Frank Derrick's Holiday of a Lifetime (8 page)

He closed his eyes and tried to picture Beth and Laura at the airport in Los Angeles, their faces wet with tears of joy and happiness. They were holding a sign with his name on. He thought about hamburgers and about popcorn, drive-in movies and cycling along the beach beside the blue sea with the equally blue sky above. He could almost feel the sun on his face just thinking about it, even though his flat was freezing and the bedroom window was etched with frost. He opened his eyes and looked over at the clock on the bedside table; it was the one and only time that he’d ever set the alarm and he’d tested it about ten times, terrified that it wouldn’t go off. He thought about checking it once more to be sure. He turned over in bed and closed his eyes again, and even though it wasn’t due for hours yet, he listened out for the first aeroplane of the day and thought that tomorrow it could be him up there.

7

480,000 flights on 84 airlines, serving 184 destinations, take off from and land at Heathrow Airport every year. Seventy million passengers pass through the airport, an average of 191,200 a day, all watched from hundreds of different angles by over ten thousand CCTV cameras, relayed to a vast wall of monitors in a security-camera control room, where, finally, there was something worth watching.

An eighty-two-year-old man wearing a pair of Desert Storm camouflage cargo pants, with long white hair that ended halfway down the back of what was – even at an airport where all day flights arrived bringing passengers back from holidays in Hawaii and Acapulco – an incredibly loud shirt, was walking towards the check-in desks.

As he walked through the airport, sidestepping and tripping over wheelie suitcases, a text message would be circulating around Heathrow’s other security staff telling them to come quickly to the control room and have a look. Someone would suggest ordering a pizza or some popcorn. It would have been a good time to steal a plane or smuggle a few hundred cigarettes through customs.

When Frank had almost reached the safety of his check-in desk, a small child riding a tiger-skin suitcase with a face and ears for handlebars ran over his foot, and other passengers in the queue stifled their laughter in various different dialects. An Albanian woman laughed out loud. Frank would probably now be as popular a comedian in Albania as Norman Wisdom.

The woman behind the desk checked Frank and his heavy suitcase in. She strapped a paper label around the handle and sent it on its journey through the rubber curtains. Frank was seriously considering not collecting it when he arrived in LA and leaving it to circle round and round on the baggage carousel indefinitely.

He walked towards security. Without the cumbersome baggage he could now afford a swagger more suited to his shirt, swinging his overnight bag by his side like John Travolta with his paint pot during the opening credits of
Saturday Night Fever
.

In the security area Frank took off his shoes and removed his belt. The 15 denier nude women’s knee-highs that he’d been so desperate for Eyes Facing South-West to put in a brown paper bag could now be seen by the passengers and staff at the world’s third-busiest airport. Ten thousand CCTV cameras filmed him from hundreds of different angles as he edged towards the hand luggage X-ray machine in his ladies’ tights, trying not to slip on the polished airport floor.

He put his shoes and his belt into a grey plastic tray with his overnight bag and placed the tray at the entrance to the X-ray machine; it reminded him of when Laura had described Beth’s radiation therapy as ‘like being passed through an airport bag scanner five times a week’. He tried to get the image out of his mind in case it made him laugh or burst into tears in this high-security no man’s land between ground and airside where laughter or tears might be enough to get him barred from ever getting on a plane.

The grey tray disappeared inside the X-ray machine and while he waited to be ushered through the metal detector arch to retrieve his hand luggage he checked all six of his trouser pockets for coins. He wondered whether the small gold studs on the belt loops of the trousers would set the alarm off. A member of the security staff waved him through the metal detector arch and he was relieved that it didn’t make a sound. His trousers were a couple of sizes too big and he was worried about what might happen if he let go of the waistband to be searched.

On the other side of the arch the conveyor belt conveyed his belt, shoes and bag through the X-ray machine. For a moment it stopped and the security staff studied the monitor. Then it started moving again, a uniformed woman following the plastic tray along the conveyor belt. She picked the tray up and asked Frank to come with her to a table, where she unzipped Frank’s bag.

‘Is this your bag, sir?’ she said, putting on a pair of white latex gloves.

‘Yes,’ Frank said.

‘Could you tell me what’s in the bag, sir?’

‘Um,’ Frank said, ‘toiletries, um . . . a comb . . . oh yes, a sandwich. I wasn’t sure what the food would be like. On the plane, I mean. Not in America. Er –’ he scratched his head – ‘this is a bit like
The Generation Game
.’

‘I’m sorry, sir?’

Frank wanted to do his Bruce Forsyth impression to illustrate:
‘Good game, good game. Cuddly toy.’
But he knew airport security was a serious business. Everyone knew that airport staff didn’t appreciate jokes about bombs and even though there was no red-circled picture of Bruce Forsyth on the forbidden-items chart behind the woman (there was a firework, a gas canister, a Stanley knife, lighter fuel, matches and a bottle of acid but no Brucie), it was possible that any joking, however light, was best avoided.

‘I’m sorry. Nothing,’ he said.

‘Where are you travelling to, sir?’ the woman said. She took his folded jacket out of the bag and put it on the table.

‘America.’

The security woman took a small alarm clock out of Frank’s bag.

‘A clock,’ Frank said, suddenly remembering that he’d packed it.

‘Business or pleasure?’ the woman said. ‘Your trip today?’

‘Holiday,’ he said. ‘I’m going to visit my daughter and my granddaughter.’

The woman took another clock out from the bag.

‘Oh yes,’ Frank said. ‘
Clocks
.’

‘Can you tell me why you have so many clocks, sir?’ the woman said as she removed a third clock from Frank’s bag. It was the clock from his bedside table. The lid of the battery compartment on the back of the clock had snapped off and the batteries had fallen out into Frank’s bag. The woman took the batteries out of the bag and put them next to the three clocks.

Frank explained about a leaflet that his daughter had sent him once and how the leaflet had suggested ways to prevent dementia.

‘Being aware of the time is important,’ Frank said.

The security woman took a small A5 children’s charity calendar out of the bag.

‘And the date,’ Frank said.

He explained to the woman how his daughter was always asking him whether he was looking after himself and if he was eating properly. He didn’t tell her that they had recently reversed those roles and it was now he who was constantly concerned about his daughter’s health. He said that he’d packed the clocks and the calendar so that Beth would see that he was taking his health as seriously as she did.

‘It’s a sort of joke,’ he said.

‘A sort of joke?’ the woman said.

‘She sends me emails with titles like “Are you eating well?”’ Frank said. ‘Or “Ten great memory tips”. Sometimes I put them straight in the trash, thinking they’re spam.’

‘Spam?’ the woman said. Frank had the distinct feeling that she was one of the few people left in the world without a computer and she might have thought that Frank was talking about processed cold meat. He looked for a picture of Spam on the prohibited items board behind the woman.

‘Can you tell me why today’s date is circled, sir?’ she said, looking at the open calendar.

It seemed such a ludicrous question to Frank, with such an obvious answer, that he had to try really quite hard not to say something hugely sarcastic. He wondered if the airport security was always this thorough. It seemed a bit over the top right now but their diligence actually made him feel more comfortable about stepping onto an enormous aeroplane with four hundred complete strangers.

As he explained that the date was circled because it was the day he was flying to America to see his daughter, the security woman took a fourth clock out of Frank’s bag. Even Frank now accepted that carrying four clocks in your hand luggage was a bit unusual.

‘That one is set to Los Angeles time,’ he said.

The woman looked at Frank and decided that he wasn’t a terrorist but just a bit of an idiot. She wished him a nice trip and waved him on with a gloved hand and a look of bewilderment.

Frank put everything back in his bag, letting go of the waistband of his trousers so that they slipped down his hips revealing his underpants like he was a rapper. He dropped the belt into the bag and put his shoes back on. The laces of the right shoe were still tied in a knot and he couldn’t get his heel in and he had to hold the shoe on by clenching his toes and dragging his foot along the ground. With his passport between his teeth, his bag unzipped, his jacket slung over one arm and the other hand holding his trousers up by the waistband, he walked into the departure lounge. The older members of staff in the airport’s security-camera control room sighed as they were reminded of 1970s sex comedies and the hero escaping through the window of his lover’s house after her husband had come home early from work unexpectedly. The same woman who’d laughed at Frank earlier walked past smiling at Frank: Albania’s Robin Askwith.

He sat down in the departure lounge and rethreaded his belt. He took off his right shoe and untied the knot in his shoelace. He rolled the pop socks down almost to his ankles and scratched his legs. He put his jacket on, careful not to rush things and crick his neck. And then he relaxed as best he could. He had quite a while to wait before his flight but he was so paranoid that he would be late and miss it that he’d turned up far too early. He squinted at the departures board but the words were too small. He would have to walk over and take a closer look.

There were more shops in the departure lounge than Frank had ever seen before in one place, and certainly in an airport. The last time he’d flown anywhere was to Portugal in the 1980s. He couldn’t remember which airport he’d flown from but he was fairly sure there weren’t this many shops and restaurants: just a duty free shop selling booze and fags and somewhere to buy a drink and a sandwich. At Heathrow now there were chemists and jewellers, bookshops and toyshops. There was a mini Harrods and a tiny Tiffany’s, a caviar house, a Sunglasses Hut, a perfume gallery and a World of Whiskies. People were sitting on stools at a circular bar eating sushi and oysters and washing Beluga roe down with pink champagne. There was even a posh luggage shop for anyone who hadn’t had time to pack properly and had turned up at the airport with everything in carrier bags.

Frank thought that he should buy something for Beth and Laura. He went into the main duty free shop. He looked at all the different alcohol on sale but he had no idea what they liked and certainly didn’t want to buy cigarettes. Perfume was out of the question. How could he possibly hope to choose the right one? And even free from duty it all seemed too expensive to make a guess on.

Frank looked at the chocolates. There really was such a thing as too much choice. He’d already packed two boxes of Matchmakers in both orange and mint flavours in his suitcase. He paused by a shelf of chocolate oranges and recalled how he’d once attempted to demonstrate to Beth how to ‘tap and unwrap’ one. His plan to tap the ball of chocolate lightly on the table so that Beth would see the segments break away like a magic trick failed and the chocolate stayed in one piece. Frank had to hit it with a hammer instead, which, it turned out, was a feat that Beth was more impressed with.

Frank gave up on the duty free shop; he walked past a luggage shop and considered buying a folding trolley for his suitcase but it might not fit and it would be just one more thing to carry. He went into a shop called Glorious Britain selling souvenirs. He doubted that either Beth or Laura would be interested in Manchester United, the Royal Family or flags. There was a lot of Beatles merchandise. Everybody in America loved The Beatles, didn’t they? Unless they hated them, of course. Frank thought they were one of those ‘Marmite’ things.
Marmite
. He should have bought Beth some Marmite.

He stopped by the postcards. They were mostly of London landmarks. He looked for a postcard with a picture of his friend Smelly John, taken back in his punk rock days. John had been dead for over a year and a half now and Frank missed him. If he’d still been alive, perhaps Frank wouldn’t have accepted the landlord’s offer so readily, fearing that once he was homeless he might be rehoused too far from John to ever see him again. Unless he’d bought them both tickets to America. After seeing Beth in LA they could have driven across the desert to Las Vegas in a hired convertible wearing the cowboy hats that they’d bought from a truck stop. They would have sat for days and days in front of the slots with a jug of frozen margarita and a bucket of loose change until they’d lost everything or had won enough to buy guns to shoot rattlesnakes on their way back to LA and the flight home. Frank suddenly felt very lonely. As romantic as the notion of the lonely traveller was, like Beth had said, even Michael Palin had a huge film crew with him. If nothing else, as John had been in a wheelchair they could have jumped all the airport queues and been given better seats on the plane. Frank gave up on the postcards. There were none with Smelly John on, just palaces, royalty and clock towers.

With John gone it occurred to Frank that while he was on holiday he wouldn’t have anyone to send a postcard to. He could post one to the library, or to Fullwind Food & Wine, or Eyes Facing South-West in the charity shop. But they wouldn’t know who he was – unless, perhaps, he signed it from ‘Giraffe Man’.

Postcards were another extinct tradition, killed off by technology and laziness, along with remembering the names of reindeers and dwarfs and pulling faces in a photo booth. Most of the postcards bought at Glorious Britain were probably being bought as souvenirs, never to be written on or sent. They were like the toys in
Toy Story
or Frank’s suitcase. An unwritten, unsent postcard was surely an unhappy postcard.