Yellow, Black, Red, Blue

fter he had died—suddenly and very surprisingly as it turned out, one quite pleasant Sunday afternoon as he was mowing the lawn—(an old Roman well was underneath his front garden, but that's not important)—Henry James Munro was supposed to learn to fly and he found it difficult.

"Up," his guide said, "up is yellow. Think anything over in the sharp yellow-lemon area and it's up you go. Anything roundabout the yellow the boss first thought of will do—cream, magnolia, primrose, even. Gold works, khaki works, but the rate of climb for that's not so hot."

Down was blue.

"Blue," Henry repeated. "And to go left?"

Left was black and only black, he was told,—he thought he detected an edge in his guide's voice—absolutely black, black-black, jet-black, really black, completely black, black as a black cat's ass in a coal mine at midnight-black. Yes, definitely an edge. No, his guide said, there was no significance in the colour and Henry wasn't going to do well if he kept asking questions.

Right was red.

And that was Henry's problem. He had started to explain, but could sense he'd lost his guide's full attention, you see, he wanted to say, he simply wasn't a primary-colour person, he wasn't, sorry, sorry, he never-had-been, into definiteness. It was his previous calling, as an interior decorator, he wanted to say, as an artist of some delicacy. To even think yellow, black, red, blue, that was like, was, well like, well,—

"It," his guide said slowly, uncontestably, "IT, is yellow, black, red, blue." "yuh-ell-ow," he said, "and black, and red, and fucking blue." Then, obviously thinking of the perfect whatever-the-exact-spectrum-number-was yellow, he was gone.

Henry pondered in his abrupt aloneness, but then his guide's voice echoed across space and into his head, "Zee-roh!"

That was another thing, Henry thought, he wasn't sure about this thinking across the cosmos, this speaking without words, "I—" he started to say.

"And you have absolutely zero fucking chance of getting into Heaven until you get your act together, Mister Munro,"

Shocked, Henry looked up. He saw an aeroplane—well its mark across the sky—and then he heard faintly, "Zee-roh-oh-oh-oh." The aeroplane was a Pan-Am something-or-other he guessed, heading out across the ocean. But then he sensed a sort of manic chuckling, and the white vapour trail reshaped, suddenly and with a flourish. "Oh!" Henry said.

Even Henry James Munro recognised being given the finger.

"Yellow, black, red, blue. Oh dear," thought he.

So, for a while, Henry thought, just for a little while, he would continue to travel using the old-fashioned methods, walking, going by road, rail, taking elevators; he even flew, but inside another Pan Am jet, a 747-400. And, since he wasn't in any hurry to meet his guide again (loud men quite unnerved him) he didn't rush to master this spirit-flying game.

So far, he hadn't had a tremendous urge to go back. Some people did, his guide had said (this immediately after the surprise with the disused well, when he had quite unexpectedly become an ancient artefact), "They want to see who cares they are gone, but really it's just a residual humanity thing, it soon fades." Perhaps Henry would have had the urge (though there weren't that many people he realised that he'd ever been that close to), but the trauma of having to learn to fly had altered everything.

He had been over the sea off Wales, "being carried" by his guide, so the guide said later, and he had been more than slightly bored with the drills and the obvious fact that his guide didn't particularly like him. Hearing yellow, black, red, blue, for the thousandth time and not concentrating, Henry had thought cerise, (the core colour of a lovely wallpaper he'd once designed for Geoffrey, a hairdresser from Pimlico who never married) and he stalled, fell to his right, flapped, tumbled out of control, and found himself spinning to earth, down, down, eventually into the side of a mountain. Still with life memories, he had been terrified at an impending, brutal death and he had tried to think of the correct colours but only one came, a soft turquoise, the colour of a librarian's eyes. So he had hit the mountain. It hadn't hurt—it couldn't—but he had expected pain and the expectation of the pain was bad enough.

"That goes too," his guide had said, but hadn't Henry detected a light mental touch of a smirk in the extension of his explanation, eventually?

You see, once, once, Henry had almost been in love, this before falling down the well, more than three years before he had looked out of his little cottage and thought, "My, such a nice day. I think I'll cut the grass."

Her name was Louise Joan Peters, a librarian, quite tall he remembered, but somehow small, and, he thought, yes, fragile, with her quiet, gentle, whispered librarian's voice. She was forty-three, (Henry was forty-seven then) and he had looked into her soft eyes one dusty-libraried five o'clock and said, (meaning history of course), "May I order the Wistfully of Wallpaper?"

And something happened to Henry Munro's solitary, celibate life at that moment. He developed a beautiful lisp and a desire to write poetry. He also found that the colours he began to choose, always pastel of course, always subtle, now took on the colour of his librarian's eyes.

And his clients began to sense a certain sameness in the designs Henry proffered, his offerings had a certain aquatic feel, they said, there was a light-green blueness to most of his ideas, and white, (she had worn a soft white blouse), and mild fawns, occasional checks, (her long woollen skirt).

Henry began to borrow more books, to make more enquiries.

Louise, Louise; it was strange how now, looking again, from here, from here where he could see so clearly what he had failed to quite feel then, had failed to follow through, how obvious everything now was. Henry had died believing he had never known love. But perhaps he had, once.

The way her hair was pulled back, tied into a long slack pony-tail of dark blonde—once she had bent to pick up a fallen note and he had seen a silver hair-clasp with romping puppies on it—and the way her smile came in two steps, a quick half-smile and then, a fuller, tooth-filled one of confession, offered vulnerability; but it was the eyes that had held him, though only now did he actually know this, how the aquamarine, the turquoise, the blue-green-to-grey, the soft, faint blurs of those windows to her aching, half-empty heart had shone, not gold but opal, muted diamonds, her.

Oh, he thought, Louise, Louise, Louise, and he remembered how, on that last Friday—remembered— how it had ended when it had yet to begin, how Miss L. J. Peters had slipped away before he knew he needed her.

"Mr Munro, I have your Gaudi, it's a beautiful book."

"Yes, an amazing man."

"Indeed. Three weeks as usual. Miss Paradyce will be expecting its return on time. I told her you were very reliable and not to worry."

"Miss Par.. but."

And Louise Peters told him, she of the milky, sea-green eyes, the two-step gentle smile, she told him. Told Henry that she was leaving, flying she said, flying off for a fresh start in the Americas.

Perhaps he looked sad.

Well, she told him, there was little to hold her here. True, she had a few acquaintances, and true, she did like the job in the library, and their chats, (then, he hadn't quite heard this, now, he felt a surge of dark, lost joy) but her little house was rented, she told Henry, and she owned no car, and her aged parents had long since passed on. This might be her last chance to see the world, she whispered as a librarian should, seconds after date-stamping a Danielle Steele for a woman Henry now couldn't see, this was perhaps the last ever chance, to make something of herself. It wasn't as if she'd married, had she? It wasn't as if she had family, connections, commitments.

"Don't you agree, Mister Munro? Wouldn't you do the same?"

And Henry had said yes, left, walked home, forgetting his car, and when he had thrown himself into his work—to overcome a sense of discomfort he didn't then understand—he dispatched two commissions as white, turquoise, the faint rough colours of her tweeds. Henry had become flatter, more pastel, a slightly sadder man and when he returned the Gaudi she was gone.

That was then. Now, thinking back, working things out, three empty years later, when Henry was fifty and Louise would have been forty-six, on a soft, lemon Sunday afternoon in spring, Henry had decided to mow the lawn, to step out on to a wafer thin turf over a well he didn't know existed; one which would become moderately famous, and make him the subject of a limerick.

His death had not been particularly frightening. Like he had once failed to know love, and failed to see it when it appeared in his librarian's eyes, so, in a world not containing a dangerous well, Henry's sudden falling had no context and he was merely surprised, surprised, surprised, and then, floating above things, seconds later with his guide, a man not the kind he would normally have taken tea with, he looked down, and between long bouts of guide-laughter, he heard, "Built AD 59, filled in with a chalk block AD 78, leeched away by rainwater over almost two thousand years."

"And I trod on it?"

"Yes," his guide had said. "And now I gotta teach you to fly."

But Henry's guide had failed, or at least had temporarily given up. Henry certainly did not think that he had failed. He could see no reason why flying had to involve such crude colourations. If this was the magic of angels, and he was soon to be one himself, could not perhaps, turquoise, cerise, charcoal and burgundy be suitable colours, why did everything have to be so harsh? Were these not the colours of his loud-mouthed, aggressive and cynical guide? How did Henry know these were the only colours?

Henry thought these things as he journeyed towards the little town, now slightly famous where it hadn't been known that Romans had settled, the little town in Dorset where his grave was, where every year they had a small arts competition and amongst the short stories and verse, ditties would appear, never winners but always published:

Henry James Munro lies here
Never had a girlfriend, some thought he was queer
Went to mow the lawn one day
Fell through the floor and went away.

His guide had warned him about going back. "Remember in life how they said, never go back, it's always a disappointment? Well,

this is angel country, so going back will really piss you off."

Henry had wanted to know more. He had also meant to ask exactly how come an angel was allowed to say fuck and piss, but his guide had thought a really sharp yellow followed by hooker-shoes scarlet and he was an age away before Henry had even shaped the question.

But he was going back anyway. He wanted to feel where he was loved.

The old town looked the same, as he stepped down from the train, and there to meet him was no-one. Henry shrugged, then felt a little sad—invisibility and the ability to float through walls wasn't sufficient compensation for having nobody to talk to. He wondered exactly where Louise had gone to, what she was doing now. Did she still dress the same, wear her hair long and thick, tied back. Did she still have her silver brooch?

He shared a taxi with a thin, slightly angry woman (her aura was twisted and navy-blue and if he put his fingers near, it fizzed and crackled). She told the driver of the taxi her husband had recently died but Henry heard "And twenty years too late, the bastard." Then he realised her aura was one of evil so he floated from the cab and into a small pink car going the other way.

The driver was a little woman. Her name was Mary and she was as tiny and delicate as his remembered Louise. He sensed a recent disappointment, no, she wasn't pregnant, someone had just told her. He sensed she was holding back tears, saw her fingers on the steering wheel, gripping a little too tightly.

But you are pregnant he wished, and somewhere deep inside her he felt a rich colour and a grey as they fused, then the car lurch, and a smile grow on this woman's face, then tears of vanilla happiness. But she was driving so badly Henry had to think the distributor faulty and make her little car putter to a halt. He wanted to touch her face and wish her well, and when she thought, "It's a boy and I'm going to call him Henry," he wanted to kiss her. Instead he let the car start on the woman's second attempt, and stayed as she spun the car round and headed back into town. The clinic, he knew, would apologise and she would ring her Jack and break the good news.

Henry stepped out in front of his house when Mary stopped there to use her mobile phone. What he had expected, he wasn't sure but he didn't think it was these hoardings and boardings, a dozen navvies and as many students, an older professorial type with breeze-flapped red hair, nor the bright, sharp-eyed young woman—he guessed at her PhD—in blue denim and John Lennon glasses issuing orders.

Men were busy, some stripped to the waist, slowly dismantling his house, and Henry's front garden had been stripped of the top four feet of soil, the lawn, his hydrangeas, the gladioli, everything gone. The clay, light, silvery, reeked with the release of decay and a desperate sense of missingness was all around him. The smell made Henry think of death and he felt acutely sad, not at death, because that didn't exist, but at the way his ceasing to be human had removed him, and how only by being removed had he come to realise he had spent his life almost blind.

He saw life, rich and raw and muscled in the workmen, saw dreams in the students, the awareness in the professor, and he felt the barely-whispering hope in the woman with the doctorate. Henry felt their eyes though none looked at him and he sensed how in them, deep in them, was a something, something, their humanity, their non-death, something he didn't yet have a word for but knew it meant he had to find Louise.

Where he had lived was now mere history, so Henry left, walking, just as if this was another living day. People did not see him of course, but now Henry noticed that animals no longer bristled at him nor sought out his aura. A sudden rush of fear, as bad as before he hit the mountain came to him. He was becoming more dead, less whatever Louise was.

The library continued, oblivious of the passing of one regular visitor or the invisible reappearance of him. Miss Paradyce worked calmly, around her a light green, gentle light—she loved Hardy, Henry suddenly knew—and the poems of Emily Dickinson; calmly, and people came, and people went.

Henry decided he liked Miss Paradyce and when he felt for her, he heard her name, Alice, and felt her Mother's slow suffering, her slow descent into Altzheimer's, knew that there was a man—a nice man, perhaps a little timid, who would take on Alice's mother gladly to be with his librarian. But when Henry tried, he could not see, could not tell, if the shy man would ever have the courage to ask her.

In the offices, smelling of lavender polish, with dark mahogany dado rails and glistening brown wallpaper below, eggshell magnolia up to the ceilings, leather creaking, the smell of paper, Henry felt for Louise. Henry felt for her but he absorbed only the sadness of her leaving, her absence, the sense that she was missing, and that the library missed her. He had no doubt that if he became less human he could open these cabinets, riffle through these papers, he had no doubt that his abilities would grow. But what Henry also knew (though his guide hadn't told him) was that the gifts were not gifts but simply the uncovering of nature as humanity dissolved.

And Henry was terrified. As yet he did not know why, but knew he must reach Louise with what was left of his life-times intact, his personality. But dogs and cats no longer saw that, they no longer saw his transitional form and Henry felt like crying. This was dying. Oh, Louise, Louise. He wished, he hoped, he wondered. He needed help, he needed someone to care.

Outside, Alice Paradyce worked, her gentle, peaceful, book-loving shift, and here Henry slowly became all spirit and non-human. He came out and sat before her, wished into her face, wished her to, wished her to—and Alice took her break, went through to the offices and sat down at her desk. Henry wished again, and Alice, surprising herself decided to address the envelope first. She began, a fine copperplate, and with a proper pen, Mrs Louise. But Henry hadn't noticed. He waited, suspended, read the address, then left for the airport. As he departed he smiled an unseen smile for Alice and hoped for extra courage for a short bespectacled bachelor who borrowed books.

Mrs Louise Joan O'Connor (n�e Peters), slept. Prematurely grey, twice disappointed, she slept, her job as librarian in the city yet hours of speckled night away. In the room, now barely an idea, was a memory of hers, a man called Henry Munro, who once, who once. in her dream he looked into her eyes. but somehow it had never quite happened, and she had gone away.

Henry kissed the dark bedroom air. "Louise," he said, in a whisper as soft as an imagined bird, "Louise, Louise," but his lost librarian slept, his soft omission, his road not taken, his tidal swell not ridden, grabbed at the flood, she slept, her turquoise eyes closed. Here he wished, here he prayed, here he hoped, but Louise Joan O'Connor still dreamt, still thought her memories were inside her, not floating, not returned to kiss her, to apologise.

But now Henry Munro saw the rest of the room, the huge, bare bear-back of Frank O'Connor, Louise's dark and bitter husband. Henry could smell and taste and chew the man's rotten soul, see the writhing colours of his anger, feel the thwarted ambitions of the man who had swept the new librarian off her feet (some said she was on the rebound, had been jilted back where she came from) and Henry thought he might take on that dark inverted anger, the self-reproach which emerged as a slap, a shout, might soften all his harsh colours, might bring some delicacy to the life of his missed love.

It was then his guide returned. He understood immediately. "Can't be done," he said. "You can't change dark to light. When our friend there gets his, he won't be taking flying lessons."

"I can feel it," Henry said. "I know I can help."

"Can't be done," his guide said again. "Step in that body, it owns you, and I already told you, when he finishes, he finishes."

"Hell?" Henry said.

"Just a finish."

"You mean, just nothing?"

"Zero."

"And if I did?"

"Did what?"

"If I tried to help Louise?"

"Then you too, blue, and me off the hook, one Munro written down. Pilot school closed, room for one more on top. Ding Ding! Stop. No eternity."

Henry Munro thought. Then he said, "Watch this."

The flying by colour thing turned out to be easy, zip, zap, clip, slap, Henry criss-crossed the room.

"Not bad," his guide said.

"Now watch this," Henry said. And he remembered a Pimlico hairdresser, a shy man with long fingers, soft manners, few friends. He thought of the colours he had given him; lilacs, aubergine, a creamy-white with the tiniest hint of pink, and slowly, gently, subtly, Henry danced in the sky, a beautiful pastel dance.

"So?" his guide said.

Henry smiled. "Not everything is black and white."

"The book is quite specific."

"I know," Henry said, "yellow, black, red, and fucking blue."

"Yeah," the guide said.

"Unless," Henry said.

Now the guide is gone, a rocket out of here, things to report, and Frank O'Connor dreams. Frank remembers something he had long forgotten, something he had failed to notice three years ago when he met the woman from England. Now he sees a librarian's eyes, turquoise, and in them the soft-sea sweetness of hope, and he sees her funny two-stage smile, and he thinks about when he met her, how briefly he had felt softer, and the world not quite so brutal. Still asleep, Frank rolls over, his thick fingers reaching for his wife. In the dark, Louise dreams too. She senses a man called Henry James Munro, and as rough hands, faintly less harsh, move on her, she imagines a softness, a little delicacy, and though, as she floats nearer to consciousness she knows her faint pleasure is only a dream, she determines to try one last time, to try and make things gentler.