The Colour of Memory (26 page)

‘That’s perfect. I feel quiet.’

‘Me too . . . I hope you’re hungry; there’s a lot of food.’

‘I’m always starving. The more I eat the hungrier I get. Is there something I can do?’

‘No, I’ll just do the salad. You could put a record on,’ Foomie said.

In the main room I crouched down and flicked through Foomie’s records. She had all the latest funk and hip-hop, a few jazz albums. From the kitchen came the sound of chopping. The sun was
angling through the blinds. Tiny diamonds of dust danced over the stereo; a golden caterpillar of light inched its way along the sofa.

Foomie came in and leant against the door frame. I stood up with a click in my knee so loud it sounded like a couple of bones had cracked. Foomie’s eyes widened. ‘That sounded
painful.’

‘Not really.’

‘We can eat in about five minutes,’ she said after a slight pause. The sun arranged thin racks of shadow on the wall.

Back in the kitchen I sat at the table and pulled four cans of Red Stripe out of a carrier-bag.

‘D’you want a beer, Foomie?’ I asked.

‘Hmmn, please.’ On one hand she had a quilted oven-glove made to look like a crocodile, four fingers forming the head and upper jaw, the thumb making the lower jaw. She held up her
hand and snapped the jaws together a couple of times. I laughed; like Freddie’s ‘Every Dog Has His Day’ glasses, a crocodile oven-glove struck me as one of those objects for which
you could develop quite a strong affection.

Foomie had cooked vegetarian lasagne. I tried to eat slowly but it was too delicious and I ended up, as always, shovelling it away by the forkful. We talked about nothing in particular,
sentences and topics following each other on a faint thread of sense and then disappearing as if they’d never actually taken place. The punchlines of jokes evaporated before we got to them.
It was strange being like this with Foomie. Judging by the conversation you would think we hardly knew each other but it was because we knew each other well that there was this odd evanescent
quality to what was said. Neither of us mentioned Steranko or Monica or anyone else.

The yellow walls glistened with a light film of condensation.

It was a warm evening and after dinner we took Foomie’s cassette player on to the roof of my block. Silhouetted by the slanting light the TV aerials threw long strips of
shadow on to the red bricks of the low wall. Sheets hung out to dry on the opposite block shrugged like flags in the breeze. There were a few lights on. While Foomie rolled a joint I put a tape of
Schubert’s fourteenth string quartet on the cassette player.

We passed the joint back and forth and listened to the music, saying nothing.

For a few moments the horizon was a damson smash of clouds. Then the sun sank behind the flats in the distance, leaving the roof in shadow. I went down to the flat to make coffee and fetch some
candles.

When I came back up the sky had deepened to indigo with a few ink-dark clouds. I handed Foomie her coffee and lit the candle.

Foomie leant back against the railing, a slight breeze combing her hair. Steam was floating from the dark surface of her coffee; when she sipped from the cup there was a slight movement of
muscle in her dark arms. She was wearing a sleeveless dress that came to her knees, blue with tiny white splashes like stars in the dark sky. It was still warm. The red and white lights of a plane
flashed above us. Clouds slipped past the early moon. To Foomie’s left I glimpsed the frail pattern of a spider’s web stretched between railing and wall.

The second movement of the quartet slid into the night: desire and dread circling, coaxing, and turning into each other; the sound of longing generating its own momentum, finding its own
form.

Listening, Foomie tilted her head to the sky. Warm candlelight touched her throat. Half her face was in shadow. The dress moved faintly in the breeze; the music swaying. She was still leaning
against the railing, her feet slightly apart.

The candle flame twisted and writhed, recoiling from the touch of the breeze that would extinguish it.

As I moved towards her, my shadow, agile with the light of the flames, disappeared into Foomie’s and then climbed slowly up her legs. I touched her neck and a few strands of hair. The
light of the candle glowed in her eyes. I bent my face towards her until there was only breath and then nothing at all between our lips.

Freddie came round when I was in the bath. While I got dry and put on some clothes he made a pot of tea. We sat in the kitchen and talked about boxing. After a while Freddie
said, ‘I’ve come to a momentous decision.’

‘You’re going to kill yourself?’

‘No.’

‘You’re going to pay me that money you borrowed four years ago?’

‘No, I’m leaving England.’

‘When?’

‘In about three weeks. I booked my ticket today.’

‘Jesus.’ I looked at the jar of marmalade and the teapot. ‘Why?’

‘There’s no point staying here.’

Then, as if offering an alternative answer, he said, ‘The fable’s got to run its course.’

That night the weather riots.

Dreaming that the door of the flat was being kicked down I woke to the sound of the wind hurling itself at the walls of the block. A strong wind lunged around the room, flinging the curtains
aside and then sucking them back through the gap of the open window. Above the surge and shriek of the gale came the sound of breaking glass. I closed the window and looked out as another gust
began thumping at the windows and walls. The air was full of dark shapes. Branches flew through the air like shrapnel. Burglar alarms were ringing in the distance. Street-lamps rocked and swayed. A
section of fencing was catapulted into the road. A piece of corrugated iron floated through the air and clattered against a wall. Someone walking along the street was battered to the ground. The
grass was flattened and glassy like a wave swept back into the ocean by the receding tide. Trees lunged at each other. The air was thick with leaves. From across the road there was a deep
kurrump
as a tree thrashed clear of the earth, hovered for a moment like a rocket on the point of take-off and then tottered and crashed to the ground. A few seconds later a clump of
bricks crashed through the windscreen of a parked car. All around was the sound of the gale breaking the branches of trees and pounding the walls of buildings.

I was still staring out of the window when, suddenly, everywhere was plunged into darkness. The ringing of burglar alarms died instantly. In place of the faint rust-coloured glow that had hung
over the city there was only deep night. Next day the air was fresh as a shaved face; the walls of buildings looked sore and clean as if a layer of dirt had been razored off by the wind. Uprooted
trees were everywhere, scattered across the roads like barricades, vast craters where their roots had been. Here and there were piles of masonry, the debris of houses looted by the wind. A fresh
breeze ran through the grass. Everywhere seemed lighter. Where before the light had filtered through clumps of trees now only bewildered daylight lay like a flood across junctions and road. The sky
was an innocent blue, washed clean by the wind and rain with no sign of contrition or knowledge. These things happen sometimes – that was the only message written on the blank sheet of
sky.

Monica and I were standing on her balcony, drinking beer and watching the setting sun carve deep canyons into the clouds. From the stereo in the living-room I caught snatches
of Callas singing of love and betrayal, her voice like a promise so vast it could only be broken.

Monica went inside to get more drinks. As I turned to watch her go I found myself looking straight into her bedroom. On other occasions when we’d been on the balcony the curtains had been
drawn and I’d not noticed the room behind us. This evening the curtains were wide open and the light was on. Clothes and jeans were piled on the bed. A dress was hanging on the back of a
door. Odd shoes were scattered over the floor. Magazines, cassette tapes and books. On her bedside table were a full roll of pink toilet paper and an old clanger-style alarm clock. Two pillows. A
stack of LPs and her old music centre. No posters on the walls. The door of her wardrobe hung open, revealing coloured dresses on hangers, the silver rectangle of a mirror. In the window was a
well-tended pot plant. The window was very clean and because of the darkness of the balcony the room looked exceptionally bright. There was a stillness about the interior that made it look like one
of those installations in museums showing rooms and furniture from different periods of history. It was easy to imagine a small discreetly printed placard just below the window-sill: ‘Young
Woman’s Bedroom, Council Flat, South London: Late Twentieth Century’.

What will survive of us?

Monica came back on to the balcony carrying two more cans of beer and a small grass joint that gave off a thin drift of smoke. She had put on a red and blue turtleneck sweater. Over the blocks
of flats in the distance, thick crimson light welled up behind the last dark rags of cloud.

The sun was watery and faint. The long trunks of mottled trees were scattered across the Common. A slight mist. Gangs of workers piled branches into the back of a lorry. Any
trees still standing were bare and broken; high branches hung at angles that couldn’t have grown. The grass was strewn with wet brown leaves. Smoke drifted in the distance.

Steranko and I walked on until we came to a part of the Common that had been cleared and scraped flat. Large piles of wood were smouldering and burning. A lorry dumped a load of branches and
then rumbled off. The soil was heavy, soft and criss-crossed with the marks of large tyres.

We followed the tracks into the bare stretch of ground where all the trees uprooted in the gale were being slowly burned. The ground here was covered in a layer of grey-white ash. With each step
a small cloud of ash was kicked lightly into the air, like sand on a beach from which a tide of fire had receded. All around, piles of ashes and embers were still smouldering, some two or three
feet high. Nearby, a mechanical digger scooped up thick loads of black earth, swivelled round and buried the trees’ ashes beneath a dark drizzle of falling soil.

We walked towards a fire that was burning fiercely. Expertly made, it was banked up so that the lower slopes glowed red and white hot while new wood thrown on the top burnt easily and steadily.
Another lorry juddered past and deposited a load of wood. Two workers threw the wood on to a slow burning fire, their faces touched by the light of the flames. There was a rose tint to the sky. The
smell of burning wood. Through the waves of heat rising from the fires, lorries and buses on the nearby road melted and rippled as they passed by. Behind them were the bare branches of tall trees
and, still further off, a few lights in large Victorian buildings. To the right a long line of trees that had survived the storm receded into the distance.

Unnoticed, the sun had disappeared behind the Victorian houses. The fires burnt quietly but all around was the clatter and roar of the lorries and the digger, the traffic on the road. The light
from the fires made the hazy sky a pale golden blue.

The pale light fading, the leaves burning, the trees receding.

We walked on and there, hanging in the wide gap between two rows of houses, was the sun: a perfect crimson disc, thin branches silhouetted against it like broken veins. Smoke from the fires
drifted across the bare ground. Buses shimmered along the road, the blood-coloured sun suspended only a fraction above them. High above the sun a red vapour trail, razor-thin, cut the sky.

Another lorry arrived, this time dumping a load of pallets, hardboard sheets, chairs, tables and desks. Steranko asked the man driving the lorry if we could borrow a couple of chairs.

‘Help yourself,’ he said.

We dragged two large armchairs to where we could watch the sun shiver through the heat and flames of the largest fire. Flames reached high into the air, staining the sky a thick blue. The lorry
trundled off and we sat back in our armchairs, surrounded by the waste ground, the slow-burning fires and the sound of the digger mechanically returning the ashes of the trees to the soil. Smoke
from the fires behind encircled and drifted past us. Slumped in his armchair, long legs stretched out in front of the fire, Steranko’s face was bathed in the deep red light of the flames.
More wood had been thrown on to the fires behind us and they erupted suddenly in bright flames. Two more workers from the parks department came along.

‘Are you supervising the fires?’ one of them said.

‘We’re just sitting here,’ Steranko said. The man limped off and then he and his mate began throwing the hardboard, chairs and tables on to the fire. They caught immediately
and bright yellow flames reached higher into the air. The heat scorched our eyes and we pulled the chairs back a little way. At the base of the fire the burning mass of wood from the trees glowed
and pulsed. On top, tables and chairs perched for a few moments at odd angles and were suddenly engulfed in flames. Something thrown on the fire bounced off and landed with a clatter at my feet: a
record player, smouldering.

The heat was so intense now that the two men had trouble throwing stuff on to the top of the fire. Their faces were stained deep red with gold and black shadows. The sun had sunk from sight as
if consumed by the bonfire. My face felt scorched, my eyes watered. I touched the arms of my chair to make sure that it was not about to burst into flames beneath me. The burning frame of a chair
toppled down the slopes of the fire and rolled, still burning, to the ground. There were shadows everywhere. Steranko’s face and clothes were lit bright orange and yellow. The sky had turned
a deeper blue than either of us had ever seen. Another table caught light and I moved back still further, angling my chair to the left, looking away from the flames. High up in the frozen sky was a
full moon, bathing the flattened ground and the trees in calm light. Half of my face was still scorching hot from the fire, the other half chilled by the evening air. Steranko had also turned his
chair round; the left side of his face was pale and silver-grey in the cold light of the moon. Burning more slowly now, blue-grey smoke from the other fires curled slowly past us. There was another
whoosh of flame from the main fire and we turned away from the moon and the empty sky as a mattress went up in a gush of flame. The two workers walked over and stood watching the fire with us.