The Potato Factory

by Bryce Courtenay

  'As we, ladies?'

  'Oh, be that so?' Potbottom exclaimed. 'And I says different and surgeon thinks different and…' he pointed upwards to the limp sails, 'evidence says different!'

  Mary showed her indignation, bringing her hand to her hip and throwing her shoulder forward. 'It ain't our fault there be no bleedin' wind!'

  'Ah! That be a matter of opinion, Mary Habacus, Gawd's opinion, surgeon's opinion and me own opinion, we all be against your single opinion!'

  'Not single, mine too!' Ann Gower shouted. 'It ain't fair! We done no 'arm, we done nuffink wrong! It weren't Gawd what made them sails still, it be 'em doll drums!'

  'That's right, it be the doldrums!' Mary shouted in support. 'They be perfectly natural, a phenomenon what sometimes happens near the equator!'

  'Oh it be clever Miss Jack 'n a Box again! Phenomenon is it?' Potbottom paused. 'And Gawd! Is He not a phenomenon? Is He not the creator o' the heavens and the earth? The rain and the glorious clouds what is His billowin' breath!' Tiberias Potbottom stopped again and looked about him at the women assembled for muster. He finally fixed his eyes on Ann Gower and then again on Mary, and began to speak, this time most rapidly and in a high-pitched voice. 'Without His breath to drive the clouds there be no rain, without the rain there be starvation upon the face o' the earth! Gawd's breath be the breath of all life itself and when Gawd takes His breath from us it be a sign o' His anger!' He pointed upwards to the limp sails above his head and spoke more slowly. 'Gawd has taken His breath away from us! Doldrums just be another name for Gawd's anger!' Then Potbottom brought his hand down again and pointed to the group of convict women gathered around Mary. 'And we all knows the reason for it, don't we!'

  'That be a whole 'eap o' bilge water!' Mary shouted angrily.

  'Ha! And that be blasphemin'! Callin' Gawd's breath bilge now, is we?' Potbottom shouted triumphantly. 'You'll all go below right now, all the whores and blasphemers! We'll put the lid o' hell on the Jack 'n a Box and all her consorts, in the name o' Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour!'

  Ann Gower's group and Mary's group were sentenced to be locked in the prison below decks for three days on half rations, but with the full daily allowance of two pints of water, this ration not halved, for it would likely have caused them to perish.

  The heat below decks was so intense and the vermin so prolific that the women were soon forced to remove their clothes and after several hours below they could think of nothing but the need for water. Many were so overcome that they fainted away, these faintings frequently terminating in fits. At night the portholes as well as the hatches were closed and by morning the following day many of them were delirious, wandering about unable to recall their own names.

  By midday, when the sun was at its zenith, the heat upon the blazing deck would cause the pitch between the deckboards to melt. This molten hell would drop onto them in the prison below where it would bubble upon their flesh, the fiery pitch sticking long enough to arm or leg or back or head to burn savagely through the skin or scalp and deep into the flesh, so that they were permanently scarred from its effect.

  On the afternoon of the second day Ann Gower, maddened by the circumstances below decks, attacked Mary, accusing her of causing the calamitous situation they found themselves in. Mary had been sitting alone in a corner against the bulkhead, clasping her legs together with her head resting on her knees when Ann Gower approached and stood over her.

  'It were you, not us! It were you the sod wanted!' Ann began. 'All along it be you givin'

  'im lip! In the wagon 'an all, when we first come. Then on an' on an' on, always makin' it 'ard for us. You what thinks you is better than a whore. Ya think 'cause ya can read that ya be clever, that ya knows everyfink! Well let me tell ya, all ya knows is 'ow to make trouble for all of us wif that fuckin' gob o' yers! Now Potbottom's gettin'

  'is own back and it's us what's sufferin'! It were you, Mary Abacus, what done this to us and I reckons you 'as to pay!' Ann Gower turned and faced the others. 'What do ya say, girls, the bitch 'as gotta pay for our misery!' She indicated the prison around them. 'For this!'

  As Ann Gower spoke Mary's hands were under her skirt, for she was one of the very few who had not removed her clothes, which hung soaking from her body. Suspended from a string about her waist was a small bundle of cloth concealed in her flannel undergarment which contained her brass talons. Mary's twisted fingers worked frantically at the knot, but it was too tightly bound to open without some persistent plucking and pulling. Long before it had yielded Ann Gower's right hand swept down and knocked Mary's mob cap from her head. She gripped a fistful of hair in her left hand and pulled Mary squealing to her feet. Balling her hand into a fist, she struck Mary a violent blow which broke her nose.

  At the sight of the blood spurting from Mary's nose the other women seemed to go berserk. Howling, they rushed at her, tearing and pulling and pushing her to the deck. They kicked and jumped on Mary and drove their fists into her face and body, raking her with their nails in a furious frenzy of fighting.

  So intense were the screams and caterwauling and hysteria that the hatches were hurriedly opened and three guards and Potbottom rushed below. At the sight of Potbottom the women turned like a pack of howling wolves and made towards him. The two prison guards were barely able to retreat and hold them off sufficiently long for Potbottom to beat a hasty retreat, his tiny bow legs propelling him as fast as they could carry him back on to the deck.

  More guards arrived together with the prison matron and two of her assistants, and it took fully ten minutes before any order was restored and they were able to gain control of the hysterical women.

  When the matron came upon Mary she lay unconscious, one of her purpled and twisted hands clasped tightly into a ball and resting on her bloodstained breast. She was carried to the hospital where she was washed and her wounds dressed, though every attempt to open her left hand failed. Her fingers seemed to have clamped shut with the shock of the beating she had taken, and had the appearance of the claws of a great bird of prey pulled tightly inwards as though in death.

  Mary regained consciousness an hour later and took water from the matron which she drank greedily, asking for more in a hoarse whisper affected by her cut and swollen lips. She was still groggy and not fully possessed of her wits, unsure where she was and with both her eyes closed unable to see the woman who nursed her.

  Mary was awakened by someone shaking her roughly and then she heard the cackle of Potbottom's voice, 'Wake her, matron, she has slumbered enough! Wake her at once, this be no inn for gentlefolks!'

  Mary attempted to open her eyes and while the right eye still remained tightly closed the left had improved somewhat and she could see with a measure of clarity. Potbottom sat beside her bunk, perched on a stool with his hands clasped to his breast. He seemed to be positively shaking with excitement. One hand suddenly jerked out and a finger prodded into the side of Mary's ribs. A sharp pain shot into her lungs where the ribs had been broken. Potbottom's hand shot back to be clasped again by the other in their former position. 'Wake up! Wake up at once! Say somethin'!'

  'Mornin" Mary said through her cracked and bulbous lips, and then added, 'Miszer Pobothum, sir,' in a voice slurred and hardly above a whisper.

  'That's better, much better, you'll soon be well again, me dear.' He dry-soaped his hands. 'Well enough for bread 'n water and a bit o' loverly solitude in the coal hole!' he cackled. 'Guilty o' startin' a riot we is.' He clucked his tongue several times. 'Now that be most wicked. Mr Smiles don't like that, no he don't, indeed we don't tolerate no riot on Gawd's ship.'

  Mary groaned and lifted the hand which was still fisted shut and Tiberias Potbottom gasped and reeled back, thinking she might hit him, though she barely had strength sufficient to lift her arm. 'No!' Mary rasped and tried to lift and shake her head. But the pain of it was too much to bear, and she winced and her head fell back and her hand fell limply by her side.

  'No, says you! Yes, says I! Startin'
a riot, now that be a most serious offence what will earn a floggin' if I be not mistaken. Surgeon-superintendent don't like that, no he don't, I'll vouch for that, not like it, not one little bit!'

  Mary tried once again to move her head. 'No!' she managed again. She was suddenly aware of a strange sound and at the same time the vessel shuddered and then rolled slightly. 'Wind?' Mary whispered.

  'Oh yes, wind! Glorious wind! Gawd's breath is back with us, Mary Habacus!' Tiberias Potbottom said triumphantly then pushed his ugly little monkey face close to Mary's. 'Gawd is not mocked!' he said, spraying her face with his fierce spittle. 'You have been punished and He has restored His precious breath to us!'

  Tears ran from Mary's swollen eyes and she drew blood as she bit her top lip in an attempt to stop them. She did not want to show her physical pain, nor her confusion and agony of mind to the creature perched on the stool beside her.

  'What's this then?' Potbottom asked suddenly.

  Mary made no attempt to look, thinking him to be making comment over her distress. Instead she kept her lumpy eyes closed fighting back the tears that threatened to grow into a desperate sobbing. They were stupid tears, tears that showed Potbottom that he'd won, that he'd broken her spirit, tears for the past and the present and the future, tears that washed over her awful life.

  'What be this I'm holdin', eh!' Potbottom asked again, and this time his demanding impatient tone caused Mary to open her one good eye. Tiberias Potbottom held up a prisoner's purse. 'Never know what you'll find when you looks, does you, me dear?'

  Mary's hand went instinctively to her cunny but she knew before she reached it that her prisoner's purse was no longer hidden there. The brass tube Tiberias Potbottom held contained her fifteen sovereigns and Ikey's precious Waterloo medallion and chain and Mary began to sob uncontrollably.

  'Shall we see what we's got, then?' Potbottom said gleefully. His small hands twisted the brass cap, removed and upended it, tapping it into the centre of his palm. 'Very curious,' he said, 'it don't have nothin' in it!' He tapped the tube once more in the same manner then held it with the open end facing Mary. Potbottom raised his dark, bushy eyebrows, his tiny black eyes shining. 'A pleasurin' device is it? A poor convict woman's comfort for the dark lonely nights at sea?' Potbottom shook his head and clucked his tongue several times. 'I don't think Mr Smiles will take kindly to such a device. Not kindly at all!' He replaced the cap and, leaning over Mary, he placed the small metal tube on her chest. As he did so, Ikey's medallion fell from within his linen shirt and dangled on its chain directly above Mary's breasts. Then, without a further glance at the hapless, sobbing Mary, he scuttled out of the hospital, leaving her to contemplate the loss of everything she possessed in the world.

  Mary had secretly dared to hope that her life might change, that despite the hell of Van Diemen's Land she would survive and that something good, no matter how small, might come of it. Now she knew that she had been deluding herself all her life, in truth, the flame of her existence had been blown out the very moment she had been born. As she lay in the prison hospital Mary craved emptiness, to feel nothing, to walk upon the earth as a shadow until death came as yet another misadventure upon her senseless life. Her past filled her up, taking possession of every corner of her soul to make her life a dark, repugnant experience. Where others might have craved Christian salvation, Mary asked only for emptiness, for all feeling to be taken from her. She wanted neither God nor the devil, but what lay between. Without feeling, she told herself, she could continue to exist; with it, she wanted only to die.

  Soon her tears dried up. They were pointless. To cry was to mourn and to mourn was to care and caring was what had always destroyed her. She cursed her mouth and its ability to find trouble; others knew their place and remained silent with their heads bowed in obsequious obedience. It was her big mouth which had destroyed her life. If she could empty out all that had happened to her, she would grow silent forever, not be seen or heard, or be there at all, her lips frozen forever.

  But instead of emptiness, as Mary lay perfectly still, there grew slowly within her a great anger and then through the anger came pain, a sharp throbbing in her left hand. She tried to ignore it, but it was too alive and demanding, and soon the pain within the centre of her hand burned as though it were a fire kindled there, a furnace of white heat expanding and filling her, roaring at the very centre of her being. She could no longer ignore it. Mary lifted her hand to within the line of her vision and perceived for the first time that it was held tightly in a claw-like grip, its dark twisted fingers resembling, not a human hand, but an ugly, twisted knot. Within the knot a searing, leaping, roaring flame called out to her for revenge.

  Mary attempted to open her hand but the fingers would not respond to her will and the pain caused by the effort brought her close to fainting. But she persisted, and after several minutes, her stiffened and contorted fingers broke loose sufficiently to reveal within them the small knotted rag bundle containing her brass talons. Mary started to weep again, but this time with a sense of great relief, for she knew instinctively that she would recover, and that the odious little monkey creature had not broken her spirit. She knew that the hatred in her would restore her health, though to be God's or the devil's child she knew not, and cared even less.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mary's punishment was not completed with her beating and admission to hospital. A week after being released she was paraded on the prisoners' deck and charged with causing a riot within the prison. This was too grave an offence for Tiberias Potbottom to resolve by the usual proxy of his prayerful master, and Joshua Smiles himself was required to preside. With a charge of inciting a riot, the safety of the ship had been placed in jeopardy and the ship's master and those officers not on duty were required to be in attendance.

  A muster of all the prisoners was called mid-morning with Mary standing with her head erect before the pale and mournful Smiles. The surgeon-superintendent, as was his usual habit, was dressed completely in black. This colour included both his blouse and neckerchief and a top hat of unusual height. The total effect gave him the appearance of being perhaps on stilts. He towered over the remainder of the prisoners, matrons, guards and even the tallest of the ship's officers present, and Mary was seen to come not much above the waist of his frock coat.

  In a tone incurious to the consequence of his words he read out the charges against Mary and then, without raising his voice or heightening the inflections placed upon his words, he pronounced sentence. It was a noticeable contradiction to the blandness of his voice that throughout his reading the surgeon-superintendent, on no single occasion looked up or at the prisoner, and his hands shook as though in a tremor as they held the paper from which he read.

  '… Mary Abacus, I, Joshua Jeremiah Smiles, under the authority given to me by the Admiralty and further, under the provisions of the Home Department and in the name of His Majesty King George IV, sentence you to twenty-five strokes of the lash to be administered at one time. Whereupon you shall have your hair shaved and be placed in solitary confinement within the coal hole and shall remain there for one week, this to exclude the Sabbath. During this time you shall be given bread and water as your only sustenance. I further order that the sentence be carried out immediately by Mr Tiberias Potbottom and that all prisoners and those who be in charge of them, and therefore under my authority, shall bear witness to these proceedings.'

  There was a gasp from the prisoners, for even the whores felt great remorse at what they'd done to Mary.

  'Ya bloody bastard!' a voice shouted from the centre of the crowd.

  'Who said that?' Tiberias Potbottom called out, jumping up and down to try to see into the lines of assembled women.

  'I did, ya fuckin' ape!' Ann Gower called as two guards moved into the crowd of suddenly thronging and excited women and grabbed her. 'You murderers!' she shouted again as she was pulled away and led from the deck. 'May ya rot in 'ell!' A guard struck her on the side of the head with h
is truncheon, so that she fell to her knees and was dragged down the hatchway.

  Mary was placed over an empty barrel, her arms and legs held by the wrists and ankles, each limb by a separate male prison guard. The matron of the hospital, who had so recently nursed her back to health, was then required to fully expose her back. Mary was given a small square of folded cloth to place between her teeth.

  The sky above was brilliant blue with no cloud to interrupt its surface, a storm having come up during the night so that the ocean and the sky seemed to shine in a world washed clean. The ship sailed steadily at eight knots to a breeze from the south-west, its prow cutting majestically through the waves. Even the sun, though warm, was not torturous, the breeze cooling the deck where Mary lay sprawled over a barrel in preparation for 'the Botany Bay dozen' – that is, twenty-five strokes of the lash. Potbottom stood over her wielding the dreaded cat. He was so tiny that the lash, with its three knotted leather straps attached to a wooden handle, seemed too big in his hand.

  That he should have been allocated such a task was unusual in the extreme. Had such a need befallen a male convict ship there would have been some person skilled in the use of the whip. But flogging was exceptionally rare on female convict ships, and no such expert existed on the Destiny II.

  While Potbottom gleefully held on to the whip handle with both hands, he was not himself sure quite how it should be used for maximum effect, so he slapped it down upon the deck at his feet to get the hang and angle of its correct use.

  Meanwhile Joshua Smiles produced from the pockets of his top coat the two small knee cushions, 'Jesus' and 'Saves', which he had carefully strapped to his legs so that the two words embroidered in red against a white canvas background might be clearly seen by all. With his back turned to Mary and his eyes fastened upon the topgallant sail, he kneeled upon the deck, having first respectfully removed his top hat and placed it beside him.