Potato Factory

by Bryce Courtenay

  Tommo stood facing Hawk fifty feet away and signalled him using the silent language. Hawk held the lobster up to his ear and appeared to listen. Then he shook his head and then the crustacean, and listened once more. Suddenly a big smile appeared on his face. ‘The magic African lobster says the name given be George, but Boxey be the name what’s real!’ he shouted back at them.

  The mouths of the urchins standing around Tommo fell open, and Boxey became very red in the face.

  ‘You be careful, mate!’ Tommo growled. ‘Or you could be in real big trouble!’

  Hawk suddenly held the lobster back to his ear. ‘The magic African lobster says if any boy gives him a wrong name again they be double cursed to drown at sea!’ he shouted.

  There was a further gasp of astonishment from the boys.

  ‘You!’ Tommo said, pointing to a skinny urchin who was dressed in rags with great holes showing through, ‘Come and whisper your name.’ The boy, even smaller than Tommo, looked up at him terrified. ‘I dunno what’s me real name, they calls me Minnow.’ His eyes pleaded with Tommo. ‘I don’t wanna be cursed, please!’

  ‘Yeah, well I’ll do me best,’ Tommo said. ‘But I can’t make no promise. Turn your back to the magic lobster so he can’t see your lips,’ he commanded sternly. The urchin, shaking all over, did as he was told.

  Moments later Hawk called back, ‘Minnow!’

  Tommo turned to the leader of the gang. ‘Boxey, you be real lucky this time! But be warned!’ He turned to the other urchins. ‘Anyone want to take a chance o’ being cursed?’ There were no further volunteers and so Tommo called over to Hawk, ‘Put the lobster in the bag and come over!’

  As Hawk approached the gang they started to back away from him. ‘Don’t run!’ Tommo said. ‘We got to lift the curse first!’

  ‘What’s you mean?’ Boxey asked suspiciously, his voice slightly tremulous. ‘You said we wasn’t cursed if we be careful.’ He seemed brighter than the others and suddenly asked, ‘How come he’s your brother and he be black?’

  ‘That’s what I means, we got to lift the curse!’ Tommo replied.

  ‘I were born same as him,’ Hawk explained, pointing to Tommo. ‘Same’s me brother, but I got cursed by the horrible African lobster and now I’s black, see!’

  ‘What you just seen here be black magic and folk’s not s’posed to see black magic,’ Tommo said. ‘So me brother, what’s turned black and is now the black magician what’s forced to pass on the curse, will wave the lobster over your heads and then the curse be lifted. Now, if you please, a circle. Hold hands and make a circle. I’ll tell you when to close your eyes!’

  The boys formed into a circle holding hands with Hawk in the centre. Hawk lifted a lobster out of the bag and held it high above his head.

  ‘Close your eyes tight now!’ Tommo instructed. ‘If you peeks you is cursed for life and you drowns all horrible out to sea but before that you turns black!’

  Hawk started to recite:

  Abracadabra, ho, ho, ho!

  Black as pitch, white as snow!

  Beware the black magician’s curse

  Or things what’s bad will soon be worse!

  Tommo waited for Hawk to place the lobster back into the bag. ‘You can open your eyes, you be safe now,’ Tommo instructed. ‘Curse be lifted, but scarper quick and stay out of our way!’ He then repeated Hawk’s lines. ‘Beware the black magician’s curse, or things what’s bad will soon be worse!’

  ‘G’warn, clear off!’ Hawk shouted, scowling fiercely. The urchins, terror etched on their dirty faces, turned and fled for their lives.

  The two boys waited a few moments, most pleased with themselves. Then Hawk took up the wriggling bag of lobsters and they started to laugh. They continued laughing all the way up the hill to Mrs McKinney’s fish shop.

  ‘I reckons maybe Uncle Ikey be right,’ Hawk said finally, then turned to Tommo and asked, ‘Was you scared?’

  ‘Yeah, shittin’ meself!’

  ‘Me too, but I reckon it’s much better than getting your nose busted!’

  ‘Blood’ oath!’ Tommo said happily.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Towards the end of the seventh year of their lives, Tommo and Hawk disappeared on a perfectly calm winter’s day somewhere on the slopes of Mount Wellington.

  Hobart Town had wakened that morning to find that the first winter snow had fallen and crusted the summit of the great mountain. The day that followed was crisp, with winter sunshine bright and sharp as polished silver.

  Mary had spent most of the day at the new Potato Factory buildings where the majority of her beer production was now taking place. The old mill was used increasingly as a bottle shop, managed by Jessamy Hawkins.

  It was the daily custom of Tommo and Hawk to accompany Mary to the small cottage at Strickland Falls, which served both as an office and schoolroom, where she supervised their lessons.

  However, on the day they disappeared the two boys had begged Mary to allow them to climb to the snowline. She had hesitated at first. It was a three-hour climb and the weather on the mountain had a habit of closing in even on a sunny day. But she had finally yielded to their beseeching, and at ten o’clock they took some bread and cheese and escaped their lessons to explore the snow at the summit before the warm sunshine should melt it.

  Mary had cautioned them to be careful and to come home immediately wherever they were if the weather turned, and no later than an hour before sunset. Tommo and Hawk were as agile as mountain goats and had explored the mountain with Mary since they were toddlers. Furthermore, there was a log hut at the summit should the weather close in, and it contained a plentiful supply of wood left by the woodcutters who worked the slopes.

  Despite the warm day it was always cold at the summit, and Mary had insisted they wear their opossum jackets which, though considered most unfashionable by the third raters, were much utilised by rural folk, shepherds, sealers, kangaroo hunters and woodcutters who worked the wilderness country. Mary had purchased these wonderfully soft and warm garments for the boys, and she kept them at the Potato Factory at Strickland Falls precisely because of the unpredictable moods of the mountain.

  At four-thirty in the afternoon, an hour before sunset, like all mothers, Mary’s ears were tuned for the homecoming calls of the two boys, although her expectation was pointless, because the roar of the falls would drown out the sounds of their approach. But they knew her routine, and her need to be back at the mill before the bells of St David’s tolled for evensong.

  Mary smiled to herself at the thought of the journey home with the two boys. It was the happiest part of the day for her, as she had them all to herself. She loved the walk through the woods and, as they approached the town, the smell of wood smoke and the sweep of the hazy hills across the great silver river spread below.

  Tommo and Hawk would be scratched from crawling through brambles and so covered with dirt they might well need to be bathed even though it was not their tub night. Tommo would be running ahead and turning back and taking her hand, words tumbling out in fierce competition with Hawk to tell her of their grand adventure as they’d played in the first of the winter snow. Hawk would be carrying her basket, hopping and skipping beside her with his head full of serious questions or explanations of the things he’d seen.

  They would arrive back at the old mill just as the working people of Hobart Town started to arrive to buy their beer to take home. It was a busy hour and Mary would help Jessamy with the customers until half past seven o’clock. Soon after, Ikey would arrive and Mary would make supper for them all. Then, when Ikey retired to work on the books, she would read to the boys. They seldom remained awake much beyond nine o’clock, when she locked up and washed her face and arms and retired to bed herself, but not before making Ikey a large mug of strong tea which he liked to take with milk and six teaspoons of caster sugar.

  Though Mary worked exceedingly hard, she revelled in the calm of an ordered and uneventful life, and her ambition wa
s in no way curtailed by the need to care for her boys. In fact they gave her a sense of purpose beyond the need to prove herself worthy in her own eyes, and on her own terms.

  Even though Mr Emmett had been right and she had been socially ostracised because of her dark-skinned son, Mary had never been concerned about social acceptance. During her earlier life, when she had been known as Egyptian Mary, she had witnessed sufficient of the behaviour of the male members of the first raters not to wish to adopt their affectations and manners, and she did not expect people of the tradesmen class would be any better.

  Indeed, Mary’s fights with the wealthy beer barons and spirit distillers of Hobart Town had been possible because she knew these rich and important men for what they were, and had not been cowed by their bullying. Moreover, her opinion of these pompous tyrants’ wives, formed during her days as a chambermaid, was not greatly in advance of what she thought of their husbands.

  Though she loved and respected Mr Emmett, Mary did not covet his lifestyle nor wish to be included in his milieu as a first rater, even if such a lofty ascent had been possible. She saw him for what he was, a rare example of a kind and compassionate human being who was independent of any class, and she hoped one day to emulate his example.

  But for now Mary devoted herself to Tommo and Hawk. She was certain that her luck in this new land had a purpose, that she would create a foundation stone upon which her sons could build and that something worthwhile and wonderful would emerge. In her imagination Mary could clearly see the little brewery she would create in its perfect woodland setting, an inseparable part of her magic mountain. While she was not by nature capable of so pompous a thought, the Potato Factory would be her monument to the ability of the human spirit to survive and prosper against all odds.

  Mary thought lovingly of her two boys and smiled to herself. She now possessed a destiny, a continuity in her new land. Tommo X Solomon and Hawk X Solomon would be the source of her second generation.

  Mary chuckled to herself as she always did when she thought of the X in the boy’s names. When Ikey had appeared somewhat sheepishly at the government offices and declared himself to be the father of Tommo and Hawk, he had registered his so-called offspring with an additional single X common to both names. The clerk who had presided over the registration had evinced not the slightest interest in enquiring what the X stood for, and had written out a certificate of birth exactly as Ikey had indicated.

  Later, when Mary had demanded to know what the X stood for, Ikey shrugged his shoulders. ‘It has to be there, it be a proper part o’ their names, my dear, a grand initial, an ancient Hebrew sign,’ he lied. In fact, the initial X was simply Ikey’s mind working in its usual convoluted way. He told himself it represented the X which Svensen of the Sturmvogel had tattooed through the name Tomahawk on Sperm Whale Sally’s breast to cancel the rights of the Merryweather. The additional justification was that he’d split the name Tomahawk in half to give each boy his name, but their names could be re-combined with the X to make a whole. Thus, Tommo X Hawk = Tomahawk = Twins. But in reality their names had simply been conjured up that first morning when he’d presented them in the basket to Mary and the X was just a feeble joke he’d thought of on the spur of the moment when he had gone to register the birth of the two boys.

  However, Mary deduced her own explanation for the singular initial. She, who was so very good at the business of numbers, concluded that the X is used as the unknown in mathematics, and that Tommo and Hawk were her two unknown factors. The letter X in calculations could be made to represent any number, and it was her duty to see that what it represented in her two sons was the sum of the very best she could do to make them men of whom she could be rightfully proud.

  Mary smiled as she packed her basket in preparation for the boys’ return. Then she bid the workmen goodnight, put on her warm coat, locked the cottage and walked over to the small bridge just below the falls, which she knew Tommo and Hawk must cross as they returned from the mountain.

  Mary Abacus waited on the bridge and watched the water as it churned white at her feet. The thundering falls sent a fine mist into the air which created a rainbow in the late afternoon sunlight, and Mary could not imagine a more perfect moment. She was not to know that the magic mountain she loved so much had just swallowed up her precious children.

  When the boys had not arrived by five o’clock she walked back to the office and found a lantern which had a good wick, and was well filled with the whale oil. Then she looked about and found half a loaf of bread, the remainder of the cheese she had given the boys and four apples. These she replaced in her basket together with several bandages and a bottle of iodine which she always kept on the premises. Then she took a small axe which hung behind the cottage door and this too she pushed, head first, into the basket. It was almost dark by the time Mary crossed the little bridge again, and set off along the path leading higher up the mountain.

  There was only one path to the summit, though many hundreds of paths led from all over the mountain before converging on this main track, which was a forty-minute climb from the top. Mary determined that she would walk until the path which led from Strickland Falls intersected several others, a steady half-hour’s walk up the mountain. The boys might have taken any of a dozen paths to arrive at this point, but she knew they must eventually turn into the one she now took for the journey home.

  The trees became more dense as she climbed, and not more than twenty minutes after she had left it grew completely dark under the forest canopy. Mary stopped to light the lantern and then proceeded onwards. She had begun to call out, her voice echoing through the trees as she called their names.

  Mary finally reached the intersection. It was getting cold so she gathered wood, a difficult task even with the help of the lantern, but she persisted until she had a large pile. She kept herself warm chopping the wood, stopping every minute or so to call out again. Finally she lit a fire and settled down to wait, hoping that if Tommo and Hawk were anywhere near they might smell the smoke or see the fire.

  Though the night was cold it remained clear and no wind beyond the usual breeze stirred the tops of the trees. Mary told herself that this might not be the case at the summit, and Tommo and Hawk might have been caught in a change of weather and taken refuge in the hut. They were young, but it was unlikely they would do anything foolish. If the summit was suddenly to mist over they would know to stay put until morning. But in her heart Mary was terrified. She imagined a rock slide set in motion by the weight of the snow. She saw them venturing to the edge of a bluff, perhaps the mighty organ pipes, and the snow giving way and sending them crashing downwards nearly a thousand feet. She imagined any of a dozen incidents and all of them became vivid and concluded in her mind.

  After two hours Mary knew that she would have to come down. Once again she lit the lantern, which she had put out to save the oil during her vigil by the fire. Wherever Tommo and Hawk were they could not descend in the dark, and she knew that no search party would set out to find them until first light. Mary set off down the path again and arrived at Strickland Falls nearly an hour later. She was scratched about and bleeding, for travelling a bush path at night is harrowing and her descent had been perilous. She had fallen on several occasions, though fortunately she had not lost the lantern. It took her another forty minutes to get back to the mill where Ikey and Jessamy were waiting, both of them terribly anxious. They’d already been up to Strickland Falls, and found it locked and had themselves not long been home.

  Ikey had never seen Mary cry, but now she sat at the kitchen table and wept as she slowly spilled out the story. She blamed herself for letting the boys go, though Jessamy reminded her that they had roamed the slopes since they were four years old and the mountain was, in every sense, their own backyard.

  At midnight Ikey left Jessamy asleep in an old armchair and Mary seated at the kitchen table with her head in her arms. Although she was tired and distraught almost beyond thinking, the ever-practical Mary
had devised a rescue plan. She would make her appearance at Peter Degraves’ saw mills at seven o’clock the following morning, when the timber cutters set off to work the slopes. But first she would call at the Degraves home and ask him for permission to pay his men a day’s salary to send up a search party for Tommo and Hawk. They would set off from Strickland Falls so that if the children had spent the night safely in the hut on the summit they would be met along the path, not more than an hour and a half after first light. At this point the search would be over and the men, already on the mountain, could return to their work.

  Mary was not foolish enough to suppose that this permission would be easily granted, for while her past employer was by the standards of the time a good man, he was tough and she knew he would expect her to pay for the value of the timber not produced while his men carried out the search. The loss of Tommo and Hawk would not be seen by him as a matter of great importance. Mary was of course, perfectly willing to meet his demands. The cost of a day’s work of a hundred timber cutters would exhaust her available liquid resources, and possibly put her in debt to the brewer, but she cared not in the least about this.

  Having resolved what to do at first light, she fell into a fitful sleep at the kitchen table only to be wakened an hour before dawn by Ikey.

  ‘Come, my dear, I have brought help!’ he said, shaking her gently by the shoulder.

  Gathered in the street outside the Potato Factory were more than a hundred people. A more motley collection of the hopeless and forlorn would have been difficult to find anywhere in the South Seas. None among them would ever voluntarily have put one foot on the lowest slopes of the great mountain.

  They were the drunks and whores, gamblers, pimps, touts, publicans’ cellarmen, barmaids, whalemen and jack tars as well as other assorted human scrapings from the Hobart waterfront. Ann Gower, now the owner of a waterfront bawdy house, had taken a donkey cart and loaded herself upon it together with a large tea urn, so that she, too, might help.