Frank was overwhelmed by an unwelcome notion of age, its indignities, its steady erasure of who you had once been and the recycling of your tiny former position in the world. The same tragic end might befall him one day. Right here too.
He was disoriented by a sudden acute empathy with a loneliness that might have been absolute. It took a conscious effort for him to suppress the awful feeling. Wiping his eyes, he went back downstairs.
He listened to an answering machine at the estate agents and left a curt message for Justin. Then turned about in the living room and forced a change of tack in his thoughts. He visualised the transformation of the house that he and Marcus would effect: wooden floors, white walls, wooden blinds, minimalist light fittings, dimmers, a wall-mounted TV, black and white movie stills in steel frames on the walls, leather furniture, a stainless-steel kitchen, a paved yard for outside dining, a spare room for his gadgets and guests, fitted closet space and nothing in the master bedroom but his new bed and a standing lamp. Clean lines, simple colours. Space, light, peace, modernity, protection.
He had his work cut out.
On the Friday of Frank’s first week in the house, the former resident’s furniture was still in place, as it had been for long enough to leave the carpet dark beneath the sofa and the solitary armchair in the living room. This had prevented him stripping the walls. Until the furniture was hauled away, the kitchen was the only part of the house that he could dismantle, even though he had become fond of using it to make egg and chips, which he’d not eaten since he was at school. He also liked to listen to the radio in that room, and BBC Radio Two, which he couldn’t recall ever hearing since childhood. As a result, he’d staved off pulling down the old wooden cabinets with their frosted-glass doors. There was also something cosy and reassuring about the cupboards and the little white stove. And anyway, as Marcus was due to arrive with his tools the following morning, Saturday, Frank was able to postpone the destruction until that time.
He needed groceries too for the weekend and hadn’t organised himself sufficiently to shop at a supermarket, so he’d been dipping in and out of the local shop to feed himself. The store was called Happy Shop, and was conveniently situated at the end of the road. A strip-lit cave run by a smiling Hindu man. This would be his fourth trip to the store in a week. Or had it been more than that? Didn’t matter and he was due a treat, which might just be the Arctic Roll that he’d been eyeing up the day before. Or had that been Wednesday? Nothing had seemed to define the days of his first week in the house; they had all been slow and pleasant.
Frank hadn’t been out much that week either, and now found himself craving human company. Going round the local shops was the furthest he’d ventured all week, because the house was immensely warm and cosy and it had made him consider the world outside the front door as not being either of those things.
On leave for the first time in six months, he’d quickly slumped into a routine of slouching on the sofa each morning to watch the greenish TV screen. This had been his first opportunity for ages to relax, which must have accounted for his torpor. But the house untied his knots wonderfully; he’d slept as if he was in a coma for an hour after lunch too, until his shows came on. Not that he’d ever seen any of the television programmes before, due to work, but he’d quickly discovered preferences on the five terrestrial channels available to him.
In the cupboard under the stairs he’d found a tartan shopping trolley on wheels. It had been parked beside a carpet sweeper that he was sure he could flog on eBay to a retro nut. Having to fetch and carry so many tins all week from Happy Shop had made the idea of using the trolley gradually less of a joke as the week progressed. And before he left the house on Friday he even paused outside the cupboard and wondered if anyone young might laugh at him in the street if he went out with the trolley. But if they did, he wasn’t sure he’d care.