Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (Picador 40th) (7 page)

I am struck by the quietness. For the past year I have been surrounded by the noises of the train: birds, animals, men, machines. Now there is just the company of plants. I understand a little why the wheat men who visited the train were so stunned by the colourful cacophony of it.

I walk over to the fence that holds the wheat in. I look back at the house and then at the wheat again. The wheat looks smooth, almost like water. It is ‘in boot' – just up to my thighs. I am unbearably hot and I feel like it might be cooler amongst the wheat. I part the wires and step through the fence. The first few steps are satisfying. I feel like I'm getting somewhere and there is the sound of the wheat snapping and the warm mealy smell of it. But I haven't gone far when the stems start to bunch around my legs. Shards pierce my stockings. My suit is oddly twisted around me. The horizon seesaws sharply in the distance. I am stumbling. The wheat crackles around me. I call out weakly in the direction of the house. A flash of check shirt hurries along the side path. Then Mr Ivers ducks between the wires. He lifts me easily and carries me back to the house, curling his boot around the front door to open it. Robert is in the hallway, carrying a box of pots and pans.

Ivers laughs good-naturedly. ‘Heatstroke. Your missus was in a spot of bother, Pettergree. Oh, and I'm afraid I've just carried her over the threshold.'

Robert smiles weakly and nods towards the bedroom where I am put to rest on the dusty mattress.

I sleep a little while Robert unpacks and sees to the delivery of Folly. Later, over a cold supper, he says there are no suitable paddocks for her and he expects she will be stupid enough to trample the crops. Stupid enough is plainly meant for me.

‘I was just going for a walk. I thought I'd walk along the creek, only I couldn't find it for the wheat.'

Robert opens his notebook. His hands shake slightly as he jots down some figures. ‘This isn't a demonstration plot or a wagonload, Jean – this is the real thing.'

I find my walk. I find the narrow river. It is little more than a creek. I lead Folly there each day after Robert leaves the house and sit and sew on the steep banks. Folly is restless. She likes my sewing basket and clumps down to push it about with her big flat face. I am embroidering a handkerchief for Mary – Folly in the wheat. I only have an egg-yolk yellow so the wheat looks wrong, but it would be impossible to capture the true russety hue of it in thread.

Sometimes I walk down the driveway back to the thick sugar gum at the gate. The ledge in between the three prongs holds me snugly. Ant trails curve around the trunks. If I look up for long enough I can see where the ends of the very furthest branches spike the sky.

Bill Ivers' wife, Elsie, is a broad-shouldered woman with a large face in two parts. The under hat area of her forehead is very white and smooth, while the skin below it is red and boiled-looking from the sun. Elsie has made several visits bringing cakes and eggs. She leads the children over on an old Clydesdale. All boys, they increase evenly in size and age between withers and rump. Off the horse they are attracted to one another like magnets, tumbling and wrestling in a constant whirl of activity that turns their small faces steaming pink.

On her first visit she arrives with a fruitcake, carrying it on a plate while leading the horse. I make tea while she sniffs suspiciously around the kitchen and snorts at the wheat heads Robert has pinned out for dissection on the table.

‘I wouldn't be letting my husband bring dirty muck like that inside.'

‘It's science, Mrs Ivers. It's important work.'

‘Still dirty though, ain't it? And you'd better be calling me Elsie.'

We take two kitchen chairs out under the broom brush and watch the boys fight each other with mulga branches.

‘They're a trial, Jean, both men and boys, but I'm sure you'll find that out soon enough.' She looks at me side-on, at the space I take up in my dress.

Elsie's mother minds the boys the first time she takes me in to town. Elsie wears her best dress, a white number with broad pink and orange stripes, a bit like a winter sheet. She drives very slowly with her hat pulled low over her brow. We have only just turned onto the main road when the car narrowly misses a brown snake surfing, head up, for the shade of the roadside gums.

I would have liked to explore the town alone but Elsie ushers me from shop to shop. My gaze is drawn to the train tracks in front of the post office and I am tempted to find the place I first got down and stand awhile, but Elsie would think it odd.

There is everything in Wycheproof that you could need; several banks, the handsome post office fit for a city square, a greengrocer's, a butcher, a pharmacy and haberdashery, a newsagent, garages and two general stores. With the train tracks in the centre and the wide dark verandahs, it is not possible to see people on one side of the street from the other. Many of the businesses are replicated, sometimes in exactly the same position on each side. Elsie crossed the street with me so we could at least walk past all of the shops, but she told me that many people in the town only shopped on one side depending on the hotel of their menfolk – Commercial or Terminus.

At my request we visit the Free Library in the Mechanics' Institute. It is only a few shelves in a curtained-off corner behind the pool table but there is a full-time librarian – Miss Iris Pfundt. Miss Pfundt is well turned out but there is something dried-up and scratchy about her. Her powder blue skirt suit sits stiffly on her sharp frame and she smells of stale hair spray. She gives me a membership card and shows me the five different categories of books: Detective, Light Love, Wild West, Children's and Heavy. Heavy is Adam Smith's
The Wealth of Nations
and Froude's
History of England
. I ask if there is any science. Miss Pfundt shakes her head without moving her tight yellow curls and snorts.

‘I hope you're not going to be like the high school girls – hard to please with all those modern plays and poetry. I'm very particular. We only have
nice
books here. I throw away anything dirty.'

The membership card requires Robert's signature so I tell her I'll be back.

Last call is the butcher. The woman in front of us at the counter asks for the cheap mince and slowly counts out her pennies. She is flanked by a large daughter who stares glumly at her scuffed tennis shoes.

The butcher works behind a green flywire screen and hands the packages through a flap. He passes the mince through to the young woman. ‘Cheer up, Olive, it's not the end of the world.' He winks at her mother. ‘Boy troubles, no doubt.'

Elsie pushes to the front and leans in close to the screen to place her order.

The butcher smiles at her playfully, tosses his tongs in the air and snaps them together as he catches them. ‘The best cuts for the lovely Mrs Ivers,' he calls teasingly to an apprentice in the back room.

I pretend to read the chalkboard which lists the prices and the butchery slogan:
Hommelfhof Brothers' Family Butchers – Where Honest Dealing Creates Good Feeling.
Good feeling indeed. Elsie smoothes her stripey dress around her hips and opens her dusty purse.

‘Wasted on the farm, you are, Mrs Ivers. We should see you in town more often. And your new little neighbour too,' he says, cutting me a glance.

— 8 —

THE EXPERIMENTAL KITCHEN

S
ister Crock wasn't wholly against men. ‘In kitchen design', she said, ‘they have their uses. Being apt to come up with good ideas about using wheels, inclined planes, pivoting storage walls, pulleys and electric light.'

She didn't want me to leave the train. It meant getting another girl from the Emily McPherson College of Domestic Science, sifting through the marriage fodder until she found someone with a calling.

‘How can you leave?' she said. ‘How can you go somewhere so flat? You deserve better.'

Sister Crock thought flatness meant dullness. She was wrong. It isn't dull and it isn't even flat. Not in winter. All summer the wheat makes a false horizon; it camouflages the real angle of the land. But in winter it isn't flat at all. It swerves and undulates for miles. There are sharp rises in the middle of paddocks, hills around fence posts, steep mounds edging dams.

And I have my calling. I can't spell it out. I can't say
exactly
what it is that I want, but I know what I don't want. I don't want to teach something I haven't lived. I don't want to be always with women. I don't want evenings in the common room playing bridge and crazy euchre. I don't want to be like Sister Crock, spectating and directing life from the outer – I want a chance to feel it and taste it for myself.

From the kitchen I can see Robert working the ground with the cultivator. He's experimenting with the stubble – working out how long to leave it between each treatment. Every time he goes over the same piece of ground it's called a pass. It makes me think of flying. That he's just passing over the place – taking a look, storing up the picture in his mind like someone out sightseeing.

For the first month Robert left the house every day just after dawn. He measured and recorded all of the farm's soils and crops. At lunchtime he brought in wheat samples that were either remarkably good or remarkably bad. He spread them out on the kitchen table and drew sketches of them in his notebook. I found the sample plants unnerving – most of them are thin and feeble-stalked with flailing arms like the skeletons of children. The sampling and recording continued for several weeks until the kitchen floor was covered with plants pinned to sheets of newspaper and stacked loosely in groups: Rust Evident; Excessively Short Straw; Weak Tillering; Poor Stem Extension at Peeping; Immature Head. It was difficult for me to start my own work with the kitchen so full and the dead plants high around my ankles.

When at last they were cleared away I set up the experimental kitchen – checking the timers, temperature gauges, scales and measuring apparatus. Everything must be rigidly standardised. When I pull the test loaves from the oven for the final assessment of crumb structure, crust colour and loaf volume, the only variable must be Robert's flour. My involvement must be rendered invisible by the strict adherence to procedure. It is an enormous responsibility. All of Robert's paddock science will come together in this kitchen in ten test loaves a year.

But after lunch each day, when I sit facing Robert at the kitchen table, instead of familiarising myself with the electric proving cabinet, something else happens. I can't describe how it starts – maybe our breathing lengthens or shortens slightly so it falls together? Or maybe one of us might move a little so that the angles of our bodies are somehow shifted? I might be looking out of the window, showing the side of my neck, some collarbone, when he places his hand heavily on my shoulder. The feeling, when it rises, is so intense, the need for each other so urgent, nothing is fast enough. The table is pushed out of the way, clothes shed, sometimes ripped, bodies held with force. Then we are coupling hurriedly wherever we might fall. In front of the pantry, against the sink, even on the table, my hair in a puddle of lukewarm tea. On days when Robert is clearly tired from carting water and we have barely even talked I always think it might not happen, but it is enough for me just to brush my hand against his wrist as I remove his plate. Then he stands abruptly and grips my waist. His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows hard. I am still standing, still holding the plate, when he pushes my dress aside and takes my nipple into his mouth.

Odd thoughts break through during the lovemaking. I think it is because of the kitchen. A small part of my mind can't seem to let go of the fact that we are in the kitchen. One day as we are coupled in front of the oven, moving rhythmically, sinuously together, I am suddenly back in elementary housewifery with Mrs Vera Cornthwaite introducing a lesson on ‘The Removal of Loose Dirt'.

‘What about fixed dirt, Mrs Cornthwaite?' a girl asked enthusiastically from the back of the class.

‘One must learn to crawl before one can walk, dear,' Mrs Cornthwaite replied. ‘Fixed dirt is covered in advanced housewifery. You'll have to wait until second year.'

Another time when we are joined side by side, my head jammed underneath his chin, his hand gripping my buttocks, drawing out their rise and fall, I notice the sharp red-white divide of his forearm where he folds his shirtsleeve. In the sun, out of the sun. In. Out. And I'm thinking of a lecture on homemaking and how to welcome a guest.

‘Even if you have little space – no actual guestroom, have a folding canvas cot ready for guests. Make a space for your guest's things in the same place. He won't feel comfortable using a few drawers in one room, a wardrobe in another, a mirror in a third. Make sure you can quickly and easily set up the bed. If you aren't sure you can do it fast, have a cot drill once in a while.'

Perhaps it was drill. The word drill.

Sometimes Robert cries during our afternoons of sex and I feel very tenderly for him. I think of the little girl Sister Crock brought in as a test pupil for teaching practice. She was only nine or ten, in a stiff grey pinafore with sallow skin and yellowing hair. She sat on a chair at the front of the room facing the audience while Sister Crock lectured from behind her.

‘Teaching domestic science provides an especially rich opportunity for the moral training of the child. As the subject is active the “real child” is more likely to be manifested than when she sits quietly at her desk. By the very nature of the work, the child is constantly confronted with the results of such delinquencies as dishonesty, selfishness, shirking and slackness. An honestly made pudding will speak for itself, as will one that has been the victim of the greedy child who, thinking to gain personal advantage, has helped herself to extra butter or shortening and spoiled her produce.'

The little girl blinked and a tear wobbled slowly down her cheek. But she held her head high. Challenging us. Was she the good pudding or the bad? I wanted to leave my seat and go and hold her. And to scold Sister Crock for using the child so unfairly.

But back to Robert. The odd thoughts go in both directions. When lovemaking I often think about homemaking and vice versa. One morning as I plot a time and motion study of the kitchen – I am considering moving the mixing centre to make it more efficient – I am suddenly thinking of Robert's naked, rutting back. How his tailbone dips and moves at such an angle his back looks double-jointed. Surely it must be free from the rest of his spine to thrust with such force? Then I'm thinking of my third year of the diploma when we made string studies of movement patterns around the college kitchens. One girl washed up or made a meal while another followed her movements on a pegboard, winding a ball of string from one place to another. The string picture showed how often she retraced her steps, how much energy she used. The aim was motionmindedness – becoming aware of your repetitive, unnecessary or superfluous movements. There was a special unit of work on it in third year.

Choose two subjects from:
Making thrifty contrivances
Rich cake mixtures
Basic infant care
Simple butchery
Household mending
Motionmindedness.

This is how I think of these early afternoons in the kitchen with Robert – that they are filled with a particular sort of motionmindedness. We have slipped through the science to a place of pure and perfect motion.

Results from the

1935 Harvest

The sample has a low bushel weight (61 lbs). In accordance with standard sampling procedure a portion of FAQ (fair-average-quality) wheat was critically examined and subjected to analysis and a milling test in the experimental flourmill.

The sample is very bright and plump, and has a generally pleasing appearance. The moisture content and the protein content are normal.

First Test Baking

Purpose:
To measure the quality of wheats grown by Mr R.L. Pettergree of Wycheproof in regard to high yields of good-coloured flour with superior baking quality.

Comments:
At this stage not all of the wheat milled for flour for these tests has been grown under the experimental regime (some of it being grown by the previous farmer).

Quality Tests:
The Pelshenke figure, which indicates gluten quality (time taken for dough ball to expand under water at temperature; time divided by protein content = quality), is average. Mechanical testing of the physical properties of the dough using Brabender's Farinograph and Fermentograph shows average flour quality with acceptable gas-producing power.

It takes three days. The loaves are large and well formed, except for number seven which I rushed and may not have measured properly. I am making sketches of their shapes.

I expect noticeably better results next year, when Robert's regime is fully in place. I pin the results above the oven then I take some of the test loaves over to Elsie next door. She sniffs at them suspiciously but says thank you all the same.