Nicola Barker - Burley Cross Postbox Theft

‘Green! Green! Oh, I love green!’ she kept saying. ‘Isn’t green the best? Isn’t it just fantastic? Don’t you think green must be God’s favourite colour? I mean if God didn’t love green then why would he have made the grass green? Huh? And plants! And trees! And leaves! Leaves are always green — always! — aren’t they, Laura?’

‘Absolutely,’ I concurred (fool that I am!). ‘Except in the autumn, of course, when our Dear Lord gently transforms them into a magnificent kaleidoscope of red and orange and yellow and burned ochre…’ (I now hold that my curious urge to wax lyrical about the change of the seasons was at least partially engendered by a perilous combination of nervousness and alcohol.)

These words had barely left my lips, before Lydia May began to glower at me, ominously. ‘Don’t talk about autumn, you fool!’ she hissed, glancing nervously over her shoulder (although there was only the wall behind her). ‘Autumn’s strictly prohibited! It’s on my miss list!’

‘Sorry?’ I stuttered, lifting a tentative hand to wipe a fleck of her spit from my chin. ‘Your…?’

‘My miss list,’ she reiterated. ‘Miss! Mis-take! Mis-chance! Misconduct! Mis-demeanour! My miss list! You mustn’t say it, Laura! It’s one of the bad words. It’s one of the words that makes me very angry. In fact I am angry, right now, simply because you’ve said it — simply because you brought it up! And having to explain it to you like this — and saying it myself, rehearsing it, again and again: Autumn! Autumn! Autumn! — makes me angrier still! It makes me seethe! It makes me boil!’

She paused for a moment (to draw breath), peering down, somewhat forlornly, at the fabric on the bench. ‘Not like green,’ she sighed, inspecting it, fondly, ‘green is on my hit list, but autumn? Urgh!’

She jabbed at the bench, savagely, with her knuckles.

‘Then let’s talk about green!’ I rapidly interjected. ‘Please!

Let’s do that! Let’s just talk about how truly wonderful green is!’

‘Really?’

She instantly perked up.

‘Yes! Of course!’ I enthused. ‘Because green is wonderful! It’s marvellous! I mean when I think of all the green things in the world and how amazing they all are, like… like apples! And pears! And… and…’

Lydia May winced, dramatically, as another dart hit the wall behind her.

‘And… and certain types of grape! Wonderful grapes! Seedless grapes, from the Cape! And kiwi-fruits, which are brownish on the outside but bright green on the inside with hundreds and thousands of tiny, crunchy, little black pips…’

‘Yeah, I guess,’ Lydia May conceded (not quite so enthusiastically as I had hoped, perhaps). ‘But can’t we think of any other kinds of green stuff, Laura? More interesting kinds of green stuff, maybe?’

(She winced, once again, as yet another dart hit the wall.)

‘Other kinds of green stuff?’ I echoed, astonished. ‘But… but why, when there’s so much more exciting fruit to consider, like… like limes, for example?’

‘But I’m tired of fruit, already!’ Lydia May grumbled. ‘It’s so safe, so dull, so… so pedestrian!’

‘Well, how about lettuce, then?!’ I exclaimed. ‘And cucumber! And courgettes! And marrows! All wonderful, healthy, green vegetables! How about some of those?!’

Lydia May shuddered as another dart hit the wall, and a roar of approval — followed by a ringing, ‘One hundred and eighty!’ — all but drowned out my words.

‘Then there’s always cabbage,’ I doggedly continued, ‘and broccoli, and sprouts—’

‘What I suppose I’m really trying to get at, here,’ Lydia May promptly interjected, ‘is the stuff that isn’t just vegetable in origin. More interesting stuff… like… I dunno… ’

‘Like the green baize on a snooker table!’ I smiled, confident of engaging her enthusiasm again. ‘Or… or your beautiful scarf , for example.’

‘But they’re man-made, Laura,’ she sighed, ‘and I want to talk about things that are really green, things that are truly green…’

‘Oh…’

I was momentarily floored, Mr Jennings, and my mind began desperately groping around for yet more green things with which to tantalize her. Then suddenly, out of the blue, the word ‘frog’ sprang into my head (if you’ll pardon the pun!), but I hesitated to pronounce it, out loud, for some reason (I can’t begin to explain why , Mr J — perhaps there was something in her strangely pale and languid expression that gave me temporary pause… I don’t know… a kind of smouldering expectation, an evil torpor, a dangerous quiescence, like she was just toying with me, at some level, like I was merely a tiny, insignificant little fly unwittingly tangled up in her voluminous web).

It dawned on me, in that same instant (and forgive me for contradicting myself here, Claw, because this is an explanation, of sorts) that perhaps ‘frog’ might lead us back, ineluctably, to ‘iguana’ (also green! Could that actually be just a coincidence? Or was it — God forbid! — a trap?!), and I definitely didn’t want to risk returning to that thorny old ground again!

In order to avoid this terrible eventuality I tried to think creatively — tangentially, you might almost say…

‘Well, here’s an idea,’ I suggested, with a blazing smile. ‘How about we focus our minds for a while on all the wonderful words for green that there are in the world, like… like emerald green, for example?’ Lydia May was instantly engaged.

‘Emerald green,’ she echoed, impressed. ‘Yes! I like that! I like it very much! Let’s think of another one, quick!’ She gazed at me, expectantly.

‘Olive green!’ I promptly followed up. ‘Yes! Good! Another one!’ she squealed, clapping her hands together, delighted.

My mind briefly went blank again, Mr Jennings (although, in retrospect, I should have just gone with ‘lime green’ or ‘pear green’ or ‘apple green’ — they’re all the most obvious ones, I suppose — but I fear a part of me was worried that Lydia May might consider these some kind of a ‘cop-out’).

Truth to tell, Mr J, I actually looked up ‘greenness’ in my Thesaurus when I finally got home that night, and was honestly shocked by how few green words there really are out there. Real green words. I mean if you consider purple, for example, there are loads of them: I can think of lilac, violet, lavender, plum and amethyst just off the top of my head. Sage green isn’t a bad one (it just this second came to me!), and bottle green, of course…

‘Well, how about you think of one?’ I eventually suggested.

‘Why?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘What’s in it for me?’

‘Pardon?’

I was shocked by her baldly acquisitive attitude.

‘I mean what do I get if I think of one?’ she demanded.

‘Get?! You get a wonderful sense of satisfaction, of course!’ I exclaimed.

‘Oh.’

She drained her second glass and then eyed my spare pint covetously.

‘A marvellous sense of… of achievement,’ I expanded.

Lydia May just gazed at me, darkly, as yet more darts thudded into the wall It was at this precise point, Mr Jennings, that a small ‘need’ (which had been nagging away at me for quite some time now), suddenly transformed itself into a powerful ‘urge’. (Fastidiousness prevents me from discussing this issue in too much further detail, but suffice to say that by some strange process of osmosis, a quarter of my pint had miraculously chanced to ‘evaporate’ and I was consequently experiencing nature’s call.)