Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (Picador 40th) (17 page)

— 28 —

SISTER CROCK PROCLAIMS THE MEN FIT

H
ec Bowd isn't at the Commercial but he can't ignore what's happening. He reads the paper, hears the bugle calls, sees the Clectrac tank roll heavily down the main street. It's a close relation to the special sand tractor that went to his neighbour when he was sold up. That was war too. The battle of the shifting soil. No one, it turns out, was the victor – not even the bank.

The Bowds left the farm for a ‘Florida villa' on the edge of town. It was a constant cruel reminder – the dado design of it with kero tins below and flapping wheat sacks above. Mrs Bowd never came around to it. She took to her cot and passed away soon after. Hec and Ollie are the survivors. They keep to themselves. He takes the odd harvest job and Ollie does a bit of babysitting. Ollie has to wear her tennis whites for everyday and she finds it hard to keep them clean.

When the recruiting train comes through Hec says they'll just go down for a look. A quick stroll to the station – catch up with some old faces. But on the way, his daughter's arm folded gently through his, he knows what he has to do. The bugle calls in the distance as they cross the river. Hec is as jumpy as a kitten. How can he leave his girl? Lovely Ollie with her sharp chin and gleaming dark eyes. But how else to put five bob a day in her purse? And the pension is good. If he comes back injured (he thinks this is unlikely) she'll be well looked after and if he is killed (most likely) she'll get the same as the widow's pension – a bit of money and some dignity with it.

At forty-five Hec's way too old to fight, but his papers went with the mice and who's going to argue? It's his teeth he worries about. He's had them thirty-odd years and they seem to be getting bigger and more uncomfortable as the years go by. He has to take them out to eat. In fact he takes them out most times except for church and odd evenings down the pub and Ollie's birthday. It takes him several minutes to coax the teeth into place and they often loosen and crash about in his mouth if he runs. He can't imagine fighting in them.

A man of forty-five may look thirty-five if he's a soft-handed city fellow who has spent his days riding a desk – slinging ink. But not a farmer. Every one of Hec Bowd's years on the farm is written across his face. Thickened blotchy skin, a scorch mark across the forehead from the band of his hat, eyes of faded china blue.

Sister Crock has made a smooth transition from measuring babies to measuring men. She is happy to bend the rules for her country. Sister Crock accepts – she rarely rejects. Why send only the perfectly fit to get killed? she reasons. Why not give everyone a chance? She is creative. With a stroke of her pen a wizened man of fifty stumbling over his date of birth has it recorded, in neat nurse's handwriting, as 1910, making him exactly thirty.

She is helpful too with occupations. ‘Far too many occupations are classified,' she complains to Mr Plattfuss. When a man is told he will not be accepted if he describes himself as a farmer, Sister Crock assists him in adopting another occupation. Her father worked all of his life in the leather tanning industry so the farmers of the Mallee became Shedmen, Hand Fleshers, Buffing Machinists, Vat Hands, Unhairers, Paddle Hands, Lime Jobbers, Strikers and Squeezing Machinists. And sometimes, for a man of a different class, she says he was a clockmaker. She went out with a clockmaker for a few months during her training and occasionally wondered how her life might have been different if they'd made a go of it.

Hec Bowd leaves Ollie to look at the displays in the women's car and says he'll pick her up later – when he's seen some mates and had a beer or two. He's third in line at the enlistment card table. A young man from the recruiting office takes his details, asks a few questions (can you drive a car, cook, use a typewriter, take shorthand, keep accounts or play a musical instrument?) and sends him down the line to the Sister. He'd been hoping for a doctor. The short arm inspection isn't something to be relished in front of a woman.

The examination car is partitioned off into several stalls with green cotton curtains. Each stall contains a chair. Sister Crock, busy with somebody in stall three, calls out for Hec to take a vacant stall and undress. Hec leans heavily against the chair. His shoes are laced with baling twine. He takes them off and lays his trousers on top of them. He sits on the cold, hard chair and waits.

‘Next man, come through now.'

Hec plucks at the edge of the curtain. On the other side of it Sister Crock sits behind a sizeable leather-topped desk flanked by a set of scales and a measuring stick. She reads out a series of questions without even looking up at him.

‘Have you had a broken nose or a serious injury? Have you been operated on? Has any member of your family suffered from Pleurisy, Tuberculosis, Diabetes, Stroke, Nervous Breakdown or Mental Trouble? Have you ever been rejected for life insurance?'

‘Er, no. Not that I can think of.'

She writes something on a white card and finally looks up at him.

‘Mr Bowd.' Her eyes travel from his face down to the floor.

Hec can feel himself shrivelling. His cock is pointing to the left, caught up in the wiry nest of his pubic hair. He wishes he'd thought to free things up down there before coming through the curtain.

‘Not exactly in the flower of your youth, are you, Mr Bowd?'

Hec holds his tongue. She's no spring chicken herself and he would have liked to tell her so, but he doesn't want to expose his dentures with any smart speech.

‘Stand against the measure, please. Heels touching.'

Sister Crock brings the adjustable rule down until it rests on Hec's smooth skull. He wishes for his hat.

‘Five-seven.' She weighs him and measures his chest. ‘Have you ever worn eye-glasses, Mr Bowd?'

‘No. Not that I can think of.'

Hec holds a well-thumbed cardboard square over each eye and reads the test chart.

‘F N P O H V D L X.'

It's a good job, an optometrist, he thinks. Maybe Ollie could get a job in an optometrist's office and spend her days polishing lenses and making appointments. She'd have to move to the city – Horsham, or Bendigo even.

Sister Crock writes 20/20 under Vision and moves on to General Physique and Configuration.

‘Turn around, Mr Bowd.' She assesses Hec's rear view for scoliosis, varicose veins and haemorrhoids. She makes him turn to the front again, stand on his toes, stand on his heels, squat, swing his arms around, bend his elbows, open and shut his hands, pronate and supinate one forearm. Then, bending forward, she examines him for disabilities of the mouth (‘dentures present but no deformities of the jaw noted'), throat and ears; for hernia and for scrotal abnormalities. She stands and examines his heart and lungs with a stethoscope. The final test is hearing. She advises him to occlude one ear (‘It means “cover”, Mr Bowd') and walks to the rear of the carriage where she whispers a few numbers for him to repeat. ‘Sixty-six,' she whispers. ‘Twenty-five, forty-four.' She makes allowances for men in cropping areas – long hours on noisy tractors take their toll. The whisper rises to a bark.

Sister Crock stamps Hec's card and passes him his AA A204. Private Hector Bowd has a week to tidy up his affairs and present himself in Melbourne. He pulls his trousers on with difficulty. He's shaking and not sure whether it's from fear or relief. Now for the hard bit. To find Ollie and break the news.

Sister Crock doesn't reject men for showing evidence of inebriation. She's aware of the three pounds on the bar, of the hours of drinking a man may need to put in the night before to get himself here. She doesn't flinch as she calls the next man forward only to find him asleep on the chair in his curtained-off cubicle. Shaken awake, Les Noy hands up his card.

She launches into her questions, ‘Have you ever . . .?' but her eyes flick down to the name printed on the card: ROBERT L. PETTERGREE. She breaks off and looks up at the man, who has an ordinary, tired sort of face and is swaying a little on his feet.

‘Mr Robert Pettergree? You are Mr Robert L. Pettergree formerly of the Better Farming Train?'

The man's eyes roll a little from side to side. ‘That's right,' he says, not meeting her gaze.

Sister Crock purses her lips for a minute and thinks. It's not unheard of. There was a circular about impostors from the Director General of Recruiting. Unfit men sometimes paid a mate to do the medical for them so they could get the post-war pension. But this case isn't about money. From what she knows of Robert Pettergree he'd be repulsed by the idea of scamming money from the government. And it isn't about age. She accepted Hec Bowd, who has a good ten years on Robert Pettergree. Sister Crock reasons, correctly, that he must have a physical condition that prevents him from standing before her naked. She goes on to imagine, incorrectly, an intimate affliction – a botched circumcision or the like, rather than the more mundane truth of a pigeon chest. And although she thinks briefly of Jean alone in some awful farmhouse surrounded by sandy waste (she has been influenced here by Mr Ohno's letters – of course she read them all) she respects Robert for his stand and she likes the idea of being in on it. Part of her would like to watch Les Noy's face as she reveals him as a fake, but a bigger part of her is flattered to be part of something so male, so larrikin, so daring.

Sister Crock winks at Les Noy.

‘Stand against the measure please, heels touching.' She slides the stick into position. ‘Funny, isn't it, Mr Pettergree? You seem to have lost some height in the Mallee.'

— 29 —

THE MALLEE SUNSET

S
ome men don't take the seven days to fix up their private affairs. Some go straight away, hitching a ride on the recruiting train to the next major town and then changing for the city. These are the men Mr Plattfuss calls publicly, ‘economic recruits', and privately, ‘five-bob-a-day murderers'. Their enlistment orders direct them to come in working clothes and bring their own cutlery. Most wear the only clothes they own and are lucky to carry a rusty penknife in their pocket.

Robert wears his good blue suit. His wedding suit. He left without telling me and I wouldn't have known but Sister Crock noticed him waiting around with the other men as they packed up, and she sent Mr Plattfuss out in the Clectrac with a message. I was so shocked by the news I shut the door in his face. He took off straight away so as not to miss the train, which meant I had to run across the paddock to Ivers and get Elsie to drive me to the station. Once I was settled in the front seat and my heart had stopped pounding I knew I wasn't going to plead. There was no point in dragging him back to face the failure. He'd found some new ideas to deceive himself with and they didn't include me. But I wanted to see him. I wanted to hold him and smell his skin, feel his stubble and the flushed heat of his face against my cheek. I wanted to imprint him on me, to make a last physical memory to draw upon in my grieving.

Elsie drove like an invalid, gripping the wheel as if she was trying to squeeze the life out of it. As we rounded Mt Wycheproof I could already see the engine rolling slowly south, a soft glove of steam trailing behind it.

‘Sorry, too late, love,' Elsie said, but she kept driving and didn't stop until the car was stalled over the tracks. We watched the train roll further and further away from us. Some of the men waved from the windows – one lost his hat to the wind. For a few seconds all of our gazes intersected as we watched the hat surf the breeze. It looped and danced and then fell suddenly sideways, landing on its crown in a breath of pink soil.

I didn't see Robert. But he wouldn't have been waving. He wouldn't have been looking out of the windows. We watched as the train lost its shape and dipped over the horizon. I wept a little then, but a truck drove up fast behind us with its horn blaring and Elsie had to put her foot down.

We went to the butcher's. Elsie didn't want to waste a trip into town. Then she dropped me home. She patted my shoulder as I reached for the door handle. ‘I'll send Bill over to help with the heavy things.'

‘Pardon?'

‘For moving. With your husband gone you'll be moving. I'll send Bill over.'

Will padded around the side of the house to greet the car. He'd just woken up and his long snout broke into a toothy yawn.

‘I'm not moving, Elsie. He chose to leave, it doesn't mean I have to.' I hadn't thought this through at all but speaking it made it clear. I would stay.

Elsie shrugged and brushed an imaginary spot from the sleeve of her dress. ‘Whatever you say. This is no place for a woman on her own, but whatever you say.'

I patted Will then I ate an orange and slept for a while. When I woke I thought I could hear someone playing the piano – the repeated tinkly jumble, just like Abe walking up and down the keyboard with his three tabby legs and one white leg, but it was only the wind rolling an empty beer bottle backward and forwards against the step.

Then I went for a walk across the paddocks. I walked in the wheat and remembered what Robert had told me about the break. How each morning close to harvest time the men would walk out into the paddocks, break a wheat stem and listen for a particular sound – a clean dryness – that meant the wheat was ready to harvest. I thought of all of the men of the Mallee alone in the early morning listening to the sound of a stem snapping – the sharp dry sound of it amplified across the paddocks, joining up from farm to farm, coming together distinctly so the townsfolk in their beds would be woken by it. And that everyone would know, instantly, that the pattern of our days was about to change from growing to harvest.

The wheat that is left in our paddocks is poor. There are patches of rust and thin patches where the seed has failed to strike. I am not sure what will happen when it is just left like this, how long it will live, how quickly the other plants will move in to replace it.

I make only two decisions. The first is to ask Ollie Bowd to stay. I can teach her to sew on her old Singer and she can help me with the farm. Perhaps together we can grow a different crop – something that belongs here. And I will go to Tatura and visit Mr Ohno – fraternise a little with the enemy. I would like to bring him here and show him the farm. Show him that I didn't die in the sandy waste and that perhaps there is something here for me after all.

I take off my shoes and stockings and walk back to the house. The sun is setting but the soil is still warm beneath my feet. In the Mallee there is nothing in between the sun and the soil. It is just like the picture on the boxes of raisins and oranges – strong tentacles of light radiating out in a perfect circle.

The sun sinks lower. A last golden slab of light glances my arm and sweeps warmly down to my feet. Then the air chills quickly. I open the kitchen door and go inside.