Paint Your Wife

  It would have been nice to have someone, Violet, say, to pass on that story to. His own near-death, which is what it had sounded like he was hearing—he’d have to stress that, and he’d even felt a shiver of proximity crawl over his skin, like it could be him, that he was on his way out, or could have well been him, only this Dean didn’t have any legs and his last wish had been to see a hill in the window which, as far as last requests go, hardly tips the scales to the extravagant end of things. It wasn’t much to ask for as you anticipated your last breath. Now that he related it back to himself it didn’t sound so convincing, and yet at the time of hearing it had sounded the most reasonable request in the world. Of course you would want to see a hill in your bedside window. What else could you possibly want? He thought a bit longer on it, and decided maybe it needed that old man’s way of telling, his walnut-coloured face and shiny fairground vest.

  He must have been sitting there in the sun a whole hour at least and was thinking he might give up because no one else had come into the gardens under the Anzac gate apart from two skateboarders and an elderly woman with a bag of breadcrumbs who walked the length of the gardens with a flock of sparrows behind her and a funny little smile on her pinched face. As far as Dean could see she didn’t throw a single crumb.

  He stood up to leave—he might as well accept the truth of good and bad fishing days. But as he did so he couldn’t think what else to do that was any better and that it was silly in that case to wind in your line when you had nothing better to do; you might as well hold on and sit tight. A sparrow hopped down off a branch onto the grass and looked up at him. Something about it gave him the uncanny sense that he was being watched. And sure enough when he turned and looked behind, who should he see but the mayor.

  The idea was to approach Dean, talk to him, and persuade him to come and see Violet and her babies. I had left them sitting in the van over at the car park. Violet thought Dean was probably embarrassed by his absences, but once they overcame that initial concern things would quickly improve and she would explain the babysitting proposal that would free her up to make some much needed money.

  Unfortunately Dean saw me and some old game known to the pursuer and the pursued came between us. He stood up from the bench and moved away in a sideways fashion, one eye to his escape route, one eye on me which to tell the truth I found unnecessary and embarrassing. I was there to help, not stick him in irons.

  So I thought I wouldn’t take another step. I stopped still and called out, ‘Dean, all I want is to talk to you.’ But it was like a starter’s pistol shot had gone off in his ear. He ran out through the gates. Stupid of course. Peculiarly mindless and irritating. A conversation would be much to his and Violet’s advantage, not to mention two babies who were entirely blameless in the situation they found themselves. All I wanted to do was help. So when he ran it was an invitation for me to chase him.

  I jogged to the gates. I knew he didn’t have a car. A bike would make it difficult. But looking right and left I saw him turn on foot at the Public Trust building on to Broadway. Actually I hardly saw him at all—it was just a glimpse of his shirt-tail lifting off his black T-shirt. By the time I reached the same corner Dean was another hundred metres up Broadway. Soon he would pass the shop. If I’d had my mobile with me I could have rung Guy. Dean wasn’t running any more but walking—bouncing on his heels like he might be feeling quite good about himself, having given the mayor the slip like that. I called out to him and as he turned around I raised a friendly hand in a gesture of, Wait a moment, Dean, you don’t understand; he replied with a stupid shake of his head and broke into a jog as far as Endeavour where he turned. At this point he might have stopped to think for a moment, Wait a second, this isn’t such a large town that I won’t ever see Harry Bryant ever again. You’d have thought that would cross his mind and some rational acceptance drop into place. But no, Dean had made up his mind. He was the hare and I was the dog. And a hare and a dog know only one thing.

  A cutting runs between the Lyric Theatre up the back of the shops, behind Pre-Loved, and comes out three-quarters of the way up Endeavour, almost opposite the school. I jogged up there with a big happy grin on my face. I was going to surprise Dean with a bit of local knowledge. I couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when I squirted out of a blind spot to nail him.

  I had turned into the dog Dean thought he’d seen.

  He was still climbing Endeavour when he saw me. He stopped, puzzled. Once more I raised the hand of reason. Once more Dean thought differently. This time I ran at him. He went up on his toes. His eyes shifted to all points of the compass. The school, he decided. He ran across the road, reaching the gates ahead of me, banging his knee in the process which must have hurt because he swore out loud which I’m ashamed to say was reason for joy; then near the playground equipment he tripped on something and fell headlong onto the grass; two seconds later I arrived on top of him, forty-four years of living as I prefer to think of my weight upon his thin scrawny frame. He tried wriggling out from under me. I could feel the steam of his face near mine. All of this was so unnecessary. I said, ‘I just want to talk to you, Dean. Now will you cut this shit out.’

  He made one last effort to buck me—he failed of course and it seemed to take everything out of him; his hips fell back and the air expired from him. His shoulders went weak. He closed his eyes and panted for a bit. I thought he could be playing possum you could never be sure with a sneaky individual like Dean. I moved my legs up his chest and pinned his arms with my knees. Away across the fields in the classroom windows I could see rows of tiny faces looking back in our direction—at their mayor; and strange to say, at that moment Ophelia snuck back in to my thoughts with, ‘What kind of mayor did you say you were?’ It was a valid question. What kind of mayor pinned down a runaway like Dean in the playing fields of his own youth where for hours, as it seemed back then, Dougie and I held opponents in fierce headlocks for the duration of the lunch hour, their sweating faces against our own, their pounding chests. I remember the day that news of the death of Felix Sampson, founder of NE Paints, spread across the school playground; everywhere you looked you saw kids unravel themselves from headlocks and stand up and brush the grass off themselves, and as one gaze up at the Sampson villa on the hill. I remember that night, Frank acting all weirdly serious at home, and my mother shooing me out of the kitchen while Frank sat down to compose a letter of commiseration to Felix’s sons, Brian and Aubrey, both shits as it turned out, who eventually wasted no time in selling us to the highest bidder.

  Over at the classroom block a teacher emerged and moved gingerly in our direction. A female teacher. She stopped and went back inside. A few minutes later a teacher with male swagger started over. It was the headmaster, a man I had once shared the mat with at this very same school. Dean turned his head and saw him too and a misguided flush of hope entered his face.

  I called out to him. ‘Hi Phil.’

  ‘Harry! I wondered if that was you.’ He looked briefly behind him and came forward. ‘The children,’ he said rather awkwardly.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I understand. But it’s okay Phil, despite how it must appear. It’s nothing at all. It’s just a little difference to sort out. Dean’s not such a bad bloke, are you, Dean?’

  Dean stared up at me tight-lipped with eyes of hate.

  ‘We’re almost done here, aren’t we, Dean?
’

  ‘In that case,’ Phil said.

  I gave him a nod of encouragement.

  ‘Really, it’s nothing.’

  He looked absently down at Dean. He said to me, ‘Okay, Harry. Regards to Fran.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Same to Meg.’

  Under me Dean stared up with a bewildered face. Phil started on his way and stopped. He turned around.

  ‘I almost forgot.’ He stood there as if inviting me and Dean to guess. His delighted face was beaming. ‘Our Olivia is pregnant.’

  ‘Little Olivia? Holy mackerel, Phil, that makes you a grandparent.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I feel too young.’

  ‘Well don’t you get old on me too fast.’

  ‘I won’t. See you, Harry.’

  After he moved off again I slapped Dean’s face. It sounded louder and actually much worse than it really was. Phil stopped and looked back. Behind his black bifocals his eyes narrowed.

  ‘It’s all right, Phil. It was nothing.’

  Phil nodded, a bit more disapprovingly this time, and went on his way.

  Dean twisted his face this way and that. He spluttered up at me, ‘What did you do that for?’

  ‘I don’t know. It just felt right,’ I said. ‘Didn’t it feel right for you?’

  ‘You’re not the fucking mayor. A fucking mayor doesn’t do that sort of shit.’

  ‘I am the fucking mayor. You’re looking up at the fucking mayor. Get used to it. Now are you ready to talk like a civilised human being or do I have to slap sense into you? What’s it to be, Dean? Give me an indication. Civilised or barbarian? I can do both.’

  ‘The first one,’ he said.

  ‘Good choice.’

  There are days when Frances asks me, ‘How was your day?’ and I hardly know how to begin to answer. This was shaping up as one of those. Later that night I told her—‘You know Phil Anderson from the school, remember his daughter, Olivia? Well she’s pregnant.’ Her answer was much the same as mine, ‘No, she can’t be,’ and just like that in dressing-gown and socked feet she took herself off to thoughts of the future, old age, shortened horizons, and I was spared the need to explain the rest. She would have been appalled to hear that I had spreadeagled myself over Dean Eliot on the local school playing field. She would have clasped a hand over her chest and thanked God or someone lurking in the ceiling that she wasn’t down-town when I had chased after that poor boy Dean. Being mayor is a thankless job, and I would be reminded of that the next morning when I picked up Alma from beside his letter box for him to say offhandedly, ‘I trust you’ve organised the baby-sitter…’ So much of what a mayor does is off limits. There isn’t a grandstand of home support cheering our every move. I know that and accept it. But from time to time it grates just a touch when the same beneficiaries upon seeing you wipe the sweat from your brow fail to ask, ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  At the schoolground I was conscious of the need to provide a morality play for those small faces gaping out their classroom windows. They had seen the mayor astride the youth—a confusing and troubling spectacle. Now they would see him gallantly offer the same youth a hand up to his feet. They would be treated to a quieter view of world peace as the two figures left the schoolgrounds by the gate, and perhaps they noted the way the mayor stepped aside for the other to go through ahead of him.

  On our way along Broadway I stopped at Angie’s Koffee Kafe and bought Dean a soft drink. I was feeling remorseful. I shouldn’t have slapped him. There was no need for it. I didn’t know I was going to until I had done it, enormously satisfying though it was. But Dean hadn’t actually done anything wrong. He hadn’t actually done anything to me—stolen, flung abuse. His only crime had been to run from me. Flight. And that is what had enraged me.

  At Angie’s while he slurped on a straw I explained my vision for the town. Before they shovelled me into the ground in a plot next to Tommy Reece I hoped we could look in the mirror and not run from ourselves for the next boat or plane, or take to the road. I gave the word run a bit more play than it warranted but I wanted Dean to think maybe he was actually to blame for some wrongdoing just in case he was thinking of getting litigious over being slapped. So on I went. People run when they’ve got no reason to run. It becomes a lifelong habit, and then when they reach the end what is there to look back on? A life of running over the surface of the globe and a colossal failure to dig down deeper. Always the next thing and never the ground under your feet. Dean slurped his drink, his eyes tilted up at me, watchful, suspicious.

  ‘Anyway, Dean, I need to ask a favour of you…’ As soon as I said that he straightened up on his side of the table and suddenly he smelt of the feral opportunism I’d experienced out at the cemetery that day I turned up hoping to exchange the beds. By the time I got to the end of the proposal his face had grown in confidence.

  ‘You want me to babysit,’ he said.

  ‘Correct,’ I said. ‘For Violet so she can earn some money. Yes, that’s the idea.’

  ‘Want me?’ he said again, getting weird about it now, looking around as if this was an amusing idea.

  ‘And when you say want you’re talking about something free, right?’

  ‘Correct.’

  Now he was very amused. I hadn’t seen him look this amused before. He shook his head down at the table like I just didn’t get it, did I.

  He said, ‘You want me but you don’t want to pay me. Is that the wonderful proposal?’

  His moral blindness really was staggering. Did Dean really think he should be paid to take care of his own children. By now I couldn’t even bear to look at him. That’s when he said, ‘They’re not my kids.’ Just like that. The element of surprise had swapped places at the table.

  Later, after we had parted with a promise that he would turn up the next day, I felt differently about Dean. I heard about the paint warehouse, and everything that he’d done for Violet, and what he had hoped to achieve by buying the house truck before running out of funds and as a result feeling washed-out and derelict and of no hope or use to Violet whatsoever. He had taken himself off so he wouldn’t be a burden on her. He’d planned to come back as soon as he found a job. Now he had one.

  There was something else. Something he seemed itching to ask.

  ‘You are the mayor, right?’

  ‘That again,’ I said. This time what I thought I’d do was take him back to Pre-Loved and show him my mayoral authority stamp. I keep it at the shop rather than down at Chambers. It’s easier that way since I do my own correspondence.

  In the end I aborted that show-and-tell because the man with the polar bear, moustache, glasses, was there. I could see Guy was talking, explaining with his hands. The other man was shaking his head down at the floor. Between them was the head of the polar bear with its silent roar and raised paws. I was getting used to the idea of Guy being there. I was discovering that I quite liked it.

  ‘Another time, Dean,’ I said. Dean nodded like he thought so.

  About now I remembered poor Violet and her babies. I’d left them in the van back at the car park outside the gardens.

  The same tree with its bronze leaves was in the side
window. The same wedge of sky in the windscreen in front. The world seemed stuck. They seemed stuck. The Eliot babies began to squirm and agitate on their mother’s lap. They began to agitate for something different. She offered them a breast each but they weren’t interested and she knew what they wanted was what she could use too, some change of air, so she laid them on the driver’s seat while she got the pushchair out. The man from Pre-Loved had been gone for much longer than he’d told her to expect. Either Dean was there or he wasn’t. If he wasn’t he should be back by now.

  She was so sure she would see them and so surprised when she pushed the babies under the arch that nothing more than rose heads nodded in the gentle breeze from the direction of the port. The air smelt of fish meal. Even the rose plants seemed to know this. That is how alone in the moment she felt. She smiled, pleased. It would have been an observation to share with Dean but he was nowhere to be seen. She pushed on. There was a bench not far away with a pocket of lawn. The twins could crawl around there.

  Soon a woman by herself wandered beneath the arch. The points of her shoes crossed when she walked and she held her hands behind her back which made her hips appear wider in a womanly sort of way. She looked to be lost in thought. But when she glanced up and saw she had company she smiled and started over.

  She didn’t sit down though. She stood with her arms folded and she smiled down at Jackson and Crystal rolling on their backs over the grass. As the woman shifted her interest she swung her hands down at her side.