Potato Factory

by Bryce Courtenay

  He was slobbering at the mouth, his tongue darting in and out. Then his arm rose above his shoulder and he smashed the side of her face with the back of his hand. Releasing his grip on her throat, he got to his knees and quickly pulled down his greasy hide trousers to show a huge, jerking erection. Parting Mary’s legs roughly, he tried to force an entry.

  Mary, almost unconscious from the blow, did not scream but fought to keep her wits about her and willingly allowed her legs to open. The monster was grunting and puffing as he tried to penetrate, but Mary’s prisoner’s purse prevented his penis from entering her. She felt his fingers grope at her and then with a grunt he withdrew the brass cylinder and threw it aside. Then he jammed himself between her legs, again trying to force his way into her. Mary felt the sharp pain as he entered and at the same moment she pulled the trigger of the pistol she held against his stomach. She pulled back the hammer and pulled the trigger a second time.

  A look of complete and uncomprehending surprise appeared on the wild man’s face and then he gripped his stomach with both hands. Mary set the hammer back and pulled a third time, this shot moving upwards and entering his heart, shortly followed by another. The creature jerked once and then his body slumped over her. Instantly he voided from both his natural apertures.

  The sound of the four shots echoed and reverberated through the small canyon as Mary lay terrified under the fallen monster, his member still jerking within her.

  Screaming, she pushed at the dead man and after a few frantic moments was able to climb out from under him. She was covered in blood and guts, shit and vomit, both her breasts stained crimson with his blood, which also soaked what remained of her dress and petticoat.

  Mary did not even think to pause but ran towards Hawk, who had regained his feet and now cowered against the rock. She grabbed him and clasped him to her and howled as though she herself were some primitive creature and then, at last, she wept and wept, holding her son in her arms.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  In years to come Hawk would grow into a man who stood six feet eight inches tall and weighed two hundred and eighty pounds with no lard upon him. People would whisper as he passed that he had once cheated the gallows. As proof they would point to the thick collar of scar tissue about his neck.

  ‘The rope could not break his neck,’ they’d whisper, ‘but it took his voice.’

  This last part was an appropriate enough explanation. Hawk had been dragged behind the wild man’s horse and the constant pulling and falling had destroyed his vocal cords. He would never speak again. So that the full trauma of his experience might be truly appreciated, it should be added that during the six months he was enslaved he had been repeatedly sodomised.

  On the return journey a most fortunate circumstance befell the terrified couple. The timber getters had found Mary’s trail and set out to find who had intruded into their domain. They came upon Mary and Hawk making their way down the mountain on the wild man’s horse not two hours after she had killed him. Mary was wearing her blood-stained overcoat to cover her nakedness, and Hawk clutched one of the bloody blankets about his body.

  Two of the timber getters continued up the mountain to inspect the corpse which Mary had covered with the remaining blanket, and the three others escorted Mary and Hawk safely down through the wilderness, allowing them to remain on the horse. The two men soon enough caught up with them and started to shout excitedly from some distance before they finally arrived.

  ‘She’s killed Mad Dog Mulray!’ one of them cried. ‘Shot ‘im through the ‘eart!’ the other shouted so as not to be outdone by his partner. One of them carried over his shoulder a bundle made from the opossum skin coat the wild man had worn. The second one now wore a set of military pistols in his belt and was waving Mary’s pepperbox pistol which, in her state of shock, she had entirely and most foolishly forgotten to retrieve.

  There was much excitement among the three remaining men and the oldest, a man who had earlier most formally introduced himself to Mary as Hindmarsh, looked up at her admiringly. Then the lad threw the skin bundle to the ground and untied it. Inside was the severed head of the wild man.

  Mary gasped, though she was too shocked to scream, or perhaps there was no screaming left in her. She instinctively grabbed Hawk and placed her hands over his eyes.

  ‘You ‘ave done us a great service, Mary Abacus,’ Hindmarsh said at last. ‘He were a divil, a monster creature, the anti-Christ hisself. He’s murdered seven of our forest folk.’ He touched the severed head with the toe of his boot and then turned to the lad who had placed it at his feet. ‘Tie it up again, Saul.’ Then he laughed. ‘It will make a grand Christmas present on the gate post o’ the police station in Southport!’

  One of the young men now handed the prisoner’s purse to Hindmarsh, who examined it briefly and then looked up at Mary.

  ‘This be your’n miss?’ he asked. It was obvious to Mary that he well knew the nature of the object he held in his hands.

  Mary nodded. ‘In it be fifty pounds, it were money offered for the recovery o’ me son,’ she explained. ‘The reward like.’ She placed her hand on Hawk’s shoulder.

  The men surrounding her were rough and ready and now they laughed and looked at each other, their expressions plainly bemused. ‘The nigger be your son?’ Hindmarsh asked surprised, looking first at Mary and then into Hawk’s dark and frightened face.

  ‘Yes, mine!’ Mary cried fiercely.

  Hawk jumped at the tone of Mary’s voice and the blanket slipped to his shoulders and now Hindmarsh and the others saw where the flesh was cut half an inch into the boy’s neck to expose the bones. In other parts it was festered and suppurating and slabs of pink scar tissue had been laid down from earlier rope burns. ‘Jaysus, Mary Mother o’ Gawd!’ Hindmarsh said. Then he handed the brass cylinder back to Mary.

  ‘This is not ours to own,’ he said.

  ‘I be happy to pay it all, if you’ll escort us back to the river where we has a boat,’ Mary said.

  ‘Yes we knows about that,’ Hindmarsh said. ‘It were not very well hid.’ He smiled. ‘We’ll be after takin’ you anyways, miss, you’ll not be payin’ us for that privilege!’ He pointed to the horse and then the pistols in the young man’s belt. ‘ ’Orse and pistols, they be payment more’n enough.’ He looked at the four younger men so that they might pay keener attention to what he was about to say. ‘We owes you, Mary Abacus. You be a legend from now among the timber getters, accepted as one of our own kind and welcome to return at any time you wishes, even though I daresay you be a bloody Protestant!’ He paused and then added with a grin, ‘And so we won’t be after makin’ you a saint though you comes a bloody sight nearer than most I’ve ‘eard o’ what comes from Rome!’

  Hawk spent long periods on his own on the mountain. It was as though he was eternally searching for Tommo, trying to recapture the essence of his brother. He soon regained the flesh on his bones and his neck healed well as young flesh does. Mary changed the label on the back of her Tomahawk beer to contain only Tommo’s name and description, though all else remained.

  Tomahawk Ale was now most famous in the colony and also in Melbourne and Sydney and it seemed almost the entire colony knew of the disappearance of Tommo. Mary never admitted it, but she secretly believed that Tommo was dead, though Hawk did not. Despite being repeatedly questioned in hand language by Ikey upon his return, Hawk could remember next to nothing of the kidnapping. The shock of the experience had completely erased his memory of the incident, but for the fact that they had not been captured by the wild man but by men who knew their names and had been most friendly.

  Hawk continued with his studies and was seldom without a book in his hand. Always a serious child, he was now withdrawn and rarely smiled, though when he did, Mary would say, ‘It’s a smile that could brighten a dark room at midnight’. With the benefit of the hand language which Mary soon learned well, he was able to talk with her as well as Ikey and Jessamy, who had also learned the lang
uage. With others, provided they could read, he was able to write upon a slate which he carried on a string about his neck.

  Ikey, fearing that Hawk’s inability to talk might disadvantage him, spent more and more time with his adopted son. Hawk at ten was already working on the accounting books at the Potato Factory under Ikey’s instructions. At thirteen he was most competent with a ledger and had developed a fair hand which Mary wished, when it matured, should be the most beautiful hand in the colony, and so she bought him the latest in handwriting manuals so that he might practise the perfection of his letters.

  But Ikey feared that this was not enough and, without Mary’s knowledge, he began to teach Hawk all the skills he knew. Hawk was too big in his frame to have ever been a pickpocket, but in all the other tricks of palming he became an expert. His large hands could conceal anything and there was not a card game he could not play or cheat at with great skill, though Ikey despaired of him for he would never cheat in a real game, but much preferred to win with his own wit and intellect. He taught Hawk how to ‘christen’ a watch, and how to recognise a forged banknote, of which there were a great many in circulation in Van Diemen’s Land. Hawk also learned to lip read, even though his hearing was perfect. ‘So you may read what a man says across a room or in a crowd,’ Ikey explained. Conscious that he had been brought up by Mary to be honest in all his dealings, Hawk would sometimes ask Ikey why he should learn a certain skill.

  ‘Bless you, my dear, it is not an honest world we live in and few can enjoy the luxury o’ being entirely honest within it.’ Ikey would cock his head to one side. ‘Have you not noted that the expression most cherished by those who are rich is the term “the honest poor”? They take much time to extol this virtue in those who have nothing, whereas there is no expression in our language which talks o’ “the honest rich"! Honesty, if it be truly earned, be, for the most part, the product o’ poverty and occasionally, if it is practised by the rich, a characteristic of inherited wealth, though rare enough in even this circumstance!’

  Ikey would warm to the subject. ‘There is neither bread nor virtue in poverty but, because it be a necessity, for how else will the rich become rich if they do not have the poor to depend upon, it stands to reason that the rich must manufacture more poor if they are to grow more rich! The rich become rich by taking and the poor by giving. The rich take the labour o’ the poor in return for a pittance calculated to make poor men near starve, so that they will fight each other for the privilege o’ giving o’ the labour the rich man depends upon!’

  ‘But Mary be not like that, Ikey!’ Hawk protested. ‘There are none that starve who work at the Potato Factory!’

  ‘Aye, Mary be different,’ Ikey admitted. ‘But you observe, she does not grow rich.’

  ‘That be because she has no capital to buy the machinery she must have if she is to have a proper brewery!’

  ‘Ha! Precisely and exactly and definitely and most certainly! My point precisely, my dear! If she should give the men less and not feed their brats. . .If she should employ children for tuppence a day and not men for a shilling, she might soon have the capital to expand.’

  ‘I should not wish her to do that!’ Hawk replied, his hands working furiously. ‘Her conscience and mine would not allow it!’

  ‘Conscience?’ Ikey said, surprised, one eyebrow raised. ‘That be a luxury you be most fortunate to afford, my dear! That be the single greatest gift and also the worst advantage Mary has given you.’

  ‘Why then must I learn of these ways of yours?’ Hawk asked.

  ‘You mean the ways o’ perfidy?’

  Hawk nodded his head.

  ‘The perfidious man be the normal you will come across in life. Everyone you will meet in business will seek advantage over you, my dear. So you must learn to recognise the cheat and the liar and unless you know the manner of his scam, the method of his ways o’ doing you down, you will be beaten. If you knows how a man should cheat at cribbage you will call him early. To know the scam is to make sure it does not happen to you.’ Ikey laughed. ‘Ah, my dear Hawk, you do not have the character to be a liar and a cheat!’ Ikey paused. ‘My only wish is that I teach you enough o’ the perfidy o’ mankind to prevent you from being a fool.’

  ‘You wish me to be hard but fair in my dealings?’ Hawk asked with his hands.

  ‘Aye, but also to remember the first rule o’ doing business, my dear!’

  Hawk had a peculiar way of raising his left eyebrow when he wished Ikey to explain further.

  ‘Always leave a little salt on the bread!’ Ikey explained.

  Hawk’s eyebrow arched again and Ikey wondered how best he should answer him. He found Hawk’s demeanour most strange, for at thirteen the boy had developed an acute sense of fairness and a natural dignity, and already the men who worked at the Potato Factory deferred to him willingly and took their instruction from him without the slightest hint of malice. These were rough men, born to the notion that the possessor of a black skin was the most inferior man who walked upon the earth’s surface, yet they seemed to love the boy and eagerly sought his smile.

  Though the kidnapping greatly saddened him, and his love for Tommo had left some part of him permanently distraught, Hawk retained no bitterness from the terrible experience with Mad Dog Mulray. The men who worked for Mary seemed to sense this and respected him accordingly.

  Ikey had been pushed into the street from the moment he could crawl about in the courts and alleys of the rookery, and only a minority of the children who had crawled in the filth with him had survived childhood. As soon as he could run from authority he was sent out to scavenge and pilfer what he could from the streets. He had learned from the very beginning that the means of life were desperately scarce and that they went to the toughest. Cunning, quick responses to opportunity and danger, freedom from scruples and courage were the ingredients of survival. The costermonger with his fly weights made a living while the drudging bricklayer went under. The prostitute on the corner fed her children while those of the bloody-fingered woman who stitched gunny sacks starved to death. In a few fortunate minutes a gang of urchins could rob a badly loaded dray and earn more from the goods than their parents could earn in a week of labouring.

  Ikey accepted the terms of this society where only the strong survived. But on the first day his father had pushed him onto the streets to trade with a tray of oranges and lemons he had been confronted with a new conundrum, a contradiction to all he instinctively knew in the game of survival. A rabbi had stopped the small boy and enquired as to the cost of a lemon.

  ‘That’ll be a ha’penny to you, rabbi,’ Ikey had answered cheerily.

  ‘Vun lemon is vun half penny? For twelve, how much?’

  ‘Sixpence o’ course!’ Ikey replied cheekily. The reb was a foreigner and even if he was a rabbi he must be treated with a certain English disdain.

  ‘Ja, so, let me see, I take only vun lemon for vun halfpenny, or thirteen for six pennies?’

  ‘No, sir, rabbi, that be wrong! Them lemons be twelve for a sixpence!’ Ikey corrected.

  The rabbi sighed. ‘So, tell me, my boy. You like to sell twelve lemons or vun lemon?’

  ‘Twelve o’ course, stands to reason, don’t it?’

  ‘Then ve negotiate! You know vot is negotiate?’

  Ikey shook his head. ‘Does it mean you be tryin’ to get the better o’ me, sir?’

  ‘Very goet! You are a schmart boyski. But no, negotiate, it means I must vin and you also, you must vin!’ The rabbi spread his hands. ‘You sell more lemons and also, I get more lemons!’ He smiled. ‘You understand, ja?’

  ‘But you gets one lemon what you ‘asn’t paid for!’ Ikey said, indignant at the thought that the rabbi was trying to bamboozle him.

  ‘Alvays you leave a little salt on the bread, my boy. Vun lemon costs vun half penny, twelve lemons cost six pennies, then vun lemon you give to me, that is not a lemon for buyink, that is a lemon for negotiatink, that is the little salt alvays you leave on
the bread, so ven I vant lemons, I come back and you sell alvays more lemons to the rabbi, ja?’

  ‘I tell you what, rabbi, ‘ow’s about twelve lemons and an orange for a sixpence, what say you?’

  The rabbi laughed. ‘Already you learnink goet to negotiate,’ he said as he took the orange which cost a farthing and the dozen lemons and paid Ikey the sixpence.

  ‘Always leave a little salt on the bread’ had become an important lesson in Ikey’s life. From the beginning he had always paid slightly above the going price for the stolen merchandise brought to him and it had played a significant part in earning him the title Prince of Fences. The rabbi had been correct, his ‘customers’ stayed loyal and always returned to him. Ikey had come to believe that ‘leaving a little salt’ was the reason for his good fortune and the source of his continued good luck. Ikey, like most villains, was a superstitious man who believed that luck is maintained through peculiar rituals and consistent behaviour.

  And so Ikey explained the theory of a little salt on the bread to Hawk, who seemed to like this lesson more than most and made Ikey write it out on a slip of paper for him so that he might copy it into his diary. Ikey quickly wrote: Remember, always leave a little salt on the bread.

  It was about this time that an event occurred which would change forever the lives of future generations of both families who carried the name Solomon.

  Like most great changes there was very little to herald its coming, for it emerged out of a simple puzzle which Ikey, in a moment of mischief and amusement, had composed to bemuse Hawk, although, as with most things concerning Ikey Solomon, it contained a hidden agenda.

  Ikey was becoming increasingly rheumatic and found his nightly sojourn around the Wapping and waterfront areas especially difficult. On some nights, out of weariness of step, he would remain too long in one place, and therefore be unable to complete his rounds on time or even to arrive at the Whale Fishery. More and more he relied on Hawk to help him at the races and afterwards he went straight to bed so that he could rise at midnight to do his rounds. He also became more preoccupied with death and was a regular and conscientious member of the new Hobart synagogue.