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

colourful cacophony of it.
    I walk over to the fence that holds the wheat in. I look back at the house and then at the wheat again. The wheat looks smooth, almost like water. It is ‘in boot’ – just up to my thighs. I am unbearably hot and I feel like it might be cooler amongst the wheat. I part the wires and step through the fence. The first few steps are satisfying. I feel like I’m getting somewhere and there is the sound of the wheat snapping and the warm mealy smell of it. But I haven’t gone far when the stems start to bunch around my legs. Shards pierce my stockings. My suit is oddly twisted around me. The horizon seesaws sharply in the distance. I am stumbling. The wheat crackles around me. I call out weakly in the direction of the house. A flash of check shirt hurries along the side path. Then Mr Ivers ducks between the wires. He lifts me easily and carries me back to the house, curling his boot around the front door to open it. Robert is in the hallway, carrying a box of pots and pans.
    Ivers laughs good-naturedly. ‘Heatstroke. Your missus was in a spot of bother, Pettergree. Oh, and I’m afraid I’ve just carried her over the threshold.’
    Robert smiles weakly and nods towards the bedroom where I am put to rest on the dusty mattress.
    I sleep a little while Robert unpacks and sees to the delivery of Folly. Later, over a cold supper, he says there are no suitable paddocks for her and he expects she will be stupid enough to trample the crops. Stupid enough is plainly meant for me.
    â€˜I was just going for a walk. I thought I’d walk along the creek, only I couldn’t find it for the wheat.’
    Robert opens his notebook. His hands shake slightly as he jots down some figures. ‘This isn’t a demonstration plot or a wagonload, Jean – this is the real thing.’
    I find my walk. I find the narrow river. It is little more than a creek. I lead Folly there each day after Robert leaves the house and sit and sew on the steep banks. Folly is restless. She likes my sewing basket and clumps down to push it about with her big flat face. I am embroidering a handkerchief for Mary – Folly in the wheat. I only have an egg-yolk yellow so the wheat looks wrong, but it would be impossible to capture the true russety hue of it in thread.
    Sometimes I walk down the driveway back to the thick sugar gum at the gate. The ledge in between the three prongs holds me snugly. Ant trails curve around the trunks. If I look up for long enough I can see where the ends of the very furthest branches spike the sky.
    Bill Ivers’ wife, Elsie, is a broad-shouldered woman with a large face in two parts. The under hat area of her forehead is very white and smooth, while the skin below it is red and boiled-looking from the sun. Elsie has made several visits bringing cakes and eggs. She leads the children over on an old Clydesdale. All boys, they increase evenly in size and age between withers and rump. Off the horse they are attracted to one another like magnets, tumbling and wrestling in a constant whirl of activity that turns their small faces steaming pink.
    On her first visit she arrives with a fruitcake, carrying it on a plate while leading the horse. I make tea while she sniffs suspiciously around the kitchen and snorts at the wheat heads Robert has pinned out for dissection on the table.
    â€˜I wouldn’t be letting my husband bring dirty muck like that inside.’
    â€˜It’s science, Mrs Ivers. It’s important work.’
    â€˜Still dirty though, ain’t it? And you’d better be calling me Elsie.’
    We take two kitchen chairs out under the broom brush and watch the boys fight each other with mulga branches.
    â€˜They’re a trial, Jean, both men and boys, but I’m sure you’ll find that out soon enough.’ She looks at me side-on, at the space I take up in my dress.
    Elsie’s mother minds the boys the first time she takes me in