Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (Picador 40th) (15 page)

— 23 —

FIRE

R
obert and Bill Ivers burn the stubble together. It's neighbourly. They do it at night when it's pitch black outside but the flames light up the house all orange and smoky.

‘You're ripening up nicely, love,' Bill says when he comes in for a glass of water. His face is covered with soil and trickled with sweat lines. He leaves brown fingermarks on the glass.

‘Hot out there,' he says.

‘Hot in here too.'

‘That'd be right.'

‘Do you think he'll come in for a drink?' I ask.

Bill brushes a burnt wheat stalk off his trouser leg and looks out into the night. ‘Hard to tell.'

They burn at night as the wind is low and the flames won't get away. They light the fires with kerosene tins fitted with a bent pipe and a burning rag at the end. When a rag is extinguished they hold the heads of the lighters together to transfer the flame. I watch them from the back step. They look like puppeteers making two long-necked birds embrace. The fires follow the path left by the harvester in long strips – eating up the scraps. They burn low in some places, high and bright in others as the plant sugars ignite and fizz.

Robert's been out a while so I pour him a jug of water. I leave my apron hooked over the handle on the back door and duck under the fence. I walk across the dirt towards the burning paddocks. The sky and the land meet in blackness, only the running streams of fire marking one from the other.

I jump over three low lines of fire – choosing the point where it burns lowest. Some of the water spills from the jug and splashes down my thighs. Three fires in front of me now, three behind. I can see Robert just up ahead, holding the lighter. My dress sticks to my legs and I peel it free. I'm looking for the low spot in the next fire, getting ready to jump again, when a sharp pain grips me. A hot metal belt is being tightened around my hips. I drop the jug and bend over the pain. It feels like flesh peeling away. I call out but my voice is lost in the noise of the fires. The pain sharpens. I fall over, kicking with my legs trying to get out from under it. The jug lies next to my hip, the water drunk instantly by the warm soil.

I am spilling over too – flowing into the soil. Blood seeps from between my legs. I don't know how long I lie like this, then Robert is in front of me and he's saying oh Jesus, oh Jesus, over and over again and picking me up and half dragging and half carrying me. One leg dangles too low through a line of fire and my shoe starts to smoulder. Bill runs up with a blanket and smothers it. He tries to drape the blanket over me but it falls. I see it fall in a heap on the soil. I reach my hand out to it. It will be so heavy to wash, I think, I will never get the blood out of it.

Robert slides me onto the back seat of the car, Bill drives. It feels like we are in
Gone with the Wind
, escaping with the glow of the burning ruins behind us. Robert strokes my hair with one hand and holds my shoe with the other.

‘Not long now,' he says. ‘Not long now.' But his hands are shaking and he's trying not to look at the blood.

Ten days later when I am home from hospital and fed up with bed rest and visits from Elsie, I retrieve the blanket and the jug from the paddock. Some of the fires still smoulder but it looks different in the daylight. I try to find the place, the exact place, where I lay and bled.

At six months a stillborn baby is wrapped and disposed of – I don't know where. But I do know that a baby is more than its body, it is fluid too and the meaty surrounds that gave it life. Some of the baby is in the paddock where I lay and bled. I look for a stain – a sign – but it must all have soaked away. In a few months the cultivator will come through. A few more months and the ground will be hidden again under the wheat.

I touch my belly. It is still loose – this cannot be explained by science. Archimedes said when a person gets out of the bath the levels will go back to normal – no more displacement. But not with this. With this when everything is measured and taken away nothing will be the same again.

I meet my baby in the night. My dream baby exists in a hazy state as if behind a window painted with glue. I have to strain to make out her features. Dream baby is baby-sized, but old. Her neck is lined and she is very thin. She has the face of someone waiting for the end of life, not the beginning. But as I struggle to make out her features I think, each night, she is getting a little younger. I think that if she were back inside me again her liquid gestation in the waters of my body would grow her young again, make her plump and fresh and new. Except that this would be in ideal conditions, not in the conditions of the Mallee.

I write to Mary about the baby. Although it is hard to find the words. There is just the born and the unborn. There are no words for someone caught in between. She came too soon, I say. There was something of the monkey about her. She was so soft. The flesh of her arm melted under my touch like butter. She was both too young and too old. Her chin was sharply pointed. She was too tired to open her tiny eyes to me. For the first time in my life I wanted my mother.

I draw Mary a map of the paddocks around the house. I mark the place that I fell in early labour and the place where Folly was set alight near the river. I tell Mary that Robert is in great pain about the baby. I can see that this is true although he cannot talk to me or even hold me for fear, I think, of being overwhelmed. I wish Mary love and happiness. I say that I'm sure she can talk her George around and put paid to his ridiculous ideas about going to the war.

Results from the

1940 Harvest

The sample size is smaller as some farmers have switched to flax due to wartime demand. This year's bushel weight of 44 lbs is low. Although economic factors have improved, environmental ones have not.

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 heavily rust-infected and shows evidence of bunt and stinking smut. The grains are small but of a constant size. Their appearance is not unpleasing.

The percentage of native grass seeds is high. Moisture content and protein content are low.

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.

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 below that which can be recorded. Mechanical testing of the physical properties of the dough using Brabender's Farinograph and Fermentograph shows extremely poor flour quality with little gas-producing power.

— 24 —

THE ONE-IN, ALL-IN TRAIN BRINGS WAR TO THE MAN-ON-THE-LAND

A
n advertisement on the front page of the
Ensign
catches our attention:

The One-In, All-In Train will stop at Wycheproof on 14th and 15th May 1940. Take a few minutes out from your busy schedule to view the impressive displays. See modern weapons of war:

1 Tank. Light. Mark VI

1 4 Wheel Drive Ford V8 with guns

1 Clectrac with medium artillery

1 Trench Mortar

2 Flame Throwers

1 Field Gun

Also many large-scale models depicting the new scientific warhorses of the RAAF, AIF and Navy and special displays for women from the Australian Defence League.

All men aged 18–35 are encouraged to attend. Men of the country – Australia Calls – will YOU answer? Are you going to wait till Nazi tanks roll up Australian beaches or Axis planes smash your mother's home? Don't deceive yourself – you'll be too late then. The War is rushing closer to Australia every day. Go out to meet it now!

On the afternoon of the 15th the Matron-in-Chief will conduct the preliminary medical examination of local enlistees in Car 2.

In the same issue of the
Ensign
there is a reprinted article on the military might and sophistication of the New Zealand Army. According to the article for the first time ever an army is giving consideration to the mental capacity of its recruits. Men who front to enlist are given a comprehensive intelligence test. Only then are they spread across different units of the army to provide the best possible mix of intelligence and strength.

After reading the article and drinking several cups of tea in silence Robert starts a fresh page in his notebook. He calculates the strength of the New Zealand Army based on the exact numbers of Class I, II and III recruits. He says with this information it should be possible to capture the war as an equation. Except there is a lot of supposing about the strength and intelligence of the Axis and even about the Allies. Can we assume a Frenchman, Brit or an Aussie will have the same brains as a New Zealander? It all seems irrelevant to me. Each of them will have the same capacity for death. But as he sits hunched over his calculations I am relieved that he's doing something, that he's been released for a while from the frozen state. No agriculture is underway on the farm – neither scientific nor plain everyday. The fences are falling into disrepair. Since the last baking test Robert has divided his time between the caravan and the house. Some days he heads off on the tractor with the caravan hitched behind, others he slouches around from room to room, returning eventually to the kitchen.

I walk to the river each morning. I like the quiet of the farm without the machines at work. The crop has started to push through of its own accord. Wheat seed that has lain dormant from the past is threaded with the native wallaby grass Robert so derided on the train. I wonder how many of the tiny heads I would need to collect to bake a loaf? And what it would taste of, the true bread of ancient Australia? If I am walking barefoot I pick out the silvery stems to stand on – they are much softer than the sharp wheat stems, like lengths of strong cotton. When I retrace my steps on my way back the crushed stems have already risen again, as if I had never been through.

Sometimes when I return to the house Robert has done some work that was rightly mine – swept the floors or washed the tea towels and hung them in precise formation on the line. I feel as if I am returning to a ship with her flags flying the alert.

On 14 May we go into town to see the train. Most of the district goes – but of course we have a special interest. It is the same engine, K109, rescued from the rust yards at Essendon. Still a dusty burnt orange. The sign on the engine's nose has been painted over but the faint shadow of ‘Better Farming Train' can still be seen behind the new lettering. The One-In, All-In Train is shorter – only three carriages and a wagon.

We stand back for a minute, taking the scene in, when a door in the middle carriage opens and Mr Plattfuss lowers himself down. His moustache has faded and he's put on a bit of weight but it is unmistakably him. He wears the familiar white dustcoat over his shirtsleeves and an army tie. He reaches back into the carriage, drags out several rolls of canvas and hoists them onto his shoulder. Robert squeezes my arm and walks over to help him. I watch Mr Plattfuss turn as Robert says his name, and the look of surprise and recognition on his face. They shake hands warmly then Robert helps him tie three canvas banners along the length of the train.

False teeth or defective teeth are no bar to enlisting in the AIF.

The Army will look after your teeth.

By the way, how's your chest measurement? If it is 32 inches or more, put an AIF tunic around it.

You are wanted urgently!

Army recruits invariably put on weight.

Join the AIF and carry more weight for your country!

Mr Plattfuss hoists himself back into the train and Robert follows. I expect Mr Plattfuss will ask Robert about Folly and I wonder what he will say: that the experiment was a failure; that science can't tame the Mallee; that we couldn't even keep the old scrub cow alive?

I walk down to my carriage. The women's carriage. The stationmaster's collie lies in the sun by the door. I bend down and rub his ears and drag my fingers through some of the matted fur around his neck. He blinks and swallows in appreciation. If Mary were here she would have been sneaking treats to him. The door opens behind me and I hear the steps being lowered.

‘We're open now. Feel free to come in for a look.' The familiar voice of Sister Crock. I stand up and turn around. She looks so bright and round framed in the carriage doorway. Her starched white dress is tight across the hips. Her red felt midi cape sits askew on her ample shoulders. She squints out at me then her fingers fly to her lips in surprise.

‘Miss Finnegan! Sorry – Mrs Pettergree, rather! Well, I didn't expect to see you here. We thought you'd long gone from the Mallee. Come and have some tea, dear, and tell me all your news.'

It is impossible not to smile at her. Or to resist her bustling me over to sit on the front pew while she makes tea at the baby-weighing table with a new electric kettle. Mary's oven still stands in the corner along with my blackboard, the same white paint peeling from the frame. My dressmaking mannequins are kitted out in AIF winter greens with slouch hats pushed low on their blunt necks. The shelves where we displayed the jams and bottled fruits are now fronted with placards.
Be proud of him in this
, one says, referring to the uniform below.

Girlfriends, mothers, sisters and wives, imagine how proud you'll feel of him in uniform! You'll be able to say with a lifted chin, ‘My Boy's with the AIF'. Encourage him to join up today and get the finest job a man can have.

Sister Crock taps the aluminium teapot with a spoon to settle the tea-leaves.

‘We thought you'd up and gone, dear. There's not many still left out here.'

‘We're hanging on. My husband doesn't give in easily. Or perhaps it's more that he's not sure what to do next.'

‘Yes I remember that about your husband. A certain determined nature. Now I suppose you've heard all about Mary's brood but what about you? Any children?'

I look at the floor. ‘No. I lost a baby last year. It was difficult, with the drought . . .'

Sister Crock smiles at me sympathetically and takes a sip from her tea. ‘It isn't easy on women. Mr Plattfuss says it is the same for horses. When it's too dry they can't carry all of the way. Drought foals, he calls them.'

There is a long pause. I pick up a pamphlet from the table. The words are blurry. It is addressed to women. Women like me.

Women of Australia – What you can do to help

1. Promote a defence conscience in the home.
   
2. Organise and attend lectures on patriotic subjects.
   
3. Instil love of Country and Empire in your children.
   

Sister Crock places her teacup on the table. ‘Don't let me forget, I have some letters for you.'

‘For me?'

‘Yes. From Mr Ohno. When the train disbanded he went to work at a big poultry factory in Drouin. Then last year I heard he'd been taken away to a prison camp for aliens. It's at Tatura, some awful place they put all the men from the wrong countries to stop them from spying. It's a loss to chicken-sexing but I suppose the government knows best. He sent the letters to Wycheproof but they were all returned – “not at this address”. Isn't that funny? He hadn't put the camp's address on the outside of the envelope – Japanese pride I suppose, but there was a sketch of the Better Farming Train on the back of one of them so the post office sent them to me. I opened a few – just a few – to see if there was anything I could assist with. Very odd. He seems to think you may have died. “Out there in the red sand,” he says, “you may have died.” '

She pours me a second cup of tea and tells me to have a look around while she fetches the letters from her sleeping compartment.

Robert invites Mr Plattfuss home for tea. I have nothing to give him except crackers and jam but he's polite about it. Says he's sick of heavy food and he's heading for a counter tea afterwards at the Commercial where he is giving a recruiting talk about the AIF and showing some lantern slides on the wall. Then he's to put three pounds on the bar to get the drinking and talking started.

‘Oiling the camaraderie,' he calls it. Robert offers to drive him in and help him set up the equipment.

Mr Plattfuss says he misses the old days on the farming train. He especially misses his cows. As he stands to leave he crushes me to him in a hug and says, ‘I'm so sorry, my dear, I'm so very sorry.'

I'm not sure if he's talking about Folly, or if Sister Crock has told him about the baby, or if it's just about Robert and me and the farm.

I wave them goodbye from the step, Mr Plattfuss stroking his moustache and doing some vocal exercises to prepare himself for public speaking, Robert purposeful at the steering wheel, happy to be caught up in something again.