Geoff Dyer - The Colour of Memory

‘You know Foomie?’

‘Not really. I went to a party of hers last summer.’

‘You were the woman with the phone number.’

‘You never called,’ she said, laughing.

I fetched two more cans of beer and we leant against the rail, not speaking. Our shadows appeared as two climbers flattened out against the wall of Monica’s block. As the sun sank they inched their way a little higher.

A plane climbed overhead, the sun glinting off its wings. Without our noticing it the vapour trail that had slashed the sky had spread out, thickened into a scar. Monica put on her sweater.

A flock of small birds, lunging quickly after one another, flew a few feet above our heads — agile specks that soon vanished.

‘Do you know what sort of birds those were?’

She shook her head.

‘Nor me. I don’t know the names of any birds anymore. It’s like trees. When I was a kid I could recognise all sorts of trees. Now I can only recognise two.’

‘Which ones are they?’

‘A weeping willow and a conker; three if you count Christmas trees. Apart from those when I see trees that’s all I see: trees.’

The vapour trail had broadened out further still and now looked like the print left by a thick tyre. A few minutes later it became still more diffuse, almost indistinguishable from the thin spray of clouds. The sun was casting long strips of shadow on to the red-gold colour of the bricks of the low rampart. Our own shadows had climbed to within a few feet of Monica’s roof.

A wasp hovered on blurred wings a few inches from my face and then disappeared into a crack in some cement. Another plane cut its silhouette into the sky.

‘Are they from Gatwick or Heathrow, the planes?’ Monica said.

‘I’m not sure. They seem to come from all directions at once. On a clear day you can see five or six near-misses.’

Monica laughed: ‘I wonder where they’re going?’

‘Paris, Bucharest, Venice. .’

‘It’s nice just saying the names of cities isn’t it?’ said Monica.

I nodded and smiled and watched the laughter in her eyes. Sipping beer, we looked up at the planes climbing through the sky and took it in turns to say the names of cities.

‘Stockholm.’

‘Aleppo.’

‘Detroit.’

‘Athens.’

‘Marrakesh.’

‘Jerusalem.’

The moorings of words were coming adrift, their sense floating free of meaning.

‘Octavia,’ said Monica finally.

A child’s balloon floated up from the street and was blown away by the breeze.

Next morning, for the first time since I’d moved in, I cleaned my windows, flooding the flat with blond light that bounced off the walls and skidded along the floors. Suddenly the flat seemed twice as big. The magnolia walls looked a pale yellow in the sunlight. I was still admiring the effect when I heard someone calling up from the street. I leant out the window and saw Steranko propped up against his bike. He was wearing a T-shirt, old rugby shorts and tennis shoes.

‘Let’s go out cycling,’ he shouted. Ever since he’d bought Freddie’s bike he was always wanting to go out cycling.

‘Come on,’ he shouted. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Two minutes,’ I said.

Outside the hot blue sky had seeped into every crack of the streets, fitting precisely into every angle of roof and building, even finding space between the agile leaves of trees. The sky encased chimneys, washing lines, car aerials perfectly. Here and there it was swallowed by the open windows of bedrooms. The light slid from the red roofs of buses and the chrome bumpers of cars. The road glittered with shards of glass. We cycled past a block of flats, almost completely obscured by scaffolding and flapping sheets of blue polythene.

‘Scaffolding: that’s the real architecture of the age,’ called Steranko.

When we turned into Railton Road it was as if we had accidentally strayed into a para-military coup. Suddenly we were surrounded by a renegade army of guerillas, all dressed in the same para-military uniform of camouflage fatigues, DMs, green bomber-jackets and army caps. Some wore sunglasses, most carried truncheons. Steranko and I got off our bikes as two jeeps, crowded with men, sped past and pulled over to where a group of five or six uniformed men were lounging against another vehicle.

There was a mixture of frantic activity and casualness about the scene. Some of the uniformed men were standing around talking, others scanned the street vigilantly, someone else was shouting instructions. I expected to see them kicking down the door of a house or dragging a deposed dictator out into the streets. Steranko and I were the only other people around. No one paid any attention to us.

‘What the fuck’s going on?’ said Steranko.

‘It’s the Rats, that big security outfit,’ I said quietly. ‘I’ve heard of them but I’ve never seen them before.’

‘It’s like we’re in Angola or Guatemala or something.’

From behind us two more guys, dressed in the same gear, trotted past, their boots heavy on the pavement.

‘Let’s go.’

We crossed Railton Road and cycled past white-fronted houses with bars on the ground-floor windows and security gates on the doors. A few moments later we were in Brockwell Park where the wind-flattened grass rippled in the heat. There were a few white clouds but they only emphasised the deep petrol-station blue of the sky.

People lay in the park in groups of two or three. A young white guy was doing martial arts training in the generous shade of a conker tree. A handsome black couple came past, their child tottering along beside them, a big smear of ice-cream down one side of his face.

Where the paths were busy we cycled slowly and then I raced Steranko round part of the park, standing up on the pedals and throwing the bike from side to side. The black path rushed by beneath us, the grass a blur of green on either side. By the time we got to the tennis courts and slowed down I was sweating. On one court a young couple rhythmically whacked forehands and backhands from one baseline to the other without keeping track of the score. The ball spun yellow through the air; there was a deep loud pock whenever it was hit. On the other court a black guy and a white guy were playing a proper game, hitting hard serves and rushing the net to volley or scrambling back to try to lob their way out of trouble.

Round the other side of the park, past the aviary and the pond, we got off our bikes and sat down on the soft grass. The park stretched away in easy slopes. In the distance there was a spire and a gentle sound of church bells.

‘Now it’s like we’re in Suffolk or something,’ said Steranko.

I pulled my T-shirt off, draped it around my face to keep the sun out of my eyes and stretched out. Through the blue fabric the sun formed molecular cross-hatches and pearls of light. I could feel the insect itch of the cool grass on my back.

‘Right. Keep your eyes shut and listen to this,’ Steranko said after a few minutes. ‘Ready?’

‘Yes.’ Next moment there was the unmistakable sound of a beer can being opened. I took the T-shirt off my face and Steranko handed me the can, laughing and opening another one for himself. I took a big gulp of beer which crashed into my throat like sharp ice. Our bikes glistened metallic red and yellow in the grass. We basked in the sun like sharks. I could hardly even remember what winter was like.

After a while we cycled back; Steranko set up his easel on the roof and we chatted while he worked. The painting was of a view from the roof but at this stage it was difficult to tell how it was going to turn out. Even in his straightforward representational work, scenes that would have been clearly identifiable were so dramatically transformed by perspective and colour — distorted, intensified or muted — that they became at once alien, strange and familiar, haunting. Almost always in these paintings some strong source of light cast long Chiricoesque shadows through the heart of the scene.