Paint Your Wife

Paint Your Wife Read Free

Book: Paint Your Wife Read Free
Author: Lloyd Jones
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wetsuit. I had surf shorts and a woollen jersey with sawn-off arms. In the
chilly air we stood about hugging ourselves.
    ‘I have news for you, boys. You have to actually go out to where the crays are. They
don’t come to you. Any objections. Harry?’
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘Doug? How about you, son?’
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘You sure? You don’t look sure.’
    ‘I’m sure.’
    ‘What about you Harry? You too, sunshine? You haven’t said much. We all sure about
this thing?’
    Down on the wet shingle there were last-minute instructions. Crays don’t have ears
but my father was saying that it helps to think that they do and that you want to
pick them up just behind the ears. ‘Just pick it up as you would a hairbrush off
a dresser table.’ We watched him tighten his huge lead belt. ‘One last thing. This
one is for you, Douglas. What colour is a cray underwater?’
    ‘Orange.’
    ‘Harry?’
    ‘Red?’
    ‘You’re both wrong. A cray is kelp-coloured. Think of yourselves looking for an old
black sock under your bed. You ought to know about that, Harry.’
    The information was confusing: socks, hairbrushes, crustaceans with ears. ‘Okay,’
he said, wading forward in his flippers. ‘Let’s go and rob a bank.’
    He was a strongly built man. He wore an armless steamer suit and I remember watching
the layers of shoulder hair lift in the cold breeze off the sea. We watched him wade
into the shore break and sink amphibiously into the icy water—there was no hesitation—then
we followed him, kicking in a line for the reef about sixty metres out from the beach.
Halfway there I lifted my head out of the water to look for Dougie—sky and water
filled my mask, and there in the distance I saw Dougie climb out of the tide. I remember
wishing I could be there too but knowing this was impossible I kicked on to catch
up to my father. Without him I would not be out this far.
    Inside the reef, the sea shifted and moved us around as easily as if we were kelp.
We were in three metres of water and by now I’d started looking for hairbrushes.
My father dived down and near the bottom rolled on to his back to get my attention.
He was pointing to something—a hairbrush—stuck in a crevice. He wanted me to dive
down for it. Between the surface and the depths were shifting pillars of light and
sea dust. I could also feel currents of trust and blind faith. I was going to have
to dive down because that was what was required. The pressure in my ears increased
until they were really hurting. The change in temperature was dramatic. I remember
wanting to surface, to get back up to the world of light for air, when my father
grabbed hold of my wrist and guided me down deeper to that crevice. Finally he released
his grip and dropped his hand on the cray and lifted it from its hiding place. Together
we bulleted to the surface, my father with the cray in his outstretched hand so
that it was first to burst from the sea into the white light of day. Frank blew the
water out of his snorkel and dropped the cray into a sack. I waited until he dived
again and taking my chance I swam like hell back to the beach.
    It’s not much of a memory, but then you can’t pick the memories you’d like to be
representative of yourself. When I’m dead, I’d like to think that Adrian’s memory
of me will be of the time I carried him home wrapped in my raincoat in driving rain
after he sprained his ankle on a tramp, or of the time I took him out to an expensive
London restaurant for veal marsala, rather than a memory of looking up across that
crowded nightclub to see his old man with a lean on list his points with an outstretched
finger to an amused-looking black woman.
    My memories are of the crays we ate on the beach around a fire of crackling driftwood,
the drive home, and later the strained silence of the house. And of that night, curled
up in bed, with my father rocking in the door of my bedroom, caught between wanting
to be elsewhere and needing to venture forward,

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