Free Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones Page B

was in order she’d run down the hill tracks, cornering like a vehicle, her
hips moving like swing doors. But on days when it was too rough or windy she would
raise her elbows and let the breeze fan her; and maybe she’d turn and look the other
way, follow the ridge up to Alma’s cottage on the hill. Maybe then she’d see a movement
beneath the guttering of the rat catcher’s cottage, and she would smile at the thought
that Alma had been watching.

4
    After that first sitting my mother was naturally curious to discover what Alma had
found in her that she could not see for herself in the mirror. At first he was evasive
and put her off. He made up excuses why now wasn’t the right time. He glanced at
his watch. He tried to change the subject. My mother wouldn’t give up.
    ‘It’s just a drawing Alma, no one will go to jail.’
    Eventually he relented, unhappily it has to be said, and she saw what he had been
trying to hold back from her, what she now saw for herself, some strange inclination
on her part to present herself to the world as an eager-to-please shop assistant.
It wasn’t her—so how did that look get there. Where did that person, that stiff-looking
shop assistant come from? It wasn’t how she thought of herself. But Alma must have
seen something to come up with that. And maybe he wasn’t entirely wrong. But it wasn’t
all of her either—not the whole story. Not the representative self she wished to
be seen out in the world.
    The next time she met him at the door and asked where he wanted her, he looked down
at the porch, used his foot to shift an old boot to one side, and said, ‘Here’s good.’
    It was to become a favourite pose that turned up in a number of paintings. My mother
leans against the door jamb; there’s the glare of her bare legs and feet, the lazy
angle of her head. Thoughts to the soft pillowing sea. The eager-to-please shop assistant
had been sent packing.
    It was progress. And it was progress that prised her from the house, a bit at a time,
until one afternoon after weeks of wondering if she should ask first or just go without
invitation, she walked up Alma’s dirt hill road. In quick time the surrounding farmland
revealed itself, straw coloured, the black flecks of telegraph poles; and on the far
edge of everything stood the ranges, in shadow at this time of the day, but their
jaws dropped open in the February heat. At the top of the drive where it levelled
out to a half-kept lawn and the start of Alma’s porch she was alarmed at how much
of her life was on show—the red roof of the farmhouse, the washing line; she could
even see scored into the paddock the track she took each day to the top of the hill.
    She knocked timidly on the door and Alma called out, ‘Door’s open!’ which made her
wonder if he’d seen her lurking around his letter box trying to force herself up
the hill. She pushed on the door. Alma was standing at a bench filling a kettle. He
didn’t seem at all surprised to see her. Pleased though, his mouth buttoned down,
some pleasure seeping out despite his efforts, but hardly surprised. ‘Just in time
for some chai,’ he said.
    While he busied himself with that task she looked around. The rat catcher’s cottage
was basic. One large room crowded with drawings and canvases, none of them framed.
All the work was pinned to a back wall. There was a door to the bedroom which Alma
kicked shut on his way to closing the door behind her. A coal range stood at one
end, a potbelly at the other; a pile of chopped wood climbed the end wall.
    My mother passed along the wall with the drawings. She picked out faces, identified
names. Victoria—grimly captive. Hilary’s face crammed with smiles; knees pressed
together, like a schoolgirl about to sit a piano exam. Some of the women had settled
for the chaste expression of someone asleep. Sadness was another subject. In two
or three cases the eyes stirred with times long gone, opportunities once theirs for
the taking; or