Solomon's Song

by Bryce Courtenay

  Hawk is suddenly very angry. ‘Mother, you have done a terrible thing, you will destroy her life. She has Tommo’s cravings for the bottle, the Dutchman will bring Hinetitama down to his level.’

  Mary has regained her calm and reaching for the tea pot she pours herself a second cup of tea. ‘I can’t imagine what yer talkin’ about. She ain’t touched a drop in almost two years and he came to dinner sober as a judge, his linen clean, dressed like Jones the grocer, neat as a new pin, and well spoken and polite throughout.’ She places the pot down and adds milk and sugar to her cup and commences to stir it, the teaspoon tinkling softly against the edge of the cup. ‘I admit he ain’t got the social standing I would have liked for the girl, but who are we to talk? We can’t help who we are then, can we? Him a foreigner, her a half-caste, you born black, me a cockney born poor as dirt and not much better than same.’

  ‘Mama, Teekleman is a gambler and a drunk, fer Godsakes!’

  ‘Well, we know all about that then, don’t we? Had one of those in the family before, haven’t we? Didn’t stop us loving him though, did it?’

  ‘Mama, that were Tommo, our own flesh and blood, it’s not the same.’

  ‘Oh? Why not? She’s in love with him, Hawk. You should see them two together. I’ve never seen her happier, singing the livelong day, carefree as a lark. She loves him all right, as much as we loved our Tommo.’

  Hawk now sees that Mary will not be baited, that she is determined to keep her equilibrium, to stay calm. He tries one more time. ‘Mama, I told you how I found them in Wellington, he’ll ruin her.’

  ‘People change. He’s been here a week and he hasn’t touched a drop as far as I know, she’s been with him most of the time and except for t’night he’s had tea with us every day.’ Mary smiles. ‘Funny to hear his voice, takes me back, just like me old dad’s, all them words pronounced wrong and “ja” this and “ja” that, like turning back the clock, Gawd forbid. I were suddenly a little girl again, tricking pennies from young men stepping out with their sweethearts in the Vauxhall Gardens.’

  ‘Christ Jesus!’ Hawk suddenly expostulates, then throwing down his napkin he kicks back his chair and leaves the table.

  ‘Ain’t you gunna say goodnight then?’ Mary calls after him. Hawk knows that he is finally defeated, that Iron Mary has won the day without shedding a single drop of family blood. He goes to bed furious and humiliated, but nevertheless determined to see Teekleman the next day.

  The Dutchman proves to be quite a different proposition to the coward he paid off with two sovs and sent packing in Wellington. He is well dressed, just as Mary has described him, and has a definite air of confidence about him. He is shown into Teekleman’s rooms, the two best available at The Ship Inn, by a manservant who, despite a suit of new clothes and boots, has the appearance of a drunkard about him, perhaps an ex-fighter gone to early seed. His rubicund nose looks as though it has been rearranged several times in the past and his ears are tight little knots of flesh. The man is plainly not overacquainted with the duties of a manservant and fails to take Hawk’s hat and coat.

  Hawk stoops noticeably to enter the room and Teekleman rises from the table he is seated at and where he has been playing a game of solitaire, the cards arranged in sequence on the table in front of him. Hawk’s memory goes back to Tommo, to his abiding obsession, how he couldn’t for a moment be parted from a deck of DeLarue and at every opportunity would finger them, handle them, splay and spread them as though they were an extension of his own body, which he supposes they eventually became.

  ‘Once a gambler always a gambler, eh, Teekleman?’ Hawk says, this opening remark intended to put the Dutchman on the defensive.

  But Teekleman is not so easily disconcerted. He smiles and extends his hand. ‘Ja, it is goet we meet, Mr Solomon.’ He chuckles. ‘Last time was maybe not so goet I think.’

  Hawk is forced to take his hand and is surprised at the firmness of Teekleman’s grip. ‘Now look here, Teekleman,

  I do not intend to beat about the bush. You are not welcome here,’ Hawk announces and then feels slightly embarrassed at how the words have come out. They sound overpompous, like a retired colonel from the Indian Army. ‘So why don’t you piss off!’ he adds, attempting to leaven his statement with an addition of the vernacular.

  Teekleman does not reply, but appears to look past Hawk, who now turns and sees that Blundstone is still standing at the door. ‘Ja sank you, Blundstone, you go now,’ the Dutchman says, waving the man out with a flick of his hand. He watches as Blundstone leaves, closing the door behind him. Hawk is fairly certain that one of the little pug’s cauliflower ears is well glued to the surface of the door.

  ‘If it’s a matter of compensation?’ Hawk now says to Teekleman.

  ‘Mr Solomon, I am here because I come myself.’ He points to the cards on the table. ‘It is just a game, I do not gamble no more, with the flats I am finish. I have goet job and I have now Hinetitama.’ He pauses and grins. ‘Is goet, ja?’

  Hawk wants to smash his fist into the Dutchman’s face, he knows the bastard is lying. ‘Five hundred pounds and your passage out of here to anywhere you wish to go. Holland, America, you name it. All I require is that you never set foot in Tasmania again.’ He knows he is offering Teekleman a fortune, but he is disinclined to bargain and has made him an offer a man in Teekleman’s position would find almost impossible to refuse. The overlarge offer is also intended to assess whether, as he suspects, there may be another agenda and Mary has rendered the Dutchman bulletproof.

  Teekleman whistles softly and appears to be thinking. ‘That is a lot of money, Mr Solomon.’ He looks slowly up at Hawk and shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says smiling, ‘I stay. I do not go.’

  As with Hinetitama, Hawk’s fears seem to have been unfounded. Teekleman has been given a job as a tally clerk in the brewery and, soon thereafter, is promoted by Mary to foreman in charge of transportation, delivering to the pubs Tommo & Hawk ale, the beer most in demand from the Potato Factory. Mary has been careful to put him to work in an area isolated from Hawk’s day-to-day influence and it has to be said the Dutchman acquits himself well enough. Furthermore, he drinks only beer, which seems not to affect his sobriety in the least, only manifesting itself by the increasing size of his girth. Hinetitama, for her part, though besotted by the Dutchman, maintains her pledge.

  The Hobart society is soon atwitter with the news of the romance, though the gossips are all in agreement that Mary has been forced to compromise and has come down in her expectations for her ‘dark little granddaughter’, the euphemism they have privately adopted for Hinetitama. They have neatly reversed the fact that Hinetitama has summarily rejected every island suitor, and now gleefully whisper that the island’s more mature bachelors and widowers have spurned Mary’s fortune and collectively rejected her granddaughter out of hand. This wildly improbable proposition is, of course, happily accepted and confirmed by the motley collection of males who have been sent packing.

  Nevertheless, everybody who is anybody in the local society is waiting anxiously to be invited to the wedding. Mary has promised a desperate and frustrated Hawk that she will wait six months before the couple are joined in matrimony, his hope being that Teekleman will inevitably reveal his true colours. When time expires and the Dutchman proves his worth an impatient Mary announces the couple’s betrothal. Hawk now begs that the wedding be a modest affair and even suggests that it take place as a civil wedding.

  Mary is appalled at this suggestion. ‘How can you deny me this?’ she castigates him. ‘Me, an old woman, what hasn’t much longer for this mortal coil! Who never had the pleasure of seeing Tommo joined and denied the same pleasure by yourself! I want this whole bleedin’ island to know me granddaughter is gettin’ married! I want guests t’come from the mainland and every publican and his wife on the island what sells our beer, all the workers, down to the most ’umble, with their families and the nobs and the snobs and the true merinos, I want the lot, even the flamin
’ governor!’

  ‘Mama, the workers and the publicans yes, maybe a grand picnic for them. As for the rest they despise us, they’ll come to laugh, you’ll be giving them more bitch-faced pleasure than they’ve enjoyed in years. I doubt also that the governor will accept.’

  ‘Yes he will, he knows what side his bread is buttered,’ though Mary secretly doubts that Governor Hamilton will accept her invitation. He’s a nice enough cove, but his wife, Lady Teresa, is a frightful snob with her nose held high enough to look down upon Mount Wellington, never mind the hoi polloi. Mary takes a final shot at Hawk’s objection. ‘You’ve made me wait all this time, she could be nigh six months pregnant by now! I may not live long enough to see me own great-grandchild!’

  Hawk gives a bitter little laugh. ‘Mama, if you have to cut the umbilical cord with your own teeth, you’ll be at the birth!’

  ‘Yes, well, you’re not denying me a proper wedding. Next you’ll be telling me you’ll not give the bride away.’

  Hawk feels he cannot protest any longer. ‘May as well be hung for a sheep as a goat,’ he grins.

  ‘Good, then that’s settled,’ Mary says, trying hard to conceal the triumph in her voice.

  The wedding is truly a grand affair with the governor in attendance at St David’s Church, though not at the reception afterwards, which is held at the racecourse, there being no other venue sufficiently large to contain the crowd. Three dozen oxen and at least four times as many lambs are roasted and it seems all of Tasmania is in attendance. Mary has reluctantly made a concession to the local society members by creating a grand banquet for them in the Members’ enclosure.

  She explains this separation of the classes to Hawk. ‘I don’t want the nobs and the true merinos walking about among the mob with the ordinary folks chewing a bit of a chop and having a good time feeling obliged to bow and scrape and thinking they’s not just as entitled to be there as the nobs.’

  In fact, she only visits the Members’ enclosure once, to present and to drink a toast to the bride and groom, whereupon the three of them promptly leave the nobs to themselves, joining the picnic on the course. Hawk, meanwhile, remains with the common crowd.

  In the months that follow the wedding not much is worthy of mention. Teekleman, having secured the prize, does not go astray and within a few weeks, almost on cue, Hinetitama announces that she is experiencing nausea. ‘Morning sickness,’ Mary announces gleefully to the cook, ‘a little strained broth if you will, Mrs Briggs.’

  On time and with surprisingly little fuss, given Hinetitama’s size, Ben Solomon-Teekleman is delivered by a midwife, with Dr Moses standing by, enjoying an excellent Portuguese sherry or two in Hawk’s study.

  The lack of complication in Ben’s delivery will characterise him all his life. He is a happy and uncomplaining baby who seldom cries, a child who is good at sports, gathers friends around him easily, is in the middle ranking at school and is seldom less than cheerful. Later, he predictably becomes a young man who takes life in his stride. Neither boastful nor arrogant and oblivious to the wealth at his command, he is much loved by a wide range of mates and accepted as their natural leader. At five feet and ten inches in his stockinged feet he is neither short nor tall but powerfully built, dark-haired and brown of eye with a hint of Maori about his broad brow and strong jawline. A handsome young man by all appearances, he is also an excellent shot and a natural horseman.

  His sibling, Victoria, born fifteen months later, has a difficult birth and Dr Moses announces that Hinetitama will endanger herself if she attempts to have more children. She is as fair as her brother is dark, a blonde with almost violet eyes and with a slightly olive skin. While Mary dotes on both children it is to Victoria that she is most naturally attracted. The little girl, much to Hawk’s consternation and her great-grandmother’s delight, is stubborn as a mule, and, in Mary’s last year of life, at three years old already shows an exceptional intelligence. She sits beside the old woman, doing basic sums on the abacus, the bright beads never ceasing to delight her.

  ‘She’s the one!’ Mary cackles. ‘She’s the one!’ Mary at the age of eighty-five still has all her faculties intact, though she is becoming increasingly hard of hearing. ‘Damned good thing too,’ she often says. ‘I’m tired of hearing all the nonsense people go on about.’ She was never one to suffer fools gladly but now she has become a thoroughly cantankerous old woman, the only exceptions being her great-grandchildren, though even they are sent packing when they become too boisterous for her. She no longer goes to the Potato Factory every day but still insists that Hawk talk the day’s business over with her as she takes a glass of sherry and watches the sun setting over the Derwent.

  At half-past five in the afternoon and half an hour sooner in the winter she is to be found in her accustomed chair on the porch overlooking her magnificent garden. Further off still the city snatches the last of the late afternoon sunlight and finally she looks out upon the river beyond it, that brightest ribbon of water that first brought her as a young convict woman over sixty years ago to the shores of Van Diemen’s Land.

  Though Mary enjoys the magnificent sunset and the closing down of the day, that is, on those good days when the ever changing Tasmanian weather allows it to occur, this is not the reason she is at her station at precisely the same time every evening. She waits for the green parrots. ‘My luck, here comes my great good fortune!’ she shouts as the flock approaches, wheeling towards her, seeming to be skidding on the glass-bright air. Her poor broken hand is clasped around the little gold Waterloo medal that hangs from her neck. Then as the birds pass over she releases the medal and clasps her hands to her bosom, cheering them on as their raucous screeching fills the space above her, drowning out her own calls of delight.

  It is a ritual which never varies and which is of the utmost importance to her wellbeing. The very site for her magnificent home was selected over several months of observation and only after carefully determining the exact morning and evening flight path of the rosellas.

  Apart from Ikey’s Waterloo medal, sent to her in Newgate Prison in a moment of aberrant generosity Ikey himself could never satisfactorily explain, the parrots have always signified her new beginning, her second chance and her subsequent great good fortune.

  She now recalls how she first witnessed a flock of parrots in flight as the Destiny II was leaving the Port of Rio de Janeiro, the convict transport having called in to take on supplies of food and fresh water before proceeding to Van Diemen’s Land.

  Mary was hidden behind two barrels at the stern of the vessel, having escaped from the ship’s hospital where earlier she had lain in wait for the vile Potbottom, to recover her Waterloo medal which he had stolen from her. The departing ship had reached a point between Fort San Juan and Fort Santa Cruz when she witnessed a flock of macaw parrots flying across the headland, their brilliant plumage flashing in the early morning sun.

  As the birds rose Mary could see the Sugar Loaf, the majestic peak that towers above the grand sweep of the bay and dominates this most beautiful of all the world’s harbours.

  With the flock of macaws captured against an impossibly high blue sky Mary felt a surge of exhilaration. It was the first time during the long and dreadful voyage from England that she held the slightest hope that what remained of her life would not continue in abject misery and end in her premature death.

  Her kind were usually dead at the age of thirty-four and some a great deal earlier. With seven years of incarceration on the Fatal Shore ahead of her, she had little reason to expect a life free of misery or, for that matter, of her death not arriving at the normally predicted time.

  Then, at sunrise many weeks later, as the Destiny II lay at anchor in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel prior to catching the early morning tide to take them up river to Hobart Town, a flock of bright green parrots had flown overhead calling a raucous welcome down to her. From that moment, when Mary had seen the parrots enter her life for a second time, she accepted the emerald green ro
sella as her good luck, her great good fortune. Never a day in her subsequent life passes without her going out to greet them at sunrise and, as she is doing now, to send them on their way at sunset.

  The following morning, for the first time in her new life, Mary fails to rise. She is always up before the servants and when she doesn’t appear on the balcony, Martha Billings, who usually stands in the garden where she can observe the birds and Mary at her customary place, goes hurrying to the back of the house and into the kitchen to tell Mrs Briggs.

  Mrs Briggs, all bustle and fuss, hurries up the stairs and arrives panting at Mary’s bed-chamber door. She knocks tentatively. ‘You all right, dear?’ she calls softly and then, when no sound comes from the room beyond, she knocks more loudly. She hears a faint call to enter and shyly enters Mary’s bed chamber.

  Nobody within living memory has ever seen Iron Mary in bed and Mrs Briggs is surprised at how small and frail she looks with the blanket drawn up against her chin. ‘You must call Hawk,’ Mary whispers.

  ‘Oh my Gawd!’ Mrs Briggs gasps, immediately bursting into tears.

  ‘Call Hawk, you silly woman,’ Mary rasps.

  With her hands covering her face Mrs Briggs runs from the bedroom.

  Hawk arrives a few minutes later wearing a dressing gown over his nightshirt. He has already shaved but not yet had the time to dress.

  ‘Mama!’ he exclaims as he enters. ‘You are not well?’

  The sight of the frail little woman almost lost in the large brass and enamel bed leaves him with a deep sense of shock. While Mary is an old woman, such is her character that only strangers note her advanced age. Those who have been around her for most, if not all of their lives, see only Mary, or if they are among the unfortunate, Iron Mary, but nevertheless both her friends and her enemies regard her as an indestructible force.

  ‘I shall call Dr Moses,’ Hawk says. ‘How do you feel, Mama?’