Paint Your Wife (3 page)

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
negotiation 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.

That night we rolled out our sleeping bags in the sitting
room. Dougie fell asleep
quickly. For a while I lay there in the humming dark listening to the distant murmur
of voices from the bedroom. It wasn't the hale and hearty voice we'd been treated
to all evening; it was low, serious, slightly menacing. Once I thought I heard my
mother's name spoken. As I strained to hear more the voices fell silent as if they
had just worked out that they could be heard. I must have dozed off after that. When
I woke it was still dark. I heard a door open, the fly-screen door smack back, a moment
later the car engine start. And in its low idling departure I fell back to sleep.

We woke late. In the kitchen there was a note from Cynthia. We were to help ourselves
to whatever we could find in the fridge.

Dougie was frying eggs when I came out of the shower. He asked me if I wanted bacon.

‘Nope,' I said. ‘We're going.'

‘Now?'

‘Now. Pack up. We're going. There's a train at eleven. I rang up while you were asleep.'

‘What about your dad?' asked Dougie, the fish slice in his hand, eggs sizzling away.

‘What about him?' I remember enjoying that tone of voice. It sounded hard, unforgiving;
I liked the effect it had.

Later, as we hurried like fugitives for the station and even as we boarded the train,
and later too, with the desert flashing in the windows, all I felt was relief. None
of this was planned. I wasn't after revenge. It was more self-serving than that;
I'd got what I was after. I would leave London the same way in a few years' time.
It was necessary to go there for all kinds of reasons to do with origins and curiosity.
But none of that had
to stick. None of it had to last. With Frank I felt like I'd
removed a thorn from my side. I quite liked Cynthia, though once I was back home
I was careful not to mention her to my mother. It would be easier on her, I thought,
to tell her that Frank was living alone and had turned bitter.

I had a short wait in Sydney for the connection to Wellington. In the lounge I fell
in with a young couple (he was a roofing contractor, she was a librarian) waiting
for a series of flights to Murmansk where they would take delivery of two orphaned
babies. What a swift change of fortune for all concerned! The roofing contractor sat
in his jeans drumming his fingers over his thighs. I could see baby stuff sticking
out of his wife's carry-on luggage. Those Russian babies would grow up between goalposts
surrounded by hills and ocean, and in twenty years' time or so I imagined there would
be a journey up to the Arctic Circle where they would arrive as foreigners but with
some inside knowledge of fruit recognising its husk.

In London this time I'd come away with a sense that to be from somewhere, anywhere,
was suddenly old hat. It didn't really matter any more. The faces in the street.
The Italian, French and Slavic names I read in the newspapers turning out for English
football clubs. The crappy food I ate in any number of so-called ethnic restaurants.
London has a way of putting everything through a common strainer.

But when we flew across the Tasman in the dead of night I did feel I was from somewhere.
I felt it keenly when the plane dipped its wing and seemed to take aim at a tiny
cluster of lights huddling together in the immensity of the night. It was
after midnight,
no cars on the road, not another soul, just me and the taxi driver in his woollen
v-neck, a plastic deodoriser in the form of a Hindu deity on the dash.