The Colour of Memory (6 page)

‘What’s the record?’ I said, pouring coffee into large white mugs. ‘You have about five sugars don’t you?’

‘Roland Kirk,’ said Carlton tying his shoes and tossing me the album cover. ‘Three. I’ve cut down. You know about Roland Kirk?’

‘No.’ I picked up the cover which showed him in profile, playing about four saxophones at once.

‘He went blind soon after he was born,’ called Carlton from the bathroom. ‘When he was in his late thirties he had a stroke that paralysed one side of his body. Even after that
he kept playing. He died when he was forty-one. You could start a religion with a life like that.’

The music twisted and writhed and breathed, searching for a way out of itself.

‘There’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you Carlton,’ I said. ‘And this seems as good a time as any.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘How come there’s never any dust in your flat? How come your clothes never smell? How come your cups and everything are so clean? Are you a closet cleansomaniac?’

‘It’s my insomnia. I tidy up my flat when I can’t sleep and I’m too tired to do anything else.’

‘How often d’you have trouble sleeping?’

‘Every night virtually. I tell you, a squeal of brakes or a shout from the street at the vital moment make all the difference between about four hours sleep and none at all.’

‘Sleep is something I have no trouble with – I can do it with my eyes shut. Sometimes I think I only get up to get tired enough to go back to bed again.’

‘I only go to bed to get restless enough to get up again. Even when I’m asleep I sometimes think I’m awake.’

‘D’you dream?’

‘I haven’t had one for a while – not a new one anyway. They’re all repeats. I know them off by heart. Sometimes I nod off in the middle of them, they’re so
boring.’ As he spoke, Carlton – like me – was lifting a mug to his lips with one hand and a barbell to his shoulder with the other. It was as if we were in an advert for strong
coffee.

‘I got these homoeopathic tablets from the hippy shop. They had three kinds. I went for the ones that sounded like wholewheat Mogadon. They didn’t do anything at all.
Rubbish.’

‘What d’you think about when you can’t sleep?’

‘My flat.’

‘What about it?’ The doorbell rang.

‘I wonder if it’s clean enough,’ he said, going to answer the door. I heard voices on the stairs and then Belinda followed Carlton into the room. She wore glasses and used foul
language and after five minutes in her company you felt as relaxed as if she’d seen you pee your pants in infants’ school. She had beautiful manners. We said hello and smiled.

‘Are those new trousers Lin?’ Carlton asked.

Belinda stepped back and twirled round. She was wearing a pair of blue silky trousers with a low gusset, very loose around the hips and legs and tied tight at the ankles.

‘You like them?’ she said, smiling.

‘Very nice,’ I said.

‘Thank you.’

‘They make it look like you’ve got a turd hanging out your bum,’ Carlton said. Belinda’s laugh was like gold coins pouring from a fruit-machine.

‘No, I’m only joking Lin. They’re terrific.’ Belinda and I talked for a few moments while Carlton opened and closed drawers and cleared stuff away.

‘Hey, listen, I’m sorry I’ve got to rush you both but I’ve really got to get a move on,’ he said. Belinda handed him a bag of grass.

‘Thanks a lot. How much do I owe you Lin?’ he said.

‘Twenty-five. Plus ten for being so rude about my trousers.’

‘Can I owe you?’

‘What a cheek.’

‘Thanks.’ Carlton pulled some notes out from behind a book and eyed them like a disappointing hand of cards before shoving them in his pocket.

‘Where are you going?’ Belinda said.

‘My brother’s for lunch. I’m supposed to be there already. Right: keys, money, bike-lock . . .’

‘And you’re coming to Foomie’s on Saturday?’

‘Yeah. Right, let’s go,’ Carlton said, wheeling his bike backwards out of the door. We followed him out and waited while he went through the lengthy procedure of locking up his
flat.

‘I don’t know why you bother. You’ve got nothing worth nicking.’

It was a warm, clear day; litter caught the sun and shone. Belinda and I walked along the pavement while Carlton skooted along beside us.

‘Where you going Lin?’ he asked.

‘I’m meeting Foomie, Carmel and Manda for a rehearsal.’

‘A rehearsal for what?’ I asked.

‘We’re starting a rap group.’

‘They’re always starting something. First they were going to make a film then it was something else. Now it’s this,’ Carlton said. Belinda had put on a pair of
sunglasses. I was still squinting at the glare.

‘It’s a good idea isn’t it,’ she said.

‘Old hat,’ Carlton said, laughing.

‘I wasn’t speaking to you.’

‘I think it’s a great idea.’

‘He’s only saying that. He hates all that kind of music.’

‘You don’t do you?’

‘Well . . .’

‘Well, you’re
square
. . .’

‘I’m going to have to get on. I’ll catch you later.’ Carlton said, leaning over to kiss Belinda on the cheek. He waved to me and cycled off.

Belinda said I should come along and meet the other people in her group if I wasn’t doing anything. We made our way down Brixton Hill and past the town hall. Ahead of us a tall guy in a
check sports jacket and baseball cap sprang along, trousers flapping round his ankles, walking as though each step had been astonished by the previous one. Outside Red Records we bumped into Luther
and his coffee jar.

‘What’s it for?’ Belinda asked. Luther looked up, saw a white man and a black woman, and said, ‘Mandela.’

Inside the cafe a woman was trying to serve food and hold on to a baby at the same time. It seemed certain that either the baby or the contents of its stomach were going to end up in the stew
before the day was out. Service was understandably slow. Belinda tapped her feet. The sun blared through the large plate glass roasting bag of the window. Belinda’s friends hadn’t
showed up yet. We ordered a pot of tea and went outside and shared a table with a white rasta. He had a wispy beard and sunken, kidney-problem eyes. There was only one person in the world who
didn’t think he looked like a jerk and we were sitting next to him. After a couple of minutes he unlocked his bike and left. A damp waitress brought out tea and we drank it, sweating, in hot
gulps.

‘Nice shirt,’ Belinda shouted to a young punk who slouched past with ‘Sceptic Death’ printed on the back of his black shirt. He took it as a compliment. Carmel and Manda
showed up together and Belinda introduced me. They were both wearing sunglasses.

‘No sign of Foomie?’ Manda said, taking her glasses off.

‘You know what she’s like.’

They ordered some cold drinks and sucked at them through straws.

‘Here she is,’ Belinda said, laughing and waving. Foomie walked slowly towards us, smiling. She had on a T-shirt, large black shorts, red ankle-socks.

‘Where’ve you been Foomie?’ Carmel called out.

‘An
hour
late,’ said Belinda, smiling.

Foomie came over and kissed all three of them. Her arms were thin and muscular. Her hair was pulled tight to one side of her head and tumbled down like black weeping willow over the side of her
face. She looked sleepy but her eyes were unhurried and calm as water in a glass.

‘I’m never drinking again,’ she said, holding Belinda’s hand. ‘My head. It feels like it’s made of tupperware.’ Carmel shifted over so that Foomie could
share her seat. She ordered mineral water and siphoned off an inch of Carmel’s orange.

Belinda introduced Foomie and me and we shook hands for a moment. She smiled but there was something instantly different in her manner. She was friendly but formal, not at all like she was with
her three friends and not at all like Belinda who was abrasive and funny from the moment you met her. I’d heard of Foomie but this was the first time I’d actually met her. Previously,
she’d either just left before I arrived somewhere or she was meant to have turned up at a party but had got side-tracked and ended up somewhere completely different.

Foomie’s water arrived. She drank it in one gulp, gasped and ordered another. The four of them talked about what they’d been doing, laughing loudly and sipping drinks. I laughed and
smiled but didn’t say anything. I was sitting there but I was like a guy at another table hidden by his newspaper. I looked at Foomie, at her arms and hair, and had a sense of gravity
rippling around her limbs.

‘Steranko!’ I shouted suddenly, seeing him cycling home from Brixton Recreation Centre in training shoes and an old tracksuit. He came over and leant against the crossbar of his
bike. We joked for a few moments until Belinda introduced him to everybody. He noticed Foomie and she noticed him, his gestures, the way he moved. I watched how they shook hands and smiled at each
other. His sleeves were pushed up above the elbows; the veins stood out on his forearms. He was unshaven, his body had that easy assurance that comes after intense physical exertion. There was a
clarity about his movements. He ran a paint-splashed hand through his hair, dripping with sweat or water from a shower.

‘What have you been doing?’ Belinda asked.

‘Squash,’ he said.

‘You’re so fucking sporty Steranko.’ At this point I wanted, quite badly, to point out that I’d absolutely hammered him the last time we’d played squash. And
tennis.

‘We’ve got to go,’ Carmel said. ‘It’s practice time.’

‘Where shall we go?’

‘Let’s go to my house.’

‘Why don’t we go to my house. It’s nearer.’

‘My place is near too.’

‘We never go to my house.’

‘It’s too far away.’

‘No it’s not and I’ve got a double-tape cassette player.’

‘I’ve got a double cassette player
too
and it’s much better than yours. I only bought it six weeks ago. Yours hardly works.’

‘It works perfectly.’

‘I don’t care where we go.’

‘Nor do I.’

‘Let’s just go.’

Steranko and I listened and grinned at each other. There was an elaborate chorus of goodbyes and then we watched them walk away. When they had gone it was as if their ghosts were still there in
the chairs, as if the air was still used to shaping itself around them. I could hear their voices all over again like a perfect echo.

‘Well . . .’ said Steranko a few minutes later, holding the handlebars of his bike with one hand as we walked up the road together.

‘Exactly,’ I said.

‘God, you take one look at her and all you want to do is cry.’

‘She’s got those kind of looks that make you feel really sorry for yourself,’ I said as we manoeuvred our way through tired women clinging to their prams. ‘Still, you
seem to be taking it pretty well.’

‘Taking what well?’

‘Foomie. It’s obvious it’s me she fancies but you don’t seem to be sulking about it or anything.’

‘You took the words out of my mouth,’ said Steranko and we both laughed like college boys.

Steranko was leant up against the bar, studying the original gravity information on the beer pumps. He was wearing his working clothes – paint-splattered jeans, an old
sweatshirt – and his fingers and nails were black with paint and grease. He bought me a drink and we sat next to two women who were quite often in the pub.

‘I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you,’ I said.

‘Go on.’

‘The good news is that Foomie – remember her, that gorgeous woman at the Jacaranda?’

‘Of course.’

‘She’s having a party this Saturday. In the afternoon.’

‘In the afternoon?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What’s the bad news?’

‘You’re not invited.’

‘You’re kidding.’

I shook my head: ‘Fraid not.’

‘Are you invited?’

‘Very definitely.’

‘Jesus.’

‘It’s alright, I’ll tell you what it was like, what she was wearing, what she said to me – all that kind of thing.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it. I bet you’re really pissed off. I know I would be.’

We drank beer.

‘And I’m really not invited?’

‘Course you are. Carlton just phoned. She asked him very specifically to invite both of us.’

‘Brilliant,’ Steranko said, smiling.

‘We can ask Freddie to come too,’ I said.

Steranko nodded: ‘She’s so beautiful.’

‘Yeah, isn’t she.’

‘What about Carmel? D’you fancy her?’

‘No. Do you?’ One of the women opposite us glanced across disapprovingly but didn’t say anything.

‘Not really. What about Manda?’

‘Not really.’

‘No, me neither.’

This was one of the irritating aspects of my friendship with Steranko. We both tended to fancy the same women – and they tended to fancy him. We looked similar but it was always Steranko
they went for.

‘I’ve got some good news for you too,’ Steranko said after a while.

‘What’s that?’

‘I’ve got that money I owe you.’

‘Great.’

I swallowed the rest of my beer in a big gulp just as time was called. The two women next to us started putting on extra layers of clothing and then picked up two crash-helmets. We left soon
after them, just in time to see them roaring off down the road, hunched over a powerful motorbike.

On the way home I stopped off at Steranko’s to pick up the money he owed me. I put two ten-pound notes in my shoe and a fiver in the cheap wallet that I always carried. Apart from that
fiver the only things in it were cancelled bank cards and library tickets. There was nothing paranoid about doing this – like taking a quick look down a dark street before turning into it or
walking on the outside of the pavement, I did it as automatically as a driver putting on a seatbelt. It was always a good idea to have some money you could get at quickly if you got jumped. Unlike
Carlton, Freddie and Steranko I’d never actually been mugged but I knew that nine times out of ten you handed over the money and nothing much happened. It was when you didn’t have any
money that things got nasty.