Potato Factory

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Ikey Solomons, in the name of the law, I arrest you,’ Sir Jasper Waterlow shouted, so that his voice echoed through the hall and up into the galleries.

  As they led Reuban Reuban away the galleries overlooking the entrance hall were soon filled with clerks and bankers observing the dramatic arrest. Even the partners had emerged from their offices to share in the excitement.

  Sir Jasper Waterlow, not wishing to let the auspicious moment pass without some show on behalf of the Bank of England and his own future prospects, had deliberately shouted his orders of arrest at the uppermost tone of his voice so that all within the Coutts & Company bank might witness his triumph over Britain’s most notorious villain and know that the Bank of England, like God, is not mocked.

  Indeed, Sir Jasper Waterlow had just reason to congratulate himself. He had only a matter of some two hours to prepare his entrapment of Ikey. Hannah had informed him of the possibility of Ikey’s escape that very morning, after Ikey had left the King’s Bench courts upon the postponement of his hearing. By pre-arrangement she had met Sir Jasper in a coffee house on the Strand and acquainted him of Ikey’s intended escape and his need to visit the premises of a certain bank, though she did not inform him of the name of the establishment until she had extracted in writing from Sir Jasper certain assurances and conditions. The first of these was that Ikey should be allowed to visit the bank and transact his business and that he would be arrested only on his way out. The second was that regardless of the outcome of Ikey’s trial for forgery, he receive a sentence of transportation for his attempt to escape from custody.

  Sir Jasper had no choice but to accept. The sentence Hannah had asked for was more or less a foregone conclusion and so presented no barriers. Furthermore, an arrest made after they had Ikey trapped within the confines of a building which could be easily surrounded, with additional men also placed within its interior, seemed much the better method of operation. Therefore, he issued Hannah with the written assurances she required. He told himself that she had previously delivered Ikey, as she had promised, with the counterfeit notes planted on his person. Now, when he might well have successfully escaped, she was once again informing on her husband. He therefore had no reason but to accept her information as genuine.

  Sir Jasper told himself that whatever Ikey’s business with Coutts & Company, it could hardly be the concern of the Bank of England. He had therefore given the chairman of Coutts & Company permission to process the transaction. This had occurred in a hastily contrived briefing when he had arrived at the bank with twenty City policemen in plain clothes. The senior bank officers were to allow Ikey to enter the premises and to afford him the normal protocol involved in making a transaction. Sir Jasper insisted that refusal by the bank to comply with this instruction would only be permitted if the transaction Ikey Solomon required was not a legitimate request for the bank’s services, or would in some way threaten or undermine the safety or finances of Coutts & Company or of the Bank of England itself.

  To ensure that the staff would go about their business in a normal manner Sir Jasper requested that one of his policemen, dressed in the uniform of a doorman of the bank, should replace the doorman on duty and that the doorman, along with the remainder of the bank’s staff, be told nothing, other than that he should resume his normal duty when the policeman at the door was seen to escort Ikey into the interior of the bank.

  The arrangements had all been finalised in great haste and Sir Jasper had no opportunity to consult the directors of the Bank of England. He was well aware that his instructions to Coutts & Company might have been beyond his authority as chief City policeman and Upper Marshal of London. With Ikey’s sudden and most fortuitous panic and resultant attempt to escape the premises of the bank, Sir Jasper had even more reason to be pleased with himself. There would now be no awkward official enquiries as to why Ikey, upon visiting the illustrious private bank, had been allowed to make a transaction which, in every likelihood, resulted in remuneration to him as a consequence of a crime against the people. He had fully met Hannah’s requirements, both as a gentleman and a police officer, and it had cost him no compromise with the law.

  Moreover, there was much talk in parliament by the supporters of Sir Robert Peel of the organisation of a new police force, and Sir Jasper could see his candidacy for the position of its head much improved by both the first and second arrests of Ikey Solomon.

  Ikey watched from the carriage as Reuban Reuban was led out of the bank manacled and surrounded by a dozen police officers out of uniform. A black maria, that is to say, a horse van drawn by two well-conditioned horses and built in the manner of a closed box with a door at the rear and no windows excepting narrow ventilation slits, appeared from the alley beside the building. Reuban Reuban was unceremoniously bundled into the back of it, whereupon the door was locked and three of the policemen mounted the platform protruding from the back of the van to further guard the villain residing within.

  The crowd had halted and immediately formed around the van and on the steps of the bank and someone shouted, ‘It be ‘im, Ikey Solomon, the Jew forger!’

  Almost at once the crowd grew angry and converged on the black maria. Despite the plain-clothes policemen who attempted to protect the van, part of the crowd pushed past and beat their fists against and commenced to rock the black maria, threatening to overturn it, so that the horses grew restless and began to stamp upon the ground and throw their heads up in alarm. The three men on the platform at its rear were forced to use their truncheons with fierce abandon, raining blows down upon the shoulders and heads of the angry attackers. The crowd had commenced to chant, ‘Ikey! Ikey! Ikey!’ and the coachman, working his police rattler so that the other coaches in the vicinity might move clear, finally managed to get the horses underway and direct the van into the stream of passing traffic. Though several urchins, skilled in the ways of dodging the traffic, followed the police van, they were quickly discouraged by the three policemen protecting the artful Reuban Reuban within.

  Ikey watched until the crowd began to disperse, but with the sidewalk still somewhat crowded, Moses Julian moved Ikey’s carriage forward to come to a halt directly outside the bank, whereupon Abraham alighted from the rear of the carriage, opened the door and with some ceremony, took Ikey’s elbow in his white-gloved hand and guided him with care to the surface of the cobbled pavement.

  Ikey moved quickly up the steps to the doorman, who, as is the nature of his profession, had been alert to his arrival at the moment his coach had pulled up. He had tugged at the lapels of his overcoat and adjusted his gold-braided top hat, conscious of the well-polished carriage and the livery of its retainers, and was therefore hardly surprised at the conservative, well-dressed gentleman who stepped from it onto the sidewalk.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir!’ he had offered in a manner akin to the military and which suggested both efficiency and respect, saluting Ikey.

  Ikey grunted, though it was a well-modulated and upper-class grunt. ‘Foreign transactions?’ he asked, in a clipped and imperious voice.

  ‘I shall call you an usher at once, sir.’ The doorman opened the door, lifted his hand and crooked a finger to denote a requirement from someone within, whereupon he further opened it for Ikey to pass through.

  It had all occurred just as Abraham had suggested and was quite unlike the reception Reuban Reuban had received. Ikey breathed a silent sigh of relief; the bank, it seemed, had assumed its normal routine. It felt like his lucky day.

  Nathaniel Wilson, Coutts & Company’s foreign transactions officer, had spent the morning with the ambassador from Chile, who had wanted to discuss the final interest rate for the public issue of a loan for his government, a part of which was being underwritten by the bank. The ambassador had plied him with glasses of an atrocious sherry he claimed was the pride and joy of the pampas and Wilson, who had finally departed to take luncheon alone at his club, in an attempt to be rid of the taste of bad sherry had imbibed rather too generously of a bot
tle of excellent burgundy, and followed it with two glasses of vintage port. The wine had left him thoroughly disgruntled and a little inebriated. The ambassador had demanded a shaving of one-tenth of one per cent of interest off the loan and towards the end had stamped his feet and brought his fist down several times hard upon the table and behaved in an altogether inappropriate manner. Wilson did not find foreigners in the least agreeable. Furthermore, he was not looking forward to facing the bank’s senior partners with the Chilean ambassador’s demand. He had returned only a few minutes after Reuban Reuban had been taken away in the police van and, as was his usual custom, entered the building through a private entrance to the side of the bank. He had repaired directly to his office on the first gallery, taking the back stairs used by the staff, and was therefore quite unaware of the excitement which had taken place in the bank before his return.

  The usher knocked on Nathaniel Wilson’s door, the two rapid knocks required to indicate a bank employee of inferior status to the occupant.

  ‘Come!’ the banker called.

  Wilson looked up as the elderly usher opened the door and observed that he was carrying a salver.

  ‘What is it, Coote?’ he said with annoyance. ‘I was not aware of any appointment at this hour.’

  ‘No, sir, gentleman says he’s from Germany.’ Coote placed the salver containing Ikey’s card on the desk. ‘He requests an urgent interview, sir.’

  Wilson reached for the card with obvious distaste. Ikey’s card was well printed on expensive board and, in the manner of a man confident of his position in life, it contained no detail other than a name and address.

  Herr Isak Solomon

  114 Bunders Kerk Strasse, Hambourg

  Nathaniel Wilson looked up at Coote. ‘German Jew?’

  ‘No, sir, English. Well spoken, proper gentleman.’

  Nathaniel Wilson threw Ikey’s card back into the tray. ‘You will inform Mr Isak Solomon that I shall see him, but that I regret it must be a short interview as his appointment comes as an unexpected but not entirely convenient pleasure.’

  Coote returned shortly with Ikey and Nathaniel Wilson rose from behind his desk to greet him. ‘Ah, Mr Solomon, are you aware that the name Solomon has much been in the news lately?’ He offered his hand to Ikey. ‘Indeed a coincidence, what?’

  Ikey removed his pigskin gloves, then his top hat and placed the gloves within the interior of the hat and gave it to Coote together with his cane, deliberately keeping the banker waiting. ‘Oh? And why is that, Mr Wilson?’ he replied in an incurious voice as he moved forward and finally took Wilson’s hand, barely touching it before releasing it again.

  ‘Ikey Solomon, or is it Solomons? Notorious forger chap. Arrested several days ago for counterfeiting, it seems he got away with a fortune in sham Bank of England notes, devil of a mess, what?’ Wilson concluded.

  ‘Really?’ said Ikey in bored tones. ‘I’ve been abroad, you see. Now, I am aware you do not have much time, so I shall be brief. I wish to lodge a letter of credit with you from the Birmingham City and Country Bank and require you to transfer these funds to the First Manhattan Bank on New York Island.’ Ikey withdrew an expensive leather folder from the interior pocket of his frock coat and placed it on the desk in front of him.

  Nathaniel Wilson opened the leather folder and quickly examined the documentation, his eyes seeking the letter of credit. He was immediately struck by the large amount of money involved. His time would not be wasted, as the bank’s commission from the transfer transaction would be considerable. It was therefore in a much more respectful manner that he conducted the remainder of the negotiations and verifications.

  Not more than twenty minutes later, with the Coutts & Company certificate of deposit safely in the folder, and with effusive assurances from the banker of the utmost of service available at any future occasion, Ikey was escorted by Coote down the red-carpeted stairway with its brass banister, across the hall of polished marble, through the imposing doors and down the steps to where Abraham and Moses Julian waited beside the carriage. Ikey paused as Abraham held open the carriage door for him and handed Coote a sovereign.

  ‘Good day to you, Coote,’ he said in his newly acquired accent.

  ‘Bless you, sir,’ the old man replied warmly. ‘It’s been a pleasure.’

  The notorious luck of Ikey Solomon had once again held. With a pinch more, a soupçon of the same, he was on his way to America.

  In his mind there formed yet another conclusion which he was most hard put to ignore any longer.

  It was Hannah who, on both occasions, had betrayed him.

  The thought of Hannah’s betrayal brought Mary to Ikey’s mind, Mary who had not betrayed him when she could have turned King’s evidence and given witness most damaging to his case and, by so doing, spared herself the boat.

  Ikey now felt a rare and genuine pang of conscience within his breast. Mary was in Newgate, incarcerated in a dungeon cage with a dozen other foul wretches and he had made no attempt to acknowledge her presence. This sharp stab of guilt almost immediately transformed itself into a surprising softness of feeling for Mary. It was an emotion not altogether different to the crisis of feeling which had overcome him in the coach to Birmingham. Ikey wondered in some panic whether there was a connection between the interior of coaches and his soft-headedness, for he was possessed suddenly by a compelling need to send fifty pounds to Mary so she might ameliorate the rigours of her transportation and be supplied with the necessities required on the troublesome and dangerous voyage to Van Diemen’s Land. He would urge Abraham to seek her out in Newgate, acquaint her of his good wishes and give her the money as a token of his great esteem.

  Ikey was uncertain as to whether this generosity came about because of the tender feeling for Mary which had come so overwhelmingly and unexpectedly upon him, or whether he wished only to ensure the continuance of his luck by putting right his bad conscience towards her. He knew only that he felt compelled to comply with this strange dictate which otherwise made no sense to his head and yet seemed so powerful to his heart. He told himself, though to no avail, that he was being foolishly generous with a gesture which could show him no future profit as he would not, in the further course of this life, see Mary again.

  This last thought left Ikey in a surprisingly melancholy mood, for he realised how the routine of his life had been brought undone and how much a sustaining and pleasant part of it Mary had become.

  This further onrush of sentiment led to an even more surprising gesture than the money Ikey told himself he had effectively thrown away. In fact, so foolish was the new thought that he feared some mischievous golem had possessed him. Around his neck he wore a gold chain from which was suspended, in the exact size and weight of gold in a sovereign, a medallion which commemorated the battle of Waterloo, and which carried a likeness of the Duke of Wellington on one side and a crescent of laurel leaves on the other. Nestled in the centre of this leafy tribute, fashioned in a small pyramid of words, was inscribed:

  I

  Shall

  Never

  Surrender

  Ikey, shortly after his release from the hulk in Chatham and while working with his uncle, a slops dealer, that is to say a dealer in workmen’s and sailor’s clothes, had won the gold medallion at a game of cribbage from a sergeant in the Marines. It had been won fair and square and also while Ikey was legitimately employed, a conjunction of events which was never to occur again in his life, and so the medallion was a significant memento and had come to assume an importance to him. He always wore it under his woollen vest, where the warmth of its gold lay against his scrawny chest unseen by any other. Like the tattoo of the two blue doves on his arm, which, as a young man, had signified his secret and now entirely forsaken hope that one day he might find his one and only true love, the Wellington medallion was his special talisman.

  At each narrow escape from the law or at the hands of the various people who would harm him, he had come to think of it more and
more as the reason for his luck. Now he decided that if his luck should hold to the point when later that very night he would slip aboard a cargo vessel bound on the rising tide for Denmark, Mary should have his Wellington medallion.

  Ikey, having determined this course of action, tapped on the roof for the coach to come to a halt, whereupon he bade Abraham come and sit beside him in the interior. As the coach moved on towards the docks he told Abraham in great detail what he was to do and say to Mary, his speech punctuated with a sentimentality Abraham had not thought possible in the man he knew Ikey to be. Ikey then took the medallion from about his neck and handed it, together with fifty pounds, to the young tailor to deliver to Mary.

  In truth, it must be supposed that the concerns of the past few hours had greatly affected Ikey’s mental state, for at the moment of this decision, if he had paused to consult his head and not pandered to the susceptibility of his heart, it would have declared him insane.

  Ikey was giving Mary his luck.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Mary had been cast into a communal cell in Newgate to await her sentencing. Charged before a magistrate for running a bawdy house and with moral corruption, she was bound over in Newgate to await trial at the Old Bailey.

  She had good reason to hope that her sentence might be a lenient one. Prostitution and earning a living off prostitutes did not generally earn the penalty of transportation. Indeed one might venture to say that ‘moral corruption’ was a fair description of the institution of the State itself.

  The hard times which followed the Peninsular War against Napoleon, the effects of factory-produced cotton from Manchester on the wool and silkweaving cottage industries, and the migration of the Irish to England during the famines, created untold misery in the rural population. Their desperate migration in search of work caused calamity in the cities and, in particular, London, where among the poor prostitution, though not officially stated as such, was looked upon as a legitimate occupation for women who would otherwise be destitute, reduced to the workhouse or left to starve.