Astonishing Splashes of Colour (5 page)

James moved into the building six months after me. His presence announced itself with a great deal of banging that started at eight in the morning and ended at six o’clock. I thought he might be paying workmen, but there was never any evidence of this. No vans outside, no men in overalls on the stairs. At first I was irritated by the noise, and several times found myself on the landing, poised to knock on his door. But my anger always subsided as I raised my fist and I would shrink hurriedly back into my flat, hoping he wouldn’t come out and catch me. And, gradually, the hammering became part of my background, so when he wasn’t doing anything, the building felt empty, too silent.

We started with a smile on the stairs. He was very polite, and always waited at the top or bottom of a flight of steps when he
saw me coming. If he got caught in the middle, he would flatten himself against the wall to let me past. I found his appearance unsettling. I seemed to tower above him. I thought that I should be standing aside as
he
limped up the stairs, a traditional dwarf in a modern setting.

James is five years older than me, and he is not handsome. He’s not exactly ugly either, at least not in a traditional, Rumpelstiltskin sense, but his shape is out of proportion. He is not ergonomic. His body is a normal size, but he has unusually short legs and a large head, made even bigger by his bouncing, curly black hair. He walks with a limp, because one leg is slightly shorter than the other. His parents tried to do something about it when he was younger, but he refused to submit to painful operations, preferring to assert himself mentally if not physically. School was difficult, he says, where status depends on sporting ability. He describes it as a formative experience. Now he marches around lopsidedly and faces the world aggressively. Demanding, confronting, refusing to be treated as an outcast. He prefers to make himself an outcast voluntarily—not to be pushed into it by people who take exception to his appearance.

One day I came into the block just behind him. I followed him up the first flight and he was waiting for me at the top.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m James. And you are?”

“Kitty,” I said nervously.

“Hello, Kitty,” he said. He looked less alarming once we were on the same level, and his face was more comfortable, more lived in than I expected.

We went up the next flight of stairs with me in front, trying to turn round occasionally and smile, in case he thought I was ignoring him. We went up the third flight side by side; it was a bit of a squash, but not impossible.

“I’ve just moved in opposite you,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “I know.”

“I haven’t seen any other tenants,” he said. “Do they exist?”

“They’re all elderly. They hardly ever go out.”

“That explains it then. We’re the only ones still in the living world.”

I thought he was being unfair. “They’re quite sweet,” I said. “Miss Newman on the second floor invites me for morning coffee sometimes. It’s very polite, with doilies and slices of fruit cake.” It sounded as if I were mocking. I didn’t know how to explain to him that I liked old people. I like the wrinkles, the trembling hands, the unsequenced memories. I often take the conversations home with me and fit them with previous bits of information, linking them like a jigsaw

“That’s a good idea,” he said.

I seemed to have missed an essential part of the conversation. This happens sometimes, a loss of concentration, my mind wandering elsewhere. I blinked at him, and tried to work out how much taller I was than him. Maybe only two inches. I kept thinking of Snow White. But I don’t have ruby lips, I thought, although my hair is almost black as ebony.

“Coffee,” he said.

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure if he was inviting me to his flat, my flat, or a café somewhere. “All right.” I followed nervously as he led the way to his front door.

James opened the door and we stepped on to a wooden floor in his narrow hall. The wood gave off a feeling of light and space which I liked then, when I first saw it.

“Did you do this yourself?” I asked, although I knew the answer already.

“Yes. You can buy it from Ikea. It’s very easy to fit.”

But noisy, I thought as I tried to walk on the soles of my feet.
James just seemed to glide across it, lurching on his uneven legs, but somehow making no sound. He led the way into his lounge and I stood in the doorway, blinking with surprise.

“Is anything wrong?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “It’s just—” How could I explain my reaction? There was nothing to react to. More wooden floor, bare white walls with no pictures. Two white leather chairs with metal arms, and a hi-fi in one corner on a cupboard with pine louvred doors—presumably where he kept the CDs. Under the window was a computer desk; disks were stored neatly in a series of labelled boxes on two wooden shelves beside it. The ceiling lights had been changed to groups of spotlights and there were two angular lamps, one on the computer desk and one tall standard lamp between the chairs. That was all. Nothing else in the entire room. It was alarmingly colourless. I thought I would lose myself with all this space round me.

“Where are the books?” I said.

He looked confused and I liked the way his eyes creased uncertainly. “I have some books in my bedroom,” he said eventually.

I didn’t think I would ask to see the bedroom, books or no books. “Is this room the same size as mine?” I said, and my voice seemed to get lost in the emptiness. I tried to compare the length of his walls with mine, the position of the window, but it was like comparing an elephant to a piece of rhubarb. Where do you start? How can you compare two things that have no point of contact, where their whole structure is different? His room didn’t feel alive to me. My flat is small and cluttered, but living, throbbing with colour and evidence of me. His is huge and empty, like a barren plain, its boundaries far beyond my sight.

“Would you like to sit down while I make the coffee?” he said.

“No,” I said. “I’ll come into the kitchen with you.”

But his kitchen was no better. The cupboard doors were
stainless steel mirrors and the tops gleaming white, so every surface shone. It gave me a slightly dizzy feeling. There was nothing out of place, not a crumb fallen carelessly to the floor, not a half-eaten apple left on the side, not a stray tea leaf in the sink. This was not a kitchen where you would make scones, or sit and chatter with friends.

I sat on one of the tubular metal stools and watched his meticulous coffee-making. It was as if he counted every granule as he put it into the filter.

“You’re very tidy,” I said.

He stopped measuring and looked up at me. A faint flush was creeping up his face. He smiled in a lopsided way. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m too tidy, aren’t I?”

Something about that crooked smile and gentle flush caught me in my throat. “Well,” I said, desperate to cancel my last comment, “it’s a good thing someone is. If the world was inhabited by people like me, everyone would be buried in mountains of their past. I lose my shoes, my door key and my diary, which tells me where I have forgotten to go.”

He laughed. “I was brought up in a tidy house,” he said, “and taught to fold everything neatly and put it away. I think it’s more genetic than anything.”

“A family obsession?”

He nodded. “They’re both doctors—surgeons. They can tie knots with one hand, sew things together meticulously. They’ve declared war on germs. I think they sometimes got muddled when I was a child and thought I was a germ too.”

I thought he might want me to laugh about this with him, but his eyes remained still. I could feel his sadness over his germ-free childhood.

“Are you a doctor too?”

“No. That was my act of rebellion. They wanted me to study
medicine, but I chose computing instead—as far as possible in the other direction.” He hesitated. “My programs are almost alive to me. I’m not sure you could say quite the same about their patients—they’re very keen on research and figures. They don’t say a lot about the people.”

I had a vision of him working on his computer, wearing a white coat like his parents.

“My job’s easier,” he said. “I can throw a computer away if it’s not worth saving. They don’t have that option.” He pulled out a tray and took two china mugs out from behind their stainless steel protection. “What do you think of the flat? Do you like it?”

“Is it finished?” I said.

He nodded vigorously as he poured out the coffee without spilling a drop. “Yes. Every room is exactly as I wanted it.”

So. No pictures waiting to be hung, no big colourful sofa waiting to be delivered. “Are all the rooms the same?” I asked, knowing the answer already.

“More or less. I’m comfortable here.”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit—boring?” I found myself saying this before I could stop it. His crooked smile had affected me and I wanted to know if he was as honest as he seemed.

He looked genuinely surprised. “No, I find it very calm.”

I looked around and from the safety of my stool I could see what he meant. There was nothing here that could crowd in on you, nothing to distract you. The reflecting surfaces of the kitchen only reflected each other. Somehow we made no impression on them.

“There is nothing here to give you nightmares,” he said surprisingly. “Nothing threatening.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. I have nightmares where I’m wandering through an empty building, on and on, thinking I’ve found a way out, except that every room I go into is the same as
the last, so I become afraid that I’ll catch up with myself if I keep going any longer. I see the dust still flying from the person I’m following and the person I’m following is me. If I go fast enough I’ll see the flash of my skirt as it disappears round a corner.

“What do your parents think of the flat?” I asked.

“Well, they quite like it—I think.”

I began to feel quite fond of his parents. Did they know he was blaming them for his hang-ups? They must be reasonable people, even if they did spend their days cutting and stitching up people’s insides. “What do they think about your job?”

He smiled again, and I suddenly realized that he was nervous. I’d never met anyone who was nervous of me. My throat was catching, my insides squeezing.

“They can’t really say much. I’m quite good at it all, and I do earn a ridiculous amount of money.”

So the bare surroundings were a deception. He was trying to give the impression of coolness when really he was just the same as everyone else. Nervous, anxious to make a good impression, still insecure enough to blush. I decided that I liked him. Or I would like what was underneath the bare, ordered part of him, if I could find it.

We took our coffee into the lounge and sat on the two leather seats. I held my mug with both hands, but I could feel a trembling inside, working its way up to my arms, that would make me spill it, even when I was trying not to.

“Put it on the floor,” he said. He leaned over, took the coffee and placed it at the side of my chair.

“I always spill things,” I said. “Another of my bad habits.”

“Do you think I need a coffee table?” he asked.

Yes! I wanted to shout. A coffee table, a red and blue Kashmir rug, curtains splashed with birds of paradise, a television, bookshelves cluttered with old copies of
Amateur Photography,
postcards
from around the world, unpaid gas bills, posters of steam trains …

“Well,” I said slowly. “What do you think?”

He relaxed in his chair and sipped the coffee. “I didn’t want one, because I thought it might feel too crowded. But I can see it might be useful. You’re the first person to visit me.”

“Really?” I couldn’t decide which bit to follow up. The need for a coffee table, or his absence of friends. “But your parents have been here.”

“Well—no, not really. They came and looked around it when I was thinking about buying, but they haven’t been here since. They’ll know what it looks like. My last place was the same.”

“The same? Exactly the same?”

He moved his head uncomfortably, as if his neck were hurting. Was I pushing him too far? “Not exactly. The furniture was the same, but the rooms are bigger here and the windows are better. There is far more light here. I like the light.”

I felt a rush of pleasure and understanding pass between us. “Yes,” I said. “I like the light too. As much as possible.” I looked around again and saw the space in a different way. The wooden floor reflected the light filtering through the white gauze curtains.

I felt exhilarated. “Yes, of course,” I said. “I didn’t see the light before.”

He looked puzzled. “But isn’t that the first thing you see?”

“No. You see emptiness first and it takes time to recognize that the emptiness is full of light.”

I felt embarrassed about my own flat. I had wanted light in my home, but had cancelled it out with my clutter. Moving restlessly, I knocked over the coffee with my foot. I leapt to my feet in panic. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry—”

He stood up. “It’s all right. Don’t move. I’ll go and fetch a cloth.”

He went out and came back again, calmly efficient with a bowl of water and a cloth.

“I’ll do it,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”

He flashed the lopsided smile that I was beginning to like. “It’s no problem.” He knelt down and wiped it up.

“I’m your first visitor and I mess it up.”

He wrung out the cloth and spoke with sincerity. “I need someone like you to bring a bit of chaos into my life.” He stood up with the bowl. “Can I make you some more coffee?”

“No,” I said. “I have to go home. I have work to do.”

I thought he might protest, but he didn’t. “We both of us work at home, then?”

I nodded. “I’m sorry. I’m a bit behind schedule.” I started edging towards the door.

“Thank you for coming,” he said. “I was beginning to think we would never speak.”

Another gentle flush was creeping up his cheeks.

I felt guilty about spoiling everything. “Next time, you’ll have to come and have coffee with me.”

“I’d be delighted,” he said.

My insides squeezed again, a thrill of pleasure at his formality.