The House That Frank Built

The doorbell rang. Jean hurried to see. Who was it; who was ringing the doorbell at this time of day?

‘Frank! Frank!!’ she called shrilly, in her twittering falsetto. All she could see through her cataract was a blurred outline, a shadow looming. The other eye was now dead. ‘Frank! Someone’s at the door!’

Frank was engrossed in dope and canvas and couldn’t hear because he liked to listen to the shipping forecast...the names were soothing…

She must let him know, but if she went, whoever was at the door might walk away, thinking they were out. What should she do then? The doorbell rang again impatiently, like an electric shock, making her jump out of her skin. Her heart rose up into her throat to make a stand and got stuck there. She tried to call out for Frank once more but no sound could get past that pulsing irregular thing. One hand rushed to scrabble at the neckline of her dress, trying to loosen the tightening constriction as the pounding started in her ears and the walls began to bend and the shape at the door was growing into the very devil himself and if only Frank would open the door and then everything would be alright then she staggered sideways, falling heavily, like the thing inside her that held it all together had been whisked clean out, like those tablecloth tricks you used to see performed, like there hadn’t been much to speak of in the first place. The dark footman held her trembling hand and she found herself back in Moulmein, at the station, wondering whatever she should do now that the Japanese had machine-gunned Miss Paget, her headmistress, back where it had all begun, where she had met Frank for the first time. A door bell rang and there was Frank, smiling fit to light up the day, that smile of his to die for…

‘Never sell! That’s what they say, never sell!’ Johnnie looked around the table expectantly, knowing he was right, knowing he would win the argument with this all powerful mantra. He hooked his thumbs into his jeans and waited. It was all about market forces. They all sat around the enormous circular kitchen table that consumed the little dining room, deciding what was to be done with Dad now that their mother had passed away. She’d just done everythiong for him like she was a domestic or something, and he would be lost without her. They had expected things to turn out rather differently, but Frank was a wily old dog; he wasn’t going anywhere without a struggle! Frank himself wasn’t present when his family were discussing his future. Johnnie needed a consensus, and there was little chance of that with the old man sitting in. Besides, as an estate agent, Johnnie knew his voice would carry…he was in the business, on the inside, with his nose to the ground and his arse in the air, he thought wryly. Yes, well…

‘What do you suggest then, Johnnie…that we rent it out?’ asked Cindy, the eldest of the family, glancing cursorily in the direction of her husband who sat impassively examining his fingernails. They didn’t need the money. Roy was loaded; he was a prince in a kingdom of glass, an aspirant to the multinational stream, an up-and-coming man of the world with an eye on the Presidential suite in the parent company headquarters in New York. Naked ambition was his driving force; he glanced at his watch calmly, because time had been allotted.

‘So renting it out means someone has to have Frank,’ said Dani carefully, watching for a reaction to this loading of the dice. They were all uncomfortable with the use of Dad’s Christian name, all except Daniella. She’d been the favourite daughter of the three.

‘Well, market forces being what they are,’ began Johnnie, authoritatively, but he was cut short by a bitter hollow laugh from his sister.

‘He’s not coming to us, so you needn’t think he is…’

‘Oh I might have known you wouldn’t have room for him in your busy schedule, Cindy,’ replied Dani quietly, but quickly adding, ‘…but I don’t want to fight. Especially today. Today is Mum’s day really. Perhaps we should meet again and talk about it another time, when we’re not so upset…’

Johnnie smothered a derisive snort for the sake of propriety.

‘We’ll realize nine hundred a month for this place at today’s rates,’ he boomed. ‘Mason’s would take a hundred a month but the rest could be invested. That’s almost ten grand a year!’

‘You couldn’t ask nine hundred pounds for a little two-up two-down like this, surely? Who’s going to pay that when you can buy somewhere for less?’ asked Dani incredulously. There was a pause as they all thought about how strange it would be to find other people living in Mum and Dad’s little house.

‘Oh someone will take it, sure enough. Johnnie’s right,’ said Roy enigmatically. He liked to wait until the thing was on the table, and then he would pick it up and look at it, which is what he was now doing. He looked at Johnnie’s grateful smile, his blotched cheeks, the tracery of broken veins, the nose already blooming; where were his eyes, disappearing into pinkish folds with the porcine anguish of those that can never have enough.

‘Never sell, that’s what they say,’ said Johnnie, smiling now and leaning back bravely or foolishly onto the back legs of the father’s dining chair. It creaked ominously under the son’s weight, taking the strain patiently. He was anxious to tie this up so that he could get away. He needed a drink. Janet Number Two would be waiting for him in the Bell at seven, and he couldn’t wait to tell her the good news. It gave him a little thrill as he thought of the evening ahead.

‘And you’re better off,’ said Roy, looking at Cindy directly and ignoring all the others completely, ‘buying another place with the proceeds. The markets are just not stable, and there’s always a problem with collective decision making. You’ll have to decide what you want to do, but I’m afraid that we won’t be able to accommodate your father at the Lodge. You might want to think about applying to the local authority for help.’

‘You mean put Dad into a home,’ said Dani, turning the thing over in her head and seeing something other than what she thought was right and decent. Her eyes flashed around the table and Johnnie knew that they were approaching the rapids, and that he would have to paddle carefully. You could rely on Dani to be contrary…she always threw a spanner in the works. He just needed Cindy to underwrite his father’s security, leaving their inheritance intact…well, more than just intact…yes, if things went his way, the house would be the beginning of the real thing for Johnnie. All he needed was what would rightfully be his one day, and having it now while the old man was still alive made sense because he didn’t need it any more did he, now that Mum was gone, and Johnnie-boy could look after him alright. In any case, Johnnie-boy was desperate. The truth was that the market had been a little static of late and the dividends that were flying into his accounts during the boom days of the eighties and nineties were now long since gone. All good things come to an end.

‘Well you can’t take him, can you Dani, and Clara certainly can’t do it,’ hissed Cindy with a cold controlled malevolence.

Up to this point Clara had been transfixed by the sleeping infant in her arms, rocking him gently, humming blissful nonsense and completely unaware of the clouds gathering around her head. She wasn’t really very interested in what happened to her father because he hadn’t really ever been much interested in her. She’d been a mistake herself, just like the baby in her arms. She hadn’t been asked to be born, and now that she had been, she was going to take about as much responsibility for being there as a plastic shopping bag dancing in the flurry of a breeze. Clara was regarded by the others as unworldly, artistic, ethereal; she was an impression, left upon the mind like a fleeting glimpse of something that one cannot quite recall and yet remembers vague flavours, shades and fluid outlines.

‘He is NOT going into a home, Cindy! Roy, you’re not suggesting that Frank is going into a home, are you…are you?

Roy allowed her words to tail off, leaving just a little uncomfortable hole...before delivering his judgment, regally. He might have used the royal plural and not seemed out of place - he was the king of glass… ‘I just think you have to look at all the options and find out what’s on the table,’ he said quietly, again addressing only his wife, inspecting his fingernails, pushing at the cuticles. He knew what was being asked, but he would not accept the responsibility. Not for Frank. Dead wood; always had been.

Johnnie went onto the offensive now. Little beads of perspiration broke upon his brow and his fingers fluttered from hair to nose to ear to mouth as he jiffled around on the chair in a growing state of anxiety. ‘Listen Dani, we’re sitting here together trying to peacefully sort out what’s best to be done and we don’t need any arguments. We’ve been through all of this before, and we decided that…’

‘I didn’t decide!’ retorted Dani, staring at her brother with flaming eyes. Something here was wrong. Something had got stuck. She could hear seagulls crying, and there she was in mind’s eye, standing on the sea wall of some seaside resort, feeling like the world was so big it was going to swallow her whole…she could even taste the salt…and there was her father, striding like a giant, smiling with yellow horse’s teeth so sure and certain, holding a great cloud of pink candy-floss in his brown hand, sweeping down upon her as the gulls wheeled and arched overhead in acknowledgment at last of seeing something real below, something that could not be held under the hand and weighed in the balance.

‘We thought it was…’

‘No, you thought it was, you bastard, because all you want is to get your hands on this bloody house!’

‘Now just you hold on a minute!’ cried Johnnie, flushing violently and starting up. ‘Just what are you trying to say, Dani? You’re saying I don’t care about him?’

‘Yeah, that’s right Johnnie, you just don’t give two hoots and everybody knows it in this family. You can’t pull the wool over my eyes with all your fake professionalism!’ Now she was coming up to the boil, and she started to bubble; she liked this: it cleansed her somehow. That feeling of being swept up into her father’s arms as the cries of whirling seagulls split the breeze, tasting strong, metallic on her tongue…she could taste the memory, sweet like salt…

The insult stung her brother like a sharp slap around those fatty jowls. He’d done his exams just like her, and more than her, he’d done his time, put in the hours, worked like a dog for twenty years and all for what? A desk, a salary and commission, a hapless marriage to a feckless girl and three dull-witted children that consumed everything in sight! God Almighty, but he needed a fresh start! Shiny hard tears welled up in his tiny eyes but he blinked furiously and retained control. He was always blubbing when he was little. His father couldn’t stand that: ‘We’ll put the nappies back on yer,’ the old man would yell, a raging ogre with a voice like a thunderclap and leathery hands that hurt even when he was playing.

‘At least I’m not a bloody dope-head, maaaan!’ he retorted childishly. It was all he could think of while he restrained the flood that surged up into his head and out through his eyeballs, the windows of his watery soul. He floundered for a moment, anxious to transfer the focus to her, so that they would see her as she really was.

She was the one that disappeared off in the middle of the night and caught the train to Kidderminster, never to return…What about her and that Lenny. It nearly killed the old man when he found out where she’d run to; Lenny was universally despised for some unknown reason apart from the fact that he was older and rode a huge motorbike. The old man just turned round and walked indoors, and that was the last that was said about it between the two of them. Dani was off his hands, and Lenny had taken her up, and it was done and dusted. She’d driven him to distraction with worry. Cindy managed to bag Roy, and a jolly good job too - at least that was one taken care of. Dani however was headstrong, wilful and independent from the start. It was shocking! She was not even seventeen… Frank just turned around and washed his hands of her, told her so too. He moved house…and they didn’t hear a thing from her until her twenty first birthday. It had aged him, hardened his heart to her; she was no longer the favourite. After that, he just didn’t seem to get involved too much with the other two; Jean took care of them, and all he needed to do was look after the money.

‘Look, let’s not let this discussion degenerate into a slanging match. Remember what it is that you are talking about…Frank’s future…we must decide what you’d like to do about this, because he won’t be able to continue living independently now.’ Roy was reasonable, balanced, rationally executive; it was what he was good at. He was a natural figure of authority; he certainly had the air of disdain off just right. His intercession was addressed to his wife as usual, even though she had not been participating in the bitter simmering exchange. There was a tense silence, broken only by the bemused humming from the blessed young mother who had finally discovered a reason for drawing breath. They all turned to look at Clara, and suddenly she was aware of them, and her black eyes wondered what the matter was.

‘Is there something wrong?’ she asked with something like innocence draped around her shoulders.

The Spitfire banked in a graceful curve and fell to make a rasping sweep of the Common. Whoever was at the controls really knew their onions, because an unsteady breeze cut across the open space in sudden flurries. Frank had expected rain. It usually rains for funerals, but today Jean had been lucky. He watched the model aeroplane execute a perfect dive, blew his sharp grey nose and wondered what would become of him now.