They immediately stripped themselves of all frivolity, let go of the roses. ‘Colour? I may say we read and listen to everything that’s being said on that particular issue,’ the man said. ‘I think you know my views on the colour question.’
‘It wasn’t that though. It’s colour TV I’m talking about.’
‘Oh, I see. No, I’ve no views on that, I’m afraid. Not yet. Haven’t got the money to have any views on that at the moment. Now, this colour question. As I said before – I think you know my views on that.’
‘Certainly I know them. I share them.’
‘I hope you do.’
‘That’s a queer way to put it, and not particularly complimentary to Mr Garrad here,’ said his wife coming nearer. ‘You’re implying he may have prejudices of one kind or another or that he’s afraid to come out with them.’
‘That’s utter nonsense! But there is a queer thing. Here we all are airing our views about colour, with lowered voices. Some day, looking back, the world will think it’s unbelievably ludicrous. We’ll be all colours and thankful to be. It’ll be a disgrace to be pure white, pure black, brown or yellow. That’s how it’ll be in the world to come.’
‘In a future world you mean,’ said his wife.
‘The same.’
‘Because “world to come” usually means “next life”. Which is a very different matter.’
‘I have no views about a next life, none whatever. Except there’s said to be no marriage or giving in marriage and that’s all that interests me.’
‘So you can see where your colour views get us,’ said his wife to Garrad. ‘I hope your wife doesn’t get what I have to put up with. And by the way, what about a bunch of roses to take back?’
‘Lovely,’ said Garrad quickly. ‘Lovely. But I’ll get them on the way back if it’s all the same …’
He moved on past other gardens competing in brightness and neatness, past doors painted blue, white and green, down to the busy corner and round it and on towards that part which grew more and more congested near the crossing of main roads but where, miraculously, on clear days, in a minute closed-in wedge between a pub and a church, you could just see the blue line of distant sea. When he was a young man Garrad had cherished this almost invisible wedge of the town. There was some fractional romance about it which he occasionally remembered nowadays when he was struggling through the rush-hour crowds or waiting in longer and longer queues. There was sometimes a pin-pointing of clouds over this sea, now and then the fleck of a ship. Sometimes it was no more than the narrow dazzle of light between black brick. He seldom looked for it now. When he looked he seldom saw it. Twenty more years of traffic had nearly obscured it. A smart addition to the church and a new signboard on the pub had pared it to an even smaller piece of sea and sky. He went further and further in towards the centre and slowly out again on the other side where most of the town’s public buildings stood – banks, town hall, libraries and Technical College – all with a sizeable bit of green in front. He came to the main modern school with its huge glass frontage where you could look right into empty classrooms and corridors and see flowers blazing along the sills, and maps, mobiles, posters on the opposite walls. A late janitor strolled up to the gates as he went past. ‘Ah … the young devils … they’re in luck, aren’t they?’ Garrad said. ‘They’re never done looking. They can see the whole world go past as they do their sums. When I think how we had to fix our eyes on a two feet by three block of blackboard. There wasn’t anywhere else to look. What wouldn’t we have given to see all this!’
‘But would you say it was a good thing?’ said the janitor, leaning his elbow on a spike of railing.
‘I was just coming to that. Is it?’ said Garrad. ‘Does it help them concentrate? Does it help them choose what things to look at out of all the stuff going past the window? Does it make them selective? Selective!’ Garrad rolled and relished the word on his tongue. The janitor took his elbows off the spike. ‘And these are going too.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The spikes are going.’
‘Well that’s good I suppose. No spikes, eh? All this and spikeless too. Makes you wonder how we came through at all at their age.’ He walked on gravely, passing one or two acquaintances on his way. He made this distinction with middle-age. Real friends got fewer and fewer while acquaintances grew and multiplied. These days he used the word ‘real’ a lot. Real. He hung on grimly to reality like an acrobat with a metal plug between the teeth hanging over a void. Real friends, real food, real entertainment, real service, real flavour, real bread, real leather, real hair, real love, real money, real women. They were all whizzing away from him. Some things he’d missed out. Real colour. It was not yet added to his list.
It was cooler now and the street quieter. At another crossing of streets a miniature market was packing up its stalls. Men and women, untying aprons blotched with juice, were getting ready to heave up piles of empty crates onto lorries or into their own shops behind, while round about a few left-over baskets of battered fruit were being fingered by late-comers. A few stalls were still intact. One was slung round like an Arabian tent with purple and crimson cloth, overhung by long red and blue nylon dresses with flowered sashes. Rows of boots, dangling from their laces round the top of the stall, kicked half-heartedly in the breeze as though engaged in some mild, disembodied game of football.
A couple who were hurrying past stopped suddenly beside Garrad. They were coming from their shop where, over a long time-span of changing fashions, every single object there had changed from junk to antique and back to junk again. They kept their spirits up. ‘Hullo Mr Garrad. Very thoughtful you look. Are you contemplating the skating boots up there or what?’ asked the husband.
‘Well I might yet. Right now I’m only out for a stroll.’
‘Good. But don’t forget to be back for seven, will you?’
‘Seven. What’s that?’
‘What’s seven! Don’t tell me you were thinking of giving a miss to the last of the Great Gardens?’
‘I’ve no choice. It’s broken down on us.’ Garrad told the tale again. Of how colour was brought and taken back, and brought and taken back again. He didn’t fuss – simply told it with a wry smile while they exclaimed in sympathy. But they were still leaning at a steep angle towards home. ‘So we’d have been better to stay with plain black and white for a while,’ Garrad went on. ‘That way we’d never have known what we were missing.’
‘Do you think so?’ Their faces lost a little sympathy. They had no colour. Garrad knew he’d been tactless.
‘It’s just,’ he said, ‘that it doesn’t take long to get used to colour.’
‘I suppose so,’ said the wife. ‘Do you find it true?’
‘True?’
‘Yes, I believe it varies a lot. Some say they’ll never get it true to life.’
‘Well it’s different of course.’
‘They’re never going to get it absolutely true. That’s what I heard.’
‘I wouldn’t say never. It depends what you mean by true. It’s going to get better and better.’
‘Does anything?’ said the man. ‘I’m afraid I’m a pessimist. And I’m rather odd about colour. I don’t believe I’d like it unless it was absolutely true. I suppose it’s because you could call me a bit of an artist. Isn’t that right, Cath?’
‘That’s right,’ said his wife without enthusiasm.
‘Not in anything I do, of course. But in how I look at things.’
‘And everyone sees things differently,’