The Amateur Science of Love

by Craig Sherborne

  She was almost too late: Cameron’s cancer was back and in the process of killing him. He could barely sit upright; his bones were eaten out and could not take his weight. Tilda apologised for even fetching him to the phone, let alone suggesting he might pose for her. ‘Art is so trivial alongside illness,’ she said, tucking the phone under her chin, pressing her palm against her forehead. Her face had lost its pink cheeks and pink lips; they were sick-bed pale from embarrassment and cancer memories. ‘Just forget I rang,’ she apologised.

  Cameron insisted she not apologise more. He was accepting of his fate. So was his wife. Dying needs its distractions too: a portrait might be the perfect tonic. There were plenty of photographs of him around, family ones, a few formal shots for book covers—his daughter, Ruth, eighteen months old, would have those images to say, ‘This was my father.’ But a painted portrait was another matter, he said. It’s an artist’s impression in oils of what’s inside us, of who we are. It’s an artefact.

  And so it was arranged. Donna took care of the details. Thursday week; a three-hour session for preparatory sketches should do it. He’d be comfortable enough if propped on pillows, and he would doze if the morphine got to him.

  Tilda maintains she never liked Donna. Right from the start she had a bad feeling about her. You wouldn’t have thought so listening to that phone call. ‘Donna,’ she said. ‘I can’t thank you enough for letting me have your husband’s precious time.’ She hung up and smiled, ‘What a woman, this Donna. Such dignity and graciousness. Such strength given the situation.’

  I remembered the day at the Barleyhusk silos. I imagined I wouldn’t look twice at Donna now. Women in the country go fat from having children. I imagined her no further. Not yet.

  Never liked Donna. Bullshit, Tilda! You came home from the portrait session like you were smitten; like you felt a little bit lesbian towards her. The prettiness of the woman; her hospitable, intelligent nature; so loyal to her husband, and caring. Never liked Donna. You didn’t spend much time telling me about painting Cameron Wilkins. It was Donna, Donna, Donna. You had made a new friend, and if the cyst had taught you anything it was that you hadn’t valued friendship enough. You had locked yourself up inside this old building and it had driven you lazy and loopy. When Cameron died, three weeks after posing, it was you who insisted we attend the funeral. I said, ‘We didn’t know him enough to go to his funeral.’

  It was you who said, ‘We need to be more social.’

  Never liked Donna. You’re rewriting history. You liked her so much you forgot to think about me. That I might like her too; I might get smitten. I might end up wanting her more than I want you.

  Chapter 63

  There were two lunches—one at our place, one at Donna’s.

  Ours was Tilda’s idea, to do with Cameron’s portraits and the Archibald. Three months after the funeral a series of six oils had been completed. Tilda wanted Donna’s opinion about which was the best of them. The best would be the prize entry. Donna could choose a gift for herself from the others. It was a nervy Sunday lunch: would the widow be in tears? Would she look at Cameron’s image and collapse on us? Her daughter, too, would she get spooked seeing her father in frame? Having no child ourselves we predicted a grief tantrum.

  Death doesn’t register with kids. While mummy did her choosing I took the wee girl to the park and she was thrilled to ride the plastic horse, hold on for dear life on the swings. She wept at having to dismount and hurry home with me. I didn’t want to be at the park being counterweight on plastic horses. I wanted to get back and pretend not to be watching Donna. At Cameron’s funeral (which involved no church, just a burial) I had kept my distance, felt an impostor. I didn’t get a good view of her. Her head was bowed; relatives shrouded her in hugging. She still had that Spanish look from the day at the silos, in the hair sense, the black shawl sense. Her hair blew forward as she tossed a handful of dirt in the grave. The rest of her was hunched around a handkerchief. She wore sunglasses. Her blue dress was too long down her legs to see anything more than ankles.

  But in our small living room eating dips on sticks of celery she was all bare arms and pants cut off at the knees. I focussed there—on her knees. Or rather, stared into spaces either side of her knees, taking little glimpses and keeping her on the edge of my vision. Tilda’s tape-measure eyes couldn’t complain about knee spaces: I wasn’t looking at a face or cleft of bosom, though I wanted to. Donna’s knees were like most knees—a dry-skin knob putting a blemish in her tan skin. But most faces were not like hers. I don’t just mean the U-chin and dimple. I mean her brown eyes. Our culture values blue eyes as if blue eyes are purest—miniature replicas of sky. But brown eyes can have earth-dark gleams to them. Donna’s eyes were this way. It was a pity not to peer into them.

  I am not an open smiler. I smile self-consciously, lips askew or pursed. Donna’s smile put all her big white teeth on show; not as an act, performing smiling like cheese for cameras, but as a pleased-to-see-you friendliness. Unless, of course, I had been fooled and she had perfected smiling for vanity’s sake. That’s what Tilda would say. Anyway, it was a pity not to look.

  I listened instead. Donna was explaining how she was doing fine. Fine in the tears sense, in the dropping-your-bundle sense and needing a good cry. A month ago the crying stopped and in its place came money worry, and does she stay in Watercook or move somewhere urban for Ruth’s schooling? If it wasn’t for Ruth she would go somewhere like Darwin. A complete change, a new life, exotic and tropical. Ruth required stability, not exotic and tropical.

  ‘I’ve even felt like cutting off all my hair,’ she said. ‘Shave it off to symbolise grief, but also for saying there’s a new me starting.’

  Cut off her hair? I jerked up my head at such a notion. I took an admiring look at it, the dark mesh of curling; then stared off before Tilda saw.

  The lunch ended with an agreement to a do a lunch again, next time at Donna’s place. She had been thinking of a modest party in a few months. A daytime soiree with local people she knew—neighbours and parents from Ruth’s playmate group. Nothing wild or late-nightish. Would we come?

  ‘Delighted,’ said Tilda. ‘Who knows, we might be celebrating an Archibald!’ She kissed Donna on the cheek. Ruth too. I shook hands and said nice to see you again.

  They were walking up the backyard, across oleander leaf shade, when Ruth’s hairclip, a fake-glass tiara adornment, snagged on a low branch and dropped from her head, broken. Donna knelt to retrieve it, pausing in a crouch to comment how it was just a cheap old thing. I did not stare off from the band of white flesh that appeared because of her crouching—almost all of her lower back. It was so smooth and transparent you could see a faint few veins where her T-shirt rode up. And the top of her pants, the shadow and crease of her bottom.

  No sooner had we waved Donna’s car goodbye than Tilda said, ‘You seemed very quiet. What do you think of Donna? I got the impression you don’t like her, staring into space like you were bored. I hope she didn’t think you were rude.’

  I shrugged that I had no opinion of her either way.

  ‘She’s very attractive.’

  ‘Is she?’ I shrugged again. ‘I suppose she is. I wasn’t paying much attention.’ If Tilda was fishing I was matching her with yawning nonchalance.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit early for her to be stopping crying?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If it was me who died I’d want you to cry over me longer than three months. You would, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She hugged my arm as we walked towards the back door. ‘I like Donna well enough, I just think she’s, you know, a bit cold. A bit hard and cold.’

  ‘Same here.’

  Tilda squeezed my arm as if relieved we were of a similar mind. She said if I died she would never stop crying over it
.

  Chapter 64

  The Donna lunch was barbecue-style, the cooktop sizzling like tap water running. A dozen people were arced around it, squinting at rissole smoke and decrying the lack of government research into declining wild bee populations. All the money pouring into genetically modified produce—it was a scandal. Mankind was going to make nature unnatural. These were alternative-lifestyle types who farmed alpacas or goats and lived in mudbrick houses built with their own amateur hands.

  Tilda and I were out of place in our nice jeans, our clean Adidas runners. The men wore workman shorts and leather sandals, their dusty toes bulging through. They held beers like microphones kept handy for swigging, for laughing louder into each new bottle. The women wore frocks so expansive it was hard to tell if they were expecting or had let themselves go. I could not picture Donna with this crowd as friends. She was more like us in her black denims, her blue blouse with frill collar. Red leather boots with wineglass-stem heels that pocked the dirt like footy sprigs as she tended the grill. Tilda had more makeup than her, too much in fact—it looked like she was trying too hard. If she was hoping to put Donna to shame she was doing the opposite. For all her red boots Donna was just naturally better—more beautiful, I mean. She had no need of blush and eye shadow. She had no fat arm getting fatter by the minute because the sleeve was left off as an experiment for socialising.

  I didn’t contemplate this at the lunch itself. I didn’t think she was competing with Donna—the older woman attempting to outshine the younger, radiant belle. But the Swahili between us rings true. Especially given her Archibald entry was a failure. It didn’t even make the first cut. She was embarrassed but bluffed it over with anger. ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know with these things. You’ve got to be sleeping with someone or brown-nosing the judges to win prizes.’

  Such statements make a failure look bitter. Saying them at a barbecue makes people clear their throats and blink in search of a different line of conversation. I provided it by pursuing the topic of genetics. I’d been guzzling wine and it fired me up for a performance of big-noting. ‘This genetically modified foods issue you’ve mentioned. We shouldn’t be too quick to slam it. Not if it’s going to stop starvation in the world. No famine—wouldn’t that benefit humanity?’

  I received frowns and muffled guffaws. One fellow swigged his microphone and spoke so close into it he produced an echo. ‘Not if all nature is mutated.’

  I rose onto the balls of my feet and returned his frown. ‘Science deserves more credit than that.’

  ‘Are you a scientist?’

  ‘No, I’m a reporter.’

  ‘Reporter?’ His scoff blew another echo from his bottle.

  ‘I’ve written a thing or two on this subject for the Wheatman. I’m their specialist grains person. Trials conducted at Ouyen and Boort predict a trebling of tonnage per hectare if growing oilseeds or wheat using genetic modification. The plants become drought-tolerant which, in the growing process, conserves thirty parts per millimetre of natural moisture in the soil. You can feed the world from the grain belts of Australia.’

  There were indeed trials, there really were. I honestly had written two stories about them. But my ‘trebling’ statement was an elaboration. I couldn’t remember the precise percentages. As for thirty parts per millimetre—I made that up to sound learned. Which worked. There were no scoffs anymore, just a general mutter of ‘I’m still concerned’ and ‘We must still be vigilant.’ On the subject of genetics there was deference to me.

  ‘You’ve got to love an expert,’ Donna said, giving the browning meat a prod. ‘I didn’t realise you were such an expert, Colin.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Tilda butted in. I wanted Donna to keep going with the compliment, not have Tilda affectionately slipping her fingers down my back pocket. ‘Who’d have thought that when I met him he wanted to be an actor.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ I pulled her fingers out by the wrist.

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘It was just me mucking about in my youth. I’m more practically orientated. Science is my forte. Agricultural journalism.’

  Chapter 65

  There is a custom in seating arrangements that I don’t understand. If a group of couples is spread along a dining table they’re placed boy-girl, boy-girl so as not to sit beside their spouse. I suppose it encourages more diverse interaction, but it also encourages flirting.

  You have to be quick arriving at the table if you intend to flirt. Arrive last and you’ll be plonked beside the person others avoided. Arrive first and you can be selective. You can act as if you’re waiting to be directed to a position by the host when in fact you are really shuffling yourself between people until paired with your preference. That’s what I did with Donna. Tilda got shuffled sideways between two microphone swiggers and a wide-frocked alpaca breeder. I had Donna to the right of me, and I can’t remember who on the left—I looked left only once to pass the potatoes. Right was my priority. I didn’t look right often; I kept my gaze forward. Tilda was seated only four placings away, so keeping my gaze forward was safer. I had Donna visible in my eye corner to read the signs: a heavy breath of boredom if she wasn’t liking me; an allowance for our elbows to touch once in a while if she was. If I lifted my head to turn her way she would avoid our eyes meeting at such close range if she liked me.

  I remember the four main topics we covered in conversation.

  One. She admired my stance on genetic modification. Didn’t agree with me so much as appreciated my knowledge. She valued my social conscience in wanting solutions to famine. ‘It’s tough to take an unfashionable stance. But there’s sense in what you’re saying.’ Cameron was robust in his opinions, she said. She’d been starved of that since his passing. She leant closer to me and spoke at a whisper, her hand over her mouth as if for coughing. ‘My neighbours are very pleasant but, you know, they’re simple people.’

  Two. She had enrolled in a psychology course at the university in Bendigo to keep her mind sharp and critical.

  Three. She intended to get fit, lose the hips motherhood gives you. I couldn’t resist saying, ‘Hips? They’re perfect.’ Ruth crawled from under the table onto Donna’s knee at that moment. If she hadn’t I might have continued the flattery. I’d judged by now that she liked me well enough.

  Four. She intended changing her married name back to her maiden one. Not now but soon. ‘I don’t want to be one of those women looked at as eternally widowed. I’m too young.’ She often wondered how long a period of grief should be. ‘They say it takes twelve months. That means I’m halfway through it,’ she figured.

  Her saying this got me thinking: in six months she’ll be out for fresh mating. I felt jealous in advance about whoever the bloke would be. A silly chill of jealousy. I shivered for it to be gone from my shoulders.

  In the car home Tilda asked me, ‘So, what did you two chin-wag about?’

  ‘Boring stuff. Genetically modified crops, that sort of thing. Boring.’

  ‘I had a windbag telling me alpaca wool was a wonderful fabric. Banged on and on and on. But the rissoles were nice.’

  ‘The rissoles were. Did you have to mention the acting stuff?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Don’t refer to it in future, please.’

  ‘Why not? It’s funny.’

  ‘It’s not.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘It makes me sound flaky. Don’t do it again, please.’

  ‘Are you kidding me?’

  ‘I’m asking you not to do it again, please. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Chapter 66

  The Scintilla Picnic Race Meeting, Melbourne Cup day. I had a free family ticket, a gift from the racing club to the Wheatman. I said to Tilda, ‘This family ticket. I see no point in usi
ng it, just the two of us. It’s a waste. Let’s give it away.’

  She considered that a shame given the gorgeous green tinge to the spring weather. A shame given the chance to mix and mingle. ‘You have your work to get you out of the house. You get to have normal conversations. I slip back into hermit mode much too easily. I’m housebound again, Colin.’ The Escort van had clapped out permanently, towed for scrap. I had the Wheatman Commodore. Tilda had nothing till we could afford a replacement vehicle. She said, ‘I sit in my studio and go bugger it.’ She flopped her arms down in a defeated motion. ‘Take me to the races, sweetheart. We’ll have fun. Let’s invite someone to be our guest. We’ll be like hobnobbers. We’ll take bubbly and roast chicken like we’re hobnobbing at the races.’

  Truth is, I had every intention of going. My ‘I see no point’ was just for Tilda’s sake. I wasn’t about to come straight out with ‘Let’s call Donna Wilkins. I want to see her again.’

  Harmless flirting, that’s all I intended. I was not setting out for love or congressing. Just flirting, a bit more than I’d had at Donna’s lunch. Her grieving period would be up by now, her twelve months had just been reached. We could spread a picnic rug near the racecourse rail and I would find a way around Tilda’s presence to enjoy the charge of simmered yearning. No harm in that—everybody does it, I bet.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ I said—using sweetheart was always good politics, particularly in this instance: I wasn’t sure about the state of Tilda’s jealousy-guard regarding Donna. ‘Sweetheart, it just occurred to me, we should probably return the hospitality of your friend Donna. It’s been months since her soiree. She might be an option.’ I paused—a clever pause. ‘Or maybe not. We can cross her off the list.’

  ‘What list? Our list consists of blank.’