‘You don’t owe me nothing, Mr Goldberg.’
‘Maybe you don’t think so, but Mrs Goldberg she don’t agree. She owes you her boychick, Moishe the Communist, no less.’ He paused and smiled at Jessica. ‘Not lend, my dear, give, compliments Mrs Goldberg! You must tell me the words we put on the Jesus cross.’ Jessica burst into tears and hugged Solly Goldberg. Later she would realise that it was the first time she had touched another human being in a loving way since she’d embraced Mary Simpson after the birth of her baby.
When Moishe next visited Jessica she asked him to make inquiries as to the whereabouts of Richard Runche KC, and then she’d waited impatiently all week for him to return.
Moishe had little trouble tracing the infamous circuit court barrister, who was still to be found in Wagga scrounging the odd brief from the Crown and between times slowly drowning in cheap claret. When he came back to Jessica with this news, Moishe had also brought along pen and ink, a tablet of blue paper with a matching envelope which he’d correctly addressed and to which he’d affixed a postage stamp of the right denomination. ‘Will you help me, Moishe? I ain’t too good at writing stuff,’ Jessica asked him.
‘You write what you want, Jessie. Write it in your own words, and I’ll fix it up for you,’ Moishe counselled.
Jessica spent the following week painstakingly writing a letter to Richard Runche KC and Moishe corrected her spelling and punctuation. He possessed a beautiful copperplate hand and Jessica wanted him to write the letter, thinking it would impress the barrister no end. But Moishe was wise enough to know that it would be more meaningful to the barrister in Jessica’s somewhat childish script and with her own heartfelt words. To this end he had conscientiously kept her letter intact. Jessica wrote several versions until she had one that contained no crossings out. She mailed it with great hope in her heart, kissing the letter several times before dropping it into the pillar box at the porter’s gate. It was a letter which had cost her many tears, and many long nights in thinking over all that had happened to her.
The Hospital for the Insane Callan Park Sydney 6 October 1918
Dear Mr Runche KC,
You have probably forgotten who I am, so maybe I should remind you. I was the young girl who saw you one morning at breakfast in your hotel at your table behind the ferns, and asked you to help Billy Simple the murderer. You probably remember him by his real name, William D’arcy Simon. He was the one who killed Mrs Ada Thomas and her two daughters at Riverview Station. You proved it wasn’t done in cold blood, which is what the prosecution wanted the jury to think, though the judge and the jury wouldn’t listen and gave him the death sentence. Do you remember me now?
I was very proud because you gave Billy his dignity so he could die with his head held up high.
Now I am in trouble, which will take quite a long time to explain to you, so
I hope you will forgive me and not think I am wasting your valuable time.
What Fm going to say may seem a bit loony, especially when you see the address above, but I have been put in here against my wishes by my mother and sister because of my baby.
I will begin at the beginning. After Billy’s trial I fell pregnant and my parents didn’t want to know because I wouldn’t tell them who the father was. They kept me locked away so nobody knew. When people asked, they said I was sick with a nervous breakdown, and that I must have quiet and rest and see nobody.
Then my sister, Meg, wanted to marry Jack Thomas, the son of Mrs Thomas who was murdered, and she tricked him into marrying her before he went off to the war, saying she was pregnant by him. But it turned out she wasn’t.
I’ve since worked out what must have happened. Jack Thomas must have said that if Meg had a son, he would inherit Riverview if Jack died in the war. So she pretended she was pregnant, stuffing things under her dress so it would look like a baby was growing inside her. My mother was also in on it, and everyone who saw Meg at St Step hen’s every Sunday thought she was pregnant. She even knitted things for the baby she wasn’t having.
Then I had my baby on Christmas Eve and my father, Joe Bergman (you might remember him), had a heart attack and died the next day. And at the funeral at St Stephen’s my mother made the vicar announce to one and all that Meg had given birth to a boy, saying that my baby was Meg’s and that Meg gave birth prematurely on Christmas Day due to the shock of my father’S sudden death.
This was when I made my wrong move, Mr Runche. I screamed and screamed and attacked my mother in front of everyone who’d come to the funeral. So they restrained me and my mother said it was because of my nervous breakdown.
When my hysterics wouldn’t come good I was taken to the lock-up at Narrandera and my mother and the vicar — his name is Reverend Mathews, M.A. Oxon. — swore in a statement that I was suffering from a nervous breakdown and was having delusions.
My mother said in the report that the baby wasn’t mine and I had gone over the edge with jealousy about my sister having a baby and not me. The vicar said he knew Meg was pregnant and that I was not well. They both signed the paper to commit me, saying they were afraid I would attack the baby.
So they brought me here to Callan Park in Sydney, but they didn’t give me a proper examination, only one doctor saw me. His name is Dr Warwick, who was drinking brandy when he examined me on New Year’s Day. I didn’t have the strength to answer any of his questions, but I told him they’d stolen my baby. I could see he didn’t believe me and later I thought I should have asked him to examine me so he could see I was telling the truth. But I didn’t know then that you could tell if someone’s just had a baby.
So Dr Warwick took the decision to commit me just because of the report. He said I had to have a second examination by the Medical Supervisor, but that I had to wait till he came back from the Christmas holidays. I never did see him and I am still waiting after three years for that examination. I am hoping that you can help me in my terrible situation. I am desperate and definitely not insane! I have never been put in a wetpack or restrained in a strait-jacket or locked up in solitary since coming here. The Ward Matron says if I am insane then she is the Queen of Sheba, but she says she can’t do nothing for my situation and only takes orders from her superiors. I have been lost in the red tape, she says.
Please, Mr Runche, could you write to the authorities to look into my case? I know I am not important and just a poor girl from the bush and I don’t even have any money to pay you. But I know you have a good heart and are the best at asking questions because I saw what you did for Billy Simple and how you spoke up for him against the odds.
Hoping to hear from you soon.
Yours faithfully,
Jessica Bergman.
Nearly two weeks passed and, while Jessica had not expected a quick reply from the barrister, she was beginning to despair that Richard Runche KC had ignored her letter. It was therefore with some surprise when she was summoned to the reception parlour, to see the barrister seated in one of the old leather club chairs. In the big scuffed chair he appeared to be even shabbier than she could recall.
He was wearing the same dark, worn-out suit, greasy tie with stained celluloid collar and white shirt much in need of laundering. His skin was pale, with the exception of his nose which had blossomed even more with blueish-looking veins, his eyes were red-rimmed and rheumy and his thin hair stood every which way, as though he’d just awakened after a restless night and not attended to his toilette. Which was quite true, of course. Richard Runche KC was nursing a fearful hangover as usual and had slept seated in a second-class carriage most of the way from Wagga.
The scruffy barrister sat with his legs together, quiet as a tally clerk waiting to be interviewed, with his battered hat resting on his lap. But he seemed to recognise Jessica the moment he saw her approaching and rose to his feet, his hat rolling from his lap to the floor.
Jessica hastened to retrieve it, though Liquid Lunch seemed not to notice and moved forward with his hand extended so that, as Jessica bent down to pick up his hat her head banged into his stomach. ‘Oh, dear, have I messed up things already?’ he said, concerned. Then, when Jessica rose and their eyes met, he smiled. ‘Ah, there you are. How very nice to see you again, my dear Miss Bergman.’