Potato Factory

by Bryce Courtenay

  Ikey’s wealth was irrevocably tied up with Hannah’s, and though he surprised himself by still determining secretly to help Mary should she be arrested, there was no reconciliation possible between them. Mary would forever remain the sweetest passage in Ikey’s life, but if it came to a choice between riches and sentiment then, Ikey reasoned, the short journey they’d taken together in life was already concluded.

  Mary had spent an eventful day. She had been awakened, considerably confused by the noise in the basement and, lighting a candle, hurried downstairs to investigate, only to be met by a stout policeman shining a torch into her eyes. He promptly ordered her back upstairs, though in a remarkably polite tone.

  ‘We’ll be up shortly, madam, to search your premises, but we’ll not be making any arrests of your good self or your girls. Would you be so kind as to wait upon our attentions and make a large pot of strong black tea with sugar added.’

  ‘Tea be too expensive for the likes of you lot,’ Mary retorted, ‘you will ‘ave to be satisfied with beer!’

  Mary had hurriedly retraced her steps to her little parlour. She thought only of the concealment of the ledger and was struck with panic when she entered the room to see that it no longer rested on the table beside the bottle of claret. Then she noticed the absence of the second tankard, and with a grateful sigh concluded that Ikey had been and had removed the ledger.

  But after a moment she became bewildered. Why had Ikey not wakened her? Had he known of the raid and betrayed her? Mary, her head filled with the anxiety of the moment, made her way to the kitchen where she filled a large jug with beer and set it upon the table. Then she took half a dozen pewter mugs from a cupboard and placed them around the jug. She walked into the scullery and noticed the bull’s eye lamp lying on the stone sink. She picked it up - it was still slightly warm to the touch. Ikey had most assuredly been, but why would he need the lamp? A gas light was kept burning low in all the passages except the attic and he would need only to have turned these up to see his way perfectly. Besides, Ikey seemed to see like a cat in the dark while others would tread fearfully with their arms stretched out in front of them.

  ‘Jesus! The attic!’ Mary exclaimed aloud.

  The police were about to search the house and they would find the attic filled with stolen articles. Mary, now fully awake, raced up the stairs leading into the attic when she realised that only Ikey kept a key to the door. Then she saw that the door was slightly ajar. She opened it and sufficient pale light filtered through the barred dormer window to reveal that the attic was empty. Not a bolt of linen or brocade, no silver candelabra or plate, or fancy clocks, nothing remained.

  Mary felt suddenly completely betrayed. She was not the kind to sob, but a great hollowness filled her being. Why had Ikey not alerted her? She sat heavily upon a step on the narrow stairway leading up to the attic door. Then she recalled the officer’s words of a few minutes previously, ‘We’ll not be making any arrests of your good self or your girls!’

  Mary felt herself filling up with joyous relief. He’d fee’d the law. Ikey had bribed the officers not to arrest her! Mary felt a great warmth go out towards him. He loved her! The miserable sod actually loved her! Mary was suddenly as happy as she had been in her entire life, as happy even as she had been on the morning Mr Goldstein had hired her as a clerk. She hurried downstairs to stoke the embers and add coal to the stove, and then to make a large pot of sweet tea for the law. Her head whirled with the discovery that someone cared about her, that Ikey had escaped before being arrested for forgery, but first he had seen to it that she was safe! Mary vowed that she would never forget his loving act towards her.

  The arrest of notorious forger Abraham Van Esselyn, alias Thomas Thompson, was a triumph for the bank officers. Though they had found no evidence in the form of large denomination forged banknotes, the discovery of an etching plate for the five pound denomination, together with a small stack of freshly minted counterfeit five pound notes taken together with the implements of forgery, the Austrian printing press, inks, though no paper, was sufficient to incarcerate him for the term of his natural life. Nonetheless, the City police were bitterly disappointed. They wanted Ikey Solomon, and they knew he had escaped.

  The search of Egyptian Mary’s had revealed nothing, though it had been thorough in the extreme. The beds and closets of the startled girls were overturned, mattresses ripped open, floorboards removed, false walls looked for and ceilings holed and tapped. The tiniest apertures were poked into and closely examined, even the coal had been removed from the scuttle, and the peephole Ikey used to spy upon Mary’s clients was examined in the hope that it might reveal some secret hideaway. But at the end of a full morning’s search, accompanied by Mary’s repeated protests that Ikey was simply her landlord and that she knew the business in the basement to be a printing press and no more, nothing was found in the brothel part of the premises, nothing which could connect Ikey Solomon to forgery or, for that matter, to any other crime beyond that of allowing the premises he owned to be used as a brothel and his basement as a printing press.

  Under normal circumstances Ikey’s landlord activities might still have been sufficient to arrest him on a charge of conspiracy to defraud the Bank of England by allowing the printing of forged notes on property he owned. But the bank’s officials knew Ikey could afford the best King’s Counsel London could furnish and nowhere in the world was there better to be found. They needed much more than a possible charge of complicity. They needed traceable, verifiable stolen goods and banknotes which proved to be forgeries and which were found to be in his possession or concealed on premises where he was known to live.

  Furthermore, Van Esselyn seemed not in the least inclined to bear witness against his landlord, though he had yet to be thoroughly worked upon. A deaf mute who purported to write only in the French language was, at best, a dubious witness. But even if his confession proved compelling, evidence taken from a forger of Van Esselyn’s reputation could, they knew, be easily negated in cross-examination by any half-competent barrister with half a wig on his head.

  Late that afternoon, as Ikey’s coach was rumbling across the countryside, a meeting took place at the Bank of England on Threadneedle Street between its directors and various officers and in the presence of the Upper Marshal of the City of London. It was here a decision was quietly taken that Ikey Solomon must, by all means available, be apprehended and permanently removed from London’s criminal society. A decision was also passed with a show of hands, and therefore not entered in the minutes, that should any emoluments be incurred in this endeavour, they would be met by the bank and dispensed through the services of a reliable go-between, so that these ‘expenses’ were not traceable back to the officers of the bank nor to any person acting on their behalf.

  The task of apprehending Ikey and building a watertight case against him was made the personal responsibility of the Upper Marshal of London, Sir Jasper Waterlow. Sir Jasper was a member of the Select Committee on Police which was about to look into the whole question of policing in London. There was already a great deal of speculation about the formation of a Metropolitan Police Force to replace the corrupt and inadequate magistrates’ runners and Sir Jasper could see himself as the head of such a body, a position which must inevitably lead to a peerage and a seat in the House of Lords. The additional responsibility for apprehending the notorious receiver and now head of a conspiracy to defraud the Bank of England was an unexpected turn of good fortune, and he was well pleased with the bank’s nomination.

  With this decision to persist in the hunt, Ikey Solomon became, at once, the most wanted man throughout the length and breadth of Britain, even though no actual warrant existed for his arrest.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It did not take long for Hannah to learn of the arrest of Abraham Van Esselyn and the reason for Ikey’s hasty departure to Birmingham. Not more than an hour after Ikey had departed an officer from the City police had knocked loudly on the front door of their W
hitechapel home. ‘Name o’ Ikey Solomon. Is this ‘is ‘ouse?’ he demanded.

  Hannah, who was accustomed to both rudeness and crisis, nodded calmly and invited the officer into her front parlour. ‘Shall I take yer coat and mittens, officer?’

  ‘Gloves, they’s gloves,’ the policeman corrected her. ‘Thank ‘e kindly, I’ll stay put.’

  Hannah smiled. ‘And what brings ya out at the crack o’ dawn, officer? Bit early to come callin’, ain’t it?’ Without waiting for the policeman’s reply, she rubbed her hands together against the cold, ‘ ’Ave a pew, officer, make y’self at ‘ome, don’t blame ya for stayin’ with yer coat and mittens, cold as charity in ‘ere, ‘ang on a mo, good idea, I’ll light the grate.’ She said all of this with such rapidity that the policeman hadn’t yet mustered sufficient wit to reply to her original question. He cleared his throat, preparing finally to answer, but Hannah turned her back on him and kneeling in front of the fire-place struck a lucifer to the kindling in the grate.

  ‘Sit, sit, officer,’ Hannah said. A tiny curl of yellow flame licked between the dark lumps of coal and a wisp of smoke followed it up the chimney.

  The policeman, a stout, heavily jowled man with a bushy black moustache, lowered himself slowly into the chair. ‘Your ‘usband, madam, we should like to talk to ‘im on a matter ‘o some urgency.’

  Hannah rose from the fireplace and turned towards him, her expression most conciliatory. ‘What a bloomin’ shame, you’ve come all this way for nuffink! ‘E’s gorn, sir, ‘fraid ‘e’s not ‘ere.’

  ‘Gorn?’ The policeman looked quizzical. ‘Madam, I must inform you, we ‘ave the ‘ouse surrounded.’

  ‘That won’t ‘elp none, you could ‘ave the bloomin’ ‘ousehold cavalry outside, ‘e still ain’t ‘ere. ‘E left three days ago on business.’

  ‘And where might ‘e ‘ave gorn, madam?’ the police officer demanded. He was aware of Hannah’s reputation and would not normally have appended the word ‘madam’ to his questions, the criminal classes being best addressed in the bluntest possible way. But such is the regard of the English for property that he was in truth paying his respects to the imposing three-storey residence and the expensive furnishings, in particular the magnificent Persian carpet upon which his large feet rested. He hadn’t expected anything like this, and they demanded a courtesy which he knew the frumpy whore in curling papers, who hadn’t even bothered to wear a mob cap, should be emphatically and officially denied.

  Hannah’s face puckered into a frown. ‘I beg ya to understand, sir. I cannot tell ya the whereabouts of me ‘usband. These are ‘ard times and ‘e is on the road seekin’ customers for ‘is bright little bits!’

  The officer now leaned forward feigning exasperation, raising his voice and speaking in an imperious manner.

  ‘Come now, we all know your ‘usband’s vocation, don’t we! ‘E ain’t no jeweller sellin’ ‘is wares at country fairs an’ the like, now is ‘e, madam?’

  Hannah shrugged her shoulders, wondering briefly why they’d sent this clumsy man to interview Ikey. She felt vaguely insulted - they deserved better, a more senior man who spoke proper and who would be a fair match in the wits department for Ikey or herself. She could almost see the cogs turning in the big policeman’s head.

  ‘I dunno what ya can possibly mean, sir! ‘Onest to Gawd, officer, I swear I dunno where ‘e is.’ She folded her arms across her chest and pouted, ‘He scarpered three days ago, that’s all I can tell ya.’ She gave the police officer a brief smile. ‘Shall I tell ‘im ya called when ‘e returns?’ Hannah raised her eyebrows slightly. ‘Whenever, from wherever? What shall I tell ‘im it’s in connection with? Shall I tell ‘im you’ve a warrant out?’

  The policeman ignored Hannah’s questions. ‘Scarpered? You mean ‘e’s left you, done a runner on you and the kids?’

  Hannah smiled, inwardly relieved. She knew from the policeman’s reply that Ikey wasn’t yet under arrest, they hadn’t taken out a warrant nor had they a search warrant for the house. ‘Nah! I mean ‘e’s just gorn. ‘E’ll be back. Sellin’s ‘is trade, ain’t it? When ‘e’s sold ‘is stock ‘e’ll be back orright, grumblin’ and cantankerous,’ she sighed, ‘just like ‘e never left.’

  The policeman sniffed. ‘Receivin’, more like! Gorn to Birmingham or Manchester then, ‘as ‘e?’

  Hannah shrugged again, though she was slightly more impressed. At least the officer had done some homework. ‘What you take me for, a bleedin’ clairvoyant? I told you, I dunno nuffink about where me ‘usband’s gorn, for all I knows ‘e’s gorn to Windsor Great Park to see the giraffe what the Mohammedan from Egypt give to the King!’ Hannah’s expression brightened at this bizarre thought and she added, ‘Perhaps ‘e’s stayed to play a game of battledore and shuttlecock with ‘Is Majesty? Wouldn’t put it past ‘im.’

  The policeman sighed heavily and rose from the chair, pointing a stubby finger at Hannah. ‘We’ve got the Froggie and we’ll get Ikey! You can quite be sure o’ that! This ain’t no normal enquiry from the magistrates’ runners, this is City, Bank o’ England!’ He sniffed again and turned towards the front door. ‘We’ll be back with a warrant, you may be sure o’ that!’

  ‘Always welcome, I’m sure,’ Hannah said, smiling brightly at the officer. ‘Next time, stay for a cuppa.’ She arched an eyebrow and sniffed. ‘ ’Ardly worth lightin’ the fire, that was, the price of a lump o’ coal bein’ what it is!’

  Despite her outward calm, Hannah was far from in possession of her wits. The single word ‘City’ followed by the three others ‘Bank of England’ had struck terror into her heart, for they told her all she needed to know. They’d arrested Van Esselyn, and now they were after Ikey. The house in Bell Alley must have been raided and Ikey had somehow been informed just in time to make good his escape.

  Hannah knew the seriousness of the situation, but she also knew her man and unlike Mary she did not for a single moment think he’d either betrayed or deserted her. Not when all their wealth was still sitting in the basement safe. Ikey had made no attempt to take a large sum of money with him, therefore he was not planning to escape to America as he’d often speculated they would do if there was no hope of either of them beating a rap.

  Hannah would have liked to go to Australia where John and Moses, their two oldest sons, had been sent, well capitalised, to establish themselves in respectable vocations in Sydney Town. But she knew that New South Wales was not beyond the reach of the law or, even more so, the wrath of the Bank of England.

  Hannah wanted her children to have a better life than her own. For them to be accepted as respectable members of society, even if it was only colonial society, was uppermost to her ambitions. The idea that they should follow in the path of their loathsome father was unthinkable. Curiously, Hannah did not see herself as an example of moral degeneration. She was, in her own eyes, a good girl turned temporarily aside by the events which Ikey had caused to happen to their family. Hannah saw her immorality as an expedient to be discarded as easily as a petticoat when the time came to lead a respectable middle-class life.

  Left destitute as a young wife with two small children by a husband imprisoned on a hulk as a common thief awaiting transportation to Australia, Hannah had been forced to survive on her wits. The brothels she now owned were simply the end result of her determination not to be destroyed. She had even come to think upon herself as a necessary component in a complex but predestined society. The gin-soaked whores, starving brats, the deformed, witless, the whoresons, freaks, cripples, catamites and opium addicts, they all came to her and, if she thought she could convert their tortured minds and broken bodies into a cash flow, she employed them. Hannah took a secret pride in the fact that she was called ‘Mother Sin, The Queen of the Drunken Blasphemers’, in a popular Wesleyan tract widely issued by the salvationists. To her this inglorious title meant she had earned her place in life’s rich tapestry, that she had triumphed within a social structure not of her making, and had overcome obsta
cles which would have defeated most other young women saddled with two infant mouths to feed.

  Hannah saw herself as a good mother who worked hard and selflessly so that her children might grow up to have both the trappings and the virtues of respectability. She told herself it was all for them, John and Moses, who were already on their way in life, and David, Ann, Sarah and baby Mark. She was convinced that while they remained in England they would be regarded as the bottom of the social heap, the criminal poor. She was quite unable to recognise that she was already in possession of a grand fortune, that her children would never starve again.

  The capacity to delude herself had been a part of Hannah’s personality from a very young age, and her subsequent social disintegration had become so complete that she felt not a morsel of shame for her actions. Her life, she told herself, had been a bitter disappointment, meaningful only in the fact that she had been blessed with children, so she extracted, and continued to extract, her revenge upon it. Hannah was a woman who was possessed by hatred which had long since consumed her conscience. The only purity in her life was her offspring, the precious fruit of her loins, and the major object of her hate was their father.

  It was quite clear to Hannah that Ikey would be returning and that he must have already evolved a plan to beat any indictment against himself for forgery. Although she loathed him, she respected his brains and his ability to make money and even, in a perverse sort of way, she enjoyed the ‘respectability’ he gave her as a criminal of international repute who carried the undisputed title of Prince of Fences.

  Long after the departure of the police officer, Hannah continued to sit with her hands cupping her chin, staring into the fireplace which now filled the little parlour with its warmth. Her first task, she told herself, was to determine precisely what had happened earlier that morning. She could not go around to what she now thought of as the deserted house in Bell Alley, though she would need to ensure that it was securely bolted against intruders. She had often witnessed how the desperate poor could strip a deserted house of its contents, then occupy it in a matter of hours and destroy its worth in a matter of days. Of course, she knew nothing of Mary and imagined the property completely vulnerable, doors left off their hinges by an uncaring City police, windows thrown open to create a deliberate deadlurk. Hannah determined to send a dozen street brats immediately to scatter throughout the surrounding rookeries to find Bob Marley who she knew, given sufficient incentive, could be relied upon to see that the house was made safe against intruders.