Free Muck by Craig Sherborne Page A

She presents Christine with scones folded in a swag of grease-proof paper tied with a blue ribbon bow: “My mother’s secret formula.” She pokes The Duke’s arm for him to please pass Christine our gift of a bottle of champagne.
    Christine blinks at the bottle with a sneer-smile of her own though she accepts the bottle politely enough, saying “You shouldn’t have done that” as she takes it by the neck.
    She turns to two men sitting on the other side of the sun stream. They stand, one very old, skinny, tanned, who steps momentarily into the stream. He has a bald head, white where a hat would normally be. The other man is a younger he, identical in face but with a pale hair-mist over his crown and more flesh to his body. They wear short khaki pants, no shoes, just socks, the ends of which flop the way socks do when boots have been levered off heel-to-toe.
    Suddenly from a room down the hall, an old woman’s ailing voice: “Who is it, dear?”
    “It’s the new neighbours,” Christine replies and in the same breath introduces her father-in-law, Jim, and Jim junior, her Jim, her husband.
    The Duke and I shake hands with the Jims. I offer a good grip, a three-second squeeze to make a manly impression.
    The Duke has always advised that it’s not a tussle of strength, nor is it a standover ritual. A handshake says: I look you in the eye and greet you forcefully without force. Unless, of course, your fellow shaker is an opposing shaker, a challenger attempting to assert superiority over you. That’s when forcefulness is legitimate, as retaliation. Grip-pressure time may be extended in that circumstance well beyond three seconds to five seconds, seven, or even, if needed, nine.
    On this occasion, shaking the Jims, I want to appear honoured to be in this house, their family home, the seat of who they are. I’ve decided I am especially honoured that they felt no need to dress up for our visit. They’re content for us to see them as they live, in their natural state, their garb of every day.
    Feet, still sneer-smiling, will consider it offensive, disrespectful. But I am willing to see it as the purest form of welcome.
    Yet, as honoured as I am, I must not appear too honoured or obliged to them. My being here is as it should be. This is only our first meeting but it’s a chance for them to realise their future depends on me.
    Squeezing their hands that reach out across the stream is
not like squeezing human at all. More log of wood than skin and bone. Wood with rough, splintery bark. No pressure is returned by them in the finger and palm embrace.
    Christine fans out her arms for us to sit. The Jims return to their side of the stream. We of Tudor Park stay on our side and sink between musty cushions.
    “Who is it, dear?” the hall-voice inquires again.
    “It’s the new people,” Christine answers, still not looking our way but pulling dags from her pullover, flitting from one section of the pullover to another. She informs us that the voice up the hall is her mother-in-law who is an invalid and frailer by the day.
    Oh, we nod, sympathetically. There the conversation stalls. Stops. We sit in nodding silence.

    Silence is for finding a way out of silence. Feet has deep breaths for trying to escape it. She crosses her right leg over her left, then changes to left over right and breathes heavily.
    The Duke has his throat to clear. On this occasion he also has crochet arm-rests to pick and rub and admire.
    The other side of the stream must be used to silence. The Jims sit motionless. One of them, I can’t work out which, has a whistling block in his nose.
    I would rather not waste time in silence. I want to know what subject brings these men alive. What would make them, ordinary people, but men of property at least, feel at ease and willing to confide in me as their future leading citizen?
    That hall-voice again. “The Van Hoots, is it?”
    “No, the new ones,” Christine calls back.
    A kettle puffs and squeals in