Jessica

by Bryce Courtenay

  Jessica was saved. By referring her hair to Joe, her sister made it impossible for Hester to interfere and impose her own punishment. Jessica often feels that Meg is more the cranky mother than Hester, and certainly they have no sisterly relationship. Only three years separate them, but it might as well be a whole generation.

  At tea that night Joe barely glanced at his youngest daughter and despite Hester and Meg trying to prod him into punishing her, he simply looked up at Jessica and said, ‘I reckon it’s damned practical for the work she does, that’s all. Leave her alone.’

  ‘But it will destroy us, Father,’ Meg had howled.

  ‘The only thing that’ll destroy us is if the bank doesn’t give me an extension on our loan until the heifer sales,’ Joe growled in reply. ‘I’m telling ya, leave the girlie alone.’

  Jessica recalls how she wasn’t too upset at Hester’s threat that she was ‘no daughter of mine’. Since the time when Joe clouted her at the table over the snake incident and her mother abandoned her for the meat dish, there have been a dozen or more such declarations, all followed by a promise of permanent banishment from Hester’s affections.

  The most recent incident was when she’d come second in her age group at the Narrandera Agricultural Show, working Red, the oldest kelpie, to herd and pen thirty sheep.

  ‘Listen to me, my girl, men don’t like a woman who shows them up! A working dog is men’s work,’ Hester scolded her. ‘I give up on you!’

  In a strange way, these constant threats have made Jessica realise that in her mother’s eyes, she might still hold some hope. One day she might have a long enough run of good behaviour to get back into Hester’s good books. Although, until Meg gets hitched to Jack Thomas or, if she fails to hook him, some other eligible young bloke, Jessica isn’t sweating on a change of heart from her mother.

  If Jessica has never wished to be a boy, she’s never really been allowed to be a girl either. She only wants to be accepted as being as capable as those who work with her. It is her misfortune that what she does well is generally seen as a man’s work. But she doesn’t ask any favours because she’s a girl. If she’s up to the job, then she wants to be treated as an equal. If she fails, then she’s prepared to cop whatever’s coming to her and learn from the experience. In her naturally stubborn mind it is a simple enough request. She doesn’t want to play at being the modest little woman always putting herself down in front of males. She -can do the job well enough. It is what Joe expects from her, and she doesn’t know how it could be otherwise if she is to be his partner on the land. But with her green eyes, blonde hair and full sweet mouth, there’s not much chance of Jessica pulling off any such grand ambition. The young blokes won’t have it — she can’t be one of them even if she works as hard and is as good as they are. She’s still a girl and therefore she must publicly cop their scorn and privately feed their fantasies.

  Jessica, of course, doesn’t see any of this. What she has in determination she lacks in vanity. If she thinks about it at all, she sees herself as plain-faced and ordinary-looking, and she supposes she must be ugly. She only coincidentally glances into a mirror, something she regards as almost the sole territory of her sister, who possesses the only mirror in the house. Jessica happily accepts that Meg’s been given all the family looks and, in this regard at least, she feels no resentment. God just didn’t make her pretty and, since she was twelve, Joe needed her to be outside with him, so that was that. But it doesn’t stop her from often feeling hurt and confused and lonely.

  What Jessica sees plainly enough is that men regard women as inferior, in a whole separate class from them,one that can’t be compared with their own. It’s as though some law exists in the minds of males which says she must know her place and accept her inferior lot. If she beats a man at any task which folk consider to be in his masculine domain, then she somehow brings shame upon herself and upon all womankind. She doesn’t see the justice in this notion and simply refuses to play the supportive and secondary role demanded of her sex. She doesn’t wish to cheer prettily from the sidelines when she can conduct herself as competently in the arena as most young blokes her age.

  Jessica sees the way they look at her, the scorn in their eyes, as though she’s got no right to be among them and is a disgrace to her own kind. Not only that, but when she competes with blokes she senses the shame they feel. She is never praised for the skill she shows against her opponent. Instead he is humiliated in front of his mates for having allowed himself to be matched or beaten by a girl. She has not won fair and square, and he has lost because he is inferior to a bloody sheila.

  Jessica is aware that there’s nothing she can do about it — she lives in a world of men. It may be unfair, but she knows there is no point in whingeing. Even if she did, she tells herself there is nobody to whom she could explain her resentment, and so it’s stuff she keeps to herself. If she told Joe how she felt he’d only nod his head, not really listening, or give her one of his dog-eat-dog lectures. He’d tell her she was perfectly right, and not to go banging her head against a brick wall. He’d be likely to say, ‘If yiz wants a good husband, girlie, yiz’ll have to learn to act stupid and buckle under.’ Hester and Meg would, of course, agree with this view. point — in their minds acting stupid is part of being smart if you’re a female.

  ‘There’s more ways than one to skin a cat,’ Hester has warned her often enough in the past. ‘You can’t shame a man, Jessica, their pride won’t take it. A woman must be soft as putty on the outside and, on the inside, like the Rock of Gibraltar.’

  When Jack Thomas first got his new De Dion motor car a few years ago, the first automobile in the district and his pride and joy, Hester sent off to Sydney for a pamphlet on the role of the motor car in the modern society. When it arrived she and Meg conducted a series of long, boring debates in the kitchen. Was it better to know nothing about motor cars and let young Jack carry on about them to Meg’s admiring oohs and ahs, or was it better to ask a lot of pertinent questions to make him think Meg was the kind of girl he ought to marry not only for her looks but also for her brains?

  In the end they’d settled for the oohs and ahs, deciding that as Jack Thomas had a mother and two sisters with an opinion on just about everything under the sun, he wouldn’t be too keen to have a bossy boots knowall for a wife.

  Jessica had thought this was pretty damn smart of them for a change, but then she secretly learnt the pamphlet off by heart. She likes working with Jack up at Riverview, and he seems to enjoy working beside her.

  When he discusses,his precious De Dion motor car he’s pleased that she knows what he’s on about and has some ideas of her own.

  Jessica values this mateship, and tells herself that she’s just as good as any of the blokes. Her flannel shirt is as sweat-stained as any ringer’s, her moleskins as dirty and worn, her boots as scuffed. She rides as hard and stays as long in the saddle as the men do, and knows her way around cattle and sheep as well as most. She works hard, doesn’t whinge, brushes the same flies from her eyes, gets the same dust up her nostrils, eats the same damper and drinks the same billy tea. But still they look at her differently.

  What Jessica hates in herself is the feeling, deep down, that they may be right. That she is different, and can never belong to their world. And that men don’t try to do the things women do, don’t even want to, and so she’s being stupid trying to prove she’s as good as them when she knows in her heart that in some things, being a woman means she can’t ever be the same as them, or be respected for who she is.

  For instance, there comes a time when men no longer try to solve their differences sensibly. They simply jump down from their horses or pile out of the pub and try to beat the living daylights out of each other. It’s a part of their world she knows she can never enter. A very important part. Nor can she hope to compensate for her useless female fists with her mouth — men hate a sharp tongue when they reckon a blunt fist is th
e best way to sort out a problem. Then after, when they’ve beaten the shit out of each other, they shake hands in a sort of ceremony of forgiveness, both of them good mates again. It is this same, stupid male logic she sees in their eyes when they look at her, and Jessica is aware she’s helpless against it. She is trapped between two worlds — neither sex will have her as she is, and both seem to want to punish her for being too much of the other. She knows she can’t punch their teeth in like Joe or Jack Thomas would if someone should look at them in the way a stockman might sneer at her, or spit to the side of his boots as he turns and walks away.

  Jessica admits to herself that Jack Thomas is the one male other than her father who takes her at face value. He doesn’t look at her like others ‘do, but treats her with some respect and more or less like an equal. He seems to enjoy competing with her openly. He’s ‘a real man’, Jessica thinks to herself with surprise and then feels angry that if a man were to call her ‘a real woman’ this would be followed by a sly nod and a wink and knowing smiles all around the camp fire. Not, she’s pleased to think, that she will ever qualify in their minds for that role.

  Joe, of course, is oblivious to all of this. He’s grown accustomed to having Jessica at his side and she knows it seldom occurs to him that she’s a woman. She’s simply a much needed extra pair of hands, though perhaps a little on the small side — a flyweight, he calls her. Jessica senses that Joe wishes she was a bit stronger so that she could help with the shearing or lift and carry an ironbark corner post. He’s such a big bugger himself and, at seventy-two, still strong as a bull and thinks everyone else must be the same.

  She knows she meets Joe’s requirements in most things. In a rare moment, she’d once overheard him tell a shearer that his little girlie could flick a blowfly off the lead bullock’s neck with a stockwhip, or post and string a fence quick as look at you. It wasn’t exactly true, though she can use a stockwhip well enough and even drive a bullock wagon if she has to. Joe’s bragging had made her feel good for about a year after. In fact, it is Joe’s confidence in Jessica which forms the basis of her strong resolve. He’s a bloody hard taskmaster and she reckons if she can satisfy him, then she ought to be good enough for any other boss around the district.

  Joe himself has long since learned that his youngest daughter’s pride forbids him to interfere any more than he might if she were his son. He knows Jessica wouldn’t think to tell him to go to blazes, but she has a way of looking when she’s mad that tells him to watch out. Her chin rests damn nearly on her chest, her green eyes are almost closed with anger, her jaw is clenched and her pretty mouth drained of its colour. It’s a look that makes him back off without a single harsh word spoken between them. Joe knows that he can’t run the place without her. Jessica is his girlie, right down to the fair colouring and Bergman temper, while Meg, dark and delicate, rightly belongs to her mother and the Heathwood side.

  Joe used to worry for Jessica when she was small, knowing she’d copped his stubborn nature and rough ways. But as she grew into a useful and happy child he reckoned that what couldn’t be changed in himself, he couldn’t expect to change in her. It was best to let her get on with it and keep a close eye on her.

  As she’s grown into a young woman, Joe’s come to accept Jessica as his right-hand man. She’s more intelligent than he is, more intelligent than the lot of them, Meg included. She might have left school at twelve but she still reads books whenever she can get her hands on one. Reads them good and fast, too. But, Joe knows, hers isn’t the sort of intelligence that wins marks as a young woman. His girlie is much too outspoken and her wilfulness and determination will get her into no end of trouble with men as she grows older. He admires her spirit, though. He knows for sure that there is not an ounce of bad blood in her. With her chopped hair and body flat as a plank she may not be a beauty like her sister, but he wouldn’t swap her for a son for all the bloody tea in China, or the coffee in Brazil.

  If Joe ever thought about love, then he supposes he loves Jessica. Whatever it is he feels for his youngest daughter he has no such emotion for Meg. He admires Hester for creating in her a young woman such as he could never have aspired to know in his own humble youth. Meg is a definite step up and away from the life of respectable poverty they know with him, while Jessica, despite her cleverness, is more of the same common stock to which Joe knows himself to belong.

  Hester is a Heathwood, and they’re a family of shopkeepers, indoors people with scrubbed white hands and clean nails. Joe has always accepted that his wife is well bred, from people above his own station in life. Hester has never really taken to the battler’s life on the land and he knows well enough that he’s not the sort of bloke she would have fancied before her dashing young subaltern went off with the New South Wales Lancers to fight for Mother England in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and got himself killed.

  Joe wasn’t to know that all subalterns are dashing once they are dead. That Auntie Agnes thought Hester’s intended was a thorough bounder and up to no good, just the sort of person the Heathwoods should avoid at all costs. Privately she felt his untimely demise had probably saved the family.

  Joe had waited until he had something he could call his own before he went looking for a wife. At thirty-five he’d given up his life as a boundary rider and taken up a government allotment along the Murrumbidgee. It had taken him nearly fifteen years to clear the scrub and stock it, build a home and, in a good year, profitably run a small holding. His land had been hard-won through two droughts, two locust plagues, a mouse plague, a flood and a bushfire, which destroyed his home and the outbuildings and burned his stock alive. Joe Bergman was fifty years old when at last he felt he had enough behind him to take a bride.

  After her soldier had died, Hester had got herself stuck behind the counter of her father Henry’s haberdashery shop in Narrandera. At thirty-five years old, when she met Joe, she was well past the marriageable age, with slim prospects of finding a man with a decent spread. All the same, Joe didn’t need to be told he was no great catch. When he’d asked her to be his bride, she’d refused at first, then finally accepted, but only after a great deal of persistence on his part and some unexpected involvement by her Auntie Agnes.

  Hester’s father, a widower, had been reluctant to let her go and insisted she was needed in .the shop and at home to cook and clean. But his sister Agnes, who lived in Whitton, folk said to be away from her brother, and was herself a widow and the mother of two sons who’d both turned out like their father, wastrels and drunkards, had come to Joe’s rescue.

  Agnes had insisted that her niece still had a few good years left in which to have a family. ‘A woman,’ she’d said, ‘can breed until she’s in her mid-forties, there’s time for half a dozen if you’re quick at it!’ She’d pointed out that Joe, even though a foreigner and of a lower class, was a big, strapping man with fair hair and blue eyes, just the sort of new blood the Heathwoods needed. He was known never to touch a drop, and though a bachelor for so long, could never be accused of having hot britches for the women. ‘Hester, my dear, Joe Bergman is a good man, rough but decent.’ She’d wagged a bony finger at her niece. ‘A hard-working and sober husband of humble origins is better than a drunken lord in a grand palace,’ she’d proclaimed. When Hester had tried to use her father’s welfare as an excuse, Auntie Agnes had countered, saying, ‘I’ll send your father down to Sydney, to the Easter Show, to find himself a grateful widow who can clean house and work in the shop. They’re two a penny in the big smoke.’

  When Hester finally accepted Joe’s hand in marriage, he was aware she did so without much enthusiasm. For his part, Joe has never complained about her lack of affection. She’s been a dutiful wife beyond his expectations, she cooks well and runs a neat home. She is a good little woman in lots of ways. If he has a wound she dresses and binds it for him, and if, as sometimes happens, he gets a bad chest, she prepares a mustard poultice or doses him with a tablespoon of sugar soaked i
n eucalyptus oil. Though these days it’s Jessica who cares for him. Hester washes and mends his clothes and she keeps herself neat and, with it all, gives him a sense of being the head of the family. And she doesn’t complain any more than Ian be expected from someone who has been forced to come down a notch or two in life.

  It seems only fair to Joe that Hester should devote most of her time and love to Meg, that she should want a life for her eldest daughter which she must once have imagined for herself. He knows he isn’t much chop but he’s done the best he can and there’s always been food on the table, Hester makes their clothes from good material and they have boots on their feet. It may not be much but it’s a damn sight better than most. Hester occasionally even has a little extra to spend on pretty ribbons and a bit of lace for Meg.

  Joe sometimes wonders if things would have been different if they’d had a big family like other folk. But they’d started out too late for that. The doctor said it was probably him getting the mumps when he was fifty five that put a stop to her pregnancies. He would have liked a boy, but there you go, can’t have everything. Now he wouldn’t change Jessica for a football team of lads built like bullocks. So Hester can enjoy Meg.

  Hester constantly refers to Meg’s hair as her crowning glory and at night delights in releasing the thick plaits Meg wears coiled about her head, letting them fall to her waist. She takes care to brush it a hundred strokes with an expensive English hairbrush ordered up from Anthony Hordern’s in Sydney. Joe hears the two of them still chatting away like a couple of budgerigars long after Jessica has taken to her narrow iron cot and him to the bed out the back. Hester has made it very clear to Joe that she has no further interest in marital relations, as she calls it.

  Hester firmly believes that the coming together of a married couple has the singular purpose of bringing forth issue. Having done what was required of her and given her husband two daughters, she doesn’t see that she has any further duties to perform in the marital bed, and Joe’s shooting blanks has been a stroke of luck for her.