But while the competition between these two is fierce, it is always good-natured and they remain firm friends. They make an impressive pair, the dark and the fair, and they’re the heroes of all the young tar boys in the shed. Jack is no bad sport nor a poor loser, not like his old man, and Jessica likes working with both the lads. They laugh and chaff each other and tease her when they stop for a smoko.
They don’t seem to mind in the least that she’s a girl and take some pride in the fact that she’s a better worker than any of the tar boys on the board. Besides, she can make a damn good mug of tea and a corned beef sandwich if needed. After a few days, at the morning smoko, Billy christens her ‘Tea Leaf’.
‘What’s that for?’ Jessica asks him. Once she had heard someone use that name for a thief, and she doesn’t want to be called a thief. Jack laughs. ‘Don’t you know?’
‘No. Is it because you don’t like my tea?’ Jessica looks worried. ‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘No, the tea’s good,’ Billy laughs, ‘it’s just that you’re the dregs!’
Jessica is puzzled and looks to Jack.
‘The tar boy is the dregs of society, see,’ Jack explains, ‘except that you’re not even a boy.’
Both of them chuckle, pleased with themselves until Jessica, on a sudden impulse, picks up the billy and pours what’s left of the cold tea over their hats. It’s all done in a flash before she realises she may have gone too far.
They both look surprised and Billy shakes his head then takes his hat off and turns it upside down, watching the dark mess dripping from it. For a moment Jessica is really scared, then Jack grins and slaps Billy on the shoulder. ‘She gotcha!’ he yells in delight, and Billy smiles up at Jessica.
From that moment a deep friendship grows between the three of them. Billy and Jack only call her Tea Leaf among themselves, they’re a team now and it’s her special name. Soon Jessica feels confident enough to talk to Jack about his shearing.
‘Billy’s your mate, Jack,’ she says. ‘It don’t matter if he throws a few more than you. Joe always reckons that if you do things right in the first place you get faster, it’s just natural. He says the real gun shearers don’t waste blows and seem to have plenty of time to make them clean. You can tell the quality of a shearer by the number of nicks he leaves behind him.’
Jack is silent a while, then looks up at Jessica, his eyes narrowed. ‘If you were a bloke I’d probably have to fight you, Tea Leaf. Or leastways tell you to mind your own business. Cheeky little bugger, aren’t you?’ He grins and then says, ‘But you’re right, a man’s stupid, I should know better.’
Jessica grins. ‘Jack Thomas, there’s a lot of sheep out there are gunna be grateful!’
Jack laughs. ‘I dunno about that, being thanked by a mob of sheep ain’t the biggest compliment in the world.’ Right from the start the other tar boys have resented having a girl in their group, especially one who works faster and better than they do. Being a tar boy is a shit job, the shearers give them a hard time, and most are lucky to come out of the day without a thick ear for doing something one of their shearers doesn’t like.
Mr Malloy buggers things up even more by singling Jessica out and calling her the gun tar and best broom on the board. Jessica can see from the looks she gets that the other tar boys don’t like it much.
The young lads can see how Jack and Billy have taken to Jessica, the three of them getting on like a house on fire. It doesn’t seem fair to them and Jessica can well understand their gripes — all they get all day is kicks and curses and meanwhile she’s Jake with her two shearers. At every opportunity they get, the tar boys are at her. Teasing, jostling and pushing her, calling out insults, and very little real good humour behind it all. At first Jessica cops it sweet. Then she decides to give as good as she gets and soon they?
??re no match for her sharp tongue. Joe says a fourteen-year-old girl is near grown, ready to have brats, while a boy the same age hasn’t got his wits about him yet and can only think about tossing off. Jessica doesn’t know yet, though, that you can’t make fools of folk without them wanting to teach you a lesson.
George Thomas demands that his foreman work the tar boys hard. Ten minutes before a smoko they have to leave the shed and prepare the billy tea and biscuits for their shearers. One afternoon, a day Joe’s gone to the land office and isn’t with her in the shed, Jessica leaves to make tea for Jack and Billy. When she gets outside the six tar boys come at her, grabbing her and pushing her into the nearby sheep pen where they knock her down and turn her on her back. Two of them jump astride her body, one on her chest, pinning her wrists to the ground, the other sitting on her legs. There’s sheep milling about and bleating and dogs yapping but the other four keep them away so there’s a clearing in the middle of the pen.
‘Let me go, you bastards!’ Jessica yells. ‘Let go of me!’ The sheep are panicking and one comes flying down the race and crashes into Jessica and the two boys, sending them flying. Jessica rolls free and tries to get to her feet but another of the young blokes falls onto her and pins her down again while a second takes hold of her feet.
‘You’ll take what’s comin’ to you, Jessie Bergman!’ the boy sitting on her chest shouts. ‘Yer too bloody cocky.’ ‘Yeah, bloody oath!’ the one who’s holding her legs shouts. ‘Here, gi’s a hand!’ he shouts at one of the others, who immediately sits astride her stomach. ‘You think you’re better than us, don’t yiz?’ says the tar boy on her chest, the biggest among them. ‘Well, you bloody ain’t, see!’ he grunts. ‘Yer just a fuckin’ sheila!’
With the sound of the donkey engine, the yapping of the dogs, bleating of sheep and the clanking of the wool presses they have to shout to be heard and Jessica knows it’s pointless to yell for help — the men in the shearing shed won’t hear her. So she saves her strength to curse them with every obscenity she’s ever heard Joe use and some private ones of her own as well. But the three of them on top of her are too strong. ‘Bastards! Let me go!’ she cries.
The three remaining tar boys now get to work, rubbing a preparation of Stockholm tar into her scalp with their tar sticks. It’s all over in a matter of moments and the boys are up and away, leaving her lying on the ground in the sheep pen with the newly shorn sheep closing in, pissing and shitting and milling about her.
Jessica jumps to her feet, panicking the sheep around her legs. ‘You’ll pay for this, you miserable bastards!’ she screams after them as a wether bumps hard into the back of her knees and she falls down again, the hot tar burning and stinging her scalp.
She is shaking with anger and humiliation and wants to cry, but wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. She chokes back the tears and, still on her knees among the sheep, searches for her hat, which fell off her head when she was knocked down. Jessica is still snorting and swearing when she finds it trampled in the dirt and smelling of sheep shit.
She rises again, bleating sheep up to her waist, and slaps her misshapen hat against the rump of the nearest ewe to dust it off. The slapping gets rid of some of her rage, and she gathers her wits. Jessica pushes her hat roughly into shape and pulls it over her head as far down as she can to cover her tarred hair.
She’s got no time to feel sorry for herself. Smoko’s only a few minutes away and she still needs to boil the billy for the lads, catch up on the sheep she’s missed tarring and then sweep the second cuts and bellies away so her section of the shearing board is clean.
Jessica doesn’t know how she’s going to hide what’s happened from Joe when she gets home. He’d be just as likely to come looking for the tar boys who worked her over and all hell would break loose. Then, like George Thomas said, any trouble in the shed because of her and Jessica gets the chop, no questions asked.
She’s still cranky as hell because the only thing she’s done wrong was to be a girl, but she can’t do anything about it. She knows Joe needs her six shillings to help pay the bank interest on the mortgage. The man from the bank has been around twice in the last month and after he’d left the last time Joe went quiet and didn’t speak a word to her for two whole days, so Jessica knows things must be real bad.
While Jessica shares most of Joe’s problems around the place, money is the one thing he never speaks to her about, nor to Hester and Meg. But she sees how things are, and she knows money is what’s going to finally drive Joe mad or kill him.
Jessica just manages to make tea for her boys and cut two corned beef sandwiches for them when the hooter sounds in the shearing shed for their afternoon smoko. Jack’s and Billy’s shearing stands are the last on the board, so they’re first to come outside to take their mug of tea, sheltering from the sun under a bit of tarpaulin Jessica’s rigged up as their spot.