Paint Your Wife Read online

  That night we rolled out our sleeping bags in the sitting room. Dougie fell asleep quickly. For a while I lay there in the humming dark listening to the distant murmur of voices from the bedroom. It wasn’t the hale and hearty voice we’d been treated to all evening; it was low, serious, slightly menacing. Once I thought I heard my mother’s name spoken. As I strained to hear more the voices fell silent as if they had just worked out that they could be heard. I must have dozed off after that. When I woke it was still dark. I heard a door open, the fly-screen door smack back, a moment later the car engine start. And in its low idling departure I fell back to sleep.

  We woke late. In the kitchen there was a note from Cynthia. We were to help ourselves to whatever we could find in the fridge.

  Dougie was frying eggs when I came out of the shower. He asked me if I wanted bacon.

  ‘Nope,’ I said. ‘We’re going.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Now. Pack up. We’re going. There’s a train at eleven. I rang up while you were asleep.’

  ‘What about your dad?’ asked Dougie, the fish slice in his hand, eggs sizzling away.

  ‘What about him?’ I remember enjoying that tone of voice. It sounded hard, unforgiving; I liked the effect it had.

  Later, as we hurried like fugitives for the station and even as we boarded the train, and later too, with the desert flashing in the windows, all I felt was relief. None of this was planned. I wasn’t after revenge. It was more self-serving than that; I’d got what I was after. I would leave London the same way in a few years’ time. It was necessary to go there for all kinds of reasons to do with origins and curiosity. But none of that had to stick. None of it had to last. With Frank I felt like I’d removed a thorn from my side. I quite liked Cynthia, though once I was back home I was careful not to mention her to my mother. It would be easier on her, I thought, to tell her that Frank was living alone and had turned bitter.

  I had a short wait in Sydney for the connection to Wellington. In the lounge I fell in with a young couple (he was a roofing contractor, she was a librarian) waiting for a series of flights to Murmansk where they would take delivery of two orphaned babies. What a swift change of fortune for all concerned! The roofing contractor sat in his jeans drumming his fingers over his thighs. I could see baby stuff sticking out of his wife’s carry-on luggage. Those Russian babies would grow up between goalposts surrounded by hills and ocean, and in twenty years’ time or so I imagined there would be a journey up to the Arctic Circle where they would arrive as foreigners but with some inside knowledge of fruit recognising its husk.

  In London this time I’d come away with a sense that to be from somewhere, anywhere, was suddenly old hat. It didn’t really matter any more. The faces in the street. The Italian, French and Slavic names I read in the newspapers turning out for English football clubs. The crappy food I ate in any number of so-called ethnic restaurants. London has a way of putting everything through a common strainer.

  But when we flew across the Tasman in the dead of night I did feel I was from somewhere. I felt it keenly when the plane dipped its wing and seemed to take aim at a tiny cluster of lights huddling together in the immensity of the night. It was after midnight, no cars on the road, not another soul, just me and the taxi driver in his woollen v-neck, a plastic deodoriser in the form of a Hindu deity on the dash.

  The thing about going away and coming back again is how much your own life has changed. It is an illusion of course, but this is what you leave the terminal with, and how little the world you left behind two weeks ago has altered. Things are out of whack. Your smile is sunnier than others’. Even the way you walk looks slightly expansive, which is to say, put on. The signs are all there. You have been out in the world.

  My car was where I’d left it two weeks ago in the car park, unmarked, and with a sort of dog-like humility that was almost touching. On the back seat lay the familiar clutter. Boxes of books I hadn’t had a chance to sort yet that I’d bought from the sale of an elderly woman’s estate. On the passenger’s seat the faxed message to the harbour master with its miraculous news of the impending visit of the cruise ship, the Pacific Star.

  As I got in behind the wheel I could feel my old life crabbily demanding my attention.

  On my mobile were twelve messages—three from Alice—so as I pulled out of the airport carpark I called up my elderly mother. The conversation went like this.

  ‘How was Adie? Were you nice to him?’

  ‘Of course I was nice.’

  ‘He said you got drunk.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘And something about a black woman…’

  2

  Different people help out at the shop otherwise I’d never get away—our daughter Jess when she comes home from university; Frances when she isn’t working on her jigsaw puzzles and up against a deadline. My mother, Alice, sometimes, but only if I am desperate since I also have to accept that she will give stuff away to old people, her cronies, and leave it to me to discover a hole in the stock. Usually it doesn’t amount to much, an armchair or a lamp, mostly things of a practical value, heaters, light bulbs, that sort of thing, so Alice’s days on are known in my books as ‘charity days’. Her great friend Alma Martin is my most reliable ‘staffer’ though he’d scoff to be thought of in those terms. Still, it’s some relief to know that he will act as a handbrake whenever my mother’s largesse gets the better of her. In his time Alma has been many things—rat catcher, teacher, artist. Back in the heyday of NE Paints he was one of the better colour technicians. Most of the colours slapped on to the older houses around the district dating back to the late fifties are his creation. The popular Bush Green and Mount Aspiring Grey are but two. He is often mistakenly credited for Pacific Blue, the relief colour of choice that was all the rage around the time the walls of every house found the need to display a large butterfly. But by then he’d already fallen out with NE Paints’ management over aesthetic differences. The surprise is that it had taken so long.

  The great value of Alma to me is that he couldn’t care less what I think. The unspoken truth is that he is infinitely more useful to me than I am to him. The tip face holds no horrors for him. I imagine he also knows that were I ever to cut him from the payroll my mother would be at my door in a flash. For as long as I can remember Alma has been in my mother’s life. For nearly as long she has sat for him. There are sketches around of her pregnant with me. And even when Frank was still in our lives Alma was drawing Alice; long before then as well, when my mother was married to George Hands. He still draws—compulsively as ever. He draws the way other people breathe. Sometimes I think he is one of those people who come into the world with prior knowledge—without being told they recognise paper as paper and pencil as pencil. In a quiet moment at the shop he will drop into one of the many second-hand armchairs, pull out one of his tired notebooks which he carries everywhere, even to the tip, and draw customers. He appears to work quickly; from the counter you can hear his grunts and the rustle of paper. I’ve looked over his shoulder a few times. They’re just sketches: a couple of vertical lines and a horizontal slash here and there. The subjects of the sketches are none the wiser. He even draws the sulky adolescent boys who come in t
o look at the soft porn at the back of the shop. Alma catches their blushing uncertainty as they linger around the cane fishing rods or pick up an abandoned basketball from the sporting goods section and roll it in their fingertips. The moment the phone rings or another customer enters the shop they take their chance. And I’ll hear the retiring bounce of an abandoned basketball, followed by the ripple of the beaded curtain that closes off the magazine section from the mattresses.

  On busy days they can get in and out without being seen. Or else I might look up in time to see a figure dart from the door. What a strange business it is. Frances wishes I’d dump the whole lot at the tip. She says it’s not very becoming for a mayor. My mother says it is a disgrace. She’s embarrassed, she says, that a child of her own would involve himself in that kind of thing. Frances wishes I could just stick to the ‘curios’ end of the market—the headhunter’s knife, its hilt wrapped in human hair, for example. Or the World War One bayonet. These things are infinitely more acceptable. But it’s the magazines and the endless recycling of glossy flesh that provides the cash-flow. Every time I hear a moral riff from my daughter about the exploitative aspect of these photos I am tempted to remind her of what pays her university fees. For that we have the enthusiasts to thank. They’re not lepers or broken souls in filthy raincoats; all are exceedingly polite and none of them look for cover but cross the floor purposefully and without shame.

  I have a degree in paint technology—it seemed a good idea when we were the ‘paint capital’ but now all that’s gone—and my mail sits in a Victorian pisspot. For company there’s the empty sofas and armchairs, the fold-up card tables, the rolled-up carpets. It’s not the sort of future I once imagined for myself, but this is the reef on which I washed up more than twenty years ago, all this household stuff that men and women once argued and flogged one another over, spilt blood for, badgered and exhorted promises and threats in order to have the sofa with that flower pattern. How important it once was. How lightly it is let go.

  On my first morning back from seeing Adrian in London I had customers by the dozen and council papers to read and arrangements to make for the cruise ship visit. All morning I heard the clacking of the beaded curtains while I dealt with a long line of customers. To someone with a carton of hardbacks, hunting titles, celebrity biographies, I casually mentioned that the hospital was always on the lookout for more books. There was nothing there that I really wanted because to some extent what I buy is what I’m forced to keep company with until I flick it on. On the other hand, ours is a poor community and I try to make sure everyone leaves with something. The books belonged to an older man. When I mentioned ‘hospital’ he turned forlorn. He pushed the books away (I suspected them all along of being a smokescreen) and produced a lovely little thimble made in Holland at the turn of the last century. The silver engraving was exquisite—a woman sewing with a needle. He must have been holding this back in reserve, and naturally he was hoping I’d take the crummy books and he would keep this family heirloom. I paid more for it than I needed to, and gave the hospital another plug. He looked guiltily away and as he made space for someone else I saw his bushy eyebrows lift for the magazine section at the back. He was thinking about it, still thinking, and finally, with regret, no, another day perhaps.

  A regular face pushed across the counter an old tin box. ‘That’s a World War One survival kit. Old but not used. It’s amazing. Everything’s there. Take a look, Harry. Fish hook. Needle. Cotton thread.’

  ‘Thank you, Raymond.’ Unshaven this morning, he stood to one side while I recorded the details in the ledger. ‘Raymond B. WWI soldier’s kit.’

  The line moved forward: an elderly man with a back strain who winced (a touch theatrically? Perhaps…you have to be aware of these things) when he reached into his coat pocket for a pair of Victorian scissors; he was followed by a very tall man with a wooden aeroplane and a woman with a wax angel which she said shed tears. Further back, dear old Tui Brown. I happened to glance up when she swung in the door. I caught her look of surprise, and she knew that I had seen it too. As well as its descent into disappointment. She slowed half a step then decided to brazen it out. Obviously she thought Alice was still behind the counter and the tight-arsed son still in London. I will buy her plastic ice cube trays out of duty and after she’s gone biff them out.

  I’m making these calculations when a face I’ve never seen before pokes in the door. Then the rest of him follows cautiously—barefoot, torn jeans. He isn’t a local. There are a number of ways of knowing this. For one thing, he doesn’t know where to rest his eyes. It’s the same with every newcomer. They bump their feet against porcelain cats, stumble against the hunting dogs as they sort out a passage through the jam of furnishings and ancient golf bags. As he comes nearer I pick him to be around Adrian’s age. His hair is dark, fine, like Chinese hair, and his eyes are dark and liquid, more so from the effect of his pasty complexion. Jeans, barefoot as I said, thin arms flapping inside a threadbare T-shirt. It’s not a survey I make of everyone who comes into the shop. But he’s here to ask after Alma. ‘Someone called Alma…’ is what he says, and he points to the ‘For Rent’ notice on the board inside the door. That notice has been up for more than five years. Once in a blue moon someone asks after it but when they see Alma’s old cottage on Beach Road they quickly turn and run. Alma lives on the cut I give him from whatever is on-sold from the tip. He also has a pension of some kind, a pittance I don’t doubt, and my mother’s lament is ‘if only poor Alma could get a tenant for that God-awful dump of his out at the beach…’

  It’s a Monday. Mondays are a big day in this business. The tips are transformed, newly stockpiled by weekenders. And that’s where Alma is, with the other tip rats, combing the weekend goodies. I’m about to give directions when I have a better idea. I have a favour to ask of Alma. I want him to paint something, maybe a mural of some kind over the vacated shop windows in town. Something more pleasing to the eye than the everyday ruin of businesses gone bust. When those people from the cruise ship come ashore I want them to see us in our Sunday best.

  I offer to run the newcomer up to the tip if he’ll wait a few minutes.

  ‘I’ve got a car,’ he says. His manner is impatient. He just wants the information and he’ll be out of there.

  Alma, however, is in his seventies, and these days he tends to get flustered. Alice would want me there.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  He hesitates, sets his face.

  ‘Okay. I’m Harry. Harry Bryant. The reason I ask is because Alma is an old friend of mine.’

  ‘OK,’ he nods back. ‘Dean. Dean Eliot.’ Some colour enters his cheeks. He looks around the shop as if expecting someone to challenge that.

  ‘Okay, Dean. Just hang fire a moment.’

  The tall man with the wooden aeroplane is getting agitated. He pushes forward. ‘You probably know,’ he says, ‘there’s only two of this model left in the country.’ And so on. He doesn’t have to try so hard and sound so earnest about it. I hate it when they underestimate my own knowledge of the market. And I happen to know the names of at least three collectors who will drive any number of hours through the night to buy this very model.

  In the back office I write him out a cheque. He stands in the door holding his hat. I hear the woman with the wax angel cry out, �
��Harry, I’m lighting the candles. You’ll miss the tears!’ This is one of those times when I experience the unhappy thought that what I do is not a serious job for a mayor. More often than not it is the nights that I fear. After the last house light has been switched off the New Egypt night is dark and final. You stand on the doorstep with the unpleasant feeling that you are sinking down into the earth and there is nothing to reach up and grab hold of but the glittering stars gathered around the rim of the abyss into which you are fast sinking. At such moments I have been known to cry out. Then that’s it. Over. Done with. Frances will look up from her book. The mayor is experiencing another anxiety attack. Day breaks with all the answers. Someone with a pair of fire tongs to sell. Someone who wants to beat me down over an old carpet. Alma to run to the doctor. A cut has turned septic. My mother blames the tip and me but not necessarily in that order.

  Dean Eliot is waiting for me. I go to the beaded curtain and clap my hands several times and the under-agers fly out like frightened quail. I am about to lock up when I see Tui Brown still standing in line. I take her plastic trays and give her a ten-dollar note which she gazes longingly at (as well she might, at this miracle the day has delivered). ‘Oh, Harry,’ she says. ‘Isn’t that a bit much?’ And of course it is. Far too much. I walk her to the door. Her eyesight is not so good these days. She goes out into the day with her ten-dollar note in her hand. Her husband, Stan, is waiting across the road, by his feet his old canvas bag with its empty sherry flagon. Tui holds up the ten-dollar note. Stan takes his holstered hands out of his pockets and looks suitably awed.