Jessica Read Free Page A

leaves the table. Jessica knows her mother has finally given up on her. From now on Jessica must stick with Joe, and Hester gives all her affection to Meg.
    Jessica recalls how Meg rose from her stool to follow Hester into the kitchen.
    â€˜Stay! You bloody started this,’ Joe commands. Meg lowers herself slowly back on her stool, not looking at her father.
    Jessica, not daring to touch her face, turns and nods dumbly to Joe, accepting her punishment. Then she looks down into her lap, fighting back her tears, determined not to show Meg how she feels.
    The room is silent. She can hear her mother in the kitchen, angrily scraping the bottom of the meat pan with the metal gravy spoon. Then the clank of Joe’s knife and fork on his tin plate as he resumes eating his tea. Joe won’t eat his tucker off proper plates, he says tin makes food seem hard-earned by decent folk.
    Jessica waits until she can be certain her voice has recovered enough before turning to her sister. ‘Fuck you,’ she whispers from the side of her mouth.
    â€˜Jessie just swore at me, Father! She used a terrible word, too!’ Meg howls.
    Joe looks up from his dinner plate at Meg. His mind is already elsewhere, his temper cooled down. In his opinion the matter is settled, Jessica has took her punishment fair and square. He plants both elbows on the table, still chewing. His massive sun-bronzed arms give the appearance of two hocks of well-cooked meat with a knife protruding from the end of one and a fork from the end of the other. Swallowing, he’ asks mildly, ‘What’d she say?’
    â€˜I can’t say it!’ Meg looks directly down into her plate as though she’s addressing the potatoes.
    Joe picks at a tooth with his pinkie nail and turns to Jessica. ‘What’d you say to your sister, girlie?’
    Jessica, even more furious at Meg, no longer cares if she ends up copping another backhander from her father. She grips the sides of the .table with both hands and glares defiantly at Meg, angry tears welling. ‘I said, Fuck you!’
    She shouts out the words in such a bold manner that Joe is left in no doubt that they are now meant to include him as well.
    Jessica closes her eyes and pulls her head back so that her neck is held rigid, her jaw exposed to take the clout she expects from her father. Her cheek still burns and the left side other mouth is numb from his previous blow. She can feel her eye starting to close.
    Joe smiles to himself. He likes the courage he’s seen in the eyes of his youngest daughter. She’s game, all right, he thinks. He turns his gaze on Meg who sits with downcast eyes, straight-backed, chin tucked in, her hands folded in her lap. A man would need a bloody pickaxe to crack open that one’s heart, he thinks to himself. Pity the poor bastard who gets her.
    How could two girls be so different? Meg, cunning as a shithouse rat, the perfect little lady, at fourteen already a woman with all the looks and tricks that turn men’s eyes soft with longing. But what’s between her legs you can be sure she’ll keep locked up tight until the exact right moment. That one’s got her mind firmly set on a better life than most of the men in the district could offer a lass. Good on her, he doesn’t mind that, she’s got bugger-all inheritance coming from him. The property’s mortgaged to the hilt and the bank’ll get the bloody lot when he’s gone, unless Jessica can keep it going. Meg’ll marry the Thomas boy and have babies dressed in ribbons and booties — it’s written all over her sulky little face.
    Joe thinks of young Jack Thomas, just two years older than his daughter with five thousand acres coming to him when George Thomas finally carks it. A thousand already under the plough and most of that fronting the river. Meg is putting in a lot of groundwork with the two Thomas girls these days. She’s gone over to the Anglicans