Paint Your Wife (5 page)

About now I notice Dean Eliot's car with its human cargo. He actually has a mattress
roped to the roof. I'm aware of passengers but I can't see how many because of the
overlapping shadow from the mattress. Now I notice how short Dean's hair is, a white
gleam of protean scalp which I find myself peering at, and in particular a scar, thin
and white, as if the past movement of a worm has stilled and calcified. Dean moves
his hand up there. And I decide there and then if the car contains two or three more
like him I won't let Alma hand over the keys to the beach cottage.

Dean Eliot drives very slowly. In fact, there is something ingratiating about how
slowly he drives; it's as if he is out to impress me and contain the Mad Max within.
I actually have to slow down to a dawdle to keep him in my mirror. I still can't
see who might be sitting in the passenger seat with that flapping mattress casting
shadow.

The tip is one hill back from the fire-watcher's cottage which has been Alma's home
for nearly forty years. His place looks down on my mother's and on the farm where
I grew up. There's nothing nice to say about the tip. Except that since the closure
of the paint plant the tip has sustained more of us than we like to admit in polite
circles.

It's not a pleasant place to be. The air is eerily clear, still, the seagulls observant,
circling, their beaked heads hanging. Far below, their view is of the bare heads
roaming through the stew. I know everyone hates the sludge sticking to their shoes
and the stone-eating noise of the grader with its puffs of black smoke. The same
folk complain of the chemical stench. My mother doesn't know how Alma puts up with
it but I suppose the simple answer to that is that he does so because I pay him to.
He spends half his week stomping around in this filth, salvaging any number of household
items that one person will throw out without a second thought and the next person
will buy from me and wonder how anyone could have acted so hastily. Without exception
all my customers beam with proud ownership over the new thing in their hand and think
its last owner to be a mug.

I have my shop clothes on so I have to step carefully around the edge of the tip
face. I can see the top of Alma's beanie, his denim shoulders, the stick he holds
to gauge the depth of layers when he goes to place his weight. Moving across a tip
is very much like crossing ice floes. You don't hurry it. He still hasn't seen me
and I cough so I won't startle him. But he's distracted by his enterprise. Finally
when I call down his shoulders jerk up and seeing it's me he looks a bit annoyed
to have been caught out in this way.

His whiskered face with its blue eyes peers up at me. I feel sinfully safe and clean.

‘Alice said you were back. How was London?'

‘Good.'

‘Adrian?'

‘Good.'

‘Alice said something about a black woman. You haven't got the clap, have you?'

‘We'll talk later,' I say. ‘Someone's here to see you about the cottage.'

‘Jesus,' he says. He looks at the filthy gloves on his hands. ‘I biked up here.'

‘That's all right. I'll drive you over.'

‘Thanks, Harry. Maybe in an hour.'

‘No, now. It has to be now.'

‘What? They're here, now?'

‘As we speak.'

‘Jesus,' he says again. He looks down at the footstool and a yard broom and something
wrapped in a carpet—I can't tell what exactly.

Dean Eliot has parked the Datsun on the edge of the mud. The driver's side door is
open and Dean is sitting while he puts on shoes. Shoes. Well, that's something. I
almost report back to Alma, ‘The applicant is putting on his shoes.' Now the passenger
side door opens and out gets a young woman, olive-skinned, big-hipped but finely featured,
youth and destiny fighting for control, part-Maori I'd say, or Greek. Thick-rooted
dark hair. A wave of it spills across her face as she stoops back inside the car.
From that position she gives a sideways look and a little wave. I wave back. Reaching
in the back door she pulls
out two babies. Babies. I hadn't thought of that—not in
a thousand years. You have to wonder how they all fit in there. Dean Eliot has his
shoes on now. She hands him the babies. Then she searches in the back for something.
This time it is a milk bottle. And now the babies are handed back, one at a time,
one for each hip; free at last Dean sets off following the dried track of the grader
to where I have been taking all this in. It doesn't look quite as bad as I had thought.

Dean nods back over his shoulder. ‘That's Violet,' he says, and indicating over the
edge of the tip face, I say, ‘Down there is Mr Martin.'

Dean cranes over at Alma squinting up in to the low afternoon sun.

‘So Harry tells me you're interested in the cottage?'

‘If it's available.'

‘It could be. Could be.' Alma thinks about his next question. I can feel Dean dying
a slow death beside me. ‘Could be' has sounded such a cautioning note. Dean has been
thinking it either is or it isn't available. What he can't detect of course is Alma's
own thrashing angler's heart.

‘Just for you, is it, Dean?'

Dean's eyes take off across the tip. How should he phrase this?

He begins to look behind for the answer but quickly has it resolved and comes back
to Alma.

‘For me and my family.'

Alma gives me a look. I didn't say anything about family. I shrug back as if to say
this is recent news. I didn't know either until a minute ago. Now Alma reaches to
grab some petrified filth for purchase. He's going to have to come up and take a look
for himself.

On the edge of the tide of mud is the orange Datsun. Soon as he sees its tired-looking
mattress I can see every instinct in Alma railing at him to say ‘No' but then comes
the masterstroke—from the Eliots' point of view. The young woman—she can't be any
older than Jess, I think now—gets out of the car. And the scene that just a moment
ago looked so alarming and desperate with that mattress slopped over the roof dissolves
some of the apprehension spread across Alma's face.

For his part, new hope enters Dean's voice; it is as though at that same moment he
cottoned on to his trump card. Proudly, possessively, you could say as he senses
it will help his case, he says, ‘That's Violet. And that's Jackson and Crystal.'

It was September, and towards the coast the land grew flat in the late afternoon sea
light. I hoped for Alma's sake the Eliots were taking all this in—the shredded leaves
of the cabbage trees, wind worn, bashed but hanging on, and now the vast and tilted
shingle beach with its litter of driftwood. I wound down the window but the dust
was worse than the chemical stench clinging to Alma. The road ended with a short
run up an incline on to a scrappy lawn with sandy tyre ruts and crushed white shells
scattered here and there. I switched the car engine off and we got out to wait for
the Eliots. The sea drew back and slurped ashore.

Immediately the peace was broken by the throaty noise of the Eliots' exhaust and
I saw Alma's thoughts shift to matters to do with risk management and liquidity.

‘You can always say no,' I said.

He thought about it, nodding, the thick skin above his eyes creasing and bristling.

‘Well, we'll just see, shall we?' he said.

We watched the Eliots unbuckle their babies. The young woman passed them out. Dean
had shed his sneakers and was barefoot again. Now Dean handed one little bundle back
to Violet and they were ready for the tour.

‘As you can see. It's a little unlived in,' said Alma.

We followed him around to the front to a weatherboard porch of peeling blue paint,
some white undercoat and a more distant experiment with pink. Dean sat one of the
babies on the rail. From here the world opened up and in the distance a tanker appeared
to sail off the line. Dean lifted the paw of Jackson and waved it at the disappearing
tanker. So far, so good.

The bottom of the door caught on the sandy carpet. Alma said something about the
maritime climate. One after another we filed through and were met with the stale
warmth of the house.

‘You hardly need electricity. The house cooks in summer,' Alma said.

That may be so, it was warm, but there is also no easy overcoming the atmosphere
of an unoccupied cottage. The walls themselves actually seemed to frame and hold
on to an air of deepening despair. Violet gazed at the front windows and I saw the
problem. There were no curtains up and it occurred to me that I could easily donate
something from the back of the shop. I passed this on to the Eliots but the offer
hardly made a dent in their faces. Nor did they give any indication of how they felt
towards the place. The attractive fireplace with its stone hearth and the problematic
absence of a fridge were met with the same indifference, Dean blankly and Violet
with the slightly more calculable expression of someone not used to giving an opinion.

The bathtub had an ugly rust mark. Everyone stared at it until Alma ushered us out
again. In the bedroom he artfully placed himself in front of the mouldy wall. I think
he'd made up his own mind that he could live with the Eliots as his tenants. Still,
there were things he needed to ask them. I didn't like to butt in and run the show
but he needed to find out how long they intended to stay. Did they have employment?
References? On the other hand, I suppose he saw little point. Their silence seemed
to indicate their lack of interest. Now Alma just wanted to end the tour and see
the Eliots off.

He led us back to the front door and stood aside as we filed past, the young woman
with a ‘Thanks'. And while Alma locked up the Eliots conferred in a whisper down
on the lawn.

A moment later Alma turned from the door to find Dean Eliot coming forward with a
fistful of notes.

‘Is a month in advance all right?' he asked.

Now the girl nudged him, her eyes lowered. ‘Ask 'im, Dean.'

‘Yeah, ah. The bond. Is there one?'

All four of them stared at Alma—the fledgling adults and the babies.

‘No,' said Alma. ‘There's no bond.' He caught my eye and we both turned and stared
at the sea.

Now Dean had something else to ask.

‘We were wondering,' he said. ‘Is it all right if we move in now?'

The question slowed Alma down. I could see what he was thinking. If he said ‘No'
where would they stay the night? Curled up in the car? The Eliots were passing on
their amateurish lack of organisation. I couldn't bear to look at Alma.
I heard
him say, ‘I don't see any reason why not,' which was possibly more generous than
he really felt.

Violet smiled and kissed the cheek of the baby she was holding. Jackson or Crystal.
I didn't know any more which was which; they kept swapping them. Dean put out his
hand—he meant to shake on the arrangement but because Alma was slow to respond he
dropped his hand back at his side. For the first time a bit of embarrassment entered
his cheeks.

‘Of course there's no power,' Alma told them. ‘You'll have to organise that. And
I don't know about the stove. There's no hot water either.' Now I could see him reconsider
if it was wise for the Eliots to move in right away. ‘If you were to wait a few days…'

But Violet pounced on that. ‘No. No. We're fine, Mr Martin.'

She dropped her eyes; almost closed them. Her mouth drew a stubborn line. We listened
to the sea puzzle its way to the shore.

‘All right, I'm not going to change your minds. I can see that. It's Alma, by the
way. I don't have a phone on at my place. If you want to contact me you need to call
Harry at the shop. I'm there part of the time. If I'm not and there's a problem Harry
can pass it on to me. I still think you should wait. Have you got candles?'

‘No. But we're fine.'

‘Bedding?'

As one we glanced up at the mattress slopped over the roof of the Datsun.

Alma told them, ‘You could do worse, a lot worse, than poke around at Harry's. He's
got enough mattresses and beds and anything else you might need.'

I chimed in with my earlier offer. They should drop around the shop and borrow whatever
they needed. Then I had a thought. The cruise ship visit was less than three days
away. In the back of the shop I had a carton of two hundred test tubes that needed
to be filled with sea water and sand from our best beach so that the cruise ship people
‘could take a little of us home with them'. It's not a big job, I told Dean. But
it might be worth a few dollars if he was interested.

Dean's face twitched. He sucked his cheeks. I saw Violet give him a look. Dean should
have said something by now. But you could see his problem. If he accepted it might
suggest the finances were more parlous than they wished to let on. On the other hand,
if he declined that was money they wouldn't see.

Finally it was left to Violet. She said brightly, ‘Dean'll do it. Dean can do anything.'

Saturday morning. A huge lump of sugar, interior lit and God sent, popped up on the
horizon. Later everyone had a story to tell how they had been at their window and
looked up to see the cruise ship.

I drove into town around nine. Broadway was glistening and black-topped—it almost
looked
prosperous
thanks to the overnight rain. Alma was working on the painting
over
the
shop windows. I didn't pay close attention, just noted with some satisfaction
that
he
was almost finished. On the corner of Railway Avenue by the port the old
NE
Paints
band were passing around sheet music. Groups of schoolchildren were being
herded
in
the direction of the port.

The crowd had to wait for the high tide. At eleven o'clock the harbour tug accelerated
across the bar and headed off to the cruise ship lying at anchor still some distance
offshore. The tug bashed its way into an opposing swell and spray lifted over the
bow. At last we came around to the lee of the liner—the sides of the ship were immense.