Paint Your Wife (20 page)

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 conferring 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 mowing 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.

I thought I'd bluff it out. I said, ‘I don't know anyone with the name Ophelia.'

Frances gave me a peculiar look. Her lying bastard look, though it trailed off to
a corner of self-doubt.

She said, ‘I'm sure that was her name. Ophelia. I kept hearing her name. I kept asking
you, “Harry, who is Ophelia?” but I couldn't reach you. You sleep so heavily these
days.'

‘Jet lag.'

‘No. I'm certain. Actually, I do know. I've got it written down. Ophelia.'

‘Well it could be anyone, Frances. If it was a name that came out of a dream how
the hell am I supposed to know? I can't even remember such a dream.'

She sat up straight in her chair and turned her eyes away while she thought.

‘I don't know, Harry. Dreams never come just out of nowhere. Dreams come from somewhere.
They live somewhere firm and secure even though we may not know it. Some experience…craving.
I don't know what, except they're connected. Everything is connected.'

Later, much later, after I cleared the dishes away, I stood watching her through
the glass-panelled doors that separate her study from the dining area. And I thought,
it isn't those doors separating us, or the sanctified air of her workspace. I could
see
too that she'd forgotten Ophelia now she was at her table, but I couldn't escape
thinking about this woman who was my wife, arranging bits of mismatched landscape
scissored out of magazines scavenged from the tip and in a rotting pile by her socked
feet. What a strange place for a life to end up!

I could see her hands sifting through the layers of pictures. The stone walls of
Scotland that had been lifted off the stony hillsides of Fife and dropped on to the
fertile countryside outside Lisbon. She told me this morning what she was working
on. The jigsaw manufacturers F W Horst of Frankfurt had asked for something rustic
and heavenly to go with their Great Escape series sponsored by Holidays in the Sun.
Snip, snip, snip
went the scissors. My wife's hands moved. The head pondered. The
hands reached for another magazine from the filthy pile on the floor.

She hadn't seen me through the glass; she was too engaged with finding a windmill.
She flipped over the pages. A windmill would deliver a timeless element, restful
to the eyes, soothing on the soul. Lovers or perhaps another lonely jigsaw enthusiast
would piece together a future life in which they appeared hand in hand beneath the
slow-moving blades of a windmill on the lake shore. A lake shore. Of course there
had to be a lake shore. For the next five minutes as I watched, magazines were picked
up and discarded. The expression on Frances's face was the same unyielding one that
sat through my lies about Ophelia. Lakes. We were on to lakes. Lakes came in all
shapes and sizes. She would persevere until she found the right one. It is a nice
little earner for which she doesn't even need to leave the house, unlike Frank, and
her own father, Dickie, who for decades punched a card into the time clock at NE
Paints.

In the course of the morning the draft image for the jigsaw would be sent electronically.
Some electronically delivered comment would come back. A problem to do with the windmill
had been identified. It was standing next to a lake and yet its reflection was not
obvious. Not to put too fine a point on it, there was no reflection. How could this
be? Some further tinkering and by that afternoon Frances had sent a shadow digitally
to Frankfurt. The email came back saying thank you.
Danke schön!