Jessica

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Yeah, well, it was always asking too much. It was bound to go wrong, come unstuck in the end. Bloody hell, maybe Jack will come back from the war, dump Meg and marry Jessica.’

  Hester’s head shoots up in alarm and Joe sees the look of hatred on her face. ‘Never! You hear, never! Jack belongs to Meg. Jessica’s not getting him no matter what.’ ‘Yeah, well, there you go,’ Joe says helplessly, shrugging his shoulders once again.

  Hester grabs his arm. ‘Listen, Joe, only Mrs Baker knows about the miscarriage, no one else. She’s got a dicky heart — you’ve heard her say it often enough, how she could pass over to the other side at any moment — her arithmetic. The whole district knows about it, nobody will be in the least surprised.’ ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘We’ll make an excuse, say you can’t take her home, that we’d be most grateful if she’d stay the night. Ask her, as a comfort to me — say you’d be much obliged if she’d stay. She can share my bed. Then, when she’s asleep we’ll suffocate her with a pillow. She’ll not be strong enough to fight us both.’

  Joe stops and looks at his wife. ‘Hester, we are going mad! This has got to stop.’

  ‘Joe, we have one more chance,’ Hester begs. ‘One last chance to keep Meg’s pregnancy alive.’

  ‘What are you saying, woman? In the end there’ll be no child for Meg, and Jack will be free to dump her anyway!’

  ‘Joe, if we can stop Mrs Baker talking so that nobody knows Jessica is pregnant, Meg could have her baby. Jessica’s baby!’-Hester says all this in a rush, getting it out before Joe can fully react to what she’s said. She thinks Joe may hit her and she’s prepared for this, lifting her arms up to her face in anticipation.

  Instead Joe stops and brings his hands to cover his face. ‘As God is my witness, you have gorn stark starin’ mad, woman,’ he says slowly.

  Hester knows she has won — Joe would have hit her otherwise. ‘Joe, it’s not madness, it’s madness the other way. Don’t you see? If Jessica keeps her child she will be disgraced, and the child will be persecuted all its life for being Billy Simple’s bastard. A monster’s child. Jessica will never live it down — there is already some talk that she’s mad.’

  ‘Yeah, no doubt started by the two of yiz.’

  ‘Joe, people aren’t stupid. They ask why she doesn’t come to church any more.’

  ‘And the two of yiz shakes yer heads and looks mournful and they catch on soon enough. Something’s not right with Jessica, they tell themselves, which is what yiz two want them to think, ain’t it?’

  ‘Well, we can’t say she’s pregnant, can we?’ Hester protests.

  ‘Why not? Get it bloody over with, it’s not the end of the world!’

  ‘Joe, if we take Jessica’s baby for Meg, it will have a good life as the son or daughter of Jack Thomas. It’s an even better idea than the miscarriage.’ Hester hesitates, then adds, ‘Jessica is still young. She’ll recover and be none the worse for the experience. She’d be free to marry or she can run Riverview Station for Meg if Jack doesn’t come back. Meg claims Jessica’s child for herself and it has a grand future.’ Hester looks up, pleading with her husband. ‘Can’t you see how it would solve everything and be so very good for Jessica as well?’

  Hester observes how Joe hesitates. She knows he feels guilty about Jessica, that he feels he’s let her down. ‘It would be the greatest service you could ever render her, Joe,’ she urges. ‘Jessica’s child will grow up rich and be the master of Riverview Station one day.’

  Joe gives a bitter little laugh. ‘All we have to do is kill Mrs Baker, hope Jack carks it in the war and steal Jessica’s child, is that it?’

  ‘Joe, we’d be giving both the baby and Jessica a decent life. You’d be looking after Jessica’s best interests. If Jack doesn’t come back from the war, Jessica gets the five hundred acres Jack said -she could have.’ Hester sees her husband hesitate a second time and she cleverly changes the subject, leaving Joe to ponder what she’s promised their youngest daughter.

  ‘Mrs Baker is poorly by her own confession, she could go at any moment!’ Hester then adds spitefully, ‘Mr Duffy the verger has wanted to play the organ for years. It’s her that’s kept him out — her waiting for God to take her to Paradise in the middle of “Onward Christian Soldiers”!’

  Despite himself Joe laughs, but then falls silent again as they turn to walk back to the homestead. Just before they reach the front door, he sighs. ‘I’ll ask her to stay overnight,’ he says, then closes his eyes tightly and shakes his head in silent denial. ‘God have mercy on our souls, woman.’

  Mrs Baker is secretly delighted to be asked to stay the night. She feels herself an important part of what’s happened and now that she’s over her initial shock she relishes the prospect of talking about Meg’s tragedy for weeks to come. She has already decided she will do so in a confidential whisper, as though the person she is talking to is the only one privileged to hear the details. And such details! Already her febrile imagination has gone well beyond what she has witnessed. Already details both intimate and sanguinary to titillate the imagination of her wide-eyed listener abound in her mind. She must use them sparingly, like a miser, make them last, and invent others to keep the experience fresh.

  Mrs Baker reminds herself happily that the field of rumours concerning Meg is well ploughed and folk have already turned up a fair amount of dirt. They’ve put two and two together and come up with the conclusion that Meg’s marriage to young Jack Thomas is not one of mutual enchantment but more likely one of singular entrapment. The young lad may have been caught with his trousers down but it was her hands that pulled them to his ankles. Now, with Jack’s compromised child carried away in a flush of blood, Meg has had her comeuppance and she, Florence Baker, has the whole story of the Bergmans and the Thomases all to herself. She well remembers Ada Thomas’s oft-quoted words, ‘I am not mocked saith the Lord.’

  This is a tragedy Mrs Baker thinks she knows how to play for all it is worth. The last tragedy in Mrs Baker’s life was never properly played out, never consummated with public tears, tea and sympathy and then the gift of a permanently tragic demeanour. She still remembers the young merchant marine officer who wooed her and married her all in forty-eight hours and then, to the strains of ‘Auld Lang Syne’, left her on the wharf and sailed away, never to return, though not listed as deceased. The disgrace of it has kept her silent for fifty eight years, when a thousand times over she has longed to possess all the trappings of a tragic life, so that she might truly enjoy the substance of sadness.

  Now, at last, Mrs Baker has something for herself. Meg’s miscarriage can be worked into her conversation in a dozen ways. This is not hearsay or second-hand gossip — she was there, she saw it happen, she has the gory details in her head as fresh as newly baked bread. Mrs Baker Climbs into Hester’s bed and snuggles under the goosedown quilt, then she hugs herself in the darkness, for she cannot remember when she has enjoyed such excitement. Hester has read her like a book. Mrs Florence Baker could not be cajoled into silence however hard she tried — it is for this very reason she was chosen to be a witness to the miscarriage.

  The moon is the merest crescent in a star-pricked sky and all that may be heard outside is the occasional barking of a fox and the mournful intermittent hoot of a boo book owl near the cow paddock. Beside Hester’s bed the Wesclock ticks rapidly. Hester lies awake waiting to go and get Joe, while beside her old Mrs Baker snores without letting up, her arms clasped to her breast. A good sleeper, that one, Hester decides.

  Just after one o’clock in the morning she slides carefully from the big double bed and walks quietly through the house to wake Joe out back. Joe is not asleep and he sits up at her first whispered call and climbs from his narrow cot. Together they return to Hester’s room, the bedchamber from which Joe has been banished for so long. Hester takes up the pillow. It has already been decided that Joe will pin the old woma
n to the bed to stop her from thrashing about. He will lie on top of Mrs Baker and pin her arms and clamp her legs together with his own while Hester smothers her, bearing all her weight down on the pillow covering her face.

  ‘Do not bruise her,’ Hester cautions Joe in a whisper. Joe nods and Hester counts to three and clamps the pillow over the old woman’s face while Joe places his huge body over hers and pushes her shoulders deeply into the mattress.

  This is the final step for Joe, the point of no return.

  He’s always thought himself a half-decent man, but now he knows he hasn’t the strength to fight his wife, nor the character to save his youngest daughter from Hester’s evil.

  No more than four or five muffled grunts escape from under the pillow — it is at once clear that Mrs Baker doesn’t possess the strength to combat Joe’s weight. In a surprisingly short time the old lady gives a convulsive shudder and Joe feels her rigid body suddenly relax under him. Hester keeps the pillow pressed down over Mrs Baker’s face for a further minute or so and then lifts it carefully.

  Mrs Baker stares pop-eyed back at her, her mouth wide open with her dentures pushed at a weird angle halfway down her throat. ‘Get up,’ Hester whispers urgently to Joe. ‘She’s gone.’

  Joe lifts himself off Mrs Baker and for some reason he cannot explain he whistles ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, in a breath only just audible. It is not that he thinks the incident is humorous — in fact, he is very close to panic — it is just something to clear his mind and keep him from thinking that he’s gone completely insane.

  ‘Hush, Joe!’ Hester whispers, though he can sense the relief in her voice. With the stupid hymn gone from his lips, Joe tries to push all thought of what they’ve done from his mind. He watches as Hester fits Mrs Baker’s false teeth back into her mouth and tries to think only that what he ,has done is for Jessica and her unborn child. That Billy Simple’s child will have Jack as its father, and will grow up to be one of the high and mighty Thomases. If Jessie has a son he’ll be a member of the squattocracy, landed gentry, no less. He’ll go to the King’s School and eventually be master of Riverview Station. Joe tries to comfort himself with these thoughts as Hester straightens the bed and arranges Mrs Baker’s stringy grey hair, unplaited for the night, neatly about the pillow. For all the world she now appears to be an old lady fast asleep. The morning light will show a small cut at the corner of her mouth sustained from her false teeth jarring, though it is too small even to bleed.

  Shortly after dawn Joe taps on Jessica’s door. ‘Get up, girlie.’ He waits for her response, then adds, ‘Fold and bring your blankets and all your clothes.’

  Joe hears Jessica shout, ‘Wait on, Father,’ and shortly after her head appears from behind the door. ‘What for?’ she asks him.

  ‘Do as I say, Jessie. All your blankets and clobber. I’m taking you somewhere — be ready in ten minutes, eh?’

  Jessica dresses hurriedly and pulls a tattered sheepskin coat over her cotton dress. She folds the three blankets she uses against the cold and places them next to the door. Then she finds an old canvas bag and folds and bundles the two old dresses Hester has let out at the front to accommodate her stomach, her hairbrush and a few odds and ends along with her Sunday boots and two sets of bloomers into it. Two small towels follow and she has just about reached the extent of her personal possessions but for her two books, Wuthering Heights and Oliver Twist, both battered from having been read a dozen times. She puts them into the bag and looks about her. Then, as an afterthought, she throws in her moleskins and two flannel shirts.

  Joe taps on the door shortly afterwards. ‘Come, girlie,’ is all he says, then, ‘bring what you can, I’ll take the rest.’

  Jessica comes into the yard carrying her canvas bag to see that Joe has the sulky outside with Napoleon already harnessed, his nostrils puffing cold air. Joe follows a few moments later with her blankets, which he tosses into the back of the sulky. Jessica sees that the large wicker hamper has been packed and that there’s a spare axe as well.

  ‘Climb in,’ Joe commands, then moves over to his side, steps up into the sulky and takes up the reins. ‘Haya!’ he says to Napoleon, lightly flicking the pony’s rump with the take-up from the leather straps.

  ‘Where are we going, Father?’ Jessica asks again. ‘It’s hardly light. Are we going to Narrandera?’

  Joe ignores her question and Jessica knows better than to persist. They are headed in the wrong direction and soon leave the rutted path and proceed across open ground towards the creek that runs down the edge of their selection. After about ten minutes Joe reins in the pony. The light is beginning to grow more rapidly now and in the distance Jessica can hear the currawongs beginning to call. It will be half an hour yet to sunrise and the morning is bitterly cold with a low mist hovering above the cow paddock. She pulls the sheepskin coat about her, making sure her stomach is covered and warm.

  ‘Jessie, I want to talk to you,’ Joe begins. He is looking downwards as though he’s inspecting his broken nails. ‘Yes, Father?’

  ‘This morning your mother found Mrs Baker dead in her bed.’

  Jessica mistakes Joe’s meaning. ‘Mother stayed with Mrs Baker last night?’

  ‘No, no, Mrs Baker stayed with us last night, she slept with your mother in the big bed.’ Joe looks up briefly. ‘She musta died in her sleep, heart attack or somethin’. ‘

  Jessica brings her fingers to her lips. ‘Oh my Gawd!’ she gasps.

  ‘Yes,’ Joe lies, ‘it were a terrible shock for your mother.’

  ‘I must go to her,’ Jessica cries.

  ‘No!’ Joe says quickly. ‘No, that’s why you must leave.’

  ‘Leave? Leave the house? But why can’t I stay in my room like before?’

  ‘There’ll be people coming. We’ll have to report the death. The house will be full of people, stickybeaks, you mustn’t be seen.’ Joe now pauses and looks over to where a curtain of mist obscures the trees that grow beside the distant creek. ‘Not in your condition, your mother won’t allow it,’ he says softly, as though the quieter tone of his voice might comfort her.

  ‘Where will you take me? How long will I be away?’

  Joe sighs. ‘The old boundary rider’s hut. I’ve fixed it some, yiz’ll be okay for a few days. Make a fire, it’s warm enough with a good fire going. I’ve chopped and split all the wood, you’ll have no need to chop, the hard work’s done.’ Joe flicks his thumb to indicate the rear of the sulky. ‘There’s plenty of tucker, you won’t starve. Maybe only a few days, eh girlie? Yiz’ll come to no harm and I’ll be down to see yiz from time to time.’

  Jessica is too dumbstruck to speak. Joe takes up the reins again and urges the pony on and they bounce and rattle across the paddock, hitting rabbit holes. Joe has not spoken this much to her in weeks and, at first, she thinks she must be grateful, as his voice has been kind. But then her stubborn nature overcomes her and she grows suddenly angry, fed up to the back teeth. She’s tired of the shit she’s had to cop from Hester and Meg and Joe’s increasing darkness.

  ‘Father, why are you doing this to me? I ain’t done nothing Meg ’asn’t done! Why does she cop it sweet and I’m in the shit all the time? It’s not fair and you know it!’

  Jessica shouts, tears coming to her eyes. ‘It ain’t right!’ ‘Hush, Jessie. Meg’s married, you ain’t, that’s all.’

  ‘Married? She and Hester shanghaied Jack. You know it as well as I do, they trapped him into getting her pregnant! She dropped her bloomers for him!’

  ‘There’s no crime in that, Jessie. Some folk would say it were bloody clever of your sister. Jack was the big catch. You can’t say she hasn’t been working at it a good while.’ ‘And I’m the stupid one ‘cause I didn’t do the same? What about when she didn’t want him no more and she give him to me and then took him back when he was gunna be rich again? Was that fair?’

  Joe rubs
the stubble on his chin. ‘You should have took your chance when yer got it, Jessie, like your sister.’

  ‘But Father, Jack said he couldn’t have a wife and children, him going off to war an’ all. It ain’t fair, not responsible, he said.’

  ‘Fair? Nothing’s fair in love and war, Jessie.’ Joe now looks up at Jessica and shrugs. ‘You was already pregnant to Billy Simple anyway. That wouldn’t have been fair to Jack neither, would it?’

  ‘I didn’t say it were Billy Simple’s. I never said that,’ Jessica protests.

  ‘You didn’t say whose it was.’ Joe pauses and looks directly at Jessica. ‘Whose is it, girlie?’ he demands.

  Jessica folds her arms across her chest. ‘I can’t say, Father. I swore on my child’s life I’d never tell nobody, never, unless it’s the man I marry. He’d have to know.’ Joe looks at Jessica and she can see he is close to tears. Joe close to tears is almost more than she can bear. ‘Jessie, I need to know. You must tell me, it could make all the difference.’

  Jessica feels her heart must surely break. ‘Father, I can’t. I swore on my baby’s life.’

  Joe turns away and looks into the misty distance. The sun is just coming up over the river and the first rays are warm on the back of their necks. ‘Please, Father — I can’t,’ she sobs.

  Joe turns and Jessica can see his face is set hard. ‘Well, it’s a bastard and it’s not welcome. You’ll stay out of the way until it’s born and then we’ll see what we will see.’

  Jessica looks tearfully at Joe but her eyes are now set as hard as her father’s. ‘Tell Mother she won’t take my child away from me. I’ll kill her if she tries.’

  Joe has seen his youngest daughter stubborn before, although he’s never seen the expression she now wears. But he’s felt it, he instinctively knows it must be the same expression he carried on the day he killed the foreman of the Great Peter’s Run. He knows for certain Jessica means what she says. His daughter never tries anything on. It’s just the same as he felt when he was aiming for the foreman’s head and not some soft wound that would leave him harmless but alive. Jessica could kill her mother if Hester meddles with her child.