The Picture Of Success

A café owner helps a young man realise his potential in this heartwarming short story by Alyson Hilbourne.

Dylan’s graffiti may have caused a lot of trouble, but that didn’t mean his talent should go to waste . . .

IWAS walking along the promenade, listening to the sea rattle the pebbles on the beach, when the sight of our café stopped me in my tracks.

What was that? I shaded my eyes and squinted. It looked different.

As I got closer, I could see someone had spraypainted the front, and one side wall.

Graffiti.

On our café.

Who would do such a thing? The tourists wanted a picture-postcard view; this could destroy our business. I stifled a cry and fumbled for my mobile.

“Kevin? Where are you?” My husband had gone to the cash and carry while I walked to the café.

“At the till,” he said. “Why?”

“You need to get here, quickly. The café’s been vandalised.”

“Vandalised?”

“Graffiti.” I examined the walls more closely. “All over. Like . . . like . . . pictures of houses and the sea and things.”

Now I was looking properly, I could see the pictures weren’t quite as haphazard as I’d thought.

“Call the police,” Kevin said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

He arrived at the same time as a police car. I’d already opened up and put the tables out on the terrace, ready for the customers. If we got any.

“This is good,” the younger of the two policemen said, peering at the walls.

Kevin stared at him.

“It’s a crime.” A vein throbbed at his temple, and his fists were clenched. “It’ll take me days to paint over.”

“Vandalism,” the other policeman agreed. “Any idea of when it was done?”

“It was all fine when we left about seven p.m. last night,” Kevin said, glancing at me. I nodded.

“Unfortunately there’s no CCTV round here,” the younger policeman said. “But we can try the high street cameras.”

He peered at the painting.

“Looks as if it was done by one person. They must have worked fast.”

They must have. I stared at the details: there were waves on the sea, and a smudgy image that could have been a boat. A row of houses, a church and a cross in a square . ..

“It’s here!” I said suddenly. “It’s Normouth! Look, that’s the square with the market cross, and the street down to the sea. Here’s the promenade and the café.”

I leaned back. The town was painted from a funny angle, not quite above, but not eye-level either. The buildings appeared wider at the top, but were quite accurate.

“It’s ruined the café,” Kevin said. “Who’s going to come in with it looking like this? No-one will to want to sit here.”

As if to prove him wrong, a couple with a dog wandered over and looked at the painting.

“Is that Normouth?” the woman asked.

“Yes –” I began.

“It’s vandalism,” Kevin barked.

The woman jumped in surprise.

“It’s very good,” she said. “You should see what gets painted on the walls in our town.”

The policemen finished taking photos and the details they needed from us. No, we didn’t know why anyone would target us.

No, we didn’t have any enemies, as far as we knew.

The couple bought ice-creams and took some photos while Kevin phoned the insurance company to see if we were covered for the damage.

Gradually the morning got going.

We put out the ice-cream boards, and I watched tourists stroll along the promenade and families set themselves up on the beach, wondering if we would get any trade.

But we did.

Business started slowly, but people were drawn to the painted walls. They took photos and posted them online.

“Saw the pictures on Facebook, so we came to have a look. Good, aren’t they? Normouth, right?”

“Cheers the place up, doesn’t it? The artist is talented.”

People chatted as I wrote down orders. I took the requests for fish and chips, soups and sandwiches into the kitchen, and told Kevin what the people were saying. He ground his teeth.

We had a good lunchtime – one of the busiest of the summer. It seemed that people had sought us out.

After lunch, a reporter from the local paper arrived. He took photos with a proper camera.

“You know, there’s been graffiti similar to this elsewhere,” he said. “Reckon it’s someone local.”

News travelled fast, and we had a record weekend. People bought coffees and ice-creams; some stopped for lunch or afternoon tea and snapped photos.

Kevin, meanwhile, bought white paint and a new roller.

“We should keep it,” I said, looking at the pictures. “It’s pulling in customers.”

“Sooner we get it painted, the better,” Kevin muttered.

But we were so busy that there was no time to do it.

“It’ll have to wait until the autumn,” Kevin said one day with a heavy sigh.

* * * *

Almost a week later, the police car rolled up again with our two constables. They opened the back door and a youth reluctantly unfolded himself from the back seat.

He was stick-thin, with jutting-out hips and acne scars across his cheeks. He kept his face down and didn’t make eye contact.

“Is this your handiwork, Dylan?” one of the policemen asked.

Dylan shuffled his feet. Kevin stood with his arms folded, watching.

“Well?”

The youth stuck his chin out. “Yeah.” “You want him to help you repaint it?” the policeman asked.

“No!” Kevin and I answered together, although for different reasons.

The paintings had grown on me, and they brought in trade. I liked the quirky angles and bright colours. From the curl of Kevin’s lip, I could tell he didn’t trust Dylan anywhere near the café again.

A flash of inspiration came from nowhere, and I hooked hold of Dylan’s arm and walked him away from the others. I felt him flinch.

“My husband is furious,” I told him. “But customers are interested. Do you do real paintings, on canvas?”

Dylan shrugged and scuffed at the ground with his trainer.

“Don’t know. Never tried on canvas.”

“Would you like to? If you did some paintings of the town, we’d be happy to hang them in the café. Try to sell them for you.”

His head jerked up and his eyes glinted.

“Really?”

It was my turn to shrug. “We can try. But you’d have to promise: no more painting on the walls.”

* * * *

Why did I make this offer to some vandal we didn’t know? I’d decided he was talented. And I was jealous.

In school my favourite lesson was art. Somewhere in the back of my memory was the smell of turps, glue and paint.

I’d put aside my dream of going to art school when I married Kevin and my help was needed in his family’s café.

Not that I was unhappy with life; I loved working by the sea and watching its changing moods. But Dylan’s paintings had reminded me of my old ambitions.

“I haven’t got any money for canvas or paint,” he said, looking up and meeting my eye.

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask where he got the money for the spraycans, but I decided I didn’t want to know.

“Ah,” I said. “Tell you what. I have some acrylics and a pad of paper at home that I don’t use. I’ll bring them in tomorrow. Come and get them.”

I could feel Kevin and the policemen watching me as Dylan returned to the car.

I knew Kevin wouldn’t approve.

“You’ve done what?” he asked. “He’s a yob. A vandal. He should be locked up, not encouraged.”

“I’ve said I’ll take some paintings to try to sell. And we’re going to put them on the walls.

“We should give him a chance. We might be able to help him.”

Besides, I thought, I liked his crooked view of our town.

“His parents should be doing that,” Kevin muttered.

The following day I found Dylan hovering outside the café.

“Why didn’t you come in?” I asked.

“Not my sort of place, is it?”

I frowned. Dylan shuffled his feet.

“Right. Well, here’s the paper and the paints.”

“Ta. I’ll bring you something tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? Don’t you have anything else to do?” Dylan shook his head. “Finished school. Nothing to do now.”

“What about a job?” “There’s no jobs around here.”

As I watched Dylan wander off, dragging his feet as if reluctant to get where he was going, I wondered where he lived and who looked after him.

The next morning I found four paintings propped up outside the door of the café.

They were miniatures of the pictures on the walls outside, all vibrant colours and peculiar angles. I put them on the shelves. They made the café look jaunty.

The customers liked them, too.

“My school! Is that Mr Matthews?”

“That’s the prom, isn’t it? And the Silverdale Hotel.”

“There’s a seagull on the roof of that house. Must be the one that wakes us up in the mornings.”

We sold two of the paintings very quickly, and I was able to give Dylan £40. He looked at the banknotes as if he’d never

“He’s a yob. A vandal. He should be locked up, not encouraged”

seen money before.

“Bring me some more paintings,” I told him later. “It’s the end of the season now, so I can’t be sure they’ll sell until next summer.

“Winter is quiet. It would be better, too, if they were on canvas.”

He shook his head.

“No money.”

“Where . . .?”

“My mum took it. To get my sister a school uniform.” I frowned.

“But that was your money.”

He shrugged.

“OK. I’ll get you some canvas. I’ll deduct the cost when we sell the pictures. Is there anywhere else you can take them to sell?” Dylan shook his head. “People don’t like me going in the shops. They think I’m going to nick something.”

That explained why he didn’t want to come into the café, and perhaps why he couldn’t get a job.

I didn’t know the children in town, but I was sure some of them came with bad reputations.

Kevin glowered at Dylan from the kitchen – he had made up his mind. He still planned to repaint the café when we weren’t so busy.

“I like the walls this way,” I said.

Kevin shook his head.

“It’s not staying.”

“But what about keeping part of it?

Look, if you left a circle of the town here, between the windows, it would look like a mural. You could paint the rest white but leave this. It will match the pictures inside.”

Kevin cocked his head to one side, trying to imagine what I meant.

“Try,” I said. “Paint the rest and leave this bit. See what it looks like before you brush over it all? Please?”

Kevin wasn’t happy, but he did as I asked. It took several coats of paint to obliterate Dylan’s colourful images, and I was sad to see them go, but I had to admit the café looked fresher.

The circle of Dylan’s painting that was left looked good, however.

Even Kevin had to agree.

“It’s OK, I suppose.

Better than it was anyway.”

* * * *

Winter brought storms and choppy seas.

I sold another of Dylan’s paintings, and he brought me three beautiful canvases. Kevin put some hooks in the walls so we could hang them.

Meanwhile, I bought some watercolours and paper and began painting during quiet moments. My efforts were amateurish, but I found it relaxing.

I looked closely at the colours in the sea and sky and tried to capture the effect of clouds and waves on paper. I put them away quickly when customers appeared.

I was sitting on the terrace with my paints in the watery winter sunlight, trying to depict the curl of a wave, when a big car drew up.

A man in a suit carrying a briefcase got out. He wasn’t our usual sort of customer.

“Mrs Hendricks?” He stuck out a hand. I took it and nodded.

“I’m a solicitor, for Dylan Smith.”

Dylan had a solicitor? It could only mean he was in trouble.

I offered him coffee.

“No. I’m fine, thank you. I’m here because Dylan needs a character reference. He’s been caught spray-painting property, and the owner is pressing charges.”

I sighed. Kevin came out of the kitchen at that moment and overheard the end of the conversation. He snorted.

I shot him a look.

“Oh, dear. I hoped maybe he’d stopped that.”

I could feel a lump of disappointment sitting heavily in my stomach. Had I been stupid to think I could turn Dylan around?

“I don’t know him well, but we’ve sold some of his paintings.”

“He’s been charged with criminal damage. But if we can prove he’s of good character, we may be able to avoid a custodial sentence.”

I swallowed. Dylan in prison? It seemed a huge shame – he really had a talent. I agreed to write a statement for the solicitor, and to attend court if necessary.

“You’re wasting your time,” Kevin said. “He’ll do it again. He’s probably in a gang.”

I shook my head.

“You watch too much TV. He’s bored, maybe, and frustrated. He doesn’t have a job or any money . . .”

Kevin muttered something about wasters and scoundrels and stomped back to the kitchen.

He didn’t want me involved. He was worried that helping Dylan would bring a string of juvenile delinquents to our door.

* * * *

At court I was surprised by the number of people Dylan had speaking for him. His art teacher from school was just as passionate as I was about his potential. It confirmed everything I’d thought.

“I tried to get him to apply to art college, but he didn’t have the grades in other subjects,” the teacher said.

Dylan looked small and uncertain in the dock. He was skinnier, and unhealthily pale. He pleaded guilty, which helped, and the judge was persuaded to be lenient.

Since it was a first offence, Dylan was given community service.

“And I strongly recommend you get yourself to college and expend your artistic energies there, young man,” he was told.

As soon as the trial was over, Dylan was grabbed by a harassed older woman who dragged him away, haranguing him all the while.

****

Almost a year after he first spray-painted our café, Dylan came to visit. He brought me some more paintings, which was just as well as we’d sold the three canvases earlier in the spring.

“Thank you!” he stuttered when I gave him a handful of money. His eyes were wide with astonishment. “I’m starting college in the autumn. I’ve got to do a foundation year, but then I can do art. My art teacher helped me get in.”

He looked around the café. The hooks were empty of his pictures, so I’d hung some of my own efforts on the wall.

My face warmed.

“You need some shadow here,” he said, pointing. “Have you got the paints?”

I got my watercolours and brushes, and Dylan deftly and quickly darkened under my falling wave. The effect was immediate. Instead of looking OK, the painting now moved and the wave rolled in properly.

He looked around at the other pictures.

“You can paint the shapes,” he said. “You need to work on the light and dark.”

I looked at my work again. I could see what he meant.

“I can help if you like.” I blinked in surprise, swallowing the lump that had risen in my throat.

Every Saturday that summer he arrived at the café and sat outside, making little sketches of the town. He brought his little sister, too, who played in the sand.

Customers enjoyed watching him, and began to come specially.

He sold some pieces direct, and while he was there he showed me how to improve my own paintings.

I was pleased he looked healthier, too. He was still skinny, but the acne was less visible and his skin less transparent.

He had a vibrancy about him while he was working that wasn’t there the rest of the time, and it gave him something to talk about.

One day he even opened up enough to tell me about his family.

His mother worked in one of the big hotels, but there was never enough money for paints or paper, so Dylan had stolen spraycans from the local DIY store and practised his art on the walls around town.

Family life was happier now he had some income, and he’d even bought his sister some paints.

One morning I caught Kevin watching Dylan paint from a distance, although he looked away when he saw me.

“Just keeping an eye on him. Making sure he’s not causing trouble,” he growled when I challenged him later.

* * * *

Come September, Dylan started college. He had homework, which he brought to me for help.

He ground his teeth and scratched his head as we worked through maths and English, and as soon as it was done he pulled out his paint palette and relaxed.

I was so glad we managed to help him. A little trust that paid off. And my painting was improving, too.

One day, as I walked along the promenade towards the café, I found myself watching the seagulls skimming across the sea, and the lacy white foam forming on the tops of the waves.

I framed the scene in my mind, and wondered with a smile if I’d have the time to paint.

The End.