Potato Factory

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Gawd bless you, sir!’ Mary whispered, her voice choked with relief.

  ‘Tut, tut, you have little to thank me for, Mary Abacus. My garden is splendidly prepared for winter and I reward you with nothing but the smell of hops in your nostrils and the cussing of rough men in your ears. I think it a poor exchange indeed!’

  ‘Thank you, sir, I will not forget this.’

  ‘There is little for you to remember on my behalf, my dear,’ Mr Emmett said gently. ‘You are worthy of much, much more, Mary Abacus.’

  The chief clerk of the colonial secretary’s department was not to know that on the brisk autumn evening in late May 1831, he had watched a small woman with large green eyes, bright with recent tears, take the first tentative step in what would one day be a vast brewery empire that would stretch around the world. Mary Abacus had discovered the commodity men could not live without and yet was not condemned or forbidden by society.

  The dream was in place, the new life begun, and Mary’s great good luck had persisted. In the gathering darkness she could only just make out the frosted top of the mountain.

  ‘Thank you!’ Mary whispered, clasping Ikey’s Waterloo medal tightly to her breast.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  It is one of the great paradoxes in human migration that new beginnings often take with them old and often undesirable social customs. Those fleeing affliction or a hierarchical system for a new and free environment soon develop tyrannies and pecking orders of their own. Though in a penal colony one might expect a clear distinction between the convict and the free, the dichotomies of class in Van Diemen’s Land were far more complicated and carefully graded. The relationship Mary enjoyed with Mr Emmett was all the more remarkable for this.

  The first two great class distinctions were, of course, the free and the prisoner populations. This was a divide so wide that it was almost impossible to leap, even in exceptional circumstances. Mary had never been inside Mr Emmett’s home, nor had she been introduced to his wife, Lucy. Occasionally they would meet in the garden, but Mary would stand with her head bowed and hands clasped in respectful silence while the grand lady passed by.

  Lucy Emmett’s pretty daughter, Millicent, had once stopped to talk with Mary, who was pruning and shaping the standard rose she had given Mr Emmett for his daughter’s tenth birthday.

  ‘Why! That’s my rose!’ Millicent exclaimed. ‘I had quite forgotten it. Will you shape it well and make it beautiful again?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Millicent, it will be perfect for the summer to come. It be robust enough and not much neglected.’

  ‘Good! It was a present from Papa and grown just for me by a drunken wretch in the Female Factory!’

  ‘Is that what your papa told you?’ Mary asked softly.

  ‘No, Mama told me that! Papa said there’s good in everyone. But Mama said the women in the Female Factory were too low to be included in everyone and were long past being good.’ Millicent tilted her head to one side. ‘I think there is, don’t you?’

  ‘Is what, Miss Millicent?’

  ‘Good in everyone.’

  Mary gave a wry laugh. ‘I’ve known some what could be in doubt and they didn’t all come from the Female Factory neither.’

  ‘Millicent! How could you! Come along at once!’ Lucy Emmett’s cry of alarm made her daughter jump.

  ‘Coming, Mama!’ Millicent called back. She cast a look of apprehension at Mary and fled without saying another word.

  Mary could hear Lucy Emmett’s high-pitched chiding for several minutes afterwards. Some time later Mr Emmett’s wife entered the garden and passed by where Mary was weeding. At her approach Mary rose from her haunches with her hands clasped and head bowed. Some paces from where she stood Lucy Emmett halted as if to admire a late-blooming rose.

  ‘You will be sent away at once should you venture to talk to Miss Millicent again,’ she hissed. She did not look directly at Mary and it was as though she were talking to the rose itself. Then she turned abruptly and left the garden.

  Because Lucy Emmett’s husband worked in the government, she was considered a ‘true merino’ by the free inhabitants of the colony - that is, they were among the first in point of social order. This circumstance was considered sufficient grounds for keeping aloof from the rest of the community. In fact it was considered degrading to associate with anyone who did not belong to her own milieu.

  The government class were somewhat jeeringly known by the next order as the ‘aristocracy’. This next, or second, order, more numerous and certainly wealthier and more influential in the colony, were the ‘respectable’ free inhabitants, the merchants, bankers, doctors, lawyers and clergymen who had no connection with the government above being required to pay its crippling taxes.

  Below them came the free persons of low station, clerks and small tradesmen, butchers and bakers, who serviced the daily lives of the first-rate settlers. They had little chance of rising above their stations in life and were collectively possessed with an abiding anxiety that they might, through bankruptcy or some other misfortune, sink to the lowest but one level, that of the labouring class.

  Below even the labourer was the emancipist, though this group was perhaps the most curious contradiction in the pecking order. Emancipists could, and often enough did, rise through the bottom ranks, past the labouring class and into the ranks of clerks and tradesmen.

  The sons of emancipists, if educated in a profession and if they became immensely rich, could rise beyond even the third rank. Daughters had greater opportunities, if they were pretty and properly prepared. That is to say, if they attended the Polyglot Academy, where French, Italian and Spanish were taught by Ferrari’s Comparative Method. They would also need to have been instructed by Monsieur Gilbert, a Professor of Dancing, before being considered sufficiently ‘yeasted’ to rise upwards.

  No young woman, even if she was exceptionally beautiful and possessed the most elegant manners, could think to enter society without a comprehensive knowledge of the steps in all the new dances being practised in the salons of London and Paris.

  Only then, and only if she should bring with her the added incentive of a great deal of money, was it possible to rise in due course to the ranks of a first rater. But even when the children of a successful emancipist achieved such Olympian heights, their flawed lineage remained and the whispers of the crinolined society matrons would continue for the next two generations.

  The bottom station was, of course, the prisoner population and it included the ticket of leavers such as Mary. Between this class and all others, a strict line was drawn. In the presence of any free person in the community, prisoners were as if struck dumb. It was considered correct, even by the lowest of the free orders, to regard them as invisible, ghosts in canary-yellow jackets who laboured on the roads or at tasks beneath the dignity even of the labouring class. And, of course, if they were assigned as servants in a household, they were expected to exercise the minimum speech required to perform their daily duties.

  Mr Emmett’s courage and generosity of spirit can now be properly appreciated. He, a member of the first station, not only acknowledged the existence of Mary, a convict, but consistently helped her. Emmett was also something of a dreamer for supposing that Mary might be accepted by even the lowliest of government clerks had she taken up his offer to work in his department.

  The marked contrast of Lucy Emmett’s attitude towards Mary should not be drawn as an example of uncharitable behaviour. To speak to a prisoner, albeit a ticket of leaver, was beyond the imaginings of a pure merino woman, a nightmarish confrontation not to be contemplated even in the most unlikely social circumstances.

  Thus, the likelihood of Mary securing a billet as a clerk in Hobart Town was very much in the order of impossible. Not only was she a woman, but such a position lay strictly within the precincts of the third class whereas she was condemned to work within the lowest of the low, the sixth class. It can only be supposed that, in bringing about Mary’s appointment, Mr
Emmett had favoured Peter Degraves with a government contract, or perhaps waived some building dispensation for the construction of his new brewery, or even invoked a Masonic rite in his position as Grand Master of Hobart’s secret order of Free and Accepted Masons.

  The gamble Peter Degraves took on Mary soon paid off. She was quick to learn, arrived early and worked late, and took no nonsense from the men, who eventually came to call her, with much admiration, Mother Mary of the Blessed Beads.

  It was not only Mary’s skill at bookkeeping that impressed her employers, but also her plain sense mixed with some imagination. Mary was soon aware that pilfering on a building site by the labourers was costing the owners a considerable amount each month, and that the men regarded this scam as their natural right. She requested an appointment with Peter Degraves at his office higher up the slopes of the mountain, where he and his brother-in-law owned the concession to cut the timber right up to the rocky outcrop known as the organ pipes.

  Degraves kept Mary waiting a considerable time before he called her into his small, cluttered office. A large cross-cut saw of the type used by convicts leaned against one wall, its blade buckled into a gentle curve. The room smelled of sawdust and the sap of new-cut wood. Peter Degraves was a tall, fair, clean-shaven man, not given to lard as were so many men in their forties. He sat in his shirt sleeves with his waistcoat unbuttoned and his clay-spattered boots resting upon a battered-looking desk.

  ‘Take a pew, Miss Abacus,’ he said, indicating a small upright wicker chair. ‘What brings you to the sawmill?’

  ‘Sir, I would speak to you about the site.’

  ‘Ah! It goes well, Miss Abacus, the foreman says we are ahead in time and I know our expenses are well contained. You have done an excellent job.’

  ‘Not as excellent as might be supposed,’ Mary answered.

  Degraves looked surprised. ‘Oh? Is there something I ought to know about, Miss Abacus?’

  ‘The pilfering, sir. . .on the site. It be considerable.’

  Degraves shrugged. ‘It was ever thus, Miss Abacus. Petty crime within the labouring class is as common as lice in an urchin’s hair.’ He spread his hands. ‘We live, after all, in a penal colony.’

  ‘Mr Degraves, sir, I have an inventory and we are losing materials at the rate o’ fifty pounds a week, two thousand seven hundred and four pounds a year. That be a considerable amount, would you not say?’

  ‘Aye, it’s a lot of money, but I’ve known worse in the sawmilling business.’

  ‘We have one ‘undred workmen on the site, each earns fourteen pounds a year in wages, that be. . .’

  ‘Fourteen hundred pounds and, as you say, we are losing nearly double that! Just how would you prevent this, Miss Abacus?’ Degraves asked in a somewhat patronising manner.

  ‘The value o’ the material what’s nicked and sold in the taverns and on the sly be one-fifth o’ the market value, no more’n ten pounds.’

  ‘And just how do you know this?’ Degraves asked, removing his feet from the desk. He pulled his chair closer and leaned forward, listening intently.

  ‘I took various materials from the site and flogged them,’ Mary replied calmly.

  ‘You what? You stole from my site!’

  ‘Not stole, sir, it all be written in the books. It were a test to see what the value o’ the materials were on the sly.’

  Degraves sat back and laughed. ‘Why, that’s damned clever! Ten pounds eh?’ He paused then said, ‘Well, that’s the labouring class for you, not only dishonest but easily gulled and stupid to boot.’

  ‘Let’s give ‘em the ten pounds, sir, or a little more, fifteen. That be three shillings per man per week extra in his pay packet, seven pounds two shillings and sixpence per year.’

  ‘But, Miss Abacus,’ Degraves protested, ‘that’s half again as much as they are paid now.’

  ‘Sir, it ain’t all the men what’s stealing, most is family men as honest as the day. We make the money a weekly bonus, given a month in arrears and when we’ve determined no pilfering has taken place.’

  ‘No pilfering?’ Degraves laughed. ‘Not a single nail or plank or brick or bag of mortar! I think you dream somewhat, Miss Abacus!’

  ‘Well no, sir. I have allowed five pounds, that will be sufficient tolerance,’ Mary said firmly.

  ‘Twenty pounds and we save thirty, I’m most impressed! Do you think it can be made to work?’

  ‘No, sir. It will not work with money,’ Mary replied.

  ‘Oh? How then?’

  ‘In rations! A food chit issued to the labourer’s wife what is worth three shillings a week. We pay the men on Saturdays and most of it be in the tavern keeper’s hands by Sunday night with the brats starving at home for the rest o’ the week. If there be the prospect o’ three shillings worth o’ rations from the company shop on a Monday, the family will eat that week.’

  ‘Company shop? May I remind you, Miss Abacus, I am a sawmiller who is building a brewery, not a damned tradesman! Who will run this cornucopia of plenty?’

  ‘I will, sir! There be enough money to pay the salary of a good shop assistant if we buy prudently and sell at shopkeepers’ rates, and I will keep the books.’

  ‘And will there be a further profit?’ Degraves asked shrewdly.

  ‘Yes, sir, to be used for the purchase of books for the orphanage school, as well as a Christmas party given to them by the brewery.’

  Degraves laughed. ‘Chits for workers’ wives, company shops, books and Christmas parties for orphans, when will these fantasies end?’ He grew suddenly stern. ‘Miss Abacus, I am a practical man who has worked with rough men all my life. Mark my words, they will take your chit and steal as before. You cannot prevent a labouring man from stealing from his master.’

  ‘You are perfectly right, sir. You cannot. I cannot. But his wife can! It’s she who will be your policeman, she who will make her man deal with the thief what thinks to take advantage of all the other men by stealing from the site. Wives will make their husbands punish the guilty, for I guarantee she will let no villain take the bread out o’ her little ones’ mouths.’

  Degraves leaned back into his chair. ‘It be most clever, Miss Abacus, but I’m afraid it cannot be done. What of my reputation with my peers? Those who, like me, employ labour? They will not take kindly to the raising of a labourer’s annual salary by more than fifty per cent! Let me tell you, there will be hell to pay!’

  ‘Sir, heaven forbid! Raise in wages!’ Mary appeared to be shocked at such a notion. ‘It be a feeding scheme for the worker’s family. The Church and the government will soon enough come out in support of you for such an act o’ Christian charity!’ Mary, afraid she might lose his support for fear of his peers, thought desperately. ‘May I remind you that we have a large community o’ Quakers what does not condone strong drink and there is them Temperance lot just started, the Van Diemen’s Land Temperance Society. They’s already kickin’ up a fuss about the distilleries in the colony. But who will speak badly of a brewery what looks after workers’ brats and cares about the education of orphans?’

  Degraves smiled. There had already been several raised eyebrows in society concerning his intention to build a brewery. ‘A model works, eh?’ He frowned suddenly. ‘Do you really think it will work, Miss Abacus?’

  Mary knew she had won, and she was unable to conceal the excitement in her voice so she spoke quickly. ‘Better than that, Mr Degraves, sir. We’ll end up with the best and most honest workers in the colony on account o’ the excellent family conditions what the boss o’ the brewery Mr Peter Degraves has put into place!’ She took a gulp of air and to this breathless sycophancy she added, ‘Thank you, sir, I think it be most clever of you to think up such generous plans for those of us who is privileged to work for you!’

  Degraves again looked surprised for a moment, then smiled. He was impressed. ‘Why thank you, Miss Abacus, it’s not a bad solution, even if I did not think of it myself.’ His expression was whimsical when he added,
‘You will, of course, let me know when I should reveal this brilliant new plan of mine to the men.’

  ‘And to the Colonial Times, sir. The feeding scheme for workers’ brats.’

  Degraves nodded as he replaced his feet on the desk. ‘Though I see little gain in helping the orphanage with the business of learning. These children are the illegitimate spawn of the island’s scum and no good will come of it, I can assure you. Besides there is more ridicule in it than there be praise.’

  ‘Sir, sometimes we may be allowed to take credit where no credit is due, and sometimes we deserve much more than we get. Besides, I were just like them poor little brats once.’

  Degraves sighed and dismissed Mary with a backward wave of his hand. ‘As you wish, Miss Abacus, I can see you do not surrender easily.’

  Mary smiled and lowered her eyes to show her respect, though she laughed inwardly, thinking of the motto inscribed on her Waterloo medal. ‘Thank you, sir, you have been most gracious,’ she replied.

  Degraves threw back his head and laughed. ‘Prudent, Miss Abacus! Prudent to the tune of thirty pounds a week! I shall not think well of you if this turns out badly, and there will be little graciousness about my manner as I dismiss you from service.’

  Mary continued to work for the brewery after its completion and by the time she had served out her ticket of leave she was intimate with every step in the process of making beer. She had been correct. Good men came from everywhere to seek employment at the new brewery where the practice of issuing ration chits had been continued and, as had also been the case on the work site, pilfering was reduced to insignificant proportions.

  Written into the wrought-iron gate of the brewery were the words ‘Happy workers make happy beer’ and this motto also appeared on the labels of the bottled product. The beer they produced at the Cascades Brewery was of a light colour and very pure and, while there were a dozen other breweries in Hobart, none could match the quality of Peter Degraves’ excellent light ale and pilsener-style beer. Such was its superiority that it quickly became popular all over the island and ships carrying the company’s timber to New South Wales increasingly came also to carry barrels of Cascade beer to Sydney.