Mateship With Birds - By Carrie Tiffany Page 0,47
shorter with just his socks on and stands with his feet wide apart as if the flatness of the floor is unfamiliar to him. His stomach is making creaking sounds like a cupboard door opening and closing. Betty concentrates on the butter – transferring the glow of it smoothly and evenly across the bread. She leans back a little to steady herself. The buckle of his belt presses into her hip. He smells of pipe smoke and Ammolene. She holds the slice up proudly.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Lovely. Cement is heavier, but it’s the same principle; steadiness and restraint.’
He steps back from her and clears his throat. He reaches into a drawer for a clean tea towel, wraps the bread and butter, and places it in the pocket of her apron.
‘There you go,’ he says. ‘A new skill and a bit of supper for later: all in one.’
Harry can’t sleep. He can’t get comfortable. He rereads his Woman and Homes late into the night, but once the light is off his feet start to twitch; the sheets are tangled around his legs, the bed feels tilted at an angle. His fitful sleep is infected with women. Edna and Betty appear alongside Vera the little secretary. He wakes and reaches for his pencil and an old envelope, scratching out notes by the moonlight that slants in the window. He draws a rough sketch with arrows to Vera’s points of interest: ‘Breasts: small but steeply pointed towards the nipple. Fleshy field around nipple shaped with great delicacy. Nipple bud of small width, but highish when erect. Nipple colour: pink rose. Thighs: white, with some vein show-through. Bush sitting at slight recession to hips when standing. Bush thick, gingery, with tufting around upper thigh. Rope line of fine ginger hairs tracking from bellybutton down abdomen and joining with bush. Buttocks creamy and lightly dimpled.’ The envelope shakes in his hands. A few weeks ago it contained a letter from the Water Commission about his irrigation licence.
Harry gets up and pads around the kitchen. He opens drawers and cupboards, searching for something, but barely aware of what it is. He finds Edna’s sewing box. When Harry was a boy his father locked him and his mother in the laundry when he went out in the evening. The laundry had no windows and a dirt floor. They made themselves comfortable enough – his mother in an old string hammock, Harry in the copper – but often he couldn’t sleep and would whimper in the dark. His mother tipped six sewing pins into his palm and showed him how to toss them lightly onto the dirt and then feel for them with his fingertips and pick them up again. Hours would go by with Harry throwing out the pins and picking them up again. He had to concentrate and be gentle; he had to count in his mind to make sure all of the pins were back in his hand before he tipped them out again. Edna’s pins are in a Dr Scholl’s foot treatment tin. Harry counts out six – surprised at how small and light they are in his hands. He gets into bed again with one arm dangling near the floor. He shakes the pins lightly in his hand like he is throwing dice, tosses them on the floor and starts to feel for them with his fingertips. Eventually he falls asleep. Half of the pins are in his hand, half on the floor – one has gently pierced the waxy outer skin of his thumb. It stands erect, a silver spine quivering in the dark.
The pierced skin on Harry’s fingers is still rough in the morning. He can feel it as he stands at the trough washing his hands before milking. Any breaks in the skin are dangerous. There’s a risk of infection and of transferring it through the herd. The cows call out wetly behind him, impatient at the delay. Pineapple is first at the gate. When he lets her into the bail she blows a wad of spittle out of her nostrils. One of her teats is already dripping. Babs pushes in next. The morning is upon him.
Later, Harry walks through the bottom paddock with an envelope in his hand for Michael. Always the worry over the bottom paddock. How to control the prickly pear? How to tackle winter bogs and the summer scalds? Harry aims to keep his head up when he walks through the paddock to Betty’s, but it