Muck

by Craig Sherborne

  Someone will have to go back and fetch her good plate. “That’s a job for you, I think,” she nods to me. For she, as she drove out of the hair-net’s drive, promised herself never to set foot there again.

  In fact never again will she be sociable like this. Not with these types with their lurking and their stealing her Wedgwood and closing doors in her face. “Where I come from you don’t close doors in faces,” she rasps like a warning, a threat. “Not in my face you don’t.”

  She has begun to dig in her hair and mutter wet swearing. Spit bubbles at her mouth corners. “Bugger them. To hell with every bloody one.”

  But promises are only temporary. Especially, says Feet, when you are fortunate enough to have the kind of husband she has. Someone with the ability to put in a nutshell exactly how our neighbours must feel.

  We must look at it from their point of view. “I should feel sympathy for them. Not anger,” she says, shaking her head annoyed this never occurred to her. “Here we are with the best property in the district. And there they are just chipping away, chipping away, as they have always done in life.”

  Just imagine it, she laughs, her fingers resting below her throat. They must feel intimidated to see the lady of a showpiece like we have turn up on their doorstep out of the blue. “They’d take one look at me, and then one look at themselves and their mothy old cardigan and their grey hair that needs a good tinting and doing. Those horrible hormone chin-hairs they haven’t plucked since God knows. Not to mention the state of their house. They probably haven’t cleaned their house for an eternity. Too busy, or too hard up even to get a cleaner.”

  The Duke is emphatic, we really must try to fit in: “It wouldn’t kill us to try that little bit harder because you never know when we’ll want something from them. Even just paying their share of a new boundary fence. Even just the loan of machinery. We want to keep in good.”

  He puts the question to Feet: “What’s the one thing every person has in common?”

  She shrugs that there are so many things it’s impossible to list them. Everybody wants to have nice clothes if they can afford them. Everyone likes to go out for dinner to somewhere swish.

  “No, no, no.” The Duke wipes his hand across his face. “Family. Family. That’s what we all understand. Rich, poor, Chinaman, Jew. And that’s how we should present ourselves to our neighbours. As a family. It shows we’re just like them in that regard. That’s the something that will break the ice.”

  She wishes she had done this in the first place.

  A phone call only takes a minute, that’s all it takes, and look what grief it saves. She claps her hands together at how wise a phone call can be. No-one gets caught on the hop by having you turn up unannounced. There is time for them to clean. There is time for them to prepare refreshments, stock up on drink, have their hair done. “Would it be convenient if we popped over?” she said to Face-ache, and Face-ache said “Yes.” Hesitated, it’s true. Didn’t jump for joy, but who ever jumps for joy to have people invite themselves over for afternoon tea?

  At least our Face-ache had the good graces to say, “That would be nice,” and suggested the occasion be held at the main house, her parents-in-laws’, at 2pm tomorrow before the evening milking.

  “Not the midget house, thank God. We’d hardly fit in,” Feet quips with a laugh-grunt, her fingertips over her mouth as if she just belched.

  A new batch of scones is called for.

  And those fawn shoes—The Duke will have to take his fawn shoes from the wardrobe, the ones with the silver buckles, and rub away any black scuffs with soap and warm water.

  She insists he wear his fawn suit to match. Not that she wants him to look too formal. But when worn with his white skivvy and red pocket handkerchief, he is the very essence of smart.

  She herself is tossing up between her orange pantsuit with the matching string shoes, so cozily flat-heeled to spare her arches and corns. Or she could try the candy-pink jumpsuit with or without the yellow belt. Either way, she thinks it time to break out her necklaces. The pearls might be the thing. Or maybe just plain gold. “My lordship, what do you think?”

  The Duke holds out his hands and pushes down on the air. “I think we shouldn’t be going over there all flash and dolled up. We’re not in Sydney now I remind you. I think we should play us down.”

  “But what’s the point of having nice things if we don’t show them off?” Feet states, not asks.

  “I’m only telling you what I think. I don’t intend arguing over the matter but I’m just saying I think we should play us down.”

  “Well I’m not going over there in gumboots, that’s for sure.” Feet stands square to him and puts her hands on her hips.

  “No-one’s saying we’re going in gumboots.”

  “That’s a relief. But I’d still like you in your fawn suit if you don’t mind. If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “I’ll wear the fawn suit. But I think you should go easy on the jewellery.”

  Feet sighs and promises to wear her polka-dot neck scarf instead. “Is that played down enough?”

  “It’s a start. I don’t think it’s too much trouble to put ourselves to if we want to fit in a bit more,” The Duke says.

  “Scones, polka-dots. I think I’m making every attempt possible to fit in. But one has standards. Why shouldn’t the lady of Tudor Park wear jewellery? It might encourage a little more pride in other people and their presentation.”

  She goes to the kitchen to make more scones, talking to herself about how people should come up to her standards not the other way round. Not her come down to theirs. “That’s all I can say. Them up. Not the other way round.”

  Mixing the dough, she talks to herself: “I am not about to compromise on standards, thank you very much.”

  Ironing The Duke’s skivvy, his red pocket handkerchief that lends such a splash of colour to a man: “Your standards drop and you might as well say ‘I’ve let myself go.’” Her voice register changes, lowered to a man’s to mimic The Duke: “Fit in why don’t you. Compromise your standards.”

  Then her own voice. “No thank you.”

  Then a rougher man’s. “Come down to our standards.”

  Her own again. “Where I come from you bloody well work hard to get nice things and wear them.”

  On it goes this mumbled argument like a private parliament of herself.

  But by 2pm next day she has talked herself into the view that wearing jewellery in the country is much too risky. A bracelet can become hooked on a branch. Try finding a sapphire in all that grass. Sydney has burglars and pickpockets. Here the culprit is long, thick grass.

  Besides, if being a good neighbour is so important to her husband, then it becomes important to her. She understands perfectly how useful neighbours can be, especially with us away so much in Australia and staff running the place—reliable one minute but what about the next?

  She ties her polka-dots around her neck like cloth jewellery. She tells me I needn’t shave because my week’s re-growth has barely sprouted. I may wear jeans on this occasion because it’s a manly, countrified statement in the young.

  Face-ache did tell Feet her name on the phone but now she has forgotten it and hopes she doesn’t call her Face-ache out of habit. “What was her name again? I think it starts with a C. I’ve completely forgotten. Carol, Kate or Carly something.” She pours herself a calming glass of riesling.

  Why have I allowed Feet to speak to me in this way with her “You needn’t shave” and “jeans on this occasion”? Why no farce of fury until The Duke restores the chain of command?

  It is because I do want to make a manly statement with jeans in the country style. I have already checked for any sign of re-growth. Had there been whiskers on my cheeks and chin I would have watered the candle-flame and gripped the Safety in the limply way to respect my neighbours with a presentable face.

  For I don’t merely put my hands behind my back and walk with my twitch self to oversee Churchill.
I don’t merely cat’s-cradle with Norman and son, perfecting my not-looking technique so they see that an education doesn’t deprive a man of hardy pride. I also gaze in all four directions at this grass and milk civilisation. I bring it up close to me with a lend of The Duke’s binoculars. There is blue sun on our mountains if a storm cloud covers it over. The milk tanker man puts his wireless to his ear and jigs while he milks the shed that milked the 500 deformed humans. I imagine I am duke of it all, the four directions, its commanding citizen. In time its mayor, its look-up-to man. Perhaps even one day, yes, its member of parliament.

  History would happen to me in this place after all.

  Such advancement would not be beyond The Duke were he a better-read man with a head for speeches. He’s the doer kind—he has no time for fancy speeches.

  What an achievement to crown his legacy I would be.

  Today I am going to meet my constituents, my neighbours. Perhaps word has spread from Norman and William that I am highly qualified in mind, a person of learning, who is adapting well to their way of life—I am clearly someone not afraid of manual toil. “Look at his forearm scar, the O shape,” they may have gossiped to others, having admired its purple blister.

  I also have added some scars to my hands. Lifting hay bales by the raw twine without gloves burns and swells the fingers till there’s blood. Bale prickles dot my knuckles and leave a puffy poison in the wounds. The blunt knife that cuts the hay twine also cuts well into skin. By using a chopping motion the rusty blade sinks where you aim it. Same with sharp rock—a chop, a grimace and the skunning’s done.

  When Feet and The Duke ask how I got these scars, I say from working. Plain hard work.

  Perhaps word has spread already through Taonga that I am one of their people now, but obviously above them.

  CHRISTINE, NOT CAROL, says Face-ache.

  Her mouth is bent up uncomfortably in a smile. Her eyes shyly avoid ours.

  Feet apologises and says she doesn’t know where she got Carol from. “Wait a minute—yes I do. I was thinking of a woman I know in Sydney who is the spitting image of you.”

  The Duke and I glance at each other and arch eyebrows because this woman, this Christine, is like no friend of Feet’s from Sydney. She has no peach-tinted or bleached salon-sculpted hair. Hers is brown with grey through it, cut below her ears like The Beatles. No make-up over the cracks and saggings of her face. Not a dab of red on her lips or fingers. Her clothes could be a man’s—khaki trousers, blue pullover shedding dags of wool.

  No woman in Feet’s circle smells as Christine smells— stale milk. Not even fumes from Feet’s perfume can cover the cow-shed taint in the air.

  The Duke touches Feet in the small of her back, his signal for her not to talk too much, not to speak for the sake of speaking as she has just done.

  Feet taps his fingers away irritably. She does this as Christine leads us down the hall where now there is a faint piss-stink in the air. Piss of soiled human not soil-animal.

  The lounge contains shades rather than colours. Through the west window a see-through stream of sun flows, squirming with motes. On either side of the flow, dark armchairs and walls, a settee with crochet coverings.

  Feet has her sneer-smile on. She uses it when something is not to her taste, a house like this for instance which she would call dowdy. The Duke steps behind her and places his hand on her elbow.

  “Ah,” she sneer-smiles. “Well, here we are.” She presents Christine with scones folded in a swag of grease-proof paper tied with a blue ribbon bow: “My mother’s secret formula.” She pokes The Duke’s arm for him to please pass Christine our gift of a bottle of champagne.

  Christine blinks at the bottle with a sneer-smile of her own though she accepts the bottle politely enough, saying “You shouldn’t have done that” as she takes it by the neck.

  She turns to two men sitting on the other side of the sun stream. They stand, one very old, skinny, tanned, who steps momentarily into the stream. He has a bald head, white where a hat would normally be. The other man is a younger he, identical in face but with a pale hair-mist over his crown and more flesh to his body. They wear short khaki pants, no shoes, just socks, the ends of which flop the way socks do when boots have been levered off heel-to-toe.

  Suddenly from a room down the hall, an old woman’s ailing voice: “Who is it, dear?”

  “It’s the new neighbours,” Christine replies and in the same breath introduces her father-in-law, Jim, and Jim junior, her Jim, her husband.

  The Duke and I shake hands with the Jims. I offer a good grip, a three-second squeeze to make a manly impression.

  The Duke has always advised that it’s not a tussle of strength, nor is it a standover ritual. A handshake says: I look you in the eye and greet you forcefully without force. Unless, of course, your fellow shaker is an opposing shaker, a challenger attempting to assert superiority over you. That’s when forcefulness is legitimate, as retaliation. Grip-pressure time may be extended in that circumstance well beyond three seconds to five seconds, seven, or even, if needed, nine.

  On this occasion, shaking the Jims, I want to appear honoured to be in this house, their family home, the seat of who they are. I’ve decided I am especially honoured that they felt no need to dress up for our visit. They’re content for us to see them as they live, in their natural state, their garb of every day.

  Feet, still sneer-smiling, will consider it offensive, disrespectful. But I am willing to see it as the purest form of welcome.

  Yet, as honoured as I am, I must not appear too honoured or obliged to them. My being here is as it should be. This is only our first meeting but it’s a chance for them to realise their future depends on me.

  Squeezing their hands that reach out across the stream is not like squeezing human at all. More log of wood than skin and bone. Wood with rough, splintery bark. No pressure is returned by them in the finger and palm embrace.

  Christine fans out her arms for us to sit. The Jims return to their side of the stream. We of Tudor Park stay on our side and sink between musty cushions.

  “Who is it, dear?” the hall-voice inquires again.

  “It’s the new people,” Christine answers, still not looking our way but pulling dags from her pullover, flitting from one section of the pullover to another. She informs us that the voice up the hall is her mother-in-law who is an invalid and frailer by the day.

  Oh, we nod, sympathetically. There the conversation stalls. Stops. We sit in nodding silence.

  Silence is for finding a way out of silence. Feet has deep breaths for trying to escape it. She crosses her right leg over her left, then changes to left over right and breathes heavily.

  The Duke has his throat to clear. On this occasion he also has crochet arm-rests to pick and rub and admire.

  The other side of the stream must be used to silence. The Jims sit motionless. One of them, I can’t work out which, has a whistling block in his nose.

  I would rather not waste time in silence. I want to know what subject brings these men alive. What would make them, ordinary people, but men of property at least, feel at ease and willing to confide in me as their future leading citizen?

  That hall-voice again. “The Van Hoots, is it?”

  “No, the new ones,” Christine calls back.

  A kettle puffs and squeals in the kitchen. Christine stands, stuffs a handful of dags in her pocket and asks, “Who has milk and sugar in their tea?”

  “Oh, I see,” Feet says with a small laugh, confused. “I’d said to myself, ‘Champagne.’ I just assumed. I’m sorry.”

  Christine picks off a dag and glances at the Jims. The Jims look at each other. They scratch their heads in identical timing and bite their lower lips as if confronted with a problem which must be solved this moment, now. Christine goes into the kitchen. The puff and squeal die away. She re-appears with the champagne.

  The Duke leans over and whispers to Feet. She frowns and stares into the stream. Then, pressing her fingers to
her throat as if to keep laughter down, says, “White with one, please.” She lets up two sneering chuckles, the way she does when she’s put out, cross. “I hope we haven’t offended you by bringing alcohol into your house.”

  The Duke smiles across the stream to the Jims. “It probably wasn’t appropriate.”

  Feet frowns an apology to the Jims. “My husband says this is a strong religious area—Brethren wasn’t it? We just presumed that since this is a special occasion.”

  “We’ll know for next time,” The Duke declares.

  The hall-voice this time is stronger, more insistent. “Who is it then?”

  Christine ignores the question, puts the champagne bottle on the sideboard and goes into the kitchen.

  That nodding silence again. Then Feet uncrosses her legs and says, “I admire people of religion. Not that I go for it myself. But my word, I’ve thought of starting a religion. What other business gets away with paying no taxes? Makes the lurks we can claim pale by comparison.” She lets up a hearty laugh.

  The Duke laughs with her but tries to catch her eye to hush her.

  Jim senior leans forward. “We had a bottle of beer in the house once. But we gave it to Rosie.”

  Jim junior nods that he remembers.

  “Rosie?” Feet inquires, pointing to the hall as if presuming the name belongs to the voice from down there.

  “We drenched old Rosie with it to bring her gas up,” says Jim junior.

  “Goodness,” Feet leans back, shocked.

  “She had the bloat,” says Jim senior.

  Jim junior gets up from his armchair and takes a framed photograph from the mantelpiece. He steps through the stream to show us Rosie, a palomino-pale Jersey. “Super milker was Rosie.” Another photograph. “This one here is her mother, Lil.”

  The Duke and Feet perform admiration with muttered Ohs and “My word.”

  This is the opportunity to display my scars and my new knowledge of Jerseys. If I take the photographs from Jim junior, make my movements very slow, leaning well forward into the sun stream, even my red prickle spots will be clearly in view.