‘Better still then, you go with her. Stay with her in the stockman’s humpy. With you there to keep an eye on her, she won’t try to escape to see him. We’re going to need a place where she can hide in the next few months. Can you fix it up a bit? Maybe she’ll have to stay longer than a day or two at times.’
And so it is decided. Hester and Meg will be left alone to say goodbye to Jack Thomas when he arrives on Sunday for his last home-cooked dinner. They are to eat early so he has plenty of time to ride into town and arrive before nightfall. Jack has joined the New South Wales Light Horse, his uncle’s regiment.
On Sunday morning early, Jessica, distraught that she’s not to be allowed to see Jack and bid him farewell, has left with Joe for the old boundary rider’s hut. Joe hasn’t tried to deceive her, but he’s made a deal with her. She won’t be sent away from home, won’t be banished, if she’ll agree not to try to see Jack again.
Joe tells her he wants to make sure the boundary rider’s hut is still good for storing winter hay against the rain and she can help him make a door. They’ll also look at the fences while they’re gone. It’s not the usual Sunday work but Jessica knows that he wants her to be well away from the homestead.
Joe hasn’t found it easy to convince Jessica to stay away from saying goodbye to Jack. ‘Why, Father?’ she asks him. ‘Is it because I’m pregnant? But Jack doesn’t know!’ She looks down at her belly. ‘He can’t see nothing. I’m not gunna tell him — I already gave you my word.’
Joe sighs heavily. ‘I trust you, girlie, but your mother don’t. She told you herself you couldn’t see him.’
‘Because of Meg?’
‘You know it is, Jessie.’
‘But that were just for the last week. To see if Meg could catch him. This is his last day. Father, I may never see Jack again! Can’t I just say goodbye? That can’t do no harm to Meg.’
‘I’m sorry, Jessie. I promised your mother,’ Joe says tight-lipped. ‘Please? No more, I’m not gunna argue with you. What’s done is done.’
Jessica thinks her heart must surely break. How she aches to see Jack just one last time. Just to have him standing in front of her, to touch his hand, feel it clasped in her own. To kiss him no matter how briefly. To breathe him in, remember his smell. Hear him laugh. Rub her hand up his forearm and watch the thick blond hair through the gaps between her fingers. She remembers how she once told him it looked like the wind passing through late summer grass. If she can have just one moment to look into his blue eyes, just long enough so she can remember him, fix his dear face clearly in her mind until he returns to her.
‘But he’s my friend!’ she says desperately. Joe can see she’s terribly upset and is fighting to hold back her tears. Jessica hasn’t cried since they got back from the doctor, and after that first evening in the kitchen. Or, at least, she hasn’t let them see her weep. ‘Whatever will Jack think of me if I don’t say goodbye, Father?’ she pleads one final time.
‘We already took care of that, girlie. You and me has had to go to Wagga urgent, some papers to sign about the trial that was forgotten to do when we was there.’ Joe looks at his daughter, not unkindly. ‘He’ll understand, Jessie. He’ll know it wasn’t your fault, that you’d be there to say goodbye to him if you could.’
‘Will you give him a letter from me, then?’ Jessica asks. ‘He’ll at least expect a letter if I’m supposed to have gone away. He knows I wouldn’t let him go without saying goodbye!’
Joe sees the sense in this. ‘Orright,’ he says slowly, knowing he’ll have to leave the letter with Hester who will see to it that it never gets delivered. ‘But you must let me read it first.’
‘No!’ Jessica says suddenly. Despite all that’s happened she can’t believe Joe doesn’t trust her. Then, realising she’s over-reacted, she adds, ‘I wouldn’t read your letter, Father.’
‘Then you must promise me you won’t tell him about what’s happened to you.’
Jessica looks up at Joe, her clear”green eyes showing she is hurt. ‘Father, I already told you, I won’t tell him about my baby. I give you my word.’
Jessica tries to deny the weakness she now sees in Joe.
She’s seen it before, though she’s always thought the bond between them was something that couldn’t be broken — that, in the end, he’d always take her side. Now she’s no longer certain, no longer sure she can depend on him. Joe is becoming an old man and, more and more, giving way to his wife. Hester is now pulling the strings with most things. Jessica knows Hester will read the letter, so she can’t put nothing in it about her love for Jack.
Their love for each other. Nor can she tell him she will wait for him — that no man will ever take his place in her life. She will be forced to write a letter stiff and formal, not revea
ling her true feelings, simply expressing her friendship. Hester and Meg have her trapped, and Jessica’s heart is filled with despair.
It is at that moment, when Jessica promises him that she won’t talk to Jack about her child, that Joe too feels total despair — feels he has broken from his youngest daughter forever. He believes Jessica when she says she won’t speak to Jack about her child. She’s never lied to him. Up to this moment he’s still harboured some hope in his heart that Jack may be the father, that the opportunity may all have come about when he and Jessica went for one of their walks after a Sunday dinner. Joe’s imagination is limited, but he’s told himself that if Meg and Jessica both have a child of Jack’s and Jack marries Meg, then Jessica’s child will be took care of. He understands that Jack may prefer Jessica. They’re long-time mates, of the right age, and so why not, he argues to himself. It’d be natural enough. Gawd knows, the two o’ them are well enough suited. But now that Joe knows for certain Jessica won’t tell Jack about her baby, it can mean only one thing. She isn’t carrying his child. Jessica is pregnant to Billy Simple and Hester is right about her.
Hester and Meg cook up a storm for Jack’s farewell Sunday dinner. It’s a roast leg of lamb and a rump roast of beef, with the sideboard stacked with tarts, pies and cakes enough to feed an army. The homestead smells deliciously of roasting meat and baking by the time Jack arrives on horseback around ten o’clock.
It is too early yet to eat and he’s barely climbed down from his horse, tied it to the post rail and given it the feed bag Joe’s left out, when Meg comes tripping down the front steps wearing a hat. She suggests they go for a walk before dinner.
‘Shouldn’t I say g’day to your folks ... t,o Jessie?’
Jack asks, surprised.
Meg grasps his arm, a look of concern on her face. ‘Oh, Jack, it is such a terrible shame. Jessica and Father can’t be here, they’ve had to go to Wagga.’
‘Wagga? Why’d they do that?’ Meg can see Jack is disappointed.
‘The trial, Billy Simple’s trial—they forgot to sign some papers when they were there. He can’t be hanged unless they do,’ she adds dramatically. ‘They couldn’t stay, it was government orders to be there first thing tomorrow.’ Meg smiles. ‘Jessica says to say goodbye, Father also.’