Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (Picador 40th) Page 5

  Mr G.R. (George Reid) Talbot is an acknowledged expert in sheep breeding. His Talbot Scale of Sheep Semen has been adopted across Australia.

  Talbot Semen Scale

  Classification

  Approx no. of sperm in millions per cc

  Thick-creamy

  More than 3000 million sperm per cc

  Creamy

  2000–3000

  Milky

  500–2000

  Cloudy

  Less than 500

  Clear

  Insignificant

  Mr Talbot developed his useful scale after testing the semen of over 1800 rams. Talbot’s major scientific breakthrough was in sperm collection. He constructed a life-like artificial ewe vagina and developed considerable skill in teaching his test rams to serve it.

  On the outskirts of Jeparit I have my first preparation for married life. Robert teaches me the Principles of Experimentation. It is a psycho-physical experiment. We have the cookery car to ourselves – Sister Crock is preparing lesson plans in the sitting car and Mary has made herself scarce.

  1. Statement of Experiment

  A person (me) claims that on tasting a cup of tea they can tell whether the milk or the tea was added to the cup first. Robert mixes eight cups of tea; four in one way and four in the other and presents them in random order (we only have six cups so he uses the gravy boat and milk jug to make up numbers). Random order, surprisingly, is not something that can be left to the human mind but must be achieved by the actual manipulation of physical apparatus. Robert uses dice but says cards or a roulette wheel are just as effective. A published collection of random sampling numbers is his preferred method but we don’t have one to hand.

  2. Interpretation and Reasoning

  Before actually conducting the experiment it is necessary to have anticipated the range of possible results, and to have decided without ambiguity the interpretation that shall be placed upon them.

  Mary would call this ‘talking it out’. After an evening in the sitting car, or after a dinner dance in town, we sit together on our bunks peeling off our stockings, rubbing our feet and going over things. We decide what was meant by the things that were said and done and forecast future developments. What interpretation should we put upon Mr Plattfuss partnering Sister Crock in several of the slower numbers?

  3. Permutations and Combinations

  There are seventy ways of choosing a group of four objects out of eight. A person (a cretin perhaps) who has no discrimination would in fact divide the eight cups correctly into two sets of four in one trial out of seventy. The odds could be made much higher by enlarging the experiment (more cups of tea, if available). If the experiment were smaller it would give odds so low that the results could be ascribed to pure chance.

  4. The Test of Significance ‘But it is possible that the very first time I tasted the cups I could accidentally choose them correctly, even if I wasn’t concentrating – even perhaps if I was trying on purpose to get it wrong.’

  ‘Why would you do that, Jean?’

  ‘I don’t know, I can’t really explain. I’m just supposing.’

  ‘That would be sabotage. There’s no point in going on if you’re going to be like that.’

  He has a nervous habit of using his finger to trace the crease from his nose to his mouth. I must have seen him do it many times before but this is the first time I notice it. He does it when he is perturbed, when things aren’t going to plan. He does it, I think, to comfort himself.

  ‘Sorry. Go on. Please go on.’

  ‘It is standard for experimenters to take five percent as a test of significance, in the sense that they are prepared to ignore all results which fail to reach this standard and to eliminate from further discussion the fluctuations which chance introduces into their experimental results. Do you understand that?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I understand.’

  5. Statistical Analysis

  I can choose three cups right and one cup wrong in sixteen ways.

  I can choose two cups right and two wrong in thirty-six ways.

  I can choose one cup right and three cups wrong in sixteen ways.

  I can chose no cups right and four cups wrong in one way.

  And the correct result: four cups right and none wrong – one way.

  Out of seventy ways of choosing there is only one way to choose the correct result. I am certainly feeling less confident, although I know how I feel won’t influence the actual results.

  6. The Null Hypothesis

  To each there is an opposite. Every experiment may be said to exist only in order to give the facts a chance of proving the opposite – the null hypothesis. If the results show I am unable to discriminate between the cups of tea on the basis of which ingredient was added first – milk or tea – then the null hypothesis is true.

  If a woman who claimed she was good consistently acts as if she is bad to the point beyond that of statistical error, the null hypothesis is proved – she is bad.

  7. Randomisation

  As the subject of the experiment I could insist that all of the cups of tea be exactly alike – same thickness and smoothness of cups, same temperatures, strength and exact amounts of tea and milk. With labour and expense these lurking variables could be removed but Robert says they do not in fact constitute significant refinements to the experiment. It is his view that it is an essential characteristic of experimentation that it is carried out with limited resources.

  ‘Whatever level of care and skill is expended on improving and equalising conditions they will always be to a greater or lesser extent unsatisfactory. The experimenter chooses which causes of disturbance should be acted on and which should be ignored.’

  8. Recording

  Robert has ruled up a page in his notebook for the results. He shows me where to write out the hypothesis and the experimental method. There’s not much to it, sort of like a baking recipe but strangely back to front. Instead of adding things together and getting something for it at the end, you start with an idea and then take things away.

  Robert has two notebooks – ‘Field’, for notes taken in the soil and cropping wagon and the various paddocks where we stop, and ‘Laboratory’. As the train has no laboratory he uses this book for notes taken while leaning on a dinner tray on top of his bunk. He has chosen the Field notebook for the results of the tea experiment – my experiment, and for some reason I feel disappointed by that.

  9. Results

  The actual experiment – the drinking and classification of the tea – is postponed as we are due at Rainbow shortly and the agriculture men have called a meeting to consolidate, as Robert puts it, ‘the plan of attack’. I wash all of the cups and pack the equipment away – kettle, tea, water, milk, teaspoons and napkins.

  Robert says science never loses its moment, and that we will have plenty of opportunity to complete the experiment at a later date.

  There was another incident between Jeparit and Rainbow. It was a day of travelling when we seemed to be pushing through the wheat, inching along as if caught in the doldrums on a mealy yellow sea. Mr Ohno flew a tiny paper crane into my lap as I sat sewing in the sitting car. Under one wing it said has teas? When I looked up he was gone.

  I told Mary I was going for thread and then I followed him back down the train to the poultry car. Mr Ohno’s bunk was behind the cages – a cot roped off with a patterned curtain. I could see him crouched behind it and coughed quietly so he would know I was there. He stood up and held the curtain back for me, bowing so low, in such a small space, I thought his head would touch my stomach.

  ‘Some tea?’

  He had placed two cushions on the floor next to the cot. In between them a tiny green porcelain teapot sat on a wire grill with a lit candle flickering beneath it. He handed me a small bowl and motioned at the cushion.

  ‘Sit, Miss Jean.’

  I watched as he lowered himself on his haunches in one swift movement, as if hinged at the hips and knees. He looked away
politely as I wrapped my dress around my legs and made an ungainly descent to the cushion. I went to speak – to ask about the brand of tea and the cups without handles – but he looked up at me sharply and placed his finger in front of his lips. So I sat and watched him make the tea which, despite the rocking of the train, he did with great precision. I noticed the angles at which he placed the pot and the bowls and the serious, languid way he lifted the tea to his lips. I copied his use of both hands around the warm bowl and when I lifted them in front of me it felt something like praying.

  It was very quiet in the poultry car – just the sound of the train coursing over the rails and the gentle scratching and cheeping of the chickens. Mr Ohno’s clothes hung like apparitions above his cot and against the curtain so I had the impression I was in his company several times over. The crouching was becoming uncomfortable as my dress was strained tightly across my outer thighs. Looser garments would be required to sit like this for any length of time. I rubbed my hands over the taut material and considered asking Mr Ohno the Japanese word for thigh. I suspected his language was more exact and would have separate words for the two different regions – outer thigh and inner thigh.

  I had just drained my bowl when the train rounded a bend and we both leant sideways into the curve. My elbow raised the sheet on Mr Ohno’s cot and I saw underneath it several piles of what looked like tiny pieces of mattress stacked on top of one another. I sneaked another look. Sandwiches. Mr Ohno’s luncheon sandwiches were stacked neatly under his bed in a repeating pattern of bread, jam, bread, honey, bread, vegemite, bread . . . They were completely dried out and didn’t smell at all. I smoothed back the sheet and pretended that I hadn’t seen.

  — 7 —

  WELCOME TO WYCHEPROOF

  I wrap the veil in brown paper and leave it in Mary’s pigeonhole. She rarely checks for circulars so it will be weeks before she finds it.

  I tell Mary that my marriage to Robert will be about more than love. It will be a modern marriage, in which Robert and I, as free and independent units of production, will implement the proven facts of scientific research. In which we will take the miniaturised world of the train and live it large, at real-life scale. Robert will grow his superior super phosphated wheats and, once the wheat has been milled, I will document his success by baking the annual test loaves in my experimental kitchen.

  ‘Is this you speaking or him speaking, Jeanie?’

  ‘It’s a partnership. The one can’t work without the other. It’s a marriage and a special sort of partnership. You can’t say he hasn’t got purpose.’

  ‘No. I can’t,’ Mary said dryly.

  ‘And we will be together – and have some land around us. I was thinking I could plant some fruit trees. Start a bit of an orchard?’

  Mary was silent for a minute then she reached out and took my hand. ‘You mustn’t agree just because he asked you. Others will ask you. You may not believe it now, but they will.’

  The train will stop at Wycheproof just long enough for Robert and me to disembark. It is heading for a two-day demonstration in Sea Lake and then on to Swan Hill. After that it will leave the Mallee and follow the Murray River to the orchard country around Echuca. It isn’t a bad time to be leaving. The superintendent has hinted that this may be the last tour – the agriculture minister is concerned about expenditure in these ‘difficult times’.

  Robert has organised our leaving in great detail. The local priest will conduct the ceremony – he has a sister who will witness for us – then our new neighbour, a Mr Ivers, will drive us out to the farm. The Wycheproof general store has filled Robert’s telegraphed order and all of our linen, crockery, kitchenware and domestic staples will be ready for collection. We will do all of this in one day – leave the train, get married, collect our belongings and travel to our new home. It will be the first full day that we have spent together.

  Mallee mornings don’t flicker. There are no hazy beginnings, no half-light of hesitation where day meets night. The Mallee sun snaps over the horizon with the sure and sudden glow of electric light. Long sharp rays of yellow reach across the flat horizon like tentacles. I have seen this before. On a packet of Mildura raisins. Raisins, Full of Goodness from the Sun. Eat More Raisins Every Day in Every Way. The picture on the packet shows children frolicking in a paddock of golden wheat wearing neat shorts and knitted jumpers; the sun’s rays touch them like ribbons from a maypole.

  The blinds in our sleeping compartment lift methodically with every jolt of the train to let in a pulse of light. The inside of my mouth is dry from sleep. Mary snores a little above me. She has hung my wedding costume on the back of the compartment door and I watch it dancing to the movement of the train. I have made myself a suit in dove grey wool with a double lapel jacket in the French style. The lapels sit high on my chest and curve upward like the wings of a bird. There is a buttonhole that I would like to fill with a gardenia, although I imagine such a thing may be hard to come by in Wycheproof.

  Mary stirs above me.

  ‘I have a present for you, Jean. But you can’t have it until we stop.’ Her voice is a little high and strained. She climbs down from her bunk to braid my hair, her eyes swimming. She winds the braids into two scrolls over each ear and pins them securely. She says these snail shells suit me better than a bun. At twenty-three I already have some grey hairs threaded through the brown. We dress and pack, both glad to be caught up in the detail of something.

  My bags overflow with presents – a set of notes from Sister Crock on domestic science and modern housewifery. (‘Everything you’ll need to know is in here.’). A Fowler’s Bottling Outfit from Mr Baker (the recipe for jellied pig’s trotters has been underlined). Mr Plattfuss has made me a model of the train in tin with pipe-cleaner animals peeping from the wagons. It looks like a child’s toy, except, as he points out to me, for the handy bottle opener welded on to the underside. A surprising set of postcards from Mr Ohno, and a pair of gloves from Mr Talbot. The gloves are a fleshy pink and I know whenever I wear them I will be reminded of the tissue diseases of sheep.

  I sit shoulder to shoulder with Mary amongst the gifts and gaze out of the window. Mary has decided that we must stay in the sleeping compartment to avoid the bad luck of seeing Robert too soon before the ceremony.

  The train rolls quietly through the Mallee. There are two ways to look at the wheat. I am used to taking in a great expanse, seeing a whole paddock from fence to fence. A paddock of uniform height and colour held in by silvery wires. Or you can see it in close-up. Pick out an individual stem, follow it to its wispy beard and then let your eye flow over the sea of soft interwoven heads like a mat suspended above the ground.

  It is only when you see the wheat this second way that you notice how it moves. I had thought of it as a sea, pushed about by the wind like a tide. But it is not at all like that. When you watch it close-up a field of wheat is full of whirls and dips and eddies which can slow in an instant to complete stillness. There is no logic to it. A small patch in the centre of a paddock can be thrashing while the rest moves in a slow and lazy wave.

  I think it must be necessary, when you live in it, to start seeing the wheat in this close-up way. There is no point in focusing on the horizon, on what lies beyond what the eye can see; the truth of the matter is right here.

  I can feel the sweat spreading out from my spine. It is fine and hot like yesterday, like the day before. Wycheproof is in the southern Mallee, on the border of the Wimmera. It lies in the centre of a shallow basin of flat country fringed with low hills. The train tracks slice through the centre of the basin dividing the land on either side. It is the only town in Victoria where the train runs along the main street. As we mount the ridge of the hill two huge wheat silos come into view; all of the buildings around them look squat in comparison. Mary has her head out of the window as we approach the station.

  ‘It’s a lovely big station – with a rose garden.’

  The train doesn’t slow. We are coming in too fast.
I’m anxious and perhaps a little relieved that it mightn’t stop. We pass the station at a stately pace. It is deserted except for a hot old collie stretched under the shade of the verandah. The train veers sharply to the left and straightens into the main street.

  Mary is excited: ‘They’re going to stop here for you. Right in the centre of town!’

  The main street is enormously wide. There is a road on both sides of the railway line edged with a row of shops. The train jerks and hisses to a stop opposite the post office, which is large and topped by an old-fashioned clock.

  We run across the carriage from window to window, unsure which side to get out. I look up and down the train on both sides for Robert but I can’t see him. He must be slow about his goodbyes. Finally Mary tugs the right side door open, jumps down and turns to help me.

  ‘Quick. I have something for you. Don’t worry about your bags, the guard will get them.’

  I want to tell Mary to slow down. I don’t want to leave like this – it feels too sudden. I’m not sure anymore if I want to leave at all, but Mary is dragging me by the hand along the side of the train and we are running through a cloud of steam. The steam has settled on my face or maybe I am crying. We are in front of the cattle trucks. The train is hugely tall without a station platform in front of it. Mary calls through the slats to a stock hand and a ramp crashes down. Before the dust has settled the youngest stock hand leads out a cow. Not any cow, our cow – the folly cow. She shifts her weight from leg to leg, blinking in the dust and light and steam.

  Mary takes her halter from the stock hand and gives it to me. She is grinning from ear to ear. ‘For you, Jean. I arranged it all with Mr Plattfuss. She’ll be better off with you. She would just have ended up in a paddock somewhere. She can remind you of me. And she’ll be, you know, something to love . . .’