2001 - Father Frank (5 page)

However, a Jiminy Cricket figure suddenly hopped on to his shoulder and barked a shrill admonishment into his ear. “Come on, what’s the matter with you? It can’t be
that
difficult. You can do it. Professor Crosby thinks you can. Think of Oxford, the dreaming spires, all those girls. I want you to have a handle on this one before we get to Birmingham.”

With Jiminy’s help, Frank slowly began to take it in. It was a bit like talking to Tom Sheehan’s dad. Sheehan senior was a Kerryman, with the broadest, most unintelligible Irish accent you were ever likely to hear. For years, Frank couldn’t understand a single word he said, just nodding or shaking his head at what he guessed were appropriate junctures. Then, one day, something had clicked. His ears were suddenly attuned to the vagaries of the Kerry native dialect and it became perfect English spoken with an extremely lyrical lilt. So it was with the weighty tome. Just beyond Coventry, Frank could hear what the author was trying to say. His underlying contention was that religion was necessary to bring man’s fundamental goodness to the fore. Man needed blind faith. He needed belief, however scientifically unsteady, in something other than proven fact. He needed to feel that his goodness would one day be rewarded or, more to the point, that his badness would one day be punished. In other words, all goodness is subtly underwritten by selfishness. Frank’s feelings exactly.

On the return journey south, he was ready to tackle the Old Testament, silently comparing its writers to contemporary tabloid hacks. Goliath being ‘nine feet and nine inches tall’ simply wasn’t true. And as for Samson deriving super-human strength from the length of his locks, enough strength to push down the two supporting pillars of a huge temple—well, if that appeared on the front page of the
Sun
, the Press Complaints Authority would come down on its editor like a ton of bricks. Yet whole religions had their roots in such rubbish. Frank’s essay on the Old Testament would question the morality and ethics of this.

The following day he absorbed further volumes between Paddington and Penzance, and more between Penzance and Paddington.

The next morning was spent at Kilburn Library. Frank had limited time to transmit what he had read from his brain though his right arm to his Papermate ballpoint before it was erased for ever. He had to scribble it all down while it was still fresh—he didn’t want his brain cluttered with questions of moral philosophy. He needed its spare capacity for other, more important questions. Who had a number one hit in 1966 with ‘Out Of Time’? Who won the FA Cup in 1954? Who’s the black private dick who’s a sex machine to all the chicks?

This was what took up the room in Frank’s head, not theological theories. Yet some of things he wrote that morning had been floating around on the outskirts—the Garstons and Hemel Hempsteads—of his mind for years. Acknowledging them and writing them down had formed them into fully fledged thoughts. They had been promoted to a cerebral Soho where they were destined to reside for ever.

T
hey’re the words every parent dreads: “Mum, Dad, I’ve got something to tell you.”

When Frank, uncharacteristically solemn, uttered these words, Eamonn and Mary feared the worst: “I’ve got my girlfriend pregnant…I’ve smashed up the car…I’m joining the Moonies…I’m joining a Loyalist paramilitary group.” So the words ‘I’m going to university’ came as something of a relief.

“Er, that’s grand, son. Which one?” said Eamonn, sipping his tea.

The word ‘Oxford’ made him splutter it back out again.

“Oxford? Do you not have to be clever to go there?”

“Obviously not,” said Frank, a little wounded.

“No, no,” came his mother’s ameliorating lilt. “Your father didn’t mean it like that. But do you not have to have, like, three grade As from your A levels?”

“Well, obviously not,” he said, with a smile that belied a cauldron of passionate pride.

His parents were dumbstruck, cups of tea frozen half-way to their lips. They stared the stare of incredulity.

“Well, since you ask,” said Frank, breaking the silence, “I’ll be reading theology.”

“Theology?” said Mary, inhaling as she spoke, in the way that only Irish women do. “Eamonn, it’s a miracle.”

“It certainly is, Mary.”

They were looking at their son now as though he were Our Lady appearing at Lourdes.

“God moves in mysterious ways,” said Mary.

God? thought Frank. For the first time in my life I achieve something truly impressive with no real help from anyone and Our bloody Lord gets the credit for it.

The astonishment of Frank’s family, though, couldn’t compare with his own. His parents hadn’t been up to Christ Church and felt the intimidating weight of intellectual brilliance. They hadn’t witnessed the majesty of Tom Quad, the towering splendour of Christ Church Cathedral or the magnificent eighteenth-century library. He had never thought for a moment that his application would be successful. When he’d posted it off, he felt much as he did every Wednesday when he posted his father’s pools coupon. The chances of either Eamonn becoming a millionaire or his son becoming an Oxford undergraduate were so slim that, once he’d left the letterbox, Frank had given no further thought to either.

The fact that Eamonn had never won the pools, had never earned a great deal of money and was a long way from being a millionaire now worked in Frank’s favour. This was 1977: there were no student loans, just generous grants. Extremely generous if your family’s income happened to be as low as the Dempseys’.

But if Frank’s parents believed it was down to divine intervention, his mates were rather more prosaic. “Oxford? You jammy bastard. God, what I wouldn’t give to go there?” Paul Frost was delivering his verdict from underneath a Mark II Cortina.

‘Frostie’ and Frank had been friends from the age of five, and the former had now been working for two years as a mechanic. He had left school without so much as a CSE but he was as sensitive to the workings of a car as a neurosurgeon is to the brain.

According to Frostie, Oxford was the easy option: “A degree from there, mate, and the world’s your fucking lobster. Me? All right, so I love motors an’ that but I’m looking at, what?, fifty years’ hard graft. And how many millionaire mechanics do you know?”

How many millionaire theologians do you know? thought Frank, but said nothing, basking in the warmth of his friend’s enthusiasm. “Anyway,” he asked, “how’s the van coming on?”

Frostie had recently acquired a bright yellow Ford Escort van into which he was going to drop a Lotus engine, a Jag rear end and all manner of other accessories.

“I’m going to flog it.”

“You what? You’ve only had it a fortnight.”

“Yeah, well, bloke I know wants to sell his old Ford Pop, 1951, sit-up-and-beg. Now that’s what you call a project. Put a V6 lump in that, eighteen-inch Wolfies on the back, Recaro seats, Mountney wheel—it’ll be the absolute bollocks. I’m going to spray it metal-flake red. I gave four hundred for the van, should be able to get six for it. It’s as clean as a whistle.”

Indeed it was, and in it Frank recognised the ideal mode of transport for anyone making frequent trips between Kilburn and Oxford with records, books, bass bins and bicycle.

The ensuing transaction could only be described as ‘Catholic Haggling’—practised by those brought up with a healthy disregard for all things financial and to give their pocket money to CAFOD or the Crusade of Rescue, people who would feel guilty about profiteering. How many ruthless Catholic tycoons do you hear of? How often does the word ‘Catholic’ crop up in the same breath as ‘business acumen’?

Frank offered Frostie six hundred for the van. Frostie refused, insisting he would only accept four, since that was how much he’d paid for it. It was worth more, said Frank, how about five? Frostie was adamant: not a penny more than four hundred. Four fifty, said Frank, and that was his final offer. He wouldn’t consider paying a penny less. Finally Frostie agreed to four twenty-five because “Three years on a student grant, Dempsey, you’re going to need every fucking cent.”

I
’ve got a motor now, thought Frank, I qualify, and he dialled Mandy Wheeler’s number.

“Mandy?”

“Yeah?”

“Hi, it’s Frank Dempsey.”

“Oh, hiya, Frankie.”

“I just wanted you to know I passed that audition. I got the part and…well…I wondered if you fancied coming out to celebrate.”

“Yeah, great,” she gushed. “Any night you like.”

Frank almost passed out but recovered enough of his senses to make an arrangement for eight o’clock the following Thursday. By five thirty that evening, he was already in the bath. Naked this time, without the Levi’s 501
s
that he had preshrunk for just such an occasion.

Of course, they weren’t known as 501
s
then. This was ten years before a hugely successful advertising campaign would make them fashionable, desirable and ubiquitous. Then they were known simply as Red Tags. There were three types of Levi’s: White Tags, Orange Tags and Red Tags. The White Tags were the cheap ones, the naff ones, the not-much-better-than-British-Home-Stores ones. Orange Tags were the normal ones, the standard Levi’s, but Red Tags? Connoisseurs and fashion victims only. Very few places sold them because very few people bought them. They did not come soft and ready to wear like other jeans. They were stiff, hard, unforgiving and, as the proud owner of a new pair (one size too big, of course), Frank had put them on and baptised them in a bath of warm water.

Nothing could have prepared him for the flood of deep indigo dye that was immediately released into the water. Within a minute he seemed to be sitting in a tub full of navy blue Quink, but he had to wait until the button-flied Levi’s felt sufficiently shrunk and softened. When they did, he’d stood up in the bath rather too quickly, slipped back down and sent a
Hawaii Five-O-style
tidal wave of inky blue water all over the tiny bathroom.

Now for the hair. Walk into a bar in Manchester, Melbourne or Massachusetts and identify the Irish patrons. How? The Irish hair. Thick, coarse and uncontrollable. Nowadays, you often hear the phrase ‘bad hair day’. Well, these people have a bad hair life and, with his frizzy dark thatch, Frank was a classic example. From an early age, he’d wanted long hair like Rick Wakeman or Robert Plant but any attempt to grow it soon had him looking like one of the Jackson Five. He was all right for a while in the mid-seventies when Kevin Keegan perms were all the rage but since the advent of punk his only option had been to keep it short. Sometimes Nick the Greek on Kilburn High Road got a little too keen with the clippers and Frank emerged looking like he’d just had a brain scan.

When Nick’s assistant, Theo, had once enquired whether Frank would like ‘something for the weekend’, Frank bought a tube of KY jelly, thinking it was hair gel. And although he now knew how to put it to better use, he still found its clear, odourless consistency far more effective than his father’s Brylcreem.

Just the aftershave to go. Today it was a toss-up between Blue Stratos and new West by Faberge. Frank went for the West on account of its funky brown bottle and big square cork lid.

Now he was ready to go: crisp white T·shirt, shrink-to-fit Levi Red Tags, new Dr Marten’s boots—black eight-hole, yellow stitching—nicely worn-in biker’s jacket from Lewis Leathers in Great Portland Street, good splash of Faberge West, all topped off with a dab of KY jelly, belying the old assumption that girls spend more time getting ready than boys.

Frank climbed into the yellow Escort van for its maiden voyage to Neasden to pick up North West London’s most gorgeous girl. The air-cushioned soles on his new Dr Marten’s felt particularly springy so when he bounced up the pathway of the neat terraced house in Warren Road, he felt like Tigger approaching the House at Pooh Corner. He rang the doorbell and was greeted by a frowning bald man, whose name just had to be Norman. “Er, hello,” said Frank, “is Mandy in?”

Norman, his frown firmly fixed, just grunted and suddenly Frank felt sorry for him. What a terrible thing to be the father of North West London’s most gorgeous girl. For years, Norman’s face must have been a permanent smile because his little girl was the prettiest in the class, the one whose captivating features shone out in every school photo. And then it must have clouded over—the smile supplanted by the frown—as that sweet little girl developed into North West London’s most horny-looking bitch with every bloke within a ten-mile radius desperate to give her one. Poor old Norman.

At this moment, Mandy sashayed down the stairs and the intoxicating smell of Charlie eclipsed Frank’s Faberge West. Tight black mini-dress, long, bare, lightly tanned legs, and cascading blonde locks. Oh, God, the thought of her naked caused an immediate stirring inside Frank’s Red Tags so he hastily turned his thoughts to a vision of Norman naked which was grisly enough to ensure that his sap shrank like a salted snail.

“Dad, this is Frank,” said Mandy, her glossed lips parting in a big smile. “Frank, this is my dad.”

Frank held out his hand but again Norman grunted. “Well, er, see you later, then,” he tried.

Another grunt.

As they drove off, Frank could almost read Norman’s mind—Oh, my God, this one’s even brought his own van.

They headed for the acme of local sophistication—a Chinese restaurant in Wembley with a silly name. Despite his efforts to affect a relaxed, cocksure manner, Frank was even more nervous now than he had been in Professor Crosby’s office. Shit, this was Mandy Wheeler—the most gorgeous girl in North West London—sitting opposite him. He knew he was punching well above his weight. Mandy Wheeler was way out of his league. He’d have to compensate somehow. Humour was always touted as the most successful way. What was that phrase? Oh, yeah—make sure you’ve got the wit to woo. If you can make a girl laugh, well, you’re laughing. You don’t have to be gorgeous. Christ, look at Woody Allen.

The wit to woo, the wit to woo…As they sat down, Frank nervously tried a little observational comedy. He looked at the name of the restaurant, at the top of the menu. “Why do so many Chinese restaurants have daft names?” he wondered aloud. “The Happy Garden, the Diamond Cottage. What’s this one called? New Golden World. Who thought that one up? Captures the very essence of Peking cuisine, don’t you think?”