‘But Jack .. .’ Jessica exclaims, about to explain, but manages to hold her tongue just in time as Hester holds up her hand and interrupts.
‘Jessica, stop imagining things! Jack carrying you when you fainted doesn’t mean anything. Has Jack even held your hand? Has he ever tried to be alone with you when he comes over?’
‘Me and Jack .. .’ Jessica bites back the words.
‘Well, there you are,’ Hester announces. ‘All he’s been is kind, like the doctor told us, told him and us we should be,’ Hester lies again.
‘But I haven’t had a nervous breakdown,’ Jessica protests.
Hester looks kindly at her youngest daughter, and speaks in a soft, consoling voice. ‘We’re not at all sure about that, Jessica. What about the sickness? In the mornings? The doctor said you could have nightmares, terrible nightmares, and wake up exhausted and feeling ill. Well, isn’t that what’s happened?’
‘Mother, what are you saying? Are you saying I’m mad?’
Hester’s face grows hard. ‘The newspapers think your behaviour at the trial of Billy Simple was very strange, Jessica. They say something must have happened to your mind.’
‘But you don’t believe that!’ Jessica cries. ‘What I did was only fair!’
Hester’s eyes narrow. ‘Being fair to a person that’s murdered three of our dearest friends is a very strange way to behave, even your father thinks that,’ she snaps. ‘They were not my friends! Besides, Father didn’t say that. He said it wouldn’t look good me sticking up for Billy Simple. He didn’t say not to! He didn’t forbid me!’
Hester, suddenly impatient, clicks her tongue and throws her head back, letting go of Jessica’s hand. ‘I’m sorry, Jessica, things have changed, we can’t afford to mollycoddle you any longer. You have to stay away from Jack Thomas, you hear me, that’s an order.’ She grabs Jessica’s wrist and hisses, ‘Meg has only got a week to get him to marry her.’
‘Marry? Meg? But he’s going to the war!’ Jessica howls. ‘He can’t marry anyone.’
‘Oh you stupid, stupid girl, he’ll be no bloody use to us dead! You just stay away, you hear me? Stay away from Meg’s man!’
‘He’s not her man!’ Jessica howls. ‘He’s mine now, she gave him up, you said so yourself, Mother!’
Hester can bear no more. ‘Jessica, leave off, you’re not to go near Jack Thomas.’
‘But what if he asks me to work at Riverview?’ Jessica begs.
‘He’s off to Sydney in a week, he’ll not be needing you. If he does, Joe will tell him you’re not well, which is the truth.’
Jessica rises from the stool and, with her hands covering her face, she stumbles out of the kitchen into the yard. Hester watches as she walks slowly down to the cow paddock. She can see from the appearance of her shoulders that her youngest daughter is weeping.
Hester tells herself that Meg is a juicy morsel in any man’s eyes, a feast for a young man’s natural appetites.
She must now take desperate measures if she is to get Jack for her eldest daughter, for Jack is a shy and awkward young man with little or no experience beyond the women he has grown up with. She and Meg have often enough seen Jack’s hungry eyes wandering over Meg’s bosom and fixing on her trim waist and the still further promise contained in the sweetly curved hips below it. It is time for firm resolve, it’s now or never, time for Meg’s skirt and petticoats to hit the floor so she can claim what’s rightfully hers.
That evening Hester prepares Meg for the onslaught to come. Hester herself knows little of the methods of seduction but she’s confident that a pretty girl left alone with a randy young man will find a way. Meg, for her part, is equally determined. She has worked long and hard to win Jack Thomas and she’s not going to let him slip through her fingers now. ‘We have just a week for him to make you pregnant, my dear,’ Hester tells her daughter. ‘There is no time to lose.’
‘But Mother, what if he doesn’t like me? What if he won’t, you know, do it?’
Hester looks into the dark eyes of her daughter. ‘He’ll be thinking with what your father calls his trouser snake, my darling,’ she smiles, ‘and trouser snakes, I am told,’ Hester pauses and giggles, ‘are not known for their intelligence!’ Both women are hysterical with laughter.
Hester plans carefully. She persuades Joe that she’s concerned about Jessica’s recurring sickness and that it is time to take her into Wagga Wagga to see old Dr Merrick, the Heathwood family physician. Thirty years earlier the Heathwoods had quarrelled with Dr Lethbridge in Narrandera and they had taken their business to Wagga, despite the inconvenience of two days’ travel. Joe, who is genuinely concerned for Jessica, readily agrees and it is arranged for the coming Wednesday. Hester herself makes plans to visit old Mrs Baker, a distant cousin and a widow who is the organist at St Stephen’s and is known to be in poor health. Finally, with everything prepared, she sends a note to Jack, giving it to a bullock driver who is passing by Riverview Station.
Dear Jack,
I have a great favour to ask of you but the opportunity to do so when you were last here did not arise. It is a small conspiracy and so of a confidential nature and I hope you will indulge an old woman but keep the details to yourself Joe has a bad back which, at the age of seventy two, isn’t getting any better.
As you well know he is an exceedingly stubborn and proud man and won’t listen to sense, even though Jessie, who has more influence with him than any of us, tries to tell him not to lift heavy things. He still thinks he’s a young lad and as strong as a bull.
We have recently obtained a wagonload of fence posts, which the timber-getter dumped in the wrong place and these now have to be moved to the north paddock.
I am most fearful that if Joe performs this task he may damage himself and, of course, Jessica cannot do it alone.
I was wondering if, on Wednesday afternoon (as late as you like), you could come over and help Jessica load the logs onto the small dray and take them to the right location?