The Painter's Friend

by Howard Cunnell

  I’d made a ton of drawings. The dog dappled by sunlight, bursting through the ground cover of ferns. Diving cormorants, goldfinches. The always-changing, unrepeatable light on the water. Always the same, always different. In a drawer I had a book full of many versions of John. Never shown him.

  Don’t think you’re coming home like that, John said.

  The dog looked up from her place on the floor, just lifting her head to gaze blankly at him and then lying back down. From the neck down she didn’t move. Within seconds she was dreaming again.

  Phew, John said to her. What a damn stink.

  Slowly I got down on the floor. Tried not to make any noise. Moans and groans. Wasn’t done. Stretched myself out next to the dog. Just trying to move the pain around. Put one hand on the dog’s warm fur. She sighed in her sleep. You’d have to think, his age, that John was in pain all the time.

  It’s about Vesna? I said.

  John’s wife.

  There was an open envelope next to John on the banquette. The old man handed it to me.

  John had told me about Vesna but I didn’t have it all clear.

  Why was he paying somebody to look for two women whose names he didn’t know?

  Because they are the bitches who kill her! he’d shouted.

  Gave her morphine. Hid her phone. Stole her money. Care home workers. Zero hours contracts. Disappeared. Not known under the names given. All bones, breath and eyes, Vesna. So thin the joints showed through. Teeth standing out like a starved horse. Leukaemia. Died anyway. Not the point.

  From the owner, John said, looking at the envelope like it was responsible for the sulphurous stink.

  The care home?

  The old man sat back on the banquette, holding his elbow, the palm of his other hand facing upwards, a storyteller of working harbours. The river moved beneath the boat. A kind of leaning. I was beginning to understand how the tide worked. When it turned. It was turning now. John reached down and touched my boot.

  No, he said, of this place.

  John’s irises seemed to lack definition, rims indistinct, crumbling almost.

  Read it, he said.

  Company headed paper. Kaplan International. Two paragraphs. As of September the mooring fees were going up by £250 a quarter. Certain improvements. Cover the costs.

  Typed. I turned the letter over. The back was blank.

  What’s Kaplan International? I said.

  In the late afternoon the sky and water were burnt orange.

  The sun was falling into the river. A black cloud of starlings appeared downstream, backlit by fire. Their shapeshifting protection against predators.

  Alex Kaplan owns the island, John said.

  The Kaplan who was shot?

  That man, John said. Yes, used to promote fighters. You know him?

  I’ve heard of him, I said.

  Vesna and me knew his father, John said. Mr Kaplan had a big house across the river. Spent most of his time here. Paid for the upkeep. Charged almost nothing for mooring. But he died. Alex Kaplan got the big house and has not spent a penny on this place. Waiting. Every summer more people visit here. They like to think they discover the place.

  Now this Kaplan thinks it is the time to spend some money. Clean the place up. Make it nice for the visitors, proper showers and toilets, a place that sells food, but make us pay for it, or make us leave.

  Leave?

  Of course leave! John said. My God! You think people here have two hundred and fifty pound sitting around doing nothing? A thousand a year?

  People will leave. They’ll have to either way. Some might leave rather than give Kaplan any more damn money.

  Why now? I said.

  The world had turned velvet, and darkness filled the wheelhouse. With the sun gone, the wheelhouse was no longer warm. I should have saved them for emergencies, but I got up and lit a couple of candles rather than turn on the light.

  John glanced at me, then tested his lower lip with his teeth. Looked down at his thick hands. Raised them fractionally and then let them rest in his lap.

  Spite, he said at last. Revenge.

  Revenge for what? I said.

  John didn’t answer.

  The candles guttered. The boat was old. Perhaps some as yet unknown separation of the planking. Maybe a tear, thin as a knife edge, in the hold.

  The button on the control panel, ruby in the candlelight, reminded me I had not pumped the bilges in a while.

  Alex Kaplan had made a full recovery after a fighter he managed named Millar shot him with an old-fashioned revolver. Kaplan hadn’t pressed charges, got out of the fight game. Much was made of Brady Millar’s unusual background for a fighter. Been to university and was an army officer before turning professional. Millar later disappeared. Nobody on either side talked, but everybody supposed Kaplan had wronged Brady Millar somehow. I was painting fighters then, and heard Kaplan sometimes bought pictures, that’s why I was interested. The word around the gyms was that this Kaplan was a dangerous man.

  John went to the open door and looked out. The dog watched him from the floor.

  I worked in this country all my life, the old man said. Blown out of the water on this country’s damn business. Alex Kaplan tells me I have to choose. Justice for my wife, or keep my home.

  She’d want you to be happy, I said.

  You never met her, John shouted, how the damn hell you going to know what she want?

  Picking up his hat and going out the door. He did not call the dog and she didn’t follow him, but lay back down, staring at the empty space where he’d been.

  John kept an ancient tender tied to his barge, a little flat-bottomed Zodiac, and I heard him take the boat out onto the river, late as it was. I went outside and stood on the stern deck, looking downstream. The moon was rising, and John followed the path it made on the water until he disappeared from my sight. The sound of the outboard diminished until I knew he was far out in the river’s deep midwater channel. Then John must have switched off the engine, as I could hear the heavy beating wings of a pair of swans coming in low over the river from the west, looking for a place to land. The swans were luminescent in the moonlight, their high moving whiteness fading as they passed into the night. It was a long time before John’s outboard started up again and I saw the old tender coming back. The dog came to stand at my side. Made no sound.

  Good girl, I said.

  The dog leaped from my boat to the empty barge, and then ran and jumped again, landing noiselessly outside John’s cabin door, her tail a bright pennant in the darkness. I followed her.

  John?

  Under the quarter moon and starry sky, the tenement of boats rocked on the changing tide. Mooring ropes tightened then slackened off. The groaning of fenders and timber under strain sounded above the constant gloopy chorus of water against boat, boat against water.

  The moon-soaked painted colours of John’s boat were rich and deep. The English rose was almost black. The castle was dark and shining.

  Lush sounds from inside. Music. A woman’s voice.

  John, I called again.

  Dog pushed her way in.

  The old man put whisky in his coffee sometimes. Grease the wheels, he said. When he’d had a couple under his belt his eyes would light up and he’d tell me sea stories. Never anything about however many years he’d spent on an assembly line.

  John? You there?

  I’d imagined a stateroom of fitted wood, brass navigation instruments shining in muted light. Sextants, chronometer. Charts. A pink map held flat by heavy coins, bearing the likenesses of forgotten rulers of renamed lands. Trophies. An opium pipe. A shrunken tattooed head.

  I’m coming in.

  Wine vinegar. The boat reeked of it. Damp that had turned to mould, and the vinegar John was using to fight back. The bulkheads where they met the overhead, the galley, every surface I could see, was marked by black mould and the signs of John’s cleaning. Everything in the boat was squared away. But it was all threatened by the c
reeping fungi.

  Rich sea captains gilded mould to show their wealth.

  In a black iron stove the blaze of a new fire was yet to settle. John still had his coat on. Didn’t see us. Holding Kaplan’s letter in his hand. Instructions from upriver. John standing like a man given an order he can’t carry out. Big-knuckled, thick-fingered hands that were never still, but always testing the physical world around him.

  The music was too loud for the small space.

  A woman’s voice. Promising or asking for a little loving in the morning.

  John?

  The old man yelled: Michael!

  You made me damn jump.

  Brought your dog back.

  The blessed dog’s right here.

  Pile of old blankets by the fire but the dog had already jumped up on the settee and was grinning at John. The old man sat down next to her. Almost let himself fall. Looked around at his things like he didn’t know who they belonged to.

  Shelves fitted to the bulkhead on the river side. LPs in plastic covers, the seams edged in mould.

  Photographs, also beaded by mould. Books that looked like they’d been rescued from a flood, then dried over a smoking fire. Young John standing next to a lifeboat davit on the deck of a ship. Snow covering the canvas over the lifeboat and crowning the davit. John giving nothing away under a pencil moustache, wrapped in a reefer coat and wearing a watch cap, hugging himself, snow falling all around, the snowballs that had hit him visible as small, violent marks of whiteness on his coat and face.

  Not a captain. Course not.

  A middle-aged woman in blue overalls. Dirty blonde hair tied up with a red scarf. John next to her. The woman was smiling at a long-haired, dark-eyed boy who was about thirteen or fourteen. Streak of paint across his smooth cheek. The three of them holding up paintbrushes. Big grins from everybody.

  A girl wearing lots of eyeliner and a graduation cap and gown. Standing next to the blonde woman. John not there. The girl not smiling. The picture not straight. Damp had got inside the frame, and some of the girl’s face – a cheek, her unhappy, angry eyes – were stuck to the glass that had also been stained by damp.

  John shoved the dog off the settee.

  She jumped straight back up and snuggled into him.

  You spoil the blasted dog, John said, finding a biscuit in his pocket and giving it to her.

  Saw me looking at the photograph of the unhappy girl.

  Got up slowly. Straightened the picture with a thick hand.

  Your daughter? I said.

  John made a noise that could have been a yes or a no. Turned to the record player as if he’d just realized it was playing. Made a sour face.

  Lifted the needle from the record and it stopped.

  Vesna’s favourite, he said.

  Dusty in Memphis.

  Went around turning lamps off, so that we sat within the light made by the fire.

  I never cared for it that much, the old man said.

  Who’s Michael? I said.

  John spoke softly in the ticking silence.

  Boy was either drawing you, the old man said, or jumping out of a tree trying to scare you to death.

  John held up his hand palm out. Don’t interrupt.

  Vesna liked to say, there’s only room on the boat for the things we love, he said. Spent years working on her, weekends, why not enjoy it. Nancy – John turned to where the girl looked out accusingly through the glass – had left home to study. I’d stopped work. Been stopped. Made sense. Pack up the house and come here. A fresh start.

  The dog stretched out all four feet in her sleep. She was lying upside down next to John, her head flung back like her neck was broken, eyes closed, an edge of pink tongue showing between her teeth. She stretched to the limit, all four feet raised, toes spread, her ribcage sharply convex, her stomach a valley. John put his hand around her muzzle and gently shook it, then moved his hand and smoothed back her ears. The dog yawned enormously, her young white teeth like pins. She smacked her jaws and rolled over onto her side. Gave John’s hand a lick, fell back asleep.

  The first years were tough, John said.

  Michael helped. The boy make you smile. A headful of curls. Cheeky. A roaming spirit. Perseis was just a silly damned hippy. Vesna helped the girl because that is what Vesna is like. Gene I believe love the boy but Gene is fierce. I tried to tell him. And before you know it the boy was growing. Becoming a teenager. It was Vesna he went to for guidance.

  John looked up at the mould on the deckhead.

  The boat got sick the same time as my wife, he said. This damn mould creep up while she was in the hospital. Michael tried to help, but he was distracted, and upset about Vesna.

  John blinked.

  Vesna die. Killed. Like I told you. Never mind the damn cancer. Three years ago. My daughter came here, once, and told me all the bad things I am, then went away and never come back. And for a while I don’t care about anything. Not me, not the boat, not Michael. I even hit that boy once. For acting up. Just a clip. Not learned a blasted thing. I hear Vesna saying that to me. All the time. The boy was just missing me, I hear her say. The same as you, she says. But it wasn’t the same.

  John closed his eyes. Sat like that until I thought he’d fallen asleep. Finally he looked at me again.

  The boy drowned, John said, two years ago next summer. Just a youth. A terrible thing.

  I started to say something.

  Listen to what I’m telling you, John said. Policemen come with dogs. Divers. Drag ropes. They question everybody. Go harder on some than others. Gene. The police are hard on Gene.

  There was a red-headed girl, John said. Michael and her were together. Alexandra Kaplan.

  Kaplan?

  Alex Kaplan’s daughter. The police question her once. They talk to Kaplan, and then he tell them what he was going to do. And he did. Took the girl away, out of the country.

  The police keep after Gene, John said. Grew up in a boys’ home. Was in trouble as a youth. Stealing cars, fighting and this and that. Gene won’t go quietly. Talk to Alex Kaplan, he tells them, ask him about his girl. The police don’t give up on Gene. They come for him again the other day. I saw the launch. They take him and sweat him for a couple of days, then they bring him back.

  The old man pulled the sleeve of his coat over his hand and opened the little door of the stove. Poked at the burning wood. Made the sparks fly.

  What do they think Gene knows? I said.

  Michael’s body has never been found, John said. The boy never come out of the river. Maybe somebody gave the police ideas.

  Wood cracked in the iron stove.

  Gene’s gone wild, John said. We have to forgive him. To lose a child. Like that. No body to lay to rest.

  John put his rough hand on the dog’s flank. Pushed his hand hard through her fur until the dog raised her head and stared at him. John lifted his hand. The dog lay down. Sighed.

  You think this is why Kaplan is moving now?

  I think Alex Kaplan is a man who likes to get all his birds in a row, the old man said. Before he take out his gun.

  The forest was deeper than it seemed from the outside. The dog ran away from me. Flash of red. Into the trees. Across the invisible line between any forest I might come to know, and the place where she was born.

  Tried to catch up. Had to stop. Hands on knees coughing and spitting on the ground. I couldn’t travel fast or without pain and I didn’t know where I was going. The path had taken me away from my home clearings and dells. The ground seemed to be rising.

  Unfamiliar bluebells shone in the dark. From somewhere came the sounds of sawing and hammering.

  Shouted for the dog, but either she couldn’t hear me over the noise of the camp dogs barking, or the summons in that barking was stronger than mine. One of the dogs was likely to be her mother.

  She might run into the big saw I could hear, or be attacked by any of the wild animals I imagined would be living in the forest. Weasels. Badgers. Bloody snakes pro
bably.

  Spat again. Forced myself to breathe deeply. Stood up straight. Called the dog again, shouting loud this time. Birds rose from the trees surrounding me, crows and the bright parakeets that John told me had been colonizing the island for years, growing in number and forcing out the indigenous birds.

  Followed the barking. Light through the trees promised clearer ground. A couple of bin bags were tied and looped over a branch at head height. A rain barrel. A shallow pit half filled with empty tins and bottles. Barking close by and a man’s voice. The dog came back to collect me, looking up happily before turning back where she’d come from.

  Good girl, I said. Good girl.

  Into a clearing busy with welcoming dogs.

  Can’t control your dog.

  The homeless giant was shirtless, his upper body hugely pale except for his chest. He was sitting on a camp chair in front of a smoking fire pit. Three other mismatched chairs around the fire. Tarpaulin shelter behind him. Adam’s black trousers and boots were still thick with winter mud. A quilted plaid shirt hung on the back of his chair. Black and blue.

  Adam reached around for the shirt on the back of his chair and put it on. Not before I saw a huge, raised, violet welt, like a pressed burn, running across Adam’s chest from shoulder to shoulder.

  The shelter was held up internally by a network of criss-crossed branches lashed together, from which were hanging a dozen or more plastic bags containing, I guessed, Adam’s clothes and other possessions.

  A camp bed that looked too small. A tough plastic box next to some boots, with a handle and a meshed door, and a big sticker on the side that read Live Animals in green letters. Plastic washbowl with various bottles of supermarket shower gel and shampoo. An old fruit box filled with tins of food.

  Everything, inside and outside the shelter, was covered in dried mud though you could see attempts had been made to remove the worst of it.

  In the trees I could see a mud-streaked green tent, just big enough for two people.

  Two worn sleeping bags had been put out to air over low branches. There was a hole in one of them and stuffing was sticking out.

  A small yellow generator with a battered laptop plugged in. The big fire pit was fringed with thick drifts of ghostly grey ash. Inside the ring were blackened pieces of glowing and smoking wood. At the centre of the pit a small flame edged in blue. Smoke rose perfectly straight before dispersing in the air over our heads. Ariel Galton had once written: the vertical line is disclosed by a hollyhock, or a column of woodsmoke.