Geoff Dyer - The Colour of Memory

The record seemed to end and then, impossibly, the saxophone emerged again, surviving the tidal wave of drums that had broken over it: the resurrection.

Spring was in the air: low cloud and faint drizzle alternating with drenching showers and biting winds. Leaves. Here and there a few chinks of light in the dull armour of the sky.

Travel Research and Information — the market research company that I worked for from time to time — was organising a huge survey over several rail routes in the south-west of England. They needed forty additional staff and Steranko, Foomie, Carlton, Freddie and I were all taken on. We had to interview passengers on trains and since some of these trains started from places like Truro, Exeter and Penzance at six in the morning the company put us up in an assortment of hotels in the region. Freddie and I stayed in a vast hotel in Taunton where the towels were thick and white, the carpets silent, and the taps eager to fill clean baths with steaming water. Staying away from home was thought to be a great hardship so they paid eight pounds a day expenses. Once that was used up we loaded as much as possible on to the hotel bill: drinks in the bar, room service, twenty quid dinners, newspapers; even things we didn’t want like salad sandwiches at two in the morning.

None of us cared about the actual survey and for most of the week we simply ran riot in unspecified parts of southwest England. By careful manipulation of our rosters — suddenly the word roster loomed huge in our lives — Freddie and I managed to meet up with Steranko and Foomie for a lavish meal in Plymouth where they had a double room in the Fitzwilliam hotel. Another day we completed our quota of questionnaires quickly and hopped on a train to Exeter where we wolfed down a couple of cream teas for lunch and strolled round the Cathedral.

So far the weather had been dull and overcast but bright sun over the south-west had been forecast for the following day. As Freddie and I tucked into a five-course meal at the hotel that night, he said that in the circumstances we were virtually obliged to take off to some coastal resort and spend the day lying on a beach, eating ice-cream and making up answers to the questionnaires. The next day we did a few interviews and then caught a train to Teignmouth where we’d arranged to meet Carlton. By lunch-time the three of us were on the beach, jackets folded up in plastic shopping bags, sipping cold beers and using questionnaires to keep the sun out of our eyes.

‘Paradise,’ said Carlton, speaking for all of us in a voice that was drowsy from the heat and the beer. ‘Three quid an hour for doing fuck-all.’

‘Not quite fuck-all,’ I said. ‘There’s still the questionnaires to make up.’ Inventing answers was not as simple as we thought; it was very easy to make some little slip which had your imaginary respondent making an impossible journey or travelling on a non-existent ticket. In a way, as Freddie explained from his deckchair, it was a bit like writing a novel: you had to invent a character — a retired school teacher, a business executive — and think yourself into his itinerary and probable opinions.

‘We’d better leave it to you in that case then Freddie,’ said Carlton, as we rolled up our trousers and paddled in the grey-green ocean.

We had only been back in London a few days when I got a call from Freddie. He sounded a little strange and said he wouldn’t be coming over that evening.

‘How come?’

‘I got my head beaten in last night.’

‘Oh no.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Home.’

‘Have you been to hospital?’

‘I went this morning.’

‘Are you OK? I mean. .’

‘I suppose so.’

‘How. .? Hey listen, I’ll come over late this afternoon.’

‘That would be nice.’

‘About four or five. Is there anything I can bring you?’

‘No.’

On the way to Freddie’s I stopped at the record stall in Brixton market and bought an Art Pepper album. Freddie took a while to come to the door — I heard him shuffling along the corridor like an old man — and when he opened it he just nodded slowly. He was wearing dark glasses. His face looked puffed up and purple in places.

‘Freddie,’ I said, feeling tears pricking my eyes. I put my arm around his shoulder. I closed my eyes tight a couple of times and then stepped back.

Freddie took off his glasses and in the bright sunlight I could see the harm done to his face. One side was swollen out around the cheekbone and badly discoloured; the other was livid and bright-looking. There were small cuts on his forehead and cheek. One eye was swollen shut and purple; the other was bloodshot but basically OK. His lips and nose were swollen. Both nostrils were filled with hard black blood. His voice came out thick and bubbly because the inside of his mouth was smashed and swollen. He looked so bad it was difficult to imagine his face ever healing again.

We walked to his room and Freddie lay on the bed, propped up on pillows.

‘I’m so sorry Freddie.’

‘Me too.’

‘Are you going to be OK?’

‘Yeah.’

It didn’t matter that this was all we said. It didn’t matter that we didn’t hold each other and sob, that words adequate to the situation were not there. Tenderness is a matter of inflection, not vocabulary.

‘I’ve brought you a record,’ I said. ‘I thought getting something for nothing might cheer you up.’

‘That was kind of you. .’

‘How d’you feel?’

‘I’ve felt better. My head aches, I get dizzy when I stand up, my nose hurts, my mouth is sore. My ribs hurt. .’

‘What happened at the hospital?’

‘I spent the whole morning there. I was sitting next to a bloke with a big bloody bandage round his foot, tucking into a bag of McDonald’s burgers. Have you been to a hospital recently?’

‘No. .’

‘It was like a DHSS waiting-room. The same atmosphere: people driven there as a last resort. Everything old and worn out and not even clean-looking. All the doctors and nurses looking like they were going to drop dead from exhaustion at any moment. I tell you, I’m going to join BUPA.’

‘What did they say?’

‘They took a whole load of X-rays. Basically I’m alright. My teeth are still all there, my nose and jaw aren’t broken. My eyes don’t seem to be damaged. .’

There was a loud knock at the door.

‘That’ll be Carlton,’ said Freddie. I let Carlton in and made some tea while he went in to Freddie.

When I returned with the tray Carlton was very gently dabbing Freddie’s face with something.

‘It’s arnica,’ he said. ‘It brings the swelling down and soothes everything. How’s that feel Freddie?’

‘OK. Nice.’

Carlton continued very gently putting this thin cream on Freddie’s face. Again my eyes nettled with tears. I poured the tea while Freddie — he couldn’t drink, his mouth was too bad — told us what happened. He’d just come out of a party when a young guy asked him the time. Freddie said he didn’t have a watch and next thing the guy was hitting him all over the place. He didn’t even take any money.

‘I don’t remember much else,’ Freddie concluded. ‘Except that just after I’d fallen on the floor he kicked me in the chest but I had a book in my coat pocket and that took the brunt of it.’

‘What was the book?’

‘Rilke poems funnily enough. It’s made me regard him in a whole new light.’

A few moments later Carlton said, ‘Did you get a look at the geezer?’

‘Not really. I hardly saw him. Just a young black guy, short hair, leather jacket. About twenty I suppose. Younger maybe.’