The Potato Factory

by Bryce Courtenay

  The men were in an advanced state of drunkenness having consumed greatly of the local firewater, the deadly aguardiente, and had not yet come to their senses or seen how badly lacerated and beaten they were. Great confusion reigned in the hospital as the matron tried to clean away the blood and stitch and dress the stab wounds. Mary too was kept busy as several of the jack tars started to vomit. She was on her hands and knees cleaning up beside the dispensary door when she observed it to be open. Mrs Barnett had rushed in to fetch medication, and in her haste to get back to the injured sailors had left the door ajar.

  Mary glanced quickly around to see the whereabouts of the matron and her assistants and, observing that they all had their backs to her, she hurriedly entered the dispensary. The candle the matron had earlier lit was still glowing so she lifted it and quickly found what she wanted, the blue bottle she'd seen Potbottom use. She sniffed it and established immediately that it was laudanum. Mary soon found the pewter box from which the surgeon's assistant had obtained the opium, and she transferred a sufficient quantity into the bottle of laudanum to make a most powerful mixture, in fact twice the strength she'd observed Potbottom make for himself. No more than a minute had elapsed before she was back on her knees cleaning the hospital decking some distance from the dispensary door, only to see Mrs Barnett enter the dispensary, blow out the candle and lock the door. Should the matron's life depend on it, she would have sworn that no person but herself had entered the dispensary.

  It took several hours to attend to the wounded men before they were dispatched back to their own apartments on the ship. Mrs Barnett and her hospital assistants were in a state of extreme fatigue and when Mary had made them a cup of tea she bade them goodnight and returned to the prison. The hospital contained no prisoners at that time, as none had been poorly disposed with the ship's arrival in Rio. This meant Mary could not sleep in the hospital, and she dared not ask Mrs Barnett for fear that she might refuse or, worse still, agree and then remember later that Mary had been the only one within the hospital when Potbottom arrived in the morning.

  Mary wondered desperately how she might be at hand when Potbottom arrived without causing any suspicion, but could think of no way to bring this about as the prison hatches were opened a full hour after those of the hospital. The solution she chose was simple enough, but fraught with the danger of discovery. She climbed the stairs leading to the hatchway, making sure that the sound of her footsteps on the ladder was clearly audible. At the open hatchway she sat upon the topmost step and quickly removed her boots, whereupon she climbed silently downwards again and into the hospital, concealing herself under one of the berths adjacent to the stairway. After a short while Mary saw the feet of the weary women pass and heard them climb towards the hatchway. Shortly afterward she heard the bolt slide behind them. In the dark she removed her prisoner's purse from its snug hiding place and took from it the four brass talons which she now fitted, two to each hand. It was nearly dawn and she would have less than two hours to wait until Potbottom arrived at seven to attend to his urgent need for the fruit of the Chinese poppy.

  Mary must have dozed off for she awoke to the sound of the bolt being pulled back, and then she heard the slight creak of the hinges as the hatch was pulled upwards. Her heart was suddenly beating so hard that she felt sure Potbottom must hear it as one might a drum on the dockside at Rio de Janeiro. His tiny feet soon scuttled past where she lay and she could hear though not see him fumbling with the key as he unlocked the door to the dispensary. She hadn't long to wait, perhaps no more than two or three minutes, when she heard what sounded like a loud gasp followed shortly thereafter by a dull thud as Potbottom hit the deck.

  Mary crawled out from under the berth and crept silently to the dispensary door. Potbottom lay with the top half of his body outside the small room, as though he had turned to leave just as the effects of the opium hit. Mary bent over him and peeled back his eyelids, observing that his pupils had constricted and his dark eyes showed no movement. She shook him several times but he was as limp as a wet mop. Potbottom was unconscious.

  Mary rolled Potbottom onto his stomach, being careful to place his head to the side so that he could continue to breathe. Then she removed the talons from her left hand and, lifting his head slightly, she took the chain and medallion from around his neck and clasped it to her bosom. The feel of the precious medallion in her hand was too much to bear, and tears ran from Mary's eyes.

  There is something perverse in the nature of humans, stubborn and quite nonsensical to the intelligence, where we will do something impulsive which may culminate in the most dire consequences, but which, at the time, we cannot seem to prevent. It is an action of the heart which temporarily overpowers any recourse to the head.

  Mary, her luck restored to her in the form of the Waterloo medallion, had need only to make her escape. Should Potbottom regain consciousness he would have no cause to be suspicious, or even, in the unlikely circumstances that he should be, would have no way of proving that the dosage had been tampered with, without revealing his own addiction. Mary had committed the perfect crime, providing she could escape from the prison hospital unobserved, and conceal herself until morning muster where she could simply join the other women prisoners on deck.

  She wiped the tears from her eyes and was about to remove the brass talons from her right hand when she looked down again at Potbottom's unconscious form. All the anger and humiliation he had caused her suddenly coalesced within her breast as though it were a great fist which squeezed her heart. Mary took the remaining talons from her right hand and placed them on the deck beside the body where she'd left the others. Now she rolled Potbottom onto his back, quickly unbuttoned the front of his worn and greasy frock coat and opened it wide, whereupon she rolled him back onto his stomach. She then stripped the sleeves from his limp arms and pulled off the jacket. Mary was panting loudly, both from the effort of manhandling him and from her tremendous fury. She laid the coat aside and pulled the dirty blouse he wore from the top of his breeches and lifted it high over his back and the back of his head. This action completely exposed his back and with it the hump which now seemed larger than when it was concealed beneath his coat. Mary was whimpering as she replaced the talons onto her left hand, and with them she drew a long deep stroke across Potbottom's back, weeping afresh with a volatile mixture of anger, spite and despair. She was doing to someone else what had been so often done to her. Coldly, precisely, she carved twenty-five lines across the surgeon-assistant's hairy back, in a random criss-cross fashion, sparing not even the ugly hump.

  'That be your twenty-five lashes back, Tiberias Potbottom! Gawd is not mocked, you 'ear?' Mary laughed, though somewhat hysterically, for she felt no humour in it. 'That be one stroke for every whore aboard and one for me, you cruel bastard! That be our Botany Bay dozen! Panting with the emotional effort, Mary began to weep softly as the anger left, completely spent by her revenge.

  After a few moments Mary ceased crying, sensing her own imminent danger. She sniffed and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her smock. She now felt strangely calm and pulled Potbottom's blouse down over his back, tucking the ends neatly into his broad leather belt. Bright crimson designs of a random pattern seeped through the dirty cloth.

  Mary could feel the ship moving as she lifted Potbottom to a seated position so that he was propped against a berth. She then calmly returned his jacket to his person, buttoning it up as before and adjusting his neckerchief, whereupon she laid him back with his broken little buckled boots placed within the door of the dispensary. The remainder of his body was lying within the main cabin of the hospital. Then she took the bottle in which she'd mixed the opium and the laudanum and emptied what remained of its contents in the slop bucket and, stepping over her victim, returned it to the shelf in the dispensary. Mary then quickly checked that Potbottom was still breathing and, gathering up the two remaining talons, left by climbing up through the open hatchway onto the deck, where she threw the vicious brass claws
over the side.

  The rising sun caught the small brass objects and for a moment the wicked claws winked and then fell into the trough of a wave. It was a small enough thing to do and some might say Mary was simply destroying the evidence of her perfidy, but this was not the case. With the dreaded hooks went the past, that hard dark passage' of time which was not of Mary's making. Ahead lay another life. And though Mary would enter her new land in captivity, she felt herself to be free at last.

  The Destiny II had reached the entrance to the harbour between Fort San Juan and Fort Santa Cruz, so that the crew's attention was to the foredeck looking out to sea. With the prisoners still below decks, there was no one to observe her as she moved aft.

  Mary moved rapidly to the stern of the vessel and up onto the poop deck where, as soon as the vessel was safely out to sea, morning muster would take place. She squeezed behind two barrels lashed to the deck and crouched there. High above her a flock of macaw parrots flew across from the headland, their brilliant plumage flashing in the early morning sun. Mary could see the high peak of the Sugar Loaf above the sweep of the bay and the dark green jungle which grew upon its slopes and almost to the pinnacle of the great mountain. She would always remember the immense height of the tropical sky and its infinite blueness so much sharper, brighter, fiercer than the English sky.

  Potbottom was not missed at morning muster, for it was not unknown for him to be absent. But he would always surface later when sick call was made directly after muster, and those prisoners hoping to escape for a few days of improved rations remained behind on the poop deck endeavouring to persuade Mrs Barnett, or even the ship's surgeon, that they were right poorly disposed.

  On the morning of sailing from Rio, Joshua Smiles had himself attended the sick call, and it had been assumed that Potbottom must have returned from ashore in the early hours of the morning and was still abed. But when the surgeon-superintendent asked for him a guard was sent to rouse him from his cabin.

  However, before the guard could return one of the hospital assistants came up to the poop deck and from her demeanour she was seen to be most distressed. She went directly to Mrs Barnett, but because the surgeon was busy with his ear to the chest of one of the convict women the matron hushed her attempt to talk by placing a finger to her lips. When Joshua Smiles withdrew his ear the assistant, a rather fat young girl with an ugly pock-marked face, was wringing her hands and blurted out.

  'Mr Smiles, excuse I, sir, Mr Potbottom be dead on 'ospital floor!'

  It took several hours before Tiberias Potbottom regained consciousness. In truth he had been conscious a full hour before he allowed that this be known. By which time he was aware both from the pain and from the talk about him, of the mutilated condition of his back.

  Joshua Smiles, more pale than usual and in a state of considerable distress, sat beside him praying, imploring the Lord Jesus to save his precious and diligent servant. By the time Potbottom was prepared to squeeze the hand of his mentor, to indicate his return to life, he had well grasped the nature of his own dilemma, and had concocted a story which explained his situation in the dispensary. This took several hours to emerge and came out in half-coherent snatches, whether due to his latent condition or a deliberate ploy is not known. By the end of that day he told a story of having been given some strange draught. 'In one o' them bodegas what they's got and where I stopped to partake o' a bowl o' the strong black coffee what they serves with the juice o' the cane plant.'

  'Mescaline!' Joshua Smiles announced triumphantly. 'The juice from cacti, a most stupefying narcotic. They put mescaline in your coffee!'

  'That be dead right, Mr Smiles, sir!' Potbottom exclaimed, delighted to have a name to add to his plot. 'Mescaleen eh? That be for sure as I were not aware o' what befell me after, save to know that me purse be stolen and a valuable gold chain and medal were taken from about me neck. Though how this came about I truly cannot say, I awoke in me own cabin in the early part o' the mornin' not knowing how I got to the ship and with me head poundin' something horrible and feelin' in every part a great discomfort.'

  'And the lacerations to your back, can you perchance venture as to how they happened?' the surgeon asked.

  'That I can't, sir. How it come about I haven't the slightest knowledge of,' Potbottom replied and then continued where he'd left off. 'But I looks at me watch what I had the good sense to leave aboard and sees it be time for me to attend dispensary.' Potbottom looked up beguilingly. 'As is o' course me daily duty and one which I takes most conscientiously.'

  'Indeed, we are all most grateful for your diligence, Mr Potbottom,' Mrs Barnett said.

  Potbottom ignored her remark and continued. 'I makes me way to the hospital when I perceived me back were hurtin' somethin' horrible, so I goes to make a physic of anodyne for the pain, like.' He looked soulful. 'That be all I remembers, nothin' more till I feels your blessed hand in mine,' Potbottom choked back a tear, 'and hears your generous prayers to the Almighty for me safe recovery, sir.'

  'God has been good, Mr Potbottom. He has restored you to us to continue your good works among the heathen and the rapscallions.' Joshua Smiles paused and slowly shook his head and a small smile played upon his lips. 'We are all mightily blessed by His glory and compassion.'

  He clasped his hands together and, looking up at the bulkhead as though the Almighty could be clearly seen seated upon its heavy cross beam, commenced to pray loudly and fervently, giving thanks for the recovery of God's most precious child, Tiberias Potbottom.

  Mary's luck had held. Potbottom, whatever he thought, could make no open enquiries as to his misadventure for fear that his addiction to opium be discovered. While he subjected Mary to a great deal more persecution, confiscating her twice weekly ration of port and sending her back to work in the prison closets and to scrubbing and holystoning the interior of the prison and the decks, he could find no way of proving that she was the one who had brought about his undoing.

  At each subsequent bloody pusover he had subjected Mary to the indignity of a front and rear inspection, though he was unable to discover the whereabouts of the chain and medallion. Once, when he had undertaken a surprise medical inspection, he had found her prisoner's purse and confiscated it only to find it disappointingly empty.

  In fact, Mary had removed the sole of her boot, hollowed it out and placed her precious luck within it. She wore her boots all day and at night, as was the habit of the prisoners, she tied them about her neck so that they would not be stolen.

  • • •

  Weeks of great tedium passed as the Destiny II neared her destination, the tiny ship often climbing to the crest of waves that saw it half a hundred feet above the level of the ocean, and then sinking into the trough of a great wave where the ocean rose to the height of the topmast. The great swells of the Indian Ocean caused many to return to their previous sea sickness, but they were fortunate that they did not encounter a great storm at sea. Of the trip, it can be said that it was not remarkable but typical of any other transport carrying female convicts. Two prisoners had died, an aged woman who was said to have a condition of the heart and an infant only just weaned, who had come aboard with bronchial pneumonia. They were most ceremoniously buried at sea with a consideration they had not known in their mortal lives.

  Perhaps the one thing that might be said to have been remarkable about the voyage was the schooling Mary had given during the hot afternoons. Though schooling was encouraged on convict ships, it was usually conducted by an educated free passenger or the surgeon-superintendent. It achieved good, though often somewhat dubious, results, for the art of reading was often construed as having been achieved when a prisoner could recite a psalm while holding the Bible and appearing to be reading from it.

  Mary's teaching was different, for she taught the rudiments of writing as well as reading, insisting on phonetics until her pupils could identify each letter with a sound and connect them with another to make a word. By the time they had reached their destination, fifty-
five of the one hundred and twenty-six female prisoners who had come on board without a knowledge of reading would disembark with an ability to read individual words from a page and connect them aloud and continuously to make sense. Though this was done slowly and often with great movement of their lips and expostulations of breath, it was nevertheless the precious gift of the printed word.

  Thus Mary, though the surgeon's report would place her in a most reprehensible light, was regarded by the female prisoners as a person of goodness, the best most of them had encountered in all of their unfortunate lives, while the children openly loved her. She was not the sort of pious personage they had been accustomed to regard as a saint, some creature whom they might have seen within the configurations of a stained glass window, with an aura about her head, clad in a diaphanous gown with her feet floating above the ground. Or some curate's daughter who saw her cunny only as an affliction and a shame and not as a delight. Nor did she resemble, in the least, the Quakers of the Ladies' Committee.

  Mary was like themselves, hardened by the vicissitudes of a poverty-stricken life, though unlike themselves, not beaten by it. She was a woman who spoke her mind, had a tongue as harsh and foul as many, but who could not be easily led and who intuitively knew her own mind at all times. She could laugh and cry with the best of them and, most importantly of all, she showed that she believed in them.