Geoff Dyer - The Colour of Memory

‘What did they take?’

‘Stereo, records, camera.’

‘You insured?’

‘Yeah. It’s just the hassle. They got in through the window and found a spare set of keys which they took so I had to spend the whole day getting new locks fitted. A hundred quid. Guess how many burglaries there were in Brixton last night?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Twenty-five. That’s what the cop who came round told me. He said he’d never known a night like it. I think there was even an element of pride in his voice as he said it.’

I laughed and bought Freddie another beer.

‘This weather is so weird too,’ he said, draining his old glass. ‘Is it hot? Is it cold? It’s not even that easy to tell whether or not it’s raining. The seasons are all dissolving into each other. Look at it: it’s supposed to be September and it looks like snow. I’m beginning to think the weather reports are government controlled, censored. They probably change the records to make out that thirty inches of rain is normal for August. I’m sure it never used to rain that much. People wouldn’t have stood for it. There’d have been a revolution. They can’t let the truth out because they know there’d be panic. The forecasts are just government propaganda. They say it’s going to brighten up by the late afternoon and it’s still pissing down at seven. The wonder is that people still go on believing them.’

Freddie was clearly in the mood to complain. I nodded my head in agreement.

‘Mary says the weather is determined by the economic structure of society; it’s all related to that economic base. We get the weather we deserve,’ I said.

‘Yes, we can’t afford good weather anymore. We probably sold it all to America. That’s why we get all this drizzle. It’s the perfect weather for a declining industrial power,’ said Freddie, groaning as he saw Ed making his way towards us. Ed was a manic depressive and like all manic depressives you never saw him manic, only depressed. You had to take his word for the mania and that was difficult because he communicated mainly in grunts and lumps of sentences that were swallowed as soon as spoken. Not only that but he never looked you in the eyes when he spoke; he looked at the rings and squiggles of beer that he traced on the bar with his fingers. He never bought anybody a drink and he always accepted one from somebody else grudgingly, as if he was doing so at considerable personal inconvenience. He never made jokes or laughed at other people’s — as far as he was concerned, there was nothing much to laugh at, the state of the class struggle being what it was. The nearest he got to a smile was a sneer and for entertainment he rolled his own cigarettes.

Freddie slurped gloomily at his beer while I exchanged a few words with Ed. After a couple of minutes he trudged over to someone else.

‘Thank God we didn’t have to put up with him. He’s like human drizzle,’ said Freddie, putting down his glass. ‘So, this job you’re doing, what d’you have to do?’

‘Code and check questionnaires before the results are put through the computer. I’m working with this other bloke, a friend of Carlton’s. There’s no room for us in the main office so we have to work in the basement. The only time anyone comes down is when they want boxes of computer paper shifted so it’s quite nice. It’s so boring though. This afternoon we ended up playing Battleships. After that we just sat there and worked out how much money we were earning per minute.’

‘Sounds a great job,’ Freddie said. I went for a piss. When I got back Freddie’s glass was empty and I asked if he wanted another. I had just ordered two more beers when Freddie touched my arm and gestured towards the door. Steranko was coming through the door — with Foomie. She was looking gorgeous and happy. I felt a jolt of shock and then a steady, draining sensation in my stomach. I was still looking at them when Steranko and then Foomie caught my eye. They made their way towards us; Freddie was already saying something to Steranko. It was one of those situations where you have either to conceal your reactions or conceal yourself behind your reactions. Smiling broadly, I leant towards them and asked what they wanted to drink.

The groan of thunder. Grey light. The cold smell of rain coming through the open window. There was the sound of a plane, soggy through the rain; the long swish and wince of cars, the sob of a police siren. I leant on the sill and watched the rain fall past the window, the trees below glistening and black. Suddenly I caught a blur of movement on the opposite roof, a shape indistinct in the drizzle. At that moment the rain began falling heavily again. I crossed the room and turned out the small reading light and went back to the window. I looked out again. For a long time I saw nothing and then, for a few seconds, I saw the shape of someone on the roof, smudged by the falling rain. The phone rang. I glanced towards it and when I looked up at the roof again there was only the rain.

I picked up the phone. It was Fran calling from a kiosk because her phone was broken. She was just calling to see how I was. Hearing the crackle of rain in the background I pictured her in the call box, hair dripping into the receiver, her hand idly wiping condensation from the fee-display.

I looked out again, my breath fogging the window. I wiped the cold glass clear, held my breath and stared out. The thump of my heart grew steadily louder. I turned my head, exhaled and breathed in deeply once again. The rain was as it sounded.

I did not see Steranko or any of the others for several days. The market research company was conducting a survey for British Rail — What sort of tickets were people using? Where were they going? What did they think of prices? The buffet? — and I spent the next week shuttling up to Manchester and back four times a day, handing out questionnaires. On most trips it only took an hour to dish them out and then I sat back in the wide First Class seats and enjoyed the ride, reading and drinking, eating hot and cold snacks from the buffet bar, not thinking about Steranko or Foomie, just watching the damp landscape slide past the big windows.

On the last day of the survey I got back to the flat and found a note from Steranko pinned to my door: ‘ON ROOF — S.’ I chucked my bags in the flat and made my way up the stairs. The roof was the single best thing about the block. At the top of the stairs a door opened on to a flat concrete rectangle about the size of a tennis court, a low wall and railing running along the edge. At the other end the same arrangement was duplicated with an identical door leading to another flight of stairs and another lift. The roof of the lift-housing was also flat and since it was eight or nine feet higher it got another half an hour of sun at the end of each day — if there was any sun to have.

Steranko was reading by the light of a hurricane lamp that covered him in a warm tent of light.

‘Hey, how’s it going?’ he said, looking up.

‘OK.’

‘Come over. .’ I sat on the rug next to him. Gnats clung to the side of the lamp. Our shadows crawled the floor.

‘Nice light, isn’t it?’

‘Beautiful. Where’d you get it?’

‘This friend of Foomie’s found it. She didn’t want it so I cleaned it up and fixed it.’ I wondered whether I should say something about Foomie and then decided against it.

‘What are you reading?’ I asked after a while. Steranko held up a battered paperback selection of Nietzsche.

‘You read him?’

‘Only odd bits.’

I flicked through some pages without reading them. The light from the hurricane lamp made the sky look dark as ink. A few feet in front of us there was an unfinished sculpture of a woman, with rough-hewn head, arms and waist protruding from a block of white stone.