Jessica

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘But your beautiful picnic basket?’ Jessica cries. ‘I won’t be able to give it back.’

  ‘Tush!’ Solly exclaims. ‘A keepsake. Miss Bergman, my dear, we miss you. The boychick and me, also Mrs Goldberg.’ He fishes for his bandanna and wipes at the corner of his eye. ‘So much we miss you, my dear.’

  Jessica looks at Solly and then at Moishe, and tears begin to roll slowly down her cheeks. ‘Oh dear, I’ve cried too much already and now I’m gunna cry again.’

  In an attempt to cheer her up Solly Goldberg suddenly declares, ‘So now we got a plan.’ Jessica looks up and sniffs. ‘A plan?’ ‘Turkeys!’

  Jessica looks over to Moishe for an explanation. ‘He wants you to breed turkeys, kosher turkeys for the shop. I told him you had ten acres. You know, like you told me, by the creek?’

  Astonished, Jessica turns to Solly Goldberg. ‘But how? How will I get them to you?’

  Moishe laughs. ‘Me again. I’ve worked out you’re only a few miles from the railway line, if you can manage to get the turkeys to Yanco Siding. To be kosher they must arrive alive here in Sydney, so they can be killed by the Shoshet according to the Jewish faith. We’ve worked out we can make a couple of wood and wire crates for you,’ he stretches his arms wide, ‘big ones that you can use to send us your turkeys once a week and we’ll send back the empty crates. It’s only an overnight trip and the experts say that with enough water the turkeys should arrive hale and hearty. I’ve written to the Hawkesbury Agricultural College for the know-how,’ he explains enthusiastically, then adds, ‘we’ll pay the rail charges, of course.’

  ‘But will it be profitable? I mean, the turkeys comin’ all that way?’

  Solly Goldberg has remained silent while his son explains the plan to Jessica. Now he says, ‘Miss Bergman, you make for me a nice turkey, we make money — we got a nice business.’

  ‘Turkeys, eh?’ Jessica muses, not altogether displeased by the notion. ‘Joe said turkeys are the dumbest things there is.’

  Solly shrugs his shoulders. ‘So? We don’t tell them what happens, they think maybe they come to make a holiday by the seaside.’ He laughs at his own joke, his jowls wobbling in unison with his great belly.

  ‘Mr Goldberg, I owe you and Moishe so much!’

  ‘Owe? Tush, we are your friends. From friends you don’t owe.’ He looks over at Moishe and then back at Jessica. ‘Miss Bergman, you give me back my boychick, it is me who owes you! Believe me, I know what I am saying.’

  Moishe kicks one boot with the toe-cap of the other, not looking up. ‘He’s right, Jessie, without you I’d never have got out of there.’

  ‘Exact!’ Solly exclaims. ‘Listen to the Communist, he’s right, Miss Bergman.’

  It is almost time to go and Jessica now enters the carriage and a moment later appears at the window of the compartment. She moves the hamper along the seat, using it to reserve a place for Richard Runche, who has not as yet reappeared. Jessica keeps glancing anxiously towards the platform gate. ‘Mr Runche, he’s gunna be late,’ she finally says, concerned. ‘Maybe I should fetch him?’

  ‘Fetch him? Where is he?’ Moishe asks.

  ‘In the pub.’

  ‘What, here in the station?’

  Jessica nods, a little uncertain. ‘I think so.’

  ‘I’ll go fetch him,’ Moishe volunteers. He has taken several steps towards the platform gate, when he stops and turns. ‘How will I recognise him?’

  ‘He’s got a mushed-up brown hat and he drinks claret,’ Jessica says.

  Moishe looks doubtful but turns and continues on his way. ‘His name’s Runche, like lunch,’ Jessica calls after him.

  As soon as his son is out of earshot Solly takes two five-pound notes from his pocket. ‘Miss Bergman, I want you should buy turkeys.’ He hesitates for a moment, then adds, ‘For the business.’

  ‘No, I can’t take it, Mr Goldberg. I dunno what’s waiting for me when I get back — not much I expect,” Jessica protests.

  ‘Take, take, no matter what’s waiting a little money can’t do no harm.’

  But Jessica knows she can’t take the money. The stubborn Bergman pride won’t let her do it. Sadly Solly seems to sense she won’t be persuaded and he puts the notes back in his pocket.

  ‘Miss Bergman, I tell you a story. When I come here from Poland, we all Jews, we come they call it “cattle class” all together below decks on that small ship. Believe me, it’s not so good. I got no money, nothing, not even two shillings. I’m a butcher by trade, I got a set knives. Beautiful knives. Without that knives, you understand, I got no trade. I don’t speak English, only Yiddish and German and maybe some Hebrew for shul.

  ‘A friend, a Jew, he tells me, “Come, Solomon, I take you to the abattoirs on Glebe Island, they got jobs.” But the shop steward of the union say, “Sorry, you got no English, no job, mate.” We go to the boss. I say to my friend, “Tell this boss, he show me a carcass, I show him I can do this job good, I don’t need English to cut meat.”

  ‘The boss he say, “Righto, Jewboy,” and he give me a pig.’ Solly Goldberg smiles and shrugs his shoulders. ‘What can I do? I can’t cut up for him this pig, I’m a Jew. “A cow,” I say to my friend, “ask him a cow or a sheep.”

  ‘’’Jew!’’ that boss say. “If you don’t cut a pig no work for you. It’s home on the pig’s back here, mate!” All the men they are laughing. A big joke, the Jew don’t cut a pig. Then when we leaving some of them, some of those men they come. “Bloody Jewboy, you want to take our jobs, eh?” They beat me and my friend, also they steal my knives. “Teach you a bloody lesson, Jew!”

  ‘’’We go to the police,” my friend says.

  ‘’’The police? What for? You meshugganah!” I say. “You think the police they will do something?” , “They got here fair go,” he say.

  ‘’’Fair go?” I don’t know what is this “fair go”. I know only in Poland a poor Jew don’t go to the police. So we go to that police station, but my friend is wrong, they ain’t got no “fair go”. The sergeant he say to my friend, “Tell your friend this is union business, not police business.’”

  Solly looks at Jessica and spreads his hands. ‘What can I do?’ He laughs suddenly. ‘In the cell in this police station we can see is a man standing. He is listening to my friend. We go to leave. “Hey, mate!” he shouts, this man. “You! Jewboy! C’me ‘ere!” Jew is already a word I understand good in English. I look him, this man.’

  Solly makes a beckoning motion with his right hand, ‘’’C’me ‘ere,” he says. “Come ‘ere, Jew.” My friend and me we look first the sergeant, then we go to the man. The man he asks the sergeant some paper and pencil. Then he write something, I don’t know what it is. He fold the paper and he say, “Fair go, mate. Give this to Bill O’Grady at the abattoir.’”

  Solly Goldberg laughs, fingering his fat nose. ‘My nose they have breaking, my side they kick, my lip is cut and my teeth is bleeding inside my mouth. What is this “fair go”? Why we go back that place? That abattoir kish mit in hinten, I say to my friend.’

  Jessica laughs. ‘That abattoir can kiss my bum,’ she translates, remembering.

  Solly smiles, delighted that Jessica has remembered, then he continues. ‘ “We got fair go,” my friend says. So, we go back the abattoir and ask they call please Mr Bill O’Grady. He come outside. “Don’t youse bastards know when yer beaten?” he says. I give him the paper. He reads and shakes his head. Then he throws down the paper on the floor. “Shit, wait on,” he says. He go back inside the abattoir. I pick up the paper on the floor He comes back, maybe two, three minutes, he’s got my leather bag, inside is my knives. “Garn, piss off!” he say. “We don’t want no Jews and dagoes workin’ here on the Island.” , Sally Goldberg takes out a battered wallet and from it he removes a piece of yellowing paper and hands it to Jessica. She unfolds it carefully and can barely make out the
words in faded pencil.

  Fair go, mate, give the Jewboy back his tools.

  Johnny Murphy.

  Jessica smiles, nodding her head, and hands the note back to Sally, who now says, ‘Soon I am getting work also. From cutting chickens! To cut a chicken is not so important, but my life, it begins already again. I marry one day Mrs Goldberg, we got the boychick, we got the kosher butcher shop.’ Sally spreads his hands again. ‘What can I say? God is good.’ Then he takes the two five-pound notes out of his pocket and offers them to Jessica again. ‘Miss Bergman, now you got “fair go” also. Today I pay back Mr Johnny Murphy.’

  Jessica’s hands shake as she takes the two fivers and stuffs them into the envelope with Jack’s letters. Then she leans out of the carriage window and kisses Sally. ‘I love you so, Mr Goldberg.’

  Sally rubs his cheek where Jessica has kissed him, a rueful smile on his great melon-face. ‘Maybe also you can do me a big favour, Miss Bergman,’ he says shyly.

  ‘Maybe, now we do business, you can call me Sally?’

  ‘And you call me Jessie,’ Jessica whispers, her eyes brimming again.

  ‘We got a business, Jessie,’ Sally says, smiling hugely, then he extends his great bear paw. Jessie takes it into her own small hand and they shake, business partners no less.

  ‘I won’t let yiz down, Solly. I swear it.’ There is a shrill blast from the conductor’s whistle. ‘All aboard what’s goin’ aboard!’ he shouts and blows his whistle again. Jessica looks anxiously at the platform gate, just in time to see Moishe with his arm around Richard Runche KC who, from the way he appears to be leaning on the young man for support, is somewhat the worse for wear. Moishe holds the barrister’s battered suitcase in his free hand and is trying to run, though Runche’s legs flop like a rag doll’s, t,wo steps behind and seemingly only barely able to connect with the surface of the platform. In the lawyer’s coat pocket, bobbing dangerously up and down, is a bottle of claret.

  Jessica gasps, holding her hand to her mouth as Moishe staggers to the carriage, dropping the suitcase at Solly’s feet as he passes. The train starts to move away and Moishe hardly has time to open the carriage door and push the top part of his burden onto the train. He begins to run alongside the departing train, feeding the remaining half of the barrister piecemeal onto the carriage. Finally, some twenty yards down the platform, Moishe manages to get Runche’s feet onto the train and to shut the carriage door.

  Jessica, stuck at the carriage window and unable to go to Moishe’s immediate aid, is trying hard not to laugh.

  Meanwhile, Solly has picked up the lawyer’s suitcase and handed it to Jessica. Then, as if he has suddenly remembered something, he starts to dig frantically into his jacket pockets, attempting at the same time to keep up with the moving train. At last he finds what he is looking for and he thrusts a piece of folded paper at Jessica. ‘Compliments Mrs Goldberg,’ he shouts, ‘take quick, Jessie!’

  Jessica reaches out of the compartment window and takes the piece of paper from Solly and absently thrusts it into the manila envelope. ‘Goodbye, Moishe!’ she shouts. ‘Goodbye, Solly, I love you both!’

  Moishe looks up, panting furiously. He lifts one hand from his knee and waves weakly, unable to speak, while Solly has his hands on his hips, also trying to catch his breath.

  Jessica watches into the fading light until they appear as two tiny figures on the brightly lit platform, the one round as a ball and the other thin as a school pencil. The train takes a slight bend in the maze of crisscrossing silver tracks leading out of Central Station and the Goldbergs are finally lost to her sight. Jessica gets up to help her drunken travelling companion to his feet and safely into the compartment.

  The train is well into the night and a million stars are pinned to the blanket of darkness as Jessica watches out of the compartment window. Richard Runche is slumped asleep beside her though thankfully not snoring.

  He has woken several times for a few moments and each time he’s looked blearily at Jessica and touched his battered derby. ‘Unconscionable, my dear, must apologise, shocking, shocking,’ he mumbles, reaching for the bottle in his jacket pocket, uncorking it clumsily and taking a long swig. ‘Hair of the dog, m’dear,’ he says.

  Re-corking the bottle, he replaces it into his jacket pocket and, almost immediately, slips back into a drunken slumber.

  The carriage is in darkness and the other four passengers are attempting to sleep, so that Jessica is unable to read the final letter from Jack. She has her feet placed on the ‘Compliments Mrs Goldberg’ basket, which has been moved to the floor, but decides she should wait until breakfast before opening it, hoping to share its contents with her badly hungover companion.

  The light from the passageway falls across the lawyer’s face and Jessica looks at him kindly. He was true to his word and, after visiting Jessica in the asylum that day, he set out to find Mary Simpson, finally locating her in an Aboriginal camp near Yanco. Mary took him to the tin hut where, just as Jessica had said, they found the tiny Chinese silk dress under the straw mattress — the dress the aunties had given Jessica for her baby. After talking to Mary, who fully corroborated what Jessica had told him, Richard Runche KC was soon convinced that Jessica’s story was true in every aspect and that Meg’s so-called son — Joseph ‘Joey’ Thomas, the heir to Riverview Station — is indeed Jessica’s child.

  However, Runche was too much of a realist to believe that he could win the child back for its true mother in a court of law. The Chinese dress was, at best, circumstantial evidence and could easily enough be construed as yet another example of Jessica’s delusions. The word of an Aboriginal woman who claimed to have been present shortly after the birth of the child would not be taken against that of Hester Bergman and her daughter, Meg Thomas.

  Furthermore, he told himself, even if he did make a reasonable case for the child, a judge, deciding in the final sense what was advantageous for the boy, would be unlikely to give custody to the true mother.

  Joseph ‘Joey’ Thomas, the judge would conclude, is likely to enjoy every possible advantage as the child of Meg Thomas and little or none under the care of Jessica, a woman who had just spent a period of nearly four years in a mental asylum.

  The barrister decided he had only one thing going for him. He had to confront Hester and Meg and threaten them with the prospect of a claim on the property by George Thomas and any other family members he might be able to dig up. He’d tell the two women outright that he would inform the Thomas relatives that a serious doubt existed as to the true parentage of the child, that Jack’s son and heir was not from his own loins. Furthermore, he’d say that he has reliable witnesses who are prepared to testify to this fact and that in his experience, the news of a fortune to be divided would bring the familial wolves howling to the door.

  However, this meant that, in return for what concessions he could wring from Meg Thomas for Jessica, she in turn must give up all claims to her child. Richard Runche KC reasoned that, harsh as this outcome might seem, it was a better solution than leaving his client to rot in an asylum where she’d have no hope of being reunited with her child anyway.

  And so he rides out to Riverview Station on his hired horse to confront Meg and Hester. He had spent the past three nights in Jessica’s hut and he looks even more derelict than usual. He sets out after a breakfast of half a bottle of claret and a tin of sardines and arrives at the Thomas homestead around mid-morning.

  It is Hester who first comes to the door. She takes one look at the forlorn-looking little man standing in front of her and it is obvious she doesn’t much like what she sees.

  ‘If you want work, see the foreman at the office. If you want something to eat, go round the back and ask the cook,’ she instructs bluntly, beginning to turn away. Richard Runche raises his battered derby. ‘Ah, a moment please, madam?’ Hester turns haughtily. ‘You must be Mrs Bergman, Mrs Hester Bergman?’


  Hester looks surprised. ‘Yes?’ she replies, her voice a little more cautious as she notes Runche’s cultured tone. ‘How do you do, madam? May I introduce myself? Richard Runche. You may well have heard of me?’ ‘I really don’t think so, Mr Runche,’ Hester sniffs.

  ‘I met your youngest daughter Jessica at the William D’arcy Simon trial.’ ‘Who?’ .

  ‘Oh yes, how careless of me. You would probably know him locally by the sobriquet Billy Simple. I was the counsel for the poor lad’s defence.’ ‘Fat lot of good you did him,’ Hester snorts, her confidence now fully restored. Joe had told her about the drunken barrister Jessie had been to see on the idiot’s behalf. ‘If you want my daughter Jessie, she doesn’t live here, she’s in Sydney.’

  ‘Well, yes, I am aware of that. I have come to see your other daughter, Mrs Meg Thomas. Is she in?’ Runche now asks brightly, ignoring Hester’s snub.

  Just then Meg comes to the door. ‘Who is it, Mother?’ ‘This is William D’arcy Simon’s lawyer,’ Hester says tartly. ‘Who?’

  ‘Billy Simple, madam. May I introduce myself? My name is Runche — Richard Runche.’

  Meg smiles inwardly. She recalls the name, not only from Jessica and Joe, but from the newspapers reporting the trial which had, on several occasions, mentioned the notorious Liquid Lunch, the incompetent barrister in charge of Billy Simple’s defence.

  ‘How do you do, Mr Runche,’ Meg replies, glancing knowingly at Hester.

  ‘Do you think I might come in? I’ve taken the liberty of giving my horse to your stable boy to mind.’

  Meg nods and she and Hester step aside to let Richard Runche pass through to the large, cool enclosed verandah which contains a wicker setting, four chairs and a small table. A large marmalade cat is asleep on one of the chairs. Richard Runche removes his hat and looks about him. He indicates the chairs. ‘Shall we sit here?’ he asks. ‘Mother, could you ask Martha to bring us some tea,’ Meg says. ‘Yes, sit down, Mr Lunch.’