Robert shifts in his seat. ‘Ah, I think I can place you . . . Les . . . red land at Towaninnie. Les Noy. My wife said you’d been to visit. I think it was a while ago . . .’ Robert trails off trying to think exactly what Noy had brought and if he should be thanked.
Noy’s face is reddening and getting blotchy with it.
‘Outside.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Outside, man, now.’ He kicks out at the barstool as he stands. It looks more childish than menacing.
Robert scans the bar for a familiar face. Most of the older men have left. He wishes that Ern McKettering were there, leaning against the wall in his white cricket boots. He stands unsteadily and heads for the door. Noy has twisted the shoulder of his jacket into a tight handle. He pushes Robert firmly from behind. It looks almost friendly to anyone watching – anyone not sober, that is. Robert is marched through the front door, along the footpath and around the back of the hotel. A fire flickers in a 44-gallon drum amongst the outhouses and stacks of empty beer barrels and rubbish bins. A small group of men stand around the drum drinking from bottles in brown paper bags. Noy shoves Robert towards the stack of barrels.
‘You’re cock-eyed, man. You go around doling out advice – do this, do that – and it’s just stuff you’ve read in books, for chrissakes. Let me tell you, Pettergree, anyone can read a book, a bloody nipper can read a book. Where’s your bloody experience?’
Noy advances on Robert and jabs him in the chest as he speaks. Robert pushes his hand aside – not out of anger. Just to stop him touching his ribs. The drink has changed Robert’s centre of balance; his head feels so light, barely there – all of him seems to be lined up behind his sharp sternum. Noy is circling him with his fists up, waiting for something, a defence, or the first jab.
Robert forces himself to think. ‘Did you plant the superior variety, Mr Noy?’ He’s aware of how ridiculous this sounds and how the circle of men around the fire has dissolved and formed again – around him and Noy. ‘Did you use the right additives?’
‘Strewth.’ Noy swings a punch at Robert’s head but it just misses. ‘Come on, put ’em up, put ’em up. You’re not a farmer’s bootlace, Pettergree. You’re not a farmer’s fucking backside.’
Robert crosses his arms over his chest. He loses his balance and stumbles sideways onto an empty barrel. His voice is barely more than a whisper. ‘Do you have a wife, Mr Noy? I think . . . a man as a single unit of production . . . it isn’t viable.’ Tears wash across his face. His voice is caught somewhere deep in his throat. ‘A wife. To provide for a wife is essential . . .’
Noy slaps his fists against his sides in frustration. You can’t hit a man when he’s down, especially not if he’s down and crying like a child. The circle of men shuffles back a few steps – it’s over. Noy feels strangely responsible for Robert. He brought him out here and now he’s slumped in the dirt with his head in his hands making everyone uncomfortable.
‘Get up. Come on, get up.’
Robert doesn’t move. Noy tries to pull him up by his collar but he’s a dead weight.
A dark haired man with a pretty pair of false teeth steps forward. ‘Leave it, mate. You’ll rip his bloody clothes off.’
The man introduces himself to Les Noy as Neville Frogley, a labourer who likes a spot of fishing and who did some work here a while back during the sand drift. Frogley drags Robert to his feet and holds him steady under the arms.
‘You see, young Leslie, there’s better things can be done with ’im. He’s a regular Mr Magic he is. We’ll be making a quid or two out of him tonight. Our Mr Pettergree has a special talent, and as we know, it’s not for the growin’ of wheat.’
Robert tries to protest. He tells them that he doesn’t do the tasting anymore. That he only did it for Lillian, his mother, who had things hard in the old country, that’s he’s dedicated his life to science . . . But the men just laugh and drag him further off into the darkness.
— 27 —
A NIGHT OF SOIL
Neville Frogley props Robert up on a sugar gum stump on the outskirts of town. Les Noy keeps the beer coming. They charge a pound a bet. It crosses Frogley’s mind that advanced drunkenness may reduce Robert’s ability. It doesn’t.
Robert tastes white soil from the shores of Lake Tyrrell, black soil from Horsham, red soil from Wyche-proof, soil laced with pepper (stating correctly that it is white pepper not black), soil mixed with kalsomine, soil moistened with kerosene, soil mixed with shit.
He can barely hold himself up. Neville Frogley feeds the soil through Robert’s lips with his fingers then leans in to catch the slurry, mumbled verdict.
Robert’s mind flicks backwards – his mother’s red hair, Uncle Will and his pigeons, years of lonely evenings in the library, the honey car, starting the tractor on a cold morning, the first harvest, Jean watering the house plants in her cotton slip, Jean pale and weak in hospital asking him to open the curtains and let in the Mallee sky . . .
He is aware enough to recognise some of the men that stand around him. He is aware enough to see his humiliation clearly. A scientist – a failed scientist – performing tricks like a circus freak. There is no going back, he thinks to himself. There is no way to recover from this.
Neville Frogley makes six pounds four shillings and threepence. He gives Les Noy half and disappears just as the magpies start warbling and the first light is spreading softly through the trees.
Noy waves the money in front of Robert. ‘How much do you want then, mate – for services rendered?’ Robert stares into his face for a second then splatters vomit across his shoes.
Noy looks around at the remains of the fire and the empty beer bottles and Robert slumped sideways on the tree stump. ‘Strewth. Why do I always get left holding the baby?’
Robert comes home not long after dawn. I hear him opening and closing the drawers on the sewing machine. I pull the coverlet around me and go to see what he’s up to.
‘Where’s the tape measure?’
He looks rough. His suit is crumpled and dusty, as if he’s been out in a soil storm. He takes off the coat and then his shirt. The white cotton is flecked with fine red soil, giving it a rosy hue.
‘The tape measure?’
‘Bottom drawer.’ I know what he’s doing. The minimum AIF chest measurement is thirty-two inches with two inches for expansion. A pigeon chest distorts the chest but it doesn’t increase it. The outward swell at the sternum is more than offset by the flattening of the ribs. Front on it might not be noticeable, but the tape measure doesn’t lie.
He struggles to get the tape around his back.
‘Can you help me?’
I take the two ends and slide it up – across his nipples. He smells of beer and soil and vomit. My hands brush his upper arms where the firm muscle puckers and folds into the softness of his armpits.
‘It isn’t going to work. It’s just thirty, and barely that.’
‘Maybe they’ll have a different tape?’
‘Last time I heard there is only one way of measuring.’
Robert twists to pull his shirt back over his shoulders. ‘I can’t see why it matters so much. I’m as fit as the next man.’
‘Perhaps you need a certain width for a decent target. Perhaps it’s an international rule of war and the Huns have the same requirement. Just to make it fair, of course.’
‘You’re being ridiculous, Jean.’
‘No. I’m being honest.’
We both look down. All of the drawers on the sewing machine cabinet are open. Robert stands dully, tired. Then he breathes in sharply through his mouth, leans down and takes the little parcel of letters from the second drawer. He holds them in the palm of his hand and sorts through them with slow concentration, as though looking for something misfiled.
‘Who gave you these?’
I snatch the letters off him and hold them in front of me.
‘I saw your handwriting on the envelopes. I’m the one that should be angry here.’
‘I didn’t read them,’ he says casually.
‘You lied to me. You prevented me from helping a friend. Ohno has been sent to prison, Robert, and he has nobody.’
He starts to do up his buttons. His mouth is held tight with pride but his face is hurt and loose around it.
‘Your heart was always elsewhere.’
‘My heart? My heart? How can you talk about my heart?’ I put the heels of my hands on his chest and push him backwards, his thigh catches on the edge of the sewing machine. He winces and rubs at it. He looks surprised. Confused.
‘My heart has always been here for you. Everything was about love – can’t you see that? Every experiment, every sample, every hopeless loaf of bread, it was all about love, Robert. My love for you. And what did you give me? Useless rules. Where is the heart in your useless rules? The rules don’t mean anything, Robert. They just get in the way of you seeing things how they really are. They get in the way of the truth.’
The sun is rising. It streams in through the open kitchen door refracting a long blade of light across the floor between us. We stare at each other across the kitchen, across the blade of light. Robert seems tired and weak. Exhausted. One of his shoulders droops low, his arm hanging slackly from it so he seems to be listing or struggling against a head wind. I take his slack arm, walk him to the door and stand behind him. The sunlight is bright and glittery and he puts out his hand to shade his eyes.
‘What do you see, Robert? Tell me what you see.’
We stand in silence for a minute. I put my arms around him from behind and knot my fingers together across his chest. His back blots out my view but I can smell the day as it starts to unfold. The aroma of the soil baking on a low, strong heat, the dry wheat, the nose-twitching sting of the peppercorn tree. I lean on Robert and nudge him forward. I want us to move out from the frame of the door into the day together. He shakes his head. Then he unlaces my fingers from across his chest and shrugs me off.
‘Robert?’ I reach out to him again, try to hold him to me. I want him to feel my body through my nightdress. I want to push against him so that there are no spaces between us, just layers of skin and flesh and muscle and bone. I want him to feel me as I am.
I hear him swallow and feel him hardening through his trousers, but then he pushes me aside and lurches through the door.
‘It’s too late, Jean. It’s too late now.
— 28 —
SISTER CROCK PROCLAIMS THE MEN FIT
Hec Bowd isn’t at the Commercial but he can’t ignore what’s happening. He reads the paper, hears the bugle calls, sees the Clectrac tank roll heavily down the main street. It’s a close relation to the special sand tractor that went to his neighbour when he was sold up. That was war too. The battle of the shifting soil. No one, it turns out, was the victor – not even the bank.
The Bowds left the farm for a ‘Florida villa’ on the edge of town. It was a constant cruel reminder – the dado design of it with kero tins below and flapping wheat sacks above. Mrs Bowd never came around to it. She took to her cot and passed away soon after. Hec and Ollie are the survivors. They keep to themselves. He takes the odd harvest job and Ollie does a bit of babysitting. Ollie has to wear her tennis whites for everyday and she finds it hard to keep them clean.
When the recruiting train comes through Hec says they’ll just go down for a look. A quick stroll to the station – catch up with some old faces. But on the way, his daughter’s arm folded gently through his, he knows what he has to do. The bugle calls in the distance as they cross the river. Hec is as jumpy as a kitten. How can he leave his girl? Lovely Ollie with her sharp chin and gleaming dark eyes. But how else to put five bob a day in her purse? And the pension is good. If he comes back injured (he thinks this is unlikely) she’ll be well looked after and if he is killed (most likely) she’ll get the same as the widow’s pension – a bit of money and some dignity with it.
At forty-five Hec’s way too old to fight, but his papers went with the mice and who’s going to argue? It’s his teeth he worries about. He’s had them thirty-odd years and they seem to be getting bigger and more uncomfortable as the years go by. He has to take them out to eat. In fact he takes them out most times except for church and odd evenings down the pub and Ollie’s birthday. It takes him several minutes to coax the teeth into place and they often loosen and crash about in his mouth if he runs. He can’t imagine fighting in them.
A man of forty-five may look thirty-five if he’s a soft-handed city fellow who has spent his days riding a desk – slinging ink. But not a farmer. Every one of Hec Bowd’s years on the farm is written across his face. Thickened blotchy skin, a scorch mark across the forehead from the band of his hat, eyes of faded china blue.
Sister Crock has made a smooth transition from measuring babies to measuring men. She is happy to bend the rules for her country. Sister Crock accepts – she rarely rejects. Why send only the perfectly fit to get killed? she reasons. Why not give everyone a chance? She is creative. With a stroke of her pen a wizened man of fifty stumbling over his date of birth has it recorded, in neat nurse’s handwriting, as 1910, making him exactly thirty.
She is helpful too with occupations. ‘Far too many occupations are classified,’ she complains to Mr Plattfuss. When a man is told he will not be accepted if he describes himself as a farmer, Sister Crock assists him in adopting another occupation. Her father worked all of his life in the leather tanning industry so the farmers of the Mallee became Shedmen, Hand Fleshers, Buffing Machinists, Vat Hands, Unhairers, Paddle Hands, Lime Jobbers, Strikers and Squeezing Machinists. And sometimes, for a man of a different class, she says he was a clockmaker. She went out with a clockmaker for a few months during her training and occasionally wondered how her life might have been different if they’d made a go of it.
Hec Bowd leaves Ollie to look at the displays in the women’s car and says he’ll pick her up later – when he’s seen some mates and had a beer or two. He’s third in line at the enlistment card table. A young man from the recruiting office takes his details, asks a few questions (can you drive a car, cook, use a typewriter, take shorthand, keep accounts or play a musical instrument?) and sends him down the line to the Sister. He’d been hoping for a doctor. The short arm inspection isn’t something to be relished in front of a woman.
The examination car is partitioned off into several stalls with green cotton curtains. Each stall contains a chair. Sister Crock, busy with somebody in stall three, calls out for Hec to take a vacant stall and undress. Hec leans heavily against the chair. His shoes are laced with baling twine. He takes them off and lays his trousers on top of them. He sits on the cold, hard chair and waits.
‘Next man, come through now.’
Hec plucks at the edge of the curtain. On the other side of it Sister Crock sits behind a sizeable leather-topped desk flanked by a set of scales and a measuring stick. She reads out a series of questions without even looking up at him.
‘Have you had a broken nose or a serious injury? Have you been operated on? Has any member of your family suffered from Pleurisy, Tuberculosis, Diabetes, Stroke, Nervous Breakdown or Mental Trouble? Have you ever been rejected for life insurance?’
‘Er, no. Not that I can think of.’
She writes something on a white card and finally looks up at him.
‘Mr Bowd.’ Her eyes travel from his face down to the floor.
Hec can feel himself shrivelling. His cock is pointing to the left, caught up in the wiry nest of his pubic hair. He wishes he’d thought to free things up down there before coming through the curtain.
‘Not exactly in the flower of your youth, are you, Mr Bowd?’
Hec holds his tongue. She’s no spring chicken herself and he would have liked to tell her so, but he doesn’t want to expose his dentures with any smart speech.
‘Stand against the measure, please. Heels touching.’
Sister Crock brings the adjustable rule down until it rests on Hec’s smooth skull. He wish
es for his hat.
‘Five-seven.’ She weighs him and measures his chest. ‘Have you ever worn eye-glasses, Mr Bowd?’
‘No. Not that I can think of.’
Hec holds a well-thumbed cardboard square over each eye and reads the test chart.
‘F N P O H V D L X.’
It’s a good job, an optometrist, he thinks. Maybe Ollie could get a job in an optometrist’s office and spend her days polishing lenses and making appointments. She’d have to move to the city – Horsham, or Bendigo even.
Sister Crock writes 20/20 under Vision and moves on to General Physique and Configuration.
‘Turn around, Mr Bowd.’ She assesses Hec’s rear view for scoliosis, varicose veins and haemorrhoids. She makes him turn to the front again, stand on his toes, stand on his heels, squat, swing his arms around, bend his elbows, open and shut his hands, pronate and supinate one forearm. Then, bending forward, she examines him for disabilities of the mouth (‘dentures present but no deformities of the jaw noted’), throat and ears; for hernia and for scrotal abnormalities. She stands and examines his heart and lungs with a stethoscope. The final test is hearing. She advises him to occlude one ear (‘It means “cover”, Mr Bowd’) and walks to the rear of the carriage where she whispers a few numbers for him to repeat. ‘Sixty-six,’ she whispers. ‘Twenty-five, forty-four.’ She makes allowances for men in cropping areas – long hours on noisy tractors take their toll. The whisper rises to a bark.
Sister Crock stamps Hec’s card and passes him his AA A204. Private Hector Bowd has a week to tidy up his affairs and present himself in Melbourne. He pulls his trousers on with difficulty. He’s shaking and not sure whether it’s from fear or relief. Now for the hard bit. To find Ollie and break the news.
Sister Crock doesn’t reject men for showing evidence of inebriation. She’s aware of the three pounds on the bar, of the hours of drinking a man may need to put in the night before to get himself here. She doesn’t flinch as she calls the next man forward only to find him asleep on the chair in his curtained-off cubicle. Shaken awake, Les Noy hands up his card.
Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (Picador 40th) Page 16