Thomas Stewart

colour me in

On Monday, Jai suggests red. He describes it as ‘just one feature wall and all the others white.’

‘Too plain,’ Ewan replies.

They’re sitting on the bed in the big bedroom that is far too empty. The walls are a stale, crackling white. The carpet, a deflated green. The sheets are new but stained; they smell of sweat and morning saliva.

‘I like duck egg blue,’ he says. ‘Maybe this room should be a blue room.’

‘Duck egg blue would be too dark in here,’ Jai says. ‘We need a lighter colour. Orange with cream walls. Or yellow.’

‘Yellow in the summer. With bees. You know how I feel about bees. It would be like a welcome sign for their colony.’

He says, ‘How about purple?’

‘I’ve always disliked purple as a colour,’ he says.

On Monday, they disagree again and when the sun goes down and the lights come on, the books of colour are put away, the paint prototypes discarded to the drawers and the TV is put on. Ewan and Jai lie silently beside each other, not touching, just allowing the blur to flicker over their faces until they’ve dulled themselves to sleep.

*

The wallpaper has been torn down, the walls smudged with ideas and marks of what used to belong. This is a new, in-between house, something unsure of its becoming. This is Tuesday and Jai is working from home in the attic whilst Ewan is in the dining room thinking about colours and cleaning his cello. The morning and afternoon proceed with a cold silence.

By the time the sun falls, the house smells of asparagus and melted butter. Jai descends the staircase, touching the ripped shards of paper, looking at the mangled, grey carpet they keep saying they will change. The kitchen, once green, is now a mix of near-grey and a misunderstood white. There are too many thoughts, too many identities, in this room. There is asparagus on the stove, seeped in butter. There are potatoes and beef in the oven. This is Ewan rewarding himself for a good day of work, of preparing for his latest concert, of going over his music. This is Ewan apologising, making Jai his favourite meal, forgetting he hates asparagus — always preferred broccoli or green beans. But he eats the food because he’s hungry. They eat it together, saying not a word. Jai sits on the lone chair in the corner of the living room. Ewan is sprawled out on the three-seater. The sofas are different colours — Jai’s purple, Ewan’s blue. They do not match.

‘What colour shall we paint this room?’ Ewan says.

Breaking the silence as if there was no silence to begin with, as if it were all in his head, Jai resents him.

‘Red,’ he says.

‘It was already red.’

‘Let’s paint it a different red,’ he says.

‘We said red was too dark for this room — we wanted something brighter.’

‘I liked the red,’ he says.

‘What’s your problem?’

‘I don’t like asparagus,’ he says.

‘You should have said.’

‘I don’t want to have to have said. You should know this stuff already. I know that you hate lentils, sprouts and you have a complicated history with mushrooms. I know you don’t like Jack Kerouac’s work. I know you’re terrified about climate change and clowns. I know all this dumb shit about you, the least you can do is not make me asparagus and then offer it to me like some sort of gift.’

Ewan nods. ‘So is that what you’ve been doing all day? Sitting on all that pent-up anger?’

‘We’re going to keep disagreeing, aren’t we? Why don’t we just divide up the house and paint the rooms ourselves?’

‘Maybe if you stop wanting to paint the house such ridiculous colours we could agree.’

Jai gets up and the butter on his plate recoils at the edge. ‘You’re ridiculous,’ he says and forks his asparagus onto his plate, allowing specks of butter to hit his favourite, happy, orange-coloured trousers. When he walks away, he hears the sound of crashing. When he returns, there’s a brown-yellow-green smudge and a bit of crushed potato against the wall. The potato falls onto the oak floor. 

‘Maybe we need to tear up the floor,’ Jai says.

He leaves him with his mess and goes to the bedroom. He wants this room to be purple, just one wall, the others white, the curtains cream. He wants something new and moody but not dark. He undresses and goes into the bathroom wearing only his pants. He touches his body, feeling his ribs, neck, ears. He touches his ass and realises his pants are torn, a large rip in the back. He takes them off and stares at the tear. He pulls, hard. The sound of the further wreckage, of the pulling apart, of the peeling of fabric, is incredibly satisfying. He tears at his pants until they are something unrecognisable, until they are torn pieces. Then he throws them in the bin. 

* 

It rains on Wednesday. Jai spends the day working in his studio.

Driving home, he feels nothing. He is simply returning.

There is no scent of food, no sound of music, no hum of candles — there is an emptiness to the house. His first thought is that Ewan has finally left. He said he would once and he always eventually followed through with his plans, besides the one about getting his driving licence. But it is clear he hasn’t gone; he’s out and will come right back.

Jai enjoys being alone in the house. He climbs the staircase, tired, angry, wanting sleep. There’s carpet in the hallway and he wishes there was wood. The walls are bare, with only the hooks of removed photographs and their brown smudges.

Then, in his nostrils, is a smell as sharp as salt water — it is the smell of paint. It comes from one of the rooms, only he can’t tell which, all the doors are closed. He checks every one, opening and closing doors, sniffing hard. His last stop is the bedroom which, when he walks in, is full of cold, wet air. The windows are open. The wind whips the curtains, ruffling the walls of duck egg blue. Every wall is painted in it. The bedroom is a cave.

Jai, taking a pillow from the bed, goes into the en-suite bathroom and closes the door. He lights a vanilla-scented candle, turns off the light and sleeps in the bath. He dreams of water and paint brushes.

* 

Jai wakes to the sound of piss in a water basin.

‘Morning,’ Ewan says. ‘You like the room then?’

‘Fuck you.’

‘I thought it would be easier than going on about it, as you said — divide the house.’

‘You’re an asshole.’

‘And you’re perfect,’ Ewan says.

He leaves him in the bath, with his face in the pillow, his aching knees. A bath without water has no comfort.

Ewan leaves for work, getting in his car to drive to the symphony, getting annoyed with himself about how he’s never been able to express his feelings, about how he’s always loved but never explained it. This is Ewan on Thursday. He loves Jai more than he hates him. On his way home he won’t buy flowers or chocolates — Jai despises that stuff. He will buy him nothing, not on the day of his apology. It’s after a few days that he will buy him something meaningful to signify that this is for him. That it is a peace offering not a pacifier.

As soon as he walks into the house, as he puts his keys down, as he steps into the living room, there is the smell of it — paint vaping, puncturing the air. The walls of the living room are purple. The furniture is the same. Purple everywhere — the ceilings, walls behind the bookshelves, behind the stacks of magazines, behind the TV and chest of drawers, all purple.

‘Do you like it?’ Jai says. ‘I never realised how much I liked purple.’

 *

Jai sleeps in the purple living room, Ewan in the duck egg bedroom. Apart, they sleep peacefully. They get more than eight hours of rest. They wake. Jai showers downstairs and leaves for his appointments, making sure to admire the purple room before he closes the door.

When he’s gone, Ewan finally comes downstairs, still in his pyjamas. He paces around the room like a sad lion. Purple in the living room, it’s too overpowering, vulgar and far too dark. The house is becoming a tomb. He goes outside, collects the paintbrushes and looks in the garage for some paint. He finds grey which he uses to paint the dining room, which he works at wildly, madly and keeps going on into the kitchen. When he’s done, he goes to the purple room. And paints over it. The walls are still sticky but the grey merges in, making the purple an inky black.

When Jai comes home from his appointments, he finds the furniture moved and the walls grey.

‘I hope you like it even more than the original colour,’ he says.

‘You’re a sad little man, aren’t you?’ he replies.

This is Friday, and the paintbrushes are henceforth divided. 

 *

Early, when the sun is slowly waking, when the insomniac birds are talking, Ewan’s eyes struggle to open. He uses his hand to scratch at what feels like glue. He manages to open his eyes and can’t see anything. This is Saturday, where the room is dark, and the curtains still drawn. He turns on the light. Red. Red paint on his arms, on his legs, on his dick, down his ass-crack. Red paint all over him — his face, his hair, his fingernails, his elbows. Red paint smudges over the sheets, against his pillow. Strands of his hair are glued together.

‘Jai!’

He tries to peel himself away from the sheets. It takes him several minutes to muster the courage and when he does he sheds his skin. He screams as he runs to the shower and starts scrubbing harshly, with soap. Red paint strewn over the shower, mangled between his toenails. After, when he’s sitting, half-asleep, half-awake, on the floor of the bathroom, there’s red paint on the white tiles and in the sink. It looks like he’s been murdered.

He puts on a pair of trousers, gathers his paintbrushes, his canister of grey, and heads outside. He walks loudly, making sure Jai, sleeping on the sofa, will hear him. He slams the door and when he’s outside he starts painting the bricks of the house. He starts near the window with small strokes of grey.

‘It’s five in the morning,’ Jai says as he stands on the doorstep in his dressing gown.

‘I know,’ he says. ‘I woke up to red paint everywhere.’

‘I was testing out some colours.’

‘You’re a fucking bitch.’

‘You’re a fucking bastard,’ Jai says.

Ewan keeps painting.

Jai disappears in the house and comes back armed with his own dirty paintbrushes, their dried ends crusted and sparkling. He has canisters of yellow and starts painting the other side of the house. 

‘I hate yellow,’ Ewan says.

‘I hate grey,’ Jai says.

They paint. They paint in silence, they paint in anger, they paint in humiliation. To the morning joggers, to the young student across the road, to the elderly sisters that live together a few doors down, it would look like a mad couple painting un-matching colours, side-by-side. But Ewan and Jai paint fast to eclipse the other’s work before they bring out the ladders.

‘This is going too far,’ Ewan says.

‘I can keep going,’ Jai replies.

Ewan steps forward and pushes his face into Jai’s. He growls at him. Jai growls back, louder. He roars and he retaliates, wolves covered in paint.

* 

Jai stands in the gloom, on the front porch, looking at the house of grey and yellow. The colours do not meet; they are crazed outlines, stretching only so high. The colours do not match, outside or in. Jai makes a sound.

‘What are you doing?’ Ewan says.

‘Laughing,’ he says.

‘It’s too late to laugh.’

They sit on the front steps, in their pyjamas, at the mouth of the house.

‘I still don’t know your favourite colour,’ Ewan says.

Jai thinks and then replies, ‘There isn’t a name for it.’

Thomas Stewart (he/him) is a Welsh writer, a 2021 New Writers Award recipient and the author of two poetry pamphlets: ‘Based on a True Story’ (fourteen poems, 2022) and ‘empire of dirt’ (Red Squirrel Press, 2019), a Poetry Book Society selection. His work has been published in Poetry Wales, Butcher’s Dog, fourteen poems, Best Scottish Poems 2019, The Amsterdam Quarterly, And Other Poems, The Glasgow Review of Books, The Stockholm Review of Literature, among others. / Twitter: @ThomasStewart08

Thomas wrote the following about ‘Colour Me In’:

Ever since I read Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road many moons ago, I have been interested in the grey areas where a character’s true self really exists. As such, I am intrigued by the pettiness of people, the wars that ensure when a person’s self is questioned or hurt. I wrote Colour Me In as a way of exorcising the wars that begin seemingly over nothing but have the power to tear everything down.