‘Oh Gawd, his mind’s gorn!’ Jessica exclaims In alarm, bringing both hands up to cover her mouth. ‘I tol’ ya,’ Mary says quietly.
Just then the barrister’s eyes seem to clear. ‘Jessica, my dear,’ he whispers softly.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It is a bright spring morning in late September 1923.
Richard Runche KC sits outside Jessica’s hut at Redlands, sipping at a mug of sweet black tea. Seven weeks have passed since she and Mary rescued him from Ma Shannon’s boarding house. While he still has the shakes, his first thought upon waking is no longer his need for a drink. He is wearing a new pair of moleskins and a flannel shirt, one of two Jessica has purchased for him in Narrandera. His old suit was so completely in tatters that it had to be discarded and burnt, his shirt disintegrating when an attempt was made to wash it.
When Jessica and Mary first brought him to the hut, Runche was in such a fearful mess that they thought he might die. The Englishman lay on Jessica’s cot for almost two weeks in a dreadful state of agitation, shivering and shaking, possessed by what Mary refers to as ‘them DTs’.
Jessica would sit on the edge of the bed and try to give him a little broth or weak sweet tea, though at first he’d vomit up everything, until she wondered what it was that kept him alive. Mary, who came over from the camp each morning to give her a hand, wasn’t overly hopeful of his chances and urged Jessica to give him a little brandy in his tea.
‘He can’t come off the grog, his brain’s pickled. He needs the drink to stay alive,’ Mary said.
‘Well, I ain’t gunna give him no more grog and that’s that,’ Jessica announced firmly. ‘We haven’t got any and I ain’t getting any.’ She turned to face Mary. ‘He were as good as dead when we found him and it’s the drink that done it. Giving him more won’t help!’
‘Well that’s all I know,’ Mary explained. ‘They can’t do without it when they like this.’ She sighed. ‘It’s them DTs.’ ‘Mary, the blackfellas you seen, did they die when they was took off the grog?’
‘Can’t take ‘em off, Jessie, I just tol’ you.’
‘Yes, but did you see any of them die?’ Jessica insisted.
‘Plenty.’
‘From getting no grog?’
‘Nah, from the grog. Like I said, you can’t take it away from them.’ Mary shrugged. ‘Don’t matter, I s’pose, them’s good as dead anyway.’
‘Well we’re gunna try, that’s all,’ Jessica said. ‘If the old bugger’s gunna die like yer said, we might as well kill him trying to make him better.’
For those first two weeks Richard Runche spent most of his time thrashing about in his cot, howling out obscenities or screaming for help, sometimes crying out for his nanny, like a small boy afraid of the dark. Sometimes it got so bad that Jessica and Mary would need to rope him to the wooden bed to keep
him from hurting himself.
Jessica felt it was like being back in the asylum. She would sit with him for hours, calming him and wiping his brow with a cool, damp cloth. She’d virtually have to carry him outside to relieve himself, though with the little he ate, such excursions were thankfully not too frequent. With the sun beating down on the tin roof, combined with his fever, the lawyer seemed to burn up all the moisture in his bladder. Jessica was flat out trying to keep him from further dehydration. How grateful she was that the summer was not yet fully upon them, when the heat in the tin hut became unbearable.
But gradually, a little bit each day, she could see her patient getting stronger and his nightmares less frequent. Now, seven weeks later, Richard Runche KC is back on his feet and, while the shakes seem like they’re here to stay, is able to get up and about for a few hours each day.
Jessica has extended the lean-to and built a rough wooden bed under it where she slept while her patient was recovering. But now she’s returned to the interior of the hut and the barrister is ensconced in the lean-to. It’s now time for Richard Runche KC to earn his keep. This morning Mary is coming over and they’re going to confront him with the problem of her missing children. ‘He gunna use them books?’ Mary asks.
Jessica nods. She had paid Ma Shannon the rent Runche owed when she and Mary came to collect him and together they got a large box and packed all the Englishman’s things, along with his law books. Then they hired a cart to transport them to the train. With the sick and semi-conscious Richard Runche KC in tow they’d returned to Redlands .
. To house the books, Jessica built three rough timber shelves along the outside wall supporting the lean-to. The green and red leather covers were, for the most part, in a state of disrepair and the gold-embossed lettering on the binding had faded. Some books even had their handsome spines ripped off to expose the glued and stitched linen membrane beneath. But, despite this, and their unprepossessing environment, they looked grand stacked along the shelves. In Jessica’s opinion they gave her humble hut a sense of dignity, and she liked to imagine it as a place of importance, a little library in the bush. Mary, who was a good hand with a needle and thread, made a cover from a grain sack to fit over the three bookshelves so that later in the summer, when the paddocks dried up and the air was thick with dust, the books would be protected.
During the weeks it took for Richard Runche KC to dry out, Jessica and Mary had come to think of the books as containing the secret knowledge they needed to return the little black woman’s children to her. It was the books which would bring them justice, they decided, with the barrister being the key to unlocking their enormous power.
Jessica seats the still-fragile Richard Runche under the big river gum not far from Billy Simple’s gravestone and where she’d built a small bush table and two crude benches. With the water’s edge close by it is a cool and comfortable place even on a hot day. Then, with Richard Runche KC seated, she and Mary tell him the story of Mary’s stolen children.
‘We want Mary’s kids back, Mr Runche. They can’t just take them like that. Just come in and put them in a truck and drive off, it ain’t right!’
He is silent for a few moments. ‘I’m afraid they can, my dear. That is, they can with Aboriginal children.’ ‘But why? They’re people same as us, and the government can’t just walk in and steal our white babies.’ ‘Well, perhaps not, unless it can be proved they are being abused or neglected.’
‘My children’s not neglected!’ Mary protests. ‘They got good clothes, plenty tucker and they don’t have snot runnin’ out their noses.’
The little lawyer looks down, examining his fingernails. ‘I wish it were as easy as that, my dear. Diligence as a parent is not the criterion — any police constable or child welfare officer can decide whether they’re neglected.’
Mary’s voice is suddenly bitter. ‘Just ‘cause we’s blackfellas, eh?’