Preethi Nair - The Colour of Love

‘Oh, painting? What do you paint with?’

‘A paintbrush,’ I replied.

He laughed again. ‘Very good, that’s very good, I see you too have got a sense of humour. I’ve dabbled in watercolours but I’m not very good,’ he added.

Then there was another silence.

‘Seen any good films?’ he asked.

I said the first thing that came into my head. ‘The Matrix .’

‘I saw that on the plane to Japan.’

For the first time he had my attention. Japan? What was he doing in Japan?

‘Japan?’ I enquired.

‘Yes, I have to travel for work and so I extend my stay wherever possible. I love to find out about other cultures. It’s important to expand the mind.’

‘Where else have you been?’

He listed practically half the countries in the atlas but not in a pretentious way. I stopped him at Chile and asked what it was like, and for the first time I sensed he was being himself.

‘I’ve always wanted to go there,’ I said, and to my surprise he did not come out with a cheesy line like, ‘I’ll take you’ or ‘Maybe you’ll go there soon.’ Instead, he said it was beautiful.

There was a pause but now it wasn’t awkward.

‘Perhaps you’d like to meet up?’ he asked.

I had images of my mother, a protagonist in an Indian film, wailing and beating her chest in despair at the thought of me saying no, so I said ‘Yes'. It would be just one meeting and then I could say it didn’t work out.

‘For dinner or a movie?’ he asked.

Movie? Before I made a comment on his use of the word ‘movie’ I thought twice. It was only the Croydon multiplex and I wouldn’t have to talk to him that much if we were seeing a film. ‘Yes, a movie sounds good.’

‘Great, I’ll pick you up on Saturday, about three?’

‘All right.’

‘See you then, Nina.’

My mother was downstairs, eagerly waiting for me. I could hear her pacing. As soon as I came down she pretended to look disinterested, resuming the rolling-pin position. She turned around for a second and her right eyebrow signalled as if to say, ‘Dish the dirt.’ The other eyebrow said, ‘He’s a good boy, got a good job, coming from a very good family, now tell me you have arranged to meet him.’

‘Three o’clock on Saturday,’ I said.

‘OK, OK,’ she muttered as if she wasn’t bothered, but when she turned back to her perfectly circular rotis I could feel her beaming.

Knowing that my parents were distracted with the whole Raj scenario, I felt less guilty the next morning about putting on a suit and pretending to go to work. Jean Michel had left three more messages. I wanted to listen to them but again deleted them one by one. Then I went back to see Matisse, the only person who I could turn to at that moment in time.

I bought the book I had seen the day before. It told me about his life and each of the paintings. It also included a commentary by critics on what he was trying to achieve, saying something about his search for chromatic equilibrium. How did they know that anyway? Maybe he wasn’t trying to achieve anything except to express his feelings? Did it matter what they thought he was trying to do? What mattered was how the paintings left you feeling, not a skewed interpretation on what he did or didn’t want to do. I searched the book for his own words and came across another quote: ‘There are always flowers for those who want to see them.’

‘Are there, Matisse?’ I wondered aloud.

The cafeteria was full again at lunchtime and I found myself having to ask if I could sit next to a girl with long, mousy-blonde hair.

‘Sure,’ she replied in an Australian accent, smiling away. When she spotted that I had bought the same book on Matisse as her and commented on it, I nodded and kept my head down. I wasn’t in the mood for chitchat.

But she continued. ‘He’s just great, isn’t he? And I love the quote on flowers.’

Ordinarily I might have taken this to be a sign, having just read the exact same quote, but in my jaded state I took it to be some lonely traveller who probably had no money and was trying to strike up a friendship so she could ask if she could sleep on my sofa. I imagined my dad finding her on his Land of Leather sofa in the morning.

‘“There are always flowers for those who want to see them,”’ she continued out loud, just in case I wasn’t familiar with it.

‘And weeds,’ I wanted to say, but remained looking down, eating in silence.

‘Nice meeting you,’ she got up to leave.

‘Yes,’ I replied as she went off.

I sat there for a while reading. Some Japanese tourists signalled to the seats next to me to ask if they could sit there. They seemed really grateful that I said yes. I nodded, relieved that they couldn’t speak any English and turned the page.

The last bit I read before heading off to Green Park was about the nature of creativity. Matisse said that creativity took courage. My dad would say creativity took a lot of lazy people who had nothing better to do all day except to waste time. The Turner Prize did nothing except confirm his perception: ‘See, they fooling people and making the money. Maybe I should get Kavitha to make some patterns with her samosas and send them in.’ I closed the book and caught the tube to Green Park.

Creativity takes courage.

Does it? I don’t think I can take a leap of faith, not on my own, anyway. I don’t trust myself. Does that make sense? I’ve never really done anything on my own. I’m used to doing things for other people, that’s what makes me feel secure. I’m used to being someone’s daughter, someone’s girlfriend, someone’s lawyer. I’m not used to being me. I don’t believe that I am big enough to make this all better. If I’m myself, I don’t think I’ll survive. Don’t worry, I’m talking to myself, not you, Ki. Wouldn’t want you to think that I’m asking you or anything. Wouldn’t want you to rise from the dead or do something complicated like that.

I sat on the bench for a little while longer, then wandered around the back of Mayfair looking in gallery windows before going home.

‘Good day, Nina?’ my dad asked.

‘We got an important client today.’

‘Very good,’ he said as he delved back into his newspaper. He didn’t really need to know the ins and outs of ‘love’, just to be occasionally reassured that I wouldn’t unexpectedly be made redundant; hence the addition of new clients every now and then.

It’s not my natural inclination to bend the truth. I wasn’t one of those types who went to school with a long skirt and rolled it up on the way there. Truth-bending is something I have learned to do out of necessity, and not necessarily to protect myself but my parents. When I was with Jean Michel I always said I was seeing Jean or staying there, but they jumped to the conclusion that he was a she and I let them believe it.

‘Bring this Jeannie round,’ my dad would say.

‘Yes, we would like to meet her. I’ll make roti and paneer,’ my mum would add. It went on like this till I couldn’t make any more excuses, so I got Susan, one of my friends, to stand in as her.

My dad liked ‘the Jeannie’ as he referred to her. After ascertaining what Susan’s parents did and estimating their combined annual income, he thought she was a good person to mix with.

Now I looked at my dad, took a deep breath and said, ‘Dad, the office is experiencing some difficulties with the phone, so if there is an emergency ring me on my mobile.’ They never rang the office, but just in case.

‘Hmmm.’

‘Did you hear me, Dad? Fire, flood, office, call me on my mobile.’

‘What fire in the office, it’s not burned down, no?’

Now I had his attention. ‘No, I’m just saying, in case of an emergency or if you need to speak to me, call me on my mobile.’