Catherine O'Flynn - News Where You Are

‘Remember the coat on the hanger. You thought it was someone hanging.’

Mo smiled weakly, but Frank could see that she’d forgotten about the coat until now. He saw her bite her lip.

‘So, for the last time, are you sure you want to come up? You don’t have to. I can clear it out on my own.’

Mo nodded.

‘Sure?’

She nodded again, but her face still showed uncertainty.

Frank started up the ladder and turned back. ‘Would you like me to go up first and take the coat down?’

She shrugged, but when Frank raised his eyebrows she cracked and nodded rapidly.

Frank climbed the ladder and wondered if the clear-out was really necessary. The sale seemed to be going through, but after so long waiting he still couldn’t quite believe they might finally be leaving the house. The buyer was a solicitor and his family relocated to the area. News of their interest and subsequent offer had caught Frank and Andrea unawares and after so long thinking only theoretically about where they would ideally like to live they were now having to find somewhere quickly.

He removed the coat from the hanger and called Mo up. They stood at the top of the ladder near the hatch and looked at the scene around them. There was an overhead light, but Mo had insisted on bringing a torch and shone it now from one perfectly visible pile to another.

‘What is it all, Dad?’

‘Stuff.’

‘It looks like as much stuff as we have in the whole rest of the house.’

Frank nodded slowly. ‘Yeah. I think you’re right.’

‘Where did it all come from?’

‘My parents’ house mainly. When Gran moved out of her house she could only take a few things to Evergreen. So we put it all here. A lot of it should have been thrown away back then, but we didn’t. It’s easier to put things off, isn’t it, rather than do them straight away. It’s a terrible habit, Mo. I hope you haven’t inherited it.’

Mo shrugged and Frank stood looking around at the piles of paper and mounds of boxes — he pushed at the edge of a suitcase with his toe.

Mo waited and after a while said, ‘Are we going to do something, Dad?’

‘Yes. Right, exactly. Chop-chop. Now — Mom’s suggested a job for you. You see the rail of clothes at the end? They’re all old dresses of Gran’s. Special dresses for occasions and dinners and things. Mom thinks we should be able to sell them on the internet — they’re vintage, apparently, like wine. Do you want to go and put them in bags?’

Mo clambered in the direction of the rail and Frank turned to the nearest pile covered by a dust sheet. He pulled the sheet back to reveal a stack of papers and ledgers. He took the top few and saw that it was paperwork taken from his father’s office at home. Sitting down on the floor he started to leaf through them. The first thing he came across were drawings of Rhombus House. Some of the early prototypes were markedly different from the final structure. Frank looked at the different approaches pursued. Many of the drawings had scribbled notes in his father’s handwriting around their edges. There were so many different images tracing the project from initial conception through to final design that it seemed strange to Frank that they should stop there. He imagined the sketches carrying on through time beyond the completion of the building. The faceless figures would develop faces and coats and carrier bags containing their lunches, their silhouettes changing with the passing fashions. One sketch would show the skateboarders who would come and make new use of the access ramp outside office hours. Later drawings would show the neglect of the exterior followed by the inappropriate facelift. A later one still would show the office workers moving out, Manila folders and houseplants in boxes. Then a series of images of the empty building, buses passing in front, the leaves on the trees coming and going. Then the JCB, like a dinosaur, taking the first of many bites out of the building, reducing it to rubble and dust and finally to its present state, a vacant plot of land.

He looked at the piles and piles of drawings and notebooks documenting all his father’s projects. He thought that there in the dusty attic all the stories stopped at just the right place, finishing at the optimistic start.

Mo called from the other end of the roof space. ‘Dad, did Gran really wear these dresses?’

Frank squinted down towards the rack. ‘Yes, she really did. We’ve got photos of her in some of them.’

‘But, Dad, they’re like the kind of clothes people wear in space.’

‘Well, it was the sixties — it was all a bit futuristic.’

‘But Gran isn’t futuristic.’ She paused. ‘She’s totally pastistic.’

‘Well, that’s just getting old, Mo. When you’re young, life’s all in the future; when you’re old, it’s all in the past.’

‘My life is present, Dad.’

‘Yeah, I know. That’s the best way.’

‘Dad? Can I keep this dress?’ Mo held up a short, silver A-line dress.

‘I thought we were supposed to be getting rid of stuff. Anyway, isn’t it a bit too big for you?’

‘When I wear it, I will be a bad robot.’

Frank shrugged. ‘In that case, you’d better keep it.’

He turned back to the piles around him and wondered if the library might be interested in his father’s archive. Maybe the library was full of plans for buildings that no longer stood, just waiting for the day when someone came and reassembled the city as it had once been. Dead buildings risen from their graves.

Mo had finished sorting the clothes and now wandered into the far corner of the attic. Frank heard her exclaim and turned to see her standing in a cloud made by the pulling of a dust sheet. She managed to say. ‘Dad! Look at this!’ before sneezing.

Frank started to walk over to where she stood.

‘It’s one of your old toys.’

Frank frowned. ‘I don’t think so — they’re all long gone.’

He reached her and saw what she was looking at. ‘Oh … that.’

‘Did you used to have little toy figures to put on the streets and in the buildings?’

He smiled. ‘I did, actually, but I wasn’t supposed to.’

‘Why not?’

‘It wasn’t mine, Mo. It’s not a toy.’

Mo looked at it again. ‘But it’s a town.’

‘I know, but it’s not a play town. It’s an architectural model. It was my dad’s.’

‘Didn’t he let you play with it?’

Frank laughed. ‘No. You didn’t play with his stuff, Mo. You didn’t touch it. Well, I did, but only when he was out and Mom was off somewhere else.’

Mo walked around the model slowly. ‘So this was a model for a real town?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is the town still there?’

Frank was staring at the model now, lost in thought. He remembered Little Cloud standing on top of the tallest building.

‘Dad?’

He’d done a good job putting it all back together after his father’s death. The fine lines where he had glued the shards back in place were barely visible.

‘Dad?’

‘Yes?’

‘The town? What’s it called?’

Frank looked at Mo and realized he hadn’t been listening to her.

‘The town? It’s called San Francisco.’

Elsie and Michael often saw Phil on television. They’d watch him sometimes on Saturday nights, surrounded by his glamorous assistants, his skin glowing, his teeth and eyes catching the light like glass, and he was the same old Phil to them. He was still the boy with too much oil in his hair who wanted to be Stewart Granger. Elsie would say, ‘You should drop him a line,’ and Michael would nod and agree that he should.

He remembers Phil’s wedding. Michael didn’t think he was right for best man. He thought Phil should pick someone better with people, better with words and speeches. Phil told him he didn’t care about any of that. What he wanted was a best man who would look after him on the scariest day of his life. He said that Michael had always looked after him, that he relied on him. Michael found that funny. He’d always thought it was the other way round.