Potato Factory

by Bryce Courtenay

  Hannah nodded, though her head was in a whirl. She thought Ikey’s plan too far-fetched to succeed, but on the other hand she wanted him to lodge the letter of credit. It represented a great deal of money, enough in itself to set her up in America even without the contents of the Whitechapel safe, though it was unthinkable that she would not have this as well. In her mind she too began to formulate a plan.

  Ikey’s plan was based on the writ of habeas corpus, that is, the right of every Englishman to apply for bail to be granted until his case came up for hearing. In order for this to happen he would need to appear before a judge at the King’s Bench court at Westminster, where he would be granted a hearing. This would entail being escorted by two turnkeys to the court and would allow him to travel outside the confines of the gaol.

  It was standard procedure for two turnkeys to escort a prisoner by foot to the Court of King’s Bench, which was situated not more than a mile from the gates of Newgate, though it was not unusual for a prisoner with funds, wishing to keep his identity and his shame from the passing crowd, to offer to pay for a carriage to be escorted in privacy to the courts.

  Ikey had applied for bail the moment he had been bound over at Lambeth Street and the hearing was set for two days after Hannah had visited him. Reuban Reuban and his son Abraham, alerted by Hannah, had arrived during that afternoon. Ikey had spoken to them at length and Abraham had taken several measurements of Ikey’s person.

  At half-past nine on the morning of the hearing two turnkeys marched Ikey through the gates of Newgate. It was the custom for turnkeys who had been on duty to take the extra duty of escort to court hearings so that the day staffing would not be disrupted. This was an unpopular rule, as it attracted no extra stipend for working, at the least, half of the day shift, or even more if the court was delayed. The two men who escorted Ikey were therefore tired and somewhat dulled from the frequent tots of cheap gin and Spanish brandy they had received from prisoners during the night and were not inclined to treat him with respect.

  The King’s Bench in Westminster was a steady half an hour’s walk from Newgate and was scheduled to commence at half-past the hour of ten o’clock. It was a week before Christmas and while no snow had fallen during the night a chill wind blew in from the North Sea. It brought with it a light fog which, added to the smog caused by the winter fires, made the streets as dark as the night itself. Moreover they were packed with Christmas shopping crowds and the smoking flares carried by the coaches and brandished by messenger boys dodging through the crush of people and between carriages added to the general annoyance and difficulty of conditions on foot.

  It seemed almost a miracle when a hackney coach appeared through the gloom and appeared to be empty.

  ‘Shall I ‘ave the pleasure, gentlemen, of offerin’ you a ride?’ Ikey asked. He silently congratulated Hannah’s father, Moses Julian, for his expertise in having the coach so ‘fortuitously’ available. Ikey’s two escorts needed no further persuasion and he hailed the hackney with a sharp whistle.

  ‘Where to, guv?’ the coachman called down to them.

  ‘Westminster!’ Ikey called back. ‘King’s Bench!’

  ‘We’ll ‘ave to go ‘round back way, guv, through Petticoat Lane. Coaches jammed tight as fiddlesticks from ‘ere to Westminster. It be the bleedin’ fog,’ he pointed his whip into the barely visible crowd milling along the pavement, ‘and them bleedin’ Christmas shoppers.’

  Ikey glanced questioningly at the senior of his two escorts, a coarse looking man with a bulbous nose to rival that of Sir Jasper Waterlow, upon the tip of which resided a large wart not unlike a woman’s nipple in appearance. It was therefore truly astonishing that his name was Titty Smart, though it may be supposed that this was a sobriquet and not his christian name. He was also the senior of the two men, much experienced and seventeen years in the prison service, and he now grunted and frowned saying gruffly, ‘Mr Popjoy and I accepts.’

  Ikey, with both his hands shackled, one to a wrist of each man, was held steady at the rear by the younger Popjoy as he climbed with difficulty into the interior of the hackney. The coach turned off the Strand at the first convenience and into a lane which despite its narrowness immediately seemed to improve their progress. The lighted flares stuck to each side of the hackney momentarily turned the drab grey walls of the smog-shrouded buildings into a bright mustard-coloured burst of light as they passed, giving the effect of magic lantern slides changing with rapidity. This flickering effect and the rocking of the coach soon began to have an effect on the weary turnkeys. Ikey watched as their chins sank to their chests and their eyelids rolled shut, only to jerk open every once in a while until the effort became too great and they could no longer stay awake.

  The coach turned into Petticoat Lane and then into Rosemary Lane and, as they were about to pass the Pig ‘n Spit, Ikey called loudly to the coachman to halt. The two turnkeys wakened with a start and their free hands went immediately to their truncheons.

  ‘Gentlemen, you are wearied from your duties as good men should be what have spent the long night in the service o’ the King.’

  Ikey dragged the arm of Albert Popjoy with him as he took his watch from his fob pocket and clicked it open, examining its face briefly. ‘We are makin’ excellent progress and will arrive at the King’s Bench well before the time we are to be called before ‘is worship.’ He nodded towards the window. ‘This ‘ostelry, a tavern o’ most excellent reputation, be closed to all at this hour, though I assure you it is open to us at any hour. ‘Ere be a supply o’ brandy the likes o’ which may not be found anywhere in the kingdom. A veritable elixir of a miraculous nature what is said to heal the sick and cause the lame to walk again! A tonic extracted from the finest Frenchy vines, matured in English oak for twenty year or more, to render it now more British in its character than ever it were French. It can be mulled in old pewter and be used with great purpose to warm the cockles and keep the eyes brightly open! What say you, gentlemen?’

  The thought of a pewter of mulled French brandy, expensive at the best of times, was too much for an old soak such as Titty Smart to refuse. ‘The one. We’ll have the one and then be off.’ He looked at his partner, the younger Albert Popjoy, whose expression seemed doubtful. ‘The one, it can’t hurt to have the one, lad, now can it?’ Smart sniffed, snorted and then rubbed his nose furiously with the edge of his forefinger, as though awakening it to the delicious prospect of the delectable brandy fumes.

  ‘Pull in around the back,’ Ikey instructed the coachman.

  The coachman touched his whip to the horses and the hackney moved into the small lane which led to the courtyard behind the Pig ‘n Spit, drawing up beside the back door. Smart opened the door on his side of the coach to see the head of the cellarman’s boy suddenly appear through the open barrel chute at ground level. ‘We be closed, sir, we opens again four o’clock. Four o’clock ‘til four o’clock o’ the mornin’,’ he yelled, squinting up at the turnkey.

  Ikey stood up and leaning over the lap of the still-seated Smart stuck his head out of the coach door. ‘Open, my dear, it be urgent business with your mistress!’

  The boy’s head disappeared underground again and a couple of minutes passed before he opened the back door. He wore a leather apron and carried a cooper’s hammer and, judging from his height, appeared to be about fourteen years old. ‘Who be it what’s come callin?’ he asked.

  ‘Call your mistress, my dear. Tell ‘er, Ikey Solomon.’

  The boy stood his ground. ‘She won’t take kindly, sir, she ain’t been aslumber more’n two hour.’

  ‘There’ll be a shillin’, lad,’ Ikey said, then repeated, ‘Call Mistress Marybelle, tell ‘er Ikey Solomon and friends ‘as come ‘round to pay their respects.’

  The expression on the boy’s face remained dubious but finally he nodded his head and closed the door. The three men climbed from the coach and the coachman moved the hackney to a tethering post. Several minutes later, which they spent waiting, w
ith their breath smoking the air around their heads and their feet stamping the frosted ground, the door was once again flung open. Filling its entire frame was the giant shape of Marybelle Firkin. She was clad in a bright red woollen dressing gown which gave the immediate effect of a giant tea cosy with a pretty porcelain head in curling papers sewn upon its top as an ornament of decoration.

  ‘My Gawd, bless me if it ain’t you! Ikey Solomon! What a bloomin’ pleasure!’ There was no hint of annoyance in Marybelle’s voice at the early hour. Had the turnkeys been more alert they might have wondered why this was so. A woman who has been up all the night to the boisterous demands of her drunken customers is not usually wakened as easily or in a mood of such pleasant alacrity. They might also have questioned why, when the tavern had been closed to patrons a good five and some hours, a hearty fire blazed in the private parlour with the mulling tongs in place between the coals.

  ‘Come in, come in gentlemen,’ Marybelle invited, turning and waddling down a passage, leading the way into a bright, warm room. ‘Welcome to me ‘umble parlour, make y’selfs comfortable.’ Then, seeing the three men standing huddled close together at the door, she pointed to the leather chairs beside the fire. ‘Sit, make yourselves at ‘ome. Ikey sit ‘ere, love.’ She patted the back of a comfortable leather club chair nearest to where she stood.

  Ikey lifted his arms, at the same time lifting the arms belonging to each of his gaolers, displaying the manacles for Marybelle to see. He looked at her sheepishly, raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders in a mute explanation of the predicament in which he now found himself.

  ‘Blimey, o’ course! The pigs, they’s nabbed ya!’ Marybelle folded her great arms across her bosom and glared at Titty Smart and Albert Popjoy.

  ‘Now listen to me, gents, this be me private parlour.’ She pointed to the panelled walls. ‘See it ain’t got no windows for boltin’, and there be a key in the door what ya can use to lock it!’ She walked over to where they stood and removed the large brass key from the stout oak door and handed it to Titty Smart. ‘Yer welcome to me best brandy and the warmth o’ me ‘earth, but ya ain’t welcome wif yer manacles in me tavern!’ She pointed at Ikey. ‘Mr Solomon ‘ere be me right good friend what’s me guest. I’ll thank ya kindly to remove them pig’s bangles from ‘is wrists or ya can fuck orf right now!’

  As she spoke the boy who’d earlier been sent to waken Marybelle came to the door followed by the coachman. The lad carried a cask of brandy and waited as Ikey and company moved further into the small room before he pushed past them and seated the small barrel of brandy carefully in a cradle placed on a carved oak dresser. On the shelf above the barrel were several rows of pewter mugs.

  ‘Well?’ Marybelle asked. ‘What’s it to be?’ She moved over to the cask and taking a pewter tankard from the shelf above it placed it under the spout and allowed just a splash of the golden brown liquid into the tankard. Then she walked over to the fire and removed the mulling iron which she plunged into the interior of the tankard. Immediately a ribbon of flame leapt from the tankard almost to the height of the heavy oaken mantelpiece and the room was filled with the inviting fumes of good French cognac.

  The effect on Titty Smart’s nose was too much to bear and he reached into his pocket and quickly unlocked the manacle attached to Ikey’s wrist and thereafter his own. His partner, perhaps not quite as taken with the need of strong drink and pyrotechnics, hesitated a little longer.

  ‘Just the one, lad!’ Smart grunted. ‘Just the one for keeping us alert an’ all.’

  ‘It ain’t regular,’ Popjoy muttered, though in an undertone. ‘There’s regulations.’

  Titty Smart glared at his partner. ‘We ain’t be paid for this escort, this ain’t our shift, we be nights, not day, this be our own time what the bastards ‘ave robbed from us, you can stuff yer regulations up yer arse, lad!’

  Before his young partner could protest further Ikey interjected, clucking the two men to silence. ‘What the ‘ead keeper don’t see ‘e don’t ‘ave to grieve about, now does ‘e?’ He rubbed his left wrist with his right hand, deliberately pulling Popjoy’s arm across with him in order to do so. Then he pointed to the parlour door which still stood ajar and grinned. ‘Better lock the door ‘case I takes a runner!’

  Albert Popjoy, shaking his head in silent disapproval, unlocked the manacle on Ikey’s wrist while leaving the one on his wrist. Titty Smart walked over to the parlour door, locked it, and placed the key in his pocket.

  Marybelle pointed to the manacles dangling from the wrist of Albert Popjoy and laughed. ‘Don’t look cosy, knows what I mean? Official. We don’t go much on duty ‘ere.’ She cocked her head to one side and grinned at the younger turnkey. Albert Popjoy, embarrassed at the attention, took the key from his pocket and unlocked the manacle around his wrist, placing the set within his coat pocket. ‘That’s it, lads, nice ‘n cosy, take a pew, make y’selfs at ‘ome.’ She looked at the coachman. ‘You too,’ then she took up four pewter tankards and turned again to the now seated men, arched her eyebrows and nodded her head in the direction of the cask. ‘A drop o’ me very best brandy for all, is it then, gentlemen?’

  It came as some surprise when no more than twenty minutes later, the mulled brandy having warmed, refreshed and lighted that small, bright flame that sputters in the stomach until temporarily doused with a second drink, Ikey suggested that they must depart and offered his wrists to the two turnkeys so that they might manacle them once more.

  Titty Smart nodded to his partner. ‘I told you, just the one and that will do for the manacle too.’ The younger man fished into his pocket and produced his set of manacles and attached them once more to Ikey’s and then his own wrist.

  Ikey felt momentarily triumphant. ‘One down, one to go!’ he thought. He felt almost free with only one wrist attached to Albert Popjoy.

  Marybelle Firkin saw them to the back door and placed her hands on Ikey’s shoulders. ‘Cheerio, lovey,’ she said and Ikey was surprised to see the brightness of moisture in her large blue eyes. She paused and grinned, though when she spoke her voice was serious. ‘Yer wife told me everyfink, good luck, Ikey.’ Then she turned to Smart and Popjoy, ignoring the coachman who had taken his brandy but had said no single word except to nod his thanks while he had been in the parlour. ‘Always welcome, I’m sure,’ she said to the two turnkeys.

  She stood at the door, her red dressing gown once again filling its entire space, her pretty head almost touching the lintel. ‘Come back soon, gents!’ she called at the departing hackney.

  To Ikey’s surprise, Titty Smart licked his lips and rolled his eyes. ‘Ooh, ah! I’d like to be up to a bit o’ fancy ‘anky panky with the likes of ‘er, I would an’ all!’ He turned to Ikey and added, ‘That be damned good Frenchy brandy, just like what you said.’

  Albert Popjoy looked out of the window of the carriage and smiled in a supercilious manner, which Smart must have observed, for he turned to his partner and barked, ‘Wipe that smile orf yer gob, lad. Lady like that be much too good for the likes o’ yer poxy little prick!’

  They arrived at the courts in Westminster with a good twenty minutes to spare. ‘Would you wish me to wait, guv?’ the coachman asked. ‘It ain’t much point in this weather toutin’ for a fare. I could drive you back afterwards, no trouble and no extra fare charged, ‘cept o’ course for the run back and a sixpenny bag of oats for me ‘orse while we’s waiting.’

  Ikey nodded his agreement and the three men entered the precincts of the court to be met at the steps leading into the Westminster courts by Hannah and several of Ikey’s associates, most of whom were Jews from the Whitechapel markets, Petticoat and Rosemary Lanes. Their attendance was less a show of loyalty than a favour returned for a similar attendance by Ikey and Hannah at some past occasion when each of those present had faced an indictment. This was because of the well-established fact that, should a Jew be in the dock, the likelihood of a conviction was near five times that of any other Londoner.
It became therefore the custom to try to fill the court with ‘sympathetic voices’ so that the mood of the rabble in the gallery would not influence the judgment.

  In Ikey’s present predicament this was of overwhelming importance, the fear being, that if news of his application for bail should spread, the court would soon be filled with the rabble from the streets howling for his blood and the judge, sensitive to the animosity of the public at large, might think it safer for all concerned for Ikey to remain behind bars until his trial came up.

  But when the time came for Ikey’s hearing to be called the clerk of the court informed Titty Smart that the judge was in his chambers. He said there would be a delay of at least an hour, taking the hearing almost to the noon hour. The man, his lips pursed, had consulted his watch, whereupon he had shaken his head. ‘No time, gentlemen, at noon his worship takes luncheon at the Athenaeum Club, he’ll not return until two o’clock at best!’ This meant that Ikey’s writ of habeas corpus would therefore not be served until the early part of that afternoon.

  Ikey suggested that he stand his two keepers a good tightener at a local chop house and requested that his friends be allowed to accompany them.

  ‘I could go a good tightener and a jug o’ best ale,’ Titty Smart agreed, patting his large stomach without his mandatory show of reluctance. His attitude to Ikey had considerably softened following the time spent at the Pig ‘n Spit and now he turned to Albert Popjoy. ‘Drop o’ fodder can’t ‘urt, now can it, lad?’

  Popjoy nodded. He too was hungry and the idea of a plate of meat - mutton chops surrounded by a generous collar of yellow fat - was a most enticing prospect. It was difficult for him to maintain his official demeanour and not show his pleasure at the anticipation of such an unexpected treat.

  ‘That be fine,’ he said in a brusque voice, though he was salivating at the thought of the tightener to come at Ikey’s expense.

  ‘My pleasure, entirely, gents,’ Ikey said with great alacrity.