Paint Your Wife

by Lloyd Jones

  Doug and I were in no hurry to climb into our wetsuits, though as I remember, I didn’t have a wetsuit. I had surf shorts and a woollen jersey with sawn-off arms. In the chilly air we stood about hugging ourselves.

  ‘I have news for you, boys. You have to actually go out to where the crays are. They don’t come to you. Any objections. Harry?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Doug? How about you, son?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘You sure? You don’t look sure.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘What about you Harry? You too, sunshine? You haven’t said much. We all sure about this thing?’

  Down on the wet shingle there were last-minute instructions. Crays don’t have ears but my father was saying that it helps to think that they do and that you want to pick them up just behind the ears. ‘Just pick it up as you would a hairbrush off a dresser table.’ We watched him tighten his huge lead belt. ‘One last thing. This one is for you, Douglas. What colour is a cray underwater?’

  ‘Orange.’

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘Red?’

  ‘You’re both wrong. A cray is kelp-coloured. Think of yourselves looking for an old black sock under your bed. You ought to know about that, Harry.’

  The information was confusing: socks, hairbrushes, crustaceans with ears. ‘Okay,’ he said, wading forward in his flippers. ‘Let’s go and rob a bank.’

  He was a strongly built man. He wore an armless steamer suit and I remember watching the layers of shoulder hair lift in the cold breeze off the sea. We watched him wade into the shore break and sink amphibiously into the icy water—there was no hesitation—then we followed him, kicking in a line for the reef about sixty metres out from the beach. Halfway there I lifted my head out of the water to look for Dougie—sky and water filled my mask, and there in the distance I saw Dougie climb out of the tide. I remember wishing I could be there too but knowing this was impossible I kicked on to catch up to my father. Without him I would not be out this far.

  Inside the reef, the sea shifted and moved us around as easily as if we were kelp. We were in three metres of water and by now I’d started looking for hairbrushes. My father dived down and near the bottom rolled on to his back to get my attention. He was pointing to something—a hairbrush—stuck in a crevice. He wanted me to dive down for it. Between the surface and the depths were shifting pillars of light and sea dust. I could also feel currents of trust and blind faith. I was going to have to dive down because that was what was required. The pressure in my ears increased until they were really hurting. The change in temperature was dramatic. I remember wanting to surface, to get back up to the world of light for air, when my father grabbed hold of my wrist and guided me down deeper to that crevice. Finally he released his grip and dropped his hand on the cray and lifted it from its hiding place. Together we bulleted to the surface, my father with the cray in his outstretched hand so that it was first to burst from the sea into the white light of day. Frank blew the water out of his snorkel and dropped the cray into a sack. I waited until he dived again and taking my chance I swam like hell back to the beach.

  It’s not much of a memory, but then you can’t pick the memories you’d like to be representative of yourself. When I’m dead, I’d like to think that Adrian’s memory of me will be of the time I carried him home wrapped in my raincoat in driving rain after he sprained his ankle on a tramp, or of the time I took him out to an expensive London restaurant for veal marsala, rather than a memory of looking up across that crowded nightclub to see his old man with a lean on list his points with an outstretched finger to an amused-looking black woman.

  My memories are of the crays we ate on the beach around a fire of crackling driftwood, the drive home, and later the strained silence of the house. And of that night, curled up in bed, with my father rocking in the door of my bedroom, caught between wanting to be elsewhere and needing to venture forward, and for the moment unable to do either but stand there and grin perhaps at his own memory of his boy kicking in the direction of the beach for all he was worth.

  It was a few days later that he left us, his footprints on the grass preserved by the first frost of the year. All morning different women came over. I sat up in a tree and watched these crabbed figures examine the footprints that the sun hadn’t yet reached. The tour then moved to my parents’ bedroom where my father’s clothes still lay on the floor, just creases and compressed air. His car was found later in the day. It looked to everyone like he’d driven at full tilt at the sea. At low tide the car sat in water up to its windows. For a couple of days we waited for his body to wash up. At its failure to do so, people began quietly to theorise. Then it came to everyone’s notice that the woman from Wages had disappeared as well. My mother waited a week before we drove out to the coast. At low tide it was possible to walk around the back end of the Holden. You could see where people had taken potshots. The windows were shattered and the paintwork was damaged where rocks had missed the more glamorous target of the windows. The sea shifted puppishly around the chassis. My mother said, ‘Do you know what is so embarrassing about this, Harry? It’s that anyone would go to this trouble on my behalf.’ Soon after this the postcards began to arrive.

  The next time I saw Frank was after Dougie and I left the train and followed the stationmaster’s directions through a superhuman heat. There was a suburban iron fence, flat, unyielding and unimpressed by the oven-like heat; it was all that kept at bay the vastness of the desert, and beyond the fence stood mounds of piled soil and against them the insect-like shadows of huge mechanical diggers, all very still. Eventually we arrived at the address scribbled down on a scrap of paper I’d held in my hand as far back as the station. We put down our packs and stared at a movement in the window. We’d definitely seen it and since we hadn’t seen another human being since leaving the station both our gazes stuck to the window. A moment later the door opened on a woman in calf-length slacks. She wore a white top, thin white shoulder straps, white on white, blonde hair out of a bottle, a face that once might have been pretty. She held a cigarette in her hand. Some time previously I had heard gossip that Frank and the woman from Wages had parted. But I hadn’t stopped to think that there might be another woman. Over her shoulder we could see cool shadows. Now the woman pushed herself off the door jamb. She seemed curious, and then impatient. She called out to ask if we were coming in or not.

  We picked up our packs and as we moved towards the door, the woman moved half into the blinding light where she stuck up a hand.

  ‘You can stop there. I’m not running a motel. Just so you know.’

  Doug asked me to check the address again. In the few paces forward it hadn’t changed but now he wanted to see for himself.

  The woman said, ‘All right I’ve had enough of this. You can fry out here or pay at the door and I’ll tell you right now so that you know—I’m not interested in bullshit excuses or anything like that. Just so you know. I’m not interested in discussions. Just so we understand ourselves.’

  Clearly there was a misunderstanding of major proportions. Either I had the wrong address or she had the wrong impression of what we were there for. But to check a final time I managed to ask her, ‘Is this 11A?’ before she snapped back with, ‘No bartering, I thought I said, or stalling. Or negot
iation or whatever you want to call it. And I’m not interested in standing out here and frying my arse for much longer.’ She took a big steadying breath and after eyeballing us separately she said, ‘Sort out who’s first while I count to ten. After that the meter’s running.’

  That’s when Doug told her, ‘Harry’s looking for his dad.’

  The woman didn’t say anything. She was staring at Dougie’s face, so I was off the hook for the moment. She looked cross with what she found there.

  ‘How old are yis?’

  ‘Old enough,’ said Dougie.

  ‘What about him?’ She meant me but she was asking Doug.

  ‘The same.’

  By now though I was craning my head back to see if there were any other 11As hidden further along the block. That’s when the woman wriggled her thin hips. She smiled at Dougie. She said, ‘I like you. What’s your name?’

  ‘Dougie.’

  ‘Dougie,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that a dog’s name?’

  ‘Must be. I’m here, aren’t I?’

  The woman found that funny. She gave Dougie’s shoulder a friendly push. She said, ‘I like you,’ again. She stepped aside for Dougie to enter. But as I followed she blocked my way.

  ‘Not you. You can bake in hell.’

  That’s when I told her that I thought my father lived there. I showed her the address I’d written down on the scrap of paper but she wouldn’t look at it. She said, ‘I don’t have to look. I don’t care what the damn paper says. It could say Queen Elizabeth lives here or Elizabeth Taylor. It could say George Washington himself lives here and I just fucked his bewigged brains out. I don’t have to believe anything just because it’s written down on a shitty piece of paper. Understood?’

  And that was it, I was thinking I really was going to fry in hell when Dougie rescued the whole mission with, ‘His dad’s got a tattoo on his bum.’ Doug saw it that time Frank was changing into his wetsuit. Then he started describing this butterfly. He had the woman hooked. But he had to ruin it by saying it was a monarch butterfly and suddenly she was shaking her head.

  ‘I don’t know anything about a monarch butterfly.’

  And just like that Doug was backtracking, ‘Well it may not be exactly a monarch…’

  ‘His name is Frank,’ I said. ‘Frank Bryant.’

  The news took the wind out of her sails. Her earlier hostility was waning and we could hear her mind ticking. She said, ‘I know lots of men by that name. There’s thousands of fucking Franks.’

  But as she was saying it, all the conviction of what she was trying to put across seemed to lift and her face softened as if she too didn’t really believe in what she was saying any more. And just like that she said we could come in but on condition that we didn’t use her bathroom. She said she had water and she had beer. ‘If you want beer you’ll have to pay for it first. Water’s free, though.’

  ‘Water,’ said Dougie, and the quickness of his reply saw the woman roll her eyes. The important thing was we’d got in out of that terrible heat. For God knows how many years I’d dreamt and fantasised of meeting up with my dad, but at that moment I’d have given it all up for a glass of water. The woman set down a jug on the kitchen table. She placed two glasses beside it. We gulped down three glasses apiece. The woman refilled the jug and we drank that too. I was gulping down the last glass when the woman said to me, ‘Your father usually gets in around seven.’ She said, ‘I don’t think I want to miss this.’ Now she was looking at me in a different light, examining me, and in a voice that was slightly mesmerised, she said, ‘You’ve got your father’s eyes. You’re lucky.’ Then she said, ‘I’m Cynthia, by the way. I’ve known your father for the past three years but I think I’ll leave Frank to explain all that. I don’t want to say anything more for the time being.’

  She wound up letting us use her bathroom. It was either that or we’d have to piss in her backyard. And after that we sat around waiting for Frank to turn up. Dougie joined in the vigil too, checking his watch, staring between the whitewashed walls and the window where we first saw the shadow of Cynthia.

  For the first hour with Adrian in London I’d felt skittish as we worked ourselves into our respective roles. I hadn’t seen him for eighteen months and so naturally there had been some loosening of the old parental shackles. He was a young man now. Despite this and a shared desire to meet as equals, the old relationship of father and son would not lie down. It loomed over us, stalked us, at different times had either one of us tongue-tied or at the other extreme had us assertively revert to form.

  With Frank I didn’t know what to expect. A diving expedition; a memory of him lingering at my bedroom door. It’s not much to sustain roles. I didn’t feel like anyone’s son. I suspect Frank felt the same, that he wasn’t anyone’s father. And yet while we waited for him to turn up my strongest desire was that I wouldn’t be a disappointment.

  Once when Cynthia went to the bathroom Doug gave me a nudge and asked me how I felt about her.

  ‘She’s all right,’ I said. At least I wouldn’t have to confront the woman who had made my mother’s life such a misery. We heard the toilet flush. Cynthia came to the door to ask if we’d like more water. ‘Or would you rather have a beer?’ She said, ‘Don’t all speak at once.’

  ‘Water.’

  ‘Water,’ I said.

  ‘The beer’s on me.’

  ‘Okay, a beer,’ said Doug.

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘The same. Thank you, Cynthia.’

  ‘Politeness. I like that.’ She gave me a meaningful nod and went off for the beer.

  We stared at the windows for I don’t know how long, watched them fill with darkness that when it came was sudden and without fanfare. The first time a car’s headlights washed into the room Cynthia stood up. ‘Frank’s here.’ We could hear doors opening and closing. Now the front door opened. And Cynthia called out, her voice loud, sounding gleeful.

  ‘Frank, you have a visitor.’

  It was awful. And possibly a mistake. I wondered that years of yearning and hope should lead to a moment of such banality. There was surprise. A handshake. Some chortling laughter accompanied by backslapping. Cynthia’s own sense of occasion. ‘Oh give him a hug, Frank. I’ll go and get my hanky.’

  Frank’s first words to me in over seven years were, ‘My God you’re a big bugger.’ Then there was his discovery of Dougie standing shyly by. ‘Who’s this then?’ And Cynthia telling him, ‘He’s the mouthy one.’

  ‘Dougie,’ said Dougie, extending his hand, and for a moment my father stared at the hand as though he didn’t know what to do with it. He was searching back through memory for something to grasp on to. ‘Dougie. Dougie.’ Then he remembered. He pointed a finger and Doug nodded. They’d both arrived at that awful day at the beach.

  ‘I told him Dougie’s a dog’s name,’ said Cynthia, and Frank laughed. For all Cynthia’s obvious faults, she managed to extract from Frank an easygoing-ness that I don’t ever remember seeing with my mother. He said to Cynthia, ‘You’re the only mouthy one I know.’ And he made a grab for her. That’s when I smelt the beer on him. As he fell backwards into a chair he tried to pull Cynthia on to his lap but she wasn�
�t interested. She looked for me. She said, ‘Harry, your father has greedy hands.’

  ‘Hands are made to hold things, Cynth. Isn’t that right, Harry?’

  All eyes were on me. The easiest thing would have been for me to agree. New, unexpected feelings were beginning to lock into place. I was thinking, if I saw this man behaving in this way elsewhere I wouldn’t like him much. That he was my father prevented any wholehearted embrace of like or dislike. He simply was what he was. Finally it was left to Cynthia to answer for me.

  ‘Pity your hands can’t ask first, Frank.’

  My father snorted. He’d forgotten Dougie now that he’d placed him as that same dismal being he’d last seen shivering at the beach.

  ‘That’s Cynthia for you. She’d talk a snail out of its shell.’

  Cynthia smiled. She’d heard Frank say this before was my guess, and besides, her eyes were afloat with a new subject. She said to Frank, ‘I was thinking Chinese.’

  ‘Chinese is fine with me. What about you boys?’

  ‘Chinese is fine,’ I said. I was wanting to sound upbeat and positive.

  ‘Harry says it’s fine,’ said my father. And for the moment we grinned at each other.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Cynthia. ‘I’ll take the dog for company.’

  Frank laughed, and I tried out a laugh of my own. Doug decently barked to help ease things along. Frank barked back. With that bark Dougie had grown another dimension from the useless cunt on the beach Frank had in mind.

  Later when I asked Doug what he and Cynthia had talked about on their way to the Chinese takeaway he said she’d told him, ‘Frank is a wonderful man, but I’d never have him as a father for my kids.’ And later, riding home with the boxes of Chinese steaming through his thighs she also told him, ‘As soon as I saw that boy I knew he was Frank’s. He’s got Frank’s eyes and nose. I hope he hasn’t got Frank’s heart, though.’ And when Doug asked me the same there wasn’t much to report. After they left for the Chinese my father who I hadn’t seen in years excused himself to go and shower. The whole time they were away I sat in the sitting room listening to the shower run. I had an idea Frank was hiding, and I realised I was happy for him to. I think that was the moment of release for me. His signature might be on my birth certificate but it didn’t need to be scribbled all over my life.