Jessica lowered her face into her cupped hands, trying to think. She remained like this for a minute or more. Then she looked up slowly, hopefully. ‘The Chinese dress. The aunties bought it for me, for my baby.’ ‘The Chinese dress? Whatever do you mean by that, Jessica?’
‘When Hester come an’ told me about Joe dying, I brought the baby home with me, but I was that upset I forgot the Chinese dress. It’s under the straw mattress of my bed in the tin hut,’ Jessica said excitedly. ‘You must forgive me, I still don’t understand.’ Jessica told Richard Runche about the shopping expedition to the Chinese shop in Narrandera by the aunties to buy her child a birth dress, a gift from the Wiradjuri tribe.
‘The court can’t say they’re all lying, can it? You couldn’t make lip a thing like that, could you?’ she begged.
‘Hmm, perhaps not. This Mary Simpson, could she take me to your hut?’
Jessica nodded, whereupon the weary barrister rose from the park bench. ‘Very well, my dear. We’ll leave it like that for the time being. I shall be in touch.’ Richard Runche KC extended his hand and Jessica could see it was trembling. ‘And now I must find the nearest pub,’ he said, shaking her hand.
‘Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.’ He ran his tongue over his cracked lips. ‘Don’t thank me yet, Jessica, we’ve a long way to go before you’re out of this miserable place.’ Then he turned and walked towards the wrought-iron gates, pausing to talk briefly to the porter, who Jessica saw point left, down the road. Jessica watched as Liquid Lunch crossed Balmain Road and turned left towards the Macarthur Arms. She felt as though she had been run over by a steamroller. She sat quietly in the dark shade of the oak tree and wondered what would become of her. She wished she was dead, like Jack, and that she lay next to him. Then she began to wonder for the thousandth time why, when he had been alive, he hadn’t written to her in the asylum. She’d written to him every month for two years but had never received a reply. Had Hester or Meg — or both of them — written to him to tell him she’d gone crazy? Surely he would be able to tell from her letters that this was not so? She’d always sent them to the right place — Moishe had seen to this, tracking Jack’s regiment wherever it went. He’d missed out on Gallipoli and stayed in Egypt, she knew that much. She also knew in her heart that he was alive. Moishe had seen to that detail, too, diligently going through the postings in the daily newspapers by the Defence Department of those killed in action. Not only had Moishe seen to it that Jessica had pen and paper to write with but he’d also paid for the stamps to Egypt.
Dear, sweet Moishe had never asked her about Jack. He’d waited patiently for her to tell him and when she hadn’t she supposed he’d considered Jack was the reason why she’d rejected his hand in marriage. It was a fair enough assumption because, of course, it was true — she could love no other man, come what may.
But then in the third week of January 1917 on a Thursday, when Moishe wasn’t expected to visit, he arrived to see Jessica and gave her the sad news that Jack was dead. He had died of his wounds sustained in a cavalry charge against the Turks at a place called Magdhaba in Egypt on Christmas Eve, on Joey’s second birthday.
Jessica had been inconsolable for several weeks, eating almost nothing and remaining silent for days on end, until she had been threatened with the jacket. Then she’d taken to mourning for Jack after midnight, when the ward was locked and when the moans and the cries and the weeping of the inmates cancelled each other out.
But still, while she mourned for him every day, Jessica could never understand why Jack hadn’t given her the benefit of the doubt. It could only have been because of something Meg or Hester had written to him about her, something so horrible it prevented him from writing to her ever again. Jessica couldn’t imagine what it could be. Perhaps that she’d tried to kill Meg’s baby, his son? Jessica couldn’t have told him about Joey.
Now, she thought, even if she’d changed her mind and he were still alive and she’d decided to write to Jack and tell him what had happened, Richard Runche KC had just demonstrated to her how unlikely her story would have sounded even to him, and how easily Meg could have refuted it. Jack would have concluded that Hester and Meg were right and that she had gone mad. Jessica sat alone and wept in the late afternoon sun. She wept for Jack in his windswept grave of desert sand and hoped that they’d buried him in the grove of eucalypts he’d seen near the pyramids. She wept for her own lost son. For herself. ‘Maybe I am going mad, am mad!’ she sobbed softly. Passers-by took no notice of the slim, sad girl in the loony-bin smock and ugly black boots seated under an English oak. People in the grounds of a mental asylum weeping to themselves were a common enough sight. Misery was the stock in trade of such a place. Mad people don’t do a lot of laughing.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
On I December 1918, twenty days after the end of the war, Jessica is released from Callan Park into the custody of Mr Richard Runche KC. She is given a cheap cotton calico dress and allowed to keep her bloomers and boots and then she’s handed a large manila envelope, which she can’t even think about opening for the moment.
Jessica and Richard Runche take the omnibus to Central Station, whereupon the barrister escorts Jessica to platform ten and buys them both a ticket. Runche hands Jessica the ticket and looks at her, slightly shamefaced. ‘If you’ll excuse me, my dear, I’ll just have a tot or two before the train goes. Would you care to accompany me? A drink might do you some good,’ he says. Jessica shakes her head. ‘Thank you, Mr Runche, I’ve never tasted strong drink. Can I just wait here?’ The lawyer looks somewhat relieved. ‘This is the correct platform, my dear, and the train departs at nine tonight.’ He fishes into his trouser pockets and finds a shilling, then points to the main concourse. ‘The tea room is over there, almost directly opposite this platform, should you be feeling a trifle peckish.’
At first Jessica is reluctant to take his money, but the lawyer persists. ‘It’s a long journey, all night on the train, so you’ll need to take some refreshment, Jessica.’ Jessica watches as he walks away, and thinks that even from the back Richard Runche looks frail. The jacket he wears is too short, and the
seat of his trousers is shiny, the trousers hanging loosely in folds, their cuffs rumpled and concertinaed about the ankles. His shoes are badly scuffed and down at heel and need a good blacking. His being slightly stooped and wearing an ill-fitting jacket makes one shoulder appear a little higher than the other. Even at a distance the dishevelled lawyer gives the impression of uncertainty and disrepair. He carries a small, battered leather suitcase, barely large enough to contain much more than his shaving soap, razor and one or two small personal items, though Jessica is sure these would not include a spare shirt, underwear or socks.
Jessica sits on the platform for a while, clutching the brown envelope and watching people in the distance as they walk along the concourse. She feels strange in the unfamiliar surroundings, as though she has been transported to another world where she doesn’t belong.
For four years her life has been conducted behind high stone walls where the buildings and every tree surrounding them were familiar to her, the witches’ broomsticks of the oak trees in winter and the dark shade of their generous leaves in summer.
Jessica needs time to adjust to this new sense of space as well as the number of people that seem to fill it. Everything looks different and unfamiliar, and after the quiet of the lunatic asylum the peripheral noise is deafening. She does not notice the austerity brought about by the war or the shabby clothes most people wear. All she sees is the rush and bustle of city life and the urgent faces of people, all of whom seem to have somewhere to go and with no time to waste. She longs suddenly to be back in the bush, the never-changing bush, where she can belong again.
The railway clock strikes six — three hours to go before the train is due to leave for the west. Jessica glances down uncertainly at the brown envelope on her lap, still lacking the courage to open it. It bulges slightly and looks quite intimidating and strange, belonging to a world she has yet to become accustomed to.
In the mental asylum suppertime was five o’clock and her stomach has grown accustomed to receiving food at this hour. But she decides to sit a while longer while she tries to summon sufficient courage to walk across the platform onto the concourse and then to enter the railway tea room.
Eventually Jessica gets to her feet, but she can feel her knees trembling as she walks towards the brightly lit tea room. At the doorway she peeps in and is alarmed to find it is filled with people chatting and eating, the hum of human voices mixed with the clatter and din of cutlery on china. The large room is fuggy with pipe smoke and the smell of cooking and she draws back, afraid to enter. At the asylum meals were taken in silence and inmates were not allowed to smoke. Jessica has become so used to eating her food in a solitary manner that the railway tea room now seems to her to be filled with mad people. Diners snorting and snuffling, feeding faces with snouts like pigs — a scene more from a dream than reality — and she shrinks back in fear.
‘What’s the matter, lovey? “Teleee-graph!” You ‘fraid to go in? “Teleee-graph!” Don’t blame ya. “Teleeegraph!” Them snotty waitresses, “Teleee-graph!” full of their own importance, them lot. “Teleee-graph!’”
Jessica turns to see the small woman, perhaps in her sixties or a little older, who has spoken to her. She wears a faded green dust-coat which reaches to her ankles and a pair of ancient bedroom slippers with the toenail of her left foot cutting through the dirty felt. A battered leather satchel hangs across her shoulder and flaps against her bony hip and under her arm she carries a bundle of evening newspapers.
‘G’day,’ Jessica says quietly, not quite knowing if she’s expected to answer the old woman.
‘Kiosk, lovey, over the end. “Teleee-graph!” Do a nice pie or a cornish pasty, “Teleee-graph!” cuppa tea and a sticky bun. “Teleee-graphf’’’ The woman is pointing towards the end of the main concourse. ‘Skinny Dredge, he’s the boss, tell him Myra, “Teleee-graph!” sent youse.’ ‘Thank you,’ Jessica says, looking to where the little newspaper seller is pointing.
‘Got a penny?’ the woman now asks.
Jessica shakes her head and says ingenuously, ‘I’ve only got a shilling.’ She opens her hand to reveal the coin Richard Runche has given her.
The newspaper seller quickly counts out eleven pence in change and gives it to Jessica, taking the shilling and handing her a newspaper. ‘Ta, lovey,’ she says moving away, ‘Teleee-graphf’
Jessica takes a deep breath and then walks over to the kiosk, which isn’t too crowded. A large silver urn dominates the rear counter, just like the one they used at Callan Park with a little glass tube set into the side to show how much water there remains in it. It is such a small thing, but its familiar presence gives Jessica confidence. A blackboard with a chalked menu is fixed against the back wall and announces, amongst other items, that a pie and a cup of tea is sixpence and a sticky bun threepence. Jessica doesn’t introduce herself with the compliments of Myra, but manages to order both a pie and a bun with a cup of tea. The very act of carrying out this simple task makes her nervous and she stutters slightly.