Jessica

by Bryce Courtenay

  On the afternoon following the fire, Jessica returns to the burnt-down homestead from Yanco Siding, where she’s arranged for Solly Goldberg’s beautiful gift to be brought to Redlands. Finding a slightly cracked glass preserving jar near the windlass, she washes it clean and then walks among the still-warm ashes until she locates what remains of her cot. Jessica tells herself she has come to rid herself of the terrible curse her mother had placed on her by arranging Billy Simple’s bloody garments on her bed. Jessica is certain now her mother was mad, for she must have kept Billy Simple’s garments after finding them in the tub beside the windlass after Hester, Joe and Meg had returned from the reading of Agnes’s will in Whitton — the incident of the famous silver tea service.

  Using a twig to poke among the debris, Jessica collects almost half a jarful of tiny burnt scraps that were Billy Simple’s shirt and moleskins. She thinks to herself that some of the now invisible blood soaked into the material is Billy’s own and he has paid the ultimate price for his sins. It is time to bury them together with his virtues.

  And so she’d buried the preserving jar with the tiny scraps of burnt cotton under the gravestone. In her mind, she restored Billy Simple from being a nonperson buried in quicklime to the real person who had once been her and Jack’s good mate.

  From that day on, Jessica truly believed in her heart that there was more of the true spirit of Billy Simple lying under the beautiful old river gum, with the quiet stream flowing by, than ever there could be in the chalky remains beneath the hard, anonymous flagstones of Long Bay Prison.

  Now almost five years have passed since the Bergman homestead burnt down and tomorrow, before she and Rusty drive the turkeys to the railway, Jessica must put flowers on Billy’s grave. It will be 6 August 1923, nine years since the day war was declared in Europe and since Billy’s short life ended at dawn. The first of the wattle is already out and in the morning before they leave she’ll pick a bunch of the brilliant yellow blossom for Billy’s grave.

  Jessica watches as the rabbits come down to drink, bunching together and pushing each other as though the only spot along the broad creek bank is the yard of pebbles selected by those who have arrived first. She feeds a single cartridge into the right-hand barrel of the twelve-bore and pulls back the hammer. Rusty now stands beside her, his tongue lolling, his ears pricked up, waiting expectantly for the sound of the shotgun blast.

  When it comes, he rushes forward, barking and splashing through the shallows to stand on the furthermost bank even before the echo of the shotgun has fully died down. He sniffs at the dead rabbits, pushing at four or five with his nose as though to make sure they’re dead, barking his head off all the while. One of the rabbits tries to crawl away and Rusty quickly snaps it up and crosses over the stream to where Jessica sits. He drops it at her feet, and Jessica reaches down for the rabbit and snaps its neck, putting it out of its misery. Rusty then returns across the creek until eventually nine dead rabbits lie at her feet. Jessica pats him on the head. ‘For a sheep-dog who herds turkeys yiz a bloody good retriever, Rusty dog,’ she laughs.

  Jessica reaches over for her hunting knife and, picking up a plump rabbit, she cuts around the fur at the extremity of the back and front legs then draws the knife up the inside of the back legs, making an incision to the top of the inside haunch. Then she pulls the pelt over the remainder of the body up to the rabbit’s head, and quickly cuts around the neck and pulls the entire pelt over the head, clean as a whistle. The whole process takes her less than a minute and she lays the pelt aside and gives the rabbit to Rusty, who trots off happily to take his dinner under a nearby saltbush.

  In less than ten minutes Jessica has skinned all the rabbits and stretched each of the pelts across a wire U-frame. Then she takes them to the turkey run behind the hut, where she hangs them high up on the chicken wire to dry out.

  Jessica returns to the hut and cuts up three of the rabbits for the stew pot. It is nearly spring and the late winter rain has put a good topping of grass on the plains, so that the rabbits are nice and plump. She puts another aside for Rusty’s dinner the following day. The remaining rabbits she prepares to throw into the creek where the crayfish, redfin and yellow-belly will clean them up a treat or, if any should wash onto the bank further down, a fox or a crow will make a welcome meal of it. It is her contribution to Joe’s world of ‘everything lives off something else’ — a free feed for which some creature, fish, fowl or four-legged animal, won’t have to work too hard.

  Usually Jessica waits an hour or so before disposing of the surplus rabbit meat. Often enough, one or two of the aunties from the nearby Aboriginal camp — some of Mary Simpson’s mob — will hear the shotgun blast at sunset and come on over and get the rabbits Jessica doesn’t need.

  Jessica wakes at dawn to the sound of roosters crowing and makes a fire outside the hut. While the billy boils she washes at the creek and then, with Rusty by her side, she walks over to a wattle tree near the bank and cuts a large sprig of the brilliant yellow blossom. She returns with it and puts it down for later, when she will go to Billy’s grave. Now she pours boiling water from the billy into a pot and stirs in three or four handfuls of oats and puts the pot back on the embers. With the remaining water in the billy she makes tea. Jessica watches the oats impatiently, stirring the pot frequently as she sips at the mug of sweet, dark tea. When the oatmeal is set she eats quickly, straight from the pot, blowing frequently at the hot porridge on her spoon. After only a few spoonfuls she puts the remaining porridge into Rusty’s dish and mixes a little of last night’s cold rabbit stew in with it. Rusty is smart enough to know that it’s too hot to eat and he settles down beside his dish, whining with impatience. ‘Be careful, ya’ll burn yer tongue,’ Jessica says absently as she fills a jam jar with water for the wattle blossom.

  The birds are already calling out in the river gums, their morning song well under way, and Jessica stops and watches briefly as a grey heron glides down to land on a rock near the far bank of the creek. This morning the kookaburras are winning the contest, which they usually do. The turkeys, of course, are having their say, gobbling away nineteen to the dozen, expecting to be let out of the run, but the river birds are more than a match for them. Carrying the jar of wattle blossom and a damp cloth, Jessica walks the short distance to Billy Simple’s grave. She has ‘buried’ him between the smooth white folds of two large surface roots belonging to the giant river gum, placing the cross exactly where she’d once put her baby on Christmas morning 1914, when her family had arrived to find she’d given birth to Joey.

  For Jessica this is a sacred spot. Not only is it the site of Billy Simple’s gravestone, but for her it has come to symbolise Jack’s death as well. At the end of the day she often comes to sit under the tree beside the gravestone to think of Jack and to read his faded letters.

  Jessica places the jar to one side and begins to wipe the face of the cross with the damp cloth. On every occasion she does this she thinks of Solly Goldberg who, so many years ago now, out of the goodness of his heart, commissioned the fine cross of polished grey granite just to please her.

  How wonderful he has been to her over the years, taking her turkeys and even giving them a name, so that a ‘Redlands Turkey’ is known amongst the Jewish community in Sydney as the very best there is. It is a turkey with a unique flavour that, curiously, needs no salt. Jessica once explained to Solly in a letter that this came about because the birds constantly pecked at saltbush.

  In his very next letter to her Solly wrote, ‘So let me tell you the wonderful news, my dear. Now I am selling turkeys “salted by Mother Nature”. You like it? For this, Mrs Turkey Shopper must pay one shilling more!’

  Jessica wipes the side and the back of the granite cross and then places the jar of wattle down in front of it. She pulls back slightly to admire her handiwork and then, with her finger, she traces the inscription across the arms and down the centre to its base while quietly recitin
g the Lord’s Prayer.

  William D’arcy Simon

  ‘Billy Simple’

  A great

  mate

  to

  Jack

  and

  Jessica

  R.I.P.

  * 1892-1914 *

  Finally she reaches to the back of the cross, to the plinth where her finger finds the small inscription written in Yiddish: Mit’n Best’n Vinchen By Mrs Goldberg, which she knows in English means ‘Compliments Mrs Goldberg’.

  It takes a good part of the day to herd the turkeys to the siding and get them into their wire packing cages and to feed, water and settle them down. Jessica collects her library book sent up the line by Miss French and leaves the one she must return and then she goes to visit Joe’s grave at St Stephen’s. By two o’clock she must be outside the schoolyard in the hope that she might catch a glimpse of young Joey, who has grown into a robust and noisy eight-year-old. The child has blue eyes and fair hair and it’s not too hard to see he’s a Bergman.

  On the days she sees him, Jessica nearly chokes with her love for her son as she watches him get onto his pony and start out for home with two other boys. Sometimes he’ll look at her and once he’d ridden up and squinted up at her. ‘Why are you dressed like a man, missus?’ he’d asked.

  Confronted suddenly by the small boy, she couldn’t think of anything to say. ‘Hello, Joey,’ Jessica said shyly. ‘Do you like school?’

  ‘I know who you are,’ Joey said suddenly, ‘you’re the turkey lady! My mum says I’m not to talk to you ever!’ Then he’d turned his pony about and, laughing, cantered off to join his friends.

  Jessica waits outside the school religiously every week after she’s sent off her turkeys and visited Joe’s grave, but she is never again to talk to her son while he remains at the school. Whenever she appears, the schoolmistress, casting dark looks in Jessica’s direction, escorts Joey to the gate and sees him on his way.

  However, she can still observe him closely every week. If he has a cut or a bandage Jessica wonders how he’s hurt himself and once, when he’d broken his arm, she’d gone nearly crazy worrying about him, despite telling herself repeatedly that it was pretty common boy’s stuff and that the arm would come to no harm. Another time, when there had been a measles epidemic and half the school was away, Joey had not been seen for two weeks and a frantic Jessica determined that if he was not back in the following week, she’d ride out to Riverview to confront Hester and Meg. But the next time she arrived he’d turned up looking no worse for the experience.

  On several occasions the same schoolmistress gathers her courage and, after seeing Joey to the gate, comes over to remonstrate with Jessica, telling her to please go away, implying that Mrs Thomas had sent word that she was not welcome at the school. Though on each such occasion Jessica sent her off with a flea in her ear, pointing out that she was standing in public property outside the schoolyard and that Meg, far as she knew, didn’t own the school.

  On the afternoon of the anniversary of Billy Simple’s death and after she visits the school, Jessica takes the pony cart into Yanco to collect her mail, go to the bank and do her shopping. She usually arrives back at Redlands just before sunset. While she finds it a pleasant enough excursion into town and enjoys the brief conversations with the shopkeepers and the bank teller, she’s always grateful when she reaches the creek.

  Hester and Meg have assumed the role previously held by Ada Thomas and her two daughters and have become the local bullies. Their presence in the district means that the townsfolk treat Jessica with caution. Jessica is seen as a woman who lives on her own in what amounts to not much more than a blackfella’s humpy. It is not at all the sort of thing an Anglican woman should do.

  The local rumour has it that Jessica has plenty of money in the bank and could easily afford better. While this isn’t true, Solly Goldberg does send her a little more money for her turkeys than she needs to spend. After four years of selling him turkeys she’s got a bob or two to spare, but Jessica is by no means well-off or able to afford a better house. Besides, she is terrified of the respectability a properly built home would mean.

  Jessica tells herself that with the trappings of conformity — and there is none better than a new house — she would have to become respectable. This idea, in a community where the pecking order is dominated by her sister and her mother, terrifies her.

  Memories in the bush are long, too, and Jessica’s attack on her mother at Joe’s funeral has never been quite forgotten. There cannot be anyone in the district who doesn’t know she’s spent time in the loony-bin, Jessica reckons — she can see this all in people’s eyes as she passes them on the footpath.

  What’s more, Jessica has a reputation for going around with the blacks, of being seen from time to time with Aboriginal women. It’s not long before the tattletales in the district begin to suggest that where there are black women there are also black men. Eyes roll knowingly at afternoon tea parties, allowing the listeners to form their own grubby conclusions as they nibble on lamingtons and dainty sandwiches.

  Not long after Jessica had returned and moved into the hut at Yanco Creek, the Reverend Mathews, M.A. Oxon., called by one morning to pay his respects. Jessica had promptly sent him packing. ‘Bugger off, yer old hypocrite, or yiz’ll get a blast of birdshot up yer sanctimonious arse!’ she’d yelled at him.

  ‘Sanctimonious’ was a word she’d learned from Moishe Goldberg, who’d once used it to describe the Presbyterian chaplain who came to Callan Park. Jessica hadn’t imagined that she would ever have the opportunity to use such a long and elegant-sounding word in its correct context.

  ‘Sanctimonious bastard!’ she’d repeated, just to hear the sound of the word again, as the clergyman’s horse and trap did an about face and charged off, sending the chooks helter-skelter in a flurry of feathers and setting the turkeys to gobbling overtime.

  Jessica senses the silent antipathy towards her and keeps to herself — more and more she is becoming a loner. Even at Christmas time, when she rides the twelve hours into Narrandera to visit Dolly, she finds herself, after only a few hours in Dolly’s loquacious company, anxious to get back to the quiet of Redlands and to the company of Rusty and the comfort of a good book.

  Jessica does not think of herself as reclusive and is certainly not lonely. Mary Simpson has remained her friend and spends a lot of time with Jessica when she’s about. The little Aboriginal woman with her tribe of kids isn’t always around, though, as Mary disappears sometimes for weeks at a time. She calls it ‘goin’ walkabout’, but on her return, when she’s closely questioned by Jessica, it invariably turns out there was some bloke involved, and not always an Aboriginal neither. Jessica will sigh and ask, ‘Has he got you in the family way, Mary?’

  Mary will shake her head and frown. ‘Men, they’s pigs, Jessie. All they thinks of is grog and nookie.’

  ‘Mary, you’ve got four kids, not counting them that’s grown and gorn away. Four kids to four different blokes, you’ve got to learn to bloody say no!’

  Mary laughs ruefully. ‘That ain’t our way, Jessie. Aboriginal woman can’t say no to her man.’

  Jessica grows angry. ‘Her husband, yes! But you ain’t married to these blokes, these bloody no-hopers — some of them ain’t even blackfellas! Your real husband buggered off after your second baby. You’ve got a kid every colour of the bloody rainbow, there’s not a full-blood among ‘em. It’s bullshit, Mary, you’ve gotta stop! You’re thirty years old, you don’t want to have any more flamin’ babies. How’s you gunna bring up decent what you’ve got already?’

  ‘I loves them, Jessie, they’re good kids. It’s the blokes what’s bad bastards, not them kids.’

  ‘And it’s you with your legs open that’s just as bad,’ Jessica snorts.

  When Mary goes walkabout, leaving her kids with the aunties, while she goes to the Warangesda
Aboriginal Settlement, or Grong Grong or the sandhills, Jessica sees they’re supplied with ample rabbit meat and flour for damper. It’s how the aunties have learned to come when they hear the shotgun blast. Often, when she’s in town, she’ll buy clothes for them and for the other little ragamuffins who seem to breed like flies in the black fellas’ camp. Jessica loves Mary’s children and they adore her. With some of the other little snot-noses they often come over to the creek to swim and she’ll make a great big pot of rabbit stew and give them handfuls of sugar or boiled lollies she’s bought in town as a special treat. And so Jessica has earned the reputation of ‘hangin’ about with the bloody blacks’.

  Jessica arrives back at Redlands in the late afternoon on the anniversary of Billy Simple’s death to find her friend Mary waiting for her. Mary turns to greet her and Jessica sees that she’s been sobbing.

  ‘What’s wrong, Mary?’ she asks, but the little Aboriginal woman doesn’t say. Jessica isn’t too concerned Mary often comes around for a bit of a blub, usually after having been beaten by some worthless bastard, the father of one of her kids arriving in the camp drunk as a skunk. ‘Wait on, I’ll be there in a tick, just let me remove this saddle and bridle and let the pony have a drink.’ Jessica carries the saddle and bridle and puts them under the lean-to, allowing the pony to take himself to the water. She then turns to the disconsolate Mary.

  ‘Some bloke, is it? Been to Warangesda again, has ya?’ she asks.

  Mary is sitting on a rock beside the creek and she turns to look at Jessica. ‘They took my kids,’ she says, sniffing.

  ‘Who? Who took your kids?’

  ‘The whitefellas. They made me sign a paper, then they took them.’

  ‘Mary, you can read — what did the paper say?’ Jessica runs over and takes Mary in her arms.