Title: Jessa Called Jay
Chapter 6: The Metronome Of Her World
Author: Elliott Silver
Summary: "Come after me, Jack Robinson," she'd said, but when he tries, she doesn't answer. Three years later, Phryne Fisher returns to Melbourne.
Author's Note: Of all the chapters, this was the one I had completed most fully. Then I reworked it. I hope the final version is worth it. (PS – the next chapter is Phryne's, in case you were wondering).
/ - / - / - / - / June 1931 / - / - / - / - /
"Jessa?"
His voice brings her back from the fog and swirl of her own thoughts.
Outside the weather is grey; a cold front swept in the night before, bringing a hard frost. Jack's eyes as she looks up are the color of clouds, grey as the cabled wool sweater that only hints at his broad shoulders.
Without waiting she hands him the telegram across their usual Thursday lunch table.
"From my editor," she says simply.
She watches him unfold the paper and read it. He glances up only at the end and then refolds it, handing it back to her as casually as if it were a bill or bank statement or menu card.
"What will you do?"
Peter Jessup's ultimatum remains as clear as ever, his instructions to return to Sydney immediately, or forfeit her job at the Herald.
She's been commuting here for almost nine months. The conductors on the Melbourne route know her by name, the taxi-drivers by sight, her landlady at the boarding-house saving her tiny room even when she has to return to Sydney. She keeps her days at the coast short, though, her meetings at the Herald brief, so that she can return by the evening sleeper. The last time she went she found she couldn't open her door for all the mail and Heralds she'd never read (and never would), all her plants having died ignominious and inhospitable deaths. The dust made her sneeze, repeatedly.
Across the table she looks at Jack Robinson. They've been having lunch like clockwork for almost half a year now. She's helped him rehabilitate, recover, and even rebuild. If it's a sacrifice, she doesn't feel it. But she's been living a life strung between these two poles, between Sydney and Melbourne, between the Herald and him. At some point the string must break and she must come down on a side.
"I don't know," she answers without conviction, and then, "What will you?"
It's a conversation they haven't had yet, but the question looms large over them both. She knows he's not independently wealthy, having little in the way of savings. He's managed until now, but with the Depression, he can't wait forever to find employment.
"I don't know."
He mimics her reply, so he explains. "All my life I wanted to be a detective."
They both know he isn't fit for that, not anymore, not with his knee. He might pass for a desk job, but even cleared of criminal charges, his name is still tarnished, like a shirt that's gone through the laundry and come out with irremovable shadows from larger stains.
"If you want anything badly enough, you'll find a way to it," Jessa says at last in their silence.
She's not sure if she means the job, or something more, this shiver between them as his knee brushes hers under the table.
"Will you go?" he asks.
"Yes," she answers him, because she must.
She begins to rise but across the table Jack puts his hand on top of hers. He links them together and holds her there.
"Will you come back?"
/ - / - / - / - /
It's early when she leaves for the train to Sydney. The sky is barely grey, sun still yawning behind the horizon.
If she thought about it, she might be terrified by what she's about to do, but she doesn't, so she isn't, slipping between the tall Ionic columns into the smooth-stone, Reed and Barnes-designed building that is City Central.
The police station hums as she walks in, the blue swirl of a shift change amidst the pungent sting of last night's coffee, hoarse curses as two suspects are hauled off to the holding cells.
Jessa moves past them all, climbing the steps to the suite of offices reserved for the Chief Commissioner. Here it is quiet; the row of desks is empty, the office girls not yet in, typewriters still covered and this morning's newspapers untouched. It smells like paint, fresh as the new name on the Commissioner's door.
She hears the man she's looking for before she sees him.
" – but I'll be wanting an honest man," the thick brogue bellows, "and you're no' that!"
The voice sounds like pulverizing gravel, something that could smash you to pieces, especially now when it's alight with anger. The phone crashes into its cradle but being on a tight schedule and never one to wait for a formal invitation, Jessa sweeps in.
"Jay Tayler," she says, announcing herself and holding out her hand.
The man behind the desk looks up, not in surprise but in curiosity.
Callum O'Callaghan is only recently arrived in Melbourne, being openly poached from the Western Australia Police in Perth. His eyes are bright and piercing – she feels he might skewer you alive with them – and the navy uniform of his trade is so stiff and new that she imagines it might crack when he moves. The insignia of his rank – two crossed and wreathed batons below a crown – is embroidered in red on his epaulettes, scarlet as the flaming hair on his Irish head.
He takes her in slowly, carefully but not covetously. Jessa can tell he is one for detail, someone who believes in starting what you finish, a man that aims what he hits for, even when you hope he might not.
(She knows someone else like that.)
He rises, unfolding impossibly large, and takes her hand in his, dwarfing it, rattling to her bones as he shakes it.
He gestures for her to sit, and she does. There are so many stacks and files on his desk that she can only see him at an angle, a square-jawed Picasso through the pages of unfinished reports and unsolved crimes left behind. It can't be easy walking into a position where your two predecessors have been found guilty of major crimes and you have been left to pick up the pieces.
"What is it you're wanting, a Stóirín?"
She moves the stacks so she can see him more clearly and begins to sort out the various folders, shifting summary offenses from indictable, separating murders from manslaughter.
"You need a Deputy Commissioner," she begins matter-of-factly, as the pile of burglaries almost topples over traffic offenses.
His eyes narrow, and she feels his hackles rise like invisible spines.
"You'll want an honest man for the job," she continues. "Someone with experience, who knows Melbourne inside and out, someone who can sort out tangles, who can make sense of things that don't make sense."
She keeps sorting; there have been twenty-two murders this year, fifteen of them unsolved, two within the last month.
Jessa hands him the cases and waits until the Commissioner's curiosity gets the better of him.
"Who?"
She tells him.
"Dia ár sábháil!" The commissioner swears, face turning redder than usual. "You cann'a be serious!"
But she is. Of course she is.
"You know there's only one kind of man who would suffer so much for so little."
"You think the truth little?"
"No," Jessa answers. "I think it's everything. And so does he."
She rises to catch her train but his deep voice catches her as she leaves.
"If ya' think so, then why're you leaving?"
Jessa breathes, and lets the world fall into place.
"Because I'm coming back."
/ - / - / - / - /
The Melbourne train is late.
(Of course it is.)
It's nearing noon by the time the engine pulls into the station and passengers disembark to the crowded platform.
The skies have gone grey again with June rain as she steps off, umbrellas scudding like dark clouds. All around her families merge together, children docking to their parents. Lovers embrace.
But Jessa stands alone, a single rock in the eddies of a human tide, as she always has.
Then she sees him.
If she had never seen Jack Robinson before, she would still think him handsome, still find herself drawn to him, the way he moves through the world. She would still like his honest face and the broad slant of his shoulders under his suit jacket. She would still be attracted to the sharp way he knots his tie, to the brisk ruffle of his roan hair, the tilt of his head when he smiles.
She'd still be one breath short of composed when his slate and sky eyes settle only on her – as they do now.
He comes to her as fast as his knee will allow him.
"Jack – ?" she begins, but he doesn't wait, but wraps her against him and kisses her, firmly, fully, his mouth on hers so she tastes the balm on his lips, the coffee and mint on the tip of his tongue. Her arms come around him, slipping under his coat and buckling them together, and she's oddly aware that the station platform around them has suddenly gone silent, that everything's stopped except them, except this way things should be.
At last (and all too soon) he pulls back, and they breathe.
Around them the world resumes its vigilant flurry as if it had never stopped.
"You did it," he says, holding both her hands.
"Did what?" Jessa asks, nonplussed as he watches her with his granite and skylark eyes.
"Talked to the Commissioner."
It's joy that she feels, Jessa realizes, pure and irresistible. He's breathless and giddy with the spark of it all, and she swoons just a little.
"I did what anyone would do."
Jack laughs. It's low and warm, and it makes her belly shiver.
"No," he tells her with certainty as he brings his hand up to cup her face, the lines of his palm against her cheek, "you did what no one would do."
Her own words come back to her then, but behind them a matron tuts her disapproval, and they consciously separate, smoothing coat and skirt, extricating themselves from the open stares of passers-by.
"It's Thursday," Jack informs her as if she didn't already know. "How about lunch? With the new Deputy Commissioner?"
"How about an exclusive interview?" she counters, "with the new Senior Reporter and Crime Correspondent of the Melbourne Times?"
/ - / - / - / - /
Somehow it feels like an age later as Jessa watches him walk into the newsroom the next day, the space engulfing her for its Friday night emptiness.
Two burglaries and a missing child have put them both on duty tonight. It's the way of the world, the way it must be with them, so it's gone ten by the time Jack Robinson shows up at the Times' offices, far too late for the dinner they had so carefully planned.
Her hands are smudged with ink (her cheek too, though she doesn't know it), the dress she'd found so fashionable this morning now lined with limp wrinkles. Her short hair swirls in wild disarray after having pencils tucked behind her ear all day, and she's replaced her lipstick twice after too many cups of coffee.
This is who she is, but Jessa wishes – just a little – that Jack could see her smartened up and polished out, in tall heels and sparkles in her hair, in a silk dress the bright color of her name, the flutter of it like her heart when he speaks her name. Perhaps one day he will.
Jack offers his arm as if none of it matters (perhaps it doesn't) and together they go out into the night. There's a storm coming in, the clouds are wild, and Jessa closes her eyes, breathing in the storm, the salt, the water – all these things she can't see but yet knows are there, like him, Jack, them.
They stand for a moment on the corner of the street, neither moving forward nor back – not towards the bright diner that smells soul-temptingly like hamburgers, nor towards the quiet bar where she can have a whisky and water until her mind begins to unwind from its frenetic labors.
Thunder rumbles from afar and people hurry by. One of her reporters breezes past on his way home, bicycle tires swishing as he waves and disappears. Two uniformed constables nod to Jack, who tips his head in return, as they march forward on their appointed rounds.
A siren shrills in the darkness, and they both jump.
Jessa feels his nerves as much as her own, this hesitance of suddenly making everything they've imagined real, her hand so primly on his elbow the conscious awkwardness of touch – too much and not enough.
It's the rain that does it, skies breaking open without warning. Water plashes over them, large fat heavy drops that spill unendingly from the heavens above.
For the Greeks it was the first element, the most important, more necessary even than air, more giving than earth or fire. Ancient philosophers believed it was the medium in which all was born, in which all life started.
Jessa doesn't think they were wrong, and she can't help but laugh about it.
Jack turns to her, almost startled, and then as water sluices over them, joins her as well, mirth rippling between their bodies.
Cold rain sputters on her skin, but Jack's hands are already there, reaching for her, pulling her into the shelter of his arms. He wraps her in his coat, enveloping her in its warm male scent of wool and soap, hailing a taxi that sloshes hastily towards the curb. He pulls open the door and she scrambles into the dry confines. He piles in next to her without waiting, his unbending knee sliding under hers, the ball of his hip rolling into her side, his palm coming to rest on the top of her thigh.
"Vautier Street," he says to the driver and she doesn't contradict him.
Water is bucketing down from the sky when the driver brakes on the Elwood street before Jack's bungalow. They hurry out, up the walk to the safety of the porch. Between them the jangle of his keys blends with the drum of rain as they rush inside, balancing on each other's imbalance.
The door slams closed behind them, locking them in or the world out. Jessa isn't sure and doesn't care.
Through his windows lightning purls the edge of the sky. The streetlights flicker, then disappear as the electricity snaps out.
In the darkness Jack reaches out and finds her hands, bringing them together. His palms are warm, her fingers cool. His hand comes to her cheek as he kisses her face, the brow of her eyes, the line of her tilted nose, the tip of her chin. She sighs as his tongue catches on her neck, the place where her pulse beats.
He steps back then and begins undressing her carefully. He sheds his coat from her shoulders, coming behind her to unfasten the closures of her dress. His hands skim over her skin as he slides the wet fabric from shoulder to waist to floor. She steps out of it, wobbling perhaps only a little as he unfurls her stockings, palms sliding reverently over her perfect, bending knees.
He rises then, and in a flash of lightning she hears the breath catch in his throat.
She realizes why only too late.
We all have scars, she'd told him (was it an age ago, or just yesterday?), but most people can't see them.
Now, here, he does.
"Jessa..."
She stiffens and tries to turn away but he holds her there, losing all words but her name as he touches her, tracing each jagged line in her skin with his fingers, so softly that she can feel the pads and whorls of his prints as he memorizes these marks, this dark lightning branded onto her flesh.
The hairs rise along her arms and gooseflesh breaks out as he kisses her there, his tongue warm so that when he finally pulls back she feels the chill of the wind on her wet skin, the ghostly echoes of his touch.
She shivers and turns to him, slipping around in his hold, her fingers nimble on the buttons of his shirt, his pants, stripping him too until they are only skin to skin, her fingers rippling over the marks on his own back as he takes her to his bed.
After being frozen for so long, their bodies melt into motion. It isn't fast or slow, hard or soft. It isn't about laying claim or taking charge. It is simply about two people finding refuge from the hard edges of the world, from the hurricane of its madness. Here, now, they are in its eye, the calm of his hands on her cheeks, her arms around his back, their bodies aligning like stars so that he comes to her, comes home.
"Jessa," he breathes against her skin as they merge, "Jessa called Jay."
He kisses her then, long and slow and deep, as they rock apart and together. Lightning fills the room, but they are only shadows, blurry lines of darkness and light in the wake of a greater storm.
/ - / - / - / - /
She wakes in the morning to bright sunlight and Jack's smile.
His head is propped on the flat of his palm, watching her. Jessa wonders how long he's been awake and if he knows how handsome he is in the morning light, his hair tousled, stubble shadowing his jaw, an errant mark on his shoulder from the night before.
Her stomach flips a little bit; who wouldn't want to wake in this man's bed?
"Good morning," she says, closing her eyes again and stretching out under the covers.
"Yes, it is," he answers, reaching out and tucking a stray end of hair behind her ear. The edges of his knuckles are soft on her face.
She murmurs deep in her chest as her toes come against his ankles and she flexes her body, reveling in the stiff bend of it, the latent memory of pleasure and the odd pop of her vertebrae.
"Coffee?"
"God, yes."
It isn't strained or awkward. In fact, it just feels like home.
The morning air is cool and she hooks her bent knee over his hip, pulling herself against his warmth. There's a hum between them, a rumble in his chest that reverberates in hers.
His hand slides from thigh to knee and he very consciously pulls her even closer so that she feels the warm rise of him where they join. She shivers as his mouth comes to the point of her shoulder, as he lights feathery kisses on her skin.
"You sure?" he asks, dangerously innocent.
Oh, she could get used to this, she thinks. She could get used to mornings like this and nights like before, to the tickle of his eyelashes on her skin to the rake of her nails through his hair, to showing him that two can play this game. Oh yes, Jessa thinks, she could get used to taking that look on his face and making it change in an instant when she touches him, as she does now.
"Maybe later," she manages as she brings her mouth to his. "Yes… certainly, later."
/ - / - / - / - /
So they have lunch on Thursdays, dinners on Tuesdays, and his quick breakfasts in Elwood on Wednesdays before she drives them into Melbourne, City Central and the newspaper office being only blocks away from each other.
Work dictates their schedules but not their lives.
They have coffee on Mondays, go to the cinema on Fridays, walk in the park or on the beach on Sundays. Hugh and Dottie join them on Saturdays, Hugh being an absolute disaster with the barbeque as Jessa cuddles with baby Faith, shielding her tiny ears from the men's amusingly profane language and Dottie's intent interventions. Sometimes Mac comes by for tea, sharing gruesome tales from the hospital that somehow make them all laugh. Sometimes they spend the day with Callum and his brood, his fiery red-haired wife and six children squawking around like banshees as the adults sip spiked coffees and the Commissioner puffs away on a cigar.
Sometimes they just spend the day in their own company.
They have an unspoken mindfulness about their relationship, taking care with the time they spend together. They both understand keenly that a modern world, even in 1931, frowns upon unmarried lovers, especially such prominent ones.
Yet there is something obvious and irresistible about their affair, something so bright and honest that few can resist it, few can speak against the affection when Jack forgets himself and brings her to him on a crowded street, when she looks across a crowded room and he is the only one she sees.
/ - / - / - / - / August 1931 / - / - / - / - /
Outside winter blows itself out of Melbourne, but inside Jack slumbers without moving, his body caught tight and pulled military straight under the sheets. She can't sleep so she rises and slips out of the room, pulling the maroon and navy striped top of his pajamas over her head as she goes.
In the darkness Jessa moves carefully, avoiding furniture, her hip against his couch, her elbow against his wall, table to the knee. She has a map of him, of his space, all in her head.
The wood floor is cool under her feet, and in the front room she opens a window, just a crack. Cold wind blows in, bringing the scent of early-blooming wattle.
Part of her wants to rush back to bed and curl against him; the other waits, shivers, and moves on.
She ignores the electric lights (she doesn't want to wake him) and instead finds a candle in the kitchen and a box of matches. A flame zings awake, and the room wobbles as she touches it to the wick, ripples of light crashing like waves of water against his walls.
She lights the kettle and pops open the tin of biscuits he stashes on the highest shelf in the pantry (as if that will stop him from eating them). She picks out the mint slices from the fruit rolls, letting the chocolate melt on her fingers as she eats.
The first time she looked in his cooler she'd found only four bottles of beer, two eggs and a sullen potato growing protuberous sprouts from its eyes. Now without looking she knows there's enough for at least a proper meal and probably a rather sumptuous breakfast. Jack is prepared like that, and actually a good cook. She really can't admit to more than burning water for tea, which she does now.
The kettle burbles and she pours the boiling water over the dark dried leaves. Swirls of heat rise off the surface and she cups her hands over its warmth, walking into the main room.
Here is where Jack Robinson lives most, from his favorite armchair (which honestly she finds most uncomfortable) to his large desk scattered with work, to Alfie's wonderful bookshelves that span the entire room, filled with a lifetime of his readings.
Jessa has a reporter's curiosity, insatiable and undiluted, and it is the desk which interests her most, so she slides into his leather chair, still holding her tea.
Jack has told her to be at home here, so she is.
Water rings have left a permanent mark on the woodgrain surface, evidence of his work habits and numerous cups of tea. She sets down her own mug amidst the dark spirals.
Jack's desk is a delta covered with the silt of his life.
Jessa runs her fingers over his files of police work, his bookmarked readings (Poe and Proust, The Good Earth and The Road Back), a set of road maps for Ballarat, and several of the last editions of the Melbourne Times, her sections folded face-up.
Notes on fragments of paper drift across the surface – grey suit, Mac 2pm, don't forget – in his handwriting, strong and spiky, in sharp black ink.
She takes up his pen and adds her own illusive cursive below – my favorite, forget what?
A floorboard creaks, and she turns, thinking he must be behind her, but there is nothing, just old wood contracting with the cold. She realizes what she feels is just his smell, the one she's come to adore, of Imperial Leather soap and cologne. Underneath there is the sharpness of gun oil, and she opens the first drawer of his desk to find the case for his service revolver, the gun clean and safe within. (She knows he keeps another in the bedroom.)
She opens the other drawers to find bank statements and medical records, his military files and war medals, the deed of sale for the house, receipts for a suit and a hat, an order for a pair of shoes, his pension plan, and a sheaf of testimonies and affidavit copies. There are certificates for meritorious duty, a stash of out-dated calendars, old birthday cards and a set of gold-rimmed stationary (unopened and obviously a gift). On the other side he has hidden a palette of soft pastels and a few dark sketches; two bottles of aspirin and a hidden bottle of whisky amid an assortment of paperclips, unsharpened pencils, and a ring of keys.
It's only as she reaches for the bottom drawer that she realizes something is different. Unlike the neat precision of the others, this one has been rudely crammed with upended detritus. A ragged red and green Abbotsford scarf, unraveling and almost in pieces. A rather weighty book, spine up and cracked, entitled Erotica of the Far East (well, she wouldn't have thought that of Jack).
Below is a framed picture, turned upside down, its glass broken – she can see sharp edges like shark teeth on the bottom of the drawer. Carefully she pulls it out, staring at the dark-haired woman making faces at the camera in what appears to be a mug shot.
She knows who it is, because it's the same woman in the yellowing newspaper clipping she excavates from the very bottom, the paper crumpled and water-stained.
Is it love-all for the Honourable Miss Fisher? the byline reads. It seems the raven-haired lady detective has found a new ball boy in Inspector Jack Robinson.
The image is grainy but she can see clearly how the woman clings to him, her arms flung around his neck. Jack's hand has come to her hip, holding her against him as they stare at the camera. For all the world they look like lovers in this single moment, and she wonders (like everyone else, she supposes) if they really were.
Jessa wants to hate her, but finds she can't.
That's what happens in life. We hurt people, sometimes without meaning to.
Wind whispers in through the window and this time when she looks up Jack is not an illusion. He is wearing only the bottom of the pajamas from which she has absconded with the top.
She could say many things, but she asks only one.
"What happened?"
She knows about Phryne Fisher, knows her from Mac and Dottie and society newspaper columns. But in some ways, it's like knowing a paper doll, only seeing one bright side of a much darker whole.
For truly, she knows part of the story (God, she's written it herself), but not all of it, and she's never heard it from him.
Jack doesn't hesitate in his answer.
"She left."
"You didn't follow her."
It is a statement, not a question.
"No," he says quickly, and then, as if relenting. "She wanted me to, but no."
"Do you regret it?"
He must say yes, Jessa thinks too late, and she can't blame him. It's terrible and marvelous what others can do to us. What can destroy one person may save the next. If Phryne hadn't left, she wouldn't have known him, but then, he wouldn't have suffered, not the sting of alcohol, nor the ache of alone, the bitter path of his injuries and arrest.
She would never ask that of him, Jessa realizes, because that is what love does to people.
But then, she doesn't have to ask, because he answers for her.
"No," Jack tells her. "No, I don't regret it."
He comes to her then and Jessa sees in him what she has always known: that without falling, we cannot rise. Here, now, in Melbourne, as Deputy Commissioner, with her, Jack Robinson has risen.
Jessa thinks that perhaps the past is best left where it always is – behind us.
"I waited for her," he confesses, and she realizes there is no bitterness in his voice. "I waited for her for two years, one to come to me, and one to come back. But she never did."
He comes to her then, tilting her chin so she has to look at him, at this fierce and vulnerable look in his eyes.
"Only you did."
She feels him like a force now, like she hasn't ever before. Jessa thinks he will kiss her but he doesn't. Instead Jack picks her up (he makes it so easy, even with his knee) and holds her against his chest, bringing her against the beat of his heart as if by the simple fact that it is still beating can be enough.
Only the burn in her lungs reminds her to breathe.
He moves, his stride marred by his fractured knee, but he doesn't let her go until he reaches the bed, until he sets her there so that he comes with her, his weight pressing her under him.
His lips meet hers, kissing only the corners of her mouth so that she can feel his night stubble against the softness of her cheek. He drifts lower then, to the ripple of her collarbones, the flat pate of her sternum, the hollow between her breasts, to the flare of her navel, the curl of her hip, the deep valley between her legs.
His breath echoes on her skin, on the part of her there, and she turns shaking from his touch.
"Jack…"
She's never had a man come to this, and she means to stop him, to stop her traitorous and keening body, but when he looks up and meets her eyes, she feels his need like she has never felt another's. It is bare and unyielding, without pride or pretension. In return she feels her own desire, how much she needs him. There is no lie in it.
"No more waiting," he says and untangles her hand from the sheet that she didn't even know she'd been gripping so tightly. Jack winds it into his, weaving her fingers through his own.
Gently, slowly, he touches her, his mouth warm, his breath humid, tracing tiny spirals on her skin so she relaxes into his touch. Then his tongue reaches for her, delving within the crescent of her body. Her back arches at this first touch, nails biting into the skin of his hand but he doesn't let go, doesn't stop.
Her breath is caught as he continues, as her body ripples with him, as he brings her closer and closer to an edge, a sharp place where pleasure and pain, where the world as it is and as it can be, divide.
He – and he alone – brings her to that edge, and heart beating wildly, Jessa lets go, held only by the fragile and indestructible tethers of love.
/ - / - / - / - / January 1932 / - / - / - / - /
It's late when she knocks on his door, past midnight.
Winter has burst into a blistering summer, and the heat swirls around her humidly. She is sticky with sweat even at this hour.
She wouldn't have come except that she didn't know where else to go, and the light in his window burned brightly, bringing her like a moth to a flame.
Jack opens the door, reading glasses on and robe askew, the latest Zane Grey held to his chest, his finger marking his page.
"Jessa?" His voice pitches oddly at the sight of her. "You alright?"
"No."
"Come in," he says and she goes.
"What's wrong?" he asks as he closes the door and she pivots to face him.
She's washed her hands over and over, but she feels the words of tomorrow's headlines still black and bleeding from her fingertips.
"Murder, kidnapping, assault," she begins, fingers fidgeting. "We do such horrible things to each other."
The past months have only seen the Depression worsen in Australia. So many people are out of work now, so many are driven by desperation. Husbands abandon their families; wives walk out; children are abandoned. She's done what she could, organizing breadlines and soup kitchens, sponsoring health care and youth programs. But sometimes for all she does, for all that is done, it feels like an eternal backslide, as small crimes turn into larger ones, larger ones into catastrophes. Those that can't make it, break it – or break themselves in the process. Suicides skyrocket, shantytowns spring up, soliciting and shoplifting proliferate.
"We kill, we steal, we hurt – " she breaks off, breath stuck in her chest as tears well in her eyes.
This is her job; she knows this is how it goes. But sometimes there are nights like this when the world twists and headlines read like slit wrists, words strangled and starved of light. And then it doesn't seem like it will – or can ever – twist back.
"I know."
The devil of it is that she knows he does, that he too has felt this anguish, that his life collapsed because of it. Of all people to understand, Jack Robinson would. Deputy Commissioner Robinson, who sees the same things, who perhaps sees them even more clearly than she. After all he sees the deeds of the world written in blood and bullets, rather than ink.
She's never had anyone like that before.
He brings her against him but she is still livid and does not want sympathy.
It's hot and she's sweltering, burning from the inside out. She twists the robe from his shoulders and strips her own clothing so violently that she hears a seam rip in protest. She is unable to bear anything but his touch on her skin as she takes them to the bed, and perhaps not even that.
Jack tries to stop her, to slow her furious assault as they sprawl on the covers, but she refuses. He grips her wrists, trying to pin her, but she jerks away. He wants tenderness, he wants to heal her gently with his love, but she will have none of it. She is broken, jagged tonight, as furious and reckless as that young girl on the Canberra streets. There's a fire under her skin, a fury that seethes out like acid.
The rawness of her burns, but Jack does not let go. If he will have her, she thinks, then he too will be burned by it.
In the darkness she throws her leg over him and straddles him backward so that she can't see his face as she brings them together before she's ready, making them both gasp with the sharpness of it.
Her hands come to his knees, the one smooth and the other healed into a lump of broken bone. Her short nails claw into his skin as she drives them together, her movements rough and erratic.
She doesn't want to think, she doesn't want to feel, she just wants her body to break from her mind in a roar that hollows her from inside out, that leaves her empty and unfeeling.
She thrusts against the rub of him, hard and relentless, but she can't bring herself to release.
And then he touches her.
His fingers are gentle as snowflakes on her back, as he traces the scars that mark her there.
"Jessa."
She falls forward with a sob, choking on a grief that is both hers and not. She realizes only too late she's calling his name, that she has been for some time.
He separates them gently and gathers her against him on the rumpled bed, her head tucked into his shoulder as she weeps and he shares her pain when she has ever borne it alone.
"We want the world to be a better place, but is it?" she says when the tears stop. "Do we ever change it?"
Jack's hands come to her arms as he pulls her before him so he can see her.
"You changed me."
His words are honest and brave and perhaps that is enough; perhaps it is everything.
He kisses away her tears, so that when he brings his mouth to hers, she tastes her salt on his lips, making her feel this sting of the world made sweet.
"Open your eyes."
He pulls her over him, facing forward now as he brings them together again, slowly, mercifully. Her hands are knotted with his so she has no leverage, no advantage, just the balance of their two bodies linked as one. Her knees slide against his hips, her toes curled against his thighs. He moves with her so it builds in slow waves, the motion between them like the ocean at high tide, until at long last it crests within her, surging from cusp to core.
Her fingers tighten around his as she keeps moving, letting the aftershocks of her body move his, bringing him with her in a release that comes not from the spark of their bodies, but from the deep and inscrutable wells of their hearts.
/ - / - / - / - /
"Why do we keep fighting?" she asks in the darkness.
Jack has switched off the lights, but they haven't yet found sleep. Jessa can feel his breathing, the rhythmic rise and fall of his lungs as her head rests on his shoulder, his arm around her waist, her hand over his beating heart, the metronome of her world.
"Because there is some good in this world, and it is worth fighting for."
She thinks he might end there but he doesn't.
"You're mine."
He answers so simply, so truly, that she can't help but believe him.
"I need you to remind me of that."
In the darkness Jack finds her chin and tips it so he can kiss her mouth, so that he can take her breath and give her his own.
"I will."
The butterfly in her chest sweeps its wings against her heart.
"Every day?"
"If you'll let me."
She feels his smile as she kisses him back, as they breathe and come together as if they had never been apart.
/ - / - / - / - /
There is a blue box on her desk the next morning.
He is as good as his promise; Jack Robinson would never swear to something he couldn't guarantee.
The ring is small, but the diamond blazes fiercely.
No more waiting, Jessa thinks, and lets it glow on her finger.
/ - / - / - / - / September 1932 / - / - / - / - /
Springtime sun shines down around her at last as she enters City Central Police Station. Summer had swept into a long winter in 1932, cold and cloudy with snow in the hills, with ominous tidings of elections in Germany, a grain crisis in America, trade protests in London. The Melbourne Times has not run short on stories, and her columns have only increased with continued news.
Yet there are good things too; Dottie is expecting her second child, Mac has opened a new hospital, and she, Jay Tayler, has been named Journalist of the Year, feted with a grand celebration in Sydney, Jack as always by her side.
The Commissioner's suite buzzes like the busy hive it is when she walks in, the lunch cart creaking by with its stale sausage rolls and bacon butties, a shift of new constables gawking as they pass, two lawyers waiting impatiently for an appointment. A dark-haired woman fidgets restlessly under the old clock, conspicuous in flashy alligator shoes and a startling orange dress.
She walks forward without waiting, greeting the flock of secretaries as she goes, but sets her sights on Jack's girl, Sybil, who immediately looks up at her name.
Jessa leans on the desk and looks down at her.
"Sybil, it's Thursday."
She smiles dangerously, and the girl blanches, just a little, as she walks forward and opens the door to Jack's office. He motions her in as he holds the phone to his ear. She can just hear the Chief Commissioner's rough Irish brogue on the other end.
" – and then tomorrow – "
"Lunch," she orders.
" – we can – " Jack waves at her and keeps talking.
Jessa walks over and slides down on the desk, sitting before him as he looks up at her from his chair.
His eyes open wide as she leans down, blouse swinging low, her fingers curling around the nape of his neck as she pulls him towards her. Callum's voice buzzes through the receiver as Jack promptly stops talking.
His shoulder dips as he reaches for her; she catches the mouthpiece and tucks it neatly into the cradle, severing the connection.
"Lunch," she whispers into his ear as she kisses the edge of his jaw.
"I was talking – "
She nips the lobe of his ear with her teeth.
"Now."
They laugh together as Jack pulls her into his lap.
"We could eat in," he murmurs, his lips salving the thrumming pulse of her neck as he slides his hands along the silken expanse of her stockings, fingers lingering on the nubs of her garters.
"We could not," she replies, feeling all too strongly the pull of anticipation at his touch, the way she always does. She rises and smoothes her skirt as Jack sighs dramatically and pulls himself upright, gathering his hat and offering his arm as poor consolation.
The phone starts ringing at Sybil's desk as they walk out, looking as unruffled as possible. The girl looks up for her instructions as usual. Callum will be spitting nails, until Sybil tells him who absconded with his second in command. Then he'll lapse into one of his Gaelic proverbs, chuckle, and wonder how a non-Catholic came to be so lucky. He does it all the time (mainly because they do too).
"Tell the Commissioner I'll have him back in an hour or so."
Then, her arm in Jack's, they disappear out into the glorious sunshine, oblivious to the strangled stare of the dark-haired woman behind them.
/ - / - / - / - /
As usual, Jack buys two prawn rolls and several triangles of fairy bread (she adores it though he thinks it too sweet) from the café on Lansdowne Street before they stroll into Fitzroy Gardens. The green space is awash with the whole of Melbourne enjoying the first bright weather of the season.
They sit on a vacant bench and eat, making small talk between mouthfuls and then resting in the shady warmth without speaking.
In their silence Jack takes her hand and lets the diamond glitter in a ray of sun.
"You haven't said yes, you know."
It's true, she hasn't. She has taken his ring, his heart, and she wants to take his name. She has accepted his comfort, his love, and his home, but she hasn't formally agreed to be part of it. She can't say what it is exactly, but something holds her back, some small dark shadow in the corner of her heart.
"Are you sure?"
"I am."
He is, and he smiles. Her heart relaxes as she thinks no one could resist one of Jack Robinson's smiles.
"Marry me, Jessamine Tayler."
She stands, his hand still in hers, a lifeline between them, and answers.
"Yes."
/ - / - / - / - /
.