Catherine O'Flynn - News Where You Are

‘Oh, that’s good. That’s where she should be. Having fun, not stuck here in this necropolis. Is it still freezing outside? I looked out of the window this morning and I could just tell that it was a bitter, bitter day. Where on earth are your coats?’

Andrea smiled. ‘It’s quite warm out, well, warm for October. You should go outside for a walk in the garden. The trees look naked and beautiful.’

Maureen sat forward. ‘Ooh, now that reminds me of something. Could you just take a look out of the window for me, dear?’

Andrea got up and walked towards the window. ‘What is it? What do you want me to look at?’

‘Can you see that small fir tree towards the right? The one that they’ve squared off at the top?’

‘Yes.’

‘Aha! Now — what do you think of that?’

Frank joined Andrea at the window. ‘What do we think of what?’

‘Look at it! Can’t you see it?’

‘See what?’ said Frank, but then Andrea laughed.

‘Oh — do you mean the face?’

‘Yes. The face.’

‘Yeah, I see it. Look, Frank — there are two holes in the foliage like eyes, and just there, level with the birdbath, that’s the mouth.’

Frank squinted: ‘Oh … yeah, I suppose.’

His mother exclaimed in triumph. ‘Now you see it! The death’s head skull! Grinning at me day after day.’

Frank muttered to Andrea. ‘Of course, “the death’s head skull”. Couldn’t just be a smiley face.’

Maureen continued. ‘Oh yes, he’s there every day baring his teeth. Well, we’re old friends now. I get up in the morning and I look out of the window and say, “Not this morning, my friend, but it won’t be long.” Oh, he’s patient; he’s waiting for me.’

Frank chose not to engage with this. ‘So what have you been up to? Have you been to the lounge at all? Spoken to anyone else?’

‘Who is there to talk to? None of the staff speak English. On Wednesday one of them brought me an absolutely frightful cup of tea. Dark brown, the teaspoon virtually standing up in it. So I said, “I like my tea weak.” Well, she frowned at me, obviously without a clue as to what I was saying, so I said it louder: “Weak! I like my tea weak.” And the light bulb finally goes on and she says, “Ah! Week. Week. No every day. Too many tea!” And she’s off laughing away and I haven’t had a cup of tea since, the silly woman. I’m living my life trapped in some ghastly farce.

Andrea said: ‘Oh dear. I’ll go and talk to someone and explain.’

She left the room and Frank stood with his back to his mother, looking out of the window.

‘Why are they knocking it down?’

He turned to see his mother looking directly at him for the first time since he’d arrived.

‘Walter showed me the article in the paper. Why are they knocking it down?’

Frank saw now the report about the demolition of Worcester House lying on her lap. He went over and sat by her. ‘I don’t know, Mom. The owners want to build apartments there — they think they’ll get more revenue. They got an immunity from listing and there was nothing more we could do about it.’

She said nothing for a while and then, ‘How many are left in Birmingham now?’

‘After that one, just one.’

She smiled sadly and looked at Frank. ‘If only he’d known. We’re going to outlive them all.’

His father’s study is littered with architectural drawings. They cover the walls and every surface. Endless, minutely differentiated views of the same buildings showing different aspects or focusing on small details of design. Occasionally, though, perhaps to illustrate scale, the drawings include human forms scattered about lobbies, or descending staircases. These figures are always faceless and Francis finds their blankness horrifying. They have become very real for him. He calls them the Future People. He imagines them moving through tree-lined plazas and along elevated walkways unseeing, unhearing and silent. He thinks that one day they will come to get him and make him like them.

At night he lies in his bed and hopes that he won’t dream of them, but still he does. The dream is the same: he’s running after his father along a light-filled, glass-lined corridor. He calls out, but his father doesn’t hear, and Francis keeps running, trying to close the gap between them. Eventually, after what feels like a whole night of running, his father gradually starts to turn his head and Francis realizes in that final split second that when his father turns he will have no face. He wakes up, heart racing and breathless, before he sees it. He reaches up to his own face and checks that he still has a nose, a mouth. He turns on his light to check that he can see. He has an old Ladybird book hidden under his pillow. He hides it because Peter and Jane are too babyish for him and he outgrew their books years ago, but when he has the dream he pulls it out to look at their faces and the face of Pat the dog. He likes Jane’s smile.

His father goes to work on Saturdays now to work on the new town. Before he would work from his study, but now he announces at breakfast that there is just too much to be done at the office. Francis’s mother butters her toast and says nothing. She spends a lot of time in the garden and Francis watches her from his bedroom window. The garden was designed by his father to complement the modern design of the house. He watches his mother dig up the gravel borders and cacti and replace them with soil and flowering plants. He sees her try to soften the geometric edges of the beds and cover the concrete blocks with foliage. He thinks the garden is a type of conversation between his parents. He looks at it and tries to hear what it’s saying.

Francis stands at the top of the stairs underneath the picture that isn’t really a picture. He isn’t sure what it is. A mess of twigs and stones. Dinosaur sick, perhaps. There are pictures like it all over the house. His father chose them especially to complement his design. Francis wishes they had proper pictures instead, of horses or boats by someone who could draw. Downstairs his mother is on the phone, speaking in a low voice to her sister. She is talking about the new town. It is a purple day. Francis can only hear the occasional word. He thinks he hears her swear and he quietly moves down two stairs. He hears her say something about being invisible. He is alarmed and cranes his head round the banister to see if she really is and is half relieved and half disappointed to see that she is still quite visible, her back to him, cigarette smoke coiling around her head. She talks about packing bags, and Francis thinks that they are going away somewhere, but when she hangs up the phone she just returns to the garden.

One evening Francis is carefully carrying a cup of tea to his father in his study when he sees the model for the first time. A neat label reads: PROPOSED CENTRE DARNLEY NEW TOWN — DOUGLAS H. ALLCROFT AND PARTNERS.

Francis stands rooted to the spot, the cup of tea forgotten in his hand. An entire toy town stretches out ahead of him covering twenty feet or more. After a while his father looks up and asks: ‘What do you think of that?’

Francis gazes at the streets and houses. ‘It’s amazing.’

His father assumes he’s referring to the elegance of the design. He smiles and nods, getting up from his chair to walk over to the model and point with the stem of his pipe.

‘You can see that the town centre is encircled by a gyratory road system with points of access at regular intervals. The passing motorist can navigate around the centre without being impeded by delivery vehicles. The shopping area is in the heart of the town in an enclosed precinct, where the shoppers can buy the things they need whilst protected from the elements. The shoppers’ cars go on top of the precinct in a tiered car-parking area. The lorries make their deliveries to the service areas that lie around the perimeter of the precinct. This is how the towns of tomorrow will look. The squalid high streets we now see, Francis, clogged with cars, blackened with soot, their pedestrians assailed by rain and traffic spray, they will be things of the past. The ring road will encircle the centre and pedestrians will be separated safely from cars by a series of subways and elevated walkways.’