Bryce Courtenay - Jessica

PENGUIN BOOKS

JESSICA

Bryce Courtenay was born in South Africa but has spent the greater part of his adult life in Australia. His bestselling books include The Power of One and its sequel Tandia, April Fools Day, The Potato Factory, Tommo & Hawk, Solomons Song, A Recipe for Dreaming, The Family Frying Pan, The Night Country and Smoky Joes Caf .

Jessica

Bryce Courtenay

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India

Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

www.penguin.com

First published by Penguin Books Australia Ltd 1998

Published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph 1999

Published in Penguin Books 2000

Copyright Bryce Courtenay, 1998

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-194220-9

To the memory of Jessica and for Margaret

A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I sometimes think my books are made up of all the things my friends know. I never cease to be amazed at how generously they share their considerable knowledge for my benefit. I thank you all.

But firstly, I thank Benita Courtenay who has been with me throughout the making of this book. It is never easy living with an author and once again we have survived the experience.

Margaret and Ian Duff, who brought me the story of Jessica in the first instance and gave generously of their time and hospitality in helping with the research. Without you, Margaret, there would have been no story to tell. The gracious assistance of your family is also appreciated.

Margaret Gee, for the countless hours she put into making sure the manuscript was clean and for so many other ways that made my writing life easier. Bruce Gee, my researcher with his eye for detail and his clever mind. Essie Moses, who helped in a dozen ways. Dr Brent Waters, for medical advice. Denis Savill, who always seems to come to the rescue with the cover art. The Bundanon Trust, for permission to use the Arthur Boyd painting featured on the cover, and to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Robbee Spadafora, for her cover design and production supervision. Alan Jacobs of Consensus Research, for his insights and knowledge.

Susan Killham of the Narrandera Shire Library was very helpful. Leslie Niewodowski for the Yiddish translation. Dr Ken Winkel of the Australian Venom Research Unit. Kathryn Everett, Sylvia Manning, Polly Zack, Peter and Victoria Thompson, Christine Gee and Margaret Merrylees. The wonderfully co-operative people at the New South Wales State Library a resource it is not possible to replace.

At Penguin Books, Peter Field, Peter Blake, my publishers Bob Sessions and Julie Gibbs for their constant encouragement and help, and finally, Clare Forster, quite the best editor it has been my good fortune to have working with me.

If you lose your pluck, you lose the most there is in you all youve got to live with .

Eighty-year-old grandmother of twenty-two children, forced to leave her Oklahoma farm during the Great Depression, 1936.

(from the exhibition, The Photographs of Dorothea Lange)

B OOK O NE

C HAPTER O NE

O ut in the south-west along the banks of the Murrumbidgee the snakes come out at sundown to dance. The mulga, gwardar and the Eastern brown, the clumsy death adder, black-headed python and the harmless carpet snake. They sway and twist in streaks of twirling ribbon, loops of gunmetal grey and whips of bronze catching the late afternoon sun, reptilian lightning that sends puffs of grey dust into the baking air.

This is country to make hard men whimper and bite their knuckles in their sleep. Old man saltbush tethers the black soil to an endless horizon. By sunrise the day is already grown hazy from the heat. Dark pre-Cambrian rock and mulga scrub tremble in an illusion of moisture. Men see for the most part through squinting eyes plagued by a constant vexation of black flies that suck the moisture from creased skin and feed on the salty sweat stains on their flannel shirts. It is a place where the heat is so severe birds lose their strength to fly and drop like stones from the breathless air.

The women, their hips wide and slack from too many pregnancies, walk with a slow gait. It is as though their shadows contain the weight of their weariness, dark sacks dragging along the ground behind them. Their faces are hidden in the interior of deep bonnets, but it is their hands which first betray them, blunt, calloused fingers and broken nails, skin raw and puffy from the constant use of lye soap and slap of wet flannel against a corrugated washboard.

This is a place to break your heart and leave no sentiment to alleviate a life of bitterness and struggle. Three hundred days a year a hard-faced sky mocks any hope of rain and every miserable dogs day dawn is much the same as the one before it. Monotony and stoicism are constant companions, imagination a bad habit to be quickly stamped out of young children so that they may be made useful and compliant. It is here where, at dusk, the snakes dance on the banks of the Murrumbidgee.

Jessica waits quietly with a shotgun cradled in her arm, her green eyes intent on the scene before her. In the pocket of her pinny are three cartridges, their faded red cases having been used and re-filled half a dozen times with birdshot, and tamped with wadding and cordite with a little black powder added to save money. Joe has shown her how and Jessica can now do it in her sleep: head-wadding, charge, mid-wadding, birdshot, cap and wadding and crimping. The worn cardboard casings with their reseated copper crowns are filled so that the birdshot will effectively spray in a three-foot arc at a distance of twenty feet, well, sometimes, anyway.

At first light when Jessica ventured out of the homestead to the chookhouse she saw that six chicks had gone missing from under the black hen, all taken by snakes, their serpentine slicks plain to see in patches of yard dust leading to the chicken run.

Shed vowed to get the bastards at sundown. Six of them for six chicks. Now, watching the dancing snakes, Jessica repeats her promise silently, Six of you mongrels are gunna pay tonight. She knows shed be safe cursing them out loud, warning them of the revenge thats coming to them. Snakes are deaf and cant see too well either, so theyre not likely to hear you coming except for the vibrations you make as you walk. They can smell, though with their trembling forked tongues they pick up tiny particles on the ground and transfer them to the roof of their mouths where they have their smelling organs. Like having your nose inside your mouth, Joe says. Jessica doesnt know how he knows stuff like this, hes not a book reader and claims hes never had any proper learning. He can read all right when hes got a newspaper, but like lots of folk his lips move and sometimes you can hear him whispering, struggling with a word, trying to hear its sound, make sense of it.