17 January – the day it began. My first painting is called: Blood Orange Attacks Brilliant Blue and Violet Circles on canvas.
I will force the colours to tell the truth.
One brushstroke at a time.
Blood Orange Attacks Brilliant Blue And Violet Circles on canvas
THE GRATING BLOOD ORANGE tinged with sickly pinks demanded my undivided attention as three magpies argued noisily with an unidentified bird in the oak tree of number 20’s overgrown front garden. The house had been empty since we’d moved in ten months ago and various species of birds had staked claims to the trees and foliage.
I watched the magpies spitefully flutter and fight through the binoculars Dad had bought me for Christmas. Normally, I used them to spot the birds making colours in Richmond Park during our Sunday afternoon walks: the lesser spotted woodpeckers, chiffchaffs and jays. I couldn’t see what bird the magpies argued with, but I already respected it. Although outnumbered, it bravely held its ground. The bird remained hidden behind a branch, its voice colour drowned out by new, spiky ginger brown shapes.
A large blue van had pulled up outside the house, but the magpies didn’t break off from their vicious attack. A man wearing jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt climbed out and walked up the path to the front door. I thought just one man heaved furniture to and from the van, until I saw two men in jeans and navy sweatshirts carrying a chest of drawers.
I didn’t pay too much attention because two more magpies had landed in the tree. The three bullies had called for backup.
Then, something extraordinary: a parakeet shrieked at the magpies – brilliant blue and violet circles with jade cores – and soared into the sky.
Come back!
I opened my mouth to shout, but my throat was dry with excitement and no words came out. I’d only ever seen parakeets in Richmond Park, never here on my street.
I put my binoculars down and made a note of the parakeet in my light turquoise notebook, where I recorded all the birds I spotted in the park and on our street. I didn’t bother with the magpies. I’ve always disliked their pushy colours.
Across the road, the men continued with their work. Backwards and forwards. They lugged mattresses and boxes out of the house and squeezed them into the back of the van.
I scanned the branches with my binoculars, but I couldn’t spot the parakeet in the trees further down the road. The magpies had flown off too, proving the pointlessness of their territorial battle.
I continued to watch the tree, furious I may have missed another glimpse of the parakeet. When Dad told me it was time for school, I wouldn’t budge from the window. He tried to pull me away, but I screamed until my nose bled down my chest. I didn’t have a clean white shirt because Dad had forgotten to put a wash on again, so we agreed I could stay off school while he worked on a new app design in the study.
Long after the men’s unpleasant-coloured shouts and the sharp yellow spines of the van’s revving engine had died away, the street remained strangely quiet. I didn’t hear the colour of a single chaffinch or sparrow, a car horn beeping or a door slamming.
Maybe I blocked out other noises as I stood guard at the window. I focused on the tree in the front garden of 20 Vincent Gardens, not the house, but I don’t think anyone went in or out. 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 Ochre 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 colours 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 colours of Aviary, birds of the jungle, the most, but that evening was the turn of the Royal Lion.
As soon as the colours started, I jumped off my bed and raced to the window, tearing open the curtains. A woman with long blonde 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 coloured shawl of shimmering musical colours, hugging it close to her body.
The colours 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 colours 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 colourful 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 greyish-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 colours 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