Superhero emblems watercolour back piece

He painted his heroes on lining paper first, then pinned the sheets along the banister like washing. There was a hammer for a fair-haired giant he swore lived on the pier, a green fist, a black bat that he insisted was a kite, a spider the size of a saucer, and a lightning bolt in mustard yellow. Every shape had a bold black edge, but the colours bled out past it, blue running into rust, pink soaking into the plaster, as though the sea air had got into the paint and loosened it. Ink flicked from the brush hung over the lot in black freckles.

On the last night of the month the power failed and the whole street went dark. We sat on the stairs with a candle while the wind worked at the sash windows, and he told me the emblems were not for show. Each one, he said, was for someone who had once told him to stop drawing. The spider was for his sister, who had never once sat still. The X was for the three men he had painted shopfronts with in the sixties, all of them gone to Spain. He did not say who the hammer was for, and I did not ask.

In the morning he was gone, his rent left in an envelope under the teapot with a note: Keep the landing painted. Mind the damp. The house was sold in spring and the new owners stripped the banister, but I kept one sheet, the green fist, rolled in a drawer. Some mornings I take it out and the colour still comes away on my fingers.