Read Online Jessica by Bryce Courtenay - Free Book Online

without the support of his mother. In the beginning, she had sided with the others, but when Jack had threatened to leave home and become an itinerant shearer and to take Billy with him, Ada, besotted with her only son, quickly gave in. Later, though, she and her daughters would wreak their revenge on poor, helpless Billy Simple. Jessica has heard Jack’s angry tales of his family’s mean teasing of Billy, and she certainly knows how nasty those women can be.
    Jessica herself has learned over the past four years to dislike the Thomas women almost as much as she dislikes their father. When she’d been forced to eat at the homestead that first year, every dinner she took with them became a torture. The two girls, Winifred and Gwen, delighted in making fun of her.
    They’d hold their noses when Jessica entered the kitchen. ‘Pooh, you smell of sheep!’ they’d exclaim, even though Jessica always took care to wash her face and arms at the pump before entering the house.
    They spoke about her in French, which they were learning from their tutor, giggling and hugging each other, overcome with their own amusement. They remarked loudly on her awkward table manners and imitated her holding her knife in her fist and resting its end on the table as she ate. They always sat at the other end of the kitchen table, noting loudly that it was as far from her pong as they could possibly get.
    They remarked constantly on her looks, her greasy work clothes and her short cropped hair, and wondered aloud how a woman could sink so low that she’d dress like a man and work in a shearing shed.
    Jessica dared not fight back and learned to take her meals in silence, gulping down her food so that she could make her escape. Winifred and Gwen never ceased delighting in taunting her and seemed between them to have an endless capacity to be vindictive. Ada would sometimes come into the kitchen and sit at the table but even then the teasing didn’t stop. Jessica soon sensed that while she did not join in, Ada Thomas was secretly very amused by their taunts and carrying on.
    â€˜You two really are the limit,’ she’d say to her daughters, though there would be a small smile on her lips. ‘Leave the poor girl alone.’
    Jessica used to beg Joe to let her go without her dinner at the homestead, to take bread and cold mutton with her and eat alone. But Hester would never allow it, saying that keeping the family’s relationship with the Thomas girls cordial was a great opportunity for Meg to get closer to young Jack.
    â€˜Don’t you ever show disrespect to them, or answer back — you’ll ruin our chances for Meg,’ her mother had admonished her, making Joe promise that their young daughter would do nothing to upset Ada, Winifred or Gwen.
    As Jessica nears the homestead now she can hear the dogs barking, and grins when she thinks how angry they’ll be at being locked up and missing out on the fun. Again, she lets herself feel happy at the thought of a few days without Meg and Hester and their endless pursuit of the Thomas family.
    Her mother and sister have turned posh and become Church of England, taking their example from Mrs Thomas and her daughters, Winifred and Gwen, which to Jessica’s mind is about the worst thing you could do. They clutch their prayer books to their bosoms for all to see as they arrive at St Stephen’s in the sulky. As you can’t go clutching a prayer book to your bosom while looking saintly and, at the same time, hold the reins and talk to the horse, their new-found piety requires Jessica to drive them to church of a Sunday. This means she has to sit on her bum in a hard pew while the Reverend Samuel Mathews, M.A. Oxon., takes an hour of sunlight out of her life to get through the dreary Sunday sermon. It’s a speech which generally seems to involve the perfidy of mankind, the futility of life and the need to be good and love thy neighbour so