But Hester is too angry to listen. ‘No, you mind yours! You listen to me, Joe Bergman, you always were an ignorant bastard. You’ve never amounted to anything and you never will. That slut and her baby are the same, a chip off the same stupid Bergman block. You’re bad blood — you couldn’t even make a son! The bank is going to take this place and we’ll be out on the road without a penny, with your mad bitch daughter clutching her bastard child! Well, I won’t have it, you hear! I won’t let you ruin us! Damn you, Joe, I hate you! I’ve always hated you and your foreign ways!’
Joe rises slowly from his chair, his huge fists balled. All the hard years have built up to this one moment, his anger grown stronger, more furious, because he knows some of what Hester says is right. All the loneliness and frustration he’s felt over the years in this bloody terrible land boils up in him. The endless disappointment, things never turning out right, the drought and the roiling floods, the big blows that flatten everything, the bushfires that destroy the simple dreams and leave only smoke and the ashes of hope in their wake, the rabbit, locust and mice plagues. He’s had a bellyful, enough of the bloody flies, the heat and the pestilence, the pale, remorseless, mocking sky, the constant worries with them mongrels from the bank, each shearing season having to crawl up George Thomas’s fat arse for a job in his shed.
Joe has never so much as lifted a finger to his wife, never belted her like other blokes. But now he knows he’s going to kill her, kill the Heathwood bitch, wring her scrawny neck. Press his broad thumbs into her windpipe until the life leaves her and her evil tongue protrudes from her mouth.
Joe’s head seems to fill with dark blood as he moves towards Hester. He feels himself choking, gasping for air. The pain in his chest smashes down on him like a huge, angry, roaring thing he can’t define beyond the noise it makes in his ears. Joe collapses to his knees and pitches forward. He is dead before his head hits the kitchen floor.
Hester stands frozen. Joe has almost reached her and now lies stone-dead at her feet. She had seen his eyes and knew he was coming for her. Her anger turns to ice, then nothing, then surprised reli
ef. She feels no sorrow — it is as though an impediment has gone from her life. Now at last she can make the decisions and, for once, get them right. Then she begins to shake, the shock of her husband’s death reaching her consciousness. She shouts for Meg and then starts to weep, the tears a part of the numbness she feels. Joe, such a big man when he was alive, now seems suddenly small, vulnerable, a crumpled shape lying on the kitchen floor. ‘Meg!’ she calls. ‘Meg, come quickly!’
Meg comes into the kitchen. She is in her nightdress, though it is not yet seven o’clock. She gasps as she sees Joe lying on the floor, then she screams and screams, overcome by hysteria. ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ Hester shouts, glad to have her daughter at the centre of her stunned concentration. She runs over and starts to shake Meg violently. ‘Stop it, you hear! Stop it!’ Meg sinks to the floor and starts to sob. ‘Your father’s collapsed, I think he’s dead,’ Hester says, trying to keep her voice level.
With the courage she’s gained from Meg’s presence, Hester kneels down beside Joe and feels his pulse. She’d learned this years before at St John’s Ambulance Association classes in Narrandera not long after the Boer War. Joe shows no pulse, but Hester has little confidence in her ability and so she opens his flannel shirt and puts her hand over his heart. His mouth is slightly open and his eyes stare at her in what appears to be a look of astonishment, as though he cannot himself believe he is dead.
‘He’s dead, Meg. Your father’s dead,’ Hester pronounces, surprised at the calmness she feels. If Joe is dead, then she is in charge.
It is just after sunrise the following morning when Hester pulls up in the sulky outside Jessica’s hut. Jessica is already up and has made a cup of tea and is stirring the oatmeal porridge, adding warm milk from the cow she’s not long since milked. She is looking forward to the day and Joe’s visit and wants her father to see her baby wearing a nappy. Mary has dismissed the idea with a pronounced sniff. ‘That nappy, that whitefella stuff, Jessie. Baby shit, you clean him, why you want to carry it round in that cloth?’ Jessica has nevertheless cut six squares from the old towel she had intended to use as a birth mat and fashioned two pins from Joe’s chicken wire to hold the nappy in place. She means to practise putting a nappy on baby Joey before her father arrives. She’s slightly annoyed and disappointed when she hears the sulky, as Joe usually arrives later in the morning. Jessica takes the porridge pot off the hearth and goes outside. Shocked to see her mother at the reins of the sulky, she asks instinctively, ‘Mother, what’s wrong?’ Hester looks down from the sulky at her youngest daughter. ‘Your father’s dead, you must come home, girl,’ she announces without sentiment.
Jessica stands still in the morning sunlight, unable to comprehend what her mother has just told her. She can hear the water running over stones in the creek and the soft phlurrrrr of air escaping from the pony’s nostrils. Somewhere she hears the carolling of a magpie and the sound of cicadas stinging the air. The sun feels warm on her cheek.
‘His heart gave in, just after tea last night,’ Hester now says. ‘He’d want you at his funeral, Jessica. You can’t let him down.’
‘No!’ Jessica says slowly. ‘No, Mother, I won’t come.’ To Jessica’s astonishment, Hester starts to cry. Jessica has rarely seen her mother in tears before. ‘But you must, Jessie,’ she weeps. ‘You’re in charge now, darling. Meg and I can’t cope with the selection.’ She looks up despairingly. ‘The bank had been to see Joe! We’ll all be ruined!’ Hester sniffs. ‘We can’t manage without you, my dear.’
‘Bullshit!’ Jessica can’t believe she’s said it.
‘What?’ Hester asks, looking down at her tearfully.
‘Mother, as soon as Meg’s child is born you’re going over to Riverview homestead. You and Meg will be Jake — you couldn’t give a bugger about the selection.’ Hester does not deny this. Instead, she wipes her eyes on her handkerchief and sighs deeply. ‘Jessica, the bank will foreclose on the property now your father’s dead, unless you come and we convince them you can take over. Your father always intended for you to have the selection. If we can only hang on until Meg’s baby is born I’m sure, what with the war and the security of Meg being Mrs Jack Thomas, they’ll let you extend the overdraft.’ Hester now looks appealingly at Jessica, wiping her eyes again and sighing. ‘I know you think I haven’t been a good mother, that I’ve always favoured your sister, and in some respects that’s true. But I know it would be Joe’s dearest wish that you and your child be safe and secure. He would have wanted you to have the property. And when we leave for Riverview, it will all be yours. You must come to the funeral, so folk can see you are well again.’
‘Again? What, that I’m not mad?’ Jessica now says, trying hard not to show the triumph in her voice. She would dearly like to refuse her mother, but she knows Hester’s right — she must take care of her child. If the property can be saved it will be Joey’s future. She has thought long and hard about the small section of riverfront they possess, and although it’s not much — this creek and a hundred yards of river — both could be used for irrigation, although Joe would never listen to her. ‘What about my baby?’ she now asks.
Hester pulls back slightly, aware that Jessica could be persuaded to come to Joe’s funeral. She knows better than to appear contrite. ‘Your father was right, these things pass with time. Now that Meg’s married to Jack and will soon have a child to give him when he comes back from the war, I dare say we’ll manage to cope, to live with the shame you’ve caused.’
‘You mean if me and my son stay away from Riverview? Well, don’t you worry, Mother, we will,’ Jessica says bitterly.
‘Please, Jessica? Bring your baby and come with me now. There is much to be done.’ It is the same old Hester, back in control.
Jessica thinks hard. ‘Mother,’ she announces, ‘I want a piece of paper to say Joe’s left the place to me and my baby.’
‘Yes, of course, my dear,’ Hester smiles, ‘as soon as we get home.’
‘No, now!’ Jessica says. ‘I’ve got pen and paper.’ Hester hesitates. ‘Really, we must hurry, dear. Can’t it wait?’ she says trying to soothe Jessica.
‘It won’t take long,’ Jessica counters. ‘I’ll make you a cuppa while you write it out.’
Jessica makes Hester sit at the table and brings her a pen and ink and a sheet of paper, both of which have been supplied by Joe.
Jessica wants to crawl away on her own and bawl her heart out for Joe, but she doesn’t want her dry-eyed mother to have the satisfaction of seeing her grieve.
PROPERTY SETTLEMENT
With concern to the last will and testament of Joseph Karl Bergman, deceased on 25 December 1914.
I, Hester Bergman, wife of the late Joseph Karl Bergman, believe myself to be the sole beneficiary of all my husband’s worldly goods, property and possessions, which consist of his selection, as well as all that stands upon it, including his livestock. I hereby, in the presence of witnesses, agree that such property as comes into my possession as a consequence of my husband’s death I freely pass over to my daughter, Jessica Margaret Bergman. I also promise to make no further claims on such property at a future date and agree in the event of Jessica’s death that the property shall become the sole possession of her child, Joey Bergman.
Signed: Hester Maude Bergman Witnesses: