‘They wouldn’t let me read it,’ Mary sobs. ‘They said it were the law and the paper were from the gubberment!’ Mary now begins to howl, and it is a keening Jessica has only heard once before, when one of the Aboriginal elders died and the aunties had started up with this strange, high-pitched lamentation.
‘Shush! Mary, they ain’t dead,’ Jessica scolds her friend, though she does this more to contain her own panic than to stop Mary wailing. ‘If they were took, they can be took back.’
Mary stops her wailing suddenly and pulls away from Jessica’s arms, shaking her dark head vigorously. ‘Nah! They said I couldn’t never get them back, Jessie! They said they’s from the Aborigines’ Protection Board, and it’s the law o’ the land. They brought a big truck and put me kids in the back and drove away! There were other kids in there also, took from Warangesda and Grong Grong!’
Jessica tries to comfort Mary. ‘I know a man, you know the one I told you about, who helped me? He’s a clever lawyer — it’s him what got me outa the loony-bin. You never mind a thing, Mary, we’ll go see him in Wagga, you hear me?’
Three days later Jessica and Mary arrive by train in Wagga to see Richard Runche KC. Before she left Jessica arranged for the aunties to feed and water the turkeys and the chickens and to give Rusty his tucker. She’s wearing the shoes and one of the pretty dresses Dolly bought for her and she’s given the other to Mary to wear, though her friend’s once skinny shape has expanded a bit from her constant childbearing and a diet consisting of too much white flour, sugar and bread. Over the years Jessica has continued to correspond with the barrister, but in the last two years he has replied spasmodically and the few letters she’s received are increasingly illegible and scratchy. ‘The grape is taking its toll, my dear, the circuit court has little use for me these days,’ he’d confided in the last one she’d received several months back.
Jessica and Mary go directly to the Albion, the hotel where she’d first met Richard Runche at breakfast. She’d been sending her letters here and so is confident of finding him. To her surprise Jimmy Jenkins, the young lad who helped on that first day, is lording it behind the desk and it’s clear from his manner that he’s become the boss cocky of the desk. In the last nine years he’s grown quite plump and is beginning to lose his hair. He wears a black suit with a white shirt, celluloid collar and black tie and sports a watch chain across his little pot-belly. Seeing the two women walking in, one of them being a black, Jimmy’s expression becomes alarmed.
‘Yes?’ he inquires, his voice not in the least accommodating. Nothing about the two women standing in front of him suggests the need for respect.
‘Hello, Jimmy Jenkins, remember me?’ Jessica says brightly.
Jimmy looks at Jessica and then pulls his head back in surprise. ‘My God, it’s you! From that trial!’ He appears to be thinking, snapping his fingers. ‘Jessie!’ he says at last.
Jessica smiles shyly. ‘Same rotten egg,’ she jokes, then turns and touches Mary Simpson on the shoulder. ‘This is Mary, my best friend.’
“Owyagoin’,’ Mary says softly, not presuming to raise her eyes to look at the man before her.
Jimmy Jenkins gives her the briefest nod. Jessica in his hotel is one thing, but the Aboriginal woman is quite another.
Jessica touches Mary on the arm. ‘Mr Jenkins here is an old friend who done me a great favour once.’ She smiles at him. He’s a real good bloke.’
Jimmy Jenkins proves to be as vulnerable to flattery as ever and his demeanour immediately softens. ‘Nice to see you, Jessica, I’ve never forgot you.’
‘That’s nice, me neither — see how I remembered your name right off?’
‘What brings you here?’ Jimmy Jenkins now asks.
‘You’re from down Narrandera way, ain’t you?’
Jessica nods. She can see that despite his friendly tone he’s growing increasingly anxious and keeps looking about him. Same old Jimmy Jenkins, she thinks, still shit-scared of the management. Mary’s continued presence in the hotel lobby is obviously upsetting him. ‘We’ve come to see Mr Runche again,’ she announces.
A look of relief crosses Jimmy’s face. ‘Oh, he don’t live here any more, Jessie.’
Jessica looks up, surprised. ‘But I send him letters here.’
‘Yeah, that’s right, but we pass them on. He lives down at Ma Shannon’s now.’
‘Mrs Shannon? At the boarding house?’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Jimmy says.
Jessica turns to Mary. ‘That’s where we stayed last time, me old man and me. It’s very nice,’ she explains. ‘Well, it ain’t really a boarding house now, more a doss-house for down-an’-outers. They even take .. .’
Jimmy stops, realising just in time what he was about to say.
‘Abos?’ Jessica says it for him.
‘Well, yes,’ he says embarrassed, not looking at Mary.
‘Good, then maybe we can get a room there,’ Jessica says tartly. ‘Jimmy Jenkins, you always was a bloody snob. Come, Mary, let’s go.’
They have almost reached the door when Jimmy Jenkins shouts, ‘Better take a bottle with you!’
They take his advice and buy a bottle on their way out. Richard Runche has always been the worse for wear, or at least he has ever since Jessica has known him. But she is not prepared for what they find when fat old gin-swilling Ma Shannon takes them to his room.
‘Help yerself,’ she says. ‘Buggered if I’m goin’ in. If he’s dead gi’s ahoy.’
Jessica turns the doorknob and half opens the door and looks in. ‘Jesus!’ she exclaims. Richard Runche KC lies on an iron cot on a filthy mattress, his eyes closed, knees drawn up to his chest. He is fully clothed but without his shoes, and his suit is clearly in tatters, his pale feet are sticking out of the ends of his dirty trousers. The buttons on his fly are missing or open. Jessica can’t see which, but the gap reveals a pathetic little purple acorn curled into its pubic nest. Runche’s greasy jacket is ripped, the lapels frayed at the edge, and his once white shirt, which sports no collar, is almost black.
They enter the tiny room, which smells of shit, stale sick and grog. Runche groans and sucks at his gums and every few moments shouts out, as though in fear. Whatever is going on inside his grog-soaked brain is obviously not doing him a lot of good.
Both women look about them, their fingers held to their noses. Jessica sees that the single window is shut tight so that the atmosphere is fetid and you could cut the air with an axe. Several blowflies buzz around, bumping against the uncovered dirty window-pane. It is light enough, though, and the rod and rings above the window testify that curtains once hung there. The barrister, groaning, now pulls a filthy pillow over his head against the intrusion of the sharp mid-morning light.
Against the wall to the side of the window stands a dresser made of several four-gallon paraffin tins resting on their sides with one end cut out and the edges hammered flat. Scraps of clothing, empty bottles and nondescript bits and pieces are stuffed into each of its apertures. Beside the bed stands a battered old chair with its cane seat broken inwards, as though a giant has farted and blown the plaited cane asunder. The remainder of the room is filled with law books lying higgledy-piggledy or piled in little heaps among the empty claret bottles and old newspapers.
‘Oh me Gawd!’ Mary exclaims, bringing her hands up to her face. ‘This the whitefella gunna bring me kids back?’
Jessica moves over to the window and after some effort she manages to push it open, though the hinges creak where they’ve rusted up. ‘It’ll be orright, Mary,’ she says, though she knows she’s trying to convince herself as much as she is her friend.
‘Nah, missus, that fella he got the DTs. He’s gorn, finish.’
Jessica turns on Mary. ‘Don’t you go Abo on me, ya hear, Mary Simpson, I ain’t yer flamin’ missus!’ she says furiously. ‘He’ll be orright, I’m tellin’ yer, I’ve seen hi
m before, same as this!’
‘I’m sorry, Jessie,’ Mary says looking down at Richard Runche KC. ‘It’s just I seen his kind before.’ She points to the pathetic shivering form on the bed. ‘This ain’t new stuff for black people.’
Jessica looks contrite. ‘I’m sorry, too, Mary, I didn’t mean to shout at yiz, it’s me nerves an’ all.’ She spreads her hands. ‘Bloody hell, what’re we gunna do?’
‘Go home,’ Mary says promptly, shrugging one shoulder. ‘Can’t help that bugger.’
‘Go home? What, and leave him like this?’
‘Ten minutes ago we didn’t know he were like this,’ Mary points out.
‘So? What’s that supposed to mean?’ Mary sighs. ‘We close the door and we think who we was ten minutes back. We’s Jessie and Mary, remember? And we ain’t done nothing wrong to nobody and we’s minding our own business trying to get back me kids.’ She pauses and takes a breath. ‘So we catch the train and go back home.’
‘And you never see your kids again! Is that it?’
‘Jessie, he’s fucked!’ Mary cries suddenly. ‘He ain’t gunna get me kids back. That poor bastard, he’s got snakes and spiders in his head, eh!’
Jessica’s jaw sets, the Bergman stubbornness comes upon her, settles down on a rock in her head like the grey heron that comes to the creek of a morning. She shakes her head slowly. ‘Nah, I’m not leavin’ him, Mary. You can go if yer like, you’ve got yer train ticket.’ Mary sighs again. ‘Jessie, it’s bloody hopeless, I seen this a hundred times. When they come out, their brain’s gorn, all they can do is dribble and shit their trousers!’ She points at the figure on the bed once more. ‘One day he like this and he drowns in his own vomit, that the most lucky day for everyone!’
‘Yeah, well, okay, but I’ve got to try.’ Jessica looks at Mary. ‘He’s me friend. Wasn’t for him I’d still be in the loony-bin!’
Mary shrugs. ‘You’re gunna be sorry, Jessica. Don’t say I didn’t told yer.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘Righto then, we got to get him awake and to make ’im throw up. You think that fat old woman will lend us a bucket or a big dish?’
‘I’ll go ask her,’ Jessica volunteers, pleased that Mary’s going to stay with her.
She returns with a bucket a few minutes later to find that Mary is seated on the side of the iron cot and has the still semi-conscious Runche held in a sitting position on the bed while she massages his neck and the back of his skull. ‘He’s got nits and I think he’s shit hisself,’ she announces calmly as Jessica enters. “Ere, Jessie, hold the bucket on his lap and watch out for your hands.’
Moments later the poor barrister gives a pronounced shudder and half opens his eyes, then he begins to gag and Mary grips him tightly by the back of the neck. His eyes open a little wider and begin to roll in his head and a moment later Mary pushes his face hard down over the bucket and Richard Runche KC empties his stomach into it.
Both women remain silent until finally the poor man seems to have emptied out. ‘Take the bucket, give us the bottle,’ Mary now says to Jessica. ‘What, the claret?’
‘Yeah, the bottle we brought him. Be better if it was brandy.’
Jessica takes the bucket and opens the door and places it outside the room. Then she takes from her basket the bottle of claret they’d purchased at Jimmy Jenkins’s suggestion. ‘Shit, we forgot the corkscrew,’ she cries.
Mary laughs and pulls the lawyer back into a sitting position, and her hand goes to the side pocket of his tattered suit jacket. ‘Abracadabra!’ she says, producing a corkscrew out of the pocket and handing it to Jessica. ‘Corkscrew’s the one thing they never lose, that and their flamin’ thirst,’ she says grinning.
At the sound of the cork being drawn from the claret bottle, Runche’s eyes pop open and his lips start to smack together. Jessica hands the bottle to Mary. ‘Should we, y’know, give him more grog?’ she asks, unsure.
‘Only way we’s gunna get him onto his feet,’ Mary says, in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘He’s all the time drunk anyway, can’t do without it no more — grog’s what keeps him gain’.’ She feeds a little claret into the lawyer’s mouth. He closes his eyes and swallows the ruby liquid greedily, then his tongue spreads against his top lip, begging for more, his eyes open again, though no more than a slit. Mary waves the bottle almost within range of his mouth, teasing him with it, and Runche tries to follow the moving claret bottle with his head, his lips now beating frantically together like those of a goldfish in a bowl. Suddenly she grips him behind his scrawny neck and begins to shake him, her thumb digging hard into the flesh under his jaw, her other hand holding the bottle up in front of him. ‘No more till yiz speaks to us,’ Mary commands.
Richard Runche KC winces. ‘Ouch!’ he groans. Mary releases her grip and Runche rubs his eyes like a small child waking and gazes about him. He looks directly at Jessica and she can see the confusion in his eyes. She sees also that he doesn’t know who she is. ‘It’s Jessica, Mr Runche, your friend. Remember me?’ Richard Runche’s eyes remain vacant, not comprehending.
‘Oh Gawd, his mind’s gorn!’ Jessica exclaims In alarm, bringing both hands up to cover her mouth. ‘I tol’ ya,’ Mary says quietly.
Just then the barrister’s eyes seem to clear. ‘Jessica, my dear,’ he whispers softly.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It is a bright spring morning in late September 1923.
Richard Runche KC sits outside Jessica’s hut at Redlands, sipping at a mug of sweet black tea. Seven weeks have passed since she and Mary rescued him from Ma Shannon’s boarding house. While he still has the shakes, his first thought upon waking is no longer his need for a drink. He is wearing a new pair of moleskins and a flannel shirt, one of two Jessica has purchased for him in Narrandera. His old suit was so completely in tatters that it had to be discarded and burnt, his shirt disintegrating when an attempt was made to wash it.
When Jessica and Mary first brought him to the hut, Runche was in such a fearful mess that they thought he might die. The Englishman lay on Jessica’s cot for almost two weeks in a dreadful state of agitation, shivering and shaking, possessed by what Mary refers to as ‘them DTs’.
Jessica would sit on the edge of the bed and try to give him a little broth or weak sweet tea, though at first he’d vomit up everything, until she wondered what it was that kept him alive. Mary, who came over from the camp each morning to give her a hand, wasn’t overly hopeful of his chances and urged Jessica to give him a little brandy in his tea.
‘He can’t come off the grog, his brain’s pickled. He needs the drink to stay alive,’ Mary said.
‘Well, I ain’t gunna give him no more grog and that’s that,’ Jessica announced firmly. ‘We haven’t got any and I ain’t getting any.’ She turned to face Mary. ‘He were as good as dead when we found him and it’s the drink that done it. Giving him more won’t help!’
‘Well that’s all I know,’ Mary explained. ‘They can’t do without it when they like this.’ She sighed. ‘It’s them DTs.’ ‘Mary, the blackfellas you seen, did they die when they was took off the grog?’
‘Can’t take ‘em off, Jessie, I just tol’ you.’
‘Yes, but did you see any of them die?’ Jessica insisted.
‘Plenty.’
‘From getting no grog?’
‘Nah, from the grog. Like I said, you can’t take it away from them.’ Mary shrugged. ‘Don’t matter, I s’pose, them’s good as dead anyway.’
‘Well we’re gunna try, that’s all,’ Jessica said. ‘If the old bugger’s gunna die like yer said, we might as well kill him trying to make him better.’
For those first two weeks Richard Runche spent most of his time thrashing about in his cot, howling out obscenities or screaming for help, sometimes crying out for his nanny, like a small boy afraid of the dark. Sometimes it got so bad that Jessica and Mary would need to rope him to the wooden bed to keep
him from hurting himself.
Jessica felt it was like being back in the asylum. She would sit with him for hours, calming him and wiping his brow with a cool, damp cloth. She’d virtually have to carry him outside to relieve himself, though with the little he ate, such excursions were thankfully not too frequent. With the sun beating down on the tin roof, combined with his fever, the lawyer seemed to burn up all the moisture in his bladder. Jessica was flat out trying to keep him from further dehydration. How grateful she was that the summer was not yet fully upon them, when the heat in the tin hut became unbearable.
But gradually, a little bit each day, she could see her patient getting stronger and his nightmares less frequent. Now, seven weeks later, Richard Runche KC is back on his feet and, while the shakes seem like they’re here to stay, is able to get up and about for a few hours each day.
Jessica has extended the lean-to and built a rough wooden bed under it where she slept while her patient was recovering. But now she’s returned to the interior of the hut and the barrister is ensconced in the lean-to. It’s now time for Richard Runche KC to earn his keep. This morning Mary is coming over and they’re going to confront him with the problem of her missing children. ‘He gunna use them books?’ Mary asks.
Jessica nods. She had paid Ma Shannon the rent Runche owed when she and Mary came to collect him and together they got a large box and packed all the Englishman’s things, along with his law books. Then they hired a cart to transport them to the train. With the sick and semi-conscious Richard Runche KC in tow they’d returned to Redlands .
. To house the books, Jessica built three rough timber shelves along the outside wall supporting the lean-to. The green and red leather covers were, for the most part, in a state of disrepair and the gold-embossed lettering on the binding had faded. Some books even had their handsome spines ripped off to expose the glued and stitched linen membrane beneath. But, despite this, and their unprepossessing environment, they looked grand stacked along the shelves. In Jessica’s opinion they gave her humble hut a sense of dignity, and she liked to imagine it as a place of importance, a little library in the bush. Mary, who was a good hand with a needle and thread, made a cover from a grain sack to fit over the three bookshelves so that later in the summer, when the paddocks dried up and the air was thick with dust, the books would be protected.
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