Hawk, fulfilling Mary’s wishes, allows Hinetitama to purchase a home of her own in Sandy Bay and she and Teekleman and the two children move out of the big house, taking four of the female servants and a gardener and stable hand with them.
Thinking he will be moving to Melbourne for several months at a time, Hawk does not wish to buy or build a new home for himself and the big house is much too large for his needs. Retaining Mrs Briggs the cook and Martha Billings as housemaid, he joins Ann Solomon, at her insistence, in Ikey’s old home in the centre of town where she has continued to live after her father’s death. It is simply a convenience, two people who have always known and enjoyed each other’s company in the most platonic way for the best part of their lives, but, of course, it sets the tattletales a-chattering.
Ann’s house in Elizabeth Street, though designated a cottage, is large enough for them both, with Hawk taking the upstairs rooms where the ceilings are sufficiently high to prevent him from having to stoop and Ann the ground level where there are rooms as well for Mrs Briggs and Martha. Mary’s house is converted into a maternity hospital where company workers’ families receive free treatment.
The transfer of power and authority to Hawk is surprisingly smooth. Even the acceptance of him as their new adversary by the other brewers and the business community sees not the slightest reduction in their malevolence. A nigger in charge of the Potato Factory is only fractionally an improvement over an independently minded woman.
Mary, who kept most things close to her chest, has always made Hawk the exception and he knows and runs the business well, seeking among his employees and elsewhere for men, and even women, who can be trained to higher positions. Hawk is an altogether more trustful and benign authority at the helm of the Potato Factory.
However, things do not transpire as well on the family front. Four months after Mary’s death Mrs Briggs returns late one afternoon from Sandy Bay where she has spent her Thursday afternoon off visiting her friend, Mabel Hawkins, Ben and Victoria’s nanny.
Ann Solomon will be out in the evening to a whist drive, a card game with old friends whom she never fails to join on the same evening every week. Thus, it is agreed that Mrs Briggs is not required to prepare a hot dinner for Hawk and may add a quiet evening to her afternoon off. Hawk is happy to be served a cold collation on a tray in his study upstairs. On this particular Thursday, when Martha is sent upstairs with the tray, she is instructed by Mrs Briggs to ask Hawk if he will see her after he has taken his meal.
‘Now this is how you says it,’ she carefully instructs Martha. ‘Sir, Mrs Briggs has a matter o’ concern to your good self, which she ’opes to see you about at your convenience, but hopefully after you’ve taken your dinner tonight.’ The cook looks at Martha doubtfully. ‘Shall I say it again, or does you understand it? G’arn, say it just like I said.’
Martha repeats the message without missing a word and Mrs Briggs nods her approval. ‘Remember, a matter o’ concern to your good self, that bit be most important, I don’t want Mr Hawk thinking I’m bringing him me own troubles.’
‘What’s the matter o’ concern?’ Martha asks fearfully. ‘Is it something I’ve done?’
‘I’ll thank you to mind your own business, my girl. No it ain’t, the world don’t revolve around you, you know. Though if you’re going to be a stickybeak, we might soon enough find something to your disadvantage, ’aven’t I seen you ogling Young Benson?’
‘Benson!’ Martha exclaims. ‘Do us a favour! I’ll not have nothing to do with him, he’s an orphan an’ all.’
‘So were you!’ Mrs Briggs exclaims, surprised.
‘Takes one ter know one, don’t it?’ Martha sniffs, then lifting the tray she leaves the kitchen with her head held high.
Hawk agrees to see Mrs Briggs immediately after he has eaten and when Martha returns to take his tray he asks her to tell the cook to bring a fresh pot of tea and two cups.
He makes Mrs Briggs sit down and pours the tea himself. Then with milk and sugar offered and accepted, he does the same for himself and leans back in his chair, lifting up the cup and saucer. He brings the cup to his lips and takes a sip. ‘Now then, about this matter of concern to myself, Mrs Briggs?’ Hawk says, smiling.
‘Mr Hawk, I hope I ain’t interfering in what’s thought to be family and none o’ my business, but I’ve been with you and Mistress Mary nigh thirty years . . .’
‘Of course not, Mrs Briggs,’ Hawk interrupts, ‘you are family. What is it you wish to say?’
‘Well, sir, it’s about Miss Heenie, she’s been beaten most severe.’
‘Beaten?’ Hawk asks, shocked. He leans forward and puts his cup and saucer down on the table beside his chair. ‘By whom?’
‘Mr Teekleman, sir.’
‘The Dutchman? Has Dr Moses been called?’
‘No, sir, Miss Heenie will not allow it.’
‘Who told you this?’
‘Mrs Hawkins.’
‘The children’s nanny?’
‘Aye, she’s the only one allowed in Miss Heenie’s bed chamber.’
‘Does she think the doctor is needed?’
‘No, sir, Mrs Hawkins knows something of nursing and says it is a matter o’ bruises, nothing broken. Miss Heenie is mending well enough, but waits until the marks are gone.’
Hawk leans back somewhat relieved. ‘Now tell me, what precisely happened?’
‘Miss Heenie’s ’usband come home last Monday dead drunk and she and him had a devil of a row.’
‘What time was that?’
‘Near on midnight. Mrs Hawkins says they was all asleep like and were wakened because o’ the shouting and blasphemy.’
‘Did anyone get up and go to her?’
‘Aye, Mrs Hawkins, she’s ever the brave one. But when she got to her bed-chamber door and asks polite if everything be all right, Miss Heenie, who she can hear crying and sobbing, stops and shouts out she’s to go back to bed at once. Mrs Hawkins says there were an empty brandy bottle left outside the bed-chamber door.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Briggs. I am most grateful to you. I’d be obliged if you’ll not speak of it to anyone.’
‘No, no, o’ course not, sir. And Miss Heenie’s servants, they’s all been in the family awhile and knows the same, to keep stum.’
Hawk expects the cook to take her leave, but Mrs Briggs makes no attempt to do so.
‘Sir?’
‘Yes? Is there more I should know, Mrs Briggs?’
‘I can vouch for Mrs Hawkins, I’ve known her all me life, a sainted woman if ever I saw one, but Young Benson he says Mr Teekleman . . . he’s been seen in Wapping.’
‘In a public house? But that is his job?’ However, Hawk knows it is a foolish thing to do. Wapping is no place to be at night and Teekleman would not be expected to visit a pub in its precinct after sunset. In fact, he is forbidden to do so by the company, one of his predecessors having been robbed and stabbed to death in its dark felonious streets some years back and another, not that long ago, robbed and badly beaten. The public houses in this notorious slum district are territorial, places for gangs and villains to congregate, and are not for outsiders after dark.
‘No, sir, it weren’t in a public ’ouse,’ the cook’s eyes grow suddenly large and her voice comes down to almost a whisper. ‘It were a gaming den!’
‘What, playing at cards?’
‘I dunno, Mr Hawk, a gaming den, that’s all what the lad said.’ Hawk can see from Mrs Briggs’ wide-eyed explanation that the two words ‘gaming den’ conjure a depravity in her mind almost beyond anything she can comprehend. A place of dark corners, scurrying rats, toothless old drunkards, filthy, scabrous harlots with their bodices ripped down and murderous villains and cutthroats, the detestable dregs of the seven seas.
James Benson, Mrs Briggs’ informer, is one of Mary’s numerous rescues from the orphanage. A young bloke, street-wise like all of his kind, he is responsible for stabling and grooming Hawk’s thoroughbred and taking care of his sulky, bringing it aro
und to the house each morning. During the day he acts as personal messenger at the brewery and, when he’s not busy with Hawk’s needs, he is expected to do odd jobs around the house. He has only recently replaced Old McDougall, a long-term family retainer who passed away a fortnight before Mary. Benson is considered by Mrs Briggs to be a bit too cheeky and forward for his own good and has not yet earned her trust, which Hawk knows is likely to take him several more years, if ever. It is because of this that she offers Benson’s information to Hawk somewhat tentatively.
‘Wapping?’ Hawk repeats.
‘Aye, that’s where ’e said it were, sir.’
If Young Benson’s information is true then Slabbert Teekleman has reverted to being his old self. Hawk hopes that it is only an aberration, done on the spur of the moment or as a gesture of bravado when he is drunk and no longer possessed of a natural sense of caution.
While Hawk hasn’t yet thought out the consequences of the Dutchman’s actions, a husband’s right to beat his wife, or even to get totally drunk occasionally, is not a heinous crime in Hobart society. Or in any prevailing society for that matter, provided always such an incident may be brushed under the carpet and doesn’t get out into the public domain except as an occasional whisper at a ladies’ tea party. The shame of having beaten your wife does not lie in the beating itself, but in the fact that it is something the common people do and is therefore altogether too plebeian. Or as the French might say, it is simply de trop, a black mark against one’s good standing in the social register.
Hawk well knows that Hinetitama is quite capable of having instigated the fight when her husband proved to be drunk beyond his normal fairly benign state of inebriation and, provided she is not badly hurt, which doesn’t seem to be the case, it may be difficult for him to interfere.
The gambling in Wapping concerns him the most. Hawk has a morbid fear of gambling and its consequences. With the sad life of Tommo always in his mind, he knows that gambling and ardent spirits do not sit well together and the results of combining brandy and cards are almost always disastrous. He can only hope, when he speaks to Teekleman, that it has occurred on this single occasion, the result of a flight of fancy by the Dutchman, and not a deliberate intention, arrived at in a state of sobriety.
Despite Mary’s instructions, the ever fair-minded Hawk has not opened the envelope with the black seal left in her office safe. Teekleman has behaved commendably in the past five years and Hinetitama seems happy to remain with him, her wild nature somewhat becalmed by the advent of the children and her temperate surroundings. She has latterly been given the responsibility of overseeing the running of the new maternity hospital, a task Hawk feels sure will utilise her talents as a nurse while keeping her happily occupied.
The Dutchman, for his part, has sired two healthy children and kept his side of whatever bargain he and Mary made. As a result he has sent her contented to her grave, the future of the Potato Factory assured. Whatever it is that Mary held against the Dutchman has either proved to be highly successful in containing his baser instincts, or Teekleman has decided to reform of his own accord. Hawk sees no point in meddling with the past while the present seems nicely intact. Perhaps the only alarming thing about the Dutchman is his stomach, which continues to enlarge to the point where he looks like a perambulating fermentation cask.
Teekleman’s rapidly expanding girth seems of no concern to Tommo’s daughter. It is, after all, a traditional sign of prosperity among the Maori and an indication that a man is being well cared for by his wife. Hawk tells himself what he doesn’t know about the man cannot influence his future judgment, which, as for every other brewery worker, ought to be made on Teekleman’s performance and not on his past misdemeanours.
Slabbert Teekleman has risen to be a distribution manager of the brewery. The common name for such a job is a ‘cheersman’. A curious job, it entitles him to start at the brewery in the late afternoon where, upon his arrival, he will examine the weekly beer orders made by the various public houses owned by the Potato Factory around Hobart in preparation for his nightly peregrinations.
Over the years, Iron Mary was forced by the rival brewers to build or buy her own public houses as they wouldn’t sell her beer in their pubs and successfully bribed or intimidated most of the independents. There was a limit to the number of public houses she could build and, if the company was to prosper, she had to ensure that each of her outlets sold near to its total capacity.
A cheersman therefore has a twofold task, he must be both a bully and a bon vivant. It is a task for which the Dutchman is ideally suited, for this ambivalence exists within him. He can be bellicose in the extreme or, if he chooses, he can soon win the approbation of the crowd with the magic of his fiddle playing. As Teekleman increases in size both these negative and positive attributes appear to be enhanced. He is, at once, a bully to be greatly feared and in another guise he seemingly becomes the merriest of company. It is a sweet and sour, hot and cold, merry and monstrous dichotomy seldom found living so conspicuously in one person.
Part of Mary’s genius was that she understood this duality in him and cast him in the role of a cheersman. If one of her pubs was not selling the amount of beer expected of it then Teekleman would drop in for a visit. Those publicans unfortunate enough to witness this side of the Dutchman did not easily forget the experience. On the other hand, if a pub succeeded to her expectations, then the publican greatly treasured his visit.
It should be pointed out, in fairness to Iron Mary, that every publican was allowed fifteen per cent of his profits as a means of eventually purchasing forty-nine per cent of his business, a task which should take him about ten years to achieve. Thus it was to his ultimate benefit to increase his sales in what Mary saw as a partnership of mutual profit.
This having been said, she would not tolerate a publican partner who did not give her his very best efforts and a visit by Teekleman in his guise as standover man was the first sign of her displeasure and a warning to the publican to pull up his socks. Eight weeks of poor trading would see him paid out and on the street. The Potato Factory was alone among the breweries in this arrangement, the other brewers using it as yet another example of Iron Mary’s stupidity and inability to understand the correct principles of profitable commerce.
Despite the fact that the Wesleyan Women’s Temperance League constantly rails against the company for selling more liquor per Potato Factory outlet than any of the other public houses, Hawk continues the arrangement after her death on the basis that the good it does for a publican and his family far outweighs the bad.
Slabbert Teekleman plays a very fine tune on the fiddle and wherever he goes in his second capacity, a good deal of merriment is sure to follow. He seems to know every jig, shanty and folk song to be sung by the light of the silvery moon and if a new one is presented to him, a few bars sung, even if it should be off-key, he will pick up the tune and present it to the crowd as though it was learned on his grandmother’s knee. His fiddle seems to have a magical quality of discovery, constantly surprising with its invention and its ability to make his audience happy. It is as though the bellicose bully is himself, while his fiddle is a happiness of its own, a person quite different in nature to the morose bully who clasps it to the curve of his shoulder.
The Dutchman’s entertaining presence in a pub of an evening will guarantee to increase the takings fivefold, while his magic fiddle seems to have the capacity to cause sworn enemies to promise everlasting friendship and send the inebriated patrons home bellowing songs to the moon.
Teekleman the cheersman is always accompanied by Isaac Blundstone, who remains within the crowd buying customers an occasional drink on the house so that a sense of good cheer prevails. He is an expert at picking those among the crowd who might not have the means to hang about, but are potentially among the most roisterous. A drink placed gratuitously in such a person’s hands will, he knows, be rewarded by the increased approbation of the crowd and in the greatly improved ambienc
e of the pub.
By closing time, the ex-pug is all sails to the wind and must generally be supported to the coach that comes to pick up Teekleman. It is the last laugh of the night as the Dutchman carries his mate under his arm like a sack of potatoes and unceremoniously dumps him into the coach.
While Blundstone is not in the employ of the Potato Factory, the company willingly accepts the cost of his largesse chalked on the publican’s blackboard. The Dutchman himself consumes large volumes of beer as a source of encouragement to others to do the same and, as a further part of the entertainment, he will challenge any man to a chug-a-lug, where, it is claimed, he has never been beaten. The presence of both men can substantially increase the takings for the night and is as happy an arrangement as the two of them can imagine while, at the same time, maintaining goodwill and bonhomie with the delighted publican.
Perhaps, after all, Mary was right, some people need only to be offered a second chance to grab the nettle and make good. Hawk hears her voice plainly in his mind, ‘We can all reform if we are fortunate enough to get a second chance.’ He wishes only that her faith in the capacity of humans to turn over a new leaf might have proved as true for his precious twin, Tommo.
‘Have Mrs Hawkins or the other servants noticed any change in Mr Teekleman’s habits?’ Hawk now asks Mrs Briggs.
‘Abits, sir?’
‘You know, his routine, his comings and goings from the house?’
‘I don’t think so, sir. He comes ’ome, takes his dinner with Miss Heenie and then goes out, returning very late, it’s what he’s always done.’
Hawk, of course, knows this to be true. It is said by some that the Dutchman’s work brings him a great deal of pleasure in both its aspects, as enforcer and clown, but with the former giving him the greater satisfaction.
Though nobody can deny his almost inhuman capacity for ale, and while he may get merry enough when he has imbibed a skinful sufficient to sink six men in a jabbering heap to their knees, he is never said to be out of control or dispossessed of his wits.
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