Read Online Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (Picador 40th) by Carrie Tiffany - Free Book Online Page A

Hercules is waiting outside to take our photograph for the Wycheproof Ensign . And then Muriel, the priest’s sister, is saying welcome to Wycheproof, Mrs Pettergree, and telling me about the dramatic society and the CWA and the Younger Set and tennis and how she won the Ladies’ Nail Driving Competition at the Berriwillock Floral Ball until, finally, I am sitting in the back seat of Mr Ivers’ car looking at my husband’s neck, so red, in front of me.
    â€˜I expect we’ll see you in town soon, Mrs Pettergree,’ Muriel shouts through the window, but she has to jump back quickly as we are off; Mr Ivers is keen to get away.
    Our farm is on the Avoca River and Mr Ivers is our closest neighbour. He has maintained the land since the last farmer and his family walked off with only their suitcases and tickets on a ship to New Zealand – ‘regular rain, proper English soils’. I wonder what Mr Ivers thinks about the farm being taken up by a scientist and agricultural expert rather than an ordinary farmer.
    The car has been sitting in the sun and I feel like I am being baked alive but the men don’t remove their coats. Robert quizzes Ivers about local yields. We skirt around the tiny mountain and take the Boort Road out through the paddocks. A few miles on we branch off down a narrower track and Ivers turns and smiles at me shyly.
    â€˜This is it then,’ he says.
    I smile back, dabbing at the sweat on my cheeks. At the start of a long driveway gum trees stand in a clump like monuments. Robert gets out to open the gate. The trunk of the nearest tree is as thick as the bodies of several men. At head height it splits into three separate prongs. Its delicate purple bark hangs in strips, a golden flesh shining underneath.
    â€˜How old are these trees?’ I ask Mr Ivers.
    â€˜Not sure, missus. A hundred maybe, two hundred.’
    As the car pulls away I imagine us inching up the paper on Robert’s hand-drawn map. Inching towards the ‘J’ for Jean. Robert reaches back and touches my arm when we pull up in front of the house as if to counteract any disappointment I might be feeling. But I like the plainness of the house. It is not unlike the cottage in the orchard – solidly square with two small windows each side of the door. The paint has faded from white to oily grey.
    Ivers says that his wife Elsie has cleaned and aired for us and that he has moved most of the furniture back from where it was stored in the shed. He says there is even an old piano.
    I imagine myself describing the house in a letter to my aunt – although we no longer write. ‘I have left my position on the Better Farming Train to marry an English Scientist. We have a farm in the Mallee with a small cottage.’ I would need to say something about a cat. In letters to my aunt I always included a reference to cats. ‘I have recently rescued a stray cat, been feeding a cat for a friend, had to borrow a cat for mousing, was kept awake by a cat, or saw an especially large or beautifully patterned cat in my travels.’
    Robert steps up onto the verandah, opens the front door and disappears inside. His boots reverberate on the floorboards. Ivers is leaning against the car, half looking at me. He has taken off his coat and I can see he is a careful man – belt and braces. I’m not ready to go into the house, although I know this is what I’m expected to do – to follow Robert. Instead I walk under an old peppercorn and along the side path to the backyard – bare dirt with a few mulgas. The house has a sloping broom brush verandah that dips low over the back door like a messy fringe. A slack wire fence holds in the wheat.
    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