Jessica (41 page)

Hester sighs. ‘It's a difficult time, that's all. It's her nerves, what with Jack gone overseas.'

Jessica looks at Hester anxiously. ‘Have you had a letter? I mean, has Meg? Has Jack written to say where he is?'

Joe turns his head away so Jessica can't see his expression. Without knowing he's doing it, he clears his throat, and Jessica knows for certain that Jack's written to her. Hester sniffs. ‘We've had no news except what's in the newspaper. That's a good part of what ails your sister. Your father says sometimes the army won't let troops write home for fear they'll give away vital information.' She turns to Joe. ‘Isn't that true, Joe?'

‘Yeah, right,' he says and Jessica hears the lack of conviction in his voice. Joe, like herself, is a poor liar. Keep things straight, girlie, can't get into no trouble that way, he's always told her. Now she wonders what's going on in her father's mind, for Jessica senses that Joe is not taking his own advice and is ashamed. She concludes it can only mean that she's got a letter from Jack and Hester is concealing it from her. Jessica has been alone now for so long that she can much more clearly pick up the meanings in Hester's voice, and Joe has never been much good at concealing things from her.

Both Hester and Meg have declined to hold the baby, Hester protesting that he might dirty their dresses while Meg simply shakes her head and blows her nose. Joe, on the other hand, has got the knack of holding the young bloke, as he has taken to calling Jessica's baby, and he can't get enough. Halfway through the picnic the baby begins to cry and a look of panic crosses Joe's face. ‘Shit, what now?' he says anxiously. Jessica laughs and takes the child from him and places the infant on her lap and then, turning her back to Joe, she opens the buttons of her summer dress. Exposing her breast, she allows the child to suckle.

‘Oh dear me!' Hester protests. ‘Not in front of your father, child!'

‘Wait on, she has her back to me,' Joe says.

‘Back or front, it's not to be done in public. It's disgusting that she should feed it in front of you!'

‘Oh bullshit,' Joe growls. ‘How else she gunna feed it? It's natural, ain't it?'

‘For ignorant folk, perhaps,' Hester snorts.

Jessica gets to her feet somewhat painfully. She's still sore and bruised, and sitting in one position on the picnic blanket has stiffened her limbs. She waddles slowly, awkwardly, to the edge of the creek with her back to her family. Looking over the blur of scrub on the far side, her eyes fill with tears. ‘Why won't them two even hold my baby? He's done nothing wrong,' she sobs. She looks down at the tiny face sucking at her breast.

Jessica is dead tired when at about five o'clock her family take their leave. Meg has pulled herself together a little and she turns to Jessica just before climbing into the sulky. ‘I'm sorry ... it's just ... ‘ she mumbles. ‘Your baby ... it's nice,' she says without completing her previous sentence.

‘Don't worry, you'll soon have your own,' Jessica comforts her. To her surprise, Meg bursts into a fresh flood of tears and has to be helped up into the sulky by Hester, who, in her fussing around Meg, forgets to wish Jessica goodbye.

Joe looks down from the sulky at his youngest daughter. ‘I'm sorry, girlie, it weren't much of a Christmas dinner. The tucker was good, the company pretty ordinary except for you and the young bloke. I'll come and see you termorra. I'll bring me medicine box — you should have it here for the baby, in case.' He hesitates, then says, ‘I'm that proud of you both, girlie.'

Jessica thinks it's a strange thing that Joe wants to bring the medicine box — he's already brought her all the medicine he has. Still, he's never had a grandchild before. Maybe it's just his way of saying she should take good care of baby Joey.

They have not been gone more than five minutes or so when Mary appears. ‘Happy Christmas, Jessie! How yer Christmas present goin', he pooped his nice dress yet?' she shouts happily, waving to Jessica as she wades across the shallow part of the creek so the hem of her dress doesn't get wet.

Mary has been waiting for two hours on the far bank, watching Jessica's family. She's seen Jessica come to the edge of the creek to feed her baby and sensed that she was crying.

Her stick legs shine black as ebony after splashing through the water as she comes up to Jessie and immediately reaches out and takes the baby into her arms. ‘You tired, Jessie? Too much cranky folks to visit, eh?' She points to the apple box Joe has left at the door of the hut filled with the leftovers. ‘Lotsa tucker,' she observes, then goes over to the box and, holding the baby against her shoulder she pokes about, ignoring the turkey, until she finds half a Christmas pudding on a chipped enamel plate. Mary breaks off a piece and pops it into her mouth. ‘Christmas pudding! We called it “Once a year tucker” when I was a kid at the Lutheran Mission up Lachlan River way.'

‘Oh Mary, it was horrible,' Jessica cries. ‘My mum and sister, they didn't touch him, even once!'

‘They's got no heart, Jessie. Some folks got no heart for babies,' Mary says, trying to comfort Jessica. Holding the baby cradled in one arm, she takes Jessica by the elbow. ‘Too hot in there,' she says, nodding at the hut. ‘We go in the creek to cool down and then you sleep, you hear?'

Mary steers Jessica to the banks of the creek and then walks splashing ahead until the water is up to her waist. ‘Come, Jessie,' she calls, ‘we bathe your baby.' Jessica follows Mary into the creek and laughs, her skirt floating in the water as she comes up to her. The cool water has already rejuvenated her. ‘Here, take him,' Mary says, handing Jessica the baby. Then she takes off her dress and squeezes out the wet skirt, balls it up and throws it to land with a wet slap onto the bank of the creek. Standing naked with the water to her waist, she takes the baby from Jessica again. ‘Jessie, take off your dress,' Mary instructs. Jessica unties her pinny and slips her head through the straps and squeezes the water from the bottom half and throws it onto the creek bank. Then she pulls her dress over her head and does the same with it. The first few inches of her bloomers show above the water-line. Mary points to Jessica's waist, taking charge. ‘You want to wash with your clothes on?' Then she grins, her nice white teeth showing in her calm face. ‘I seen it all before, remember?'

Jessica blushes, but she laughs and takes off her bloomers and squeezes them out and sends them flying onto the creek bank, where they land spread out on a small bush. ‘They dry nice there,' Mary giggles. ‘Come, I show you how to wash your baby.'

They stay in the creek, happy and laughing, until the sun begins to set. ‘We go now, Jessie eh, mozzies soon and them snakes come soon.' Mary points to the sky. ‘Tonight it's big fella moon, they come and do their corroboree for sure.'

‘I just want to sleep, Mary,' Jessica sighs. ‘It's been a long day.'

Meg continues to sniff and sob most of the way home while Hester and Joe do not talk to each other. It has been one of the most difficult days of Hester's life, for she senses strongly that Joe is going to go back on his word. After everything they've been through, it seems that all is about to be lost. She wants to scream for the frustration she feels. She's always hoped that Jessica's child could be taken from her at birth, so that she would never hold it or get to know it. With a bit of luck they could have said it was stillborn and later refused to show it to her, said they'd buried it right off, when she asked. It would've been easy enough to fake a grave, then a few days later they could have announced a premature birth to Meg. Now Hester knows Jessica will never give up her child even if it should cost her her life. Upon returning home, Meg goes straight to her room and Hester sets about making Joe his tea, a bit of egg and bacon. Joe is surprisingly hungry after the big Christmas picnic where he'd been the only one to tuck in, relishing the food. Hester senses he has changed, and the blackness is not there any more. Somehow the birth of Jessica's baby has changed him, given him an appetite for life again.

After wiping his plate with a piece of bread, Joe asks for another cup of tea. Then he sits back and crosses his legs, the steaming mug of tea in front of him on the kitchen table. ‘Well, that were a turn around for the books, eh, Hester?' he says calmly.

‘What was?' Hester asks, knowing full well what he means.

‘The baby. The young bloke, Joey.' He grins. Hester turns around suddenly. ‘Joe, you can't change your mind! Nothing's changed.'

Joe shakes his head. ‘No, Hester, we're not going through with it,' he says firmly, bracing himself for what's to come.

‘Joe, can't you see she's mad? She refused to come home when you asked her. She wants to stay in that tin hut and keep the baby there! How long do you think it will last? It'll be dead in a week — a snake will get it, or a tick or a scorpion, and it will die.'

‘Ha, it's a damn sight safer in the bush than with the two of yiz. The girlie's gunna make a real good little mother,' Joe nods his head in the direction of Meg's room, ‘not like that little viper.'

Hester cannot contain herself a moment longer. ‘You bloody fool, can't you see what you're doing? You're ruining us all. Not just me and Meg, the lot of us, you and Jessica as well!'

‘Hester, mind yer mouth,' Joe warns her.

But Hester is too angry to listen. ‘No, you mind yours! You listen to me, Joe Bergman, you always were an ignorant bastard. You've never amounted to anything and you never will. That slut and her baby are the same, a chip off the same stupid Bergman block. You're bad blood — you couldn't even make a son! The bank is going to take this place and we'll be out on the road without a penny, with your mad bitch daughter clutching her bastard child! Well, I won't have it, you hear! I won't let you ruin us! Damn you, Joe, I hate you! I've always hated you and your foreign ways!'

Joe rises slowly from his chair, his huge fists balled. All the hard years have built up to this one moment, his anger grown stronger, more furious, because he knows some of what Hester says is right. All the loneliness and frustration he's felt over the years in this bloody terrible land boils up in him. The endless disappointment, things never turning out right, the drought and the roiling floods, the big blows that flatten everything, the bushfires that destroy the simple dreams and leave only smoke and the ashes of hope in their wake, the rabbit, locust and mice plagues. He's had a bellyful, enough of the bloody flies, the heat and the pestilence, the pale, remorseless, mocking sky, the constant worries with them mongrels from the bank, each shearing season having to crawl up George Thomas's fat arse for a job in his shed.

Joe has never so much as lifted a finger to his wife, never belted her like other blokes. But now he knows he's going to kill her, kill the Heathwood bitch, wring her scrawny neck. Press his broad thumbs into her windpipe until the life leaves her and her evil tongue protrudes from her mouth.

Joe's head seems to fill with dark blood as he moves towards Hester. He feels himself choking, gasping for air. The pain in his chest smashes down on him like a huge, angry, roaring thing he can't define beyond the noise it makes in his ears. Joe collapses to his knees and pitches forward. He is dead before his head hits the kitchen floor.

Hester stands frozen. Joe has almost reached her and now lies stone-dead at her feet. She had seen his eyes and knew he was coming for her. Her anger turns to ice, then nothing, then surprised relief. She feels no sorrow — it is as though an impediment has gone from her life. Now at last she can make the decisions and, for once, get them right. Then she begins to shake, the shock of her husband's death reaching her consciousness. She shouts for Meg and then starts to weep, the tears a part of the numbness she feels. Joe, such a big man when he was alive, now seems suddenly small, vulnerable, a crumpled shape lying on the kitchen floor. ‘Meg!' she calls. ‘Meg, come quickly!'

Meg comes into the kitchen. She is in her nightdress, though it is not yet seven o'clock. She gasps as she sees Joe lying on the floor, then she screams and screams, overcome by hysteria. ‘Stop it! Stop it!' Hester shouts, glad to have her daughter at the centre of her stunned concentration. She runs over and starts to shake Meg violently. ‘Stop it, you hear! Stop it!' Meg sinks to the floor and starts to sob. ‘Your father's collapsed, I think he's dead,' Hester says, trying to keep her voice level.

With the courage she's gained from Meg's presence, Hester kneels down beside Joe and feels his pulse. She'd learned this years before at St John's Ambulance Association classes in Narrandera not long after the Boer War. Joe shows no pulse, but Hester has little confidence in her ability and so she opens his flannel shirt and puts her hand over his heart. His mouth is slightly open and his eyes stare at her in what appears to be a look of astonishment, as though he cannot himself believe he is dead.

‘He's dead, Meg. Your father's dead,' Hester pronounces, surprised at the calmness she feels. If Joe is dead, then she is in charge.

It is just after sunrise the following morning when Hester pulls up in the sulky outside Jessica's hut. Jessica is already up and has made a cup of tea and is stirring the oatmeal porridge, adding warm milk from the cow she's not long since milked. She is looking forward to the day and Joe's visit and wants her father to see her baby wearing a nappy. Mary has dismissed the idea with a pronounced sniff. ‘That nappy, that whitefella stuff, Jessie. Baby shit, you clean him, why you want to carry it round in that cloth?' Jessica has nevertheless cut six squares from the old towel she had intended to use as a birth mat and fashioned two pins from Joe's chicken wire to hold the nappy in place. She means to practise putting a nappy on baby Joey before her father arrives. She's slightly annoyed and disappointed when she hears the sulky, as Joe usually arrives later in the morning. Jessica takes the porridge pot off the hearth and goes outside. Shocked to see her mother at the reins of the sulky, she asks instinctively, ‘Mother, what's wrong?' Hester looks down from the sulky at her youngest daughter. ‘Your father's dead, you must come home, girl,' she announces without sentiment.