Potato Factory

by Bryce Courtenay

  Mary shrugged. She was manacled but the clamps were on either end of a good twelve inches of chain so that her hands were more or less free to work the abacus. She rested it on the side of the cart and instructed Ann to hold the abacus firmly. A moment later her twisted fingers began to fly in a clicking and clacking so rapid that the red and black beads slid across their wire runners faster than the eye could possibly follow them. After what seemed only a few minutes she stopped and read the beads.

  ‘You been alive eighteen thousand, six ‘undred and sixty-four days. You was borned on a Sunday.’ Tapping the abacus, Mary added, ‘That be what me abacus does, it counts things.’

  ‘Ho, ho! We’s got us a smart one ‘as we? A Jack ‘n a box what springs out above others! Well, Mary Habacus what’s got an habacus what counts, pleased to meetcha, me name’s Potbottom, Mister Tiberias Pot-bottom, that be the full complement o’ me cartouches.’ He spread his hands and grinned disarmingly. ‘They calls me, “The Scrapins”! Now can you imagine why that could possibly be, eh?’ His head jerked enquiringly from one woman to another, waiting for the women in the cart to acknowledge him with a laugh or some sign of acquiescence. But no laughter or even a nod was forthcoming, for Mary sensed a trap and the others had held back, waiting for her reaction. She remained stony faced looking down at the diminutive creature on the dock.

  All at once the bright eager to-and-fro of Potbottom’s head ceased and he looked down at his scuffed and worn shoes. His head began to nod slowly as though it were coming to some sort of conclusion. His dark eyes moved to each of the women above him, lingering as though taking in all their details, as if, in his observance, he had suddenly learned much about them and what he found was of the utmost disappointment. His eyes came last to Mary and held her gaze as he spoke.

  ‘Ha! What about leap years, then? Your habacus didn’t count no leap years, now did it?’ He pointed a sharp finger at Mary and jumped from one foot to the other. ‘Ho, ho, habacus ain’t such a clever Dick now is it?’

  The female convicts all looked questioningly at Mary.

  ‘What you takes me for, an idjit?’ Mary sniffed. ‘There be eleven in all, they’s all counted, leap years and even this mornin’s included in.’

  The women in the cart clapped and yelled their approval and there was much rattling of chains and laughter at Mary’s sharp rejoinder.

  ‘Well, well, we’ll soon see about this mornin’ included in, won’t we?’ Potbottom said, his lips drawn to a tight line. ‘Welcome aboard His Majesty’s convict ship, Destiny II. Destiny be a good name,’ he jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the boat, ‘for her gracious ladyship. You see, if you be o’ the kind what trusts to destiny to supply yer needs, I is most pleased to inform you that you has got it exactly right! On board we supplies all the misery yer heart could desire, lashin’s and lashin’s o’ the stuff, and, as well, we tops it up with despair, more of it than what you could possibly digest in one plain sailin’!’

  Mary laughed nervously and the others followed, a titter ran through the cart.

  ‘Oh, now we laughs, does we?’ Potbottom’s eyes narrowed. ‘I knows not how many days you has been alive on Gawd’s sweet earth, Mary Habacus, but I makes you this most solemn promise.’ Potbottom’s eyes held Mary’s. ‘The worse ones hasn’t yet come for you!’ He paused and gave her a malevolent smile. ‘But they will. Oh deary me, yes! They will, they will!’

  Tiberias Potbottom turned his back on them and hurried up the gangway, his short bandy legs making his shoulders jump from side to side, his long arms hanging loose, so that he lurched along very much like the monkey creature he so closely resembled. It was only then that they noticed that one shoulder was higher than the other, that there was a hump, though not overly large, resting behind it. Tiberias Potbottom was a hunchback.

  ‘Blimey! Who’ll be touchin’ that one’s hump for luck,’ Mary exclaimed softly.

  The women in the cart giggled and watched as Pot-bottom disappeared on to the deck above them. ‘Jesus!’ Ann Gower said in a loud whisper. ‘Talk about ‘ot an’ cold! What were that all about?’

  ‘Whatever it were, it ain’t good news for me,’ Mary sighed. She turned to one of the two turnkeys who’d escorted them on the trip down and who had just that moment returned from reporting to the ship’s surgeon-superintendent, the already infamous Joshua Smiles. Neither of their guards had witnessed the exchange between the convict women and Potbottom, who’d brushed past them just as they’d reached the top of the gangway.

  ‘Can you take off our irons now, Mr Burke, we be exceeding tired o’ standin'?’ Mary asked politely.

  ‘Not till you ‘as been counted and numbers taken,’ Burke said. ‘Sorry, that be regulations.’

  A murmur of dissatisfaction came from the cart which caused the second of their guards to raise both hands and pat the air in front of him. ‘Now, now, girls, you been good so far, don’t you go spoilin’ things now!’ He smiled up at the women in the cart, ‘Besides, Mr Potbottom, what be assistant to ship’s surgeon, be ‘ere soon enough to count and take your numbers.’

  An hour later with the spring sunshine turned unseasonably hot and uncomfortable they still remained standing in the cart. The female convicts had no protection but for their mob caps, their ankles were swollen and painful from standing and their throats were parched for want of water. Many of the older women were close to swooning in the heat. They commenced to shouting, demanding and begging from all who mounted the gangway to release them from their chains and allow them to step down from the cart and into the shade cast by the ship’s side. When they were ignored by the coming and going throng they cussed loudly, calling out obscenities. Finally two jack tars appeared at the top of the gangway, the one carrying a small table and the other a chair. They walked down and placed them in the shade on the dock.

  ‘Call the bleedin’ baboon what’s meant to count us!’ Mary shouted angrily at the two tars, her temper quite lost. ‘There’s some near dyin’ for want of a drop o’ bloody water!’

  ‘Baboon, is I? Well thank you very much!’ Potbottom said, appearing at the top of the gangway. ‘A baboon what can count and take numbers, an extraordinary baboon what is blessed with a very long memory for the slightest slight and insults what injure!’

  ‘Oh shit!’ Mary said in a loud whisper.

  Tiberias Potbottom, a small smile on his face, walked down the gangway and skipped lightly on to the dock-side where he continued on to the table and chair.

  ‘Shit it be, but not for me! Shit it be for such as thee!’ He smirked.

  He was carrying a large ledger under his arm which seemed to raise his hunched shoulder even higher and now he took it and opened it on the table to show one of its two opened pages half filled with writing. From the side pocket of his worn frock coat he produced a pot of blacking and, undoing its cap carefully, placed it beside the ledger. Then he took a goose feather quill from an inside pocket and this too he laid beside the book. Having completed this task he stepped to the front of the table and placed his hands behind his back, whereupon he commenced to rock on the back of his heels looking up at the women in the cart.

  ‘Has we had enough, then? Enough profanity to last us all the ways to Hobart Town?’ He did not wait for their response, but continued. ‘Or does we stay another hour and get the rest o’ the bile out of our vile hearts?’ He paused and this time waited. ‘Well?’ he finally asked.

  ‘Enough, sir,’ Mary said, her eyes suitably downcast and her hands clasped in humility in front of her. The others nodded eagerly. ‘We’s ‘ad enough o’ cussin’, sir,’ Mary repeated. ‘Can we step down now, if you please, sir, Mr Potbottom?’

  Potbottom squinted up at Mary and, shaking his head slowly, said, ‘Oh, I very much hopes so, Mary Habacus, I very much hopes so! You see, Mr Smiles don’t take kindly to profanity and me,’ he shrugged, ‘I is his sharp eyes and his large ears and I must warn you!’ He paused and chuckled. ‘Me eyes is exceedin’ good and. . .’ he tou
ched one of his ears lightly, ‘. . .me ears is even much better’n that!’

  From his back pocket he produced a large red silk handkerchief and held it open in front of him, the silk hanging limp from one corner. ‘Sailing is Gawd’s breath,’ he began, as though he were about to give a lecture, which indeed was his intention. ‘When the sails lay limp that means Gawd has taken away his breath and we is becalmed.’ He glanced at them as though to assure himself of their attention. ‘Becalmed, that be an awesome thing. To be upon the ocean without Gawd’s breath, to be forsaken by the Almighty.’ Potbottom’s small body seemed to shudder at the very prospect. ‘That be a time for the devil to skip across the flat sea and come aboard.’ He waited for the effect of his words to sink in and then, with his free hand, he took up a second corner of the scarf so that it hung square in front of his face, whereupon he blew upon it so that the silk billowed away from him. ‘Gawd’s gentle and steady breath be everythin’ to them what sails upon the oceans wide. It be His gift to us for observin’ His ways, ways you lot has long since forsaken!’ Potbottom suddenly flapped the scarf furiously and his voice rose in pitch. ‘You makes Gawd angry! Terrible angry! And when He be angry, His breath be angry! His angry breath be a storm at sea, a hurricane what takes small ships and drives ‘em up high onto the furious waves and dashes them down, and breaks their backs and smashes ‘em to tinder, and sends ‘em to the bottom o’ the ocean!’ His voice lowered. ‘Planks and carcases and barrels and bilge, spat up later on some distant and forsaken shore!’

  Tiberias Potbottom, breathing heavily through his nostrils, crumpled the cloth into his hand and stuffed it angrily back into the pocket of his breeches. He appeared quite overcome, struggling to contain himself.

  The women in the cart watched silently. Potbottom swallowed twice, his Adam’s apple jumping along his scrawny neck, then he spoke slowly and quietly. ‘That’s why we talks to Gawd in prayer and meditation, we asks Him for His fair and lovely breath upon our voyage. When we uses profanity, when we take His name in vain, He will take His breath away, or, if He be angry, sufficient enough angry, if the blasphemy be too great, He will blow and blow until we is doomed upon the calamitous waves!’

  Potbottom, his hands now once again clasped behind his back and his demeanour recovered, walked around the cart so that the prisoners within it were forced to follow him with their eyes and turn as he moved. The chains of their manacles rattled and clinked. Finally the tiny man came to stand directly in front of Mary.

  ‘Me remarkable ears, Gawd’s special gift, can hear a whisper o’ profanity in the full face o’ the Roarin’ Forties! I am Gawd’s watchman! When you’s spewin’ yer heart out in the sea sickness what’s soon to come, if one of you so much as moans, “Oh Gawd!” I’ll have you on bread ‘n water in leg irons.’ He looked at each of them in turn and then suddenly shouted, ‘We only have Gawd’s sweet breath to save us! And with your kind on board we places our lives in great jeopardy! Mr Smiles will not have no whore language, no profanity, no blasphemy on board, does you understand?’ His voice lowered and spitting each word out as though it caused a bad taste in his mouth he added, ‘Does-I-make-me-self-per-fekly-clear?’

  Potbottom did not wait for any of the female convicts to nod but turned and moved around the table to sit down on the chair. Seated, he looked up again and addressed himself to the two turnkeys, who had been standing, eyes downcast, more or less at attention, beside the cart.

  ‘Unshackle!’ he instructed, taking up his quill and dipping it into the pot of blacking in front of him. Then he looked back up at the women and jabbed the quill at Mary and then at Ann Gower. ‘Them two shall be last!’

  Mary brought her hands up and placed them over Ikey’s medallion until she felt the comfort of the small gold object in the centre of her flattened palm. The long hard voyage to Van Diemen’s Land had begun. Ikey’s medallion, his luck, she suddenly knew, was intended for the second great passage of her life. She must survive.

  It was three weeks before all the female convicts had arrived from gaols as far away as Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The bright spring weather had turned into a wet, miserable early summer. Many of the convicts arrived with coughs, colds and bronchial infections, and a number of the older women suffered profoundly with the added affliction of rheumatism which often bent them double and made them seem like old crones twice their age. The children’s dirty faces were pinched and wet with a constant flow of mucus leaking from their nostrils, and many were consumed by high fevers.

  As each cartload, or coach, unloaded, Mary watched from the deck as Tiberias Potbottom met them, hopping and jumping about and, in general, making their arrival as difficult and fearful a prospect as he possibly could.

  Upon coming aboard the Destiny II they had been taken directly to Joshua Smiles and his assistant, who had given them a medical examination of a most cursory nature, but carefully documented down as though of the utmost importance. A lifting of the bottom and top eyelids, a probing in the ears, an inspection of the tongue and a tapping of the chest for the almost certain signs of bronchial infections. This was followed with a more thorough inspection a week later which became known on shipboard as ‘Bloody Pusover’.

  Each week prisoners were examined for blood and pus in the ears, in the mucus, in the eyes, in the nose and mouth, and finally in the cunny for the glim or syphilis. There was little notice taken when an infection was discovered, though, apart from it being written in the surgeon’s book with details of a most generously prescribed medication. This medication, though well conceived according to the contemporary dictates of treatment, was never administered.

  Upon completion of the very first medical examination Joshua Smiles, in a burst of volubility not to be repeated outside of his prayers, explained the rules to be followed during the voyage. He then launched into a lengthy dissertation which included much comment about the dangers of immoral behaviour, the need for cleanliness and the benefits and rewards of a religious life. He left until last his admonition that profanity and blasphemy would earn the harshest of punishments and warned any female prisoner to bring the name of the Almighty God upon her lips in no other manner but in prayerfulness.

  Mary and her intake were divided into two groups, each of which was termed a mess. From each mess a monitor was chosen to speak for all. Mary was elected monitor by the insistence of all in her group. Ann Gower was also selected as monitor in the second mess, which contained six convicts who were from Dublin, they being whores and thus thought to be most compatible to the other members.

  The prison uniform consisted of a coarse particoloured cotton shift, two petticoats and two sets of ill-fitting undergarments, a pinny, with a spare, and two mob caps. The women’s own clothes were washed by three members of each mess, hung out on the deck to dry then dry packed away in boxes with camphor balls. The idea behind imposing uniformity of dress was to eliminate a natural pecking order derived from the status of possessions - rags or fine gowns, tortoise shell brushes or combs of ox bone, bottles of perfumes or tincture of lavender water, a fine brooch or merely a few bright buttons or a single trinket. These were all placed on the mess inventory and packed away, so that those wearing a silver brooch and fancy outfit could not earn precedence over rags and a simple garnet pin. Upon arriving in Van Diemen’s Land their belongings would be handed to the matron of the Female Factory in the presence of their owners to be kept until their release.

  The money they had brought with them in gold, silver, copper and soft was ordered to be handed to the surgeon-superintendent, who entered the amounts into his cash book and, upon arrival, lodged these funds with the authorities in Van Diemen’s Land. They were to be returned to the owners at the completion of their sentences.

  This inventory of cash was undertaken by Tiberias Potbottom and such became Mary’s fear that she would never again see what rightfully belonged to her, that at the risk of the most severe punishment if she should be discovered, she elected to keep her small personal horde
of gold coins. Fifteen gold sovereigns remained from Ikey’s gift and this she kept in her ‘prisoner’s purse’ along with Ikey’s medallion.

  The prisoner’s purse, readily obtained for a few shillings in any English gaol, consisted of a small metal tube of brass with a fitted cap and rounded end. It was fashioned in much the same manner as the cigar-shaped container Ikey had caused to be made and which had carried his letter of credit, so comfortably worn by Marybelle Firkin when she had travelled from Birmingham to London. Only, the prisoner’s purse of the kind Mary wore was much smaller and made to fit, without too much discomfort, in either of the ‘treasure caves’ that is to say, the rear or front orifice, convenient places to bury contraband on a female person.

  On bloody pusover days Mary would transfer the brass container to within the rear cave, which although uncomfortable was safe from Potbottom’s supervision, and the probing fingers of the convict matron who would examine that other part of her anatomy and report it free of infection to the surgeon’s assistant. He hovered behind her with quill and ledger in the hope that he might be able to record a finding of pus to transform into profit.

  From the time the prisoners began to arrive the Ladies’ Committee commenced to visit the ship. Mary, suspicious by nature of charity, was at first wary of these high-minded women, but she soon grew to respect them. Though pious in their ways they earnestly sought to alleviate the discomfort of the voyage and could, on occasion, become quite cantankerous if they found a facility in the prison which did not adhere to the prescribed regulations.

  Potbottom did his unctuous best to earn their approval, dancing attendance like some small simian creature trained especially for the task of serving, assuring them with much dry-soaping of hands and nodding of head and frequent obsequious expression of his utmost co-operation. He insisted that any complaint they might make would be his personal pleasure to attend to in the time it took to snap his greedy fingers.