Potato Factory

by Bryce Courtenay

  Hannah, who stood close to her husband, shook her head. ‘ ’Ang on a mo’! We go into a chop ‘ouse round these parts, in fact, any parts, there’s plenty what will want to do Ikey an ‘arm!’

  A look of mutual disappointment crossed the faces of the two turnkeys, although Ikey could scarcely believe his luck. ‘Gentlemen, what’s to worry? Mistress Marybelle will welcome us back to the Pig! There be a dozen chop ‘ouses in Rosemary Lane what can send in a banquet to suit the fancy o’ the most particular appetite.’ He spread his arms wide. ‘What it is my great pleasure to satisfy.’

  The matter was quickly settled and fifteen minutes later the three men arrived back at the Pig ‘n Spit followed shortly afterwards by two hackney coaches containing the six others eager to avail themselves of Ikey’s generosity. Hannah, though, protested to Ikey that she would follow a little later as young Mark had a bad cough and she must fetch some physic for him before joining them.

  The fog had lifted somewhat, but the ever present miasma at rooftop level and the winter smog kept the day sombre and the visibility low. Therefore none but Ikey noted the outline of a gentleman’s coach with four horses which had followed them and now passed them as they turned into the rear of the Pig ‘n Spit. Nor would they have seen that it too came to a halt only a few yards further along the road.

  Marybelle, now dressed, welcomed them with the same equanimity as on the earlier occasion. Upon entering the parlour Titty Smart, observing Marybelle’s previous demand, had unmanacled Ikey and Popjoy had done likewise. Waiting for the other guests to enter the room, the older of the turnkeys once again locked the door and dropped the key into his coat pocket.

  The parlour, if they should stand in a rather close-packed manner, was only just large enough to accommodate them all. In fact, the near proximity of Ikey’s guests to each other, the warmth of the excellent fire in the hearth and the dispensing of generous quantities of Marybelle Firkin’s best brandy coupled with her friendly banter added greatly to the jollity of the occasion. Ikey’s two keepers were soon as loquacious as any in the room as they continued to imbibe the excellent brandy. But their stomachs were empty of food as Marybelle had delayed, by an hour, its delivery from a nearby chop house.

  At last the food arrived and at the same time Hannah appeared. Titty Smart, Ikey noted, had with some difficulty inserted the key into the lock, to allow the trays to be brought into the room. Two large trays of chops, aproned with deliciously crisped fat and at least a dozen plump whole carcases of spatchcock stuffed with chestnuts together with mounds of golden roasted potatoes were hoisted above the heads of the guests and placed upon the dresser. Ikey watched again as the older turnkey made several unsuccessful thrusts at the lock before pausing to carefully place his tankard of brandy on the floor between his legs. Then with the key held in both hands, and squinting fiercely at the key hole, he finally managed to lock the door.

  The smell of the roasted meat appeared to have much the same effect on Titty Smart as had been the case earlier with the flaming brandy fumes. Forgetting the half-filled tankard on the floor between his legs he kicked it over as he rudely pushed his way through the throng towards the trays of steaming food. As he passed, Ikey simply dipped his hand into the turnkey’s coat pocket, and in a foolishly simple example of the art of tooling retrieved the key to the door.

  While a mood of genial drunkenness overtook the room, Ikey retained a completely sober disposition. Marybelle pretended to frequently fill his pewter but, instead, merely splashed a lick of cognac into the bottom of his tankard, which was not sufficient to cause a comfortable night’s sleep to a teething infant.

  Ikey measured the cacophony of the room. It was, after all, filled with people who were easily inclined towards talking over each other in a manner seldom confidential, and when it seemed all were shouting and none were listening, he prepared to make his move. First he checked the whereabouts of Albert Popjoy and found him pinned to the wall by two shmatter traders from the Lane both battering him with expostulating words too mixed in the general banter to hear. Popjoy’s eyelids seemed heavy with fatigue and he appeared to find it difficult to focus on the two men. Ikey moved towards the door and carefully unlocked it, whereupon he slipped quickly through to the other side, closed the door quietly and locked it again, placing the key above the lintel.

  He made his way down the passage to the back of the Pig ‘n Spit and was about to step into the courtyard when the cellarman’s apprentice made an appearance.

  ‘Me shillin’? You promised us a shillin’, Mr Ikey.’

  Ikey looked behind him in a panic, but he and the boy were alone. He fished into his coat for his dumby and from the purse produced two single shillings. Ikey dropped one of the shillings into the lad’s hand and held the other up between forefinger and thumb and whispered urgently, ‘There, a deuce hog, one for the promise and t’other for not seein’ nothin’ what’s happenin’ in front of your eyes at this very moment. Does you understand, my boy?’

  The boy nodded and Ikey dropped the second shilling into his dirty hand and scuttled across the yard to the street entrance. In a matter of moments he was beside the coach where Moses Julian, who had followed them from the courts, had been waiting for him.

  ‘Quick, Moses, be orf!’ he said in a loud whisper, clambering into the carriage. ‘To the ‘ouse o’ Reuban Reuban.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  On Ikey’s arrival at the lodgings of the actor and his tailor son there was soon a frenzy of activity as Reuban Reuban clipped and trimmed Ikey’s hair until it was short and much to the latest fashion, brushed close and forward to the forehead. Then he trimmed the sideburns in the shorter vogue allowing an inch or more between the side whiskers and the commencement of the beard, which he then clipped short and close to the face. With expert hands he shaved the remaining whiskers from Ikey’s face and completely removed his moustache. The result was such a transformation of appearance that Hannah herself would have had great difficulty recognising her husband. Ikey had shed fifteen years in age and his appearance was of a man of handsome demeanour. His looks, occasioned by the wildness of his hair, scraggy beard and length of the nose which rose from his hirsute face like a mountain peak above the forest line, now looked well proportioned and passed well for that of an upper-class English gentleman.

  It was Abraham who was next to work upon the transformation of Ikey. He stripped him quickly, though Ikey whimpered at the removal of his beloved coat, until Ikey stood stark naked, his only adornment a chain to which was attached a small medallion of gold which hung about his neck. Commencing with woollen long johns, piece by piece Abraham refurbished him from his under garments to a fine frock coat until his subject stood before him square rigged and every inch the prosperous City gentleman. Ikey, shown his new visage in a mirror, came near to fainting from the shock of witnessing the remarkable re-creation of his personage. Abraham’s final act of sartorial brilliance was to produce a top hat and silver-topped malacca cane. Carefully brushing the nap of beaver fur with the elbow of his coat, he placed the hat upon Ikey’s head, whereupon he handed him an elegant pair of pigskin gloves and the cane.

  ‘Blimey! You looks a proper toff, Uncle Isaac!’ Abraham exclaimed, well pleased with his work. ‘You could pass for the Guv’ner o’ the Bank o’ England, walk right through the door, you could, no questions asked!’ He turned and shouted to Reuban Reuban who, shortly after having trimmed and shaved Ikey, had departed to another room. ‘Come see, father!’

  ‘Me coat, where’s me coat?’ Ikey called out in alarm.

  ‘Your coat? Why it be upon your back, Uncle Isaac!’ Abraham’s expression changed and showed sudden consternation. ‘You’ll not be wearing that coat?’ He pointed to the greasy heap upon the floor. ‘That’d be dead give away, that would an’ all!’

  ‘ ’Ang it up! ‘Ang it up!’ Ikey commanded in an agitated voice, dancing from one foot to the other in his shiny black gentleman’s boots.

  Abraham looked mome
ntarily confused, but then hastily took the coat hanger from which had hung the frock coat Ikey now wore, fitted the collar of Ikey’s coat about it and suspended it from a hook behind the door.

  ‘Now leave us, if you please!’ Ikey said, his composure regained.

  Abraham, in somewhat of a sulk, left the room. He was disappointed at Ikey’s complete lack of interest in his clever tailoring and the remarkable change he’d brought about to such an unpropitious subject.

  Ikey quickly rummaged through his overcoat, putting the contents of all its secret places into the few available pockets in the frock coat. All the bits and pieces that had a known and accustomed place. Cards, promissory notes, pencils of red and blue, string, wire, keys of innumerable configurations, money in small denominations, purses of various sorts containing various amounts, some filled with sixpences, others with shillings. Money in soft and hard, betting slips and receipts for the care of his two little ratters, the terriers he would so sorely miss, a magnifying glass and an eye piece for the assessment of jewellery, spectacles, pincers, pliers, tongs and probes. Each piece filed in its own place was now removed and flung onto a horrendous junk pile within his frock coat pockets, as though they were to be discarded willy-nilly as fuel to a bonfire of Ikey’s past.

  Finally Ikey took the long cigar-like cylinder containing the letter of credit from the breast pocket of his coat. He folded the letter neatly, added it to several other documents which Reuban Reuban had obtained and placed them in a leather wallet stamped with his monogram in gold on the outside cover. This was yet another small detail prepared by the actor, who had already put a small silver card container beside the wallet which carried the precise cards Ikey had instructed him to print. This too carried the letters I S inscribed upon it.

  Whimpering like a newborn puppy, Ikey took leave of his coat. The loss of his beloved coat seemed almost more than Ikey could bear, for his new outfit felt altogether alien to him. It stiffened his joints and rubbed in strange places, so much so that he thought of himself as being not just transformed but as if somehow he had sloughed his old body, and mysteriously come upon a new one. One moment he was Ikey Solomon and then, with a little trimming, shaving and the application of new linen and half a bolt of suiting, he had been created into some curious unknown personage.

  The smell and touch of the new cloth enveloped Ikey’s bony body and added to this strange feeling of otherness. He wondered for a moment whether it all might drive him mad, his urgent mission with Coutts & Company quite forgotten as his newly tonsured head was utterly confused.

  It was at this precise moment that Ikey saw himself in his old personage walking into the room, with wildly flying grey and gingered hair, scraggly beard and untidy, shaggy brows, his nose rising majestic between two small obsidian eyes looking directly at him. He saw old Ikey reach behind the door and take his beloved coat from its hook and place it upon his thin, angular body. He observed himself at once become stooped, his neck lowering itself tortoise-like into the shiny collar of the coat. His chin came to rest upon his breast, and, most remarkably, how, with all this doing, a sly, furtive expression had crept upon his former face.

  Suddenly his nephew appeared in the doorway, a rude intrusion standing directly behind the vision. Abraham placed a flat-topped, broad-brimmed hat upon the apparition’s head identical to the one Bob Marley had discarded at the Academy of Light Fingers. Ikey now observed himself standing in front of himself so completely that he pushed the fingers of both hands deep into his mouth. The astonishing manifestation before him was a more perfect likeness of himself than he knew himself to be.

  ‘Not the fingers, Uncle Ikey! No gentleman swallows ‘is fingers,’ Abraham cried.

  ‘What say you, Ikey?’ Reuban Reuban asked. ‘Do I well fit your personage? Is the likeness true, my dear?’ His voice was thin and carping in the exact timbre of Ikey’s own and his hands imitated perfectly the other’s mannerisms.

  It was not a moment more than half an hour later when Moses Julian, dressed in the expensive livery of a private house and accompanied by Abraham, similarly dressed as a footman, drew their carriage to a halt in a lane leading directly into the Strand. Inside sat Ikey and his remarkable likeness to his former self, Reuban Reuban, who touched Ikey’s knee in a quick salute and slipped out of the coach even before it had completely come to a halt. Whereupon Moses urged the horses on and the coach moved away and soon enough came to the end of the lane and turned into the Strand.

  The afternoon was already beginning to darken from the smog and the general effects of the fog so that the thronging humanity who moved along the crowded sidewalk were of a mind much occupied with their own progress in the failing light, so took no interest in the Jew as he made his way among them.

  Nor, within a moment of turning into the Strand, could the coach have been recognised in the numerousness of similar carriages and coaches and hackneys that jammed and pushed their way along the great choked thoroughfare where they were yet further hidden by the smoke from the flares that ostensibly guided their way.

  Abraham had the previous morning posted himself outside the bank to observe the protocol of a gentleman’s manner of entering the premises. Thus he observed that, alighting from his coach, a person of quality would be greeted by the doorman, who would summon an usher from the interior of the bank. This bank officer, in all appearance a man of some mature age and authority, dressed in a frock coat and square rigged in the best of form, would immediately appear armed with a small silver salver which he would proffer in an obsequious manner while requesting the gentleman’s personal card be placed upon it. At this point, of course, the doors were once again closed and Abraham had no way of knowing the manner of the client’s further progress within the august establishment.

  Abraham had returned home by way of Newgate Gaol, where he had informed Ikey of the manner of obtaining entry to the bank and Ikey had instructed him in the exact manner of the cards he required Reuban Reuban to have printed for the occasion.

  It was just before the hour of two o’clock in the afternoon and the more important officers of the bank were returning to work from luncheon at their club when Ikey’s carriage approached Coutts & Company on the Strand.

  Abraham looked to see whether Reuban Reuban had arrived on foot. When he spotted him standing close to the wall of the bank, half concealed behind a Doric column, he tapped the roof of the carriage to tell Ikey that all was in order, and waited for Ikey’s return tap to tell him to signal to Reuban Reuban to proceed. The two return taps came promptly and Abraham signalled to his father to proceed by appearing to rub an itchy nose and then smacking his gloved hands together as though against the cold.

  Reuban Reuban commenced to walk boldly up the steps of the bank to where the doorman waited. Though boldly is perhaps an exaggerated description for he walked in the manner of Ikey, which none could even in their wildest imagination call bold. Ikey, watching from the interior of the carriage, saw the doorman stiffen slightly as Reuban Reuban drew nearer. Ikey, his instincts sharpened by a lifetime of experience with the mannerisms of a policeman, knew at once that he was a member of the constabulary. In as much as it was possible from the interior of the carriage he looked about to see if there were others, but could see no suspicious characters who might be miltonians, that is to say, policemen out of their official uniform.

  Reuban Reuban halted beside the doorman and while Ikey could not hear what he said the doorman allowed that he should enter without apparently requesting his personal card or summoning an usher or in any manner following the form which Abraham had so carefully observed the previous morning. The door opened and Reuban Reuban disappeared into the interior of the building followed closely by the doorman. A few moments passed and a new doorman was seen to take the place of the old one, a man who stood more easily and assumed more naturally the accustomed nature of his task.

  The interior of the bank comprised a large central hallway which at first seemed entirely composed of marble,
with huge pillars of the same material supporting two storeys of gallery above which the offices of the partners were located and where the clerks worked at their ledgers. At one end of the impressive hallway were a set of brass tellers’ cages and a stairway leading downwards, presumably to the underground vaults. At the other end was a similar stairway, though this one led upstairs to the galleries and carried a heavy banister of gleaming brass and was carpeted in brilliant red. Brass rods secured the carpet to the hinge of each step and they too shone with a brightness which gave the effect of a pathway leading heavenwards to untold wealth.

  Reuban Reuban barely had time to take all of this in when he was accosted by an officer of the bank whose quick, sharp steps tapped out on the marble floor showed him to be most purposeful in his confrontation. Reuban Reuban was also aware that the doorman had remained and stood directly behind him as though to block any retreat he might contemplate. Several other men seemed now to have mysteriously emerged from behind the marble columns and were seen to be pacing the polished marble floor, although no work of banking seemed to be taking place in his immediate vicinity.

  ‘Good day to you, sir,’ the bank officer greeted Reuban Reuban. ‘May I be of service?’

  Reuban Reuban smiled unctuously and shrugged his shoulders in an admirable imitation of Ikey. ‘Some other time maybe. I ‘ave just remembered, uh. . .all of a sudden, if you knows what I mean. With the greatest respect to yourself, sir, I ‘ave urgent business I must complete elsewhere!’ Reuban Reuban turned towards the door again, only to see several of the men who had but a moment ago been contemplating their own business converge on him. He started to run towards the door but in a moment was grabbed from behind. It took only a few moments longer for several of the men to reach him and he was thrown roughly to the floor where he was quickly manacled by the doorman.

  Reuban Reuban was pulled to his feet and immediately observed a small man with a very large red nose wearing a top hat exceedingly tall for the remainder of his size, approaching him.