‘Can’t get it up mate?’ Fran shouted.
‘Jesus Fran! Honestly you’re going to get us killed.’
Clutching it by the tail fin the man dragged the plane back to his car, shouting at the kids to hurry up and making barking noises at his dog. Understandably reluctant to get back in the car — nobody had even thrown him a stick to chase — the dog was still eager to play. The kids were in their anoraks, arms by their side, walking obediently to the car.
We walked back across the Common towards some kind of park buildings — lavatories or storage buildings for the groundsmen. Two young black guys, both carrying smoke canisters of some kind, hopped over the fence and started clambering over the building, every now and then releasing great clouds of red, green and blue smoke. It billowed up in thick palls and then blew away. As the sun sank lower the light became richer and deeper, spreading out in long golden streaks. An angle of honking geese flapped towards these bright strips of light. It was slightly cooler now. I had no idea where I was.
From behind us came the sound of car horns, yelling and bustling. We turned around and saw police scrambling out of a van — first two and then, in quick succession, five or six more — and charging across the grass in the direction of the groundsmen’s building, shouting. Then we saw them jumping over the fence by the park buildings, running through coils and plumes of blue and red smoke. More shouting. As the smoke faded we caught sight of the two kids, both still inside the fence and taken completely by surprise. One turned by the edge of the building but ran straight into two cops who pulled him to the ground before he even had time to struggle. A cop lunged at the other one but he swerved just out of reach and started running hard for the fence. The cop was yelling ‘Head him off, Ron!’ The fence was more than three feet high and the young guy cleared it without breaking stride. Another cop was running towards him as he ran along by the fence, heading for the open park. Running at full tilt the young guy tripped over one of the stanchions and went flying. The cop was only a matter of yards away as he began to pick himself up. By the time he got to his feet the cop was within a foot of him and stretching out an arm. For several seconds they seemed to stay exactly like that but then, unbelievably, the gap between the cop’s hand and the kid’s back seemed slowly to widen as he got into his stride.
‘Go on!’ yelled Fran. ‘Run!’
The cop ran for all he was worth for a few more seconds but with every second the young guy was another couple of feet clear of him.
‘Go on, you’ll make it!’ called Fran at the top of her voice.
The cop was running out of steam, a few yards more and he was bent over, heaving for breath. The kid looked round, running more slowly now, heading across the field into the bright sun. He looked around again. We waved and shouted to him. He saw us and waved back, then ran on again, silhouetted and getting smaller and smaller until he could hardly be seen against the last crimson scarves of light.
044
I decided to buy the trumpet after all. When I called round at Steranko’s to pick it up I found only Foomie sitting on the floor of the Blue Room with a mug of tea steaming beside her, reading. She was wearing one of Steranko’s sweaters.
‘Stay and have some tea,’ she said smiling.
‘I’m not disturbing you?’
‘It’s nice to see you. I don’t know where Steranko is.’
Foomie’s hair was tied up tight in a bun. She was wearing jeans and faded red socks. It was odd seeing her in one of Steranko’s favourite sweaters. While Foomie made more tea I trotted up to Steranko’s room and brought down the trumpet.
The Blue Room was the main living-room of Steranko’s house, so-called because of the painted blue floorboards and the pale blue walls. There was nothing in it except a fire and a small stereo. Foomie put on a record of Flamenco guitar. I poured the tea and opened a packet of biscuits. I took the trumpet from its case and fiddled around with the valves.
‘D’you think you’ll learn to play?’
‘I doubt it.’
We spoke in that relaxed and highly conventionalised way that the friend’s lover and the lover’s friend tend to when they find themselves alone. We were eager to like each other and laughed too quickly at each other’s jokes. We talked about Freddie and about Belinda but the conversation was all the time revolving around Steranko. He both restricted our intimacy and made it possible. There were all sorts of other things we could have said and we avoided all of them.
Instead, Foomie asked what I wanted to do, what kind of work I wanted. I said I didn’t know, that for as long as I could remember I had been living from one conversation to the next, going nowhere slowly.
The room echoed with the sharp claps, heel stamps and ringing chords of the music. Foomie wiped away some crumbs that had fallen on her book.
The blue floorboards looked liquidy and wet in the orange glow of the electric fire. The panels in the middle of the door had been painted a dark grey and against the background of blue they formed a cross which, for a moment, seemed like the mast of a sinking ship rising from a blue sea — the bars of the electric fire like the bright stripes of a sunset.
We sat and talked by the light of the fire.
043
Bonfire night: Steranko and I walked back to his house across the park. There was a halo of mist around the moon. A light fog draped the iron skeletons of trees. Fireworks exploded green, red and yellow in the cool mist of the sky. The bandstand loomed stark and empty before us. Paths grew indistinct in the near distance. A rocket arced up into the sky and burst into a bunch of bright petals falling. Some way off to the left there were the shrieking noises and colours of a fun fair. We walked towards it, past the huge pyre that would be at the centre of the firework display later that night. We passed through a thicket of bare trees, indistinct and swampy in the fog. Another rocket asterisked the sky.
On the waste ground outside Steranko’s house some kids had built a big bonfire. His room reeled and heaved with the bright light of flames. The window panes were warm, the sky deep blue. The whole room was rolling with orange light swirling around the various half-finished paintings. Writhing shadows. Heat. A portrait of Foomie — the first one I’d seen — was stained red by the light of the flames. Her eyes were startlingly lifelike in the flickering light. Steranko put on a record and propped himself on the window-sill, hands round his knees, to watch the fire, silhouetted by the flames. Music flooded the room which was full of colours moving, full of the light of burning.
042
It was a Sunday afternoon, cold and raining, the sort of afternoon when what you most want to do is spend four or five hours in the cinema, eating cake and taking in a double bill of French films with nice photography and plenty of sunshine. On offer was a triple bill of black-and-white Bergmans so we ended up playing Ludo for money at Freddie’s place. Warmed by a gas ring on the cooker Steranko, Freddie and I drank tea and waited for Carlton, picking up bits of the Sunday paper and throwing them down again unread.
‘What a lot of shit this paper is,’ Steranko said, tossing down the colour supplement in disgust. ‘I mean, look at this: part two of a pull-out history of ratatouille through the ages.’
Freddie and I didn’t bother to reply. That’s the kind of afternoon it was. Steranko was wearing a thick and expensive cardigan that a friend of his had ripped off from a shop in Chelsea where he worked. Steranko had the sleeves pulled down over his hands and cradled a steaming mug of tea between them.