The Amateur Science of Love by Craig Sherborne Page B

the settlement date.’
    ‘What, go ahead alone?’
    ‘Not alone. You’re going to lend a hand for a while. I’ve thought up a businesslike arrangement.’
    I frowned and shrugged my confusion and sat on the end of the bed while Tilda puffed up pillows behind her shoulders.
    She said, ‘You help me move in. I’m moving in to my Van Gogh garret and you must help transport my things in the van. And once I’ve moved in, the next part of the business arrangement can begin.’
    ‘Are you ordering me?’
    ‘Let me finish. You can putty the walls, plug the holes in the floors. Replace where the tiles have fallen off in the bathroom. I want to be able to get straight to painting my paintings. You can tart up the place for me. Patch the ceilings where the plaster’s come down. Rehang all the doors. You owe me that, Colin. You bloody well owe me that.’
    ‘For how long?’
    ‘A year.’
    ‘A year? A year of that?’
    ‘A year of work to clear your Richard or Alice debt. Consider us business partners. We’ll be assigned domestic duties. I will cook. You can plant a vegetable garden for me. I will pay the bills and do my art. You will work on my place and pay off your debt that way. We will be like friends. We will sleep in separate beds, in separate rooms. You futoned on the floor in one room. Me in my bed in another. I’m going to buy myself a nice four-poster one.’
    A year. It sounded a long time, though in my heart I was convinced I deserved it. A year, and at the end of it my absolution would be the reward.

Chapter 31
    A convenience of the arrangement was money. I wouldn’t need any: Tilda was in charge of that. Buying the Van Gogh garret meant there was nearly $8000 left over from her $40,000. She would top that up by painting. In no time her new studio would be wet with canvas paddocks and sunsets. She’d sell pictures to loyal aunties and cousins. Charge them $1000, which I called robberygiven they were relatives.
    The arrangement included guidelines for socialising. If either of us met a Scintillan who attracted us for dating, that was perfectly reasonable, part of the arrangement. Reasonable too if we wanted to bring them home for congressing. Or so we said—it was never tested. Scintillans took some getting used to for Tilda. I was accustomed to country people—hairy-eared, bull-sized men who talk rainfall as if rain was life’s measure. Tilda’s type was more…well…a feckless me. Besides, she was back to the Tilda I’d first met in London: art not men in life, that was her decree.
    If only we humans didn’t have the sweet poison in us, wouldn’t that be simpler and save us so much misery?
    Six weeks after we moved in Tilda made a suggestion. She couched it as a slight amendment to our business agreement. Did so not with coldness or unfeeling calculation; there was fondness for me in her face. At least that was my surmising. Her cheeks were blushed ashine from the cask reds of the evening. But the blush was also a red shyness and boldness blend.
    It was late autumn, which still means summer if you’ve stoked the fireplaces. Your skin slicks with sweat after showering. Hot temperatures, I’m sure of it, thin the poison and flood the body with it easier. ‘You can come into my bed tonight if you want,’ Tilda said, her top lip teasingly attached to the wineglass rim.
    The poison slushed through me. My breathing wouldn’t behave. ‘Seriously?’
    ‘Seriously.’
    Week after week and only me had touched me.
    Tilda put her hand on the kitchen table as if swearing on a Bible. She said, ‘Let’s not call it congressing. Let’s call it servicing. You can service me and I will service you.’
    I said, ‘You make us sound like Herefords,’ though it was not a criticism. I was so excited no amount of mathematics was going to prevent me from having to let the first expelling go.
    We serviced each other, nightly, then I would go back to my room.
    But the servicing got more serious. One night, I