Happy Birthday and All That (7 page)

Woolston, on the other side of the bridge, really did seem like the sticks to Frank.

‘I remember when all there was was the floating bridge,' Grandpa told him, just as he always did. ‘They said then it would take till past the year 2000 for the bridge to pay for itself. I wonder if it has yet.'

‘Doubt it,' said Frank, as he always did.

Soon they were driving along the road beside Weston Shore. This wasn't necessary, but Frank always made this minor detour so that Grandpa could have a quick look at the sea. The shingle and mud had once been thought of as a beach, and families had spent whole days there, now it was usually deserted. The water had a caustic look and nobody paddled any more. There were dog-walkers and people digging for lugworms, but no picnickers and rarely any children. Just yards from this was Weston estate, six towering blocks that looked like the last of England, innumerable flats, a precinct, some houses, and when she was in, Melody.

Weston had been the subject of every government and local authority improvement scheme ever. There was a long, impressive roll-call of them - Local Projects, Estate Action, Housing Renewal, Community Safety Initiatives, Community Action, Single Regeneration Budget - but these might never have happened. It still needed more. Now it was a Sure Start Area. The vortices between the blocks capsized prams and blew over buggies. It was a struggle for the young mums to get to the bus stop for the number 17 that would take them away past the Vospers yard, over the Itchen Bridge and into town. Melody didn't have a baby though. She lived with her parents. To be still at home at twenty-two! Frank and The Wild Years found it astonishing, but to Melody the pros were obvious - wide screen TV, DVD player, another TV in her own room, everything comfy, Mum doing all the cooking and washing, all for £20 a week. She did have to put up with her little brother, Mark, who at nineteen was not that little and worked at Q Tyres earning more than she did. Just the dog would have been enough to drive Frank away. It was a spiteful little Jack Russell cross, a really pointless dog. It always seemed to have a special sneer for Frank.

The music teacher at Melody's school had said that she would go far. Melody had a future as Southampton's answer to Celine Dion, but without the nose. So far though, she had only made it to the box office of The Mayflower, where she had landed a job as an assistant after Frank cost her the job at Asda. It had been a blessing in disguise, really. The Mayflower was much classier than Asda. In quiet moments she would read the programmes and daydream about being in one of the shows herself. She would undo her ponytail and let her silky blonde hair fall over her face. She had the ideal hair for a contemporary young person, dead straight, longish, fair, very manageable. She could have been mistaken for one of Atomic Kitten.

Frank knew that Melody would be at work. There was no chance of meeting her. Her mum had placed an order last
time. Frank had got Grandpa to knock on the door with that one. It had been for a stupid white plastic shelf-thing that was designed to stand on a corner of a bath. Frank could imagine Melody's mum thinking that it would be very handy. He wondered if she had been disappointed or if it had changed her life after all.

Taking the catalogues round wasn't really that bad; all they had to do was shove them through people's letter boxes. It was going back and trying to retrieve them or, if they were lucky, some orders that Frank dreaded. People out here went for bulky, awkward things, buckets, brooms, bins, wipeable self-assembly bedside cabinets, the sort of things that they wouldn't want to carry home themselves. Frank was hoping that
Asda.com
home delivery, Argos Homedirect, and all that crew would put paid to the whole BettaKleen empire. Surely it could only be a matter of time.

In the tower blocks they rode to the top in the lifts that were all, thankfully, working that day and then slowly made their way down, floor by floor, using the stairs. Grandpa waited and looked out of the landing windows while Frank went along the corridors shoving catalogues through people's letter boxes. They broke for lunch and got fish and chips, eating in, both paying for their own and having second cups of tea to put off returning to their deliveries. There were still many more blocks to do.

‘If Posy could see this she wouldn't always be bloody moaning,' Frank constantly told himself. They met almost no one, but he could hear the sounds of life coming from behind the doors - hoovering and washing machines and Tweenies, all merging. Frank had the feeling that he was visiting the back doors of a cliff-top gull colony. On the other side would be the young in their nests squawking for more food, while their parents were off fishing and flying.

Posy would still have been moaning if she had seen him. He should be doing a proper job. She should have married a GP or
a solicitor or someone who worked for IBM. He wasn't even any good at DIY.

A couple of hours later they were done. He took Grandpa home, dropping him outside to avoid going into the shop again. Frank thought that just as there is a theory that each heart has a prescribed number of beats, so there was a limit to the number of times he could set foot in Fancy Ways without dropping dead. He thought that he must be somewhere near the maximum already. He parked the car just as Posy and the children were arriving home from school. Isobel was fretting in the pram.

‘Daddy!'

‘Daddy!'

‘Daddy!'

‘That was good timing,' he said to Posy. He loved how pleased the children were to see him.

‘Would have been better if you'd been in time to collect them,' Posy grumbled. ‘I had to break Izzie's feed.'

‘Sorry,' he said. ‘Sorry. I was just helping Grandpa.'

‘Why do those stupid leftover catalogues have to live at our house?' Posy demanded, as she always did.

‘You know how cramped his flat is …'

‘Huh.' She turned away from him. He saw that Grandpa's trolley was still in the boot of the car. It would doubtless be needed. He would have to take it back. Dear God, hadn't he already paid his debt to society?

‘Could you make the kids some toast? I just want to go and finish this feed.' Well, he could manage that.

An hour later Posy still hadn't come down. He went up to see her. She was lying on their bed, Isobel blissed out with sucking; they were both asleep. Radio Four would keep them that way.

When CBBC finished the children realised that they were still hungry.

‘Let's go and get some chips,' Frank told them. ‘A nice
surprise for Mummy.' He could take back Grandpa's trolley at the same time. With the kids waiting in the car and some chips cooling in their paper, he would have a good excuse not to go in.

‘Oh no! Not chips! You know I'm trying to lose this weight,' Posy said when they returned. ‘Well I'll just have a few.' She piled a side plate with them. Lashings of Waistline salad cream meant that it wasn't really that fattening. Brown bread and Flora Light for the butties made it positively healthy. ‘Do you mind doing the baths before you go out? I'm just really tired …' No he didn't mind, not much.

Frank felt as though Posy really made him pay for his nights out with the band. Of course he enjoyed them, but conveniently she seemed to forget that the band was his work, and their main source of income. It was a long time since she'd brought in any money, and all she did was complain. Frank always played on Wednesdays. It was Posy's favourite night of the week.

When the children were in bed she remembered that she hadn't shut up the rabbit for the night. Lettice received constant death threats from local foxes. Posy and Frank found pigeons' wings, scatterings of feathers, chewed shoes, disembowelled and slashed balls on the so-called lawn, and had to dispose of them appropriately. Posy put on her bendy M & S sandals and went out into the garden. Lettice was calmy nibbling dandelions.

‘All organic,' Posy told her. ‘Guaranteed 100 per cent pesticide free, the rabbit equivalent of eating the finest fresh rocket salad.' She gave Lettice a brief cuddle, kissed her silky ears, and shut her securely in the hutch. The first stars were coming out. Posy sat down on the steps, hugging her knees under her soft cotton skirt, the way she had when she was a girl. Django the cat came and joined her. The flower bed beside them was over-run by evening primroses. She watched
as they started opening. ‘One enchanted evening …' she thought, and made her breathing slow and calm. She no longer heard the hum of the traffic on The Avenue. Her ears were tuned into the soft whispers and creaks that came from the Common, overlaid by Lettice's rustlings. Through the dusk came the opening bars of a song ‘Da da du du du da da …' She smiled. ‘When You Wish Upon a Star'. She would sit there all evening and drink in the beauty and tranquillity. Then she heard the sound of crying coming from upstairs. Ho hum, Isobel. She heaved herself up and went inside. By the time she reached Isobel's room the noise had stopped. Just a bad dream. She turned off the children's lights, lifting a
Beano
off James's face, returning a monkey to Poppy's pillow, putting the quilt back on Tom. Back downstairs everything was dark. The garden seemed uninviting and cold now. She might as well watch
ER
and
Sex in the City,
neither of which Frank would tolerate. She really ought to do her fitness video. She drank two glasses of water instead. There was a family-size bag of Rolos in the cupboard, perhaps she would just have one.

During the ads she muted the TV. The noises of her home at rest, the boiler flaming and relaxing, water in the pipes, the sighs of the fridge, the rattles of the sashes when a train went past, all served to comfort her as she sat on the floor and ate the chocolates one by one. She created a Rolo-shaped mass from the gold papers, scrunching and destroying the evidence of how many she had eaten, even though there was nobody but herself to deceive, and nobody who might censure her pigginess.

Meanwhile at the pub Frank was making his second pint last as long as possible. It was his turn to drive Melody home, so unfortunately he couldn't get wasted. But The Wild Years had been red hot that night.

It was often the way: he went out with no expectations and everything just clicked. It was some sort of special electricity,
something in the air, in their blood temperatures. It was all perfect, complex and beautiful. As he played he thought of the Indian brass wire ball that Father Christmas had given to James. It was called a mandala, something like that. It had beads on the wire and could be made into different shapes, but it always came back to being a sphere.

Last orders came and went. Eventually they were loading up the equipment. Melody remained aloof to this bit. She had an impressive policy of never, ever helping. She would sit at the bar and smoke and sip her last drink. Or lounge around making comments as they staggered past her with the PA. From the way her T-shirts clung Frank speculated that she must wear the sort of bras that he only ever got to see on billboards. She blew smoke in great clouds as he passed her. He inhaled deeply. How sweet it was. She had pale, slender wrists, and wore silver and aquamarine bangles that jangled each time she moved. She would never ask for a lift home. It was her divine right. One of the Wild Years would take her home. She always hoped that it would be Frank.

She could have had any of the others, and they had all tried their luck at some time or other, but Frank, the one who wasn't available, was the only one that she would have had. It wasn't that she was desperate or anything. She just thought he was pretty good-looking, and funny, and kind, and talented. And married. Actually she quite liked the idea that he was married. His wife obviously didn't know how lucky she was. Melody remembered seeing them all together in town. Posy had been wearing a hippy skirt that was bunched up around her waist and made her hips look enormous. Posy hadn't taken much notice of Melody when Frank introduced them. She seemed to be hunting in her bag for something. When James piped up, ‘Daddy, is this the lady you were throwing flowers to in Asda?' Frank had quickly ushered them all away. It looked as though Posy
hadn't heard anyway. Pity. Melody would have liked to see him get out of that one.

‘Ready, Melody?' Frank said. She drained her glass and nodded. ‘Haven't you got a coat?'

‘You are such a dad!' she said.

‘I'm not,' he said. ‘Really I'm not.' But she was lighting another cigarette, not listening.

He drove slowly because there were so many students about. You never knew when one of them was going to come lurching into the road in front of you. The lights were all for them, and soon they were through the city and heading over the Itchen Bridge. The warm, salty air streamed through the open windows.

When they were almost at Weston he heard that tune again.

‘Do da der du doo da da …'

‘What is that?' he said. It had been bugging him all day.

‘When you wish upon a star …' sang Melody.

Of course, of course. It was playing again and again, getting louder. Jiminy Cricket was sending him a message from across the Solent.

‘Mind if we go and see where it's coming from?' he asked.

‘Don't you know?'

Instead of turning inland towards the estate he took the coast road, down past The Seaweed Pub, and soon they were parked on Weston Shore.

‘When you wish upon a star …' The tune came again, louder.

‘When you park on Weston Shore …' Frank sang.

‘Look! There it is!' said Melody. ‘I'd love to go on that.'

Suspended in the darkness in front of them, strung with pink and yellow beads of light, was a ship.

‘Off to Neverland,' said Frank.

It was the Disney cruise liner.

‘When you wish upon a star …'

‘I don't suppose I'll ever get to go on that ship,' Melody said.
She sounded so mournful and little and sad. He leant over and kissed her.