Geoff Dyer - The Colour of Memory

‘You OK?’ I said, leaning on the back of a chair. She nodded, smiling. I walked into the living-room. She had lots of plants; they created a fresh, restful atmosphere.

‘I’ve got to get some more plants,’ I said.

‘Hey?’ she called from the kitchen.

‘Your plants are nice.’ I walked out to the kitchen again and clambered into the small gap between a chair and the kitchen table. The kitchen walls were painted a yellow that was bright but very easy on the eye; all the woodwork was green. Foomie had the white towel wrapped around her head.

‘D’you want some tea?’

‘Shall I make it?’

‘That’s OK.’

She pulled the kettle over to the sink and filled it without unplugging the lead.

‘Very handy,’ I said. ‘That’s something I’d really like to do — except I don’t have the first idea of how to go about it. Design the ergonomically perfect kitchen.’

Foomie smiled and leant back against the sink. Behind her the window was pearled with steam. The shelves were crammed with herbs and spices. Pots and pans were piled up to one side of the sink. Cups hung from the undersides of more shelves. The noise of the kettle working started.

‘It’s just you and me. I hope that’s OK.’

‘That’s perfect. I feel quiet.’

‘Me too. . I hope you’re hungry; there’s a lot of food.’

‘I’m always starving. The more I eat the hungrier I get. Is there something I can do?’

‘No, I’ll just do the salad. You could put a record on,’ Foomie said.

In the main room I crouched down and flicked through Foomie’s records. She had all the latest funk and hip-hop, a few jazz albums. From the kitchen came the sound of chopping. The sun was angling through the blinds. Tiny diamonds of dust danced over the stereo; a golden caterpillar of light inched its way along the sofa.

Foomie came in and leant against the door frame. I stood up with a click in my knee so loud it sounded like a couple of bones had cracked. Foomie’s eyes widened. ‘That sounded painful.’

‘Not really.’

‘We can eat in about five minutes,’ she said after a slight pause. The sun arranged thin racks of shadow on the wall.

Back in the kitchen I sat at the table and pulled four cans of Red Stripe out of a carrier-bag.

‘D’you want a beer, Foomie?’ I asked.

‘Hmmn, please.’ On one hand she had a quilted oven-glove made to look like a crocodile, four fingers forming the head and upper jaw, the thumb making the lower jaw. She held up her hand and snapped the jaws together a couple of times. I laughed; like Freddie’s ‘Every Dog Has His Day’ glasses, a crocodile oven-glove struck me as one of those objects for which you could develop quite a strong affection.

Foomie had cooked vegetarian lasagne. I tried to eat slowly but it was too delicious and I ended up, as always, shovelling it away by the forkful. We talked about nothing in particular, sentences and topics following each other on a faint thread of sense and then disappearing as if they’d never actually taken place. The punchlines of jokes evaporated before we got to them. It was strange being like this with Foomie. Judging by the conversation you would think we hardly knew each other but it was because we knew each other well that there was this odd evanescent quality to what was said. Neither of us mentioned Steranko or Monica or anyone else.

The yellow walls glistened with a light film of condensation.

It was a warm evening and after dinner we took Foomie’s cassette player on to the roof of my block. Silhouetted by the slanting light the TV aerials threw long strips of shadow on to the red bricks of the low wall. Sheets hung out to dry on the opposite block shrugged like flags in the breeze. There were a few lights on. While Foomie rolled a joint I put a tape of Schubert’s fourteenth string quartet on the cassette player.

We passed the joint back and forth and listened to the music, saying nothing.

For a few moments the horizon was a damson smash of clouds. Then the sun sank behind the flats in the distance, leaving the roof in shadow. I went down to the flat to make coffee and fetch some candles.

When I came back up the sky had deepened to indigo with a few ink-dark clouds. I handed Foomie her coffee and lit the candle.

Foomie leant back against the railing, a slight breeze combing her hair. Steam was floating from the dark surface of her coffee; when she sipped from the cup there was a slight movement of muscle in her dark arms. She was wearing a sleeveless dress that came to her knees, blue with tiny white splashes like stars in the dark sky. It was still warm. The red and white lights of a plane flashed above us. Clouds slipped past the early moon. To Foomie’s left I glimpsed the frail pattern of a spider’s web stretched between railing and wall.

The second movement of the quartet slid into the night: desire and dread circling, coaxing, and turning into each other; the sound of longing generating its own momentum, finding its own form.

Listening, Foomie tilted her head to the sky. Warm candlelight touched her throat. Half her face was in shadow. The dress moved faintly in the breeze; the music swaying. She was still leaning against the railing, her feet slightly apart.

The candle flame twisted and writhed, recoiling from the touch of the breeze that would extinguish it.

As I moved towards her, my shadow, agile with the light of the flames, disappeared into Foomie’s and then climbed slowly up her legs. I touched her neck and a few strands of hair. The light of the candle glowed in her eyes. I bent my face towards her until there was only breath and then nothing at all between our lips.

Freddie came round when I was in the bath. While I got dry and put on some clothes he made a pot of tea. We sat in the kitchen and talked about boxing. After a while Freddie said, ‘I’ve come to a momentous decision.’

‘You’re going to kill yourself?’

‘No.’

‘You’re going to pay me that money you borrowed four years ago?’

‘No, I’m leaving England.’

‘When?’

‘In about three weeks. I booked my ticket today.’

‘Jesus.’ I looked at the jar of marmalade and the teapot. ‘Why?’

‘There’s no point staying here.’

Then, as if offering an alternative answer, he said, ‘The fable’s got to run its course.’

That night the weather riots.

Dreaming that the door of the flat was being kicked down I woke to the sound of the wind hurling itself at the walls of the block. A strong wind lunged around the room, flinging the curtains aside and then sucking them back through the gap of the open window. Above the surge and shriek of the gale came the sound of breaking glass. I closed the window and looked out as another gust began thumping at the windows and walls. The air was full of dark shapes. Branches flew through the air like shrapnel. Burglar alarms were ringing in the distance. Street-lamps rocked and swayed. A section of fencing was catapulted into the road. A piece of corrugated iron floated through the air and clattered against a wall. Someone walking along the street was battered to the ground. The grass was flattened and glassy like a wave swept back into the ocean by the receding tide. Trees lunged at each other. The air was thick with leaves. From across the road there was a deep kurrump as a tree thrashed clear of the earth, hovered for a moment like a rocket on the point of take-off and then tottered and crashed to the ground. A few seconds later a clump of bricks crashed through the windscreen of a parked car. All around was the sound of the gale breaking the branches of trees and pounding the walls of buildings.