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

Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (Picador 40th) by Carrie Tiffany Page B

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Authors: Carrie Tiffany
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completeness and satisfaction I am reluctant to enter the caravan with Robert in case I am drawn into the dream in front of him. I am not sure what it means. It seems to be a wish to be self-contained. There is no space for Robert in the dream, or for science.
    â€˜It is your project,’ I say, when he asks me to hold the tape measure. The caravan will take Robert away from me, but it will bring him closer to the land. I would like this closeness too. I would like to lie in the darkness watching the stars through the little window, listening to the earth as it cools and cracks during the night.
    The test run for the caravan is not a success. The floor falls out piece by piece as the tractor does its slow lap around the house. I wave and call to Robert but he can’t hear me over the noise. More timber poles are needed so we plan a trip to the pine reserve at Patchewollock. I come along to tend the fires and make our lunch but mainly because of the clearing sale at Day Trap along the way. A whole farm is to be sold up – all machinery, household goods and a long bobbin Singer treadle sewing machine in good working order.
    Hec Bowd’s farm has poor soil. Mallee sand that shifts underfoot and rises with the smallest wind. Robert says Hec Bowd has made terrible mistakes with fallow. He says he let the fields stand for so long between plantings that the soil upped and drifted off by the time he came back to it. Hec was following advice from the Department of Agriculture Journal – that long fallow would protect his wheat from field smut. They had three bad seasons and were hanging on. The bank took the final decision.
    Robert parks the car under some poplars behind the house. We can see Hec Bowd in the paddock demonstrating his tractor to some prospective buyers. It’s a Clectrac crawler that runs on tracks like a tank with a tall air inlet to get above the dust, giving it a military look – like a periscope on a submarine. Robert straddles the fencing wires and walks over to a crowd of men around the tractor.
    Mrs Bowd and her daughter have set up a tea table on the back verandah. They are wearing their best dresses, serving sandwiches and cakes and tea from patterned china normally reserved for a wedding or a christening or Sunday best at least. I have seen them in town before. The daughter, Ollie, is a famous local tennis player. She is strong and spare like her father with a sharp, serious face. I have regularly seen her photograph on the back page of the Ensign .
    The sewing machine belongs to Ollie. She leads me into the dark sitting room where it takes pride of place on the circular table. The auctioneer has tied a large tag to it with a number. Ollie runs her hand over the shiny black metal.
    â€˜What do you think, Mrs Pettergree? Dad got it at Swan Hill when he went up with some sheep. It was my eighteenth.’
    â€˜It’s lovely, Ollie. I’ll thread it up and run something through it.’
    Ollie must be in her early twenties by now. She brings me her sewing basket and rummages about for some thread and a bobbin. The basket is made of birthday cards covered in cellophane and sewn together with raffia. The auctioneer’s label half covers the face of a white kitten – to our darling ten year old girl . . .
    Ollie watches me trace the thread through the shiny guides and loops.
    â€˜Oh, Mrs Pettergree, do you know I’ve been doing it the wrong way all this time?’ Her cheeks quiver. ‘It never worked properly, the stitches always pulled tight, and I thought it was me.’
    She clumps glumly back out to her mother on the verandah.
    I look at the photographs on the mantel. Generations of sharp-faced Bowds, Hec’s shy young face as a bridegroom, Ollie as a teenager in her Highland dancing outfit.

    The auctioneer’s voice breaks through from outside. Many more people have arrived. A large crowd is gathered in front of the poplars. The auction men

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