Muck (9 page)

“I’m sorry. I’m all ears.”

“If you have got better things to do, it’s no skin off my nose if you want to listen or not.”

“I do want to listen.”

“I really couldn’t be bothered if you’re not interested.”

“I am interested.”

She puts her knuckle to her eyelid again. She walks into the sunroom. The Duke follows to place his hands comfortingly on her shoulders but she waves that she doesn’t want him to see her cry. He takes out his handkerchief and offers it, but No, she says, she has recovered now and somehow managed to keep the tears at bay.

Trip number three began promisingly enough, she says. It was the next driveway over from the curtain lurker, the one with the white goat chained at the gate the way some around here do for good luck. “Such a pretty goat, I thought to myself. It raised its head and made a baaing sound as if pleased to see me.”

But the farmhouse itself was less than inviting, more a falling down cottage in need of bulldozing. There were happy dogs wagging their tails and tongues but there the welcome ended. “I knocked on the door, and who comes to greet me? The most sour-looking prune in a hair-net I have ever set eyes on. I said to her, ‘How do you do? I thought I’d bring around some scones.’ And do you know the extent of her conversation? I’ll tell you—‘Thank you.’ Not so much as a ‘Would you care to come in?’ She took the scones, Wedgwood and all. Didn’t empty them on to her own plate. Just closed the door.”

Someone will have to go back and fetch her good plate. “That’s a job for you, I think,” she nods to me. For she, as she drove out of the hair-net’s drive, promised herself never to set foot there again.

In fact never again will she be sociable like this. Not with these types with their lurking and their stealing her Wedgwood and closing doors in her face. “Where I come from you don’t close doors in faces,” she rasps like a warning, a threat. “Not in my face you don’t.”

She has begun to dig in her hair and mutter wet swearing. Spit bubbles at her mouth corners. “Bugger them. To hell with every bloody one.”

But promises are only temporary. Especially, says Feet, when you are fortunate enough to have the kind of husband she has. Someone with the ability to put in a nutshell exactly how our neighbours must feel.

We must look at it from
their
point of view. “I should feel sympathy for them. Not anger,” she says, shaking her head annoyed this never occurred to her. “Here we are with the best property in the district. And there they are just chipping away, chipping away, as they have always done in life.”

Just imagine it, she laughs, her fingers resting below her throat. They must feel intimidated to see the lady of a showpiece like we have turn up on their doorstep out of the blue. “They’d take one look at me, and then one look at themselves and their mothy old cardigan and their grey hair that needs a good tinting and doing. Those horrible hormone chin-hairs they haven’t plucked since God knows. Not to mention the state of their house. They probably haven’t cleaned their house for an eternity. Too busy, or too hard up even to get a cleaner.”

The Duke is emphatic, we really must try to fit in: “It wouldn’t kill us to try that little bit harder because you never know when we’ll want something from them. Even just paying their share of a new boundary fence. Even just the loan of machinery. We want to keep in good.”

He puts the question to Feet: “What’s the one thing every person has in common?”

She shrugs that there are so many things it’s impossible to list them. Everybody wants to have nice clothes if they can afford them. Everyone likes to go out for dinner to somewhere swish.

“No, no, no.” The Duke wipes his hand across his face. “
Family. Family.
That’s what we all understand. Rich, poor, Chinaman, Jew. And that’s how we should present ourselves to our neighbours. As a family. It shows we’re just like them in that regard. That’s the something that will break the ice.”

She wishes she had done this in the first place.

A phone call only takes a minute, that’s all it takes, and look what grief it saves. She claps her hands together at how wise a phone call can be. No-one gets caught on the hop by having you turn up unannounced. There is time for them to clean. There is time for them to prepare refreshments, stock up on drink, have their hair done. “Would it be convenient if we popped over?” she said to Face-ache, and Face-ache said “Yes.” Hesitated, it’s true. Didn’t jump for joy, but who ever jumps for joy to have people invite themselves over for afternoon tea?

At least our Face-ache had the good graces to say, “That would be nice,” and suggested the occasion be held at the main house, her parents-in-laws’, at
2
pm tomorrow before the evening milking.

“Not the midget house, thank God. We’d hardly fit in,” Feet quips with a laugh-grunt, her fingertips over her mouth as if she just belched.

A new batch of scones is called for.

And those fawn shoes—The Duke will have to take his fawn shoes from the wardrobe, the ones with the silver buckles, and rub away any black scuffs with soap and warm water.

She insists he wear his fawn suit to match. Not that she wants him to look too formal. But when worn with his white skivvy and red pocket handkerchief, he is the very essence of smart.

She herself is tossing up between her orange pantsuit with the matching string shoes, so cozily flat-heeled to spare her arches and corns. Or she could try the candy-pink jumpsuit with or without the yellow belt. Either way, she thinks it time to break out her necklaces. The pearls might be the thing. Or maybe just plain gold. “My lordship, what do you think?”

The Duke holds out his hands and pushes down on the air. “I think we shouldn’t be going over there all flash and dolled up. We’re not in Sydney now I remind you. I think we should play us down.”

“But what’s the point of having nice things if we don’t show them off?” Feet states, not asks.

“I’m only telling you what I think. I don’t intend arguing over the matter but I’m just saying I think we should play us down.”

“Well I’m not going over there in gumboots, that’s for sure.” Feet stands square to him and puts her hands on her hips.

“No-one’s saying we’re going in gumboots.”

“That’s a relief. But I’d still like you in your fawn suit if you don’t mind. If it’s not too much trouble.”

“I’ll wear the fawn suit. But I think you should go easy on the jewellery.”

Feet sighs and promises to wear her polka-dot neck scarf instead. “Is that played down enough?”

“It’s a start. I don’t think it’s too much trouble to put ourselves to if we want to fit in a bit more,” The Duke says.

“Scones, polka-dots. I think I’m making every attempt possible to fit in. But one has standards. Why shouldn’t the lady of Tudor Park wear jewellery? It might encourage a little more pride in other people and their presentation.”

She goes to the kitchen to make more scones, talking to herself about how people should come up to
her
standards not the other way round. Not her come down to theirs. “That’s all I can say. Them up. Not the other way round.”

Mixing the dough, she talks to herself: “I am not about to compromise on standards, thank you very much.”

Ironing The Duke’s skivvy, his red pocket handkerchief that lends such a splash of colour to a man: “Your standards drop and you might as well say ‘I’ve let myself go.’” Her voice register changes, lowered to a man’s to mimic The Duke: “Fit in why don’t you. Compromise your standards.”

Then her own voice. “No thank you.”

Then a rougher man’s. “Come down to our standards.”

Her own again. “Where I come from you bloody well work hard to get nice things and wear them.”

On it goes this mumbled argument like a private parliament of herself.

But by
2
pm next day she has talked herself into the view that wearing jewellery in the country is much too risky. A bracelet can become hooked on a branch. Try finding a sapphire in all that grass. Sydney has burglars and pickpockets. Here the culprit is long, thick grass.

Besides, if being a good neighbour is so important to her husband, then it becomes important to her. She understands perfectly how useful neighbours can be, especially with us away so much in Australia and staff running the place—reliable one minute but what about the next?

She ties her polka-dots around her neck like cloth jewellery. She tells me I needn’t shave because my week’s re-growth has barely sprouted. I may wear jeans on this occasion because it’s a manly, countrified statement in the young.

Face-ache did tell Feet her name on the phone but now she has forgotten it and hopes she doesn’t call her Face-ache out of habit. “What was her name again? I think it starts with a C. I’ve completely forgotten. Carol, Kate or Carly something.” She pours herself a calming glass of riesling.

Why have I allowed Feet to speak to me in this way with her “You needn’t shave” and “jeans on this occasion”? Why no farce of fury until The Duke restores the chain of command?

It is because I
do
want to make a manly statement with jeans in the country style. I have already checked for any sign of re-growth. Had there been whiskers on my cheeks and chin I would have watered the candle-flame and gripped the Safety in the limply way to respect my neighbours with a presentable face.

For I don’t merely put my hands behind my back and walk with my twitch self to oversee Churchill. I don’t merely cat’s-cradle with Norman and son, perfecting my not-looking technique so they see that an education doesn’t deprive a man of hardy pride. I also gaze in all four directions at this grass and milk civilisation. I bring it up close to me with a lend of The Duke’s binoculars. There is blue sun on our mountains if a storm cloud covers it over. The milk tanker man puts his wireless to his ear and jigs while he milks the shed that milked the
500
deformed humans. I imagine I am duke of it all, the four directions, its commanding citizen. In time its mayor, its look-up-to man. Perhaps even one day, yes, its member of parliament.

History would happen to me in this place after all.

Such advancement would not be beyond The Duke were he a better-read man with a head for speeches. He’s the
doer
kind—he has no time for fancy speeches.

What an achievement to crown his legacy I would be.

Today I am going to meet my constituents, my neighbours. Perhaps word has spread from Norman and William that I am highly qualified in mind, a person of learning, who is adapting well to their way of life—I am clearly someone not afraid of manual toil. “Look at his forearm scar, the O shape,” they may have gossiped to others, having admired its purple blister.

I also have added some scars to my hands. Lifting hay bales by the raw twine without gloves burns and swells the fingers till there’s blood. Bale prickles dot my knuckles and leave a puffy poison in the wounds. The blunt knife that cuts the hay twine also cuts well into skin. By using a chopping motion the rusty blade sinks where you aim it. Same with sharp rock—a chop, a grimace and the skunning’s done.

When Feet and The Duke ask how I got these scars, I say from working. Plain hard work.