Excerpt from Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I ended up paying an exorbitant taxi fare. Twenty years ago it had been enough to walk everywhere, and with holes in my shoes. I didn't dream of catching a cab, anywhere. Adrian and his mates seemed unfazed. They all work in the film industry—Adrian said what they did but I can't remember; strange-sounding job descriptions, grippers, line people. They probably catch cabs every day of their lives. On the other hand I paid an amount which in my daily trade in second-hand furnishings was worth a decent sofa and maybe a mattress thrown in. But as I say, Adrian and his mates seemed so remarkably cool about it that I hated to make a fuss. Instead I followed them through the doors manned by Nigerians in black leather jackets. They nodded at Adrian but seemed puzzled by me. I couldn't hear a thing. I gather Adie was explaining, his thumb hooked back in my direction, while the Nigerian's face hung low to catch the drift. He nodded at the floor and I passed by his uplifted red eyes. Inside it was a deafening thump thump thump. I had to yell for Adrian to hear.

The price of the drinks was out of this world. It was beers all round for which I paid after stupidly saying 'Let me,' which they did. I paid for another round, and another one after that, until at last they slipped off the feeding teat and disappeared into the crowd of bobbing heads. I followed the arrows to something promisingly called 'the conversation pit' where indeed I had a conversation with a black woman along the lines of, 'You're black,' to which she smiled patiently and said, 'Yes. Thank you. I know.' It wasn't so horribly gauche as that, but not all that far behind either. I asked her where she was from. She leant her head closer so as to hear and I could smell all kinds of tropical fruit smells. I said, 'Are you from Guyana?' and she shook her head and her big luscious mouth fell open; she said, 'No, darling, I'm from around here. Born here, Harry Bryant,' she said. I liked the way she said 'Harry Bryant'.

After some more fumbling of this kind we did manage a conversation. We asked about each other. We were even going to dance but we didn't in the end. Eventually I used up all my goodwill and her patience and after saying decently, 'Well Mister Mayor, it's been nice meeting you,' she moved off stylishly, holding her glass with both hands before her, a whiff of tropical breeze cutting through the thick air. Across the room of dancing shadows and shaven heads there was my son grinning back at me.

I don't remember much more of the night. That nice black Brixton woman was the last decent conversation I had. The rest of the time was filled with noise and beer. And shots of something in tiny glasses that was painless and irresistible at the time. I don't recall how we made our way back to Adie's flat; I hope there was a taxi, I hope no one drove, but that's where I woke feeling just bloody terrible, in a sickly sweat. The conversation with the nice black woman from 'round here' played endlessly back in my head with a clarity that was cruel and mocking.

I got dressed and slipped out of the flat and drifted to the nearest underground station. I rose gastrically near St James's Park to warm sunny skies. Flirted with buying a yoghurt outside a nice-looking deli and thought it best not to tempt fate. Instead I crossed the road and entered the park.

Everything looked so beautiful and I felt so shitty I could barely stay upright. I followed a path and felt my age every step of the way. As the morning grew warmer I found a nice grassy spot to lie on, and there I dozed for a pleasant few hours. At some point I woke to raised, hectic voices. It was a pick-up game of football and the goalposts—two humped jerseys— were only metres away. Twenty years ago I had joined in these sorts of games at Holland Park. I remember one game played under an early evening sky where the light actually seemed to stall and we had played on and on in a state of suspended bliss. Skills I never knew I had revealed themselves; a flashy slap of the ball off one foot then the other turned the goal-keep, a schoolteacher with a long pre-war face, and I banged in the shot past someone's shoe that was standing in for one upright of the goalposts. A man on a bike who had stopped to watch actually applauded. Funny that this man, so incidental and anonymous in every other respect, should rise in my thoughts all these years later. I seem to recall telling someone who had asked that I was from Sweden. I wanted origins more spectacular than my own to go with that drive past the shoe upright. And afterwards, on this particular night, the night of the goal by the young Swede, I went for a beer in the pub opposite the park gates—I've long forgotten its name—and remember falling in with a Nigerian officer on leave from the war in Biafra. He had a nasty gash over his forehead, and two nicks in his cheek. Here was another occasion where I was all too aware that I was speaking to a person of colour, a black man. At the same time I was also determined to give the impression that his colour was neither here nor there. But of course that was untrue. It was colour generally which had made an impression on me during my first trip to London. That new colour white I'd not seen before, and now black.

Excerpted from Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones. Copyright © 2016 by Lloyd Jones. Excerpted by permission of Text Publishing Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.