by Geoff Dyer
A few yards further on was the new, refurbished Woolworths where they used to stock nothing except security guards and empty shelves. We walked past the Ritzy and the library where round-the-year alcoholics stuck with the Tennants Extra that served as anti-freeze through the long months of winter. A few steps further on we passed a place called Brixton Fashion. For a long time no one knew what it was supposed to be: there was only this elaborate designer façade with nothing going on behind it. Then Freddie pointed out that our confusion was due to wondering what was happening behind the façade when what was going on here was, precisely, the façade. The whole thing existed solely in the realm of display. The front wasn’t the outward display of a concealed function: the façade was the function.
A little further on someone had sprayed DON’T CATCH IT on a clean white wall.
022
With the good weather everything changed for the better. Boredom turned to leisure. People with no work were glad once again that they didn’t have jobs to go to. What to do was no longer a problem. Everyone felt bouncy and fresh as new tennis balls.
Freddie was getting better too. The bruising had come out and the dizziness had passed. Apart from some discolouring around one eye you could hardly tell that anything had happened to him. I ran into him late one morning as he bought a paper from the stall outside the Prince of Wales on the corner of Cold Harbour Lane. A couple of years ago the man who ran this stall had handed Freddie his paper with the words: ‘Now you look like what I’d call a radical intellectual sir.’ It made Freddie’s day – it made his year – and since then he’d always bought his paper from the same bloke.
‘You’re looking great Freddie,’ I said as we strolled around the market, enjoying the smell of the new season. He was wearing a crumpled linen jacket and had the look of someone who might go on to write novels set in south-east Asia.
‘You bet. I’m thriving both physically and financially.’
‘You’ve sold a story?’
‘Not exactly. But I did sell Steranko my bike.’
‘How much for?’
‘Sixty quid.’
‘This calls for a celebration,’ I said, offering him a wine-gum.
‘What about you?’ Freddie said. ‘What have you been doing?’
‘I’ve started the long slow fade to retirement and senility. I take each day a little easier than the previous one.’
‘You were saying that three years ago.’
‘I was joking then. Now it’s really happening. I didn’t realise it at the time but those jokes were just a premonition of what was to come.’
‘What is the past though,’ said Freddie, ‘if not an intense premonition of the inevitable?’
We walked past the side of Woolworths, past one of those badly painted murals depicting a multi-racial society where women are the equal of men, where no one is discriminated against because of their age or race or sex, where work looks like play and play looks like work because it’s all painted with a childlike simplicity and the sun never stops shining. Across the road, like nothing in the mural, guys hung outside the Granada Car Hire or sat chewing in the Acapulco. An old man came out of the door, dragging a leg that was heavy and useless as a sledgehammer.
We ate a pizza in Franco’s in the covered market. It was a tiny place with room for only a dozen people inside, either on stools or at tables. Outside in the Arcade there were more tables but these were always full too. It was the sort of place where it was nice to hang out but because it was so crowded and there were always so many people waiting to get served you had to do your hanging out quickly. With people eating or queuing for tables or waiting for takeaways there was hardly room for the waiters to move. There was hardly even room for the opera which tumbled to the floor from two speakers high up on the wall. After ten minutes we got a table outside which was fine because the sunlight and warmth fell through the high glass roof of the Arcade.
‘I heard a gunshot last night,’ said Freddie, cutting his pizza into meticulous slices.
‘How do you know it was a gunshot and not a car backfiring?’
‘You can tell.’
‘How?’
‘A gunshot sounds exactly like a car backfiring. A car backfiring sounds exactly like a gunshot. It’s called a paradox lieutenant.’ He said it in a kind of fast drawl, the whole sentence coming out like one long corrugated word.
We left Franco’s and walked to the health food shop so that Freddie could gawp miserably at the woman who worked there.
Inside there was a long queue of people waiting to pay. You always had to wait here. Learning to roll joints in the back of the shop with the right proportion of hash and herbal smoking mixture was a higher priority than mastering mental arithmetic as far as the staff were concerned. Not being in a hurry was part of the underlying ideology of the whole place. What really made the staff happy was a customer asking if he could see the boss – then they could point out that there was no boss, the shop was a collective.
‘Excellent,’ said Freddie, seeing the size of the queue and picking up a pack of wholewheat spaghetti. ‘Bigger the queue, longer the look.’
We shuffled towards the counter. The woman Freddie claimed to have been in love with for almost two years was wearing a black vest; her hair was tied up in a scarf. Her arms were tanned; she looked energetic and full of health (in sharp contrast to the rest of the staff who looked like they could use a plate of steak and chips).
As luck would have it we got served by the man behind the counter. Once the guy had grappled with the addition for a couple of minutes Freddie handed over an irritable five pound note and paid for everything. We both said hello to the woman who was laughing with the person she was serving.
‘Things really seem to be hotting up between you two,’ I said as we headed away from the counter.
‘Beauty is an idea,’ he said after we’d stepped outside and clumsily held the door open for a young woman with a pram and a heavy bag of shopping. ‘That’s the beauty of it.’
As we walked towards Effra Road we saw the green, black and gold flag of the ANC fluttering over the Town Hall. Further on we saw workers hurrying out of a small factory. They carried lunch-boxes and tool bags. Some were in a hurry to catch buses, others walked slowly, talking and joking in groups or in pairs.
‘That’s one of the nicest things you can ever see isn’t it?’ said Freddie.
‘What?’
‘People coming out of a factory into the sun.’
We crossed the road to my flat and for the first time that year sat drinking beer on the roof. Every now and then a plane passed overhead.
021
I ran for a bus and hauled myself on as it accelerated away from traffic lights. The bus swung round a corner as I lurched to a seat just behind the driver’s cabin. It wasn’t until I looked up that I noticed the driver: a beautiful black woman, her face in profile as she looked out across traffic filtering in from the right-hand lane. She was wearing a pale blue T-shirt, gold earrings; muscles moved in her arms as she hauled the wheel round. When the bus was held up at lights or in heavy traffic the conductor leaned across me and spoke to her through the tiny strip of open window just above my head. To speak to the conductor the driver had to twist round in her seat and lean out the open door of the cab. As soon as the traffic cleared the bus accelerated smoothly away. Some kind of race was going on with another bus. If we were in front and slowed down to pick up passengers the bus behind would pass us quickly; and then, a few minutes later, we would overtake again. Every time it happened our driver laughed at the man driving the other bus. Whenever we approached a stop where no one wanted to get on or off the conductor gave two sharp tugs on the cord to tell the driver not to stop and in this way we gradually pulled clear of the other bus.
Every couple of minutes our driver waved to drivers in other buses, grinning at them. An elderly white couple got off while the bus waited at lights and gave the thumbs up sign to her and she waved and grinned back.
I watched her and wondered about her life, about where she lived, and if she was married.
Executives complain of stress and fatigue but it’s as nothing compared with the effort involved in conducting or driving buses in rush-hour traffic five or six days a week. No businessman in the city worked harder than this woman. Driving this bus was something to be proud of – and it was a pride in which everyone who saw her shared – for a few minutes, a few stops. Watching her heaving the bus around so easily you sensed that what she was capable of would always transcend her circumstances and for once, rather than being a source of frustration, this certainty was a kind of affirmation; an affirmation of human potential of the same order as that glimpsed in a work of art or in the performance of any kind of sport, or in the playing of a musical instrument.
020
As I get off the tube broken glass crunches under my feet: the remains of a wine bottle. A few steps further on there are large curved triangles of green glass in a pool of deep blood. Slumped on a bench is a middle-aged man with blood over his shirt and a gash down one side of his face. An ambulance man bandages him sternly. I am walking behind two rastafarians: together the three of us sprint up the escalator. By the time we get to the ticket barrier, like a photographer whose finger presses the shutter by reflex, I have already drafted these words.
This book is like an album of snaps. In any snap strangers intrude; the prints preserve an intimacy that lasted only for a fraction of a second as someone, unnoticed at the time, strayed unintentionally into the picture frame. Hidden among the familiar, laughing faces of friends are the glimpsed shapes of strangers; and in the distant homes of tourists there you are, at the edge of the frame, slightly out of focus, in the midst of other peoples’ memories. We stray into each other’s lives. In the course of any day in any city it happens thousands of times and every now and again it is caught on film. That is what is happening here. Look closely and maybe there, close to the margin of the page, you will find the hurried glance of your own image: queuing at the bar, hurrying for the bus, drinking beer on a roof, bleeding on the floor of the tube (I wanted to help you but was too frightened; I’m sorry, I really am).
Often what happens accidentally, unintentionally, at the edges or in the margins of pictures – the apparently irrelevant detail – lends the photograph its special meaning. What is happening in the foreground in sharpest focus seems somehow unimportant or meaningless compared with – or at least is leant meaning and importance only through – the accidental intrusion of detail: the glimpse of someone’s shoes; a car in the background; a furled umbrella; the tilt of someone’s hat; the child eating a lolly. These details absorb and transform – and are themselves absorbed and transformed by – the principal action; the main subjects become saturated by the accidental inflections of attendant details. The distinction between foreground and background collapses; the subject is usurped by his surroundings, by the momentary pattern of clouds, by other faces in the street; his shadow is lost in a blur of others – the shadows cast by accidental gestures.
019
Foomie’s teeth crunched into a huge apple, its skin so dark that the inside, marked by the tracks of her teeth, looked dazzling white.
‘You want a bite?’ she said, holding it out to me. I shook my head.
‘You’re missing a great apple.’
Foomie had a knack for buying nice fruit that I could only regard with astonished admiration. When I bought fruit it was always either over-ripe or under-ripe, never just right.
‘The other day I bought some cherries,’ I said. ‘They were like little sacks of rotten black blood; the day after that I bought some bananas that were so soft you could have chewed them quite comfortably within ten minutes of getting your teeth ripped out without anaesthetic.’
‘Ugh, shut up. You’re making me feel sick . . .’
We were on the roof. Foomie was sitting back in one of the deckchairs she’d spent the winter making. She’d bought a whole load of them from seaside resorts, painted the frames black and replaced the canvas with brightly coloured prints of her own design. She had given one to each of her friends and was trying to sell the rest at Portobello market for fifteen pounds each. I leant against the railing and looked at my own deckchair as it lounged contentedly beneath the blue sky.
On the roof of the lift-housing rested the finished sculpture of the woman that someone had worked on throughout last summer. Freed from the block of stone she was propped up on an elbow with her head back, one leg bent at the knee. Though only two or three feet in length, the sculpture was so life-like that it made the roof seem much bigger than it was, as if what we saw was a life-size figure, lounging in the sun some way off.
‘I’ve got some grapes in my bag,’ Foomie said after a while. ‘You want some?’
‘No thanks. For me the pip destroys the pleasure of the grape.’
‘They’re seedless.’
‘Are they?’
‘Not exactly.’
Foomie was wearing a vest, shorts and a battered straw hat that shaded her face. I was wearing shorts too. Looking at Foomie made me feel very white.
‘Am I going brown?’
‘You look like you’ve just stepped out of a microwave. You ought to put some cream on. You’ll burn.’
‘I never get sun burn,’ I boasted.
‘I wish Steranko would hurry up with those beers,’ Foomie said, excavating another crisp apple.
‘Me too.’ Until he’d been persuaded to go to the off-licence Steranko had spent the afternoon painting up on the roof – since the good weather began he’d kept an easel, brushes and paints at my flat – while Foomie and I read or talked or just sat around.
‘Here he is,’ I said, looking over the railing and seeing him walk along the street with a brown bag full of beer.
Steranko had only been back a short time when he reached for his jacket to relight a joint that had gone out. The jacket was lying on the concrete and as he pulled it towards him his keys, resting on the jacket, rolled off and disappeared down the drainage hole which had been lurking there unseen. A few seconds later there was a loud splash from several floors down.
‘Shit!’
The drainage hole was only a little bigger than the plughole of a bath. There was nothing to see as we gathered round and peered down it.
‘Where does that pipe end up?’
‘In about three foot of filthy water underneath the block.’
‘Shit. Is there any way to get at it?’
‘No. But it’s not a problem is it? What about the other people in your house?’
‘They’ve gone to Thailand. They’re not going to be back for three weeks.’
‘Has no one else got a key?’
‘Foo – oh shit you gave them back to me the other day didn’t you?’
‘Can you get in somehow?’ Foomie asked.
‘Oh there’s no chance. That house is like Fort Knox.’
‘Why didn’t I get a spare set of keys done? I just do not believe it. I may as well throw myself off the roof now.’
Foomie put her arm round Steranko’s shoulders.
‘And I’m just beginning to feel stoned as well.’
‘Maybe that’ll help you see the funny side of it.’
‘There’s no funny side to it. It’s total head-fuck.’ Steranko tugged a handful of hair with both hands. ‘That grass is so strong as well. I can’t think straight.’
Foomie and I started laughing.
‘It is not funny,’ Steranko said.
‘No, I know it’s not,’ I said laughing. ‘Just the thought of it makes me feel quite faint. I’m not sure I could bear it if it had happened to me.’
‘I’m not sure I can either.’
The sky was full of the motorway sound of Concorde passing overhead. As the noise faded Foomie said: ‘I’ve got an idea.’
‘What? Don’t tell me: I go down to the ground floor, pull the manhole cover off with my bare hands and then crawl around in two fo
ot of shit using a bent straw for a snorkel. Or better still I persuade someone else to do it. That might be a bit difficult.’
‘It’s just an idea but it might work,’ Foomie said calmly.
‘Right what is it? I’m willing to consider anything.’
‘OK. What we need is a long piece of string . . .’
‘I’ve got that in my flat,’ I said.
‘And a magnet.’ There was a slight pause then Steranko leapt in the air.
‘Brilliant! Brilliant!’ he shouted. ‘Have you got a magnet?’
‘’Fraid not. Hard luck.’
‘Maybe we can buy one.’
‘Where?’
‘Mr Patel’s is the best bet but he shuts at six.’
‘What time is it now?’
We stood and counted quietly as the town-hall clock struck four . . . five . . . six.
Steranko hurtled towards the door. We heard a crash as he tumbled down a few steps and then looked down into the street and saw him sprinting along the pavement.
‘Poor Steranko. I’d laugh if the shop was shut,’ Foomie said and we both giggled. I went down to my flat and hunted out a ball of string.
Anxious minutes passed. The sky was still beautiful. Steranko’s easel cast awkward shadows across the roof. Birds chirped and sang.
Steranko came back through the door, grim-faced and breathing heavily. Then he grinned hugely and pulled a magnet out of his pocket. It was shaped exactly like a magnet in a children’s comic: U-shaped, painted red except for a quarter of an inch at each end.
‘Foomie, if this works I’ll buy you the biggest meal you’ve ever eaten,’ Steranko said, tying the string around the magnet in a fierce knot. ‘And if it doesn’t you’ll be on bread and water for six months . . . Right, now comes the difficult part.’
The three of us crouched round the drainage hole. It was like a scene from Mark Twain rewritten for the late urban world when all that remained of lakes and rivers was this one tiny plunge hole leading to a pit of sewage. Steranko paid out the string. When he had let out about fifty feet there was a faint plop. He continued letting out the string. Every now and again he tugged it to check that it was still taut. He paid out several feet more until the string hung loose in his fist.