Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (Picador 40th) Read online

  When they had eaten everything they died, but we could still smell them. Even when all of the corpses were gone – burnt to cinders. The fetid perfumed smoke of dead mice hung around. It was always there – behind every other smell we reached for.

  — 16 —

  DROUGHT

  We dream of baths. Of that delicious moment when skin goose-pimples and prickles and then slides smooth under a film of water. Hot baths. Cold baths. Mottled river-baths. Baths slow with heady oils and perfumes.

  Doris McKettering tells me that she dreams of the New Radox Bath which, for two shillings and sixpence, oxidises away fat. In her mind’s eye she sees herself rising from the fizzing waters no longer a jolly tugboat but a racing yacht. She keeps the New Radox Bath in her vanity box under the bed along with some Venetian Muscle Oil for sunken tissues and a Celadonna Knit Artificial Silk Nightgown. All on hold, but for rain.

  Iris Pfundt reports a rush on books about the seas and oceans, about polar exploration and the snow-covered lands of Canada.

  The Ensign records the days without rain and runs articles on stock losses and how a local housewife is saving water by boiling potatoes in beer or using wool fat to clean her infants.

  The government sends water trains.

  Folly gives milk every second day. She grubs around for feed and is a Houdini with the gates. She eats two pairs of socks off the line and the bristles from the house broom. If I’m late with her hay she calls for it incessantly and stamps up and down the fence digging a tunnel with her hooves.

  I purchase Robert new cooling, super-absorption asbestos insoles for his boots. Several local farmers have asked him to buy back their super phosphate. Without rain there is no point in spreading it.

  I cut my hair short to save on washing. A short straight bob that grazes my ears. When I look down the hair falls forward into my face. It feels light, like the touch of fingers, and for the first few days, until I get used to it, I imagine Mr Ohno’s cool fingers stroking my forehead.

  Robert hasn’t said anything about my hair. He doesn’t say much at all. Everything has dried up between us.

  ‘Now isn’t that a beauty? Isn’t that the roundest, most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?’ says Ern McKettering.

  Doris rocks backwards on her heels and smoothes her apron over her middle. ‘Ern, don’t be a goose. She was a purely economic decision. She’s a whatsit – an insulator. One good rain and we’ll be right.’

  I smile at Doris. Robert rubs his chin and looks at the ground. Ern can’t drag his gaze from his new water tank. It is the biggest ever seen in the district. And here, on its side, attached to a knot of struts and ropes and pulleys, it is indeed a very beautiful vessel. The galvanised sheen is so fresh and new it glows blue in the morning light. Each corrugation casts a perfect shadow on the dip below so the tank looks somehow alive and undulating.

  Robert takes off his jacket and slowly rolls up his sleeves. He is here to advise on the best spot for the tank stand. Ern ordered the tank after one of Robert’s spiels. It was the insurance spiel about planning and managing drought – about insuring against the lack of rain in the same way ships insure against hitting a whale. ‘We don’t need to insure with money. We need water. If every farmer had a big enough tank to see them through several years – enough even for irrigating – we’d be shored up for as long as it takes.’

  Ern had nodded. It made sense. He told Robert about a book his mother read to him as a boy. A squirrel that played the fiddle all summer instead of collecting nuts. The tiny creature nearly died in a puddle of icy snow until his neighbours took pity on him. No squirrels here, of course. But Robert might be right. Maybe the Australian farmer lacked the collecting and insuring ethic – always expecting his mates to pull him out of a tight spot.

  When Robert heard from Ivers and several other sources that the biggest bloody tank they’d ever seen was waiting in the railyards for collection he rubbed nervously at the deep groove that ran between his nose and mouth. That evening we drove into town and sure enough there it was. A brand spanking new 30,000 gallon tank. And there was McKettering, hands in pockets, hat tipped back, showing it to Don Busby from the bank as if he’d given birth to it.

  Finding the best spot for the tank and planning its installation isn’t an everyday job. Which is why we are here on a Saturday and why the men are wearing their good shirts and I’m to help Doris with the lunch for after.

  Robert does slow laps around the tank. His face is bunched in concentration.

  ‘Right, McKettering.’ He slaps his hands against his thighs. ‘This is an exercise in the science of loads. You will be aware that the ancient Egyptians built pyramids with the most rudimentary of tools. Force and fulcrum equals load. That’s all we need – history, knowledge, and a piece of paper.’

  Ern is delighted to have Robert take control and even happier to be given an instruction. ‘Right, Pettergree. Paper it is.’

  Doris and I follow Ern into the house where he pulls out every drawer in the kitchen before she opens a biscuit tin and hands him a pad of writing paper.

  ‘Housewives’ mouse-proofing tip number one.’ She smiles at me. ‘Tea, Jean lovey?’

  While the men work on the tank Doris boils the kettle and gives me the news from her boys. I notice that she adds the milk to the cups before the tea. I think about my experiment with Robert in the cookery car. At the time I thought it was some sort of metaphor for us – to prove or disprove the success of our partnership. It didn’t occur to me then how important a few cups of liquid could be. Or the significance of the vessel in which the liquid is contained.

  In the face of all this we celebrate the Queen’s birthday with a jazz picnic on Mt Wycheproof. Banjo Andrews and the Wycheproof Footwarmers have returned from playing on the radio in Melbourne. They wear dinner suits at midday. Flora May and her sister Nell sit on wicker chairs at the front playing twin banjo mandolins, their hair blowing in a rare breeze. The whole town is out – adults perched on the odd-shaped boulders, children swarming on the lower slopes. I sit with Elsie Ivers on an old rug of Douglas tartan. She’s hard pressed swatting flies and keeping the boys out of the picnic basket. Lola Sprake from the Commercial comes over for a chat. She makes a point of mentioning that her sister-in-law, Wilma Noy, couldn’t be here as Les has had to sell the car, and gives me a long hard look.

  The wind is rising. Robert is off talking to McKettering. They are watching some young men get ready for a bicycle race down the mountain. I watch as Robert’s hat is swept from his head in a strong gust. The scraggly gums are shedding their leaves like confetti on the crowds. The May sisters raise their heads and stare up into the sky. Their light and twangy music rolls over the sides of the tiny mountain like mist.

  The first drops of rain pass without notice. It is the wind that has caught our attention. I feel a tiny splash hit my hair and settle warmly on my neck. Then more, my head is prickling with it. The older Ivers boys return with little Percy; he is just walking and has never seen rain before. He holds out his wet-smattered hands to his mother in astonishment.

  Everyone rushes for the cars and buggies. Ern and Doris wave cheerfully to us as they pass: ‘I reckon me tank will be full before we get home.’ Ern grins. The dust and rain on his cricket boots has turned them streaky orange.

  People return to their farms and houses and, like us, take every vessel, every pot, pan, basin and bowl outside to be filled. Children dance to the syncopated sound of raindrops hitting enamel. Thunder rolls and cracks overhead, it seems to be threatening a downpour. But then, after less than half an hour, the rain stops. The grey sky rolls away and is replaced by high white cloud – pretty but empty. A cruel false alarm.

  The only rain comes in Mary’s next letter. Flash flooding in Gippsland strands her in hospital for an extra week with her new baby. She says that at least the youngster will feel at home – exiting one watery world to arrive immediately in another.

  A few slow dry afternoons later Les Noy c
omes by on a bicycle. His face is very sunburnt. I offer him a drink. He shakes his head. He asks for Robert, but I’m not sure whereabouts on the farm he is, or what time he’ll be back. Les says goodbye and I assume he’s left when I hear a noise against the side of the house. I open the window and see him stacking some bushels of poor-looking wheat under the eaves. He sees me watching him and points to the wheat.

  ‘Tell him that’s an acre.’ He takes a piece of paper from his pocket, screws it up and throws it on the feeble stack. ‘He can have his bloody equations back too. Fat lot of good they did me.’

  — 17 —

  MR FROGLEY BLOWS IN WITH THE DRIFT

  Fences mark one man’s crop from another but they have no power over the land itself. They can’t contain the sandy soil that blows and blows in vast rolling clouds most afternoons. The soil storms rush through trees and dams and herds of anxious sheep who lie down to sleep thinking it is night. Soil clouds roll right through the house, in at the back, out at the front. There is always soil in our cups when I pour the morning tea.

  Department of Agriculture Journal, Victoria, March 1938

  The Sand Drift Relief Committee reports that claim forms should be obtained from post offices. Claimants are advised to complete both the pink and the blue form and attach them to the yellow form. An entirely separate claim must be made on the green form where a share farmer is party to a share-farming agreement. In order to facilitate payments, and to obviate unnecessary correspondence and delay, all writing must be in ink, and incomplete claim forms will not be accepted.

  The soil is so high against the door of the machinery shed Robert has to dig the tractor free each morning. Will’s kennel has been buried. He now sleeps in the car which is stranded, soil as high as the running boards.

  The government sends a gang of labourers to shovel the soil that has built up in dams and channels and along fence lines. The labourers started at Swan Hill some months ago and are working their way down to us. When the gang arrives at Ivers’ next door, Robert insists on going out to help. I cook Cornish pasties with a knotted pastry top for a handle – just like the miners’ wives, except my concern is for dirt above the ground rather than below it. Robert digs the car free and leaves with a gunnysack on the front seat, Will and the tools on the back.

  Later, as I am brushing the dirt from the windows in my apron dress, Folly starts to bellow. I think Robert must be back and check the shed for the car but it isn’t there. The dust has risen in Folly’s paddock. She is trotting towards the house – she doesn’t usually trot anywhere – but in the distance I can make out a figure moving in front of her. A man is walking across the paddock with Folly close on his heels, pushing his pockets with her nose. He sees me and waves. A cloud of flies rises and disperses and then settles again around his outstretched hand, which he is holding at a strange angle, as if it is injured.

  When he reaches the fence Folly gives up on him and heads back to the shade. The man’s clothes are filthy. His rabbit felt hat has a tide of sweat stains rising from the crown. I stand still on the back step and watch him climb through the fence. I’m unnerved by a strange man appearing so brazenly at the back door but his face, when I can see it more clearly, is reassuringly old and ordinary.

  ‘Your mister said you could help me with this.’ He shakes the fly-covered hand towards me. ‘Frogley. Me name’s Neville Frogley.’ He takes off his hat and smiles. His eyes flicker quickly over my body. ‘Got a touch of the Barcoo rot in me hand and she’s slowing me up a bit.’

  The man is short, but strongly built. His hair is flat and dark, most likely dyed, and he has a beautiful pair of false teeth – small and elegant, as if they were made for a woman. I retie my apron strings firmly and invite him into the kitchen. He holds the back door open leaving his arm outside for a final shake, then quickly pulls it in. I fetch an enamel basin with water and throw in a handful of salt. He lifts his hand onto the kitchen table and I flatten his fingers back gently. The rot – an infection caused when the skin is broken and open to the flies, has eaten a deep channel across his palm – part of the heel of his hand has been worn away. I splash it with salt water and blot it dry with a tea towel. He watches me as I fetch an old sheet and rip it with my teeth.

  ‘Is it hard work?’ I ask him, picking a cotton thread from my tongue.

  ‘Government gangs are as hard as it gets. Not much else around though. And that’s the Mallee for you, eh? Hard work and no reward.’

  The pretty teeth make a slush of his s’s. He looks around the kitchen at my labelled tins and boxes, at my lists of oven temperatures and at my cleaning rota pinned to the wall. He looks through the glass that covers the kitchen table to the menu underneath with the list of meals and ingredients; Monday through Sunday – roast of course, with a fruit or egg pudding depending upon availability. He looks at the long bench under the window – Robert’s notebooks and samples, his microscope, jam jars full of soils and seeds and fertilisers, boxes of slides.

  ‘I recognised your husband. Can’t think from where though. Ink slingers, are ya? You and the mister?’

  ‘Ink slingers?’ I soak the bandages and squeeze the excess brine into a basin.

  ‘Teachers. You know – ink slingers, pen pushers.’

  ‘No. We’re farmers – like everyone else, Mr Frogley.’

  He snorts and jerks his head around. ‘So you’re from around here then?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m from the city, originally.’

  ‘Haven’t seen you there,’ he says.

  ‘In Melbourne?’

  He rolls his eyes. ‘Swan Hill. Swan Hill is the city around here.’

  I fold the bandages in a wad over the wound, packing them in tightly. He grimaces.

  ‘I come to Wyche sometimes. Played footy here way back and I like to catch up with me mates.’

  I nod.

  ‘There were always them small parrots here – red-rumped fellas. We’d come off at half-time and they’d be all over the field scratching about in the divets, pulling up onion grass. Even hung about when we played, they did. Like playing in a storm of feathers it was.’

  He looks across at me. ‘So I suppose you’ve seen ’em then, suppose you see ’em all the time, them parrots?’

  ‘No. I’ve never seen them.’

  He snorts.

  I fetch my sewing basket and thread a needle using the faded blue of his shirt as a backdrop, then I stitch the layers of bandages together. It is a test of accuracy – my head bent close in front of him – to pick up the cloth but not the flesh.

  ‘I think it’s the wheat,’ I say. I don’t know where this thought came from but suddenly it seems somehow true, obvious even, that with more wheat there will be fewer animals and that the small creatures – frogs, skinks, birds – will be the first to go.

  ‘Well you’ve got enough of it,’ the man says. He looks around again. Stares for a minute at the jars of soil and then slaps his good hand on the table.

  ‘That’s it. He’s the soil chappie from the farming train. That’s where I seen him before, down at Avoca. I was on me way back from a fishing trip in Gippy.’

  ‘My husband is an agrostologist – a specialist in soil and crops.’

  The man snorts. ‘He’s a bloody specialist all right. He was a bloody specialist with my money if I remember rightly.’

  I lean in towards the stitching. I’d like to know more but it would be disloyal to Robert to ask.

  A fly bangs angrily against the kitchen window. I can feel the man’s eyes on me – he’s looking through my thin dress with no sleeves and deep V-neck which is meant for a blouse underneath if it wasn’t so hot.

  ‘My eldest looks a bit like you, but she’s got one of them permanent waves. Spends her life looking after it.’

  There is a glass of Folly’s milk still on the table from breakfast. It is thin and silvery – with a cinnamon dusting of soil. He places a finger in it and paints the milk across my cheek. I cringe.

  ‘Good for th
e complexion. That’s what the girls say.’

  I glance up at him – the teeth are somehow repulsive, like my sour aunt’s mouth transplanted into a man’s face. I wipe my cheek with the selvedge from the sheet and tie off the thread.

  He looks a little nervous, like he wishes he hadn’t touched me, but then his face hardens again.

  ‘Well the Mallee’s finished anyway. You’ll all be sold up. You should never have come out here in the first place, missus. It ain’t the place for the likes of you.’

  The wind is rising outside. I can hear soil moving against the side of the house and I’m pleased to be sending him out into it.

  The drift that blew in Neville Frogley, or maybe the drift we battled the days and weeks before or after, made its way into the city. Melbourne – the real city – that is.

  In a lunch shop on Collins Street clerks are perched on a row of stools, their briefcases standing to attention like faithful working dogs, when the sky suddenly starts to darken. Some of the men – the younger types – run out onto the street, the shop bell jingling in their wake. The sky is in turmoil. A great orange cloud moves overhead, skirting the tops of the tallest buildings.

  ‘It’s a tropical storm.’

  ‘It’s an alien invasion.’

  ‘It’s the Russians.’

  ‘It’s a fire at the paint shop.’

  ‘It’s the end of the world.’

  An older clerk polishes off the sandwiches his friends have left behind, chewing the crusts resolutely – if he is to die let it be while eating – and stumbles on the answer. The great orange cloud is soil. The very soil that nurtured the seed that grew the wheat that made the bread he chews upon.

  For three days a freak wind takes whole paddocks of Mallee soil up and away to Melbourne where it rains upon lush green lawns and stains the underclothes of the city folk. They are outraged. There is an increase in nasal catarrh, the discharge a disturbing liquid pink. Housewives write to the newspapers demanding compensation for their ruined washing. One woman claims the soil that came through her window contaminated a summer’s worth of fruit she had cooling in jars.