Jessica

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘It’ll be all right, Billy,’ she says, looking up at him.

  ‘We’re not beaten yet.’

  The black flies hum around her head, the fierce sun beats down and Jessica climbs aboard again and sets off, determined to go as far as the cracked axle will take her. Almost a mile down the track the axle breaks, but by then she’s worked out a plan.

  Jessica turns to Billy. ‘Billy, you’re gunna have to sit on the pony, and I’m gunna have to walk you in.’

  Billy’s teeth are chattering and his shirt is drenched with sweat. ‘Horse hurt Billy,’ he says plaintively, ‘horse hurt Billy’s head.’

  ‘It’s our only chance, mate. I’m bloody not givin’ up now!’ Jessica moves to help Billy down from the sulky and he winces and draws away from her. ‘Damn you, Billy, help me!’ she shouts at him.

  Whimpering, Billy tries to get down from the sulky but he loses his balance and falls against Jessica. They both tumble to the ground. Billy rolls away from her, moaning and crying out with the pain.

  Jessica lies still — she feels as though she’s been run over by a team of horses. After a few moments she realises she hasn’t broken any bones. She rises slowly to her feet, too shocked to cry. Blood runs from her cheek and she sees she’s grazed her arm, but she doesn’t care. Now she has only one thought in her mind, to get Billy Simple into Narrandera. Beat those bastards heading down the track. Hobbling over to Billy, she manages to get him to sit up on the side of the sulky while she unharnesses Napoleon.

  ‘Billy, we’re going to take your splint off so you can sit on the pony, you understand?’

  Billy makes no reply, his head hangs between his knees and he is sniffling. But he lets Jessica untie the splints and remove them. Jessica then takes her bowie knife and cuts the leg of Joe’s moleskins to the thigh so that Billy’s badly swollen leg is less restrained.

  The infection has spread higher up his leg and Jessica knows that if she doesn’t get him into Narrandera on time he’ll die of blood poisoning. She’s seen it happen before, to a stockman who’d been gored by a beast and couldn’t be brought in from the run in time.

  ‘Billy, I know it’s going to hurt a lot getting you onto the pony’s back, but you gotta try for me.’

  Jessica brings the pony around to stand beside Billy. Then she helps him onto his good foot, but he starts to blubber. ‘C’mon, Billy,’ she says, ‘jump up, you gotta try, please!’

  Billy makes several attempts and fails. Napoleon shifts his rump around, disturbed by all the movement, and Jessica tries to keep him still long enough to let Billy get on him. Each attempt causes him great pain so that he is now bawling like a child. ‘Can’t, Jessie, can’t!’ he sobs. ‘Damn you, Billy,’ Jessica screams at him, losing her patience in her anxiety. Then she takes a deep breath and tries to calm herself. ‘Billy, please try, try for me, your friend Jessie. You must try, we have to get going.’ Billy makes one final attempt and this time manages to hang on long enough for Jessica to get her body under him and hold him up so he can get his good foot over the pony’s back, pulling himself more or less up by the mane. Jessica thinks her back’ll break but she grabs Billy’s infected leg and pushes for all she’s worth. Billy screams in agony but holds on and finally sits unsteadily astride the horse, weeping and whimpering, great tears splashing down his dirty cheeks.

  Jessica collapses at the side of the track, panting. Then she throws up her breakfast. ‘Good boy, Billy,’ she finally pants, spitting in the dirt, all but spent from the effort. ‘Now you hang on. Don’t let go, no matter what. Don’t let go, Billy!’ She is bent over with her hands on her knees, gasping as she tries to regain her breath.

  Billy looks down blearily and starts to hiccup, then suddenly he vomits over the pony’s flank. His whimpering grows even louder. ‘Hang on, Billy!’ Jessica yells. ‘Never mind that, just bloody hang on, will ya!’

  She shortens the reins and, with the Winchester slung over her shoulder, Jessica sets off down the track, leading Billy on the pony. They have about ten miles to go and, by her calculations, two and a half hours to get to Narrandera before they’re overtaken.

  The black flies swarm around the vomit on the pony’s flank and cover half Billy Simple’s face where he’s dribbled down his chin. Jessica sees none of this. She has set her mind on getting to Narrandera and no bastard is going to stop her now. They’ll have to shoot her to make her stop. Joe always said she was too. bloody stubborn for her own good.

  For years folk would tell how at ten o’clock on the last Monday morning in April 1914 Joe Bergman’s girl Jessica came into town leading a stock pony with a half-dead man on its back. Him lying with his arms slung around the horse’s neck and his head lolling to one side with a cloud of black flies about it, like the Devil’s halo.

  They recalled how this slip of a girl, wearing a man’s flannel shirt, moleskins and stockman’s boots, walked down the centre of the dusty main street in Narrandera, staring ahead of her, ignoring the folk who’d come out into the street. Twice she’d stumbled onto her knees from exhaustion, but she just picked herself up and kept going. There was blood on her arm and face where she’d fallen somewhere out on the track.

  They told how she was no more than two hundred yards from the courthouse when a mob of horsemen came galloping into town behind her. Must have been twenty or more, with rifles slung. She’d stopped and turned to face them and unslung her rifle to fire two shots over their heads, bringing them to a halt in a cloud of dust. Then she’d turned, calm as you like, and, taking up the reins, went on her way up the street, looking neither left nor right.

  One of the horsemen broke from the pack and came trotting up towards her and she’d turned again with the rifle aimed straight up at him. She’d have fair dinkum shot him right out of the saddle if he’d come any further. The young bloke pulled his horse up and raised his hands in the air. ‘Jessie! Jessie, it’s me, Jack. Jack Thomas. Don’t shoot!’ he called down at her. The girl stood and stared at the young horseman, the rifle still pointed at his chest, then, without a word, she lowered the rifle and slung it, then turned back to the pony and continued leading it towards the courthouse.

  The young bloke turned his horse in and rode behind the pony with his hand held up, keeping the mob of horsemen behind him at bay.

  It was a sight the townsfolk would take to their graves. A lone girl with blood on her arms and face, no more to her than a hundred or so pounds, leading a stock pony with no saddle carrying a huge, lifeless-looking fellow spread across its back, his cut and bloodied arms locked about the horse’s neck.

  ‘It’s the murderer!’ one of the horsemen shouts to the crowd. ‘Him on the pony. The Thomas women from Riverview Station, all murdered!’

  The young lass has brought the murderer in all by herself. And behind the pony, young Jack Thomas, the son and brother of the murdered women, on a horse keeping back the lynch mob.

  And then old man Thomas shouting and cursing his son, coming up to him on his horse. The horse pulling its head back and prancing sideways. The father red as a cockscomb, eyes almost popping out in anger.

  Then the young bloke pushing the barrel of his Winchester into his father’s fat gut, warning him not to interfere or he’d shoot his balls off. The rest of the mob on horseback armed to the teeth and angry as sin, wanting to get at the murderer and finish him off, do for him right then and there in the main street of Narrandera. Do what they’d come to do.

  And Joe Bergman’s little girlie walking on, leading the pony, not looking back, not hearing nothing, taking no notice.

  By the time Jessica reaches the courthouse a fair-sized crowd has gathered. Somebody must have alerted the police magistrate, Patrick Brown, because he now stands on the courthouse steps beside a fat constable with shiny buttons on his dirty tunic, the last three undone to let his gut breathe out.

  Jessica leads the pony right up to the steps, its withers a
lather of sweat, nostrils blowing hard. The poor beast is about done in, its nose almost touching the ground, when she relaxes the reins. Jessica looks up at the police magistrate and wearily extends the reins to him. The surprised official takes hold of them, not quite sure what’s expected of him next.

  ‘Your Honour, I’ve brought Billy Simple. He’s done a murder and he’s hurt bad and needs a doctor.’ Jessica collapses at the astonished official’s feet, the Winchester clattering to the ground beside her. Jack Thomas jumps down from his horse and rushes over to Jessica, kneeling beside her. Then he picks her up in his arms and brushes straight past the magistrate and the constable, carrying her up the steps and into the safety of the courthouse. ‘Jessie, Jessie, Jessie,’ he keeps saying.

  BOOK TWO

  CHAPTER SIX

  The news of the murders is brought into Whitton by young Sam Cully, who has inherited the role of stock and station agent from his father Henry. Sam called in at Riverview on the Sunday evening, planning to spend the night in the shearers’ quarters. On the Monday morning he hoped to interest George Thomas in a Shorthorn stud bull from Groongal Station, bought three years back by Mr Ralph Falkiner from a famous stud in Scotland. Sam’s heard the rumour around the district that George’s present bull, Trump Card, has turned out to be a bit of a joker and is firing blanks.

  What Sam found at Riverview was the cook alone, returned from her visit to North Yanco and in a fearful state. Her eyes were red from weeping and upon seeing him she became quite hysterical.

  She had returned to find the three Thomas women wrapped in bed linen and hanging in the meat cooler, with a note from Mr Thomas explaining what had happened and instructing her to contact Reverend Mathews at St Stephen’s to prepare for their burials. Also, he had asked for someone to go to Darlington Point first thing on Monday to fetch Coffin Nail, the Italian carpenter.

  All this the cook told Sam Cully in sobs and sniffs, and Sam obligingly offered to go, eager to spread the news at Whitton on the way.

  Coffin Nail, a master cabinet-maker by trade, was originally brought out from Italy to do the interior panelling, fittings and staircase at the McCaughey homestead at North Yanco Station. His real name was Copernicus Di Nallo, but this proved too much of a mouthful for the locals and after he started making coffins in his spare time he quickly became known as Coffin Nail.

  After he’d finished the job at North Yanco Station, Coffin Nail decided that he liked the black soil country so much, though Gawd knows why, that he took up a settler’s selection, which he named Santa Sophia, after the name of his village in northern Italy. He was never short of work, and developed a nice sideline in fancy carved coffins for the squattocracy and, as Joe puts it, ‘for folk what’s foolish or wicked enough to take death so seriously they want to invest money in it’. Unwittingly, many a rich Protestant squatter has gone to his eternal rest with the coat of arms of the tiny Catholic village of Santa Sophia carved on the lid of his fancy Tasmanian blackwood coffin.

  George Thomas has left instructions, to be given to Coffin Nail, to measure up and make three caskets of pine, and give them the full mahogany varnish so to the uninitiated they will look like expensive Tasmanian blackwood.

  On the lid of each must be carved just the first name of the occupant, but at no greater cost than four shillings and sixpence per carving. This is a tender touch that George hopes will distract the mourners’ attention from the cheap varnished wood. He has spelt out each name carefully in capital letters so the dago won’t get it wrong: ‘ADA. GWEN. WINIFRED. @4/6d each.’

  Then he’s instructed that the interior of the coffins must be lined and padded in white Chinese satin, which is three shillings a yard cheaper than silk and readily available at Heathwood’s store in Narrandera. Upholstery studs and padding give the interior a prestigious appearance, of course.

  As for the exterior of the caskets, these he wants fitted with fancy handles, brass for the girls, silver plate for the mistress of the house. They are to be hired only, George’s offer of rent to Coffin Nail being one shilling a day for the brass and two for the silver plate, the handles to be redeemed by the gravedigger for threepence a fixture after the mourners have gone home.

  Finally, Coffin Nail is to deliver the caskets to Riverview by Wednesday morning so that visitors may pay their last respects to the dear departed before they start to get on the nose, the funeral to be held the next day. George Thomas’s note sets out to make Coffin Nail aware, in no uncertain terms, that George knows his coffins, their prices and quality and every trick in the mortician’s book. The I-tal-yin is in for the very devil of a tongue-lashing and can expect a damn good whipping if he attempts to overcharge the owner of Riverview by so much as a silver sixpence. George is fond of saying that it pays to be precise with bloody foreigners about money. ‘Give them half a chance and they’d rob the wax from your ears and sell it back to you as altar candles!’ George Thomas got to be a bit of an expert on coffins during his riverboat days. He always carried at least four of the most fancy kind on board. These included two child’s caskets, children being the most likely to suddenly depart from the mortal coil and also subject to gestures of gross sentimentality. George has long ago learned the caskets that conveyed a child to heaven could command an outrageous price on earth.

  He’d also stock two basic adult caskets, as well as an assortment of expensive metal handles, locks, crucifixes and other decorations, pictures and paraphernalia, all at prices to be negotiated in the profitable. context of grief. George believes that death ought to line the pockets of the living, and that those stricken by sorrow will pay good cash.

  To the sorrowing husband, he would tap his knuckle against the hard wooden interior of a coffin and shake his head piously before looking his prospect in the eye.

  ‘Life was hard enough, my friend. She bore you six children in life and never complained, surely a little comfort in death wouldn’t go astray.’ Then he’d produce the four padded lining boards for the interior of the coffin, white silk for purity studded with purple upholstery studs.

  ‘Purple, the colour of Heaven’s majesty,’ he’d pronounce grandly, wiping an imaginary tear from his eye. If he sensed a little hesitancy in his prospect he’d point to the coffin and say, ‘This is the last carriage taking the dearly departed to the Kingdom of Heaven. We don’t want them angels opening the lid to bare boards and austerity now, does we?’

  Ridiculous as it may sound, the analogy of coffin turned into heavenly carriage to convey the dead to glory invariably worked. Coffins made George a tidy sum over the years, the coffin lining being the most profitable element. He seldom completed a trip up and down the Murrumbidgee without selling at least one coffin to a sheep station along the river.

  Corpses ripen quickly in the hot weather and shouldn’t be left lying around. Even in the meat cooler with the cross-breeze from the river playing over them they won’t go much beyond five days before they must be gutted and drained of a gallimaufry of fluids. This is the putrefaction, the noxious juices which roil and ferment as they prepare to burst through every available orifice, or build up and erupt in such an internal combustion as to split open the corpses’ bloated guts like an overripe melon.

  George Thomas can feel little true grief at the loss of his nagging wife and demanding daughters, but publicly he must be seen to pursue the killer with suitable outrage and vengeance, of course.

  To George Thomas’s credit, or so it seems, before setting out to hunt down Billy Simple he had attended to the bodies of his wife and daughters, carefully removing and pocketing the rings from their fingers and the chains from their necks. He swaddled their battered heads in cotton wool and bandages and then wrapped each in a damp bed sheet before winding them about with wool bale twine. He left enough of the sheet above each of their heads to make loops which he lashed with twine, so that each appeared to wear a linen topknot, to which he tied a ticket with their name. All this he di
d alone and asked only for the assistance of two of the assembled stockmen to help him hang his wife and two daughters by their loops onto hooks in the meat cooler, where they dangle with their feet only inches from the ground.

  Joe, Hester and Meg only hear Sam Cully’s news on Tuesday, the morning they are to leave Whitton for the homestead. They hear that the three Thomas women have been murdered, but they know nothing of what’s happened to Jessica. As far as they’re aware, Jessica doesn’t even know of the killings, although Joe is worried for her safety, what with a killer on the loose, and he’s keen to get back home.

  Hester and Meg profess themselves shocked and manage to shed a few tears when they stop off at a shop to purchase several yards of black crepe for their funeral bonnets.

  Later, on the journey home, they exclaim together about the awful calamity. Their eyes are downcast, but secretly both think it might be a lot easier to win Jack Thomas now that Ada is out of the way. Joe notices with a scowl that already there’s talk of inviting Jack over for tea after a respectable period of mourning. Soon enough Hester and Meg are worrying about how long such a period might be, and debating what gown Meg should wear when Jack comes over for the first time. In the end they agree on black with two white petticoats and a small clutch of yellow roses at Meg’s breast. The black dress is for sorrow, the white petticoats to show a glimmer of hope, and the yellow roses for friendship, of course, all to ensnare Jack Thomas.

  Billy Simple’s trial takes place in July, just eight weeks after Jessica has delivered him to the police magistrate at Narrandera. There’s been good rain in the Riverina the night before, rain from a sky that’s carried herringbone clouds for two days but has otherwise been dry-eyed, pale as a blister, for six months.

  The dust is settled, the sky clean and blue and there is the smell of hope in the air. Joe says a spot of unexpected rain turns people stupid, makes them think things they oughtn’t to, have hope they’re not entitled to, make plans only an idiot would contemplate.