‘Yes, well, as a matter of fact, we’re going to see Jack.’ Jessica cannot at first comprehend what her mother is saying. ‘But why?’ she asks finally. ‘Meg is pregnant to him.’
‘Pregnant? Meg? To Jack?’ Now Jessica simply cannot believe her ears and her hand goes to her heart. ‘But how, Mama?’
‘Oh you stupid girl! You of all people! How!’ Jessica bites her lower lip, her eyes brimming. ‘Please, Mama, can I come too?’
Joe, who has his head bowed and seems to be examining his fingernails, now looks up. ‘No, girlie. Yiz’ll stay here and take care o’ things.’
‘And stay out of sight,’ Hester adds, her voice hard. Jessica rises from the table, unable to see for the tears that blind her. She brushes roughly past Meg, who draws away from her, pulling her arms up against her breasts as if repulsed by her touch. Jessica runs to her room, where she can contain her emotions no longer and begins to howl.
Her grieving can be heard in the kitchen and Meg looks at her mother and shakes her head.
‘Oh, God, will we never be rid of the trouble she causes?’ Hester cries.
‘Jesus Christ, what have we done?’ Joe cries. ‘A man ought to be ashamed of hisself.’
Hester turns and admonishes him. ‘Joe Bergman, don’t you back down now!’
They leave just before sunrise, with the winter morning bitterly cold and the frost white on the ground. Jessica can hear a crow cawing in the cow paddock, though it’s still too early for the other birds. There has been a fall of rain overnight, too little to matter much, but the early morning air is sharp and sweet and the dust dampened down under a clear blue sky.
Neither Hester nor Meg speaks to Jessica as they step up into the sulky and cover their knees with a rug. Joe stops to give her instructions, though he knows Jessica can manage on her own well enough and it is only an excuse to speak with his younger daughter.
‘It’ll be better when we’re back, you’ll see,’ Joe says, touching his daughter’s arm. ‘There’s a lamb fresh slaughtered in the cool house, and after that there’s bacon.’ He stands awkwardly, looking down at his boots, then says slowly, ‘We’ll be gone a fortnight, less I hope, certainly no more. Look after yerself then, eh, girlie.’
Jessica’s teeth are chattering from the early morning cold and she hugs her chest. ‘Father, will you give Jack a message for me?’ she asks quietly.
‘Now Jessie, you know I can’t do that. What have you done? Wrote a letter?’
‘No, Father, just a message, for you to tell him.’ She looks at Joe, her eyes appealing to him. ‘It can’t do no harm, Father. Tell him, “Tea Leaf will be here when you get back.’”
‘Tea Leaf? Tea Leaf will be here when he gets back?’ Joe smiles. ‘Don’t see no harm can come from saying that,’ he says, happy to be able to do something for his sad little daughter.
‘No Father, tell it exact. “Tea Leaf will be here when you get back.” , ‘Tea Leaf, eh? That what he calls yiz?’
It takes all day to get to Narrandera, where they put up for the night at the home of Hester’s ageing father and Dolly, his second wife twenty years his junior. Dolly is the widow Auntie Agnes sent Henry Heathwood down to Sydney to find at the Easter Show. She was to be Hester’s replacement behind the counter and in the kitchen, in order that her spinster niece might marry
big, silent Joe Bergman.
Dolly is a cheerful soul who now runs the shop with the help of a young female assistant. She makes them feel most welcome and thoroughly at home. Henry Heathwood, always of a morbid disposition and now in his dotage, continues in his cheerless ways. His mind has taken to wandering of late and he no longer works in his haberdashery shop. Instead he spends most days seated in an old wicker chair under the grapevine in the backyard, mumbling to himself and dribbling down his chin. He is too feeble even to follow in the tradition of the Heathwood men. Most of them spent their old age as colourful local identities, which, among the town’s middle-class tradesmen, is the euphemism for one of their kind being in a constant state of inebriation.
The express train for Sydney is due to leave at 9.45 a.m. and Joe has only just enough time to get to the recruitment office to obtain the papers he will need in order to visit Jack Thomas at the Victoria Barracks in Sydney.
Dolly packs them a splendid hamper and gives Meg a new bonnet. She proudly claims, ‘It came up unadorned from Melbourne and I’ve titivated it a bit — it’s wonderful what a bit of ribbon and a bow or two can do. I made the red velvet roses myself,’ she adds proudly. Dolly then tells them she is of a mind to branch into hats as she feels she has a flair for decoration. Meg says she fears it is a little ostentatious with her plain brown dress and its white Chinese lace collar. ‘Nonsense, child,’ Aunt Dolly insists, ‘hats bright as peacock birds are all the rage in Sydney and Melbourne.’
Apart from coming into Sydney by boat as a young boy from Denmark, Joe has only ever visited the town on two other occasions, both towards the end of the last century when old Queen Victoria was still on the throne. His memory is of a busy place, too many people, all of them talking at the same time. Of shoulders bumped in the street without so much as an apologetic grunt. Of smoke-filled pubs with tiled walls and floors, their polished hardwood counters awash with spilled ale and the approach to them three rowdy drinkers deep. And ever more noise, the clatter and clanging of the cable and electric trams, of coaches and traps, sulkies and wagons of every description and every cross-street jammed with people hurrying somewhere, like a colony of ants on the march.
But the Sydney they come into seems to have taken on a different dimension. They’ve seen a good many young men on the train wearing the bush on their faces like a weary smile, some dressed in patched trousers and broken stockmen’s boots, others neat as squatters’ sons at a picnic dance, and all of them coming in to enlist even before there has been an official call to arms. War has not yet been declared but the rumour of its coming has swept through the bush to flush out the young bucks who have been weaned to a rifle and are eager to the fray. Word has it that the city blokes will go first and these young bushmen don’t want to miss out on the grand adventure which some of the punters are betting will be over in just a few months.
The whistles of the self-important, black-uniformed, peak-capped conductors, the hiss and spit of steam, the yells and squeals, laughter, babble and shouted commands, quite take their breath away.
‘A regular Sodom and Gomorrah and Tower of Babel all at once!’ Hester shouts, cupping her hand against Meg’s ear. Meg,for her part, stands wide-eyed. She has never seen so many young blokes together and she tries to imagine them in uniform, with a band blaring and them marching off to war, rifle over one shoulder, free arm swinging, their jaws clamped tight with pride. She can feel the pounding of her heart as she observes how the young men look at her in Aunt Dolly’s hat. Their eyes hungry, devouring her breasts and trim waist, darting away shyly when she dares a glance at them.
Meg wonders if they can see her for the country bumpkin she is, in her plain brown dress and unfashionable boots, Aunt Dolly’s elaborate bonnet perched on top of it all. She looks frantically to see if there are other bonnets like hers, but sees none and thinks the young blokes must be looking at her bonnet and laughing to themselves. But when she looks into their faces she can see the bronze of sun and wind, the natural creases around eyes kept narrow by too much sharp light, and she knows she’s among her own kind.
These are country boys from all the bush towns, farms and sheep runs in the land. Australia is sending the very heart and soul of the dry and dusty plains to fight for old Mother England. Tall, gangly, slow-talking country lads, who sit upon a horse and carry a rifle as easily as they use a knife and spoon. These colonial lads are off to sort out the Hun — the Kaiser had better watch out.
The three Bergmans struggle with the two old suitcases and the wicker hamper until they stand clear of the station and hail a hansom cab. ‘Oxford Street, mate, how much?’ Joe asks, trying not to feel too lost and unimportant.
‘Dunno, mate, depends, don’t it?’