The Amateur Science of Love (21 page)

I came back down the stairs, backpack on shoulder and reached for the Commodore keys on the hook beside the back door. They weren’t there. They should have been my priority, the first belongings I packed. Instead they were in Tilda’s fingers and she wasn’t about to let them go.

‘You are not going anywhere.’

‘Oh yes I am.’

‘Oh no you’re not.’

‘Give me the keys.’

‘No.’

I reminded her that the keys were the property of the
Wimmera Wheatman
.

‘So?’

I put my hand on the doorknob to keep my leaving flowing. I turned the knob. The door was locked. I had no way to open it—my house key was on the Commodore ring. ‘Hand it over, Tilda.’

‘You are not leaving me.’

‘I am.’

‘You are not leaving me and going to that fucking slut.’

‘Give me the keys.’

‘This is where you live. You are my husband. You are to take me upstairs and congress with me like my husband.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

‘Take me upstairs, Colin. Show me that you are my husband. Because that is exactly who you are. You are not leaving me. You are not going to that filthy piece of shit. Take me upstairs. I said
upstairs
.
Now
.’

‘What would that prove?’

‘It will remind you that I am the only woman in your life. By
law
.’

If she had locked me in a tiny cell she could not have suffocated me more. Not being allowed to go here or there. Not being able to seize a key because of the grabbing and tearing and hitting I might have to do. I shouldered my backpack and said, ‘Okay. Okay. Let’s go upstairs.’

‘Good,’ she grinned. She nodded for me to go ahead of her so she could keep an eye on me.

At the bedroom she ordered me to cover my eyes while she decided where to hide the keys. She checked that the window latches were closed. As if I was going to jump out! It was straight down two storeys with no pipes to climb on. The bathroom window was a different matter. It had a drainpipe against the bricks and was still wide open from the fire. Tilda seemed to think the bedroom was her cage for keeping me in and nothing else existed outside it, least of all the bathroom. She pulled down the blinds. She slipped the keys somewhere—under the mattress or a flap of carpet. Keys were not my focus now. The bathroom was.

‘You can open your eyes,’ Tilda said. ‘Take off your clothes. Do it please. Now.’

I unbuttoned my shirt. Tilda unclipped her overalls and peeled off her sleeve. ‘Take your pants off, please. Now, please. Then lie on the bed and invite me to bed with you. I want you to hold out your hand and invite me properly and formally as your wife.’

I unfastened the tongue of my belt but did not unfasten the belt altogether.

‘I said, hold out your hand and invite me to bed as your wife.’

I distracted Tilda from demanding I get undressed by taking her good hand’s fingers to my lips and kissing them. She knelt on the bed and I distracted her more with kisses on her cheek and chin. I said, ‘Please come to bed with me properly and formally as my wife.’

‘Thank you. I shall.’

I lifted her shirt to remove it over her head and get her naked. Nakedness would slow her running after me when I upped and dashed to the bathroom window, shimmied down the drainpipe to be gone.

‘Not so rushed,’ Tilda frowned, using her elbows to block the shirt’s removal. ‘Properly. Do it properly, like you adore me.’

It took more kisses than I could stand. It took an effort of open-mouth ones. It took some biting of her neck and making breathy carried-away noises to get her bra and body part from her. I managed to keep my belt buckle clasped. My own shirt was still on, and most importantly so were my runners. I pretended I was trying to heel-to-toe them from my feet but that my passion was so great it was affecting my co-ordination. Tilda smiled, eyes closed, surrendering to my performance.

As she eased her knickers down over her knees and said, ‘You may touch me and enter me,’ I ran. I scooped up the backpack and ran. Tilda screamed for me to stop. She hopped after me, pulling her knickers on, but I had already thrown the backpack out the window and was negotiating the pipe before she could cover herself. My only problem was thorns of pipe paint, years of them formed from undisturbed peeling. They stuck in my palms on the way sliding down and made me jump the last six feet and hurt my ankle.

I didn’t care. I had the open air and no locked door or Tilda. I sprinted for a second, west up Main Street, then jogged so as not to attract attention.
Just going for his usual exercise
was the dignified impression I wanted people to get.

My plan was to run to Donna’s, the entire ninety-five kilometres to Watercook. I would cover ten kilometres every hour, sticking to the highway for a smooth surface. I hoped the stars stayed unclouded to light the way.

It was a bad plan. Nine hours of running? Not with my ankle starting to throb. I decided to call Donna to come and get me. I turned left off Main, ran across Kitten Lane—the little street we used to access our back drive. I was headed for the Scintilla forest. I intended to take a breather there, elevate my ankle before walking east to Hastings Road, using the forest leaves to hide. The cover of leaves seemed sensible because I expected Tilda would be after me, searching the streets in a desperate temper.

I was right. She was searching. Not on foot either. She was tearing about in the Commodore. I had made it through the Methodist carpark, past Philpott’s place and onto the forest fringe where the tarseal ends when I spotted her—or, rather, spotted the Commodore with its shiny bullbar and CB aerial,
Wimmera Wheatman
lettering on the side. It was on the next street along. Tilda spotted me too and yelled for me to wait, stop. The car squealed, skidding to a halt. It reversed with another squeal and fishtailed into a right turn, the rear wheel clipping the curb. I sprinted up a dirt parting in the scrub in the direction of Ringo Point. Did so out of habit—Ringo Point was the opposite direction to Hastings Road. I kept running there anyway: its ironbark clusters would make me invisible. I got in among them and crouched to catch my breath and my heartbeat. I slumped the backpack to the ground but didn’t take off my runners. My ankle would have to ache and swell—this was no time to care about ankles. Dusk was setting just the other side of the treetops. A dark breeze was leaning heavier on the branches. The sky was cloudy, which meant the forest would blind me soon. I needed to stay in sight of streetlights to keep my night bearings.

A car was going up the Ringo Point road. The Commodore, I was sure. But I wasn’t about to peep to check. I remained in the ironbarks’ protection and listened to the wheels grinding gravel. A sift of dust moved through the vegetation. I had so many choices of trunks to touch wood on I touched a dozen within two steps of me: ‘Tilda, if that’s you, go home. Don’t stop. Don’t get out and search for me. Keep driving, touch wood. Touch wood you’re keeping driving.’ But wood was only ever wood. The car slowed and Tilda’s voice called out, ‘Colin? You here, Colin?’

At first she sounded clipped and angered. Then she called my name more sweetly. ‘Colin, sweetheart? Darling? Please, sweetheart, please come home with me.’ Then sharpish again: ‘At least do me the courtesy of answering. At least give me the respect of speaking.’ Her voice cracked as if she were talking through crying. ‘Come to me now, Colin. Come here, now,’ she yelled, so high-pitched she started losing her voice. She gave one last ‘Come here, you bastard’ and went silent for a few seconds. Then the car ripped away up the road in the sundial’s direction. I heard the faint rasp of it turning around on the loose surface, sliding from too much speed off the mark. Back down the road the car came. I touched wood it would not stop for more of Tilda’s yelling. It didn’t. It ripped past like a signal of good riddance to me.

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.

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?’