Jessica

by Bryce Courtenay

  The shearing season at Riverview Station begins the first week in July, with the early mornings freezing cold and the frost white on the ground. The shearing starts at six-thirty in the morning unless it’s rained during the night, when it starts at ten, after the sheep have dried in the sun.

  Half of what little rain comes in the south-west falls in the winter, the best eight inches of the year, God’s half. The other half comes in the heat and is pulled out of the soil by the remorseless sun before it can do any good, that’s the Devil’s half. God’s half falls when the fleeces are at their thickest, so what grows the grass for the lambing season interferes with the shearing season, which goes to show that not even God thinks to help folk around here. Jessica and Joe rise at three-thirty in the morning to do the work around the farm before leaving just after five to ride to Riverview on their horses. They return home an hour before sunset and Jessica milks the cow, then mixes mash for the pigs and gives them fresh water. Joe checks on the sheep and cattle. It’s no more than maintenance work, and if anything should go wrong Joe . and Jessica try to fix it on the Sabbath or on the occasional day when it rains.

  Meg and Hester look after the chooks and do a bit of gardening, the only farm work they do outside the homestead. Hester keeps a small rose garden as well as a vegetable patch, both wire-netted, the wire dug in three feet underground so the rabbits can’t burrow under it. Hester has the gift of a green thumb and there are always plenty of fresh vegetables in the kitchen. Joe and Jessica do the heavy digging, but she and Meg will carry water from the windlass tank and they take some pride in what they produce for the table.

  By eight o’clock at night Jessica and Joe are sleeping the sleep of the dead until Joe’s old Wesclock goes and he calls her again an hour and a half before dawn.

  It’s a hard slog, but Jessica is used to hard work. Sweeping the boards and tarring the nicks on the newly shorn sheep keeps her busy enough, but she can still find time to boil a billy for Jack Thomas and William Simon. Billy Simon is a strict Roman Catholic and some call him ‘The Mary Boy’. He is often seen at night in the shearers’ quarters holding a set of rosary beads, quietly reciting Hail Marys.

  ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee;

  blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

  Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.’

  The Mary Boy is not a name too many are game to call him to his face, though — at only eighteen years old Billy Simon is six feet four inches tall, hard as an iron bark and still growing. He has a mass of black hair, wide blue eyes, a well-muscled body and the constitution of an ox. He’s no fool either and is known to have a bit of a temper when provoked. He’s a good man with his fists — all in all, not someone to be picked on rashly.

  He and Jack, who’s not as big as Billy, are friendly enough, but Jack, who’s just out of the King’s School in Sydney, doesn’t want to be shown up by Billy Simon. George Thomas hasn’t brought his son up soft. Both lads have been rouseabouts to two of the gun shearers in previous seasons and there’s been competition between Billy and Jack since they were tar boys together.

  Jessica soon sees that Jack Thomas has a lot of pride, but Billy is the better shearer. Jack is using his blade, making his blows carelessly while he tries to keep up with Billy. His sheep carry twice the number of nicks as those of his mate. Some of them are pretty bad, needing a whole pot of tar to stop the bleeding.

  She senses that Jack knows Billy is the better shearer, but as the boss’s son, he has to keep his pride intact. He can’t be thought to be soft or lazy. But he’s trying too hard and slowly losing out.

  Jessica wishes she could tell him what Joe always says to her, ‘Do the job well first up, in the end that’s the fastest way to get it done.’ As their tar boy it’s not her place to say anything. She’s at the bottom of the ladder and, besides, there’s no one but her who knows which sheep are Jack’s or Billy’s when she sends them down the race into the pen. She knows enough to keep her trap well shut if someone should ask.

  But while the competition between these two is fierce, it is always good-natured and they remain firm friends. They make an impressive pair, the dark and the fair, and they’re the heroes of all the young tar boys in the shed. Jack is no bad sport nor a poor loser, not like his old man, and Jessica likes working with both the lads. They laugh and chaff each other and tease her when they stop for a smoko.

  They don’t seem to mind in the least that she’s a girl and take some pride in the fact that she’s a better worker than any of the tar boys on the board. Besides, she can make a damn good mug of tea and a corned beef sandwich if needed. After a few days, at the morning smoko, Billy christens her ‘Tea Leaf’.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Jessica asks him. Once she had heard someone use that name for a thief, and she doesn’t want to be called a thief. Jack laughs. ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘No. Is it because you don’t like my tea?’ Jessica looks worried. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘No, the tea’s good,’ Billy laughs, ‘it’s just that you’re the dregs!’

  Jessica is puzzled and looks to Jack.

  ‘The tar boy is the dregs of society, see,’ Jack explains, ‘except that you’re not even a boy.’

  Both of them chuckle, pleased with themselves until Jessica, on a sudden impulse, picks up the billy and pours what’s left of the cold tea over their hats. It’s all done in a flash before she realises she may have gone too far.

  They both look surprised and Billy shakes his head then takes his hat off and turns it upside down, watching the dark mess dripping from it. For a moment Jessica is really scared, then Jack grins and slaps Billy on the shoulder. ‘She gotcha!’ he yells in delight, and Billy smiles up at Jessica.

  From that moment a deep friendship grows between the three of them. Billy and Jack only call her Tea Leaf among themselves, they’re a team now and it’s her special name. Soon Jessica feels confident enough to talk to Jack about his shearing.

  ‘Billy’s your mate, Jack,’ she says. ‘It don’t matter if he throws a few more than you. Joe always reckons that if you do things right in the first place you get faster, it’s just natural. He says the real gun shearers don’t waste blows and seem to have plenty of time to make them clean. You can tell the quality of a shearer by the number of nicks he leaves behind him.’

  Jack is silent a while, then looks up at Jessica, his eyes narrowed. ‘If you were a bloke I’d probably have to fight you, Tea Leaf. Or leastways tell you to mind your own business. Cheeky little bugger, aren’t you?’ He grins and then says, ‘But you’re right, a man’s stupid, I should know better.’

  Jessica grins. ‘Jack Thomas, there’s a lot of sheep out there are gunna be grateful!’

  Jack laughs. ‘I dunno about that, being thanked by a mob of sheep ain’t the biggest compliment in the world.’ Right from the start the other tar boys have resented having a girl in their group, especially one who works faster and better than they do. Being a tar boy is a shit job, the shearers give them a hard time, and most are lucky to come out of the day without a thick ear for doing something one of their shearers doesn’t like.

  Mr Malloy buggers things up even more by singling Jessica out and calling her the gun tar and best broom on the board. Jessica can see from the looks she gets that the other tar boys don’t like it much.

  The young lads can see how Jack and Billy have taken to Jessica, the three of them getting on like a house on fire. It doesn’t seem fair to them and Jessica can well understand their gripes — all they get all day is kicks and curses and meanwhile she’s Jake with her two shearers. At every opportunity they get, the tar boys are at her. Teasing, jostling and pushing her, calling out insults, and very little real good humour behind it all. At first Jessica cops it sweet. Then she decides to give as good as she gets and soon they�
��re no match for her sharp tongue. Joe says a fourteen-year-old girl is near grown, ready to have brats, while a boy the same age hasn’t got his wits about him yet and can only think about tossing off. Jessica doesn’t know yet, though, that you can’t make fools of folk without them wanting to teach you a lesson.

  George Thomas demands that his foreman work the tar boys hard. Ten minutes before a smoko they have to leave the shed and prepare the billy tea and biscuits for their shearers. One afternoon, a day Joe’s gone to the land office and isn’t with her in the shed, Jessica leaves to make tea for Jack and Billy. When she gets outside the six tar boys come at her, grabbing her and pushing her into the nearby sheep pen where they knock her down and turn her on her back. Two of them jump astride her body, one on her chest, pinning her wrists to the ground, the other sitting on her legs. There’s sheep milling about and bleating and dogs yapping but the other four keep them away so there’s a clearing in the middle of the pen.

  ‘Let me go, you bastards!’ Jessica yells. ‘Let go of me!’ The sheep are panicking and one comes flying down the race and crashes into Jessica and the two boys, sending them flying. Jessica rolls free and tries to get to her feet but another of the young blokes falls onto her and pins her down again while a second takes hold of her feet.

  ‘You’ll take what’s comin’ to you, Jessie Bergman!’ the boy sitting on her chest shouts. ‘Yer too bloody cocky.’ ‘Yeah, bloody oath!’ the one who’s holding her legs shouts. ‘Here, gi’s a hand!’ he shouts at one of the others, who immediately sits astride her stomach. ‘You think you’re better than us, don’t yiz?’ says the tar boy on her chest, the biggest among them. ‘Well, you bloody ain’t, see!’ he grunts. ‘Yer just a fuckin’ sheila!’

  With the sound of the donkey engine, the yapping of the dogs, bleating of sheep and the clanking of the wool presses they have to shout to be heard and Jessica knows it’s pointless to yell for help — the men in the shearing shed won’t hear her. So she saves her strength to curse them with every obscenity she’s ever heard Joe use and some private ones of her own as well. But the three of them on top of her are too strong. ‘Bastards! Let me go!’ she cries.

  The three remaining tar boys now get to work, rubbing a preparation of Stockholm tar into her scalp with their tar sticks. It’s all over in a matter of moments and the boys are up and away, leaving her lying on the ground in the sheep pen with the newly shorn sheep closing in, pissing and shitting and milling about her.

  Jessica jumps to her feet, panicking the sheep around her legs. ‘You’ll pay for this, you miserable bastards!’ she screams after them as a wether bumps hard into the back of her knees and she falls down again, the hot tar burning and stinging her scalp.

  She is shaking with anger and humiliation and wants to cry, but wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. She chokes back the tears and, still on her knees among the sheep, searches for her hat, which fell off her head when she was knocked down. Jessica is still snorting and swearing when she finds it trampled in the dirt and smelling of sheep shit.

  She rises again, bleating sheep up to her waist, and slaps her misshapen hat against the rump of the nearest ewe to dust it off. The slapping gets rid of some of her rage, and she gathers her wits. Jessica pushes her hat roughly into shape and pulls it over her head as far down as she can to cover her tarred hair.

  She’s got no time to feel sorry for herself. Smoko’s only a few minutes away and she still needs to boil the billy for the lads, catch up on the sheep she’s missed tarring and then sweep the second cuts and bellies away so her section of the shearing board is clean.

  Jessica doesn’t know how she’s going to hide what’s happened from Joe when she gets home. He’d be just as likely to come looking for the tar boys who worked her over and all hell would break loose. Then, like George Thomas said, any trouble in the shed because of her and Jessica gets the chop, no questions asked.

  She’s still cranky as hell because the only thing she’s done wrong was to be a girl, but she can’t do anything about it. She knows Joe needs her six shillings to help pay the bank interest on the mortgage. The man from the bank has been around twice in the last month and after he’d left the last time Joe went quiet and didn’t speak a word to her for two whole days, so Jessica knows things must be real bad.

  While Jessica shares most of Joe’s problems around the place, money is the one thing he never speaks to her about, nor to Hester and Meg. But she sees how things are, and she knows money is what’s going to finally drive Joe mad or kill him.

  Jessica just manages to make tea for her boys and cut two corned beef sandwiches for them when the hooter sounds in the shearing shed for their afternoon smoko. Jack’s and Billy’s shearing stands are the last on the board, so they’re first to come outside to take their mug of tea, sheltering from the sun under a bit of tarpaulin Jessica’s rigged up as their spot.

  The boys are all but spent, their shirts clinging wetly to their chests, their necks and faces shiny with perspiration. They sit on the apple crates she’s put out for them and gulp gratefully at the hot, sweet tea in silence. After a while Jack notices that Jessica isn’t yacking away like she usually does. Without looking up from his mug he says, ‘Cat got your tongue then, Tea Leaf?’ Billy glances up at Jessica, and his eyes grow wide with surprise. ‘Shit, what happened to yer neck?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s nothing,’ she mumbles.

  ‘It’s bloody tar! There’s flamin’ tar running down yer neck!’

  Jack now looks up. ‘Hell, what’s happened?’ he exclaims.

  But by this time Billy has put down his tin mug. Jumping to his feet, he reaches down and pulls at Jessica’s hat.

  ‘Ouch!’ she yells. Billy has lifted her hat and her blonde hair sticks to the rim, glued to it by the tar. ‘Who’s done this?’ he demands.

  ‘Ouch, Billy, let go!’ Jessica yells again as Billy tries to unglue her hat by pulling still further, but more gently, finally yanking it free.

  Jessica snatches at the hat and with both hands plants it firmly back on her head, then she pushes Billy away. ‘Leave off, will ya, I’m all right!’

  ‘No you bloody ain’t,’ Jack says. ‘What happened, Jessie?’

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ Jessica says, trying to sound tough.

  ‘Like hell it’s not,’ Billy exclaims. ‘Who’s done this to you, Tea Leaf? You tell me and I’ll fix the bastards.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ is all Jessica will say.

  ‘It’s the tar boys, isn’t it?’ Billy keeps at her. Jessica turns away to hide her tears just as the hooter sounds to call the tar boys back to sweep the board.

  Jack looks down at Jessica and wipes his hand across his mouth. ‘Jessie, I’m taking you over to the big house to get you fixed up. Fetch my horse and yours too, we’ll ride over now.’

  ‘No, please!’ She looks anxiously back at the shearing shed. ‘I’ve gotta get back,’ Jessica says, knowing that her being out of the shed is bound to come to the notice of Mike Malloy, especially if Jack’s also missing. She’ll be dismissed and Joe will be disgraced. ‘Please, Jack, I don’t want no trouble, it can wait. I’ll be right.

  I’ve gotta go now.’

  ‘No, hang on!’ Jack grabs her wrist. ‘There’s benzine at the homestead, it should take the tar off. Maybe we should try the engine gas-oil here?’

  ‘Please Jack! I’ll lose me job!’ Jessica begs.

  ‘Let her go, Jack,’ Billy says, ‘her hair ain’t gunna get any worse if we wait till the day ends. She’s right, Mike Malloy’ll be out to find her if she doesn’t get back.

  Don’t you worry, Tea Leaf, I’ll sort out the lads later.’ Jessica sees that Jack doesn’t like Billy taking over like this. ‘Billy’s right, Jack,’ she says urgently. ‘Please, I’m late, Jack, it’s me job!’

  Jack looks a bit miffed. ‘Well, you get the horses ready as soon as we break, right?’
he says crossly, sitting back on his apple crate and picking up his mug again. ‘But wait on a moment, if you go in there like this Mike Malloy will see the stuff all over your shoulders,’ he points to her, ‘the tar running down.’

  Jessica looks more panic-stricken than ever. ‘I’ll cover it up.’

  Jack grabs her by the hand. ‘Come with me.’ Inside the dark little shed which houses the donkey engine Jack takes up a gallon can of paraffin. He soaks a bit of rough hessian in it and begins to scrub the tar from Jessica’s neck and her collar and over her shoulders. Jessica tries not to wince at the smell and the scrubbing, and finally Jack stops. ‘There, that’s better! If Mike Malloy asks where you’ve been tell him I kept you back.’

  Jessica nods and runs back to the shed. Her scalp itches from the tar and her skin burns where the paraffin has removed the tar from her neck and shoulders. When she returns to the shed the foreman is nowhere to be seen and she breathes a sigh of relief.

  Towards the end of the afternoon she manages to get away for a few minutes to find the stable boy and tell him to saddle Jack’s horse and her own and to bring them round ready for when work ends.

  The boys watch her all afternoon, giggling each time she passes one of them. At last the hooter for the end of the day goes and Billy, who has stopped shearing five minutes before to clean and oil his clippers, jumps from his station and walks down the board. He grabs a tar pot and stick and then collars all six boys and marches them out of the shed.

  The other shearers watch, confused. It’s a tar boy’s job to do the last sweep and clean up. First in, last out, the lowest works the longest is the rule. The donkey engine comes to a stop, then the wool press does the same and the shed has suddenly quietened down.

  ‘What’s up, Billy?’ one of the shearers calls, but Billy doesn’t answer, roughly pushing the boys ahead of him. The shearers look at each other and then at Jack, who’s grabbed hold of Jessica so she doesn’t run for her horse. ‘A spot of bother with the tars,’ Jack says. ‘They’ll be back in a while, Billy’s just sorting it out.’ He is holding the shears and, spying a bit of Jessica’s tar-covered hair sticking out from under her hat, snips it off and puts it into his pocket.