ear Mary,

It's beautiful up here. Behind me the mountains, in front, the sea. Anyone living up here is privileged, but I didn't remember the prefabs up here. They seem tiny and fragile set in between the rich houses.

The first house I remember was a "prefab". Just after the war they began to spring up all over England and Wales. The Festival of Britain was coming, rationing was slowly disappearing. We were the victors, they said, but I don't think my parents understood why it didn't feel that special after all, after all the kissing in the streets had been forgotten.

I had been born after Pat and Jenny, and Mam, Dad, me and my two sisters were squeezed into a single room, my Auntie Nora's basement. Well, that's the story, Mary, but how do I know the truth? All I know is I was a few extra points on the housing list and we moved from Herbert Street and into Masefield Vale, me still no more aware of the world than a fat breast, a nipple, the smell of my mother's milk. But historically, I can check, we moved into a prefab.

The prefabs would have been very new in 1948, white or close to white, little bungalows of corrugated something that we called formed asbestos, but given how the name asbestos has been perjured like cancer, perhaps it wasn't. I could do research of course but that wouldn't be the point. We lived in the prefabs and they were made out of pre-formed corrugated asbestos.

Or cheese.

I don't remember the prefabs as white or as grey. I don't remember them as coloured or non-coloured. Instead I remember the front door, metal, because it clanged, and I remember the kitchen sink because there my cuts and sprains were run under a cold tap, my mother's fat hand holding me effortlessly and laughing, a light, cynical laugh, the kind men of importance should remember in their mothers.

But the prefabs were white or grey, They weren't black. They weren't red or brown or beige, not house colours. Nor were they blue or green or orange, nor were any of them pink or lilac or cerise. Or maroon or turquoise. Not cyan, magenta, yellow. They were prefabs. They were white or grey.

I remember falling down the steps on my bike, so yes, we had steps, and I remember my father carrying a burning radiogram into the garden, so I had my heroes, well, one hero at least, and there were radiograms. They were brown and solid and the records were black. My life wasn't colourless.

My parents were Catholic. I was what I was told. We bred and we spread quite quickly. First Barbara came, and then Angela, and then I was sent away, a long way away, and the building there wasn't small and it wasn't white and it was by the sea and I was a very little boy but at least I knew I was a little boy. I thought of running away and looked at a railway line, and I wet myself once and then the postman took me to the station and I met a man who said he was my father and we went home.

We took a bus from the station and walked to Masefield Vale. The houses looked sweet and warm, the gardens full of flowers and at the gates and fences ladies who knew me said nice things to me and they called me Ronnie and gave me toffees. I think the houses were grey-white but the gardens were green and full of colours and the women smelled of milk.

Then my father told me we lived somewhere near, not in a prefab, any more, but in a new house up the Gaer, and it was made of brick and had a flat roof and I would have a bedroom of my own, called a box-room, and there was a shed, a coal-house and two toilets. It was on a hill.

Gradually, I learned to recognise my father. Maybe I was six. He would walk from Whiteheads Iron & Steel, up over the railway, down through Caer-Perlan, down through the prefabs, up past the dingle, across the park and along Dickens Drive to Shakespeare Crescent.

My father wore grey, black, and was black with the grease of work, and he smelled divine, of tobacco and newspaper, and good hot sweat. We would run to him if we saw him, run down from the park, through the dingle toward the prefabs, see him grin, reach down and grab one of us and swing us up and round his ginger-stubbled face. Behind were the prefabs, the people there older, slower, the houses grey boxes tight together, the gardens steep banks. But flowers still.

School? I'm not sure. School was yellow-brown brick, and the school-yard dark grey. The teachers were sombre and cardiganned, probably green and brown with brown shoes, their hair a shiny black or a bunpinned severe grey. Our schoolbooks were light blue.

When I was sent away again, this time I knew I was being sent away. The house was old and grey and had leaded windows, little monsters stuck high up on the walls. There was a river nearby, grey or brown, there were trees, all grey. The courtyards were grey, we wore grey, the days were grey. That year there was no summer.

Then, I came back—I remember eating a pomegranate when I was there, and getting a splinter—and number twelve was less red and more brown, the garden less green, and the box-room smaller, dustier.

But the view was everything, Mary! Like this one; Wentloog, the Bristol Channel, a huge cream and red power station and great silver, blue, and green ships slipping in on the Usk, with hooters so loud you could hear them from my bedroom.

And then my mother left. November the Fifth.

I remember a bonfire, sparklers, fireworks, Joseph Murphy falling in a fire, faces at a window and then, in the morning, my mother not being there. The world was still without colour but I was learning that colour could be stolen, chocolate from shops, red and green pop from mobile grocer's vans, creamy white milk from doorsteps, even the pink of kisses.

Then I was sent away again, Mary. This time I knew I was being sent away and I knew where, and I almost understood why. I knew that the woman taking us worked for the authorities, and that her car was a lovatt green Morris Minor 1000. I saw in her face that she was lying to us when she said we were going to see Roman ruins. I saw my father's wretched face too, back in the shadows of our front room, as far back from the window as he could get himself, but I didn't know the word wretched, then, nor was I able to imagine that he was crying.

The children's home? Dull yellow brick; inside, industrial greens. The stairs were cream, the banisters polished wood. The kitchen was stainless steel and water, the cockroached cellars more grey, the bedrooms striped with thin lines of fawn, yellow and brown on the counterpanes. Our guardians were called Auntie and Uncle; Auntie Joyce, Auntie Gwyneth, Uncle Fred. They bathed us, clothed us, fed us. They gave us pocket money. But they were not my father.

Then, my sisters disappeared and on a Saturday they let me visit home. As I walked down, the prefabs were white again, and the names Masefield Vale and Macauley Gardens were suddenly musical, fabulous sounds. And as I walked up through the dingle, to Dickens Drive and then to Shakespeare Crescent, the houses seemed redder than I remembered, and the grass sharp green and the banks rolling with colour; primroses, daffodils, lilac.

But then Mary, I had to go back, to Auntie Gwynneth, Auntie Joyce and Uncle Fred. And they bathed me, clothed me, fed me. They gave me pocket money, but they were not my father.

And then came an afternoon tea and talk of fostering. I wanted to stay with Auntie Joyce and Uncle Fred, but they told me, "Just go for tea and see how you get on."

It was an old house, with another box-room, allocated to the foster-boy, but all browns, greens, the tables dull white lace, and my foster-mother dull-eyed and her sons, dark-brown with intent and me now with my own redness, outwitted, outnumbered, but defiant, staring them down inviting the secret beatings, the secret pecking order.

And then, Mary, I managed an escape—from my lost mother, my dark and bitter father, the green-yellow children's home, my brutal brown foster life, the ugly dull-redded house on the hill, the pathetic grey prefabs down past the park. I escaped, I thought, and to the pleated light-blue of Her Majesty's Royal Air Force, the sharp arrows of jet planes, the rich navy-blue Hunters the silver Lightnings, the rippled brown-green camouflage of Vulcans and Victors, the bright red Jet Provosts, the yellow band on my hat, the gleaming black of boot-caps. And guns and bayonets, Mary, and the cool shine of copper at the base of bullets, the silver stay-brite of a Boy Entrant's badge.

But it was all a myth, love. And it would take me seven years to escape from my escape, a month in solitary confinement, humiliation, and again no colour, save the dark grey of prison walls.

In the cells, only the books had colour, especially the faded, finger-worn colourless ones, the finger-printed ones, the ones which were no longer pristine, the ones that had been passed from villain to villain, from square peg to unread, uncoloured, square peg. But then, in the books, the escape really was complete, the world was no longer grey-white, or dull red, or grey-blue, and the civilian colours, all of them, were there for the taking. Then they let me go.

***

At first the world was frighteningly big, but I rented my first bedsit and painted it—peach around the skirting-boards, with an orange wallpaper of lanterns and scrolls. The curtains were light brown, the ceiling white, the carpet blue, and the lampshades red, red, red. I bought a book.

My first apartment I painted light blue, with mahogany book-shelves, slowly filling, a blue carpet. The sofa was light green and brown with scattered tartan cushions.

Then there was Sally and we painted our house pastel, easy, co-ordinated; and the soft-furnishings were gentle, even lighter greens, and lighter browns. It stayed that way until Sally left.

I painted my second bachelor apartment magnolia. It was convenient, quick, and easy to re-do, easy to move on from. When women visited me they bought me pictures and they stole my books and when we slept together their colours varied from dull grey to glorious reds, occasional rainbows, but nothing was colour-fast, Mary, nothing was safe.

I began to write. The pages were white, the typeface almost black, but in my head, Mary, there were glorious, wonderful colours. But outside me was still a drabness, a darkness. Then I decided I had left the place of my soul, my childhood, and perhaps, back there in Wales, the colours that had been bled from me, from blue to grey, red to brown might come back, reborn, revitalised, recaptured, for wasn't the flag of my country a rampant red dragon on white and green?

Well you know I went back, Mary. I left you and took a train. You said it was necessary and you smiled, and I left you.

But I ached, Mary, straight away I ached. The train rattled and clacked. It was grey and smelled of greyness. The low fields were green but dull, and the flicking, sailing wires strung from pylons were grey, grey, swinging grey. The only way I could find colour was to close my eyes and think of you.

The Severn tunnel was black, the break from it into light a brief, deluding gold, then there was more dull green farmland, more backyards, more rust, then a dirty river, brown, a castle, grey, a station, grey, streets, dark grey.

The bus from the railway station to Masefield Vale had been painted with a crest, gold, red, Newport Yellow and Green. But the transferred crest had faded and the bus broke down on the hill out of town. The men had to get off, and help it over the rise. When I got to the prefabs, it was raining.

The gardens of Masefield Vale were older, as if once they'd displayed themselves but they, like their owners had got a little tired. At forty-six there was no-one in. At number forty-four there was a shouted answer and behind the frosted glass, a bent silhouette, but the door didn't open. I knocked no more doors.

I walked past the dingle, and up toward the park. The path was boggy, I didn't remember that. But I remembered my father, the puffiness around his eyes, his skill with a football, his foolishness when the worst for drink, the dark anger of his dying.

The four-bedroomed houses were wet and sad. Dogs scavenged round dustbins, paint peeled, the rooms hid behind dirty windows and yellowed lace, the hedges were overgrown or hacked. On Dickens Drive a woman scurried away from me, another passed in a spraying, hissing car, a dog barked and threatened me, surging on its chain in an alleyway.

I was disappointed, of course I was, but Mary, I thought of you. I went to the end of Dickens Drive and turned, stopped on Shakespeare Crescent right by number twelve. I looked up at the box-room. I thought of you, Mary, the two nights we laughed, the night you came back with my poems and said you had to sleep with me, the way your eyes shine, the way you said when I asked about Wales, "Go back there, Ron. Go home and find out."

And I looked down towards the Channel, the mouth of the river, the old docks. Most of it down there had always been grey and in this light drizzle it looked greyer still. And Mary, finally I understood where colour comes from and I could only think of you, the colours you are, those you give me. But then, as I thought of you again, Mary I saw a huge, red, white and blue ship break away from the rain and in bright yellow, painted on it's side, Fyffes Bananas; and the rain stopped, the sun broke out, and the colours flashed. And then I thought of you again, I wanted to laugh, and I heard the ship's hooter go, loud, crisp, defiant.

© Alex Keegan