The Amateur Science of Love

by Craig Sherborne

  She might have been playing games, parked up the road to catch me as I emerged, so I stayed among trees till the last impression of light offered me vision. Then I limped to Hastings Road. I’d untied my runner to let my ankle blow out and had to spring myself along on my toes.

  I had no coins for the phone so I made the call collect via the operator. Donna’s number was engaged. I waited five minutes, sat on the sandy grass out of the streetlight’s glow, and tried again. Still engaged. Another five minutes. Engaged. I kept trying but the operator said, ‘Sorry, sir, the line is busy.’ The phone was off the hook, that was the logical reason. Who could blame her after Tilda’s hateful serve? I imagined Donna pacing about, wringing her hands, wanting to put the receiver back in case I rang. I expect she was desperate to hear that I was bearing up to the acrimony. I expect she wanted to say she loved me and express support. Thinking that heartened me.

  I hobbled from the phone box to a council toddler park near the Housing Commission project. Not much to speak of, as parks go—a garbage bin, swing, plastic slide, plastic tree house—but I decided the tree house was good for spending the night. I climbed into it. I had never slept in my clothes before. I tried to think of it as an adventure, not a homewrecking. I had the injured ankle of an adventurer but the rest of me had the scared-of-life sensation; too much of it for easy slumber. I counted the lorries and their earthquakes. I held my nerve, though, and did not limp home to Tilda.

  I fell asleep eventually. Woke many times through the night but the earthquakes were enough of a distraction to have me count them until I dozed off again. I woke for the last time at 7am. Scintilla was well daylit by then. Seven is peak-hour for traffic in the country—cars and one-tonners going past at a rate of one every fifteen seconds.

  I splashed my eyes with water from the park tap and set off for the Wheatman office. My gait was a hop-shuffle given the ankle but I hurried as best I could to avoid gossip: ‘What on earth is Colin Butcher up to, lame and head down like he’s trying to hide?’ The office opened officially at 8.30 but compositors were usually in before then. My intention was to slip by them, grab the Commodore’s spare keys from the front desk drawer, then sneak into my own backyard and retrieve the vehicle like a just thief.

  Chapter 77

  Very proud of his heritage is Vigourman. He was waiting for me, new lamb-chop sideburns framing his face. The centenary of his family settling in Scintilla was a month away. What better way to commemorate the occasion than copying his sepia great-grandfather’s features?

  The salt-and-pepper fuzz aged him. So did the sleepy redness in the gutters of his eyes. ‘I’ve hardly had a wink,’ he said, stirring black tea at the staff basin. ‘Half the night I’ve spent in consultation with police. Your ears must be burning.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Come with me.’ He indicated my desk would do for a serious discussion. Then changed his mind—it was too close to the compositors to be private. He brushed past me, dripping his tea, ignoring it splashing his shoes. He opened the storage room door and told me to sit on a pile of Wheatman back issues. He perched on the taller Gazette pile. He was his usual full-of-himself self, shoulders back, chest and stomach spinnakered, but his voice wasn’t normal. It was muted. He hardly parted his lips to let the words out. ‘You are aware of what Tilda did last night?’

  I presumed he meant the bath-burning scene. A neighbour must have witnessed it after all and blabbed.

  ‘It was an experiment,’ I began explaining—but Vigourman was not referring to underwear.

  Tilda had driven the Commodore to Watercook and threatened to kill Donna, burn her house down and let her and Ruth burn in it. She had splashed turpentine at the back door, set it alight and only the fact the house was brick and the door was a glass slider stopped the premises catching fire. She then rammed Donna’s car in the drive. There was a heap of damage to the Commodore’s front end.

  Vigourman had insurance concerns given Tilda was not the authorised company driver. ‘All because you were tomcatting. Oh, this is very distasteful. Very distasteful indeed. This is deeply embarrassing to the Wheatman, to me, to Tilda, Mrs Wilkins, you. It reflects so poorly on you I am more than disappointed, son. More than disappointed. Your whole future in my employment is under review, I’m afraid.’ He sipped his tea but was too infuriated to swallow. He spat the mouthful back into the mug. ‘How could you do it to your poor wife? After what she’s been through, to do this to her goes directly to your character, or lack of it.’

  I leant forward, my hand held up to request more details from him. ‘Is Donna all right? Ruth all right?’ Last on the list was Tilda.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he replied irritably. ‘That’s something to be thankful for. I have, I think, convinced the Watercook police that this is a very private matter and no charges should be brought against Tilda to embarrass us further. Mrs Wilkins can try and force the issue but she will not necessarily find a sympathetic ear in the senior sergeant. None of us have much sympathy for her—her husband still warm in the ground and she’s off tempting you into tomcatting. This community embraced you as a Scintillan, Colin. I embraced you and gave you a start. And you do this to us.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Vigourman.’ I called him Hector normally but sitting up on his paper pile he had the distance of a magistrate. ‘I’m sorry for what has happened. But I have strong feelings for Donna. Very strong.’

  ‘Nonsense. You’ve given over to your urges instead of your decency.’ He shook his head as if I must be a halfwit not to recognise such obvious wisdom. He voice lowered to a confidential register. ‘We all have urges. If we live with the same woman for a number of years we get urges. But that doesn’t mean we go tomcatting. There are ways and means to satisfy yourself without fouling your own nest. You take a business trip to Melbourne. Do I have to spell it out? You take your urges to Melbourne. There are places you go to. There are ladies who are professionals. You take care of your urges that way and keep your home life intact.’

  ‘You’ve done that…professionals?’

  ‘Did I say I had? I said no such thing. I’m simply telling you: there are ways and means.’ He took a sip of tea. ‘Tell you what I’m going to do. I’m willing to treat this escapade of yours as a one-off. You were temporarily bewitched by a loose female, someone who had lost her husband and was not in her right mind from grief. I am aware that sacking you also punishes your good wife. She needs a provider for a husband, not a jobless so-and-so.

  ‘Therefore, here’s what you do. I suggest you go to Tilda, get down on your hands and knees and beg to be taken back. You do the right thing by her and I’ll do the right thing by you. Poor woman’s up in hospital this minute, bawling her eyes out despite sedation. Dr Philpott fears the trauma of all this could kickstart her cancer. What a terrible, terrible thing to have on your conscience.

  ‘As for Mrs Wilkins—let’s never speak of her again. Do I make myself clear? These are new conditions to your employment. So, what’s it going to be? You can go to Watercook and be with that…that widow if you want. But if you do, I wipe my hands of you. And don’t think you’d find work in Watercook either. Not Watercook or anywhere the length and breadth of the Wimmera Plains. I will see to it that your name is mud. Understand?’

  Chapter 78

  I am glad I never gave Vigourman the pleasure of replying, ‘I understand.’ Saying ‘I understand’ was the same as saying ‘You’re right, Mr Vigourman. It was all urges and nothing more. Not love. Not a shot at joy. Just the equivalent of professionals in Melbourne.’ He could threaten me all he liked but my feelings for Donna were greater than worries about being called mud could ever be. Greater than any job with a Commodore. Greater than a bad conscience. What’s conscience when you’d rather die than beg to a woman you no longer loved?

  Donna was another story. Her I could beg to if needed.

  I left Vigourman to his smug tea-sipping; turned my back on him,
breathed my chest and stomach out so they made a spinnaker of their own. I limped from the storeroom without a word. Donna was my priority. I went to my desk and couldn’t care less if Vigourman eavesdropped. I was going to speak to her like a man speaks to his loved one. I dialled. Her phone was working again. She picked up immediately.

  ‘Donna, sweetheart. Are you all right? You fine?’

  ‘Physically, yes. But rattled. Extremely rattled.’

  ‘Sweetheart, don’t be rattled.’

  ‘Why not? I’ve never had someone say they want me dead. I thought she was going to do it, kill me. I held Ruth and I thought: How do we defend against this kind of hatred? Abuse over the phone is one thing, but to come to my home and stand at my door screaming she will kill us. Try to set us on fire. Ruth was so terrified. I have to keep her in my arms or she shakes.’

  ‘I wish I could just fold you in my arms.’

  ‘I tried to lay charges. I was told: bed-hopping disputes aren’t why police are paid. You made your bed, you can lie in it, they said. I feel dirty. I feel I have made a dreadful mistake. And I have a child shaking in terror.’

  ‘Let me come to you right now. I will need to organise transport…’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The train to Ballarat leaves here at noon…’

  ‘No.’

  ‘From there I’ll get a connecting bus.’

  ‘No, I said.’ A sharp no with a wet growl in it.

  ‘But I want to.’

  ‘Let’s have a break. Let’s do that. Let’s have a break from each other.’

  ‘A break?’

  ‘I need to take stock of things.’

  ‘A few days’ break?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘A week? How long?’

  ‘I need to get Ruth back to normal. I want just her and me and a wholesome feeling back.’

  ‘How long a break?’ I was aware of being weak in voice suddenly. I was starting to beg. I bent forward over my desk, hand cupped around the mouthpiece so only Donna could hear. ‘How long a break?’

  ‘Indefinite.’

  ‘That sounds more than a break.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you saying forever?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Colin.’

  ‘Are you meaning the end?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why don’t we say a couple of weeks? Let’s say a month while you get over this.’

  ‘What then? Looking over my shoulder for Tilda? Looking over Ruth’s shoulder? I can take on small baggage. But this is not small.’

  ‘Let me hang up now and call you tomorrow.’

  ‘Please, no calling.’

  ‘Or a few days. Have a rethink and I’ll call you in few days.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I’m taking Ruth out of here tomorrow. We’re staying with friends interstate to get away from this and feel safe.’

  ‘Whereabouts? How can I reach you?’

  ‘No. No calls.’

  ‘Donna, please.’

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Donna.’

  I said I loved her. I said, ‘Remember our Neutral Motor Inn; remember our happiness there.’ I was pleading so loud I didn’t hear her hang up. There was just silence and the seashell noise of air through the phone wires.

  I called back straight away. No answer. I tried again. Same thing. I envisaged her standing at her phone, fists clenched against the temptation to answer it, against reconnecting our voices, our lives: No more of this man I may love but who is too much trouble.

  I waited a few minutes, dialled but got nowhere. She must have unplugged the line. This did not put me off. She would have to plug it in eventually. I spread the latest Wheatman edition on the desk and thumbed through it to look occupied, reading headlines aloud as if testing their petty poetry:

  Soaring freight costs go against growers’ grain.

  Boomspray ban near Wimmera waterways.

  Agronomists warn over-till is overkill.

  Vigourman was washing his cup at the staff sink. He dried it and put it on the tray beside the taps. He whistled a few notes with trills in them as if that would soften his officious mood. He kept whistling all the way up to me, scratching his sideburns. He complained how growing whiskers made a man itch. He leant close, put a hand on my shoulder.

  He said, ‘Shouldn’t you go up to the hospital, to see Tilda? Don’t you think that’s your first priority?’

  I bent down and rubbed my ankle. ‘My foot hurts.’

  ‘I’ll drive you.’

  ‘I’ve got a call to make.’

  I dialled, delaying pushing down on the last digit until Vigourman had retreated. All I reached was the seashell static but pretended I had made contact.

  ‘Hello?’ I said. ‘Hello.’

  I motioned to Vigourman that I’d go with him soon. I bowed my head, closed my eyes and rested that way a minute, stopped my life from anything more happening just yet.

  Chapter 79

  Vigourman dropped me at the hospital.

  He said, ‘You’ve come to your senses, I hope.’

  Yes, I nodded, an automatic gesture.

  ‘Good man. That’s the way. Good luck to you in there.’

  He turned out of the driveway so slowly it was obvious he was checking for equivocation: my duty was to go directly and beseechingly to Tilda, not duck around the side of the building or hesitate at the glass entrance. I did hesitate but pushed through the front door anyway. It required a barging with my elbow to release the suction of the hinges. The cool inside air puffed my hair pleasantly but put a taste of antiseptic into my breathing. I stepped outside to spit out the taste.

  Vigourman stopped his car and wound the window down. I waved to him that I was simply having a good cough and clearing of the senses and would be heading inside in a second. He returned a wave and resumed driving.

  The hospital was all shiny lino and scuffed cream walls. The corridor ran left a short way, and a longer distance right. I went right, expecting someone in authority to appear and give directions. The six rooms either side of the corridor had beds in them, neatly made with blue covers. There were no patients.

  I dreaded facing Tilda without people present. There would be less of a scene with people near. Tilda would be inclined to curb her fury. The dread put such a weight onto my head and shoulders I had to lean against a wall and double over, hands on knees. What marriage did Tilda and I have now? What future was there for me if I lived cap in hand? What kind of man would accept such a life? The only honourable course of action would be to kill yourself. That would be the only future, suicide.

  And with that I stood to attention. I issued myself the following instructions: go to Hobbs’ Timber, Tacks and Twine this instant. Get a length of rope—make sure it’s twice your height. An inch in width should be strong enough to take your heaviness and not slice the skin or snap from tension. Do not engage in conversation with old Jock Hobbs. He might pat his leather belt and scare you away with, ‘What’s this for, the rope?’

  Or go to Ringo Point and flush out a snake and stomp on it, taunt it to bite you. A tiger snake, not a red-bellied black. Red-bellied blacks are far less poisonous. Do not fear the pain. Pain is only temporary and then nirvana. Don’t dither, do it. What are you worried about? The other side? You don’t truly believe in God. Yet still you worry. What if death is not just the blackest darkness? What if you wake afterwards into this world’s complicated sequel—long-dead relatives pointing their accusing fingers; or Richard or Alice with ghostly infant faces wishing upon you the sewer life you condemned them to?

  Do it, now, kill yourself and then good riddance, you’re gone.

  No. I want to be alive. Even if it is only a second-best life. A life that will do. Who’s to say we aren�
��t all living that way—from Prime Ministers to Vigourmans, we’re all settling for second-best love; we just don’t let it show, we accept our fate in secrecy.

  A voice from up the corridor spooked me. ‘May I help you?’

  A thin woman, in a white smock a bit baggy for her. I tried to pick if I’d seen her around town. I had, in a just-another-face way. She’d had no presence like she had now in that white uniform. She looked into my eyes as if to challenge. There were deep spokes of skin around her mouth, a smoker’s wheel, made more obvious by her pursing.

  I stood up. ‘I’m looking for my wife. My name is…’

  ‘I know who you are.’

  She glanced at the watch on her lapel. ‘Tilda should have finished the little meal I gave her by now. Follow me.’

  We went to the end of the corridor and turned right into an alcove where a metal ramp led outdoors. The nurse directed me along it. ‘She’s on the deck. I’ve set her up in a nice spot in the sun. Dr Philpott wants her to rest here for a few days, and I am going to treat her like a queen.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t thank me. I’m doing it for her.’

  I couldn’t see Tilda at first. Sun lit the metal railings around the deck too strongly. Leaves from a lattice climber were too transparently green and shimmering. Then my eyes adjusted. She was on a canvas banana chair, dappled in shade, placing the glass of water she was sipping onto a tea trolley beside her.