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

  What happens next? I can hardly say . . . but the knife and the frame are gone and I am taking off my dress, arms reaching over my head like him, and letting it fall to the floor of the car into the water and honey.

  Then there is this moment – one still moment – when he watches me but does not move and I could almost have felt foolish, but for the drowsy effect of the heat. So I busy my hands with undressing, shoes, stockings, slip, and go to him with my head bowed.

  Then he is touching me. From my fingers up to my shoulders, down my legs and up again, across my breasts, licking the fine hairs that snake down my belly, stopping to part my sex with his tongue.

  His clothes are with mine on the floor and then we are on top of them. He is biting my mouth, dragging and sucking my lips, folding them in his. His tongue is strong and urgent. He grips my breasts hard in his hands, the flesh spilling between his fingers. He is drawing out my nipples in his mouth, then letting them fall, stunned. He is grinding his penis into the flesh of my belly. Hard flesh into soft. He is working at me, pushing at me, his toenails scraping at my calves. It hurts, it is almost pain. He is moaning and keening and straining and then shuddering and suddenly still.

  His chest feels hard and sharp so I push his shoulder and he moves to the side. There is the sound of skin unsticking.

  Then I lie there with him, alight and dripping, until I can take myself away and make it right alone.

  Because of the train we are coming together at a gallop. It’s different for people who meet on open ground: in a house, on the street, in town. They have the chance to skirt around, to evade, to see each other from different angles, to turn a corner and claim more time. When I conspire to meet Robert Pettergree on the Better Farming Train, we must walk towards each other down the aisle. If the train is moving we walk with a wide-legged gait for added balance so it looks like we are wading towards each other, a thick sea pulling about our legs.

  We meet in the soil and cropping wagon where he tends his miniature fields. It is not gardening, it is clearly science. He weighs and measures each additive – water, nitrogenous fertiliser, phosphate, potassic fertiliser – and applies them gravely. We sit together on the narrow bench between the rows of wheat while he records his observations in his notebook. The glass louvers on the sides of the wagon are open and it is often windy and noisy. Even when the train is not moving the wind will push the wheat, teasing it, until it sways forward in a pulse. The sun beats through the glass roof so it is almost like sitting in a real paddock, except that we are moving and there is a large sign above our heads: Super Phosphate is the Manure of Birds from Pacific Ocean Islands.

  I measure the wheat. He grows the very best of varieties: Ghurka, Currawa and Baldmin are smooth and golden bronze. The strong bearded heads of the Nabawa brush my face as I lean to reach its roots. There are native grasses too, clearly poorer in comparison. Wallaby grass, Amphibromus nervosus – and it looks nervous indeed, thin stems all elbowed and bent about. Its heads are tiny silky spikelets, they disintegrate between my fingers leaving traces of skeleton filigree in the air. It would take a day to collect a thimbleful and then a farmer’s boot would surely crush it dead. Robert feeds it no additives; he says it just grows, endlessly, everywhere, wallabies spreading the seeds. I imagine they carry it caught in their fur, shaking it off as they bounce, or perhaps grooming it out of each other like monkeys.

  Robert explains scientific replication to me. ‘These plots are like a bathtub, Jean, and there’s a great ocean out there, just look at it, stretching for miles. Everything I do in here, small-scale, I could do out there. Imagine the poor soil of the Mallee chemically fertilised to produce at its utmost capacity. Imagine wagonloads of super phosphate being transformed into a trainload of wheat. Imagine, Jean, the harsh backblocks of the Mallee becoming the breadbasket of the nation. What greater challenge could a man have?’

  The word bread hovers. I wish I’d spent more time watching Mary. I’ve never been good at baking.

  Robert picks a wheat head and dissects it with his scalpel. It is fleshy and tightly packed. I’m surprised at the moistness of it and the strong smell of earth.

  It seems to me Robert is a transformer in the same way that Mary is, and that it really is a question of scale. Mary takes the flesh of an animal, or grain from the ground, something raw and unappealing, and makes it into an attractive and flavoursome meal. Robert can turn super phosphate into wheat. Robert’s achievements are credited because they are so visible. We gawp at his plants day after day while Mary’s apple pie is consumed in minutes.

  Mary is hungry for information about Robert’s background, but I have little to share. We meet, tend the plants and he talks about science. Often he doesn’t address the talk at me but at the rows of wheat around us. It is hard to keep Mary’s interest.

  ‘We touched. Just a little . . .’

  ‘Did he kiss you, Jeanie? Tell. Tell me everything.’

  ‘No, it was just the train. You know, we just sort of crashed into one another.’

  Mary smiles. ‘I bet he did it on purpose.’

  I’m perplexed. ‘But he said sorry.’

  I can tell that Mary doesn’t wholly approve. That she considers Robert odd – a boffin, a cold fish. He certainly hasn’t used any of the standard techniques of wooing and seduction. We have barely touched at all since the honey car. When the train does throw us together, accidentally, he could steady me, but instead he reaches for the roof of the carriage and I’m left flailing, embarrassed by my outstretched arms.

  We spend three days at Jeparit. The train has been skirting the edge of the Mallee but now we are truly within it. The sky seems suddenly to widen and deepen. The country appears uninhabited until we reach the station where every farmer in the district, every child at the local school, every shopkeeper and every day labourer, is waiting for us. The women have swarmed into the cookery car. They wear their best clothes and Sister Crock is quite overcome with the smell of mothballs. Nothing is white in Jeparit. The water is hard and rusty and they wear its colour – streaky orange. The wheat too suffers from rust. The farmers seek out Robert urgently. They bring bouquets of diseased wheat for him to examine. I have no doubt that he can help them.

  Sorry. He sent me a message, via a stock hand, as I helped Mary to clean her pots; she’d burnt the jam, again. Sorry, Jean, can I see you tonight?

  Even after dark the soil and cropping wagon is full. Anxious farmers file through by lamplight stopping to exclaim at the Nabawa and insist some magic has been worked on it. So we meet, for once, on open ground. Robert holds the fencing wires apart for me and we walk into a paddock next to the train. We walk side by side and I notice the solid set of his neck, the breadth of him.

  The paddock is empty except for a few dried-up thistles. We walk to the middle and stop. The train glows behind us. Robert takes a slim parcel from his coat.

  ‘You might like to read this, Jean.’

  His hands guide mine to the page, where I can just make out his name and the title of the article. Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living. By Robert L. Pettergree, Department of Agriculture.

  ‘I’ve been working on it for some time. I think it makes clear how things could be. What I – ’ he stumbles – ‘what we . . . could do.’

  I turn the journal over in my hands and flick through the neat typewritten pages.

  ‘There is something else too. I sent away for it.’

  He pulls a tiny box covered in dark velvet from his pocket then he quickly takes my shoulders and turns me around.

  ‘Shut your eyes.’

  I can feel the heat of him through my dress. His arms are firm around me and I have a sudden giddy recollection of playing cricket in the orchard with my father. I stood under the strong ledge of his body, our hands laced together around the bat. He smelt of orange peel.

  Robert fumbles with the box and reaches for my hand.

  ‘I’m not sure which finger you wear it on.’

  The metal is
cool. I blink with surprise at the gift on my finger. It is a silver thimble. A perfect silver cap finely etched with a pattern of small wheat heads and notched on the top to push off or receive a needle. A thimble is a practical and appropriate gift for a woman – for a sewing instructress – and I know I will keep it forever.

  The real gift was some papers inside the agricultural journal. I found them later, as I was meant to. Mortgage papers and a map of a farm at Wycheproof in Robert’s hand. The paddocks were neatly drawn with the fences marked in green pencil. The farm was oddly shaped, as one of its long boundaries is a river. He had drawn only one bank of the river with its many twists and bends, but not the other. I guess it would be wide, perhaps with an island in the channel for ducks and swans.

  The paddocks were all named, after people or purpose. Gurney’s, Dump, Horse, Smith’s, Timber, Wether’s, Melville’s, Back, Dam and House. The house paddock is smallish and square but there is no indication of an actual house. I’d looked at the map for some time before I noticed something else in the house paddock: the letter J. It was quite faint and looked to have been written recently, almost as an afterthought.

  Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living

  By Robert L. Pettergree, Agrostologist

  CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY FOR THE ACHIEVEMENT OF MUTUAL BENEFITS.

  THE ONLY TRUE FOUNDATION IS A FACT.

  KEEP UP-TO-DATE.

  AVOID MAWKISH CONSIDERATION OF HISTORY AND RELIGION.

  KEEP THE MIND FLEXIBLE THROUGH THE DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING OF NEW HYPOTHESES.

  CULTIVATE THE COMPANY OF WISER MEN – MEN WHO ARE STICKERS – NOT SHIRKERS.

  DISSEMINATE. THE LABOURS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF MEN OF SCIENCE MUST BECOME THE PERMANENT POSSESSION OF MANY.

  BRING SCIENCE INTO THE HOME.

  Victorian Department of Agriculture Journal, May 1934

  This short and surprising article – really just a list – appears on page 33 of the Agriculture Journal. Before it is a technical paper on the use of copper sulphate by potato farmers and after it several pages of entomological drawings. It was unexpected, unanticipated. I didn’t know what to make of it so I sought advice.

  What Sister Crock said about Robert’s article: ‘A man with a desire for exactitude is a man worth noting.’ She said this in a kindly way – over the top of her glasses. Sister Crock is busy preparing her own articles for the Agriculture Journal on the model modern baby. She argues that modern women, and modern rural women in particular, are deficient in their natural capacity for their domestic responsibilities, including motherhood. Sister Crock believes that the modern human mother lacks the strength of instinct to be found in animals. She is producing three related articles: Mother’s duty to her baby, Milk and the Baby, and Errors of Maternity.

  What Mary Maloney said about Robert’s article: ‘Look, Jean, what they believe in is important – I wouldn’t choose a man who has no pride in his work, but perhaps in the end it doesn’t matter so much. Do you want to live with someone who thinks they know the answers, or spend your life trying to find them out together? Then there’s love – and there’s dancing. Now, have you ever seen him dance?’

  What the superintendent said about Robert’s article: ‘Mr Pettergree is a scientist of essentially sound thinking but someone liable to get a little carried away. In future I would like all articles submitted to the Agriculture Journal to be approved by me.’

  What Mr Baker said about Robert’s article, while eating a bacon sandwich: ‘Mawkish? Religion mawkish? Piffle. Did you see the article on diets for the lactating sow? Now that’s worth a read, Miss Finnegan.’

  What Mr Plattfuss said about Robert’s article while spit-polishing his loudhailer: ‘Rules like that are all right for a plant man. In my mind that’s the difference between a plant man and an animal man. An animal man isn’t going to come up with concrete rules for living and doing because there’s no point. With animals everything’s always changing. An animal man is looking after something with a heart inside of it and you can’t go living by rules when there’s a heart involved.’

  I wondered what Mr Ohno would make of Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living. And whether he has some sort of motto or list of his own.

  When I spread my sewing out on my bunk each evening there is always one section that catches my eye. One small section where everything is somehow concentrated and clear. When I read Robert’s article it is the second rule that stands out for me. THE ONLY TRUE FOUNDATION IS A FACT. It is a fact that I have lain naked with Robert Pettergree on the floor of the honey car. It is a fact that I see him lifting his arms and taking off his shirt over and over again in my mind – that I go to sleep at night both soothed and excited by the slow lifting of white cotton and his body being revealed beneath it. These private facts – that I don’t share, even with Mary – are my foundation.

  — 6 —

  THREE INCIDENTS AT JEPARIT

  Jeparit is memorable for other reasons too. The first is Mr Ohno’s birthday. Mary bakes a pineapple upside down cake for Mr Ohno and goes to collect him from poultry. We wait in the sitting car. Everyone is there, even Robert. A few minutes pass then Mary slides the door open and encourages Mr Ohno through. He takes his place in front of the cake on the superintendent’s desk and we sing happy birthday. Mary hands Mr Ohno the knife and he takes it with a bow, but he doesn’t cut the cake. He clears his throat and sings his own version of happy birthday, in a high, serious wail. We stand politely to attention except for Mr Kit Collins, who is stifling a laugh. As soon as the song is over we clap. Mr Ohno bows again but still he does not cut the cake. He stands quite still holding the knife and seems overcome with emotion.

  ‘Anyone for harikari?’ Mr Talbot whispers, but it is heard by all.

  Mr Ohno looks confused. So I step forward, take his hand in mine and help him to mark out the slices.

  ‘Who’s for cake?’

  There is one slice remaining at the end. Robert’s slice. He left abruptly, just after I took Mr Ohno’s hand.

  Jeparit is also the place where Mr Talbot from sheep gets into trouble. The superintendent has received a letter of complaint about one of Mr Talbot’s herd management and husbandry lecturettes. The writer, a Mr Frank Edgcumbe, sheep farmer from Cope Cope, considers Mr Talbot’s comparisons between the undesirability of breeding between cretins and breeding between inferior sheep distasteful and offensive.

  Mr Talbot is deeply hurt. His quiet manner is even more subdued. We are all summoned to the sitting car to ‘clear up’ the matter. I sit wedged between Robert and Sister Crock on one of the long velvet banquettes while Mr Talbot paces the aisle giving us an abridged version of his spiel. He coughs nervously when he reaches the contentious bit. Robert shifts on the seat next to me. Robert thinks this is a circus – that a farmer’s complaints to a scientist are not worth the time of day, that the superintendent should be allowing the train’s experts to spend time on research, not just demonstration. Robert’s thigh sits alongside mine. I can feel his heat seeping through the cloth of his trousers, through my dress and stockings, deep into my skin. My face is flushed. I look down. It is perplexing that my mind can conjure such intimate pictures of Robert’s body while my eyes are firmly fixed on Sister Crock’s ankles.

  Mr Talbot continues: ‘The rational management of breeding amongst stock can be quite simply compared to the rational management of human sexual behaviour leading to an improved and efficient human race. A healthy and vigorous sexual union, and I of course mean here licit sex – taking place in marriage, is as beneficial to the farm family and the nation as the healthy and appropriate union of well-chosen stock in the joining paddock.

  ‘The opposite, the need to control reproduction between the illicit or inappropriate, is just as true. Let me quote from the “Adelaide Mail”: “Restraint upon propagation of the species by individuals who are afflicted by serious physical or mental infirmities is required. The recognition by persons so afflicted of the necessity for restraint is
, we need hardly say, the highest form of patriotism.”

  ‘So, my dear friends and patriots, I conclude by saying, don’t put your prize ram with the old ewes from up the back. What you’ll get out of it won’t take you anywhere. Think about breeding. Think about the traits and characteristics you want to promote and plan your breeding programs with them in mind.’

  It doesn’t seem appropriate to clap. Although I have noticed some farmers do clap after a lecturette and the women often clap when Mary pulls something high and spicy from the oven.

  Mr Talbot ventures a smile at his audience, but the superintendent rises from his desk and quickly removes it.

  ‘What were you thinking of, Mr Talbot, to come up with such notions? Are these your ideas or someone else’s?’

  Mr Talbot looks about blankly. His gaze settles on Robert and he seems to gain a little focus.

  ‘The thing is, Superintendent, that country people don’t understand metaphor and so . . .’

  The superintendent interrupts. He says the thing is that the Edgcumbes have a nineteen-year-old cretinous son whose head, instead of being filled with brains, leaks watery fluid. The son has not left the house since birth as he wears a turban of bedsheets to protect his soft, damp noggin. According to the Edgcumbes he is a fine vegetable sculptor and an able draughts player and they invite Mr Talbot, or in fact any of the lecturers from the Better Farming Train, to visit and play a game with him sometime.

  The superintendent reminds us all of the influence that we have within the districts that we visit and asks us to revisit our lectures. He suggests we ask ourselves regularly, ‘Am I following the correct line?’ and, ‘Am I providing the best possible example?’ He shares his favourite aphorism. ‘A thoroughbred doesn’t need much whipping. He does his best – do you?’