I came to my head-shaking senses. ‘What are you doing? Stop it,’ I muttered, closing my eyes.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Cameron.
‘Yes. Yes. Just dust.’ I blinked and picked at pretend eye trouble and silently berated myself: you’ve got a sick woman at home—you should be thinking about her. You’ve got enough on your plate with hair-counting and rifles and weedkiller without being face to face with a decent fellow and feeling sweet poison in you for his wife.
‘Listen, Cameron,’ I said. ‘I have to go. I’d like to show you around more but I have commitments.’ I advised him to drive north-west to the most plague-ravaged places. Call in at the Mallock Mallock general store. The owners, Claude and Verity, would tell of how they slept in the bath because mouse feet couldn’t climb the slippery sides. I promised to ring him if I thought of any quirky details he might find useful for his piece. I jotted down his number, shook his thin hand. I made a point of not even waving to her at the car.
When I got home I embraced Tilda. I told her I would cook dinner this evening, which was unusual—I can’t boil eggs. It was all part of an apology she didn’t know I was giving. I felt purged by it, if only until bed. We congressed. Or rather, we serviced. It was servicing to me. I imagined Holly beneath me, not Tilda. Then I imagined Donna, how gentle one would have to be to accommodate her tender belly. Holly, Donna, I alternated between the two. I had to concentrate not to let slip a moan of their names.
Chapter 47
It’s customary in Australia to abbreviate a person’s name and add an affectionate O or Y, a gesture between people symbolising friendship: Vigourman to Vigo, that sort of thing.
No one abbreviated Tilda and me in Scintilla. We had the usual good morning and gidday and other pleasantries but we didn’t socialise much, didn’t seek out friendship. Nor did friendship exactly rush to invite us in. We wore a covering, I suppose. The prickly shell of loners. More Tilda than me, because of her worry about gawking. She kept sensing gawkers in the street. Not in cold weather so much, with her bulky oilskin jacket on. More the heat, when tops come off and we go around in loose singlets. She didn’t mind her arms exposed—those veiny vines were her trophies—but for the rest of her it was always a shirt and denim overalls, baggy-fronted like camouflage. Even then she suspected a gawker could peek in at the edges.
On the subject of peeking, she wondered what my eyes did when in public. I glimpsed her watching me on occasions if I was talking to women of a certain age—anywhere between fourteen and sixty. She had tape-measure eyes able to calculate my line of vision. Any hint the line was intersecting with a bosom would get her fuming. ‘Don’t deny you were perving,’ she accused. ‘How fucking dare you perv. And in my presence.’
I swore to God I wasn’t perving. And it was often true. I crossed my heart and hoped to die and said, ‘This is Scintilla, for Christ’s sake. Name one beauty who’d turn my head. Just one.’
Tilda couldn’t, which left her satisfied she was the town’s queen of good looks and my eyes were just for her.
In holiday season, when city Scintillans came home to the family farm, there was more competition—there was slinky fashion to leer through. If I wore sunglasses Tilda had me remove them on the grounds that it was rude to talk to people when they couldn’t see you properly. I said, ‘Harsh sunlight gives us cataracts.’
‘So what! Cataracts are not cancer.’
Chapter 48
I should have touched wood more on Tilda’s behalf. I don’t believe superstitions work but we’re all nagged by an inkling there may be something out there. If there was it channelled its worst powers into the fluids of Tilda’s right arm. It happened just as her two-year examination by Roff was getting close. The twelve-month milestone had been one thing—twelve months clear of tumours tipped the odds a little in her favour. A little was enough to warrant champagne, proper French stuff that cost the same as a fortnight’s groceries. The two-year test tipped the odds in a bigger way—she might end up having a decent lifespan. She walked around the house with her fingers crossed, chanting, ‘Two years. Please, please, let me be clear.’
The night after I filed my final plague-related story—500 words on how demand was hiking seed prices, cruelling efforts to replant crops—Tilda asked me to come into the bathroom. She wanted the full glare of my shaving bulb angled on her. ‘Do you notice any difference?’ she asked.
Tricky question, I thought. Be careful. She hasn’t changed her hairstyle. She hasn’t changed a thing. Best wait for her to prompt me. A towel was tucked around her. Her arms were at her side. She urged me to keep looking.
‘You’ve got me, I’m afraid. I don’t see anything obvious.’
‘Good,’ she exhaled. ‘Must be in my head.’
‘What’s in your head?’
‘Look at my right arm.’
‘I am looking.’
‘See any difference?’
‘Nope.’
‘Good.’
‘What am I meant to be noticing?’
‘Nothing.’ She shrugged that it was just her overactive imagination.
But next day I was called in again and told to look harder this time. Concentrate on her arms. Was her right arm larger than her left, in terms of width, in terms of puffiness?
‘No.’
No wasn’t adequate for her. No didn’t reflect reality, she reprimanded. ‘How can you not see any difference? Look at my fingers. They’re larger. My wrist is larger. Look at how the veins run down my arms. My left vein sticks out like normal, but my right doesn’t.’ She pressed her thumb to her skin and told me to watch: ‘Indentations.’
There did appear to be a fuller outline to her right arm. Her fingers were fuller, redder, as if blood was trapped. I did not want to speak and cause panic over a smidgeon of swelling. In fact, the more I looked the more I was convinced there wasn’t any.
On the toilet seat Tilda had laid out a length of string, a ruler, piece of paper and pen. By a pinching process she used the string to take the size of her biceps. She looped it around like a tourniquet, pinched the ends together and in the same action made a fingernail dent where the string crossed. Holding the string taut along the ruler allowed her to read the measurement: 24 centimetres, upper arm; 20 centimetres, forearm; 15 centimetres, wrist. Each finger, each thumb, down to the 4.5 centimetres of her pinkie. She said she did this yesterday, not once but four times, and her right arm was now larger by 2 centimetres at the biceps. Bigger all the way down the limb. ‘You take the sizes,’ she ordered. The string was twitching in her grip as she held it out.
I tourniqueted and pinched according to her example.
‘That’s too loose,’ she complained.
‘Is that better?’
‘Now it’s too tight. Concentrate. Concentrate.’
‘I am concentrating.’ I was impatient at her impatience. I sighed a sick and tired sigh of resentment at being spoken to like that. I said, ‘Your right bicep is not 24 centimetres. It’s 22.’
‘Take it again.’ She raised her voice. ‘I said, take it again.’
‘Not if you speak like I’m a servant.’
She bowed her head and apologised. ‘Could you please take it again? Please.’