Jessica (56 page)

Jimmy stops, realising just in time what he was about to say.

‘Abos?' Jessica says it for him.

‘Well, yes,' he says embarrassed, not looking at Mary.

‘Good, then maybe we can get a room there,' Jessica says tartly. ‘Jimmy Jenkins, you always was a bloody snob. Come, Mary, let's go.'

They have almost reached the door when Jimmy Jenkins shouts, ‘Better take a bottle with you!'

They take his advice and buy a bottle on their way out. Richard Runche has always been the worse for wear, or at least he has ever since Jessica has known him. But she is not prepared for what they find when fat old gin-swilling Ma Shannon takes them to his room.

‘Help yerself,' she says. ‘Buggered if I'm goin' in. If he's dead gi's ahoy.'

Jessica turns the doorknob and half opens the door and looks in. ‘Jesus!' she exclaims. Richard Runche KC lies on an iron cot on a filthy mattress, his eyes closed, knees drawn up to his chest. He is fully clothed but without his shoes, and his suit is clearly in tatters, his pale feet are sticking out of the ends of his dirty trousers. The buttons on his fly are missing or open. Jessica can't see which, but the gap reveals a pathetic little purple acorn curled into its pubic nest. Runche's greasy jacket is ripped, the lapels frayed at the edge, and his once white shirt, which sports no collar, is almost black.

They enter the tiny room, which smells of shit, stale sick and grog. Runche groans and sucks at his gums and every few moments shouts out, as though in fear. Whatever is going on inside his grog-soaked brain is obviously not doing him a lot of good.

Both women look about them, their fingers held to their noses. Jessica sees that the single window is shut tight so that the atmosphere is fetid and you could cut the air with an axe. Several blowflies buzz around, bumping against the uncovered dirty window-pane. It is light enough, though, and the rod and rings above the window testify that curtains once hung there. The barrister, groaning, now pulls a filthy pillow over his head against the intrusion of the sharp mid-morning light.

Against the wall to the side of the window stands a dresser made of several four-gallon paraffin tins resting on their sides with one end cut out and the edges hammered flat. Scraps of clothing, empty bottles and nondescript bits and pieces are stuffed into each of its apertures. Beside the bed stands a battered old chair with its cane seat broken inwards, as though a giant has farted and blown the plaited cane asunder. The remainder of the room is filled with law books lying higgledy-piggledy or piled in little heaps among the empty claret bottles and old newspapers.

‘Oh me Gawd!' Mary exclaims, bringing her hands up to her face. ‘This the whitefella gunna bring me kids back?'

Jessica moves over to the window and after some effort she manages to push it open, though the hinges creak where they've rusted up. ‘It'll be orright, Mary,' she says, though she knows she's trying to convince herself as much as she is her friend.

‘Nah, missus, that fella he got the DTs. He's gorn, finish.'

Jessica turns on Mary. ‘Don't you go Abo on me, ya hear, Mary Simpson, I ain't yer flamin'
missus!'
she says furiously. ‘He'll be orright, I'm tellin' yer, I've seen him before, same as this!'

‘I'm sorry, Jessie,' Mary says looking down at Richard Runche KC. ‘It's just I seen his kind before.' She points to the pathetic shivering form on the bed. ‘This ain't new stuff for black people.'

Jessica looks contrite. ‘I'm sorry, too, Mary, I didn't mean to shout at yiz, it's me nerves an' all.' She spreads her hands. ‘Bloody hell, what're we gunna do?'

‘Go home,' Mary says promptly, shrugging one shoulder. ‘Can't help that bugger.'

‘Go home? What, and leave him like this?'

‘Ten minutes ago we didn't know he were like this,' Mary points out.

‘So? What's that supposed to mean?' Mary sighs. ‘We close the door and we think who we was ten minutes back. We's Jessie and Mary, remember? And we ain't done nothing wrong to nobody and we's minding our own business trying to get back me kids.' She pauses and takes a breath. ‘So we catch the train and go back home.'

‘And you never see your kids again! Is that it?'

‘Jessie, he's fucked!' Mary cries suddenly. ‘He ain't gunna get me kids back. That poor bastard, he's got snakes and spiders in his head, eh!'

Jessica's jaw sets, the Bergman stubbornness comes upon her, settles down on a rock in her head like the grey heron that comes to the creek of a morning. She shakes her head slowly. ‘Nah, I'm not leavin' him, Mary. You can go if yer like, you've got yer train ticket.' Mary sighs again. ‘Jessie, it's bloody hopeless, I seen this a hundred times. When they come out, their brain's gorn, all they can do is dribble and shit their trousers!' She points at the figure on the bed once more. ‘One day he like this and he drowns in his own vomit, that the most lucky day for everyone!'

‘Yeah, well, okay, but I've got to try.' Jessica looks at Mary. ‘He's me friend. Wasn't for him I'd still be in the loony-bin!'

Mary shrugs. ‘You're gunna be sorry, Jessica. Don't say I didn't told yer.' She takes a deep breath. ‘Righto then, we got to get him awake and to make 'im throw up. You think that fat old woman will lend us a bucket or a big dish?'

‘I'll go ask her,' Jessica volunteers, pleased that Mary's going to stay with her.

She returns with a bucket a few minutes later to find that Mary is seated on the side of the iron cot and has the still semi-conscious Runche held in a sitting position on the bed while she massages his neck and the back of his skull. ‘He's got nits and I think he's shit hisself,' she announces calmly as Jessica enters. “Ere, Jessie, hold the bucket on his lap and watch out for your hands.'

Moments later the poor barrister gives a pronounced shudder and half opens his eyes, then he begins to gag and Mary grips him tightly by the back of the neck. His eyes open a little wider and begin to roll in his head and a moment later Mary pushes his face hard down over the bucket and Richard Runche KC empties his stomach into it.

Both women remain silent until finally the poor man seems to have emptied out. ‘Take the bucket, give us the bottle,' Mary now says to Jessica. ‘What, the claret?'

‘Yeah, the bottle we brought him. Be better if it was brandy.'

Jessica takes the bucket and opens the door and places it outside the room. Then she takes from her basket the bottle of claret they'd purchased at Jimmy Jenkins's suggestion. ‘Shit, we forgot the corkscrew,' she cries.

Mary laughs and pulls the lawyer back into a sitting position, and her hand goes to the side pocket of his tattered suit jacket. ‘Abracadabra!' she says, producing a corkscrew out of the pocket and handing it to Jessica. ‘Corkscrew's the one thing they never lose, that and their flamin' thirst,' she says grinning.

At the sound of the cork being drawn from the claret bottle, Runche's eyes pop open and his lips start to smack together. Jessica hands the bottle to Mary. ‘Should we, y'know, give him more grog?' she asks, unsure.

‘Only way we's gunna get him onto his feet,' Mary says, in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘He's all the time drunk anyway, can't do without it no more — grog's what keeps him gain'.' She feeds a little claret into the lawyer's mouth. He closes his eyes and swallows the ruby liquid greedily, then his tongue spreads against his top lip, begging for more, his eyes open again, though no more than a slit. Mary waves the bottle almost within range of his mouth, teasing him with it, and Runche tries to follow the moving claret bottle with his head, his lips now beating frantically together like those of a goldfish in a bowl. Suddenly she grips him behind his scrawny neck and begins to shake him, her thumb digging hard into the flesh under his jaw, her other hand holding the bottle up in front of him. ‘No more till yiz speaks to us,' Mary commands.

Richard Runche KC winces. ‘Ouch!' he groans. Mary releases her grip and Runche rubs his eyes like a small child waking and gazes about him. He looks directly at Jessica and she can see the confusion in his eyes. She sees also that he doesn't know who she is. ‘It's Jessica, Mr Runche, your friend. Remember me?' Richard Runche's eyes remain vacant, not comprehending.

‘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.

I
t 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?'

Richard Runche KC nods, then says, ‘I'm afraid so, Mary. There's a lot of high-blown rhetoric about the rights of the Aboriginal people, but when it comes down to it, as the Yankees say, it doesn't amount to a hill of beans.' He brings his fist up to his lips and clears his throat. ‘There isn't much in the law that looks after your interests when it comes either to property or personal rights.'

Mary turns and points in the direction of the bookshelves. ‘You mean them books ain't gunna get me back me kids? Yiz not gunna find out how to get me kids back outa them books?' she repeats, then looks at Jessica and says, ‘Shit, Jessie and me, we nearly broke our backs bringing them back.'

‘Oh, they'll be useful all right, nothing like a precedent or two to confuse a judge or a police magistrate,' Richard Runche KC says reassuringly. ‘Though I'm quite well versed in this part of the law,' he explains. ‘When I first arrived in this country in 1890 there was quite a to-do in the papers about a wild race of half-castes .growing up in New South Wales. It was then that the Aborigines' Protection Board introduced the notion that the children should be “de-socialised” as Aborigines and “re-socialised” as whites — “assimilation” was what it was being termed at the time. The idea of separating children from their parents was so abhorrent to me that I took some interest in the whole affair. It was not so different from the disenfranchising of the American Red Indians, and I confess I thought it might be an area of the law where I might profitably practise.' He looked up and shrugged. ‘Well, it wasn't and then things changed for me,' he said, not explaining any further, though both women knew he meant his drinking. ‘We must obtain a copy of the Aborigines' Protection Act. We'll need to know it backwards if we are to proceed.'

‘Where would we get one o' them?' Jessica asks. ‘Is it a book?'

‘Why, the nearest courthouse will have it, I should think, or a police station. It will be a government pamphlet, a guide to the law for police magistrates and the like,' Runche said.

‘I'll ride into Yanco termorra and get one,' Jessica promptly responds.

‘It may not be quite as easy as that, my dear. You'll not be thanked for asking for it and it might well be withheld.' ‘Why?' Jessica asks.

‘Well, it's a tricky business at the moment. You see, the Aborigines live on well over a hundred reserves in New South Wales, all of which have been officially set aside for them by past governments. You could say the government has “deeded” them this land, though this viewpoint has always struck me as odd — after all, it was theirs in the first place.'

‘Do yer mean like Warangesda, Grong Grong and Sandy Hill?' Mary asks.

‘Well, yes, and a great many government stations and missions and reserves like them.'

‘Well, why they chasin' the blackfella out them places?' Mary asks. ‘If it ours, why can't we stay? We ain't done nuthin' wrong!'

‘Ah, well there's the rub. It's good land and now the government wants it back.' ‘What for?' Jessica asks.

‘Returned soldiers. They want to give the land to the returning troops, divide it into farm settlements.' ‘But that's not fair!' Jessica protests.

‘No, my dear, it isn't, it isn't even strictly legal,' he says, then glances up at Mary. ‘And that, Mary, is where your children come in.'

Both women look at him, puzzled. ‘How come, Mr Runche?' Mary asks at last.

Richard Runche KC smiles gently. ‘I mean no offence by this question, Mary, but how many of your children are unadulterated?'

Mary shrugs. ‘They all adulteried, sir. Me old man, the one I was married to, he buggered off after the first two kids. The two that's already grow'd up. I ain't never married again.'

Richard Runche chuckles despite himself. ‘No, no, that's not what I mean, my dear. Serves me right, silly word. Let me begin again. How many are full-bloods?'

‘You mean no whitefella somewhere in ‘em?'

‘Yes.'

Mary shrugs. ‘All me girls got whitefella somewhere in ‘em.'

‘How many full-blood Aboriginal children are there in your camp, Mary?'

‘Not many that I knows of.' Mary taps her finger lightly to her chest. ‘Me neither, I'm black enough, but me grandad were an Irishman.' She tries to think. ‘Some of the old people, the elders maybe, but most of the full-bloods in the Wiradjuri people they long dead, not many left in these parts, I reckon.' She glances at Jessica and smiles. ‘Jessie says me kids, they every colour of the rainbow.'

‘Well that's precisely it, it's the genetics you see, my dear.'

‘What's genetics, please?' Jessica asks.

‘What you look like, the colour of your skin, eyes, hair — it's all in your blood, your genes.'

‘Oh, you mean like Mary's black and I'm white?'

‘With brown eyes and blue eyes, yes, that's the general idea.'

‘And when you mixes them two up you gets me kids,' Mary says.

‘Exactly, my dear. Now the government of the day happens to think genetics will solve the problem of your people. it seems that, unlike other black races — for instance the negroes in Africa — the Aboriginal people do not “throw back”.' He is aware the words mean nothing to either of them. ‘What this means is that the colour can be bred out of them quite quickly, and a dark child will not crop up at some future time into a family of white children. If the Aboriginal people can be made to persist with white partners, then their offspring will eventually become white. I am told two or three generations is all it takes.'

Mary turns to Jessica. ‘Like Polly.' She looks at the barrister. ‘Polly, she the colour of yellawood honey.'

Jessica frowns, looking at Richard Runche. ‘I don't understand. What's this genetics got to do with taking Mary's kids?'

‘Well the idea is to take part-Aboriginal children from their mothers — Mary's yellowwood-honey child is a perfect example. She'll be able to assimilate and her children will be even lighter skinned.' He pauses before continuing. ‘By the way, eight out of every ten children removed are female. They're taken from their families and made wards of the State.'

‘That explains what they done!' Mary cries suddenly.

‘They never took no boys from the camp. Just me four kids.' Mary looks at him and explains. ‘All me kids, they girls.'

‘Well, there you have it, my dear. The usual procedure is to place the girls into institutions if foster homes cannot be found. The idea is that they will be taught and reared as if they were white children. At age fourteen, they are required to leave the institution and are placed as servants in white homes, where, alas, it is not unusual for them to become pregnant.'