Geoff Dyer - The Colour of Memory

Someone called my name. Steranko and Foomie, arm-in-arm, both wearing overcoats and smiling, made their way through the crowd. We stopped and talked about Christmas shopping while people bustled past, our breath forming momentary tangles of sculpture. A hand came down hard on my shoulder.

‘Drug squad,’ said a voice near my ear. I jumped and looked around.

‘I wish you wouldn’t do that Carlton,’ I said.

‘You spook easy, man,’ he said, laughing. He too was carrying a big bag of shopping. We were all pleased to see each other.

‘What time is it?’ Steranko asked.

‘One fifty seven,’ said Foomie.

‘How d’you know that?’

As she gestured towards the town hall clock it occurred to me that none of my friends owned a watch.

‘In that case,’ said Steranko, ‘I decree that we abandon our attempts to buy Freddie a Christmas present and spend the money on ourselves in the boozer instead.’

We stayed in the pub until three o’clock. Outside the afternoon reeled into us. After a sleep and some food we returned to the Effra in the evening. It was crowded, people were standing several deep at the bar. Gold streamers, silver balls and coloured balloons caught the warm light of the pub and bounced it around the bar. The large ceiling fan rotated quickly overhead. I squeezed in between Belinda and Freddie. All around us people were drinking and talking. I knew most of them by sight. From the other bar came cheers from people playing darts. Every twenty minutes or so Carlton and Steranko would get called into the pool table in the other bar. Before he went to play Carlton pulled on a pair of wire rimmed spectacles that made him look about fourteen years old.

‘How come you’re wearing glasses Carlton?’ I said.

Belinda laughed.

‘You tell him Lin,’ Carlton said.

‘He stayed at my place last night but didn’t have his contact lens case with him so he put them in a glass of water by the bed but he didn’t say anything to me. In the morning they were gone. I drank them in the night,’ Belinda said.

‘Women man,’ said Carlton while everyone else laughed.

‘What about you Freddie, has anyone ever drunk your contact lenses?’

‘No but someone I was going out with did hit me in the face and break my glasses once. I don’t suppose that counts though.’

Someone called Steranko and Carlton again and they made their way to the other bar.

‘Did you see the news the other night?’ said Foomie.

‘Maybe.’

‘They had this thing about Halley’s comet. You know it’s only meant to come round once in a lifetime or something. Well apparently it’s due quite soon. I thought it had actually come round last year or the year before.’

‘Yes, I’m sure I remember something about it,’ said Belinda.

‘It seems to be around all the time these days.’

‘Maybe what we remember is all the anticipation about it coming.’

‘The more I think about it the less sure I am one way or the other,’ said Foomie.

‘Me too,’ I said, wondering if it was possible that the prolonged build-up to the actual arrival of the comet could create a sense of expectation so intense as to make you think it had already taken place.

‘Did you see the thing last night about the ghost of Karl Marx?’ said Belinda. ‘Several people claim to have seen him wandering around Highgate cemetery trying to ponce cigarettes off passers-by.’

‘I thought there was a ghost in my flat the other day,’ said Foomie. ‘I was in the living-room when I suddenly heard a voice say “Do you want a piece of bread and butter?” Then I realised it was the junkies next door preparing their evening meal.’

Steranko had come back from playing pool — Carlton had thrashed him in about three minutes — and was talking to Freddie and someone I didn’t know. ‘I tell you,’ Steranko was saying. ‘Anyone who can watch a film of Pele dummying the goalkeeper in the Mexico World Cup or Muhammad Ali beating Foreman in Zaire or see Said Aouita breaking the world record for the ten thousand metres or whatever it was — anyone who can watch those things without tears in their eyes, without being moved in the same way as they are by a work of art is a philistine — there’s no other word for them.’

‘That’s right,’ said Freddie.

‘Bigot-speak,’ said Foomie.

‘The voice of reason,’ said Belinda and both of them laughed.

‘The problem with football though,’ said Steranko, ‘is that it’s its own worst enemy. It’s like when England got knocked out of the World Cup by Argentina. If instead of complaining about Maradona’s handball Bobby Robson had just come out and said “so we lost the game — big deal. The important thing is that we played our part in staging the greatest goal that has ever been seen” — if he’d said something like that then football might get near to the condition of art.’

This was fairly typical Steranko. His method of arguing was both forceful and feeble. Everything he had to say was compressed into the first couple of sentences, something like: ‘I thought that film was utter dogshit. I only stayed five minutes.’ That was it. If someone raised an objection he would listen attentively and then say ‘yeah, maybe. I wasn’t so keen on it.’ Either that or he would attempt to marshal some kind of reply but he was a hopeless arguer, really. Easy to outmanoeuvre and catch in contradictions of his own making, he was like a boxer who only has one punch: if he failed to get a knockout with that and bring the conversation to a quick conclusion he was done for. This suited me. I’d never had the patience for elaborate debate either.

In the meantime there was some discussion as to whether or not it was Freddie’s round.

‘Look I’d love to buy all you people a drink but the thing is it’s my wallet: there’s a time lock on it.’

‘You’re not kidding. I remember the last time you bought a round: I kept the bottle as a souvenir.’

‘I think it’s Carlton’s round,’ Steranko said, seeing him walk back towards the table.

‘I’m skint,’ he said, turning his pockets inside out and looking, for a moment, as if he might turn into a snooker table — it must have been the green shirt that did it.

‘It’s supposed to be Christmas.’

‘Have you been to his house recently?’ Belinda said. ‘He’s so mean he’s installed a Durex machine in his bedroom.’

‘Jesus Lin!’

‘No I’m only joking,’ she said reaching for Carlton’s hand. ‘Condoms make him impotent!’

‘Me too,’ said Steranko.

‘He makes nice porridge though,’ said Foomie.

‘What about you Freddie?’

‘Oh, it takes very little to make me impotent. Generally the merest thought of sex is enough to do that.’ Everyone laughed.

‘Come on, whose round is it?’

‘Honestly,’ said Belinda, getting up to go to the bar. ‘The four Scrooges. What does everyone want?’

By this time the pub was even more crowded. Various other people had joined our table and I began the arduous business of making my way to the toilet. By the time I got back Steranko was standing by the bar talking to Ed, the depressed manic-depressive.

‘I’ll give you one reason why it makes no difference who you vote for,’ Steranko was saying. ‘You go on the tube tomorrow and when you get off at the other end there’ll be some poor guy — or woman — waiting to take your ticket. And he’ll have been doing that all day, all week, all year, and he’ll probably be doing it for a good part of his life. I tell you when I see some young guy about twenty doing that it breaks my heart. And those guys about forty or fifty you see who’ve probably been doing that job since they came over to this piss-bin country thirty years ago. If I had a son I’d tell him to sign on and spend his days down at Brixton Rec or dealing dope rather than do that. Unemployment’s not the problem, it’s employment.’