Jessica

by Bryce Courtenay

  For his part, Joe has spent too many years alone in his life not to know how to seek his own relief and so he lets her be, though he knows other blokes in the same circumstances would think they’d been shafted.

  Most of the men in the district would climb into the saddle regardless. It would never occur to them to ask permission, or that a wife has a say in the first place.

  For most it was a man’s flamin’ right, that’s all there was to it. ‘A skinful on a Saturdee night, mount the miss us and there she goes! Conjugal rights, mate! It’s written in the Bible when yiz gets hitched.’ Joe has heard it often enough in the shearing sheds and elsewhere. But he leaves Hester alone as part of the price he feels he has to pay for not being her equal. In his seventies, his urges have become a lot easier than perhaps they used to be.

  Joe sometimes wakes up to go for a piss in the yard only to find his wife and eldest daughter in the kitchen still chewing the fat as late as ten o’clock at night. It amazes him that after being together from morning till dusk they still find something to talk about. He and Jessica are often together for hours without a word passing between them. Yet Joe knows that Jessie can talk the hind leg off a donkey if she’s in the mood or is excited by something new she’s seen or learned. He remembers how as a child she never stopped asking questions, wanting to know everything, couldn’t be put off. Why, why, why? Until he was nearly out of his mind. So very different the two girls, chalk and cheese.

  When the two of them are together, strangers hardly ever know that they’re sisters. Although if they were to stop and examine them closely, they would see both have a fullness around the mouth and an identical shape to their lips. This sweetly shaped mouth makes Meg seem a bit exotic, as if she might be foreign, an Italian contessa or a Spanish dancer or something splendid like that.

  Jessica is aware that she and Meg share the same shaped mouth. And while Jessica agrees it looks very pretty on Meg, she is not at all sure that it isn’t the shape of her own mouth that creates most of her problems. She secretly bemoans the fact that it cannot be used like a proper mouth, like a mouth that doesn’t say things to men before it’s opened. No matter what she does with it, it always ends up looking like Meg’s mouth. That is to say, it ends up looking pretty and feminine and promising something unspoken when no such promise exists in Jessica’s mind.

  Meg’s mouth goes with her lovely figure. Meg has all the right curves to suit the fashion of the day and they can easily enough be imagined under her tight-waisted dress. Her lips, which she has the habit of keeping just a fraction apart so that she looks slightly breathless, are calculated, along with everything else about her, to drive a young bloke round the twist. On the other hand, Jessica feels her own mouth is just stupid and looks out of place with the rest of her body, which is flat as a pancake all the way down the front.

  Hester has long since given up trying to influence Jessica’s appearance. Despite the dress she is required to wear to church of a Sunday, which Hester has sewn and embroidered around the collar as prettily as may be, Jessica remains as plain-looking as mustard pickles in a Jar.

  Hester no longer feels guilty about Jessica and has convinced herself that it’s only natural that her duty is to concentrate on Meg, who has all the looks she needs to get the kind of husband she herself missed out on. But she’s well aware that any mother who has an eligible boy with a decent inheritance coming to him goes to market knowing prettiness alone is not enough to qualify for her son’s hand in matrimony.

  Hester knows well enough that there’s nothing quite like childbirth to take the bloom off a woman’s good looks. Meg must also be seen to look as though she will turn matronly in an appropriate manner after having given birth to the mandatory six or more children, hopefully including a brace of sons thrown in for good measure.

  Finally, and almost as important as her capacity to bear healthy children in large numbers, her eldest daughter has all the domestic qualifications needed for a good homemaker. Meg is an excellent cook and her preserves and needlework are always among the best at the Narrandera Agricultural Show and she has twice won a blue ribbon there for the best starched and pressed tablecloth.

  All in all, Hester quietly congratulates herself that all of this adds up to a set of marriage qualifications which any future mother-in-law would be anxious to secure for her son.

  Using the same rules, she has come to accept that it would be difficult for any potential mother-in-law to imagine how Jessica’s narrow-hipped, lean little body could possibly endure a pregnancy without complications. Or that the young lads who might gladly call on Meg would be likely to entertain the idea of walking out with the family leftover. In her mind Hester has consigned Jessica to a spinsterhood she herself has only managed to avoid by the skin of her teeth.

  It is one sentiment Joe is forced to share with his wife. He once sadly remarked, ‘Meg is prime stock for the marriage market, but Jessie is gunna be left alone in the sale-yards long after every young bloke’s climbed back on his horse and gone home.’

  It is hardly surprising that Jessica’s family haven’t noticed that, though still flat in front at eighteen years old, Jessica has a neatly rounded little backside which fits snugly into a pair of moleskins and sits well enough in the saddle for many a young stockman to happily let her take the lead when riding single file.

  Nor are they aware that Jack Thomas will most often choose to be Jessica’s partner on a cattle drive or when they’re branding the ewes from the wethers, castrating or crutching sheep. This fact entirely escapes Joe’s notice -like his wife, he’s so resigned to the notion that Meg must win young Jack that he could not even conceive of Jessica having a place, no matter how platonic, in the young man’s affections. Hester and Meg are none the wiser, as both are unaware of the Thomas boy’s peripheral presence in Jessica’s life.

  Jessica lacks the personal vanity to suppose for one moment that Jack might think of her as anything but a good working partner or even a mate when they attend lectures at the government experimental farm. Her self-esteem requires no more bolstering than this from her future brother-in-law. She continues to enjoy working with Jack, being his firm friend. They both seem to anticipate each other’s movements on a horse and together they can drive a large herd through the scrub better than most.

  Jessica now hears the currawongs in the river gums — they’re always the first to greet the sunrise — and she goes out to the woodpile and gathers an armful of firewood. She returns to the kitchen, builds a fire in the cast-iron stove and sets the kettle to boil. While she waits she chops a turnip, a parsnip, two carrots and several potatoes into the soup pot and adds what’s left of last night’s lamb bone. Then she empties half a jug of water into it and adds a handful of gelatine crystals to compensate for giving the dogs a generous splash of soup over their feed of bones last night.

  Joe would be annoyed that she’d added the gravy to their tucker, but he’ll never know, she smiles to herself. Hester, or perhaps Meg, has set four bread pans of dough to rise overnight on the scrubbed pine kitchen table, covering them with cheesecloth. Jessica removes the cloth and sprinkles a little milk over the top of the risen dough, spreading it evenly over the top of the loaves with the tips of her fingers so the crusts will brown in the baking. Then she returns to the stove and adjusts the flue to heat the oven. In about half an hour it will be hot enough to bake and by the time she gets back from milking the cow the bread will be ready to be taken out of the oven and cooled on the window ledge. Hester knows that Jessica would rather eat the last of the loaves when it is three days old than go to the trouble of mixing and kneading a batch of dough and baking fresh bread herself. Despite her coldness to her youngest daughter, Hester is a dutiful mother. There’s the stockpot bubbling away on the back of the stove, a side of bacon in the cool house and another leg of lamb cooked and ready to eat cold, tea, bread, eggs, milk and yesterday’s churned butter — Jessica will want for noth
ing while they’re away.

  Jessica stops to listen as the dogs bark again. The same bark as before, though this time a little more urgent. Kelpies are working dogs and don’t usually bark at nothing. Jessica’s ear is now tuned to the sound as the barking draws closer. Just when she’s about to go outside and whistle them in, their barking stops once more. Nevertheless she goes to the cupboard and fetches the shotgun, breaks it and loads both barrels but does not pull the hammers back. She leans the twelve-bore against the wall near the door to the yard. The kettle comes to the boil and Jessica prepares a pot of tea. She likes it strong and black with lots of sugar, the way it’s made in a billy on an open fire.

  Today is Sunday, though she’s buggered if she’s going to drive the five miles to church. Joe hardly ever goes to church, though he observes a day of rest more as a matter of habit than piety. He’ll usually spend the day stitching and mending harnesses or some such task. Jessica’s in charge now and she’ll act the same way he does on the Sabbath. For a start, she’ll keep well clear of St Stephen’s with the ever-present Thomas women ticking off the names of the worshippers.

  If Hester asks, she’ll say one of the wheels on the sulky is giving a bit of trouble so she decided not to chance it. It’s only half a fib, the rear axle does need minor attention. Hester will not allow her to go to church on horseback as she thinks it unladylike and reflects badly on the family.

  All of which adds up to a pretty lazy day ahead. She’ll milk the jersey cow and leave it in the paddock with its calf. Let the little fellow get his fill for once — she’s not going to need the milk or the cream. She’ll feed the chooks, give the two horses half a bale of hay and fill their water trough. Then it’ll be time to feed the pigs with the cabbages gone to seed in the vegie-plot. She’ll take a look at the sheep and then ride down to see if the cows in the paddock nearest the river have got their hopes up yet.

  Joe’s paid George Thomas for one week’s use of his Shorthorn stud bull, Trump Card, which Jack rode over with on Wednesday. But so far the great slack bovine bastard hasn’t bothered to climb up the back of a single cow. Joe won’t want to pay Mr Thomas if the bull doesn’t service half a dozen cows and then there’ll be a blue which will leave Hester and Meg at Joe’s throat. George Thomas’s temper hasn’t improved any since that first time when Joe took Jessica over to Riverview Station. Outside the shearing shed he has a rotten habit of picking on his son and so Jack tries to work separately from his father whenever possible, often calling on Jessica to partner him on musters and other work. Over the past four years Jessica has taken Joe’s advice and stayed well clear of George Thomas. Joe can be a difficult sod, but he’s got nothing on old man Thomas, a bloody know-all who thinks every ringer, stockman, shearer and rouseabout is a born malingerer and out to cheat him. By the end of a day’s work his face is always crimson as a turkey’s wattle and he’s fit to burst with anger. As often as not, it’s his own boy who has to cop his bad temper. Jessica’s watched dozens of times as Jack stands there and takes it while George Thomas abuses him. She sees how the knuckles of Jack’s clenched fists whiten as he holds his arms rigidly to his sides while his father humiliates him in front of the stockmen. George Thomas always needs an audience.

  Afterwards Jack will move into the bush to be on his own for a bit, away from the scene of his shaming. Jessica will let him go for a while and then follow him, pretending to be gathering wood for the fire, and whistling a bit of a tune so he’ll hear her before she comes upon him. Bush rules say she should leave him be, mind her own business, it’s every man for himself. But when she comes up to him he never tells her to bugger off and he’ll let her sit quietly, chewing on the end of a stalk of kangaroo grass, a few paces away from where he sits.

  Jack’s no mother’s boy who blubs easily, Jessica knows that. If one of the stockmen shows him disrespect he’ll climb down from his horse and have a go. Scrap with him right there, where they’ll bump against the flanks of their horses and sometimes wrestle in the dust, horses whinnying and shying, clouds of dirt flying everywhere.

  The stockmen always come running, not caring who wins, only hoping to see a good stoush. Jack’s no pushover and knows how to scrap, but if his opponent gets the better of him, which sometimes happens, Jack’ll take his punishment and shake the other bloke’s hand afterwards. The men respect him as much as they hate his old man.

  The men remember too how it was Jack who took care of Billy Simple after his accident at the shearing shed and they like him for it. Most would have walked away, taking no responsibility. They see the way Jack looks out for Billy, sometimes bringing him down to the shed for some company as he works, talking to him and making sure he eats his tucker.

  It’s been three years since Billy’s accident and the men working at Riverview Station have grown used to seeing him with a watering can or digging in the homestead garden. Those who remember him of old will shout him a greeting and Billy will wave back shyly, though he gets nervous if anyone comes too close. He’s grown even taller and now stands at six feet and six inches, a shambling giant of a boy with his scarred face hidden under the brim of his hat and no teeth in his mouth except for the big molars at the back.

  Jessica sips her tea and thinks of poor Billy Simple. Since the accident he’s somehow got his religion mixed up with his penis, which is a source of amusement for those who didn’t know him before. Billy isn’t a complete idiot and he can understand simple directions well enough. He’ll stand with his head bowed and his hands clasped below his waist, shaking in terror when he’s being addressed, especially when it’s Ada Thomas. Then he’ll look up calmly, no longer shaking, his watery blue eyes focused on whoever’s in front of him. He’ll cross himself and say, ‘Hail Mary, Mother of God!’ And give a toothless smile and politely inquire, ‘Would you like to see the big cock Jesus gave me?’ Then he’ll start his shaking again, head bowed, eyes tightly closed, lips mumbling senselessly, his great raw hands with their bitten and broken fingernails clasped together and resting on his chest.

  Billy will stay like this until he hears the word ‘Amen’, which he takes as permission to leave. With his shoulders hunched he’ll shamble off, his broken boots shuffling in the dust.

  When Jessica works on Riverview Station she always stops over to see Billy in the garden. She’ll get boiling water from the cook and make up a billy of tea and take it to him together with a bit of damper soaked in golden syrup that she’s brought from home for him.

  Billy, seeing her coming, will drop whatever he’s doing and jump up and down and laugh like a little boy. Jessica will walk up to him and put the billy and the damper down at her feet. Then the two of them will stand quite still, Billy towering above her. After a few moments he’ll reach out shyly and touch Jessica on the cheek with the back of his fingers and then reach down and take her small hand in both his huge fists and hold it for a while. , ‘Owyergoin’, Billy, orright?’ Jessica will say after a while.

  Then he’ll release her hand and clasp his own in prayer, and break into his big, gaping smile and say, ‘Hail Mary, Mother of God, would you like to see the big cock Jesus gave me?’

  The first time he did this, Jessica had blushed and protested, but she soon enough realised that Billy’s saying it is an empty threat. Now when he says it she looks stern and says ‘Amen’ and then, ‘Bend down, Billy.’

  Billy will come down on his knees and Jessica, first making sure no one is looking, will take a wet cloth and clean his face, wiping the mucus from his nose as any mother might do to a small boy. Then she’ll kiss him lightly on the cheek. Billy will rise to his feet and tear off around the vegetable patch and then come panting back to her side like an excited puppy. Whereupon she’ll give him the tea and damper, which he’ll break off into little bits and push furiously into his mouth, swallowing tea with the bread to soften it so he doesn’t have to chew. Jessica recalls how on one occasion, when she and Jack were earmarking some sheep, they wer
e talking about Billy Simple. On a curious impulse she suddenly asked Jack, ‘When Billy talks about his gift from Jesus, has he ever, you know, shown it to you?’ Jack at first didn’t understand. ‘Shown what to me?’ ‘You know, what he says Jesus gave him?’ Jessica was trying not to giggle. ‘Nah.’

  ‘Have you seen it?’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose,’ Jack replied, shrugging his shoulders.

  ‘Suppose?’

  ‘Well, I seen him taking a piss lots of times in the old days.’

  ‘Were it, you know,’ Jessica paused, ‘like he says?’ Jack, she remembers, looked up at her and grinned.‘Yeah, I reckon. A bloody monster!’ he’d said, laughing. ‘In the shearing quarters when he’d take a piss someone would always say, “Hey, Billy, you should take that thing to Mike Malloy to lock up in the flamin’ gun locker!” , They’d fallen about laughing, as much at Jessica’s boldness as at Billy’s superior equipment.

  Then Jack had suddenly grown serious, and told her how Billy had become the object of horrible taunting by Gwen and Winifred, who took delight in Billy’s confusion and terror in their presence.

  According to Jack they’re getting worse and Ada Thomas, it seems, is no better. Billy works hard in the garden and is as strong as a bull, but ‘the papist idiot’, as Jack’s mother calls him, can do nothing right. ‘You can see the map of Ireland all over his face,’ she’ll say to anyone who’ll listen. Jack says she constantly tells Billy off, even beating him over his shoulders with her English blackthorn walking stick. He’s often made to repeat a task for no good reason other than to please her.

  Once, Jack told Jessica, Ada had spent a day making Billy move a large pile of rocks intended for a bed of succulents, changing her mind each time he’d completed the task and making him move them to a different location again. Jack had come home at sunset to find Billy collapsed over a pile of rocks, the skin stripped from his hands, the flesh of his palms reduced to a bloody pulp, and him shuddering and whimpering in a heap.