The Amateur Science of Love

by Craig Sherborne

  ‘Perhaps ring her and ask her then. Up to you, sweetheart. Makes no difference to me.’

  Simple as that. Donna was invited. She told Tilda that Ruth would adore it—the hoof-thunder of horses, it would delight and scare the wits out of the child.

  I was curious to know after the call if I was mentioned. A ‘How’s Colin?’ or something. Tilda didn’t say so and I wasn’t about to ask. I doubt I was, which disappointed me. But it was pleasant disappointment. I smiled to myself and winked to myself and muttered, ‘Oh well, c’est la vie.’

  Chapter 67

  The family ticket allowed us two car spaces. Donna was able to reverse her green station wagon in such a way that the tail door could be lowered as a smorgasbord table facing the home straight. The Commodore was parked beside it, which kept the next group of people along at bay. Perfect for not being too sociable with them. We even had willow shade, which added intimacy to the outing, like blinds drawn down while others sweated.

  This was not like Donna’s lunch, however. I did have her on the right of me again, but I did not have her to myself. I had Tilda directly on my left and Ruth straight in front. Tilda was in a talkative mood. Christ, she can talk sometimes. All her housebound inactivity must have stored talk up in her. Not ordinary talk. Health talk. That’s the thing about people with health problems. You give them the chance to explain their afflictions and it’s as exciting to them as party time. We’d only just sat down and chinked glasses to say ‘Happy race day!’ when Donna asked, ‘I hope it’s not rude of me, but I’m curious about your sleeve. What’s it for, exactly?’

  Tilda put the arm behind her back and said, ‘This bloody thing,’ as if she despised it. She’d fretted about wearing the sleeve that day. Such a glamorous day. What was worse, having it stared at or having swelling to explain? Midday heat and sleevelessness would be heaven to the elephants in her.

  Donna apologised and said, ‘I just wondered if it’s uncomfortable.’ She reached over and touched Tilda’s thigh to try and erase her faux pas.

  I thought Tilda might take all this as snideness: a putdown by a flawless woman to the unfortunately maimed. To her credit, or rather the goodwill in champers, she brought the arm forward for display. ‘It’s my uniform. And this little glove is my gauntlet.’ She said it like a boast.

  If she had left it at that I would have admired her as gutsy. But on and on she went about swelling and massages. She referred to me as Mr Fingers, her indispensable personal massage mate. I picked up a stick from the dirt and touched wood she wouldn’t get me to demonstrate massaging. Don’t do it, I touched—I could tell it was in her mind. I didn’t want Donna seeing me intimate with my wife.

  Tilda did it. ‘Colin, show Donna your stroking method.’

  ‘Can’t. Races are starting.’ I stood up and took $10 from my wallet. ‘I’m off to place a bet.’ I hurried away wishing Tilda would just melt into the ground. Melt and not be seen or heard from just for an hour. Half an hour would do, instead of being an interference to flirting.

  I placed no bet—I’m no gambler. Gambling always seemed too sleazy an activity. I walked around the betting ring disdainful of bookies, the way they thumped their white money bags and spruiked 5 to 2 on Baron’s Boy as if offering me a favour. Yet, between bookies and me that day, bookies were the more wholesome. I should have demonstrated the massaging as Tilda wanted. I told myself as much—‘Do the right thing by Tilda.’ But by the time I returned to the rug, topped up my glass, nibbled at a chicken thigh, I was thinking of ways to have Tilda leave Donna and me alone.

  Ruth was an option. Or I could get Tilda so drunk she needed a lie down. Drunkenness would take hours, however: she held her drink like a shearer. Ruth was the better way. If only I could get Ruth to take Tilda’s hand and ask her to play. There are a dozen opportunities on racecourses for children’s amusement. There are jockey-midgets in their harlequin costumes. The swaying ambulance that follows the race to the finishing post. When the barrier shoots open the metal bang is bone-jarring; it’s a wonder the horses don’t drop dead of fright. I said this to Ruth. I said, ‘I would drop dead from the terror of it. But horses have wings inside them.’ I let out a great exhaling of wonder at horse wings. ‘No matter how terrified they are they run and run and refuse to drop dead.’

  It worked. She was O-mouthed with fascination that horses don’t die from noise but sprint instead and sometimes fart very loudly from the sudden lunge.

  ‘I reckon farting makes them run faster,’ I said. I had her in stitches from saying a rude word like farting and making a fart sound with my mouth. Donna was giggling too, and burping up champers fizz. ‘Ruth, I’d take you and show you, but I’m going for another bet.’ She begged me to take her and show her the farting but I said no.

  Tilda said, ‘Don’t be so mean.’

  ‘I’m not mean, it’s just—a person in my position, wearing my Wheatman hat, so to speak, I have to be seen participating. You take Ruth. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Ruth?’ I tapped Tilda on the forearm to suggest she hold out her hand for the child. I said, ‘Don’t you be mean.’

  Ruth had the most innocent, pleading smile. It brought on the melting I needed. Tilda wiggled her fingers to have the girl come near. The moment they touched Tilda held her close and kissed her hair. She said, ‘But who’s going to look after Donna?’

  ‘As if I require looking after.’ Donna reclined on her elbows, her drink almost tipping too far.

  As Tilda led Ruth away it occurred to me she might pretend she was the actual mother of the girl. I hoped it would be a pleasant fantasy. I hoped it would mean she stayed away a while. I guessed their walk would take ten minutes to reach the barrier at the 1600- metre chute. Watching the horses circle around and get loaded into their gates would be five minutes. Then ten minutes’ walk back after the barrier crashed open: twenty-five minutes in total.

  I did not even bother with the pretence of betting. Once Tilda was out of sight I sat down and said, ‘Second thoughts, I might hold off on a punt until later.’

  Donna wagged her glass to ask me to fill it. ‘This is bliss,’ she said. ‘I haven’t let my hair down for I don’t know how long.’

  ‘Feel free to do it today.’

  ‘I have to drive. I’d better watch my intake.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll be fine.’

  ‘I’m out of practice with drinking.’

  ‘No wild parties?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘No romantic dinners?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘No fellow on the scene? I’d have thought there’d be men queuing up at your door.’

  ‘I wish,’ she blurted. The tiny sentence surprised her as much as me: the hearty frankness; the hinted crudity. She quickly revised it. ‘I wish it was that simple, I mean. Oh, never mind.’

  ‘Go on. Don’t stop.’

  She stood, one hand visored over her eyes for a view of how lovely the horses looked in the mounting yard. From our distance they appeared to be all one colour—shiny bay with a silver feather of perspiration in their flank.

  ‘You were saying?’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s awkward to explain.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just think on it for a second.’

  ‘Think on what?’ I was still excited by that initial frankness-crudity moment. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to be explicit with me.’ Using explicit in this context sounded frank and crude as well.

  Donna got re-seated, snuggled between two ridges of willow feet. She spoke to her glass, not to me directly. ‘I am a mother. I am a mother and a widowed mother at that. A man, well, it is expected that a man will keep company—let’s call it that: company. A man will keep company. He will seek it out, even. I’ve heard of men whose wives die and they’re off seeing people, off in the sack with people, a few weeks later
. It’s not considered improper in their case. It’s considered nature. But a woman, a mother, we have to be proper. Or feel we have to be proper. I do, anyway.’

  I did not believe any of this was for my sake. It was innocent drink-talk. Or perhaps there’s no such thing as innocent. A lump of breathlessness rose in my throat. I gulped on wine to treat it. That’s what lust is—breathlessness. Then the old sweet poison. Then, worst of all, love deranges you in the whole confusion of the process. It does in my case. I was still a way off being at the deranged state. About twenty-four hours. That’s how fast the deranging gets a hold. There was the following clumsiness to get through first. ‘So let me get this straight. You want—company?’

  ‘God yes. Of course. Who doesn’t?’

  The champers refluxed into my sinuses. I fought back a sneeze. ‘I’m astonished nobody has made a move on you.’ I sneezed.

  ‘Bless you, for the sneeze and for saying that. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with me, is there?’

  ‘No. Jesus. No. You are very—desirable.’

  ‘Thank you. Very kind of you.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘I wonder, is it me having Ruth?’

  ‘Ruth seems a nice kid.’

  ‘Is it that men feel a bit put-off because, you know, my husband died and that makes me sort of jinxed or something? Is it that they’re overly respectful of my widowhood? Such an ugly word, widow.’

  I managed to get out, ‘Who can say?’ through the breathlessness.

  ‘I have one friend, Ian, a neighbour. He wasn’t at my barbecue—he was sick. He gets colds and flu and any bug going round. Which is one of the problems. He’s single, he’s available, but he’s a wreck. And he’s not handsome. He’s actually quite unattractive. I look at his mouth and I think: Do I want to kiss that mouth? No, I don’t want to kiss his mouth. If you don’t want to kiss their mouth, then it’s very—clinical.’

  Whoever this Ian was, I loathed him for being in consideration for kissing from her.

  Donna sat up straight. She said eagerly, girlishly, ‘At university, in my psychology class, there’s this boy. He’d be eighteen, nineteen. To me that’s a boy. Him I could kiss. He’s so incredibly beautiful. He’s dazzling. Him I could really kiss and keep very nice company with. But what am I supposed to do? Ask him out? I just can’t pluck up the courage.’

  ‘Don’t do it.’ I spoke so forcefully it made Donna flinch. ‘We’re all beautiful in our youth. It’s nothing unusual.’

  ‘No, he is very beautiful.’

  ‘He’ll soon go to seed. And besides, where does a relationship with a nineteen-year-old take you?’

  ‘That’s true. I’ve wondered the very same thing. It takes you nowhere. But it does give you physical gratification.’

  I scratched at the dirt around me. What I wanted to do was scratch this boy’s image from her mind. Scratch him out and put me there and ask, Would you care to kiss me? Is my mouth worthy?

  What I did do was say, ‘I’m attracted to you, Donna. I know I shouldn’t confess it, but there, it’s said. I’m very attracted to you.’

  No reply. Not a rejecting motion of the hand; not a willing welcome of her eye. She was too busy taking in my indiscretion. Finally she uttered, ‘Oh. Oh.’

  The whole scene was spread out over twenty minutes. One minute at least just for Donna’s two Ohs. She too found dirt to scratch in. I considered letting my finger scratch closer her way but was glad I didn’t, not in the open like that, with Tilda surely only a minute off. Less than a minute. There she was skipping between car rows; Ruth at the end of her arm, jumping and stumbling in horse mimicry, smacking herself like a whip.

  I stood up and patted my trousers clean of grass dust. Guilt and worry were so cold on my face my blood must have fled heartward to hide. Tilda would tell I’d done something just by my colour. I thumbed my wallet for cash to look busy. I timed walking off like a purposeful betting man just as Tilda called delightedly, ‘Your daughter has worn me out, Donna.’

  I used horse rails and tree trunks to touch wood that Donna would not tell on me. The count went into the hundreds. She didn’t tell. She went quiet instead.

  As we packed up the picnic I wanted to whisper, ‘Donna, thank you for keeping mum.’ But there was no chance. Tilda was too near. She said later, ‘Wonder why Donna went so moody?’

  Chapter 68

  Next morning I fed coins into the Hastings Road public phone. I had to speak to her immediately. I could not wait until lunch and the empty office. I certainly could not take the risk from home—my excitement was not that stupid.

  I did not feel dirty making the call. The handset was dirty from public fingers, stinky from cigarette breath, ice cream was smeared on the glass, but I did not feel dirty in myself. I was embarked on the higher purpose of Donna, or so the deranging had it. Whatever wrong I was about to do felt wondrous.

  The ringing kept on so long that Donna’s whereabouts concerned me. If she was at university, was she talking to that boy? Was she wetting her lips and imagining kissing his? If the phone rang out I had a powerful impulse to drive to her, find her class and interrupt the lecture. This was no time for manners or niceties. The phone clicked.

  ‘Hello, Donna speaking.’

  ‘Hello. It’s Colin. I felt I better call.’

  ‘I’m glad you did. I wanted to try you at your work but held off and off.’

  I had no speech composed. ‘I thought I…I just wanted to say if I said anything yesterday that offended you…’ I left the sentence incomplete, for her finishing.

  ‘I wasn’t offended. More surprised. Very surprised. But listen, we can just forget it. Put it down to the champers.’

  ‘Is that what you want?’

  ‘Is that what you want?’

  The course of life, such a long, large thing as life, can have a simple yes or no change it. One tiny syllable and it’s changed, or gone.

  ‘No,’ I said. The certainty of the sound was itself emboldening. I repeated it. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I do not retract what I admitted to feeling.’

  Donna let out a whistly exhaling. ‘I see. Wow. Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I mean really sure. Take a moment to think before answering.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Truly?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve thought of nothing else.’

  ‘Nor have I.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Someone says what you said and you don’t sleep. You just think.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Listen. Let me say this: I have no wish to be a roll in the hay. I have no wish to be a…mistress or something. Some grubby affair.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes. I understand.’

  ‘Obviously the big question for me is, what’s the state of your marriage?’

  ‘I am dying from it.’ The words came out like a plea. What relief to say them! A light breeze of truthfulness blew through my chest. I said, ‘I don’t know if any of us has the right to say we deserve a shot at joy. But I want to say a shot at joy is what I crave. I don’t have it now. I have the opposite. But I want that shot.’

  ‘But Tilda is a…very pleasant woman. I like her. She isn’t a good friend, but a friend nonetheless.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying I feel very uncomfortable. Naturally I feel very uncomfortable.’

  ‘If I wasn’t with her then you’d be interested in me?’

  ‘Yes. I would. I have thought to myself: What an attractive man. But I have not let myself think it in a serious way because you are with Tilda.’

  ‘Would you prefer I hung up and we dropped this, cast it from our minds?’

  She hesitated. I heard her sucking her lips, troubled. ‘No. No I don’t want it cast from m
y mind.’

  ‘Good.’

  She hesitated again. ‘What are we going to do, though?’

  ‘I want to see you.’

  ‘We need to talk this through.’

  ‘This afternoon I could swing it.’

  ‘This afternoon? Where?’

  ‘I could come to you?’

  ‘Okay. Just to talk, though.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Let’s be clear about that.’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Come on, are you sure?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Talk and nothing more.’

  Chapter 69

  I arranged a job in Watercook. It’s more a sheep town than grains but I figured I could concoct an article with a herbicide-resistance angle—I’d heard resistance in rye grass had become a problem in Watercook. It was common in Scintilla. My story would say it was now spreading eastward.

  I arrived at Donna’s a little after 3pm. Good timing for Ruth to be posited at the living room television. We had the kitchen table to ourselves. We sat opposite each other like negotiators. She began proceedings with an offering of coffee and a formal introduction to her house, as if it were people. ‘Over there is my own handiwork—I designed the stovetop area and glued the benches together myself.’ She stood up, nervous. ‘This is the porch. Gets the west sun from midday. Great in winter; hot as hell in summer. The cupboards were Cameron’s doing. He liked to bang in a nail when he was up to it. See how the hall kinks to the right in the middle? That’s deliberate—the previous owners had some eccentric notion about it being eye-catching.’

  Talking on the phone was easy. There we were in the flesh and avoiding everything but house and land chatter.

  ‘It’s a very nice place you have,’ I said. I really thought it spartan. I had been spoilt by our big Scintilla building—two storeys and a forest for a town fringe. Here the brownlands were dealt out in buckle-fenced rectangles: two or three acres with a mudbrick dwelling in the middle. ‘It’s pleasant here,’ I said. ‘Bit of country life, bit of suburban feel all in one.’