Jessica

by Bryce Courtenay

Joe sits facing the doctor and watches as he fusses with his eyeglasses and then turns his attention to the opening of Hester’s letter. He uses a silver and enamel paper-knife and his hands shake something terrible, so that he makes several attempts to insert the knife into the corner of the envelope. Joe notices how very old the physician is. He is feeling old himself and his back hurts from the long ride into town. Not too long for this world, that one, he thinks to himself, immediately feeling a little better.

  After a while Nathaniel Merrick looks up and Joe sees that he is amused. ‘Well, well, boys will be boys, Joe Bergman. I can’t say anything’s changed in the fifty years I’ve been in practice.’ He looks up at the ceiling as if he is trying to recall something. ‘Oh, yes,’ he says, chuckling to himself, and recites:

  ‘When apples are red

  and nuts are brown

  skirts come up

  and trousers down’

  The old doctor doesn’t look to see if Joe is amused, it’s enough that he has remembered the rhyme. ‘She’s a fine-looking young filly as I recall. Bit narrow in the hips, though — she’ll need a midwife when her time comes.’

  He places Hester’s letter to one side and reaches for a writing tablet before smiling at Joe. ‘Happy to oblige, Joe Bergman. There’s no sense in making unnecessary trouble for your lass.’ He reaches for his pen, briefly rubs his thumb and forefinger across the surface of the steel nib and then further tests its point with his thumb. Then he dips it into the ink-pot and says, ‘Meg, was it?’

  Joe swallows and nods. ‘Meg Charlotte Bergman, doctor.’

  The old physician begins to write, then pauses. ‘I seem to recall the name “Jessie” when I attended her?’

  Joe has been primed by Hester in case this should happen. ‘It’s what we calls her, you know, her nickname, like.’

  The doctor sighs and then continues writing, the steel nib of his pen scratching Joe’s lie across the width of the snowy white paper.

  Joe is elated, but doesn’t show it, careful to keep his face without expression. ‘Thank you, doctor. Most grateful for yer help.’

  Merrick chuckles. ‘I’m too old to make judgements, Joe Bergman. But if I was younger with a more inquisitive mind I’d say your wife is up to something, eh? A very clever letter, worthy of her old aunt.’ He thinks for a moment. ‘Agnes Heathwood — a fine-looking but most mischievous and interfering woman, always up to something. Clever and complicated as a cat’s cradle.’

  Joe leaves for home that same evening, crossing the river and continuing on for two hours before making camp for the night to allow his horse to rest. Shortly before dawn he sets out again, knowing that they’ll have to set off for Narrandera in a few days to catch the train for Sydney.

  They will have to leave Jessica behind to care for the selection and take their chances that no one will see her.

  Joe wonders to himself how wise it is to tell her about Meg’s pregnancy to Jack Thomas, but he can think of no other explanation for their going to Sydney. He’s not silly enough to think his youngest daughter has gone ratty in the head. He wonders if he should stay behind and allow Hester and Meg to confront Jack with Dr Merrick’s letter.

  Joe sighs heavily. Hester will know what to do, and anyway he is too tired these days to think for himself. Lately he’s been getting pains in the chest and down his left arm. He finds himself panting after the least exertion. ‘I’m losing me wits,’ he mutters to himself. ‘A man’s goin’ out backwards.’

  Hester and Meg are excited when, on Joe’s return, they hear the news. ‘There’s no time to be lost, we must leave for Sydney in the morning,’ Hester declares.

  ‘Who’s gunna tell Jessie?’ Joe asks.

  ‘You should, Joe,’ Hester answers.

  Joe looks down, examining his fingernails. ‘Nah, I don’t think so,’ he says softly, though he knows it is weak. ‘It’s women’s business.’

  Hester gives a long-suffering sigh, though she is secretly pleased. More and more she is taking charge. ‘As usual I have to do the dirty work,’ she says mournfully to cover her satisfaction.

  At tea that night, Hester breaks her silence to Jessica. ‘Jessica, we have some news,’ she announces.

  Jessica jumps at the sound of her mother’s voice directed at her. So surprised is she to hear her name that her eyes glisten with tears of relief. ‘Yes, Mama,’ she manages in no more than a whisper.

  ‘Your father, Meg and I are going to Sydney tomorrow.’

  Jessica wipes away her tears. ‘Sydney? But that’s where Jack is!’

  ‘Yes, well, as a matter of fact, we’re going to see Jack.’ Jessica cannot at first comprehend what her mother is saying. ‘But why?’ she asks finally. ‘Meg is pregnant to him.’

  ‘Pregnant? Meg? To Jack?’ Now Jessica simply cannot believe her ears and her hand goes to her heart. ‘But how, Mama?’

  ‘Oh you stupid girl! You of all people! How!’ Jessica bites her lower lip, her eyes brimming. ‘Please, Mama, can I come too?’

  Joe, who has his head bowed and seems to be examining his fingernails, now looks up. ‘No, girlie. Yiz’ll stay here and take care o’ things.’

  ‘And stay out of sight,’ Hester adds, her voice hard. Jessica rises from the table, unable to see for the tears that blind her. She brushes roughly past Meg, who draws away from her, pulling her arms up against her breasts as if repulsed by her touch. Jessica runs to her room, where she can contain her emotions no longer and begins to howl.

  Her grieving can be heard in the kitchen and Meg looks at her mother and shakes her head.

  ‘Oh, God, will we never be rid of the trouble she causes?’ Hester cries.

  ‘Jesus Christ, what have we done?’ Joe cries. ‘A man ought to be ashamed of hisself.’

  Hester turns and admonishes him. ‘Joe Bergman, don’t you back down now!’

  They leave just before sunrise, with the winter morning bitterly cold and the frost white on the ground. Jessica can hear a crow cawing in the cow paddock, though it’s still too early for the other birds. There has been a fall of rain overnight, too little to matter much, but the early morning air is sharp and sweet and the dust dampened down under a clear blue sky.

  Neither Hester nor Meg speaks to Jessica as they step up into the sulky and cover their knees with a rug. Joe stops to give her instructions, though he knows Jessica can manage on her own well enough and it is only an excuse to speak with his younger daughter.

  ‘It’ll be better when we’re back, you’ll see,’ Joe says, touching his daughter’s arm. ‘There’s a lamb fresh slaughtered in the cool house, and after that there’s bacon.’ He stands awkwardly, looking down at his boots, then says slowly, ‘We’ll be gone a fortnight, less I hope, certainly no more. Look after yerself then, eh, girlie.’

  Jessica’s teeth are chattering from the early morning cold and she hugs her chest. ‘Father, will you give Jack a message for me?’ she asks quietly.

  ‘Now Jessie, you know I can’t do that. What have you done? Wrote a letter?’

  ‘No, Father, just a message, for you to tell him.’ She looks at Joe, her eyes appealing to him. ‘It can’t do no harm, Father. Tell him, “Tea Leaf will be here when you get back.’”

  ‘Tea Leaf? Tea Leaf will be here when he gets back?’ Joe smiles. ‘Don’t see no harm can come from saying that,’ he says, happy to be able to do something for his sad little daughter.

  ‘No Father, tell it exact. “Tea Leaf will be here when you get back.” , ‘Tea Leaf, eh? That what he calls yiz?’

  It takes all day to get to Narrandera, where they put up for the night at the home of Hester’s ageing father and Dolly, his second wife twenty years his junior. Dolly is the widow Auntie Agnes sent Henry Heathwood down to Sydney to find at the Easter Show. She was to be Hester’s replacement behind the counter and in the kitchen, in order that her spinster niece might marry
big, silent Joe Bergman.

  Dolly is a cheerful soul who now runs the shop with the help of a young female assistant. She makes them feel most welcome and thoroughly at home. Henry Heathwood, always of a morbid disposition and now in his dotage, continues in his cheerless ways. His mind has taken to wandering of late and he no longer works in his haberdashery shop. Instead he spends most days seated in an old wicker chair under the grapevine in the backyard, mumbling to himself and dribbling down his chin. He is too feeble even to follow in the tradition of the Heathwood men. Most of them spent their old age as colourful local identities, which, among the town’s middle-class tradesmen, is the euphemism for one of their kind being in a constant state of inebriation.

  The express train for Sydney is due to leave at 9.45 a.m. and Joe has only just enough time to get to the recruitment office to obtain the papers he will need in order to visit Jack Thomas at the Victoria Barracks in Sydney.

  Dolly packs them a splendid hamper and gives Meg a new bonnet. She proudly claims, ‘It came up unadorned from Melbourne and I’ve titivated it a bit — it’s wonderful what a bit of ribbon and a bow or two can do. I made the red velvet roses myself,’ she adds proudly. Dolly then tells them she is of a mind to branch into hats as she feels she has a flair for decoration. Meg says she fears it is a little ostentatious with her plain brown dress and its white Chinese lace collar. ‘Nonsense, child,’ Aunt Dolly insists, ‘hats bright as peacock birds are all the rage in Sydney and Melbourne.’

  Apart from coming into Sydney by boat as a young boy from Denmark, Joe has only ever visited the town on two other occasions, both towards the end of the last century when old Queen Victoria was still on the throne. His memory is of a busy place, too many people, all of them talking at the same time. Of shoulders bumped in the street without so much as an apologetic grunt. Of smoke-filled pubs with tiled walls and floors, their polished hardwood counters awash with spilled ale and the approach to them three rowdy drinkers deep. And ever more noise, the clatter and clanging of the cable and electric trams, of coaches and traps, sulkies and wagons of every description and every cross-street jammed with people hurrying somewhere, like a colony of ants on the march.

  But the Sydney they come into seems to have taken on a different dimension. They’ve seen a good many young men on the train wearing the bush on their faces like a weary smile, some dressed in patched trousers and broken stockmen’s boots, others neat as squatters’ sons at a picnic dance, and all of them coming in to enlist even before there has been an official call to arms. War has not yet been declared but the rumour of its coming has swept through the bush to flush out the young bucks who have been weaned to a rifle and are eager to the fray. Word has it that the city blokes will go first and these young bushmen don’t want to miss out on the grand adventure which some of the punters are betting will be over in just a few months.

  The whistles of the self-important, black-uniformed, peak-capped conductors, the hiss and spit of steam, the yells and squeals, laughter, babble and shouted commands, quite take their breath away.

  ‘A regular Sodom and Gomorrah and Tower of Babel all at once!’ Hester shouts, cupping her hand against Meg’s ear. Meg,for her part, stands wide-eyed. She has never seen so many young blokes together and she tries to imagine them in uniform, with a band blaring and them marching off to war, rifle over one shoulder, free arm swinging, their jaws clamped tight with pride. She can feel the pounding of her heart as she observes how the young men look at her in Aunt Dolly’s hat. Their eyes hungry, devouring her breasts and trim waist, darting away shyly when she dares a glance at them.

  Meg wonders if they can see her for the country bumpkin she is, in her plain brown dress and unfashionable boots, Aunt Dolly’s elaborate bonnet perched on top of it all. She looks frantically to see if there are other bonnets like hers, but sees none and thinks the young blokes must be looking at her bonnet and laughing to themselves. But when she looks into their faces she can see the bronze of sun and wind, the natural creases around eyes kept narrow by too much sharp light, and she knows she’s among her own kind.

  These are country boys from all the bush towns, farms and sheep runs in the land. Australia is sending the very heart and soul of the dry and dusty plains to fight for old Mother England. Tall, gangly, slow-talking country lads, who sit upon a horse and carry a rifle as easily as they use a knife and spoon. These colonial lads are off to sort out the Hun — the Kaiser had better watch out.

  The three Bergmans struggle with the two old suitcases and the wicker hamper until they stand clear of the station and hail a hansom cab. ‘Oxford Street, mate, how much?’ Joe asks, trying not to feel too lost and unimportant.

  ‘Dunno, mate, depends, don’t it?’

  ‘Dunno what you mean, mate.’

  ‘Oxford Street goes two, maybe two an’ a arf miles.’

  ‘Paddington? We’re goin’ to Paddington, know where it is?’

  The cabby tries not to look insulted. ‘Cost you sixpence each and another zack for the luggage,’ he says, looking down on them from his high seat, seeing them for what they are.

  ‘How far is it, mate?’ Joe now asks.

  ‘Nearest point?’ The cabby rubs his chin. ‘Arf a mile.’

  ‘Near the barracks, the Victoria Barracks, in Paddington. We got the name of a boardin’ house, Mrs O’Shane.’

  ‘About a mile, then,’ the cabby points, ‘up thataway.’

  ‘You know Mrs O’Shane?’ Joe asks in surprise.

  ‘Nah, mate, the flamin’ barracks, about a mile,’ the cab driver says impatiently.

  ‘Thank you, we’ll walk,’ Joe says, lifting his hat to the cabby.

  ‘Nah, don’t be bloody silly, catch the electric tram. Cost ya a deener the lot o’ yiz.’ He points to the tram stop. ‘Waverley tram goes right past.’

  At the boarding house Mrs O’Shane is a big woman with hands and face red as boiled lobster. She seems all heat and fuss, with a voice rough as the sound of a wood rasp. But she remembers Dolly well enough and, it seems, with some favourable feeling, for she shows them a tiny room for Hester and Meg and a bed for Joe in the single men’s quarters out the back.

  The room isn’t clean, but then it isn’t dirty either. It has the pungency of human wear and tear but not of cat’s piss and fried kippers, the redolent smell of just about every cheap English-speaking boarding house in the world. Hester has brought her own sheets and a thick blanket together with a bottle of eucalyptus oil so the bed bugs and fleas are more or less taken care of. The room is declared tolerable, its two major attractions being a stout door with a good lock and a brass key and furthermore, it is what they can afford.

  They are all bone-weary from the train trip through the night, where they sat up all the way in a secondclass carriage. Behind the door is a notice which spells out the rules for Mrs O’Shane’s establishment.

  NO SLEEPING PAST 7 A.M. IN THE ROOMS AND NOT AGAIN UNTIL SIX O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING.

  Mrs O’Shane later explains it’s to stop double dipping, that is, nightshift and dayshift workers sharing the cost of a room between them.

  DURING THE DAY, IF THE OCCUPANTS ARE IN THEIR ROOMS, THE DOORS ARE TO BE KEPT OPEN.

  This, she says, is to prevent any hanky-panky and so forth and so on.

  UPON LEAVING THE PREMISES THE ROOMS MUST BE LOCKED AND THE KEY HANDED IN TO THE LANDLADY.

  ALL CARE AND NO RESPONSIBILITY TAKEN. FRONT DOOR WILL BE LOCKED BY TEN O’CLOCK, NO VISITORS ALLOWED AFTER NINE IN THE EVENING.

  ‘I know yiz are respectable folk from the country an’ all, but I can’t make no exceptions,’ Mrs O’Shane explains. ‘Them’s the rules and it’s one in, all in, I ‘opes you understand? At night keep yer door locked and yer purse under the pillow and don’t open for no one ‘cept if you recognise their voice. Don’t have eyes in the back o’ me ‘ead now, do I?’ She looks sternly at Meg. ‘No soldiers allowed, no sa
ilors neither. Best to talk to no one, ‘less they’s introduced by me. Breakfast at seven o’clock sharp, porridge and tea, no toast. Dinner yer finds yerself outside, cafe on the corner, fish ‘n’ chips two doors down. Tea at six o’clock, ternight it’s Irish stew or bangers ‘n’ mash or savoury mince, take yer choice, rice pudding to finish, all the tea yiz can drink, no intoxicating fluids to be brought to the table.’ She glares at them, one eye closed. ‘Does I make meself clear?’

  It is mid-afternoon by the time they’ve settled in and Joe goes off to the barracks a block away to find out how they might go about contacting young Jack Thomas. Hester and Meg are off window-shopping in George Street and Meg finds herself the subject of many an admiring glance, even though she has chosen to leave Aunt Dolly’s velvet roses, bowed and ribboned extravaganza in the boarding house and wears her second-best plain brown bonnet instead.

  There are soldiers everywhere and they see several officers on horseback who look so grand Meg thinks the younger ones must be captains and the older, with their curled moustaches, at the very least generals in command. Eventually they end up in the Botanical Gardens, where they rest on the clipped green grass under a large Moreton Bay fig. They take off their boots and share a vanilla ice cream together while they watch the mallard ducks floating on a small pond covered with lilac waterlilies.

  At tea that night Joe announces that they’ll see Jack Thomas at four o’clock on the following afternoon for an hour by special permission of his squadron commander, Lieutenant Ormington. They’re to meet at the main gate of the barracks and Jack is allowed out but must report back by five-fifteen sharp.

  ‘We’ll need to bring him back here,’ Joe says, ‘so we can speak to him private, like.’

  ‘What about the rules, Father? Door open and no soldiers,’ Meg says, her heart pounding at the thought of the confrontation to come. There has been no mention of their little conspiracy since the first night. She has planned and waited for Jack Thomas so long that what they’re doing now seems almost normal. It is the thought of seeing Jack that makes her nervous — she’s seen so many handsome young men in uniform that she hopes he stacks up. She wants her man to be as good as the others.