‘Mrs Baker.’
Joe shakes his head, lost for words. He is about to say something when Hester interrupts. ‘Joe, can’t you see, she now thinks there’s been a miscarriage. We can’t go denying it happened — pretending Meg is still pregnant.’
‘I thought you said you’d speak to her ... Mrs Baker ... about Jessica, get her to shut her trap. Ask her to do the same now about the miscarriage.’
Hester brings the tips of her forefingers of both hands to press down on either side of her nose. ‘She’ll know we’re up to something. It may have worked with Jessica — she saw her half naked, to her that would be a sure sign of Jessica’s insanity. She will also understand how it has come about after Jessica’s trip with Billy Simple.’ Hester now looks up. ‘But she believes she saw Meg’s miscarriage with her own eyes. She won’t be able to keep quiet about that.’ Hester looks pleadingly at Joe. ‘If she asks me why she shouldn’t tell about Meg,’ what reason will I give her? Will I tell her that we’re trying to deceive Jack? The old girl was very fond of Ada Thomas — Ada paid her salary for years! She’ll see what we’re trying to do to Jack.’ Hester bows her head and starts to cry softly. ‘We’re ruined. We will be disgraced, destroyed,’ she sobs.
‘Yeah, well, it was always asking too much. It was bound to go wrong, come unstuck in the end. Bloody hell, maybe Jack will come back from the war, dump Meg and marry Jessica.’
Hester’s head shoots up in alarm and Joe sees the look of hatred on her face. ‘Never! You hear, never! Jack belongs to Meg. Jessica’s not getting him no matter what.’ ‘Yeah, well, there you go,’ Joe says helplessly, shrugging his shoulders once again.
Hester grabs his arm. ‘Listen, Joe, only Mrs Baker knows about the miscarriage, no one else. She’s got a dicky heart — you’ve heard her say it often enough, how she could pass over to the other side at any moment — her arithmetic. The whole district knows about it, nobody will be in the least surprised.’ ‘What are you saying?’
‘We’ll make an excuse, say you can’t take her home, that we’d be most grateful if she’d stay the night. Ask her, as a comfort to me — say you’d be much obliged if she’d stay. She can share my bed. Then, when she’s asleep we’ll suffocate her with a pillow. She’ll not be strong enough to fight us both.’
Joe stops and looks at his wife. ‘Hester, we are going mad! This has got to stop.’
‘Joe, we have one more chance,’ Hester begs. ‘One last chance to keep Meg’s pregnancy alive.’
‘What are you saying, woman? In the end there’ll be no child for Meg, and Jack will be free to dump her anyway!’
‘Joe, if we can stop Mrs Baker talking so that nobody knows Jessica is pregnant, Meg could have her baby. Jessica’s baby!’-Hester says all this in a rush, getting it out before Joe can fully react to what she’s said. She thinks Joe may hit her and she’s prepared for this, lifting her arms up to her face in anticipation.
Instead Joe stops and brings his hands to cover his face. ‘As God is my witness, you have gorn stark starin’ mad, woman,’ he says slowly.
Hester knows she has won — Joe would have hit her otherwise. ‘Joe, it’s not madness, it’s madness the other way. Don’t you see? If Jessica keeps her child she will be disgraced, and the child will be persecuted all its life for being Billy Simple’s bastard. A monster’s child. Jessica will never live it down — there is already some talk that she’s mad.’
‘Yeah, no doubt started by the two of yiz.’
‘Joe, people aren’t stupid. They ask why she doesn’t come to church any more.’
‘And the two of yiz shakes yer heads and looks mournful and they catch on soon enough. Something’s not right with Jessica, they tell themselves, which is what yiz two want them to think, ain’t it?’
‘Well, we can’t say she’s pregnant, can we?’ Hester protests.
‘Why not? Get it bloody over with, it’s not the end of the world!’
‘Joe, if we take Jessica’s baby for Meg, it will have a good life as the son or daughter of Jack Thomas. It’s an even better idea than the miscarriage.’ Hester hesitates, then adds, ‘Jessica is still young. She’ll recover and be none the worse for the experience. She’d be free to marry or she can run Riverview Station for Meg if Jack doesn’t come back. Meg claims Jessica’s child for herself and it has a grand future.’ Hester looks up, pleading with her husband. ‘Can’t you see how it would solve everything and be so very good for Jessica as well?’
Hester observes how Joe hesitates. She knows he feels guilty about Jessica, that he feels he’s let her down. ‘It would be the greatest service you could ever render her, Joe,’ she urges. ‘Jessica’s child will grow up rich and be the master of Riverview Station one day.’
Joe gives a bitter little laugh. ‘All we have to do is kill Mrs Baker, hope Jack carks it in the war and steal Jessica’s child, is that it?’
‘Joe, we’d be giving both the baby and Jessica a decent life. You’d be looking after Jessica’s best interests. If Jack doesn’t come back from the war, Jessica gets the five hundred acres Jack said -she could have.’ Hester sees her husband hesitate a second time and she cleverly changes the subject, leaving Joe to ponder what she’s promised their youngest daughter.
‘Mrs Baker is poorly by her own confession, she could go at any moment!’ Hester then adds spitefully, ‘Mr Duffy the verger has wanted to play the organ for years. It’s her that’s kept him out — her waiting for God to take her to Paradise in the middle of “Onward Christian Soldiers”!’
Despite himself Joe laughs, but then falls silent again as they turn to walk back to the homestead. Just before they reach the front door, he sighs. ‘I’ll ask her to stay overnight,’ he says, then closes his eyes tightly and shakes his head in silent denial. ‘God have mercy on our souls, woman.’
Mrs Baker is secretly delighted to be asked to stay the night. She feels herself an important part of what’s happened and now that she’s over her initial shock she relishes the prospect of talking about Meg’s tragedy for weeks to come. She has already decided she will do so in a confidential whisper, as though the person she is talking to is the only one privileged to hear the details. And such details! Already her febrile imagination has gone well beyond what she has witnessed. Already details both intimate and sanguinary to titillate the imagination of her wide-eyed listener abound in her mind. She must use them sparingly, like a miser, make them last, and invent others to keep the experience fresh.
Mrs Baker reminds herself happily that the field of rumours concerning Meg is well ploughed and folk have already turned up a fair amount of dirt. They’ve put two and two together and come up with the conclusion that Meg’s marriage to young Jack Thomas is not one of mutual enchantment but more likely one of singular entrapment. The young lad may have been caught with his trousers down but it was her hands that pulled them to his ankles. Now, with Jack’s compromised child carried away in a flush of blood, Meg has had her comeuppance and she, Florence Baker, has the whole story of the Bergmans and the Thomases all to herself. She well remembers Ada Thomas’s oft-quoted words, ‘I am not mocked saith the Lord.’
This is a tragedy Mrs Baker thinks she knows how to play for all it is worth. The last tragedy in Mrs Baker’s life was never properly played out, never consummated with public tears, tea and sympathy and then the gift of a permanently tragic demeanour. She still remembers the young merchant marine officer who wooed her and married her all in forty-eight hours and then, to the strains of ‘Auld Lang Syne’, left her on the wharf and sailed away, never to return, though not listed as deceased. The disgrace of it has kept her silent for fifty eight years, when a thousand times over she has longed to possess all the trappings of a tragic life, so that she might truly enjoy the substance of sadness.
Now, at last, Mrs Baker has something for herself. Meg’s miscarriage can be worked into her conversation in a dozen ways. This is not hearsay or second-hand gossip — she was there, she saw it happen, she has the gory details in her head as fresh as newly baked bread. Mrs Baker Climbs into Hester’s bed and snuggles under the goosedown quilt, then she hugs herself in the darkness, for she cannot remember when she has enjoyed such excitement. Hester has read her like a book. Mrs Florence Baker could not be cajoled into silence however hard she tried — it is for this very reason she was chosen to be a witness to the miscarriage.
The moon is the merest crescent in a star-pricked sky and all that may be heard outside is the occasional barking of a fox and the mournful intermittent hoot of a boo book owl near the cow paddock. Beside Hester’s bed the Wesclock ticks rapidly. Hester lies awake waiting to go and get Joe, while beside her old Mrs Baker snores without letting up, her arms clasped to her breast. A good sleeper, that one, Hester decides.