Paint Your Wife (23 page)

Alma was impatient. He didn't care about the damn bike. He wanted to get to the end
of the outstanding rent. He was tired of all the running around. He wished he'd never
rented the place out in the first place.

‘This is how many times I've run out here?' he asked.

‘I know and I'm really sorry,' said the girl.

Now there were more promises made. She'd speak to Dean. She'd make sure he left the
rent money with her if he couldn't be there himself.

We bumped our way back along Beach Road. Neither of us felt like speaking.

Well, Dean didn't come home that night or the next. There was no phone. If there
was a phone he might have rung, and as far as Violet was concerned any excuse would
have been welcome.

In the morning she left Dean a note and took the twins down to the beach. She walked
for longer than she normally did because she was fed up with the waiting. She wanted
Dean to find her gone. She wanted him to feel that stab of panic for a change.

But it was hot, and the twins were irritable. Today she didn't have the energy for
it. Crystal kept dropping her rattle and she had to keep bending down to pick it
up. The last time the little girl dropped the rattle Violet yelled at the pink face
dribbling near her ear. They started pulling her hair until she shouted at the air
behind to cut it out. A seagull hopped on to a log and looked at her. And suddenly
she was sick of the beach. Tired of the idea to give Dean a dose of his own medicine.
She would go back and if Dean was there she would say she had just gone out for a
walk. If he wasn't there she would put the twins down and sit outside on the porch
steps and wait for him.

Near the flax bushes by the cottage she heard someone moving about. She thought
it must be Dean and rushed forward to find Mr Martin on the lawn. In that split second
she knew he'd looked around and worked out Dean's absence. She could see his annoyance,
and something else—hope was it, something preventing full-blown disappointment hogging
his face. Some hope that Dean might have left the rent with her. She waited for the
inevitable question. But instead she
heard him ask, ‘Was that Dean I saw out at the
Riverside Community?'

She didn't know what to say. She didn't know the place. Dean hadn't said anything.
Where did he say again?

‘You know, Violet, where the house truckers park?'

She had no idea what he was on about. He gave her some directions but she didn't
know of it. She shook her head and felt her eyes drop. She heard the landlord step
closer. He must have reached out with his hand. She heard one of the babies coo.

‘They're lovely babies, Violet. They're adorable. You get to my age and you just
don't see babies any more.'

‘Thank you,' she said.

‘You know, I cycled out here. I hate asking Harry to come all this way on my behalf.
He's a busy man. And it's such a lovely day I thought…what the hell…I'll cycle out
there.'

He was being so nice to her. She felt bad that he'd come all this way on his bike.
She wished she had something nice to say back. She wanted to hide.

She pulled a strand of hair across her face.

She said, ‘I don't know what's holding up Dean.'

He didn't show any sign he had heard her.

‘I noticed a bike leaning up against the house. Is that Dean's?'

She was so surprised by this she went around the side of the house to look. Black
mudguards. The heavy pedals. The faintest ghost that was Dean. Her heart sank. He
must have come home and left again while she was down at the beach.

Now she heard the man say, ‘Violet, maybe you should let me know what is going on.
What do you say? I won't bite your head off.'

Jackson and Crystal were wriggling in her arms. She pretended they were more of
a distraction than they really were. She could have put them down to continue the
conversation; instead, through the maze of little pink pawing hands, she asked Alma
if she could have until Monday. Monday didn't promise anything better. It didn't
promise anything at all, but it was the only stalling device she could think of.

‘Monday,' he said. He didn't look happy to hear it. ‘All right. Monday it is.'

After Alma left her she counted up her change. She found she had twenty-four dollars
and fifty cents left. She needed things—bread, milk, tea—but she couldn't bear to
spend the money because if she did there would be nothing left. So she stole milk
from the letter boxes of farmhouses scattered up Utopia Road. The houses were a long
way back from the road and the letter boxes. It was pretty much free picking. Though
it turned out she was democratic about it. If she took a carton of milk from a letter
box, the next night she would push the twins in their pushchair past that house for
the next letter box. A carton here, a carton there. In other ways it wasn't so straightforward.
A week ago and she'd have thought this was the kind of thing that happened to other
people. But there she was stealing under the cover of night, taking what wasn't hers
to take.

This was pretty much how Violet came to my official attention. A phone call from
one of the houses. A sighting of a silhouetted figure with a pushchair running down
the road in the moonlight. Any milk taken? Why yes, was the surprised answer at the
other end.

In a moment of wide-awake hunger she lay in her bed thinking, I'm sick to death
of milk. Tomorrow I will catch a fish.

She had caught spotties and some herring before but nothing that she would eat. This
was a much more serious undertaking. She scooped a pen out of the shingle higher
up the beach and laid Jackson and Crystal down. With the driftwood near to hand she
fashioned a shelter. Seeing the pattern of shadow and sunlight fall over their pink
faces she removed her purple blouse and hung it over the driftwood, before heading
up the beach to the log where she placed the bucket with its tackle.

She'd woken up thinking about the fish she was about to catch. Before she got out
of bed she'd cooked and eaten it half a dozen times already. Her stomach juices didn't
remember any of it. Were those stomach cramps hunger? A wave drew up the beach seeking
her bare feet. She said a prayer. Two prayers. One for Jackson and Crystal—‘Don't
yell out or I'll hit yis.' The second prayer was for the ocean. ‘Let there be a bloody
great blind eye of a fish headed this way, please?' She peeled some cat's-eyes off
the rocks, smashed their cover and dug out the yucky green flesh which she threaded
on to the hook. She did as she'd seen Dean do. She waded out into the tide up to
her waist and threw the hook and sinker beyond the fringe of soft brown kelp; letting
out the line as she backed her way to the warm shingle and the toothless complaints
of the babies.

Shush Jackson. Shush Crystal honey or I'll whack you. Shush. You don't want the fish
to hear.
She made the sound of the sea. Two pairs of dark eyes shone up at her.
Shush
baby. Were waiting for the fish…
After a few minutes a nibble travelled up the line.
She closed her eyes, held her breath.
Concentrate. Concentrate. Please God. Concentrate.
Shaddup Jackson. Shush baby.
She waited, waited…when she gave the line a rip she
felt her hand come up against the fish's weight. She walked towards the water
excitedly
pulling the line in hand over hand. Already she could see its aspirin-white belly.
The flash of blue, followed by a singular movement, a near thing as far as the fish
was concerned. The line went slack in her hand and drooped over the stony part of
the beach.
Fucking fish.
She began hauling in the line and almost immediately it snagged
on the kelp. She walked along the beach trying to free it. She didn't have another
hook or sinker. There was nothing else to do but strip off and swim out to the snag
and free the line.

At this point Alma left the sandhills and walked back to his bike. He stood it up
and balanced the bag of potatoes on the handlebars and cycled the short way to the
Eliots' place.

That night she sat out on the porch. It was warm, one of those nights that light
up the entire countryside. You could thread a needle in this light. You could play
a hand of cards. You could ride a bike.

The last thought made her lift her head. She stood up. The bike was still where Dean
had parked it. The front door was wide open. She turned her head to listen for wide-awake
sounds at the end of the hall. She thought she'd better check just to be safe. She
tiptoed up the hall and stood in the doorway for five minutes until she was sure they
were asleep. She knew she shouldn't leave them. It was the worst thing you could
do. It was irresponsible. Anything could happen. A fire, for example. The thought
was so awful that she shook her head to get rid of it. It was almost as dangerous
to think like that; to think the worst was to breathe life into the possibility of
it happening. She stood the bike up and stared back at the peeling weatherboards.
In the deep night she heard a morepork calling and the sleepier sound of the sea
turning over. She knew she
shouldn't leave. It was wrong. She should definitely not
leave her babies but here she was lifting her leg over the saddle bar.

She hadn't ridden a bike for years. The front wheel wobbled to start with, and the
handlebars shook loose in her hands as she rode over potholes. Along Utopia the way
was smooth. She was able to stand on the pedals and cycle as fast as her legs would
allow. Once as she passed under the deep shadow of a giant pine all the bad things
that could happen suddenly returned and she stood higher and pushed harder to get
away from the picture in her head.

She reached the T where she had to stop and think back to the landlord's directions.
Only now did it occur to her that he had been telling her where to find Dean. He'd
just been letting her know. How the hell had she been so slow? She turned the wheel
left and was about to set off but paused to wait for a car from the direction of
town to whoosh past. The night fell silent again. She pushed off. Soon the road began
to climb. Her legs grew weary and the front wheel slowed. It became so difficult she
thought about turning back. But she was past the midway point; she might as well
keep going. She counted to twenty; she counted to fifty, to one hundred. There in
the near distance was the wooden sign the landlord, Mr Martin, had spoken of. She
turned down River Road. The air changed to a gorsy smell, and now there was the sound
of a shallow river; there was a screen of thin trees but she could hear a narrow
reach gurgle along a bank quite near her. Soon she saw lights, little pinpricks of
yellow headlights. She cycled on. Now she could hear music. Someone was strumming
a guitar. She heard a woman's laughter. Different shadows boxed up around her. House
trucks. Caravans. Old buses. She got off her bike and wheeled it in off
the road.
She could see a circle of faces lit up by a small fire. That's where the guitar was.
One person looked up, now another, and another. The person playing the guitar stopped.

She called out, ‘Hi!' She hoped she sounded friendly; she wanted to. But no one answered.
No one moved from the fire. It was a bit intimidating, really. She said she was looking
for Dean. She'd come for Dean. Anyone here know of Dean Eliot? No one responded.
She thought she might describe Dean, maybe that was the way to go about it, when
a woman stood up from the circle around the fire and came towards her. She was barefoot.
She wore a woollen shawl over the shoulder straps of a white cotton dress. One side
of her face was fire-lit. Now that she was closer Violet could see her lip piercing.

‘Who's asking?' she asked.

Violet began to say who she was but the woman looked away before she had finished.
She seemed to know.

‘Well,' she said. ‘Dean isn't here.'

‘What about the house truck?'

‘It's here.'

That was something at least. Dean wouldn't leave without the house truck.

‘Dean's gone?' It didn't sound right when she said it, it didn't sound remotely possible.

The woman pointed to a cutting on the edge of the dark. ‘He left that way and followed
the railway tracks down the coast.'

‘To go where? Where was he going? Did he say?'

The woman shook her head. ‘Nope, he didn't say.' She pulled the shawl around her
shoulders. Her expression had hardened.

Now Violet tried to look past her. Maybe Dean was sitting with those people around
the fire; sitting there and watching this, the joke on his face.

‘Well,' said the woman. ‘I think I told you what you need to hear.'

Then she thought to ask after the house truck. ‘Dean wanted to show me,' she lied.
‘That's why I'm here.' She could see the woman weighing up what she had said; she
could see another lie was in order so she said, ‘Dean wanted my opinion on a paint
colour.'

The woman gave her a long and testing look. She just wished she'd go away. She wished
she hadn't got up from the fire in the first place. She looked over at the fire. Her
friends were getting up and walking away to different house trucks. She turned back
and said, ‘Five minutes. That's all you get because I didn't hear Dean say anything
about you. What did you say your name was again?'

‘Violet,' said Violet.

‘All right, wait here and I'll get the torch. He doesn't have electricity in there
yet.'

She started over to one of the house trucks and stopped and looked back.

‘Well, come on,' she said.

Violet wheeled her bike after the woman. The light kept changing. One moment it was
pitch black, then a square or rectangle of lead-lighted window, a candle flickering,
now it was shadowed, and in the shadows she would see the outline of people sitting
on the steps of the trucks talking and smoking. Underfoot the ground was bumpy. She
hoped she didn't step in cow shit. She waited while the woman
picked up a torch from
the step of one of the trucks and they carried on to the dark oblong at the very
end of the house truck community.