Potato Factory

by Bryce Courtenay

  The road gang grew silent and even Billygonequeer ceased making his frog sounds.

  ‘There she be, high up in the fork o’ the tree and, by Jaysus, the child inside her is beginnin’ to be borned! She’s gruntin’ somethin’ awful, snuffin’ and snoofin’ like a fat sow and then it’s a screamin’ and a caterwaulin’ as the head and shoulders come to sniff the world outside! “Here’s sport for all!” Sam O’Leary, me mate, shouts. “We’ll wait this one out!” ‘

  ‘Wait this one out!’ Cristin Puding shouted, turning to the others. ‘Get it? Wait this one out!’ But the other prisoners hushed him fast, anxious for the story to continue.

  ‘Well, you’ll not believe it,’ Strutt continued, once again ignoring Puding, ‘though I swear on me mother’s grave it be true! Out come the bloody mess. The child’s got the birth cord twisted round its neck and stranglin’ him, only later it turns out to be a her, a little girl, and it’s hangin’ itself in the air, and the black gin’s tryin’ to hold onto the cord, but it’s slippin’ through her hands. “Five shilling to him what shoots it down first!” Paddy Hexagon shouts.’

  Strutt stopped suddenly and rocked back on the log he’d sat on and then began to chuckle softly.

  ‘Well you never seen such a loadin’ and firin’ and missin’ and, all the time, the cord stretchin’ longer and longer with the black woman holdin’ on to it at her end and screamin’ blue murder! Then Paddy takes a bead and fires and the little black bastard explodes like a ripe pumpkin! There be blood rainin’ down on us! Jaysus! I can tell you, we was all a mess to behold. “Bastard! Bitch! Black whore!” O’Leary shouts at the gin screamin’ and sobbin’ up in the tree.’ The foreman laughed again. ‘His wife just made him a new shirt and now it be spoiled, soaked in Abo’s blood! Paddy and me, we damn near carked we laughed so much!’

  He paused, enjoying the eyes of all the men fixed upon him. ‘ “You’ll pay fer this ya black bitch!” O’Leary shouts upwards at her, shakin’ his fist. Then he takes a careful shot. Bullseye! He hits the gin in the stomach. But she don’t come tumblin’ down, instead she starts to pick leaves from the tree and stuff them in her gut, in the hole what O’Leary’s musket’s made. We all shoot, but she stays up, and each time a shot strikes home she spits at us and stuffs more leaves where the new holes be. There we all be. Us shootin’ and her stuffin’ gum leaves and screamin’ and spittin’, the baby lyin’ broke on the ground. It were grand sport, but then I takes a shot and hits her in the head, dead between the eyes, and she come tumblin’ down and falls plop, lifeless to the ground.’

  The men around the overseer clapped and whistled. Only Ikey and Billygonequeer remained silent.

  Ikey turned and spat into the dark, thankful that Billygonequeer would not have understood a word of the foreman’s grisly tale. Then someone threw a branch on the embers, and the dry leaves crackled and flared up and in the wider circle of light cast by the fire Ikey saw that tears were flowing from Billy’s dark eyes. Large silent tears which ran onto the point of his chin and splashed in tiny explosions of dust at his feet. The fire died back to normal, and in the dark Ikey reached out and touched Billy’s shoulder and whispered softly.

  ‘You got to learn to be like us, Billygonequeer!’ Then he added, ‘Not like them. Jesus no! Like a Jew. I’ll teach you, my dear. You could be a black Jew. All you got to learn is, when you’ve got suffering you’ve got to add cunning. Suffering plus cunning equals survival! That be the arithmetic of a Jew’s life!’

  Billygonequeer turned slowly and looked directly at Ikey, sniffing and wiping the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand.

  ‘You good pella, Ikey,’ he said, his voice hoarse and barely above a whisper. Then, ‘You gib me name, Ikey!’

  Ikey looked momentarily puzzled. ‘You’ve already got a name, my dear. It ain’t much, but it serves as good as most.’

  Billygonequeer shook his head. ‘Like Ikey. Name same like white pella.’

  ‘Oh, you wants a proper name? Is that it, Billy?’ He pointed to the men around the fire. ‘Like them pella? Puding, Calligan, Mooney? Name like so?’

  Billygonequeer nodded and smiled, his sad, teary face suddenly lighting up.

  Ikey considered for a moment. After promising to turn Billygonequeer into a Jew he thought to give him a Jewish name, but then changed his mind. It would take too much explanation and might get Billygonequeer into even more trouble.

  ‘William Lanney!’ he said suddenly. It was the name of a carpenter mechanic who owed Ikey five pounds from a bet lost at ratting, a debt Ikey now knew he would never collect. ‘Will-ee-am Lan-nee,’ Ikey repeated slowly.

  ‘Willeeamlanee!’ Billygonequeer said in a musical tone as though it were the sound of a bird cry.

  ‘No.’ Ikey held up two fingers. ‘Two words. William. Lanney.’

  Billygonequeer was not only a dab hand at mastering frog calls, for he seemed now to grasp the pronunciation of his new name quite easily, ‘William Lanney. . .William Lanney,’ he said, with tolerable accuracy.

  Ikey laughed. ‘Good pella, Mr William Lanney!’

  Billygonequeer stretched out and touched Ikey’s face as though he was memorising his features through the tips of his long, slender fingers. ‘You good pella, Ikey! Much, much good, pella!’ He tested his new name. ‘William Lanney!’

  It was time for the evening lock up. The prisoners were led to their huts, mustered, and then each was manacled to his bunk and all locked in for the night, except for Billygonequeer, who was manacled and chained to a large old blue gum to sleep the night in the open.

  At dawn Ikey wakened as the javelin man, the trusted prisoner in charge, entered the hut and called over for the man to come and unlock his shackles so that he might go outside to take a piss.

  Ikey walked out into the crisp dawn. Above him, where the early sunrise touched the top of the gum trees, he could hear the doves cooing. When he’d emptied his bladder Ikey strolled over to the tree where Billygonequeer had been chained for the night. Here he stopped in surprise. The shackles, still fixed in their locks, lay upon the ground, but Billygonequeer was missing.

  Ikey stood for a moment not fully comprehending. He wondered if Billygonequeer might have already risen, though it was customary to unchain him last of all. Then he noticed that the manacles and shackles had not been opened, and that there were bloodstains on the inside surfaces.

  Ikey felt a great ache grow such as he had not felt before. A deep heaviness which started somewhere in his chest, and rose up and filled his throat so that he was scarcely able to breathe. He could hear his heart beating in his ears, his head seemed for a moment to float, and he was close to fainting. He stood very still, and he could hear the burble of water flowing over rock, and the wash of the wind in the leaves above him. Ikey, the most solitary of men, now felt more completely alone than ever before.

  ‘May Jehovah be with you, Billygonequeer,’ Ikey said, the words hurting in his throat as he spoke to the chains which lay unopened in the beaten grass where his friend had last lain. Then he began to rock back and forth and at the same time to recite the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. Hot tears rolled silently down his cheeks and disappeared into his scraggly beard as the words of the ancient prayer frosted in the cold morning air.

  And may he walk continually in the land of life,

  and may his soul rest in the bond of life.

  Then he leaned against the smooth, cool bark of the gum tree and sobbed and sobbed. High above him in the silver gum trees he could hear the blue doves calling to their lost partners.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Imprisonment is intended to break the spirit, to render harmless those who are thought to be harmful. Such is the human condition that it will endure the brutal lash and the bread and water of society’s pious outrage, but is finally broken by the relentless boredom of prison life. The blankness of time, the pointless repetition, the mindless routines undertaken in a bleak and purposeless landscape addles the brain and reduc
es a person to whimpering servility. Humans best survive when they are given purpose; a common enemy to defeat, revenge to wreak or a dream to cling to.

  Mary survived her sentence because she had a dream. She saw her incarceration in the Female Factory as her apprenticeship out of the hell of her past. Henceforth, she determined that she would be judged by her competence and not doomed by the circumstances of her birth. Here, under the shadow of the great mountain, she would take her rightful place in life.

  During the four grim years she spent at the Female Factory Mary knew that she had taken the first steps in her great good luck. The Potato Factory in the prison vegetable gardens had prospered and when she was granted her ticket of leave to live outside the prison she had accumulated the sum of five hundred pounds. Ann Gower also now possessed sufficient money, saved for her by Mary, to achieve an ambition she talked of a great deal, open a bawdy house on the waterfront area of Wapping.

  The King’s Orphan School had achieved exemplary results, with most of Mary’s pupils numerate and literate and some beginning to show a most gratifying propensity for learning. So impressed was Mr Emmett, the chief clerk, that he persuaded Governor Arthur to offer Mary the position of headmistress. This independent position meant that she would no longer be under the baleful eye of the Reverend Smedley, and would be entitled to a small salary. Much to the dismay of Mary’s sponsor, she had once again refused his generous offer.

  ‘What ever shall we make of you, Mary Abacus? Will you never learn what is good for you? A more stubborn woman would be most difficult to find upon this island! If you were a man you would be quickly dismissed as a complete fool!’

  Mary, who had the greatest respect for Mr Emmett, was sorry to be the cause of his disappointment. In the three years she had been teaching he had come to support her keenly and had seen to it that she was supplied with equipment from government stores, and that the Reverend Smedley did not unduly interfere with or undermine her work.

  ‘Mr Emmett, sir, I thank you from the bottom o’ me heart for the trust you have shown in me, but I must remind you, I am a teacher only for the lack o’ someone more qualified. You gave me the position only because I believed the brats could take to learning.’

  ‘I’ll give you that, Mary, I’ll give you that,’ Mr Emmett repeated, somewhat mollified. ‘You’ve proved us all wrong and a salutary lesson it has been, I agree.’

  Mary smiled. ‘You’re very kind, Mr Emmett, but it be time for you to make a proper appointment. There be a widow, Mrs Emma Patterson, a free settler out from England, a Quaker I believe. She has excellent references and is well trained to her vocation. She has applied to us for a billet and she is much superior in her knowledge and methods to me or Miss Smedley.’ Mary paused. ‘You would do well to grant her the post in my stead.’

  ‘Oh Mary, Mary, quite contrary, what shall we do with you?’ Mr Emmett asked.

  Mary grinned, thankful that he seemed reconciled to her decision. ‘A reference, sir. I intend to apply for a clerking position, with some bookkeeping, just as you would have me do for the government, but in commerce. Will you grant it me?’ She tilted her head and gave Emmett a most disarming smile. ‘Please?’

  The chief clerk tried his utmost to appear disapproving, but finally nodded his head. ‘It will do you no good, my girl,’ he said.

  The position of headmistress of the orphan school was duly given to Mrs Patterson who, together with the patient and loving Elspeth Smedley, would ensure that the future for Mary’s pupils was a bright one.

  On the day before her ticket of leave was granted Mary took a tearful farewell from her orphans and cried all the way back to the Female Factory. She loved her children and had watched them grow and take pleasure in learning. Mary felt sure that some, at last, would have respectable lives. She wondered how she could possibly have given up her post, for the children loved her, gave her a purpose and had confirmed her as being a natural teacher. But deep in her heart she knew that teaching would not fulfil her ultimate ambition, that her skill with numbers and her abacus was meant for a different purpose.

  With the Potato Factory, Mary had gained a further sense of business and was reminded again that the rules of supply and demand work best when they are predicated against the innate weakness of men. The brothel in Bell Alley and the supply of poteen from the Potato Factory both demonstrated this fundamental principle. To this end Ann Gower had begged that once they were free of the Female Factory they do more of the same. She also suggested they take the still with them so that they might continue in the trades that had been so lucrative for them in the prison vegetable gardens.

  But Mary had resisted her friend’s offer. She wanted no more of the criminal life, and was determined to be as free as the brilliant green parrots which had welcomed her to Van Diemen’s Land. Freedom meant a great deal more to her than the opportunity to live a respectable existence in a new land, where old beliefs and habits were applied to circumstances which had greatly changed. She would use her freedom as though it were truly the gift of being born again to a new life. Mary’s conviction that destiny had called her to something more than a life of drudgery had persisted, and she responded to it with a full heart and the unstinting application of her nimble mind. Her body had grown strong on a diet of fresh vegetables and from working in the open air, and she was ready to make whatever sacrifices were necessary.

  Mary’s ticket of leave included a probationary period of three years and then her sentence would be completed. She wished to use this time to learn a new trade, so she would be ready when she was permitted to go into business on her own. She would take a billet where she might learn the intricacies of trade, and her first task had been to purchase a copy of the Colonial Times so that she might peruse the advertisements for employment. The number of these which requested the need for a bookkeeper, eight in all, filled her heart with joy. But before she set about walking to each address she had a promise to keep to herself.

  She had been escorted to the gates of the Female Factory by the keeper, Mr Drabble, not much past six in the morning. To Mary’s surprise he had taken her hand.

  ‘You have served your time, Mary Abacus, and I wish you well. It is my most earnest hope that you shall never return to this place.’

  Mary smiled. ‘Not as earnest as mine, Mr Drabble. You’ll not see hide nor hair of us again!’

  Mary had left without Ann Gower, who was to serve an extra week in solitary on bread and water for insubordination when drunk. Mary was somewhat relieved, for though she loved Ann she feared that she would never change, that she would always be, as the popular expression went, ‘A nymph o’ the pave’, though such a description of Ann Gower would have been a gross underestimation of her rapidly growing size. A diet consisting largely of grog and potatoes had caused her to grow exceedingly gross, which Ann described to her customers as ‘the luxury o’ comfort on the ride’, and she would have charged an extra sixpence if she could have gotten away with it. Mary had been reluctant to hand Ann the money she had saved on her behalf, though she told herself she could no longer be responsible for her friend. She had also given the still to her partner, to be secretly dismantled when Ann left the Factory. If Ann should show the minimum of good sense then she had the means to prosper well on the new waterfront area of Wapping.

  Mary did not go directly into the town when she left the Female Factory. Carrying her bed roll, a clay pot, her abacus and a small cloth satchel, she climbed the hill immediately behind the Factory and headed towards the great mountain. Sometimes, on her way to the orphan school, she would divert into the tall trees growing on the slopes of Mount Wellington. Along a secret path of her own making she had discovered a small stream, though stream was too grand a word for the trickle of sweet, clear water which came from a large overhanging rock.

  Mary now made her way to the secret rock set into the mountain side, which was flat at its top and made an ample ledge. She would sit on a carpet of moss surrounded by fern and look out be
yond the shadow cast by the rock to where clumps of brilliant yellow wattle grew under the gum trees. The air around her was scented with blossom. Mountain blueberry, the berries ripe and brilliant, twisted and trailed over the smaller trees and shrubs, and every once in a while she would see a splash of wild fuchsia or a clump of pale pink and lilac early snowberries.

  On hot summer days it was cool under the shelter of the rock, which was scarred with lichen and pocketed with moss. On mild winter days Mary would climb on top of the rock ledge and the sun would dapple through the leaves to warm her.

  Mary imagined sleeping on this ledge so that she might see the stars at night. Slowly the desire grew in her and she would think upon this prospect as she lay in the stale dormitory filled with the tainted breath of forty other prisoners, a heaving, snoring body on either side of her. Finally she had determined that she was going to spend her first night of freedom on her secret rock under the stars.

  Mary arrived at the rock no later than seven in the morning. She removed a clump of moss from deep within the recesses of the overhanging rock and carefully buried the clay pot. Inside it was the five hundred pounds she had saved. She replaced the moss and marked the spot with a handful of small pebbles which appeared to be resting naturally. Mary paused only to take a drink of water and wash her hands before leaving. With her she took her abacus and the small satchel in which she carried a pound in copper and silver and Mr Emmett’s letter of recommendation. She walked further up the mountain slope, making a wide arc well away from her rock, until she found a woodcutter’s path which led down to the precincts of Hobart Town.