‘Red’ Pete was as left-wing as they came. Few on campus could match his fire for hard-line, unforgiving, Marxist-Leninist rhetoric. Even within the sanctum of his own set you had to be wary of expressing the wrong opinions to Pete: get in his bad books and you’d be labelled ‘capitalist swine’; sometimes he’d say it with a smile, sometimes not.
Pete and I stayed close over the years, but drifted as friends. I still see him most days at work – ‘Sir’ Peter on his way to the boardroom, me on my way to the factory floor.
I like to think he’s still a revolutionary at heart.
These words form my entry into this week’s Friday Fictioneers photo prompt challenge.
By day our top floor apartment echoed to the sounds of learning: flats where manuscripts said sharps; clashing C minors in place of sweeping D majors. On the faded green settee proud parents sat nodding nervously in time.
Mr Juniper lived alone at the end of Cotton Lane. The sprawling branches of an untamed Oak meant it always looked dark in there, even in summer; summer was the only time we ever went inside. He ran the athletics club, the papers said he was a state champion in his day.
From around the corner came a man dressed in royal blue. Lifeless, red eyes at No. 39 widened behind net curtains, only to narrow as the man stopped and turned into No. 36.
‘Take care, Isi, my love,’ said Persatus, ‘and take care of our boy,’ he smiled.