Jessica (34 page)

After breakfast she goes down to the pig pen and separates the two young sows and old Maude, the ageing sow. The old girl has in her time produced numerous piglets but now seldom becomes a farrowing sow. When she does, the piglets usually die or are crushed by her rolling on them. Jessica calls to the sows, who follow her, grunting loudly, smelling the cabbage leaves in her hand. She leads them into a small holding pen they use for breeding when the weather is warmer.

The boar is a cranky old bastard, usually handled by Joe, and Jessica approaches him with some trepidation.

But he's sighted the three sows and the cabbage leaves she's placed in their pen. When released from his enclosure he makes straight for them, although, once in, he seems more interested in feeding his face than in servicing his womenfolk.

With winter well advanced, Jessica can't imagine why Joe wants the sows to breed. It isn't good farming practice — the freezing cold, or a sudden frost in the early mornings, will often enough kill off a litter and, besides, the sows require extra rations to keep up their milk supply.

The household settles down to some semblance of normalcy.
In
the weeks that follow Joe still works apart from Jessica, and it is obvious from the things that are left undone about the place that he is slowing down considerably.

Joe seems to be working most days down by the creek where the old boundary rider's hut is situated and he mentions that he's decided to try breeding turkeys. This statement is made without explanation when Jessica ventures to ask him what he's doing in a part of the selection where there is normally little work to do. She is surprised at her father's response, for poultry breeding had been one of Jack's so-called harebrained ideas. With the telegraph and the train line coming through in a year or two, the Sydney and Melbourne market will open up, he claimed, and poultry might be the go for smaller properties where labour is the sole responsibility of the family on the land. At one of their Sunday dinners he'd told them all that with irrigation the grain and the green needed for turkeys could be grown, that live poultry in special trucks could easily enough be sent off, bred for the Christmas market when the lambing and calving season was well over. Jessica can't recall that Joe had shown any enthusiasm for Jack's idea at the time and so she is surprised and at the same time hurt that he hasn't invited her to see what he is doing or to share in the task. But she knows well enough to stay away from the section where he works, trying for her part to keep the remainder of the paddocks going as best she can.

A month after she'd let the old boar in with the sows Jessica comes back in from the cow paddock for breakfast one Saturday morning to see Joe emerge from the pig pen with his hands and arms covered in blood up to the elbow and carrying a zinc bucket covered with a piece of hessian.

He stops only long enough to say, ‘I'll need yer help after breakfast, girlie.'

‘What for, Father? Have you slaughtered old Maude?'

‘Nah, the two young ‘uns. You'll help me to dress them and make bacon. Scrub out a pickling barrel, will ya?' He continues on his way over to the well to wash, taking the bucket with him.

Jessica is alarmed and confused. The two sows were a pedigree cross, Berkshire and Saddleback, which Joe had selected for his breeding stock after a great deal of care. They'd cost a fair whack, more than Joe could rightly afford, and he'd been that proud of them. She's surprised that he'd let them breed so young and now, for no good reason, he's slaughtered them. It doesn't make sense, Jessica thinks — both were in prime health.

He couldn't want them for ham, as they were not yet old enough to make a good-sized hindquarter.

She goes into breakfast puzzled, but no further explanation is forthcoming from her father. Jessica spends the better part of the day with him and by its end her hands are red and puffed from the near-boiling water used to scrape the hair from the skin, and they hurt from the exposure to the brine and spices in the bacon trough and pickling barrel. Throughout it all Joe remains grimly silent.

After the evening meal Hester and Meg talk about inviting Mrs Baker to Sunday dinner after church the following morning. Jessica is surprised — while Hester sometimes visits the old girl, she's not, by her own admission, all that fond of her. Even by Hester and Meg's standards, Mrs Baker is sanctimonious and, as well, a terrible old whinger and gossip.

‘A nice feed of pork chops and a bit of crackling will do the old dear a power of good,' Hester asserts to no one in particular. ‘She's poor as a church mouse and eats like a bird. I'm sure that's what mostly ails her.' Then she turns to Joe. ‘Will that be all right, Joe?' She doesn't wait for his answer before she concludes, ‘Good then, we'll bring her home with us after morning service.' Hester now turns to Jessica. ‘You'll need to stay out of the way, Jessica. I don't want Mrs Baker seeing you in your condition. She's a fearful old gossip and the whole world will know in a day. You'll be in your room when we return from St Stephen's and I'll thank you to stay there until your father takes her home later on in the afternoon.'

They are the most words Hester has spoken to her in a week. The previous time her mother had addressed her was to point out that Meg was beginning to show, making her eldest daughter stand up and spread her hands tightly across either side of her stomach so that Jessica might see the slight bulge under the brown bombazine of her sister's dress. ‘Such a pretty little bulge,' Hester said, smiling benignly up at Meg.

Jessica does not reply to her mother, but rises slowly, almost painfully, from the table to go to her room. It has been a tiring day. Slaughtering and dressing pork is hard work and Joe seems less able to do his usual share. With all the bending, lifting and carrying, scalding and scraping the bristles from the skin and cutting up the carcasses, Jessica's back also aches something terrible. Besides, her baby has been unusually active and she is sore all over and exhausted. She washes-herself carefully and retires gratefully to her cot, glad to spend the afternoon of the following day alone in her own room.

Jessica spends the next morning doing her usual Sunday chores until shortly past noon, when she sees the sulky approaching across the saltbush plain leading from the river, whereupon she dutifully retires to her bedroom.

She is happy enough to accept the enforced rest, as she doesn't much care for Mrs Baker — a dreadful and interfering old gossip who spends most of her waking hours complaining to anyone who will listen about the poor state of her health. This, she will tirelessly explain, has been brought about by a peculiar condition of her heart, which, according to a famous Sydney physician she'd once seen, doesn't throb to a regular cadence like everyone else's. It seems Mrs Baker's heart is known to miss a beat every so often, a condition known as
arrhythmia.
Accordingly, her dicky heart is always on the verge of giving up the ghost. She explains that it is something to do with the way it ticks, which she refers to as her
arithmetic.
She will conclude with a deep and distinctly mournful sigh and declare, ‘A body could drop dead this very moment from me arithmetic.'

As long as anyone can remember, the organist at St Stephen's has pronounced to all and sundry that she is living on borrowed time. ‘My life is a gift from the Lord, only He knows the day and the hour,' she will say melodramatically. ‘I ask only that He take me to Paradise while I am seated at the organ in praise of His precious name.'

And so Jessica had taken a plate of roast pork and potatoes into the bedroom with her and concluded happily that being absent from any dinner table shared by Mrs Baker is no hardship.

Jessica is completely unaware of her mother's true reason for inviting old Mrs Baker, who has been so carefully chosen for her very morbidity. It is Hester's guess that the advent of Meg's faked miscarriage will render the old girl hysterical, so that when she accompanies Joe with the bloody evidence to the vicarage that afternoon she will have a pronounced effect on the Reverend Mathews, M.A. Oxon.

Hester has finally decided that Joe should show Jack's contract indicating the terms of her marriage to the vicar and then, immediately after, expose the evidence of the miscarriage for him to examine. Joe will reveal it quickly so the vicar may obtain only the briefest glance. Whereupon Mrs Baker will tearfully confirm that she had been present when Meg was took ill, quite out of the blue and not an hour after Sunday dinner. The vicar's lack of anatomical knowledge, coupled with squeamishness and his almost certain reluctance to make a second closer inspection of the evidence, will, Hester anticipates, finalise the matter.

Joe hasn't at first wanted to get involved to this degree, afraid that he will show his nerves and give the game away. ‘The more you shake and quaver the better,' Hester replies. ‘He'll see it for your grief.' She then points out that no loving mother would leave her poor suffering daughter alone under such trying conditions. Furthermore, she says, with Joe handling the bloody evidence and Mrs Baker whimpering at his side, the Reverend Mathews, M.A. Oxon., is even less likely to embarrass him with a close and careful scrutiny of the gory evidence. It may safely be assumed he will wish only to ply Joe with a deep and abiding sympathy for the terrible tragedy which has befallen their daughter. After all, Hester points out, Meg is the new Mrs Jack Thomas and the reverend can only hope that she proves to be as generous to the church and to himself as was the former incumbent of Riverview Station.

‘Never you mind, that one knows which side his bread is buttered on,' Hester concludes.

But, while Hester has been able to influence her husband to conspire with her, she has quite underestimated the calibre of opponent she faces in Colonel Septimus Cunningham-Thomas, Jack's company commander.
In
what can only be described as a strange coincidence, Hester is handed a letter for Joe from the verger at St Stephen's the very Sunday morning they are to return home with Mrs Baker. This isn't in itself unusual. Folk travelling to Narrandera will collect any mail for people in the district and leave it at the vicarage or bring it to Sunday worship to be handed to the recipients. What is a coincidence are the contents of the letter. Hester is so preoccupied with the plans for the day that she forgets to give the letter to Joe when she returns with Mrs Baker from morning worship. It is this seemingly innocent oversight that will cost a life, and contribute to a tragedy that will last for the next fifty years.

All goes well at Sunday dinner. Hester and Meg chat happily with Mrs Baker and even listen for the umpteenth time to the story of her dicky heart and its arithmetic. Joe is his usual silent self and Mrs Baker declares the pork quite the best that she has tasted in a good while. After Mrs Baker has had her last piece of crackling, Meg clears the dishes from the table and Joe, with hardly a grunt, leaves the three of them at it and says he's going over to the north paddock. After she's cleared the table and washed the dishes, Meg also excuses herself.

‘What's the matter, dearest?' Hester asks, a little surprised.

‘It's the pork I think, a bit too rich.' Meg holds her stomach, emphasising the far from impressive bulge under her dress. ‘Maybe the baby doesn't care for crackling as much as Mrs Baker,' she says, giving her mother a wan smile.

‘You go to your room and rest, my dear, I'll look in a little later,' Hester says, comforting her daughter. ‘Perhaps a little water? Take some in with you.'

Meg pours herself a mug of water from the clay pitcher on the table and departs. ‘Such a lovely girl,' she hears Mrs Baker say.

It is less than twenty minutes later when Meg reappears. She is sobbing and clutching at her abdomen with part of her skirt bunched in her hands so that the hem is lifted to her knees. Blood runs down her right leg and into the top of her boot. ‘Mama, something terrible is happening to me,' she wails.

‘Oh my God!' Hester gasps, bringing her hand to her lips. She rises from the table. ‘Oh my God, the baby!' she repeats, rushing over to Meg and turning her away from an astonished Mrs Baker. Then, putting her arm around her daughter's shoulder, she leads Meg back into her room.

Old Mrs Baker sits for a moment like a stunned mullet, then she clutches at her heart. ‘Oh, my heart!' she screams. ‘Water, water!'

Jessica hears the scream and comes running into the kitchen from her room. She is dressed only in her pantaloons, having removed the remainder of her clothes in the privacy of her room to bring her some comfort from the heat and her pregnancy. Mrs Baker, who has her back to Jessica, has risen from the table and has her hands thrown into the air and is stumbling about in a circle, sobbing and gasping and screaming out whenever she can catch her breath.

‘What is it?' Jessica cries as Mrs Baker turns to see a young woman near nude and with her pregnant stomach boldly distended.

Mrs Baker cannot believe her eyes, which seem to pop from her head at the sight of Jessica. ‘Oh, oh,
help!'
she yells, then she points a trembling finger. ‘It's you! Oh Gawd, you're p ... p ... pregnant!' she stammers and seems as though she must at any moment faint.

Jessica crosses the room quickly and takes her by the arm. ‘Come and sit, Mrs Baker,' she says, steering the old lady to a chair. ‘Sit, I'll get you some water. Is it your heart?' she asks as she pours the old girl a mug of water. ‘My heart, oh yes my heart,' Mrs Baker says, clutching at her bosom. With the shock of seeing Jessica pregnant and almost naked, she has for the moment forgotten why she became upset in the first instance. Jessica holds the mug to her lips. ‘Drink, Mrs Baker.' The old woman drinks greedily from the mug, some of the water spilling down her front. Just then Hester walks into the kitchen. ‘Jessica!' she shouts. ‘Get back to your room at once!'