Read Online The Amateur Science of Love by Craig Sherborne - Free Book Online Page B

if she turned that old building into a viable concern. What was the one thing the Wimmera-Mallee lacked, as stated in the road guide? Good accommodation. There wasn’t even a bed-and-breakfast within an hour of Scintilla. ‘You can do one just for artists. Call it The Artists’ Colony. Get the local council to pitch in for renovations. Advertise in the city newspapers— Paint the wheat fields just like Van Gogh did. Frame the Vincent flake, use it as an attraction.’
    ‘Would you help me with all this?’
    ‘Of course.’
    She said she was sorry for ever doubting me, for harping on about me and no plans.
    I was so deluded I wanted to phone Norm and boast that his son was involved in an investment in Australia; he’s a doer not a pipedreamer. I slept deep and stirless that night despite the usual disturbances: heat, stars and moonlight so bright they could be suns; moon moths butting my skin as if wanting to be let in. I might well have rung if not for what happened next morning.
    Tilda woke belching bits of food brown. She caught them in her T-shirt and managed to lean free of the van before vomiting more. She knelt naked in silvery grass and retched herself empty. I attempted to drape a shirt on her in case traffic came past but she ordered me away. She walked on her knees a few stub-strides to block the sight of her puddle.
    When the retching was gone she stood pale and sweaty and asked for water to rinse her sicky mouth. She hated when our water got warm and bitter from being kept in an orange-juice bottle, but this time she rinsed and drank it like nectar. It was 8am and already the sun was high, poaching the blue sky white, yet Tilda’s sweat had turned icy on her. She shivered her way into the van, into our body-damp bed—two chequer sheets, two folded eiderdowns for a mattress. ‘My period’s late,’ she shivered.
    I may have furrowed my brow in reaction, but little more. I hadn’t clicked to the significance. I was still full of myself over my big-business antics. I wanted to congress if possible, if Tilda was better now.
    She crooked her arm over her eyes. No, she was not better. ‘I’m two going on three weeks late.’ She wiggled her fingers, counting on them. ‘Two’s not unusual for me, I’ve never been clockwork, especially if things are emotional.’ She belched and coughed weakly. ‘But I feel very strange today. Like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I feel inhabited. I feel pregnant.’
    I sat on the van’s passenger-side seat. Tilda adjusted her arm to observe me eye to eye. I acted a smile, more close-lipped grimace than anything happy. I blinked myself free of her gaze, bowed my head as if the piece of gum leaf blown in from the road and sticking to my shin was more urgent an issue to deal with.
    ‘Probably just a false alarm,’ she said.

Chapter 26
    I drove us to Scintilla. The chemist would be open by 9; they’d have a test we could buy, which, Tilda explained, might not be perfect but a pretty good sign. She rode reclined in the back until the puttering and lurching of travel got to her and she climbed into the front to get air. She let window wind beat on her fringe.
    I asked, ‘What are the odds?’
    ‘We’ve been flying without a net. What do you think about it if I am?’
    ‘What do I think? It’s amazing.’ But my true thinking was: It’s terrifying; I am not ready to raise children; I am still raising myself.
    ‘In what way amazing?’
    ‘Amazing as in me having the power to do that.’ This part was true to my thinking. What I didn’t say was: I’ll be trapped for the next however many years. Yes, I loved Tilda, as best as I knew to call a feeling love. What if love had several levels? What if our level was just lust-love, just temporary, not love fit for breeding, sitting at the kitchen table budgeting for school expenses, other childhood bills?
    ‘All the drinking I’ve been doing, the smoking and shit food, any baby I had would be a mutant with two heads