Paint Your Wife

by Lloyd Jones

  ‘Well,’ she says, with an extravagant wave of her arm. ‘All this we’re leaving behind.’ I start itemising as Kath calls them out—the bed, the vanity, the rug, the bedside lights. I tally them up and mention a figure. Immediately Kath looks away. She was thinking of a different figure of course. This is how it is. This is how we will progress around the house. I lift the duvet and test the mattress springs—this time when I mention the figure Kath looks frankly appalled.

  ‘No. Really? Is that all? I really thought…’

  I tell her I’ve got mattresses coming out of my ears. I can’t give them away. People are funny when it comes to beds. They will scrimp and save on the other things. They will settle for a secondhand bed frame and splash out on a new mattress.

  ‘Still,’ she says.

  I tell her, ‘You could give Skinners a go.’

  But I know she won’t. Why would you drive fifty kilometres down the coast on the off-chance? I give her a moment to consider the option. The fluorescent patches on the roadside posts flash in her eyes.

  ‘No. Take the damn thing,’ she says.

  This is an emotional business. People are often surprised to discover this. They just don’t realise how wrenching the whole exercise can be.

  Now Kath has sat down on a corner of the bed to take fresh stock. The tips of her hands dive between her thighs. She is looking up at a familiar print by an old Dutch master.

  ‘You should take that with you, Kath. It’ll be nice to have the memento in Caloundra. Something to remember us by.’

  But I see she’s not looking at the painting with any affection. In fact she’s not really looking at it at all. In a dreamy voice she says, ‘I’ve promised the kids surfboards. Guy says there’s surf in Caloundra.’ Her shoulders rise and fall with this information. She looks back at the painting. ‘Nope. I don’t think I want that thing coming with us. I don’t actually want to think about this place. I want to make a clean break of it. I want everything to be new and without that old scene nagging away at me from a wall. I don’t want to be looking out the window at Caloundra and then back at New Egypt on the wall. I don’t want us constantly switching back and forth between the two. I don’t want any second thoughts or maybes, or “Jesus, I wish we hadn’t,” kind of thoughts.’

  Her head turns. We can both hear it now. Guy is instructing his boy on cricketing matters. Play with a straight bat. Eyes over your front foot…It’s funny to listen to because I don’t recall Guy knowing that much at school. What I do remember is his face tightening with concentration—he always wanted so much to succeed but his body just wouldn’t deliver for him. He’d get himself tied up. He’d dream of hitting a six and end up falling back on his wicket. Guy was forever dusting off his dignity. I follow Kath over to the window in time to see the boy play and miss. Father and son look nonplussed, a hand on their respective hips as if to ask, how did that happen?

  ‘I realise it won’t be easy,’ says Kath. ‘But I’m not giving up without trying…’

  As I turn away from the window I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I look like a man who may have been thinking about Ophelia’s pussy.

  ‘The mirror, Kath?’

  ‘Like I said, our bags and clothes are all we want to arrive with. It’s just more junk, isn’t it? And anyway, I told you Harry, I don’t want our new life cluttered up with the past. I don’t want it to be cursed. I want it to be bright and new.’

  Two days later I had finally found a magazine with an African nude. Piles of lion and tiger skins for our Queen of Nubia to lie back against, the outside knee raised. Mahogany-coloured breasts. Large dark nipples. Ophelia undressed back to her African origins. I was completely buried in this stuff when a voice piped up, from the distance of the door, thank God.

  ‘I can come back…’

  It was Dean Eliot and he was nodding in the direction of the counter. He was too far away to see. And yet he seemed to know. The knowledge crossed his face.

  But if Dean knew, he didn’t care. He glanced around, his eye climbing the floor-to-ceiling pile of mattresses, and I slipped the magazine under the counter.

  ‘I’m after a bed. A new bed,’ he added, but not in time to erase the vision of old blankets and a hard floor.

  ‘Well, what you see is what we’ve got. King-size or queen?’

  ‘King,’ answered Dean, but again he’d left the blocks early and was forced to quickly follow up with, ‘they’re the same price? A king and a queen?’

  They’re not as it happens, but at that moment due to the munificence of the owner I was prepared to offer him a special. ‘Same price applies to all,’ I said.

  ‘In that case, I’ll take this one,’ he pointed at the Stuarts’ bed. There must have been thirty mattresses piled there and he’d found the one I’d just bought from them. I felt an odd wish to deny him but couldn’t think of a reason fast enough.

  He’d come prepared. He had a length of rope in the boot of the orange Datsun. I helped him wrestle the base and mattress on to the roof and held it in place while he roped it through the open windows. It was unstable as anything. I mentioned the van—I didn’t mind running it out to the beach. Usually it is part of the service. And in case he was thinking of an added expense I put his mind at rest. I should have insisted, but Dean was determined to do it his way.

  There was a call from Guy on the Saturday night. He was ringing to say the Caloundra thing was off. The marine paints lab had gone into receivership. The manager had phoned him to explain. Apparently it was all a big shock. The manager hadn’t known anything until the security people showed up at the gates. He was like everybody else at this point, pondering his future. ‘I’m sorry. This isn’t the news you were wanting to hear,’ he told Guy.

  There was a deep breath at the other end. ‘So…everything is on hold, Harry.’

  I said to Guy, ‘I hardly know what to say.’ Immediately Frances looked up from her jigsaw table. I mouthed the news to her and she rolled her eyes and whispered, ‘Ask him how Kath is.’

  ‘How’s Kath handling it, Guy?’

  ‘Not well,’ he said in a very low whisper. ‘She was so looking forward to this, Harry. It breaks my heart. But it could have been worse. She’s not interested in hearing that, of course, but what if we’d got over there and been given the news? We’d be up the proverbial without a paddle. Anyway, listen, I’m afraid it means we need our stuff back.’

  When he said that a fatigue of stunning proportions came over me. I’d just spent the best part of an afternoon finding places for their household stuff and now it was spread to all corners of the shop. There must be ten other frying pans that looked just like theirs.

  ‘You can imagine how it’s been. All day the same thing. Shall we go? Shall we stay? It’s been terrible.’

  ‘Well, everything is here…’

  ‘Good. Good. That’s something.’

  ‘Except your bed.’

  ‘You sold our bed? Already? Jesus, Harry.’

  At first he sounded impressed, then injured like I’d just impounded their dog or switched off the power.

  ‘I think we have a problem. Hang on a mo will you, Harry.’

  There was some confe
rring in the background. Kath was snapping at the walls. At the Stuarts’ end the phone fell against something. I placed my hand over the receiver and told Frances, ‘Kath’s gone apeshit because I sold their bed.’

  ‘That’s what you do,’ she answered.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Then Guy came back on.

  ‘You there, Harry? Sorry about that. I’m going to put you on to Kath. You two can sort this out. I just want to go outside and dig a hole and bury myself.’

  ‘Harry! Is that you? Now, listen. I want that bed back. It’s like we’re camping in our own house as it is.’

  ‘As I said to Guy, Kath, everything else is there but…’

  ‘I don’t care about anything else. I just want our bed back.’

  ‘The bed is sold.’

  ‘Then un-fucking-sell the bed! That’s our marital bed. Michael and Abby were conceived on that bed.’

  Now that she’d cracked my ear she began to sob. ‘Please, Harry…Help us with the bed.’

  There were some muffled noises and I had a sense of the phone swinging airily in the Stuarts’ hall before Guy came back on.

  ‘This is not a good time for us, Harry. In fact, this has just got to be the worst.’

  The next day I drive out to the Eliots’ with a new king-size bed that I aim to exchange for the Stuarts’ bed. Hopefully that will make things right. It means of course that I’ve had to leave my mother in charge of the shop with the result that the magazine crowd won’t come further than the door. It also means there will be some profit-taking. Word will get around that Alice is behind the counter, on her own, and every piece of worthless crockery will be winging its way to the shop even as I speak.

  At the Eliots’, Violet is hanging up the washing. I notice that the Datsun is gone.

  I need to explain the situation with the Stuarts and come to the point as quickly as I can. I have promised Guy I will try and get their old bed back to them by noon.

  I tell Violet, ‘The bed I sold you and Dean, well it turns out that I shouldn’t have.’

  Her face seems to darken. I rush on with further explanation, the Stuarts off-and-on-again situation with Caloundra. The late-breaking news of the receivership. The importance of the bed to Kath Stuart in particular.

  Violet drops her eyes. Oh God, there is a problem. I can feel it. Now she raises her face to look in the direction of the house. She says she just put the babies down. At first I’m not sure why I am hearing about the babies—I just want the mattress—then the penny drops. I wasn’t expecting there to be a problem. I thought I could dash in here and out again. To make things worse, she says, ‘Maybe you should speak with Dean. Dean is funny about things like this. I can make you a cup of tea if you like, but you’re still going to have to speak with Dean.’

  ‘Where’s Dean?’

  ‘At the cemetery. He’s got some work there this week.’

  Another ten minutes and I pull up behind the orange Datsun on Utopia Road. I climb over the broken gate for the path that winds up past the bones of adventurers from Dalmatia and Russia and Ireland, the same place I had mistakenly brought the cruise ship people to. Strategy. Strategy is everything.

  Nothing concrete has formed in my mind when Dean pops up behind a headstone, looking crudely alive with a pair of hedge-clippers in his hand. The corners of his mouth are smudged with orange soft drink, the bottle I can see lying in the cut grass.

  For the second time that day I start on the same story, although this time I up the ante and suggest that Kath has become unhinged with disappointment.

  ‘These are very old friends of mine, Dean. I think we can work something out that is satisfactory to all parties.’

  Dean is staring down at the grass. I can see the bit about old friends and working something out has skipped his attention. Now he raises his feral head.

  ‘But technically the bed is ours, right?’

  ‘Technically, I suppose that is right.’

  Once more I feel an enormous tiredness descend on me. I don’t think it can be jet lag. I’ve been back two weeks now, though I haven’t quite felt myself since the day with the cruise ship people. And it isn’t just that. The beaches have been hit with algal bloom. Kids run from the water complaining of scratchy eyes; they are vomiting in the night. Dead fish have washed up. Dead seals roll in the shore break. People, sane people I’ve known all my life, have been up to the strangest things. George Hands and Victoria are back in town to bury their son Dean (the irony of the name does not escape me). The funeral is in another week. George has asked me to say a few words. There are so many fronts to attend to.

  Dean, though, sensing leverage, swings his attention out to the pine trees lining the other side of Utopia.

  ‘So you’re asking me for a favour?’

  ‘Yes, Dean. I suppose that is what this is all about. I’m asking for your understanding…’

  ‘But technically…’

  ‘Technically the bed is yours and Violet’s. But I’m asking that you reconsider. I’ve got another bed in the van that isn’t just as good, it’s better.’

  The van is just visible over the top of the grey headstones. Dean sends his eyes there.

  ‘How so?’ he asks.

  ‘The one I dug out for you has an extra layer of innerspring. Ventilation is better. This bed I got you and Violet breathes. When the Stuarts bought their bed no one was even thinking about breathing beds.’

  Well, it sounds plausible to my ears. Dean though has tuned out. He’s working the handles of the hedge-clippers, snipping at the air. At such a moment it’s usually best to bite your tongue and sit back and let things work towards their final shape, but in this instance I feel the negotiations are going nowhere. I’ve also decided that I don’t like the Eliots. How long have they had the bed? One night? So why are we are going to war over this thing?

  ‘Okay, Dean. How about this? I will buy the Stuarts’ bed back and give you the one in the van for free. How’s that?’

  I would have thought that sounded pretty good in anyone’s language. But Dean looks put out; inconvenienced, you might say. This is amusing in an annoyingly ironic way. Dean is gainfully employed because of money I wangled out of the district beautification scheme. Maybe it would be wise to let him know who is responsible for the funds set aside for his employment? Maybe I should tell him to hand over the fucking bed and be done with it?

  ‘I’d need to talk it over with Violet,’ he says.

  ‘I already did, and she said it was fine with her but to check with you which is why I’m here. I’m asking you.’

  ‘Cash?’ he asks then.

  It is eleven fifteen by the time I reach the cottage on Beach Road. I pull back the sliding door and drag the new bed across the sandy lawn to the front porch. I have to yell out for Violet to give me a hand to get it in the house. She has to get the babies up. I stand in the hall while she puts the babies on the floor and strips the bed. It is embarrassing—but not too embarrassing.

  I ask her to help me carry out the Stuarts’ base to the van, then the mattress.

  I speed out to the Stuarts’ house. When I get there Guy is mow
ing the grass out front. Bare legs in gumboots. The front door is wide open, the hall looking desolate. As I get out of the van Guy bends down to switch off the mower. He drops his earmuffs to around his throat. The blond hair on his legs is covered with grass clippings. On his way across the mowed section of lawn he stops to pick up a dead blackbird. He picks it up by its orange feet and throws it into the nearby hedge.

  ‘Where is everybody?’ I ask.

  ‘Kath and the kids are around at her mother’s.’

  I feel his pale blue eyes settle on me.

  ‘To be honest, Harry, I was hoping you’d get here earlier. This morning would have made all the difference.’

  13

  This morning Frances looked at me across the breakfast table and said I seem so far away. Ever since I got back from seeing Adrian in London. I said, ‘I’m all right,’ and cracked the top off my egg.

  ‘I haven’t seen you like this before. Distracted. Elsewhere. I don’t know what,’ she tailed off and waited.

  ‘I’m all right,’ I said again.

  She looked at me a while longer. She was in her dressing-gown. She would spend the rest of the day in that dressing-gown. Her lips moved to speak, but nothing came of it. She cleared her throat and looked away to her workbench. Her eyes came back with a puzzled look

  ‘Who is this Ophelia?’

  ‘Ophelia?’

  ‘Yes. Ophelia.’

  ‘How do you spell that?’

  She ignored that as I tried to think back. I was sure—no, I was positive I’d never mentioned her name to Adrian. Unless, of course…it was possible he knew her, in which case it was possible…it could have come back through him, the little shit (that overpriced Soho eatery plus the theatre set me back a hundred and fifty quid), the name of the woman I spent no more than an hour with in that London nightspot.