Astonishing Splashes of Colour Read online

  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.

  2

  the lost boys

  I’m dreaming that my father’s house is on fire. He and I are trying to wake Martin, who is wrapped up in his duvet like a hibernating bear.

  “Is Paul at home?” I shout.

  “How would I know?” my father says. He starts rolling Martin from side to side in his bed. But he’s too heavy and we can’t rouse him. The approaching fire engine’s siren wails in the distance.

  I wake up sweating and realize the phone is ringing. The room is light with sun, but I can’t remember if it’s summer or winter, so I don’t know how early it is. I lean over to look at the clock, but my eyes won’t focus. As I try to work out where the fire is, the answer machine comes on.

  “Kitty! It’s Adrian.”

  A panic seizes me. The fire’s at Adrian’s house. Emily and Rosie are trapped. I grab the phone. “Adrian, what’s happened?”

  “Nothing. Aren’t you up yet? It’s nine fifteen.”

  I have a theory that Adrian doesn’t write his books at all. He keeps a wild genius locked up in his office, who throws out brilliant ideas and phrases that Adrian writes down and organizes. Adrian st
arts his day in the same way every morning. Up at 8:00, breakfast at 8:30, start work at 9:30. How can such a conventional man have an imagination and make up stories?

  “Of course I’m up.”

  “You don’t sound it.”

  “Don’t I? Well, I haven’t spoken to anyone this morning, that’s all.”

  “Could you babysit on Friday night? Lesley has a parents’ night and I’m off to London. Not sure what time I’ll be back.”

  “OK,” I say.

  “Will James mind? He can come with you if you want.”

  “Can you afford to feed us both?” This is a joke.

  “Yes,” he says. He doesn’t like to discuss his income. “I can’t see a problem.”

  Of course there’s a problem. I’m not quite sure if James and I are friends. It’s at least four days since we last spoke to each other. I’ve turned off the answer machine, so now he’s stopped phoning. But Adrian doesn’t know this.

  “You could bring your work with you—the girls go to bed quite early.”

  I know what time the girls go to bed. I’ve been babysitting since they were born. “I said, OK.” I don’t know why he goes through this guilt thing every time he asks. He knows I love Emily and Rosie.

  “Right. Can you be here by five thirty? Lesley has to go out by five forty-five.”

  “Fine,” I say.

  The children are like butterflies. They’re playing hopscotch up and down the front path, waiting for me to come. Emily is five and Rosie three, and they dance fluidly over the slabs, darting around each other while the afternoon sun catches their blond hair. Rosie has a red balloon she’s brought home from a party and it floats lazily behind her as she jumps. They move so fast that the brightness of their hair whirls behind them, while their giggles echo through the warm air. Flashes of red and yellow from the balloon and their hair, blue and cerise from their dresses spin chaotically. They are only still for a second, giving a brief glimpse of their intricate patterns before they fly away again.

  Lesley goes to considerable trouble to dress them in different clothes; she wants them to develop individual characters and not be identified as sisters. But they conspire behind her back. They like the same colours, the same styles. They’re given chances to find their own paths, their own shapes, but they’re not interested. They operate together and won’t be separated. Two halves of a whole, two wings of the same butterfly.

  Emily sees me first. “Kitty!” she cries, and throws herself at me. Rosie looks up and echoes Emily. I wrap my arms around both of them.

  “Have you brought the books?” asks Rosie.

  Of course I have. My nieces love books, holding them, handling them, having them, and I’m here to supply them, even though they’re outside my specialist age-group.

  “Yes, I’ve brought the books,” I say, disentangling myself. I’ve brought the tickets as well, but they don’t know about that yet.

  Lesley is checking over lists of pupils when I enter the house. She looks up at me and smiles. “Hello, Kitty. It’s good of you to come at such short notice.”

  “You know I’ll always come.”

  “I thought you might bring James.”

  “He’s busy,” I say, “and he loves his computer too much. He takes it to bed with him—it gives him a feeling of safety.”

  I can say these things to Lesley, because she doesn’t listen properly. I like to say bizarre things to her every now and again as a test. She fails every time.

  She stands up and pushes her piles of notes into a briefcase. She is taller than me and slimmer, more tanned, and her hair is blond. I think she puts a rinse in it. Nobody of her age has hair that yellow.

  She looks at me closely. “Is everything all right, Kitty?”

  “Of course,” I say. But she can’t have heard what I said. She would say something more specific.

  Lesley makes me nervous. She’s very capable and knows what she wants. She never shouts at the girls, but reasons with them. She’s older than most of the parents of their friends. But she doesn’t mind. She controls her own destiny. “Follow me,” she says and marches off with her nose in the air. Everyone follows. It’s expected, inconceivable that anyone should disobey. She was born to be a headmistress. She just needs to listen more and then she’ll be ready for promotion.

  “I’ve left the school phone number if there is an emergency.” She gives the girls a kiss and hug. “Year 9,” she says to me and grimaces. “Hard work.”

  Then she’s gone. The car door slams, the engine starts, the car pulls out of the drive.

  “Right,” I say to the girls. “Tonight we have a treat.”

  They laugh because they don’t know what I am talking about, but they can see it’s going to be fun.

  “Tea first,” I say, “and then wait and see.”

  Emily and Rosie live in a pink house. A house made for winter, with drawn curtains and chairs pulled up close to the gas log-fire. Everything in the house is pleasant and new. It smells new, as if Adrian wants to cancel out the years growing up in our old, secondhand home. There is a heather-pink carpet in the lounge, smooth and restful, and the curtains swirl with shades of pink. They have modern lighting, spotlights behind cheese plants, shaded lights in alcoves, uplights that cast pale ovals on the ceiling. I turn all the lights on when I am there in the evening, but it’s not enough. There’s a dinginess in this soft lighting that troubles me. As if they want to bury the colour and make believe it’s not there. It makes me uncomfortable, gives me a queasiness inside. But I like the pink.

  Emily dodges round me as I make tea. I nearly fall over her every time I turn round. “Emily, why don’t you sit down for a while?”

  “All right,” she says, but she hovers on the corner of a chair, her plump legs restless, twitching, ready to leap off at any minute.

  “What’s Rosie doing?” I ask.

  “She’s upstairs playing with her Barbie dolls.” She sounds contemptuous.

  “You don’t like Barbie?”

  “Mummy says it’s impossible for someone with her statistics to exist.”

  Emily knows everything. She recently lectured her teacher about the facts of life. I gather the teacher didn’t mind too much, but would have preferred less detail. Lesley was dismissive. “What’s the point in making up stories? The earlier they know all about it, the less alarming it becomes.”

  I prepare the meal that Lesley has left for us: tuna salad, baked potatoes, cold beans, french dressing with plenty of olive oil; nothing that could contaminate the children. But I have cheated and brought them some chocolate. I often do this, and I have to swear them to secrecy.

  Emily is off her chair again. “Mummy says I can help you make the tea,” she says.

  “Right,” I say, putting her back on the chair. “You sit down there and grate the cheese.”

  She stays for a bit, singing to herself. “Down it goes. Out come the wiggly worms. Hello, worms, what did you do today? I bet you didn’t have to do spellings. Our spellings are easy-peasy. Everyone can do them—what, why, who and things like that.” She looks up. “Is your treat chocolate, Kitty?”

  “No,” I say as I get the baked potatoes out of the oven.

  “Oh,” says Emily.

  “Better than that.”

  “What then?”

  “I’m not going to tell you, otherwise it wouldn’t be a surprise.”

  “It would still be a surprise to Rosie even if I knew what it was.”

  “No,” I say. “Wait and see.”

  I call Rosie, who comes obediently downstairs with a Barbie dressed in luminous pink. Every time I see Rosie, I curl up inside and have to fight the urge to pick her up and squeeze and squeeze. She was born three years ago. She could have been my baby.

  We sit at the table and eat our tuna salad and baked potatoes. When we’ve finished I give them their chocolate. Emily eats it slowly and carefully. She sucks it for the long-term flavour. She still manages to talk as she sucks. “Mummy would be rea
lly cross if she saw me eating this,” she says and giggles, her laugh escaping from her as if by mistake, rich, but casual, her little shoulders shaking with pleasure.

  Rosie eats hers faster, stuffing it in until her mouth is bulging. Then she sits chewing, her eyes shining with anticipation.

  I put the plates in the dishwasher. They’re both watching me. “Right,” I say. “Coats on. Something exciting is going to happen now. We’re going to go—Wait and see, wait and see—”

  Dressing them for outdoors is time-consuming: coats, scarves, gloves, socks, shoes. Nothing goes on easily. They struggle to put the gloves on themselves, and put fingers in the thumb holes, two fingers into another hole, so their little fists stick out, clenched at the centre, with distorted fingers flailing. They have lovely hats which tie under the chin, with a bobble dangling down at the back, blue for Rosie, pink for Emily, to match their coats, but they swap and change and make themselves a mixture of pinks and blues.

  “Where are we going?” says Emily.

  “Wait and see,” I say again.

  Buses change their nature once it’s dark outside—the warmth and light draw you in while the world outside is hostile and unknown. People sit silently side by side in their individual bubbles as always, but they no longer seem so unconnected.

  When we stand to get off, the woman opposite smiles at me. “What beautiful children,” she says.

  “Thank you,” I say and glow inside.

  We’re going to the theatre to see Peter Pan. I’ve decided that Rosie is old enough to concentrate now. I haven’t told Adrian or Lesley about this because I want the treat to be exclusively mine, so that whenever they think of Peter Pan later in life, they’ll remember the mystery and excitement that led up to it. I want it to be a happy memory of a gift from me. Adrian is away for the night, Lesley will be late back from her parents’ evening. This is my treat. I’ll introduce the children to Tinker Bell, flying, the lost boys. When Lesley comes home I will tell her where we’ve been. She might complain, but I don’t care. The time I spend with the girls is its own reward.