would have changed while he’d been away or if the whole world really did stop without him there.

He hoped the estate agent had removed the FOR SALE sign and that none of his neighbours saw him when he arrived back at the flat. There’d be too much for him to explain, with the sign and the suitcase and the sunburn on his nose that had already begun to peel. He would spend some of the flight time working on his story and try to make it as entertaining and informative and as Hollywood as he possibly could. He was practically looking forward to it now. If there was no one outside the flat to greet him, he would signal his arrival by pressing his cockamamie doorbell.

It was a twelve-hour flight to Heathrow and allowing for a couple of hours in customs and passport control and waiting by the baggage carousel, plus the three or four more hours in a taxi from Heathrow to Fullwind and a while longer trying to remember how Jimmy’s tablet computer worked, Frank expected to be seeing Beth again just after lunchtime. He wondered what time it would be in Los Angeles.