Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (Picador 40th) (10 page)

I burnt loaf four. If it wasn't an experiment I would have just thrown it away – tossed it out of the window to Will. The tendons in my arms ache from kneading.

It wasn't my fault, as the baking technician, that the loaves were not as good as last year, but when I gave Robert the results I felt somehow responsible for them. I placed my hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it away.

— 13 —

BIG BEN FROM THE AIR

A
ccording to Robert, Ern McKettering likes his motor car. His paddocks are crisscrossed with homemade roads. Not just around the edges, but often right through the middle of the crop. He even drives out to the break. Ern invites Robert on a tour of inspection followed by sandwiches from the glove box.

‘I fancy I'm a bit of a science man, myself,' he tells Robert between bites, ‘but expert advice never goes astray.'

Robert is perplexed by the many small, oddly shaped paddocks. The farm is a gridlock of gates and fences and roads with strips of different crops, even different varieties within the same field. Short-strawed wheats grow next to tall; white varieties mingle with russets. It is clear from the poor state of the crop that Ern is only just keeping it together – that he is knife-edge close to going under.

‘Must be hell to harvest.'

‘True, Pettergree, true. But she's a treat from the air. Dad's idea. He went up in a hot air balloon at the Quambie show and the pilot fella tells him to look down at the artistry of the crops. Well he got the idea he could make an actual picture with it.'

Robert looks around, trying to discern some sort of shape from the lines of fences filled with crop.

‘Hard to pick from the ground. It's Big Ben. He worked from drawings in a book, “
Clock Towers of England and Her Isles”
. Big Ben was always his favourite.'

Robert has no hesitation in dismantling London's famous timepiece. He prepares a farm plan for Ern with regular-sized paddocks fenced to soil type. He designs a laneway system to reduce roads and gates and allow easy access for machinery. He explains to Ern how he will be able to drive up the laneway and survey all of his crops and paddocks. He likens it to a conveyor belt on a production line. From the laneway all of the farm's components will be visible, checkable, quantifiable.

Ern and Robert peg out the new fences together. It takes weeks, Robert running his eye over the land like a spirit level, Ern following on behind him, always talking, always telling stories. Ern tells of the trip to the sea, his sister's near drowning in the Murray River, the snake that killed his pony, his pocket money job at the abattoirs bagging dried blood for poultry feed, the mouse plague of 1918, his prize-winning cow – Linga-Longa-Wattle-Speck – the research team that came up from Adelaide and personality tested all of the children at the Wyche School, the Charlie Chaplin film he saw at St Arnaud . . .

When they reach the farthest fences at the very back of the farm he tells Robert that he'd not really wanted to marry Doris because he had feelings for her sister.

‘Not Iris, of course – never liked a woman without some decent upholstery. There was an older girl, Sarah. She had all this dark curly hair.' Ern rocks back on his heels for a minute in contemplation.

‘The family bred bulls and hired them out across the district. The bulls were aggressive bleeders. At certain times, if you know what I mean, the girls couldn't venture off the verandah for fear of the bulls. I hadn't really courted her – Sarah, that is. I was still young and so was she, but we had glanced at each other often enough and I fancied there was something between us. One day I heard that a bull had gored and trampled her when she was walking between the chook pen and the house. She was badly injured. They called the bone cart and took her to the big hospital at Bendigo. While she was gone the bulls went stale, all of them off their food and unable to do their duty, if you know what I mean.' Ern looks away coyly.

‘After a few weeks they brought her back to the house because there was nothing more that could be done for her. She died on that first night back. The next morning they found the bull that had gored her drowned in the dam. He'd just walked straight in. Anyway Doris sort of stepped into the breach so to speak – not that I'm complaining.'

Ern breaks off to gaze at a cloud.

‘What do you think about all that then, Pettergree? Women and love and all that?'

Robert clears his throat awkwardly. The fencing is just about finished. He asks Ern if they can inspect the dam now. Robert sees water as the biggest impediment to Ern McKettering's farming operation. Ern insists that they drive. The dam is old; its lips are cracked and flaking. The spongy feel of the soil around the rim means it is leaking. Ern and Robert stare into the clayey water.

‘How deep do you think?'

Ern picks up a stone and lobs it in. The water swallows it with a plop.

‘Less than six feet. They never dig too deep around here. Nothing to fill them with.'

Robert starts to unbutton his shirt. He needs a sample.

‘Coming in?'

Ern's ageing body still holds its muscle well. Robert thinks there is something of the bull about him. Ern cups his genitals in his palm tenderly, more to comfort than hide himself. They edge in sideways, turning the smallest surface to the freezing water.

‘Cold enough,' Robert grimaces.

‘Jesus, Joseph and Mary.' Ern hugs his arms across his chest.

The water is only thigh deep. There is a dead feeling about it. It is heavy water, like the swill that comes off metal. Robert sits on the bottom and manipulates his soil pick underwater. He dislodges lumps of clay, brings them to the surface and hands them to Ern, who throws them out onto the banks.

‘Here.' Robert aims too high. A muddy lump hits Ern on the shoulder and slides down his chest.

‘Here yourself.'

Clay flies. Ern digs with his toes, Robert with his pick. They chase each other, lifting their knees high above the water. Ern beats his chest like a monkey; he has clay through his hair and smeared over his face. Robert spreads the clay over his chest making patterns with his fingertips. They float on their backs together for a while and then clamber out to dry on the banks.

An ibis lands on the far side of the dam and pokes its beak into the soil cracks. Robert and Ern sit up to watch it.

‘Beautiful,' Ern says. ‘Who'd live in the city, eh? You'd have to be a mug.'

Robert shifts his gaze from the ibis to Ern.

‘I'm only here because of a bird. My uncle won some money on a racing pigeon. Enough for the passage and for university.'

Ern smiles broadly and slaps Robert on the back. ‘A winged benefactor. What a lark, Pettergree, eh?'

They laugh together. Ern drums his feet against the dam wall and the ibis takes off in alarm.

The men dress, gather the equipment and walk back to the car. Ern sits at the wheel turning the key over in his hand.

‘This science stuff, Pettergree. Well, it's got me converted. I'm up for it. Anything you say – I'm up for it.'

That afternoon Ern McKettering opens the heavy volume of
Jack's Self-Educator
on the kitchen table and thumbs awkwardly through the lacy pages. He stops at the section on Botany and starts to read: ‘We cannot fail to be struck by the root of the plant. Pull up even an insignificant herb and an extraordinary number of small roots can be observed branching and spreading out in all directions.'

Ern takes a crumpled shoot from his pocket. It is small and thin, barely tillering. He holds it upside down, examines the roots and reads on: ‘Anyone wishing to spend an instructive but tedious afternoon may be advised to pull up a plant, carefully wash out the roots and measure them all.'

The wireless crackles in the background. Something about breeding whippets? He tosses the plant out of the window and jiggles the volume dial.

— 14 —

A TRAINLOAD OF SUPER PHOSPHATE

R
obert collects our mail from the post office. He shows me this letter with a certain pride.

Dear Mr R.L. Pettergree
The current world depression has created a looming crisis for our country. The Australian Balance of Payments is heavily in deficit and the flow of capital has been severely arrested.

Prime Minister Lyons plans to overcome these difficulties with an expansion in primary production. Mr Lyons has made a direct appeal to Australian farmers to
GROW MORE WHEAT.

A target of a million more acres of wheat has been set by the Victorian Department of Agriculture. Your expertise in the parishes and towns of Teddywaddy, Wycheproof, Bunguluke, Thalia, Ninyeunook, Cooropajerrup, Carapunga, Narraport, Towaninnie, Tittybong, Nullawil and Jil Jil is sought.

We ask that you appeal most vehemently to the patriotic natures of the men of your parish.

A parcel of promotional goods will follow under separate cover.

C.J. Mullet B.Agr.Sc.
Victorian Superintendent of Agriculture

Now that the train has been decommissioned GROW MORE WHEAT is the superintendent's new promotional project. The materials reflect his taste for theatre – rosettes, bright yellow, slightly crushed, and a poster depicting a farmer in a hound's-tooth jacket and deerstalker hat smiling from a tiny golden field.
GROW MORE WHEAT
is emblazoned across the hedgerow, blackbirds fly overhead.

Robert plans his approach; the collection of soil data from paddocks in each of the parishes, then the public presentation to each man of the specific equation, including additives and treatments, to be followed. It is a recipe, like one of Mary's, that if followed exactly, in every aspect, will produce the required result. He does our own first:

1936–37 Pettergree, R.L. Wycheproof

160 acres red land from undulating loam through to sandy loam.

Spread 90 lbs per acre super phosphate early.

Treat with Gypsum at 20 lbs per acre and Borax at 15 lbs per acre.

Sow 80 lbs of seed per acre:
Ghurka and Rannee 4H. (
Seed to be pickled in a wet solution of bluestone or formalin to insure against Take-All, Bunt, Loose Smut and Flag Smut.)

Yield: 12 bushels per acre = 1920 Bushels in total (0.71% OF THE VICTORIAN WHEAT EXPANSION TARGET)

To write such an equation for every farm hereabouts Robert must know its soil. So we go walking – not for exercise or pleasure – for knowledge.

I feel reinvigorated by this task. Like we are really in it together. We bend over the laces of our boots side by side each morning. I pack a rucksack with lunch and Robert's field equipment: his notebook, a pick, collecting bags, a compass and a small jar of water. Robert has planned out the routes. We follow the jerky compass needle and mark our progress on survey maps. Sometimes we walk straight out from the house, sliding through the fences in our way; other times we drive to the starting point and leave the car along the road.

We walk in single file through pasture and crops, over fences, across bare ground dotted with tufty native grasses. Robert breaks the crust of the soil with his boots, leaving his print and a spray of fissured cracks around it. The flies are bad in places, especially at the salt lakes where they swarm at the wet edges of our eyes and mouths. Every fifty feet Robert stops to sample and I am ready with the equipment. He takes topsoil and samples from different depths. I hold the bags open for him and tie them up with string. I pour just the right amount of water into his hand for the elasticity test in which he moulds the soil into a sausage then squeezes it from its base to measure the ooze. We tie the sample bags to our belt loops. When we walk they make circles around us like small planets.

The soil is always different, although sometimes there is only the smallest difference – golden brown to golden red, dry to sugary to smooth. I like to watch it pouring into the calico bags and have to curb the impulse to reach out and feel it on my skin. It reminds me of the many fabrics I have handled and know by touch: silk, velvet, rayonelle, chenille, Irish linen, French linen, lawn. My fingers alone could read the warp and weft of the threads.

We often trespass, but avoid confrontation or explanation. If we come upon a house we veer off-course until we are well past it and then swerve back to the route. It requires some recalculation. I hand Robert a pencil stub from my pocket. He licks it, taking the numbers apart and putting them together again under his breath. Sometimes we hear dogs barking in the distance or the sound of a car but we have never been stopped or asked our business. Once, startled by rifle shot (some farm children hunting rabbits), we lay down together in a field of oats and held our breath until the danger had passed. (I imagine we looked like the couple in Mr Vincent Van Gogh's painting,
Siesta
– a peasant man and a woman lie asleep amongst the swirling hay. Their working clothes are the same sad faded blue as the sky but there is such peace in the way that they lie together, not touching, but together in shared exhaustion.)

Lunch is under a gum tree or on the banks of the river. If it is hot we will swim first and then eat so as to be safe from cramps. The water is so bitterly cold it forces me quickly out into the sun. The Avoca is the colour of long-brewed tea, its waters oily with shadows from the sugar gums. Robert's body is a patchwork beside it – red arms and face and neck, the rest of him pale and freckled. He stretches out to nap. His breastbone juts out sharply. When we are in bed I like to run my fingers up the sharp rise and then off into the sandy curl of hair on either side. If I hover above him in the dark his ribcage catches the deep sway of my breasts.

I lie next to Robert by the river and watch his chest rising and falling. The sun prickles my face. I stretch my hand out above my eyes and open and close it against the glare. I think about reaching across and touching him, but I am not sure how he would respond. I don't understand this gulf between our bodies and our minds and why it is so hard to move between the two.

Robert grills Ern McKettering for information. He wants rainfall statistics, the exact dates of sowing and harvesting, the seeds planted and bushels produced. Ern says he's got some diaries somewhere, but he can't quite put his hands on them. The shire rainfall records show an average of thirteen inches for the last four years. There is an occasional worrying dip, six inches in 1926, but it seems more aberration than pattern. Robert sits at the kitchen table long into the night calculating and drawing graphs. He drafts an advertisement for the
Wycheproof Ensign
.

Farmers of the Southern Mallee – do you desire to GROW MORE WHEAT? You are cordially invited to a free lecture on improving profits and productivity. All the money in the bank comes from the soil! Teddywaddy Memorial Hall, 4pm, Saturday June 18th.

The meeting is held under the names of the district's dead. The men and boys of Teddywaddy lie in Ypres, Flanders, Rheims, the Somme, Gallipoli and the Dardanelles. And somewhere thereabouts (according to a handwritten sign pinned to the wall) there are 236 pairs of socks, 142 pillowcases, 59 handkerchiefs, 40 ambulance cushions, two pairs of mittens and six cholera belts sent over by the Teddywaddy Women's Auxiliary.

I put the chairs out, placing them what I hope is an appropriately masculine distance apart. This is only the second of Robert's lectures I have attended.

A car pulls up outside and there is the sound of doors slamming, low talk and laughter. More cars and men arrive. They stand around the entrance to the hall lighting cigarettes and yarning and adjusting their hats. Finally a few start to file inside. Bill Ivers nods at me politely and helps Stan Hercules with the tripod for his camera. Within a few minutes the hall is full of the sound of chairs scraping and men exchanging greetings. I feel overly bright in my yellow patterned dress – like a cheap decoration.

Robert sits at a table on the timber stage leafing through his papers. He wears his dark blue wedding suit and for the first time I notice that his hair is starting to thin. Behind him a crudely painted theatrical backdrop shows Henry VIII in neckfrill and knickerbockers holding an axe in a grove of gum trees. Robert stands and clears his throat. He nods to me and I walk to the rear of the hall and pull the door closed. When I turn around he is holding the back of his chair with both hands.

‘I have asked you here today at the request of Mr Lyons and Mr Hogan. I am a fellow farmer (there is some coughing and the shuffling of feet) but I have been called to arms, and I come to extend that call to you.

‘Our country, our great country, is in dire need of your skills. The world stands at present on the brink of a serious depression. The pain is already being felt in our cities and towns. We've had a period of wealth and prosperity (a louder bout of coughing, throat-clearing and shuffling) during which our government entered into various loans, now, as the economy contracts, the interest on those loans has to be paid.'

Robert raises his voice over the noise from the floor. Several whispered conversations have started up in the back rows. He touches a finger nervously to the crease between his nose and mouth and pulls his jacket around him.

‘Mr Lyons plans to overcome these difficulties by an increase in primary production. In Victoria the target has been set at a million more acres. That's a twenty-five percent increase in area and yield. I believe, and I have irrefutable scientific data to base this belief on, that we here in the southern Mallee can produce that amount alone. Let me demonstrate.'

Robert shuffles the papers in front of him. The noise in the hall drops. He finds the sheet and moves to the front of the stage waving it confidently above his head.

‘Mr Leslie Noy. Are you here this evening, Mr Noy?'

A plain looking man in the front row near the aisle stands up. I strain to get a look at him. This must be Wilma's husband and the brother of Lola from the Commercial. Noy's neck and face redden.

‘That'd be me.'

‘From my information Mr Noy farms one hundred and twenty acres out at Towaninnie. What would you be getting out there on those red loams, Mr Noy – six bushels an acre?'

Les Noy looks at his boots. ‘More like five,' he says, quietly.

‘Well, Mr Noy, consider this. Manurial trials on red loams demonstrate the efficacy of super phosphate at least one ton per acre, sown early. Add sixty, but preferably ninety pounds per acre of gypsum and several minor elements – zinc sulphate at twenty pounds per acre and borax at fifteen pounds per acre – and you've got a guaranteed increase to eleven bushels an acre. That's over double the production, Mr Noy.'

Les Noy is frowning. ‘I'm sowing
Bencubbin
and I'm backed up in it. Would I have to be changing over?'

‘
Ghurka
and
Rannee 4H
win the yield trials, Noy. If it were my land I'd be changing over but with this equation you could still make your targets on
Baldmin, Bencubbin
or even
Regalia –
although no man with an ounce of sense would grow a wheat so weak in the straw.'

A mouse runs out from under Henry VIII's feet, does a lap around Robert's chair and exits, stage left. No one else seems to notice but I can't help smiling. It seems like a good omen.

Robert holds the piece of paper out in Les Noy's direction. ‘Take it, Mr Noy – it's yours. And there's a similar equation for every man here.'

Les Noy comes forward, with some hesitation, but by the time he gets to the stage an orderly line of men has formed behind him. Robert calls out their names like a school roll. There is a break in proceedings as the men read their equations and show them to neighbours and relatives. Robert returns to his seat on the stage although my instinct is he would be better on the floor amongst them. After a few minutes he calls the meeting to order again.

‘I propose we agree here today on the bulk ordering of super phosphate to decrease the unit cost for each –'

‘Slow down, Pettergree. Hold your horses. What's this all about? Us putting our hands in our pockets by the looks of it. Which fertiliser company is paying you off?'

Every head turns to the interjector, a thin man in a faded black suit.

‘Come clean, man.'

I hug my arms to my chest, concerned about Robert's reaction.

He is instantly indignant. ‘I represent no one and I resent the implication. I stand here as a scientist – if anything I represent scientific endeavour and the improvements it can make to this land. There's no magic here.' Robert folds his arms over his chest. ‘And patriotism. Mr Lyons asked me to appeal to your patriotism.'

Stan Hercules is the first to clap. The others quickly join in. Some men even get to their feet. One or two of the younger men whistle.

Robert motions for quiet. ‘Down to business. I need a man to take the bulk orders. Is there a volunteer?'

‘In for a penny, in for a pound. I'll do it, Pettergree.'

Robert gives Ern McKettering a grateful nod and says his name aloud as he writes it down. ‘Mr Ernest McKettering.'

Ern smiles proudly. He is now the scientist's assistant – an apprentice scientist, perhaps. He taps the toes of his white cricket boots against the hall's timber floor – the action of a man going in to bat. Then he turns and winks at me, as if to say, ‘That was a bit of fun, eh?'

The day the super phosphate train arrives we are the first at the station wearing the yellow rosettes pinned to our chests. All of the men of the district are there – some with their wives and children. Boys have been kept home from school to help with the carting; they play marbles as we wait. The sun strikes the glass baubles as they tumble and crack on the platform. The sky is the deepest, brightest blue. We watch a small flock of galahs clean up around the silos across the tracks. They are so common here I hardly notice the beauty of them anymore – their feathers the softest nipple pink.