Alas, I regret to inform you that the safe when opened was empty, that is, save for a sealed envelope. When opened it contained an envelope addressed in printed writing to The Solomon Family, the note within contained only these words in Ikey’s handwriting:
‘Always remember to leave a little salt on the bread.’
You will recall it is a saying much favoured by Ikey.
And now to business which I trust will always remain only between you and I, dear Mama.
You will remember the two lines in the riddle poem:
‘To this cipher be one more to fit
&
then add roses ringed to love’
By much speculation it came to me some months ago that ‘To this cipher’ meant not Hannah’s part of the combination but only one number, and not three. The lowest number when the number 276 is finally reduced is 2 + 7 + 6 = 15 and 1 + 5 = 6. I took the number for the line ‘To my one and only blue dove’ to be six.
Then again, by working some weeks in my spare time on the conundrum I came one evening to the notion that the ring of roses seen surrounding Ikey’s tattoo was in the shape of a zero, the cipher ‘0’. I now had two numbers, six and zero. But it was the final one which took me near to despair, until some weeks ago I chanced to read the final line in a different manner, ‘then add roses ringed. . .to love’. The third number was, I concluded, contained in the reduction to a single number of the sum of the numbers made of the word, love!
These I soon worked out, which you will see from using the alphabet code are: 12 + 15 + 22 + 5 = 54. When reduced to the lowest possible number, that is 4 + 5 = 9. The third number was nine.
I now had three numbers, 6, 0, 9, and the final line tells me clearly that the ring of roses (the ‘0’) is added to the word ‘love’ so the zero, I surmised, must come after the number nine.
I am pleased to inform you that I concluded the number must be 690. Using the numbers you had given me as being the combination held by Mistress Hannah, I had a sequence complete of 690816. This proved sufficient to open the safe some four weeks before I received Ikey’s letter of instruction when David Solomon and I met on board.
I must inform you that Mr David Solomon has taken ship to return home with the sad news of the missing contents to the safe. This letter will be despatched in the care of the captain of the same vessel, the Mermaid, bound for Hobart. You should expect great unexplained lamentation from Ikey and even perchance some effect to his heart, so you must tell him immediately! You should also anticipate considerable wrath should you meet up with Mistress Hannah, or she come upon Ikey. For with him Master David carries the note from Ikey and a magnificent gold signet ring encrusted with diamonds and rubies, so that Ikey could be true to the message written on the note. I feel sure Ikey will be most pleased at the notion.
I am therefore delighted, my dear Mama, to acquaint you with the news that you are now a woman of most considerable means. The value of the gold and silver in sovereigns and in the form of ingots, and there be a great many precious stones besides, is in the region of one hundred thousand pounds. If you wish you shall have the land in the entire Huon Valley for the cultivation of hops.
I am now exceedingly happy to inform you that I have learned all we will need to know on the tilling, sowing, netting and harvesting of hops and have, with my own hands, worked every part of the growing and harvesting process. I have also acquired fifty bags of the finest quality seed.
I now most eagerly and impatiently await your instructions to come home as I must set out upon my search for my brother Tommo.
I remain, your humble, loving and obedient son,
Hawk X Solomon.
P.S. I caution you to burn this letter at the conclusion of your having read it. I will include a bank draft for the value of Ikey’s house made out in your name, to the Bank of Van Diemen’s Land, though I shall find the ten percentum commission most useful. I shall bring you a new Sunday bonnet, some bright ribbon, which I do not suppose you will affect, a winter coat, two of the splendid crinoline gowns so popular with our young Queen Victoria and several pairs of good stout, English boots. H.X.S.
Hawk’s letter crossed with one from Mary.
My darling Hawk,
I thank God every day that he has given you to me. Though I confess I also thank the great mountain as often. My news is both wonderful and sad; Ikey has passed away, though peacefully in his sleep. I wish you to come home at once. This letter is extremely short for there is a ship which leaves for England within the hour.
And now! Our Tommo is back!
This morning at eight of the clock there was a knock at the door and a boy in rags who looked not much more than eleven years old, skinny and of a dirty appearance stood as I opened it. His hair was fair and his eyes a most beautiful blue.
‘Mama, I am home, will you take me back?’ he asked.
I love you, Hawk Solomon, and we are all together again, Mary, Tommo and Hawk!
Your loving mother,
Mary Abacus.
Acknowledgements
The first thing a writer learns is that real life contains far more coincidence than any he or she will ever be allowed to get away with in a fictional plot. Life is simply stranger than fiction. Almost at a glance any daily newspaper carries examples of character and plot well beyond the imagination of the boldest of fiction writers. Good, historical fiction may be said to be fact that went undiscovered at the time it happened and the historical novel is the writer’s ability to dig deep enough to find some of the truth as it was at the time. To help me do this a lot of people gave generously of their knowledge, intelligence and time. Without them there could be no book. While they may appear below only as a list of names in alphabetical order, I count myself most fortunate to have known them all, for they are the fuel which fed the fire of my fiction.
Louise Adler, Jennifer Byrne, Adrian Collette, Benita Courtenay, David Daintree, Owen Denmeade, Margaret Gee, Alex Hamill, Jill Hickson, Elspeth Hope-Johnstone AM, Rabbi J.S. Levy, Dr Irwin Light, Larry Lyme, Essie Moses, Libby Mercer, Ross Penman, Roger Rigby, Jeff Rigby, Irene Shaffer, Michael Sprod, Paula Teague, Barbara and John Tooth. There are others who helped in smaller though no less important ways and I am grateful to you all.
There are always one or two people who need to be singled out for special mention. My editor Belinda Byrne qualifies as the star at the top of the tree, closely followed by Dr John Tooth and Paul Buddee AM. Also my publishers, Reed, who chewed their collective fingernails but kept their patience and their expletives to themselves when my manuscript was well past its promised deadline.
I thank you all.
I acknowledge and recommend Phillip Tardiff’s book, Notorious Strumpets and Dangerous Girls: Convict Women in Van Diemen’s Land,1903–1829, as an important piece of scholarship and a valuable source of information on the transportation of female convicts to Tasmania.
Finally, I acknowledge my gratitude to all those writers and historians past and present who go before me; they are too numerous to mention and too wonderful for words.
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First published by William Heinemann Australia, 1995
First published by Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 1997
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Copyright © Bryce Courtenay 1995, 2006
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Set against a backdrop of Australian pubs and politics, The Story of Danny Dunn is an Australian family saga spanning three generations. It is a compelling tale of love, ambition and the destructive power of obsession.
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So he puts pen to paper and tells the compelling tale of the life he has lived since his war-hero days. It’s an adventurous life that has had at its heart the love of two passionate and unforgettable – but very different – women.
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Inspired by real events, Brother Fish tells the story of three people from vastly differing backgrounds. All they have in common is a tough beginning in life.
Jack McKenzie is a harmonica player, soldier, dreamer and small-time professional fisherman from a tiny island in Bass Strait. Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan is a strong-willed woman hiding from an ambiguous past in Shanghai. Larger than life, Private Jimmy Oldcorn was once a street kid and leader of a New York gang. Together, they reap a vast and not always legitimate fortune from the sea.
Spanning eighty years and four continents, Brother Fish is an inspiring human drama of three lives brought together and changed forever by the extraordinary events of recent history. But most of all it is about the power of friendshi
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Billy O'Shannessy, once a prominent barrister, is now on the street where he sleeps on a bench outside the State Library. Above him on the windowsill rests a bronze statue of Matthew Flinders’ cat, Trim. Ryan is a ten-year-old, a near-street kid heading for the usual trouble. The two form an unlikely bond.
Through telling Ryan the story of Flinders’ circumnavigation of Australia as seen through Trim’s eyes, Billy is drawn deeply into Ryan’s life and into the Sydney underworld.
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In a small town like any other small town around Australia live the Maloneys. They are a fifth-generation Australian family of Irish Catholic descent who are struggling to reach the first rung of the social ladder. The Maloneys are a family you won’t forget: a strong mother, a father broken by war, three boys and two girls, one of whom has an illegitimate daughter. Each of their lives is changed forever by the four fires – passion, religion, warfare and fire itself.
Four Fires is a story of the power of love and the triumph of the human spirit against the odds.
A Vietnam Vet returns to an Australia that regards him as a mercenary guilty of war crimes.
Thommo begins to develop all kinds of physical and mental problems, and thinks it must only be him until he finds that he is not alone. Ten mates, all ‘who remain of his platoon’, are affected in the same way.
Now Thommo and his mates are eleven angry men out for revenge. They rope in an ex-Viet Cong with ‘special skills’ and his own secret agenda. They’re the ‘Dirty Dozen’, just like the movie. Only it’s real life, and they’re so screwed up they couldn’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag.
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