Potato Factory

by Bryce Courtenay

  The pistol had been presented to her by Ikey, who had bought it from Ann Gower. Ikey was most particular that it be light enough for a woman to handle yet carried four chambers, could be ready loaded, and deadly if fired at close range. Not being in the least accustomed to the workings of firearms he had diligently written down the instructions on how it should be loaded and Mary practised until she was certain how it was done. Though she had never before fired a pistol, she was confident that she was capable of using it should the occasion arise.

  The Isle of Erin arrived in the tiny settlement of Port Huon by mid-afternoon of the second day. Mary’s beer was loaded onto a bullock cart to be transported to the Kermandie River settlement, the driver happy to take a case of beer instead of payment, thinking himself much the better off with such a bargain. Mary sat beside the driver as they made slow progress into the small settlement.

  The town seemed to be entirely constructed of bark and mud. The streets, if streets they could be called, were ruts where the unwary traveller might sink his boot half way to the knee in the wet.

  The buildings were a testament to colonial ingenuity. A framework of wood was raised, and bark was peeled from green eucalypt in strips six feet long and two feet wide. The strips were flattened on level ground by poles laid across them and allowed to dry. When dry and stiff they made excellent walls, as well as serving, if lightly strutted, as doors and windows. Brown, warm-coated stringy bark provided the roof cladding. All that was then required was a slabbed chimney built above a base of stone, and lined a further four feet with stone topped with turf to protect the walls from fire. The flue, also of bark, was then carried up on a framework of poles to a suitable height above the ridgepole. From the chimney-breast up, the flue was boxed on all sides and experience taught just where to place the chimney to avoid down draughts. Thus everything was made locally and, if care was taken in the construction, a comfortable home could be built in a very short time.

  The surrounding countryside rose steeply from the river and clearings for the small holdings around the settlement were a testament to sheer hard work. The natural growth which had to be removed before the soil could be tilled was a staggering five hundred tonnes per hectare. Ring-barked trees two hundred feet high stood like dead sentinels, while from their trunks huge strips of bark whispered and flapped in the wind. On the ground below cows grazed in paddocks sown with English grasses, coxfoot and white york, which provided fodder and hay for the winter. The rich virgin soil was deep-loamed and full of nutrients; at milking time, milch cows came in from the runs with full udders.

  But despite this appearance of a tranquil farming community, the rising ground and huge trees made each acre taken from the forest a triumph over the forces of nature. The small community clung to the banks of the Kermandie River, and the wild country stretching towards the Hartz Mountains was not yet penetrated by settlers.

  These forbidding parts of the interior were mostly occupied by isolated communities of itinerant timber getters, many of Irish origin, who lived further upriver and were said to be half wild and dangerous and unlikely to welcome strangers in their midst.

  All male convicts who arrived in the colony would spend some time at hard labour producing timber and from that time on, any misdemeanour would result in a further stint on a timber gang. So, almost by definition, the worst offenders learned the most about the skill of the sawing pit, splitting logs and getting timber. In addition, the Irish, many of whom lacked the basic skills to work in towns, and being usually among the most intractable of convicts and also Roman Catholics in an overwhelmingly Protestant community, found timber getting was the only lawful skill they possessed upon emancipation. For many, isolation became their only way of avoiding trouble.

  They seldom ventured with their families into the nearby towns and their children were wild things. They would score the timber, each with his individual mark and the number of his agent, and float it downriver. Every few weeks one of their kind might venture quietly into the small settlement and collect what was owing to them all. He might stop at the tavern for a few drinks, though he would usually buy what he needed of brandy and rum to take back into the forest, and leave with no more than a grunt to the publican.

  It was claimed that should the law be foolish enough to wander into a timber camp, and if the timber getters should first see the law and the law not see them, then the law would be unlikely to see the sunset on the river again. It was a brave set of troopers or special constables who ventured out from the police station at South-port to patrol the small, scattered and isolated communities who lived in the dense, dark forests. And those who did travelled on horseback, so that they could more easily cover the ground or avoid a surprise attack.

  Though these backwoodsmen would come out of the forest in winter to work at the Recherche Bay whaling stations during the peak season, they still kept to themselves, but should they drink, they turned into the very devil himself. The money they made during this period was spent in provisioning at the general store which they took back into the forests for the summer months.

  As well, in the summer, escaped convicts and wild men roamed the mountain country. Food was relatively easy to get in the form of small animals and the easily captured native hen. In the winter they came nearer to the towns to raid the small farms and take a sheep or even a calf or pig, and if the property were not well guarded, or the owner away, to rape any women or children they would find. These were men outside the law and, like the timber getters, they lived lonely and brutal lives deep in the forests and mountains. They left the timber getters alone unless they should find one on his own, when they would murder him for his boots or axe or some other possession.

  The bullock driver took Mary directly to the front of the tavern to avoid the mud. From the moment they entered the outskirts of the little town dozens of urchins, all with black mud caked up to their knees, had followed the cart and rudely yelled questions at Mary. But now they stood around shyly as she alighted and, first jumping a small mud pool, walked onto the verandah of the public house. It was the largest building in town, though it too was built of bark, but featured at one end a wall of stone containing a great high chimney which promised a hearth in the interior of splendid proportions.

  Mary bid the driver wait and entered the tavern. At first, the smoke, smell and noise overwhelmed her senses. But when her eyes became accustomed to the dark she saw it to be a large rectangular room with a crowded bar running the full length of one side. The only natural light entering the room was from three small windows set up on the wall opposite the bar, this so that they should not be easily broken if a fight broke out.

  The hearth at one end was as grand in size as it promised to be from the outside, but its tall chimney had nevertheless been badly designed. Smoke filled the room so that, with the addition of half a hundred pipes and cigars, it was far past the point of comfort for both the eyes and the nose. The low ceiling was long since blackened by the constant fumes and added to the dingy appearance of the place.

  Several card tables occupied the centre of the room and wooden benches were placed against the outside walls, and all were occupied by human forms who, from the noxious smell they emitted, had not washed in a year. Men stood everywhere drinking beer and rum, while the players at the card tables with neat stacks of coins at their side must have found it difficult to communicate the least instruction in such an awful din. Mary observed that there were no women to be seen, not even a barmaid behind the counter.

  As she walked in, there was an instant lull in the hubbub as the rough men standing and sitting everywhere appraised her. Eyes red from smoke and drinking followed her as she moved over to the bar, and two men leaning upon it stepped aside to let her in.

  ‘Is there a publican?’ Mary asked.

  This, for some reason, caused the men within the room to explode with laughter.

  ‘Aye!’ said a voice as soon as the laughter had died down. It came from a door set into the cent
re of the wall behind the bar and, at the same instant, a big, burly man with a completely flat nose and eyes stretched to slits with puffed-up scar tissue made his appearance. As he came closer Mary saw that his ears, too, had the cauliflower appearance of a rough goer. She smiled nervously as he approached her and thought him ideally suited to his surroundings.

  ‘You must forgive the men, not too many o’ the fair sex do come in ‘ere, miss,’ he said, drying his hands on his dirty apron. ‘Gin is it?’

  ‘Ginger beer,’ Mary said.

  The publican looked somewhat embarrassed. ‘Don’t ‘ave much call for ginger beer ‘ere, miss.’

  ‘Best rum, half and half and half a tot,’ Mary pointed to a clay pitcher, ‘if that be water.’

  ‘Aye,’ the publican said and took down a bottle of rum from the shelf behind him and poured a half measure into a glass, topping it with water from the jug.

  Mary’s call for best rum seemed to amuse the men and a second wave of laughter filled the room.

  ‘Now, now, we’ll have none o’ that!’ the publican called sharply, whereupon the laughter died down abruptly.

  ‘Mary Abacus, from the Potato Factory, maybe you’ve heard o’ my beer?’ Mary announced to the publican, her voice firm, not betraying the nervousness she felt within.

  ‘By Jesus, yes!’ the publican exclaimed, plainly astonished. There was a murmur around the room and quite suddenly the mood changed. Mary sensed a new tone of respect from the drinkers.

  ‘We don’t get much o’ yer stuff ‘ere, Miss Abacus, though it be greatly liked when we does.’ The publican stuck out his huge paw. ‘Sam,’ he said. ‘Sam Goodhead.’

  Mary fought back a smile at this inappropriate name. She said, ‘I have some beer for sale. Would you be interested, Mr Goodhead?’

  ‘Never get enough beer, miss. Always interested. Though o’ course it depends on the price, don’t it?’

  Mary gave Sam Goodhead a description of the beer and told him the quantity and the price, which she’d set fairly low so that the beer would be seen as a bargain.

  ‘I’ll take the lot orf yer hands, Miss Abacus, ‘appy to do business!’

  ‘I shall need accommodation tonight. Does you have a safe room, Mr Goodhead?’

  ‘Not ‘ere I doesn’t, but if you’d care to come ‘ome to the missus, I daresay we can put some o’ the brats together and find you a bed what’s safe enough. We’d take it as a pleasure if you’d ‘ave tea with us.’

  The noise in the room gradually resumed its former level, though several men had left the tavern to inspect the beer on the bullock cart. When Sam Goodhead arrived with Mary the men were taunting the bullock driver, who now stood with his whip held aloft ready to strike at anyone who should attempt to lift a case of beer from the cart.

  ‘Bring it ‘round the back, mate,’ the publican instructed. ‘Two stout lads back there will ‘elp you unload.’ He turned to Mary. ‘Them’s well-coopered barrels if I say so meself,’ he remarked.

  ‘Keep them with my compliments, Mr Goodhead,’ Mary said, then told the publican about the case of Tomahawk the bullock driver had taken as payment and that this should be deducted from the price and, further, that he should take a case of her new Tomahawk beer for his personal enjoyment with her compliments.

  ‘We ain’t ‘ad this beer before, it be a new one then?’ the publican said, shouldering a case of Tomahawk to take home with him. ‘I shall look forward to it.’

  Mrs Goodhead was an equal match for her husband in size and to Mary’s keen eye looked somewhat knocked about in life herself, with one eye permanently closed and some scarring on her face. It was not the custom to enquire into the background of someone recently met, as most people in the colony had a similar and unfortunate story to tell. But after several of Mary’s Tomahawk beers both her host and hostess became most loquacious, obviously maintaining a good head for liquor and, except for warming to the prospect of discussion, not otherwise disconcerted by it. Though they spoke briefly of their time as convicts in New South Wales, this was only to establish more quickly Sam’s true past vocation, which was, Mary was not surprised to hear, that of a professional fighter. His wife, Esmeralda, had also been a fighter of some renown, originally in Bristol and later in the colony of New South Wales.

  Sam had risen and shortly returned carrying an old poster which he handed to Mary. ‘Read it aloud, please, Miss Abacus,’ he said, laughing.

  Mary held the poster up and began to read.

  Sam Goodhead hereby challenges to fight any man in the colony for a prize of Five Pounds plus travel expenses and two gallons of beer. My wife Esmeralda shall fight any woman in the country, bar none; and for a prize of Two Pounds, travel expenses and a bottle of English Gin. My dog will fight any dog of 45 lb or less for two shillings, plus a juicy butcher’s bone! My cock shall fight any cock in the colony of any weight for a shilling and a lb of good corn!

  *****

  Apply, Mr Sam Goodhead,

  Parramatta Post Office.

  Both Sam and Esmeralda Goodhead laughed uproariously as Mary concluded.

  ‘Aye, it does ya good to ‘ave it read out loud. Though we knows it orf by ‘eart, we can’t read neiver of us, so it’s good to ‘ave it read by someone else once in a while,’ Sam declared happily.

  This explained why the publican and his wife had not broached the subject of the label on the Tomahawk bottle, for they were by now on their sixth bottle.

  Esmeralda finally rose and prepared supper, a meal of roast beef with potatoes and swedes and a most delicious pickled cabbage. She filled four plates for her children and sent them outside to eat, and then brought three more heaped helpings to the table where they had been drinking. It was a meal as good as any Mary had tasted, and much more than she could eat. She excused herself after having finished less than half the contents of the plate.

  ‘Never you mind, love, the little ‘uns’ll polish that orf soon enough, or Sam ‘ere!’ Esmeralda laughed.

  After tea Sam produced a clay pipe, and when he had it well stoked so that the room was fuggy with smoke, Mary addressed him quietly.

  ‘I has a proposition to put to you, Sam,’ she said, for they were now on Christian name terms.

  ‘Put away, lass,’ Sam Goodhead said, puffing contentedly on his pipe.

  ‘It be in strictest confidence.’

  Sam nodded. ‘Aye, everythin’ is. I’ll not tell unless I can make a profit out of it,’ he said with a wink.

  ‘That be the point,’ Mary said. ‘If you stays stum, you makes a very big profit; if you talks, you owes me for the beer!’

  ‘What’s ya mean, lass?’ Sam said, now most interested and leaning forward. Esmeralda, who was scouring a pot with her back to them, suddenly stopped scrubbing.

  ‘I needs some advice and help, nothing more, ‘cept I don’t want any folks to know about it right off!’

  ‘That’s not so easy ‘round ‘ere.’ Sam laughed. ‘Scratch the ‘ead of a pimple on yer arse and it’s the talk o’ the bleedin’ town fer days. Your comin’ ‘ere today is already the news o’ the month!’

  ‘Year!’ Esmeralda called.

  ‘What is it then?’ Sam Goodhead asked.

  Mary told him that she needed someone who wouldn’t talk about it to take her as far as it was possible to go up the Kermandie River and thereafter to give her, if possible, some directions which would take her to the high mountains. ‘That’s all, a boatman what will keep his gob shut and some directions possibly.’

  Sam Goodhead whistled. ‘And you’ll give us what?’

  ‘The whole consignment o’ beer I brought,’ Mary said.

  Sam Goodhead sighed. ‘I’m sorely tempted, lass.’

  Esmeralda turned from her pots. ‘You’ll do no such thing, Sam!’ she shouted.

  Sam Goodhead shrugged. ‘If I did that, Mary, it be the same as killin’ you. Ya can’t take such a journey all alone. Ya can’t even take a journey like that with a platoon o’ troopers. I’m sorry, la
ss, it be suicide!’

  Mary picked up an empty bottle of Tomahawk and read from the back label. Then she told them about the abduction of Tommo and Hawk and the news that Hawk, at least, had been captured by a wild man and had been seen by some Aboriginals in the region of the Hartz Mountains.

  ‘Them blacks are a lyin’, thievin’ bunch. Most be now locked away, thank Gawd, but there still be a few ‘round ‘ere. Ya can’t trust ‘em though,’ Sam said. His pipe had gone dead and he now set about scraping the spent tobacco from the top of the bowl and relighting what was left.

  ‘Sam, I’m going anyway, all you can do is make it easier!’ Mary cried.

  Eventually she convinced Sam Goodhead that nothing would keep her from looking for Hawk.

  ‘We’ve a lad works fer me at the pub, he ‘as a boat and will keep ‘is gob shut if I tells ‘im,’ the publican said. ‘You’d best leave at first light, that way the town won’t known yer gorn.’ He puffed at his pipe. ‘Though it won’t take long before the bloody timber getters know!’ He sighed. ‘Gawd ‘elp ya, Mary Abacus, yer a brave woman, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say a very foolish one! If ya gets back alive I’ll take yer beer as bonus. If ya doesn’t, which be more than likely, we’ll use the money fer a tombstone, though I’ll vouch yer body won’t be lyin’ beneath it!’

  Mary was surprised to see that Esmeralda was quietly weeping in the corner.

  A heavy mist lay over the water as Mary stood on the shore waiting for a lad she knew only as Tom. She heard the slow splash of oars through the fog and soon the outline of a small, flat-bottomed boat appeared through the swirling vapour. Behind it was a second boat, a smaller dinghy, attached by a rope to the boat the boy was rowing. The boy shipped the oars and Mary pulled the boat onto the shore and stepped into it. The young lad standing midships took her canvas bag and stowed it in the bow, and held his hand out to steady her as she seated herself in the stern. Then, without saying a word, he pushed the boat back into deeper water, pulled it around with one oar until the boat pointed upstream, and began to row.