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

  When Mary talks mastitis my chest buzzes. It is a surging feeling around my nipples. To quiet it I must lay my hands upon my breasts and think cool thoughts.

  I notice, whilst Mary talks mastitis with the men in the sitting car, her own hand is flat upon her bodice, not cupping a breast but skirting her throat and down a little where the flesh softens and parts into two.

  Mary says I will find love in the sitting car but I am not looking for it. I sit and sew while Mary and the men talk and Sister Crock calculates her statistics. Sewing looks industrious and involving but I can drill stitches while barely looking at my fingers. I sit and sew and listen. I am listening for something important, some piece of knowledge that will take hold of me, that will give me the same certainty of purpose as the men I sit amongst.

  I know I won’t find knowledge in the women’s car. I’m not fooled by Sister Crock’s methods – we are merely playing at science, using its language to dress up the drudgery of women’s lives. There was no certainty in the lives of the women who gathered in my aunt’s front room for fittings and alterations and tea and endless stories of shameful births, wayward children and disappointment. Women’s talk.

  Progress is the word that dips and slides through the men’s discussions in the sitting car. Men bring progress. They are so sure of progress they measure it constantly – number of acres cleared in a day, bushels of hay cut, pints of milk produced, acres of seed sown, tons of firewood cut. Men measure the activity of progress ‘per man, per day’. Four acres of Mallee scrub can be cleared per man, per day. Although this seems to deny something that even I can see – that all men are different, that some light the way with their ideas and others are merely followers.

  Take Mr Baker, sitting next to me on the banquette, with his thick orange whiskers sprouting at unruly angles. Mr Baker wants only to speak of pigs. He has on board some prime specimens, which he reminds us of often. His three breeds of pigs, pure Berkshire, middle Yorkshire and large Yorkshire are the ‘triumvirate of future quality’. He likes to muse on the numerous crossings and uncrossings that can be achieved between the three breeds and predict what might be produced.

  Mr Talbot, on my other side, talks sheep diseases. He is a little shy. Mary says this is not unusual for a sheep man. Mr Talbot has a long, thin face and soulful eyes. Sometimes I help him colour in his slides of the tissue diseases of sheep. He has a child’s pencil case with a beautiful set of coloured pencils. I am to use natural colours, he says, lots of reds and pinks. Then I label the drawings in black ink and draw arrows to features of interest. I have coloured tuberculosis, actinomycosis, contagious pleuropneumonia, liver fluke and hydatids.

  Then there’s the superintendent, sitting stiffly at his desk drafting telegrams to the agriculture minister describing our progress. Sometimes he will give us all an ‘impromptu lecturette’ on our roles as propagandists and the importance of agricultural education in the development of a truly modern society. Most of us have been on the train for several tours – a year or more – but we still listen politely.

  Some of the men ask about my sewing. Mr Baker breaks off from pig talk and points at my lap.

  ‘And what useful item are you making there, Miss Finnegan?’

  I hold the lace netting out to him.

  ‘Ah, a veil.’ His whiskers dip and bob as he speaks. ‘Do you have a sister getting married?’

  ‘I have no sisters.’

  Mary covers the marriage terrain for me as we lie on our bunks. It amuses her so I feign interest. Sister Crock is already snoring loudly in the next compartment. Mary starts with the older, portly men and works down to the more likely. Many of them are damaged, either by the war or by work. Several have lost fingers. Mr Plattfuss has a glass eye. Mr Baker has a glass eye and an ugly dragging scar across his cheek where a sharp fencing wire has danced upon him. All of the older men, that is older than thirty, have sun-roughened skin and thinning hair. Mr Pettergree, the new soil and cropping expert, seems to be some sort of scientific recluse. He never comes to the sitting car and we have only seen him from a distance.

  ‘And what think you of the Asiatic?’ Mary asks me with mock formality.

  I laugh, but the truth is I think of Mr Ohno a great deal. I imagine him standing in the poultry car taking off his jacket. He hands it to me so I can study its strange seams and creases. Then I can’t help but lift it to my face.

  Only one of the men is beautiful – Mr Kit Collins from horticulture. Mr Kit Collins has large green eyes and curly hair. He is an expert on the pruning and irrigation of fruit trees. On rest days when the men play cricket in a paddock next to the train, Mr Kit Collins always switches the ball for an orange, and the batsman always pretends he hasn’t noticed until after the orange has been hit and flies mushily through the air.

  — 2 —

  FRANK FINNEGAN’S FRUIT

  1915

  My dad gave me an orange every day. Each peeling was an exploration – they were all different – on the outside and on the inside too. My dad was an orchardist – Frank Finnegan’s Fruit. He smelt of soil and oranges just on the turn. His cheeks were gravelly and bits of pith filled out the gaps between his teeth. He sent me to school at four to get me out from under him. I walked down the hill and across the creek, the orange rolling backwards and forwards in my metal case. We had a cat called Abe who walked nearly all of the way with me but he got shy near the road and slunk back home even though I tried to call him across or lead him with a bit of torn-up sandwich.

  I had sticky fingers. The books always got dirty. I spilled the ink. My white embroidery square was crumpled and smeary. It said Jean Finneg – I wasn’t able to finish it. My hair had knots, but only at the back. First thing each morning we did physical jerks outside by the flagpole. My bonnet flopped in my eyes. I couldn’t stand on one leg or stretch up tall like a giraffe without wobbling.

  My mother died before my eyes had barely opened and because of this people liked to touch me and give me things. Most weeks the teacher gave me something from her pocket – a hair slide, a picture of the Baby Jesus all fat and white like a grub, or a piece of chocolate. A special low voice went with the giving and some patting of my arm or head. I thought that this was like me with Abe the cat, so I tried to stay still for her and look happy to be petted.

  I liked the singing and when the teacher read us a story. I didn’t like all the numbers dancing around getting taken in or taken away by the other numbers. I didn’t like the spelling words that stayed on the blackboard all week until the test on Friday: cho-rus, shrap-nel, corps, kha-ki.

  I didn’t like it when the teacher split us into boys and girls and we had special talks. Our talks were about being modest and having babies. The teacher showed us a map of Australia and drew a big rectangle inside the middle of it with a ruler.

  ‘See this – all empty. And whose job is it to fill up the empty continent with lovely healthy babies? It’s your job, girls. What an honour. What a privilege . . .’

  Then we had to write an essay about duty, but because I was the youngest I was allowed to draw a picture. I drew the middle of Australia filled up with Baby Jesuses. Baby Jesuses covering all of the paddocks of all the farms, Baby Jesuses top-to-toeing it across the desert and one Baby Jesus high up on Ayers Rock with a smiling dingo for company.

  The boys’ talks were about the war. The war was in England, the mother country to our country, but the fighting was happening in other places, like France and Turkey.

  After school I walked back up the hill and looked for Dad in the sheds. Often he was down at the creek fixing the pump so I went paddling and made dams until it was time for tea. It was my job to butter the bread. Then Dad did the orders or read some books. He was on a quest for knowledge and I was not to disturb him during the quest. Then Abe the cat played the piano. It was all broken down and the white keys were a bit yellow where I had put butter on them to encourage him, but some of the black keys still worked. Abe walked backwards and forwards making
his jumbly music. He was four octaves long. He had three tabby legs and one white leg. I liked to watch the patterns of them as they struck the keys.

  On Saturdays we went on deliveries right into Melbourne. On the way home we visited my aunty in Hawthorn. She made us tea but we had to sit outside because we were dirty from the cart. On Sundays I had a bath with Dad and we washed our clothes and went walking. We walked every track in the district. Sometimes we followed the creek up into the bush. Once I saw three lyrebirds on the same day but they might have been the same one.

  My cat Abe went missing on a school day. Dad said he’d probably gone courting but we looked for him in the sheds and in the orchard and under the fruit crates. I walked to school on my own. For physical jerks we walked along a balance beam ‘graceful like a cheetah’. I felt sick. I felt like I’d swallowed a stone and whenever I moved it scraped at my neck.

  I was peeling my orange at lunchtime when I saw Dad talking to the teacher in the doorway to the classroom. His nose was all sunburnt and his ears stuck out like the handles on a toby jug. The teacher motioned me over and I heard Dad ask if it was all right for me to come home now because he had a lot on and a bit of help from the nipper wouldn’t go astray. The teacher gave him her soft smile and nodded. I got a piggyback up the hill. My hands were orange juice sticky on Dad’s shirt but he didn’t mind.

  Abe was in an apple box on the kitchen table. He was all long and flat – all of him was there but none of him was there. His fur stood up rough and wouldn’t sit flat even when I stroked it. His mouth was open a little and the pale pink of his tongue made me gulp. Dad parted the fur on his one white leg to show me the puncture wound from the snake’s fangs – two holes an inch apart.

  Dad got the shovel and we searched around the sheds and down by the creek. I went along with it but I didn’t really want to find the snake. I was frightened, but mainly I didn’t want to see the killing.

  I thought I saw it – a branch wrapped in muscle flowing over the concrete apron under the pump, but I didn’t call out. Instead I complained of being thirsty, of a pain in my eyeball, of needing to pee, so Dad would come away.

  We dug a grave for Abe in the orchard.

  ‘All clay, this soil,’ Dad said. I picked some dandelion heads and put them in the hole then we went back to get Abe. Dad picked up the box and turned for the kitchen door but stopped suddenly in his tracks.

  ‘Jesus Christ. Jesus H. Christ. He blinked. He bloody blinked.’

  He put the box down on the kitchen table and I saw it too. A slow, perfect blink. We felt for his heartbeat. There was a faint thud like rocks moving about underwater. Dad was grinning so wide I could see his big yellow side teeth. He ruffled my hair, he picked me up and we did a jig around the kitchen. ‘Talk about nine lives,’ he said. ‘Talk about nine bloody lives, eh?’ Then he walked to town to see Dr Smurthwaite and get some advice.

  Abe didn’t move. He hardly breathed – just the occasional blink. I stroked his back until it warmed up then I did the piano for him.

  The book on par-al-y-sis said we had to manage the patient’s essential functions and wait for the brainstorm to subside. We trickled sugar-water and milk down Abe’s throat. We massaged his limbs and bent them backwards and forwards as if he was walking. We breathed into his fetid mouth to expand his lungs. Dad carried him outside and lay him on the dirt. He felt around his tummy and squeezed different bits until some pee trickled out. He was limp. He didn’t even purr, but he was still alive in the morning.

  The first week after the bite when I walked home from school I thought Abe would be either dead or better, but he just lay in the box. We did the essential functions in the morning and the evening. I drew pictures and propped them up in his box. I drew our house, some orange trees, a fish in the creek, a mouse, a family of mice, the Australian continent covered in mice. Two weeks passed, then two months. I grew an inch. I finished the Second Schools Reader but there were no copies of the Third Reader in the cupboard.

  We were being good at the war – especially on the Gallipoli Peninsula. At school we copied out a notice for our mothers asking them to donate sheets, pillow-cases, towels, white shirts or frocks for the war. I got to tidy the bookshelf instead. Then we called out ideas and the teacher wrote a list on the board.

  How we can earn money for the State School’s Patriotic Fund:

  Collect eggs.

  Shift fence posts.

  Catch leeches for the hospital.

  Make and sell jam.

  Sell empty bottles.

  Catch frogs for the University.

  Donate birthday money.

  Catch difficult horses.

  Donate money for sweets.

  Hazel Meaks said she was going to sell her pet lamb to the butcher and everyone clapped, then she cried.

  I caught three frogs. I pretended I was sick to avoid eating lamb. When Dad opened my school tin to put the orange in he asked what the frogs were for.

  ‘The war.’

  He nodded. ‘Good in the trenches, no doubt.’

  Then one day I walked up the hill and Abe was sitting on the gatepost washing himself as if he had never been sick. I hadn’t even been thinking about him – I’d been thinking about subtraction and how you were meant to know when to borrow a small number from a bigger number and then to pay it back again. I followed Abe all afternoon. He went to the orchard and the packing sheds and under the house. He went to the stables and fell asleep in the straw. Dad made us pancakes to celebrate but he put orange juice in the mixture and it curdled.

  I asked my aunty for scraps of material to take to school and hand in for the war. My aunty made dresses for ladies. I asked her for white scraps or cream scraps so they could be used for bandages.

  The first time I saw Dad in green I didn’t really see him. The green of his uniform was the same green as the orange trees, but the sleeves were too short so I saw his long wrists and big hands. I saw the sharp bones that stuck out at the sides of his wrists. Sometimes I rubbed these bones on his wrists when I couldn’t sleep.

  The next time we went to my aunty’s she let us into the house. She showed me how she had put up a curtain across part of her sewing room to make another little room. She said it was nice. She said it was quite roomy even.

  I couldn’t take Abe with me to my aunty’s because of the ladies that came around. Anyway the woken-up Abe was different. He didn’t play the piano anymore, he didn’t like to be picked up, he had gotten very thin and sometimes when I watched his sinewy back move it made me shudder. He hissed at Dad.

  I went to a new school near my aunt’s house. At this school the boys made sandbags and the girls knitted socks. My dad wrote first from the training camp at Broadmeadows where he complained about the badly draining soils, then from France. My dad died in the Battle of Fromelles. In his last letter he said it was a beaut place with lots of churches all ringing out with the sound of bells.

  — 3 —

  THE FOLLY COW

  When I sew the veil in the sitting car it is my protector. The men leave me to it. I am the ‘dark and serious type’ with my head bent low over the cloth. ‘Not a natural smiler,’ my aunt said. The veil isn’t even a veil, just a scrap of curtain netting from the window near my bed. I cut it without taking the rail down. It left the netting a good foot short of the windowsill, but my aunt didn’t notice. Or perhaps she noticed after I’d left. I didn’t take much else. Just a scrap from my old life to take into the new.

  At first I thought I would just fill in the holes. But it became something else. Forms took shape that I hadn’t planned, lines and whirls darted through the netting leaving bright trails of colour. Stitches rose and stretched and fell in jagged rays from their source.

  When I sew the veil in public I keep it tightly tucked into my lap, busy on one small area. Later, when I sit on my bunk and inspect the work I am often amazed. It seems I have stitched the very shape of the conversation in the sitting car. The heat of it, the dips and lulls, th
e opinions and arguments, the conflict between the railway’s men and the agriculture men, it is all there in wandering thread.

  In my lecturettes I say that sewing is about completing the circle. I draw a circle on my blackboard and then turn to them and say, ‘You see that’s all a stitch is, any stitch, it’s just a circle. Around and around it goes. A well-made stitch doesn’t reveal where it was started or how it was tied off, it just is.’

  I teach them sheeting, kitchen linen, blouses, the V-neck, the drop-waist, riding pants, men’s shirting. I am qualified to teach infant garments but Sister Crock has told me firmly that she will speak on all aspects of baby care and management. I have been asked to teach work garments, practical garments, and this is what I do, but the questions are always about other things.

  The women will listen with great patience to my lecturette and then ask me about something entirely different. They ask me about Chinese collars and pleats and self-knotting scarves – impractical garments. And at every siding there is always one woman who will wait until everyone has left to shyly show me her embroidery. Lavender is very popular. I admire tea cloths shiny with sickly purple and mint green.

  I suggest they sew things they see around them. Perhaps wheat heads or gum tree blossom? I produce samplers from my college days: the whirring spokes of a bicycle wheel, a fatly coiled tiger snake, a cloth stitched with the word for love in ten different languages. The women look with interest and surprise. I do not tell of the consternation these pieces caused the college embroidery instructor. Now I am the teacher.

  ‘What about your husband?’ I say. ‘Perhaps you can capture his image, a little each evening when he comes in.’ Sometimes they are barely more than schoolgirls, they giggle and blush. I admire the women that I teach. They are not like me in the sitting car, a shy spectator. They are truly within their lives, working in partnership with their husbands for the good of each other.