The Potato Factory

by Bryce Courtenay

  Sold into Slavery

  'Tom Jones is sold into slavery!' said a man to me the other day.

  'Sold into slavery!' I cried. 'Is there anything like that now-a-days?'

  'Indeed there is,' was the answer.

  'Who bought him, pray?'

  'Oh, it's a firm, and they own a good many slaves, and more shocking bad masters.'

  'Can it be in these days? Who are they?' I asked.

  'Well they have agents everywhere, who tell a pretty good story, and get hold of folk; but the name of the firm is Messrs. Rum, Gin amp; Spirits.'

  I had heard of them, it is a firm of bad reputation, and yet how extensive are their dealings! What town has not felt their influence? Once in their clutches, it is about the hardest thing in the world to break away from them. You are sold and that is the end of it; sold to ruin sooner or later. I have seen people try to escape from them. Some, it is true, if they should take 'The Pledge', do escape to find the heavenly delights of Mary Abacus' most excellent and unadulterated Temperance Ale, sold at threepence half-penny a bottle, or threepence if the previous bottle be returned empty.

  The Potato Factory.

  Mary's Temperance Ale became such a success that the large Hobart breweries decided at once to bring out a version of their own. But here again Mary was not caught napping. With the help of Mr Emmett she had registered the names Temperance Ale and Temperance Beer, and also Pledge Ale and Pledge Beer, so that these names could be used exclusively by the Potato Factory.

  This caused great annoyance among the beer barons, and they thought to take her to court for registering a name which they claimed was in common usage. But the advice of their various lawyers was to leave well alone.

  The label also caused great annoyance to the local importers of rum, gin, brandy and sweet Cape wine, as well as to the local manufacturers of the various ardent spirits available on the market. But the more they bellyached, and shouted imprecations against Mary in the newspapers, the more popular her Temperance Ale became, not only among those customers who had signed the pledge and sworn off spirits, but also among those who liked a drop of the heavenly ambrosia as a matter of preference.

  There was nothing the common people liked more than a poor, defenceless woman, only recently granted her conditional pardon, winning a point of law against the first raters, the whisky and beer barons, who grew rich on the pennies of the poor. To keep up demand, Mary was obliged to take on additional help. Soon she had three men working for her, as well as a girl of fifteen who came directly from the orphanage and who possessed the pretty name of Jessamy Hawkins.

  Late one morning at the Potato Factory Jessamy came to Mary while she was testing the fermentation levels in the hop tanks.

  'Mistress Mary, there be an old man what's called to see you.' The young maid looked concerned. 'I told him to go away, but he says he knows you, says he has a letter.' Then she added gratuitously, 'He's most smelly and has a shaggy beard and long hair, but is also bald and wears a coat what you might expect on an old lag what's a proper muck snipe, not ever to be redeemed.'

  'Hush, Jessamy, do not speak like that, for all you know he could be a most loving father!'

  'Gawd! I hope he's not mine!' Jessamy said, alarmed at the thought.

  Mary laughed. 'Old lag what's a drunk, that description could fit half the bloomin' island. So, where be the letter, girl?'

  'No, Mistress Mary, it weren't no letter what's for you! It were a letter he said he got from you. He says he comes because o' the letter you sent.'

  Mary's heart started to pound. 'Dirty is he? And ragged?'

  Jessamy nodded, brought her thumb and forefinger to her nose and pulled a horrid face.

  'It's Ikey!' Mary said and her poor, crippled hands were suddenly all a-flutter, touching her hair, patting her apron, her hips, not quite knowing what they should do next. 'Bring my cotton gloves!' she commanded of Jessamy. Then she thought better of this. 'No, I'll get them, you take him into the bottle room and give him a glass of beer, tell him I'll be along presently.'

  Mary removed her apron and ran her fingers through her hair, fluffing it as best she could in the absence of a mirror. Then she found a pair of clean cotton gloves and, with a feeling of some trepidation, entered the bottle shop.

  Ikey crouched on a stool, clutching a glass of ale in both hands. He gasped as Mary entered, and his hands jerked upwards in alarm sending half the contents of the glass into his lap.

  'Oh, Jesus! Oh, oh!' he exclaimed, looking down at the wet patch on his dirty coat and the mess at his feet. He wiped his hands on either side of the threadbare coat.

  'Ikey? Ikey Solomon? It's you all right, Gawd help us!' Mary laughed, the spilt beer overcoming her nervousness. 'You always were a most nervous old bugger!'

  Ikey grinned, which was not a pretty sight. Mary had forgotten how tiny he was, and he appeared to have lost several teeth and looked a great deal older than his fifty-two years. Jessamy was right, he stank to high heaven, even by the high standard of stink set by much of the local population.

  'Nice to make your acquaintance again, my dear, news o' your remarkable success grows far and wide,' Ikey cackled. He looked around at the barrels of beer, and the racks of bottled ale stacked to the ceiling, as though weighing and valuing the contents to the last liquid ounce.

  'Nonsense! News o' my remarkable success goes all the way down Liverpool Street and into Wapping, and not much further.'

  'I is most proud of you, proud and honoured and most remarkably touched, my dear, and oh…' Ikey dug into the pocket of his coat and produced a pound. 'This be what's left o' the money you sent in your most kind letter, after the boat ticket and vittles eaten and five shillings paid for a week's board and lodging 'ere in town. That is, only until I can get back into my own 'ouse.'

  'Change? You giving me change?' Mary looked incredulous. 'My goodness, we has reformed, hasn't we, then? Whatever could have come over you, Ikey Solomon?'

  Ikey gave a phlegmy laugh and shook his head slowly. 'I admits, honesty ain't a habit what's come easy, Mary, my dear.' Mary saw that his back had become more hunched, though now he pulled himself as straight as he was able, wincing at a stab of rheumatism in his hip. Then he jerked at the ragged lapels of his coat and grinned, pushing his chin into the air.

  'What you sees here, my dear, is a reformed man, honest as the day be long, reliable to the point o' stupidity and a ledger clerk what's to be praised for neatness, accuracy and the most amazing sagacity, experienced in all the ways o' gettin' what's owed to one quickly paid, and what one owes to others most tedious slow to be proceeded with!' He bowed slightly to Mary, bringing his broken shoes together. 'Isaac Solomon at your 'umble service, madam!'

  'You'll need to sign the pledge and agree to take a bath once a month,' Mary said, unimpressed.

  Ikey clutched at his chest. 'You knows I don't drink, least only most modest and circumspect, my dear! Bathe? Once a month?' His eyebrows shot up in alarm. 'Does you mean naked? No clothes? But, but… that be like Port Arthur again! That be ridiculous and most onerous and unfair, and 'as nothing to do with clerking nor keeping ledgers fair and square!'

  'Once a month, Ikey Solomon!' Mary repeated. Ikey could see from the tightness at the corners of her mouth that she meant it.

  Ikey smiled unctuously. 'Tell you what I can do for you, my dear. I could wash me 'ands!' He held his hands up and spread his fingers wide. Mary observed them to be a far cry from clean. 'Not once a month, mind, but every time I works on the ledgers, once a day, even more, if you wishes! 'Ow about that, my dear?'

  Mary shook her head and then folded her arms. 'Bathe once a month and take the pledge. I smoked you, Ikey, and I be most reliably informed that you has grown fond 'o the fiery grape!'

  'Reliably informed, is it? That be most malicious gossip and not to be trusted at all and in the least! A little brandy now and again to calm me nerves in the most unpleasant times experienced in New Norfolk, that were all it was, I swear it, my dear!'<
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  'Well, then you will have no qualms about signing the pledge,' Mary replied calmly. 'You can drink beer here, and if you works well your nerves won't need no calming with the likes of us, Ikey Solomon.'

  Ikey hung his head and sucked at his teeth, and seemed to be considering Mary's proposition. Finally, as though coming to a most regrettable decision, he shook his head slowly and in a forlorn voice said, 'Hot water, mind? In a room what's locked and no soap! Soap makes me skin itch somethin' awful!'

  'Soap, but not prison soap,' Mary said, remembering well the harsh carbolic soap issued once a fortnight in the Female Factory which caused the skin to burn and itch for hours afterwards.

  Ikey, of course, did not fit in well. He was not the sort to be put on a high stool with a green eyeshade to labour at ledgers while the sun shone brightly. Sunshine was a most abhorrent spectre for Ikey and had been one of the more difficult aspects of his imprisonment. Daylight was a time when Ikey's internal clock ran down, and Mary soon realised this.

  After Ikey had bathed and signed the pledge, she had taken him to Thos Hopkins the tailor. Now everyone, even the most ignorant, knows that 'Thos' stands for Thomas at his christening, so that he was forced to spend his whole life explaining that his name was not Tom or Thomas but Thos. He was small and plump, somewhat irritable and a dreadful snob, but a very good bespoke tailor, and quite the most expensive in Hobart Town. He used only the best imported worsteds and demanded three fittings at the very least.

  Thos Hopkins had recently signed the pledge and become a most enthusiastic user of Mary's Temperance Ale, to the point of half a dozen bottles taken most evenings. But he soon revealed that behind his snobbish facade lay an impecunious state of affairs, and he owed Mary nearly five pounds in credit. Were it not for the mounting debt he would not have permitted Ikey to enter his establishment.

  Mary replaced Ikey's clothes, and had the bootmaker make him a pair of pigskin boots with long, narrow toes which served as yellow snouts in exactly the same manner as the pair he'd owned in England. The coat was made to Ikey's precise instructions. Half a hundred pockets appeared in the most peculiar places, so that the redoubtable Mr Hopkins eventually cried out at the very sight of Ikey entering his establishment. 'Bah! More pockets, I will not tolerate more pockets!'

  Eventually the coat was completed and after seven years Ikey was back to something like his old self, which included a return to his nocturnal ways. He would appear at six of the evening at the Potato Factory, just as the other workers were departing, and work until midnight. At the stroke of twelve he would creep away, heading for Wapping and the docks to spend the night in the public houses, sly grog dens and brothels inhabited by sailors, whalers, drunks, thieves and the general riff-raff of Hobart Town.

  Though Ikey was no longer in the crime business he could still be persuaded to pay out on a watch temporarily loaned and returned for a small commission added. This was merely the business of being an itinerant pawnbroker conveniently on the spot when a drunk or a sailor found himself without funds in the early hours of the morning. More importantly, Ikey now carried a large basket over his arm filled with various types, sizes, packets and prices of snuff, cigars and pipe baccy, and he moved from place to place selling his wares. If there was only a small profit to be made from this trade it did not overly concern Ikey because it gave him an excuse to spend the hours of the night at perambulation. Once again he was a creature of the dark hours.

  This suited Mary perfectly, as in daylight hours Ikey proved a difficult proposition. He would argue with the men at the slightest provocation, and had an opinion about everything. What's more, he was a tiger when it came to debt.

  A great many of Mary's customers came from the dock-side area of Wapping, the place in Hobart Town where the poor and the broken lived. Customers who required a drop of credit were a frequent and normal part of Mary's life. But Ikey, who had spent his life among the congregation of the unfortunate, had a very low opinion of the credit rating of the poor, and constantly grumbled and groused at the idea of giving them grog on the slate. Sometimes, when they came to the Potato Factory to beg a bottle or two for the night in advance of their weekly wages, he would soundly dress them down. A penny owed to Mary would irritate him until it was paid. While Mary found it difficult to argue with Ikey's diligence on her behalf, she knew how hard it was for many of her customers to stay on the pledge and not drink the raw spirit made by the sly grog merchants which would rot their stomachs, send them blind or even kill them.

  Ikey had become more and more fidgety, often not appearing at the Potato Factory until mid-morning, and even then still bleary eyed. Finally, at about the time his new coat had acquired a suitably greasy patina, Mary tackled him as to the reason for his behaviour.

  'It be the sunlight, my dear, seven years o' sunlight, too much o' the bright. Bright be always cruel, in the bright light the evil things done to a man is seen to be normal. I craves the dark. What a man does in the dark is his personal evil, what 'e does in the light 'e does in the name of truth, and that often be the most evil of all. People do not see clearly in the light, but they look carefully into the shadows. In the night I am a natural man, given to the feelings of honesty or deception, quite clear in the things I do, whether for good or for bad. In the light I am confused, for the most awful crimes are committed in the name of truth, and these always out loud, in the blazin' sunlight. It is a feeble notion that good is a thing of the light. Here, in the name of justice, property and ownership, poverty and starvation is considered a natural condition created for the advantage of those who rule, those who own the daylight. The poor and the miserable are thought to exist solely for the benefit of those who are born to the privilege.' Ikey paused after this tirade. He had surprised himself with his own eloquence. 'Ah, my dear, in the dark I can clearly see good and evil. Both can be separated like the white from the yolk. In the light I am blinded, stunned, eviscerated, rendered useless by the burning malevolence which blazes upon the earth with every sunrise.'

  Mary had never heard Ikey talk like this, and she did not pretend to understand it all. She knew Ikey for what he was, a man possessed of cunning and greed, not given to the slightest charity. But now she became aware that Ikey had always exploited the rich and she could think of no instance where he had profited by robbing the poor. It was true that, as a fence, he had depended on the desperate poor to do his dirty work, but he had paid promptly and well for what they brought him. Even the brothel in Bell Alley had been for the gentry, where he caused the collective breeches of lawyers, magistrates, judges, barristers and bankers to be pulled down to mine the profit of their vanity, and milk their puny loins and their vainglorious attempts to recapture an imagined youth long since lost to rich food and port wine.

  And so Ikey had returned to his old ways, and life at the Potato Factory continued without his avuncular interference, but with the advantage of his instinct for a bad debt approaching, and his sharp eye for any unscrupulous trader's attempt to bring Mary undone.

  Mary spent the first hour with Ikey each evening before he started on the ledgers, and she served him the mutton stew and dish of fresh curds he loved. After he had wiped the foam from his beard, and in general declared the satisfaction of his stomach by the emission of various oleaginous noises, she would seek his counsel in those matters of immediate concern to her.

  Their relationship was not in the least romantic, and Ikey would never again share Mary's bed. Mary had brought him back into her life because she earnestly believed his gift of the Waterloo medal was the reason for her good fortune in Van Diemen's Land. And it was Ikey who had given Mary her first chance at a decent life.

  Mary never forgot a good deed or forgave a bad one, and she repaid each with the appropriate gratitude or retribution. She had always lived in a hard world where no quarter was given; now she realised that an even harder one existed. She had discovered that those who possessed wealth and property were dedicated to two things: the enhancement of what
they owned, and an absolute determination never to allow anyone below them to share in the spoils, using any means they could to dispossess them. Mary had not accepted this rich man's creed. She was determined that those who helped her would be rewarded with her loyalty whether they were king or beggarman, while those who sought to cheat her would eventually pay a bitter price.

  Against his better judgment she had persuaded Mr Emmett to apply in his own name for Ikey's release and had, through the chief government clerk, secretly paid the bond and secured Ikey's early ticket of leave. In doing this Mary did not seek Ikey's gratitude, but was merely repaying a debt. In offering Ikey the position as her clerk Mary was not seeking to gloat at the reversal of their roles. She was simply keeping faith with her own personal creed.

  It should not be imagined that Mary and Ikey formed an ideal couple. They quarrelled constantly. Ikey's imperious ways and scant regard for the proprieties of a relationship where he was the employee often left Mary furious. He was careless about her feelings and often disparaging of her opinions. But whereas the old Ikey may have caused her in a fit of temper to throw him onto the street, she soon discovered that the new Ikey was unable to make a decision. Mary came to see him as the devil's advocate, useful for his incisive mind but now without the courage of his convictions.

  Mary was growing in prosperity and she soon had the money to construct a water-powered mill and malt house on her land at Strickland Falls on the slope of Mount Wellington. Although she was still a long way from owning her own brewery, she already sold her high-quality barley mash and malt to some of the smaller breweries, as well as using her superior ingredients to increase her own output.