Nothing happened.
It was the calm before the storm; the whole street waited with bated breath for the parakeet to return.
That evening, 9:34 P.M.
Carnival of the Animals with a Touch of Muddy Ocher on canvas
The windows of 20 Vincent Gardens swung open and loud music poured out, like a long, windy snake trailing across the road and up to my bedroom, tap-tapping on the window. Tap-tapping on all the windows in the street.
I’m here. Notice me.
The colors arrived with a bang and drifted into each other’s business, disrupting everything.
Some might call them a nuisance. They certainly did that night and in the weeks and months to come.
The glossy deep magenta cello; the dazzling bright electric dots of the piano, and the flute’s light pink circles with flecks of crimson formally announced that someone new had arrived on the street.
A person as well as a parakeet. They wanted to be seen. They loved loud, bright music as much as me.
Later, much later, I discovered this glorious music was called The Carnival of the Animals. Fourteen movements by Camille Saint-Saëns, a French Romantic composer, who wrote music for animals: kangaroos, elephants, and tortoises. I loved the colors of “Aviary,” birds of the jungle, the most, but that evening was the turn of the Royal Lion.
As soon as the colors started, I jumped off my bed and raced to the window, tearing open the curtains. A woman with long blond hair held a glass while she threw herself around the sitting room. She danced like me, not caring if anyone else watched. Not caring if she spilt her drink.
Whirling, twirling, she wrapped herself in a brightly colored shawl of shimmering musical colors, hugging it close to her body.
The colors overlapped and faded in and out of each other on a transparent screen in front of my eyes. If I reached out, it felt like I could almost touch them.
“Jasper! Turn it downnnnnnnnn . . .”
The last word was long and drawn out because the sentence never finished, like a lot of Dad’s sentences when he talks to me.
He walked towards me, but I couldn’t turn around. The pulsating music pushed absolutely everything out of my mind. Our house could have burnt to the ground and I wouldn’t have shifted voluntarily.
I thought it was the most perfect combination of colors I’d ever seen. I was wrong, of course. Much better was to come when the pandemonium of parakeets arrived. But I couldn’t know that then.
I focused my binoculars on the house opposite. The colorful music had squeezed out most of the furniture from the sitting room. The sofa, a small table, and chairs were pushed up against the walls by the side of a piano. A green beanbag remained, along with an iPod on a stand.
I recognized the dark brown curtains and grayish white nets that usually hung at the windows folded neatly into squares and placed on the table. They’d been sacked, made redundant.
“Good God.” Dad snatched the binoculars off me. “What will people think? You mustn’t do that, Jasper. No one likes a spy.”
I didn’t bother to ask what people would think. I’d given up trying to guess the answer to that particular puzzle long ago.
Normally Dad’s grabby hands would have outraged me—it’s rude to snatch. That’s one of the rules he’s taught me. I didn’t remind him because the depth of colors had transfixed me.
They dazzled against the whiteness of the woman’s arms in the background as she waltzed around and around, her floral dressing gown flapping open as if she’d been caught in a sudden breeze.
I couldn’t pull my gaze away to look at Dad.
He was about to explain what I’d done wrong when the music stopped.
“No! Wait!” I cried.
The colors vanished as fast as the parakeet from the oak tree. They didn’t drift off or melt away. Gone. Like a TV switched off. But then . . .
A few minutes later, 9:39 P.M.
Martian Music and Warm, Buttery Toast on canvas
The woman must have heard my shout.
She darted across the room to the beanbag. Bigger, bolder, glittering neon sounds belted out from the iPod.
Martian music.
These colors are alien visitors that only I can understand—colors that people like Dad don’t know exist. They don’t look like they belong in the real world. They only exist in my head—impossible to describe, let alone paint.
Silver, emerald green, violet blue, and yellow simultaneously, but somehow not those colors at all.
“She likes her house music, doesn’t she?” Dad said. “The neighbors will be thrilled.”
It sounded like a question, but I had no answer. I didn’t know who “she” was or what “she” was doing at 20 Vincent Gardens.
Dad’s other choice of words was accurate for once. I was thrilled, along with all the neighbors. Not only did “she” like dancing and loud classical music but she loved Martian music even more.
I sensed we could be friends. Great friends.
“This won’t go down well,” he said. “She’s already wound up David by parking directly outside his house.”
“Who is she?” I asked. “Why doesn’t she have any proper clothes? Why did the men take away her furniture in a van?”
Dad didn’t answer. He watched her wild dancing, throwing her hair from side to side. I think he felt sorry for her because she couldn’t afford furniture or curtains. She wore a slippery bright floral dressing gown, which kept wriggling down her shoulders and falling open at the waist. It felt wrong to look at her bare, alien-like skin, with or without binoculars.
This wasn’t the elderly woman Dad said used to live here. This “she”—the Woman with No Name—didn’t remind me of an old person. At all. I don’t normally pay too much attention to hair, but hers was long and blond and swinging. She moved gracefully around the room, twirling like a ballet dancer or a composer, conducting an orchestra of color.
“Who is she?” I repeated.
“I don’t know for sure,” he replied. “Pauline Larkham died in a home a few months back. This woman could be a friend or a niece or something. Or maybe she’s the long-lost daughter. I don’t know her name. She’d be about the right age. David mentioned her a while ago. Said she never bothered to come back for Mrs. Larkham’s funeral.”
This was news to me. I didn’t know the old woman who used to live over the road was called Pauline Larkham or that she’d died in a new home. Maybe she didn’t like this one much.
“Well, which one is this woman? Is she a friend or a niece or a long-lost daughter who didn’t come back for the funeral and doesn’t have a name?”
Dad was infuriating. He didn’t grasp the importance of getting the facts straight. I knew one woman couldn’t be two or three people at the same time. She was either someone’s friend or someone had lost her and needed help finding her again.
“I don’t know, Jasper. Do you want me to ask her for you?” He fiddled with the strap of the binoculars, which made me itch to snatch them back before he scuffed the leather. “It would be neighborly of us to welcome her to our street, don’t you think? To help her find her feet?”
I stared out of the window, confused. It was obvious where her feet were and she didn’t need his help finding them. She flitted about on the tips of her toes.
I didn’t want to point out the stupidity of his question. Instead of concentrating on her feet, he should have run out of our house and up the path to hers. I could have watched from the window because it was too soon to meet her in person. I hadn’t had time to prepare for the conversation.
Too late!
A man walked up the path to 20 Vincent Gardens, wearing dark trousers and a dark top. I guessed he was a thrilled neighbor, welcoming the new arrival to our street.
He banged hard on the door. Irregular circles of mahogany brown.
The music stopped abruptly.
I instantly disliked this visitor. He’d prevented Dad from introducing himself to the Woman with No Name. Wor
se still, he’d disrupted her palette of colors.
“Uh-oh,” Dad said.
“Uh-oh,” I agreed; this man looked like bad news.
The Woman with No Name tied up her dressing gown. Hard. Like she was fastening a parcel at Christmas to deliver to the post office. Fifteen seconds later, she appeared at the front door. Her mouth opened wide as if she’d sat down in a dentist’s chair. She took a step backwards, further away from the door. Maybe he wasn’t a thrilled neighbor after all. I didn’t like the way he’d made her mouth change into an O shape.
“Why is she walking backwards?” I asked. “Has he frightened her? Should we call the police?”
“No, Jasper. That’s just Ollie Watkins from number eighteen. He came home last week to look after his mum. Mrs. Watkins is very poorly so I doubt you’ll see much of him on the street.”
“Are you sure the woman over there’s OK?”
“Absolutely. Ollie doesn’t mean her any harm. He’s taken her by surprise, that’s all. She probably wasn’t expecting any visitors on her first night here.”
Again, my hands longed to rip the binoculars back. Dad gripped them hard. He didn’t want to let go, but they didn’t belong to him. They were mine. I was about to point out this Important Fact when the man’s hand lunged out. I gasped. I took a step back too, convinced he was about to grab the belt of the Woman with No Name.
“Don’t worry, Jasper. He’s not threatening her or anything like that. He wants to shake her hand. Remember, people do that when they’re introducing themselves to each other for the first time. It’s polite.”
The woman didn’t want to shake his hand. Perhaps she didn’t know Dad’s rules about what to do in social situations. She folded her arms around her body as if she needed to tie up the parcel even tighter, with especially strong brown vinyl tape, for the long journey ahead.
“Ha! That went well,” Dad said.
“I know. It means we can’t welcome her now that he’s welcomed her.” The crushing disappointment felt like a huge weight on my shoulders, drilling into the carpet, through the wooden floorboards, and plunging me into the sitting room below. The man had stolen our introduction.
“I doubt he’s the welcoming committee,” Dad said. “I mean, he probably has welcomed her to the street, to be polite. I don’t think that’s his real reason for visiting tonight.”
“Why? What is it?” I stared at the mysterious man, Ollie Watkins, with the mysterious motive for wanting to jump the queue and meet the Woman with No Name before us.
“He probably wants to have a chat about the music. The noise passes right through the walls of terraced houses. He and his mum must be able to hear everything magnified in Technicolor.”
That’s when I felt another, strange emotion.
Jealousy. The word’s a wishy-washy pickled onion shade.
Ollie Watkins and his mum didn’t suffer an annoying dilution of color. It could absorb through the walls into their front room.
“Lucky, lucky them,” I said.
Dad accidentally breathed in and out at the same time, making an ink-shaped blob of mustard and brown sauce.
“Not everyone appreciates loud house music like you, Jasper. I’m sure he’s asking her to turn the volume down. It’s a residential street, not Ibiza.”
Why would Ollie Watkins and his mum want the colors to disappear? Ibiza sounded like a fun place to be.
The front door closed and the man walked back down the path again. He looked up and raised a hand at us. Dad raised his hand back, a secret gesture.
“You have to feel for Ollie,” Dad said. “He’s having a rough time with his mum. It won’t be long now. She doesn’t have much time left.”
Dad was wrong yet again. I didn’t feel anything at all for Ollie Watkins. I didn’t know who he was, where he’d come from, or the color of his voice. I’d never seen him before—at least I didn’t think I had. I didn’t recognize his clothes.
All I knew for sure was that Ollie Watkins didn’t like loud music and had stopped all the lovely colors.
That was a black mark in my book. Not pure black, but a dirty smudge of a color with traces of grainy gray that would deliberately stain anything it touched.
I tried to focus because I could feel myself getting distracted by the shades. Dad was right about one thing—the man walked along the pavement and up the path to the next-door house, 18 Vincent Gardens. This was definitely Ollie Watkins, going back to his mum, who didn’t have much time left. For something or other.
“That’s it, Jasper.” Dad wrapped the strap around the binoculars. “Time for bed. It’s school tomorrow. No more raves. No more excitement on our street tonight.” He sounded as disappointed as me that the show was over.
I bit my lip and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to let the Martian colors go; I could forget them in my sleep. My alarm clock would go off at 6:50 A.M. as normal, but I had to paint them straightaway.
I needn’t have worried. The Martian music dramatically returned a few seconds later, a fraction quieter before it cranked up again. Louder. Louder than ever before.
My eyes flew open. The Woman with No Name was back in the sitting room, twirling, her dressing gown lifting and blowing as if the breeze had grown stronger.
I couldn’t help myself. I knew Dad hated my dancing, but I flapped my arms and leapt about, swimming in the colors. I danced in solidarity with her, a perfect blending of shades.
Defiant colors that didn’t care what anyone thought or said.
Dad didn’t tell me off or demand I stop dancing as usual. He stood at the window, staring at the Technicolor rebellion.
“Here comes David Gilbert to complain about the noise too,” he murmured. “It won’t take him long to lay down the law. She’ll regret moving in next door to him.”
That evening’s second visitor, David Gilbert, strode up the garden path. He came from the house on the other side, number 22. If I hadn’t seen this and Dad hadn’t given me his name, I’d have guessed Ollie Watkins was back. Wearing a hat.
“I don’t think she’ll turn the music down for Ollie Watkins or David Gilbert,” I said. “I don’t think she can. This music has to be played loud. The neighbors will get used to it.”
There was a rolling, darkish ocher color as Dad chuckled to himself.
“I wouldn’t want to take on David. I think he’s going to have his hands full with this one. Whoever she is, Jasper, she’s going to be a troublemaker.”
“Really?”
She didn’t look like a troublemaker to me. Troublemakers covered their faces with scarves and spray-painted graffiti on walls at weekends. They hung around street corners, aiming kicks and punches at anyone who strayed too close.
Dad didn’t sound worried about the Woman with No Name or the fact she was transforming into a Troublemaker. He studied her through my binoculars even though No One Likes a Spy.
“Mmmmmm.” His voice was the color of warm, buttery toast.
6
TUESDAY (BOTTLE GREEN)
Later That Evening
I line up my brushes by the bathroom sink. I don’t want to alert Dad to the fact that I’m up at 11:47 P.M. I turn on the tap slowly, making a trickle of water.
Small circular clouds of kingfisher blue.
I love this color. It’s happy, without a care in the world.
Shivers of excitement play trick or treat up my back, the way they do whenever I open a fresh tube of paint. I love gently squeezing the smooth tube. Too hard and the paint spurts out, wasting it; too little and it’s impossible to tell a proper story from beginning to end.
A small dot of paint is always the best place to start. I can add to the splash of color and make it grow in size until it becomes the perfect amount. I’ve remembered enough for one night—how excited I was about seeing the mystery woman for the first time and how I longed for the right moment to meet her in person.
When the music eventually stopped that night, after a visit lasting three minutes and
thirteen seconds from David Gilbert, I began planning for the day when I could meet our new neighbor. I had to memorize what she looked like (long blond hair, not many clothes) and come up with the perfect introduction.
Both these things were important. I didn’t want her to think I was a stupid weirdo, like everyone else.
I had hope: a tomato-ketchup-colored word.
Hope she would get me. How couldn’t she? She loved loud Martian music and dancing wildly. The only difference between us was I didn’t like the cold and still don’t. I only ever dance with my clothes on.
The same scarlet-in-a-squeezy-bottle color embraces me as I tiptoe back to my bedroom with damp paintbrushes, dabbed dry on an old hand towel. The TV in Dad’s bedroom buzzes gray grainy lines, but tomato ketchup’s in my head.
As soon as I climb into bed, I remember it’s school tomorrow and popcorn yellow dread crawls under the duvet with me. It rudely refuses to budge, however hard I try to kick it out and replace it with tomato ketchup.
Dread’s my usual unwelcome bed guest on Sunday nights, reminding me of the break-time gauntlet—waves of anonymous faces surging towards me along the corridors.
Some could turn out to be friendly, others will not. Good and bad aren’t stamped on pupils’ foreheads to help me sift through their identical uniforms.
This time it’s different. Tomorrow’s Wednesday (toothpaste white) and dread is a far harsher color because I have to face Lucas Drury again, for the first time since IT happened.
He was mad at me last week for my Big, Dumb Mistake. He’s going to be even madder now the police are involved.
He’ll yell shades of thorny peacock blue at me.
I jump out of bed and pull the curtains tighter together to get rid of the crack of light and the blurry purply black lines of a passing motorbike.
The windows of Bee Larkham’s house stare reproachfully at me through the duck egg blue curtain fabric.
However many times I apologize, the panes of glass will never forgive me.
The Color of Bee Larkham's Murder Page 4
