Solomon's Song

by Bryce Courtenay

  This proves also to be true with the female patients. Whether or not they have been put up to it by the hospital staff, the workers’ wives profess to feel equally uncomfortable knowing that they are being subjected to the ministrations of a member of the late Iron Mary’s family. Despite Hinetitama’s lack of affectation, they regard her presence almost as though the formidable old lady is herself delivering their children. As one pregnant wife was heard to say, ‘Don’t want no rich nob poking around in me pussy.’ Her words are repeated with hilarity among the staff and finally reach the brewery itself, where the double entendre is a cause for much merriment among the men. When Teekleman hears it told he makes a great pretence of laughing and being seen to be a good fellow who can take a joke, but later relays the remark to Hinetitama who finds herself completely mortified and humiliated.

  As Hinetitama has no experience in administration and no pretensions or desire or even the ability to be the hospital manager, she has, with Hawk’s help, appointed a matron and a manager, and increasingly has withdrawn her presence, remaining only, at his insistence, on the hospital board.

  When Teekleman approaches his wife about joining him as an entertainer she is, as the expression goes, ‘ripe for the plucking’. Hinetitama is bored and disappointed and while she loves Ben and Victoria dearly, Nanny Hawkins sees to most of their other needs. Hinetitama still sings to them or tells them bedtime stories of the Maori, but otherwise she is given little cause to share in their lives.

  She is a woman of thirty-two with her looks, spirit and libido still retained, but the last two have been much dampened by the routine nature of her daily life. Although she has not lost her affection for her husband, Teekleman’s increasing size has rendered him impotent and his nightly absences increase her sense of loneliness and isolation. His recent beating has caused her to believe she has lost his love and, as so often happens, she thinks she must be the cause of his anger and somehow given him reason to beat her.

  Hinetitama still works among the poor in the slums of Wapping where, during daylight hours, she is a familiar sight. But whereas her work in Auckland involved rolling up her sleeves and nursing the sick and the frail, the poor of Wapping and some of the poorer part of New Town see her in quite a different light. Before, when she worked among her own people, her work involved bandaging the broken heads of women and children invariably caused by the drunken fists of their frustrated, unemployed and usually de facto husbands and temporary fathers. Acting as a midwife to deliver their babies or trying to keep their half-starved children alive through the vicissitudes of measles and mumps, diphtheria, whooping cough and pneumonia, to name but a few of the childhood diseases rampaging through the slums, she felt then that she was one of their own, who offered them from her heart all she had and they responded by loving her and understood when the grog got the better of her as it had to so many of them.

  But here in Hobart, the poor want none of her tender ministrations, she is expected merely to give them a handout. As with the hospital, she is regarded as a member of the Solomon family, rich beyond avarice. Her bandaging, nursing and dispensing of cough syrup and ointment, pills, potions and mustard poultices is scorned as mere pretension, a rich woman playing at being Florence Nightingale. They hold out their hands and ask for money, all the while promising to send for the doctor, but, as often as not, a child remains ill or dies and the money gets spent in the Emerald Parakeet or the Lark & Sparrow. The irony of this does not escape Hinetitama, increasing her frustration.

  While she has no illusions about the desperate poor, Hinetitama finds herself increasingly disenchanted with this rich woman’s life. It is not one she has chosen for herself and her stubbornness precludes her from accepting it as a compromise role. She has begun to despise money and the life it forces her to lead. She is in this frame of mind when, to her surprise, Teekleman comes down to breakfast. She is accustomed to taking breakfast alone while he usually sleeps to well past noon.

  ‘My God, what is this?’ she exclaims as he enters the dining room.

  ‘Morning, wife,’ Teekleman says, not explaining and walking over to his chair which has been reinforced to take his enormous weight.

  Hinetitama rings the bell to bring the maidservant. ‘Do you want something to eat?’ she asks her husband.

  ‘Coffee only,’ then he points a stubby finger to the loaf of bread on the table, ‘and brood.’

  Hinetitama cuts two thick slices from the loaf of fresh-baked bread and when the maid arrives orders coffee. ‘So what wakes you at this hour?’ she asks.

  ‘We must talk, ja?’

  ‘Talk? Haven’t done much of that for a while.’

  Slabbert Teekleman looks up, his belly is so large that he appears to be seated two feet from the edge of the table but for his stomach, which touches the edge. ‘No job no more,’ he announces.

  ‘Whatever can you mean?’ Hinetitama asks, confused, reverting to the safety of her elocution lessons and the protection of good grammar.

  ‘I give it away, I tell them to stick it up their bums,’ Teekleman says, attempting to sound nonchalant.

  ‘What? What did you give away?’

  ‘Me job?’

  ‘What?’ Hinetitama shouts, forsaking all pretence at calm.

  ‘Ja, it is so,’ Teekleman says more calmly than he feels. He breaks off a small piece of bread and pops it into his mouth.

  ‘At the Potato Factory? You’ve given in your notice?’

  ‘No notice, I finish, no more work,’ her husband announces, chewing on the bread rather more conscientiously than it merits.

  ‘You saw Uncle Hawk before he left for Melbourne?’

  ‘Him? No.’

  ‘Slabbert, what can you be saying?’ Hinetitama exclaims, frustrated. It has never occurred to her that her husband isn’t well satisfied with his position as a cheersman. After all, it allows him to drink as much as he wishes, and unlike her, he seems able to hold his grog well enough. With Mary’s trust fund they are rich and if he spends all his salary on drinks to show what a great bloke he is, what does it matter? She’s long since given up thinking of him as her companion and the father of Ben and Victoria. They haven’t made love since Victoria was born. ‘You didn’t tell me you weren’t happy. I could always have talked to Uncle Hawk, he’d give you another job if I’d asked him?’

  ‘He found out I were gambling. He don’t like that, ja.’

  ‘Gamblin’? That’s the one thing!’ Hinetitama exclaims.

  ‘Ja, with Miss Mary. It is true. We agree, no gambling. But not Boss Hawk.’

  ‘What does yer mean? ’Course it’s the same.’

  ‘Miss Mary sign the agreement, not him. It be her and me, dat agreement. Ja, I have no agreement mit Boss Hawk.’

  ‘What agreement? You had an agreement with Mary?’

  Slabbert Teekleman sighs. ‘I come here because she bring me, if I don’t she tell the police. I go back to Holland, maybe I am hanged.’ He shrugs. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘What are you talkin’ about, Slabbert?’ Hinetitama has reverted to her natural vernacular which she finds puts her husband more at ease.

  ‘I kill a man. In Holland. Long time ago. She, Miss Mary, she find out this.’ Slabbert Teekleman shrugs. ‘We have contract, agreement, black seal on the paper. I give you baby, I don’t gambling, Miss Mary, she stay stom. She don’t say nothing the police.’ Hinetitama can see he is plainly distraught.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Hinetitama cries.

  ‘Ja, Miss Mary say I don’t tell you.’ Slabbert Teekleman shrugs and grins. ‘She give me goet job, plenty beer, plenty money.’ He pauses and looks at his wife. ‘When Miss Mary is alive it’s goet, ja?’

  ‘You mean you didn’t come to Hobart because you loved me? I mean, on your own like? Because you wanted to see me?’

  Teekleman looks surprised that she would have such a stupid notion. ‘Me, I am Hollander, a white man, I do not marry willing a Maori.’

  Hinetitama, who ha
s lost all affection for Teekleman, is less upset by this pronouncement than she is about Mary’s duplicity. She shakes her head in denial. ‘She bought you as a bloody stud! Jesus!’

  Teekleman chuckles. ‘I do goet job, ja? Ben, Victoria, my cock it is goet, ja, of course, I am Dutchman!’

  Hinetitama conceals her contempt for him. ‘So, Hawk found yer gamblin’? What, you and the creature Isaac Blundstone? What did Hawk say?’

  ‘He say, night-time I don’t go Vapping, it is verboten.’

  ‘And so you chucked it in? Gave up your job for that?’

  Teekleman is suddenly annoyed. ‘Ja, Miss Mary can say this, not Boss Hawk! When she die I am free man, I go where I like.’

  ‘Did she say you were free when she died?’

  ‘No. But I think so. I always think this, ja.’

  ‘And Uncle Hawk threatened you with the contract?’

  Teekleman doesn’t answer, instead he counters with, ‘Why he tell me I cannot to go to Wapping, huh? Wapping, dat is where I can play cards, poker, euchre. It is not fair, he go to buggery, ja.’

  Hinetitama sighs. ‘Slabbert, don’t be a fool. I’ll talk to Uncle Hawk about the contract, I’m sure he’ll tear it up.’ She smiles. ‘You’ve done your part, you give us Ben and Victoria, he’ll understand. He won’t tell anyone about,’ she pauses, ‘you know, what happened in Holland.’

  Hinetitama is too accustomed to the Maori way to be concerned about the supposed murder. A fight between two men of neighbouring tribes will often enough result in the death of one of them without recriminations, the fact that Teekleman may have committed a murder when he was young, sometime in the dim past on the other side of the world, means little to her.

  ‘No! It is finished! No more I kiss his black bums!’ Slabbert slaps his hand down hard onto the surface of the table. ‘Potato Factory, no more!’

  The maidservant enters with a pot of coffee and Hinetitama waits until she has left again. She pours coffee for her husband, handing him the cup. ‘So what now?’

  Slabbert Teekleman smiles. ‘We stay here. But like before, in New Zealand, I play fiddle in the pub, you sing, we are happy, ja?’

  ‘You mean you gamble and I get drunk?’

  Teekleman doesn’t deny this. ‘Maybe, a little euchre, sometimes poker, for fun, ja. Drunk? No, no, you sing only, no grog. I tell the publican.’

  Hinetitama laughs, shaking her head. ‘Slabbert, it’s been eight years since I sung in a pub!’ But Teekleman can see that as she recovers from her surprise she is beginning to like the idea.

  ‘No matter, your voice it is so beautiful.’ He smiles. ‘We can practise, soon it will be goet again, first class, okey-dokey ja, you will see,’ he jokes.

  Hinetitama thinks of the years ahead of her. The children have tutors, already she sees little enough of them, what between Mrs Hawkins and their lessons at sums and reading. She has given up any prospect of being accepted on equal terms at the hospital and the poor of Wapping don’t need her love or compassion. She has come to understand that there is a class system no less deeply felt and practised by the poor. What they will accept with open hearts from their own kind, knowing the struggle it takes to give compassion, they will not take from a rich woman with a hot breakfast under her bustle playing at Christian charity for the sake of her soul.

  Hawk comes around whenever he can, but he is very busy and when he does he likes to spend time with the children, who quite plainly adore him to the exclusion of their mother.

  Though she belongs to one of the richest families in Tasmania, it isn’t exactly a family. Teekleman the Dutchman has no status within it whatsoever, Hawk a nigger, respected to his face with much bowing and scraping, is sniggered at and disparaged behind his back, she is a half-breed, a savage with a doubtful past. What passes for the local society, the nice folk, have snubbed her since her arrival and she has returned the sentiment by ignoring them.

  It has been a long, long time since she’s had any fun. Whatever she has come to think of her husband, which isn’t much, though in the Maori tradition she is bound to him, he still plays a wonderful fiddle and she can still sing in tune.

  Hawk will be away for three months or more. If she doesn’t like working as a singer in a common public house she can creep back into her safe, cosy, boring nest before he returns and resume her role as the good little mother again.

  After all, she tells herself, they don’t need the money, they will be doing it for the fun, which is different.

  ‘Do you think we can do it, Slabbert?’

  ‘Ja, of course, my dear.’

  ‘We’ll have to practise, very hard. I shouldn’t like to make a fool of myself.’

  The Dutchman brings the coffee cup to his lips and takes a long sip. His revenge has begun, Hinetitama is back in his grasp. ‘Ja, that is goet, Hinetitama,’ he says quietly. ‘Now you are my wife again.’

  The first night they perform together is in the Hobart Whale Fishery and Teekleman’s fiddle and Hinetitama’s beautiful contralto voice, now mature and rich, complement each other perfectly and fill the public house to the rafters.

  It is more a concert than simple tavern entertainment, though the voices of the patrons raise the roof when a shanty they know is performed. Late in the evening when mellowness has not yet turned to drunkenness someone shouts, ‘Sing the whalemen’s song, “John Rackham”!’

  It is said to be the song composed for whalemen by Sperm Whale Sally, a dockside whore of the most sweet temperament and voracious appetite for both food and whalemen. As legend has it, an entire whaling ship’s crew could be accommodated by this huge and sweet-singing whore, who could consume a leg of mutton, two plump chickens or a goose and a dozen skinned and lard-roasted potatoes while at the same time drink any man who cared to sit beside her under the table.

  It is also said that the gargantuan whore, a great friend of Ikey Solomon, was the true mother of Hawk and Tommo Solomon and died giving birth to them. ‘John Rackham’ is the song which Sperm Whale Sally composed and first sang in the Hobart Whale Fishery, which has ever since flown the Blue Sally flag in her honour.

  The Blue Sally is a flag with a blue sperm whale emblazoned against a white background and was presented to any whaling ship in which a member of the crew had successfully eaten more and consumed more grog in the process than the giant whore and then afterwards still possessed sufficient stamina to receive her favours free of charge.

  This little piece of blue and white bunting was considered the greatest of talismans for a successful whale hunt a ship could fly from its foremast and it was carried throughout the Pacific islands, Antarctic waters, South America, the Caribbean, West Indian islands, along the coast of Africa and around the Indian Ocean. The song is therefore of great sentiment to the regulars who frequent the Whale Fishery.

  Though the sea shanty has been sung on the seven seas for sixty years it is claimed that it has never been matched in the original voice. Now, with the Dutchman’s magic fiddle and the Maori Queen of Song, as Hinetitama has been billed, there is an anticipation that Hinetitama might attempt to equal the original, though of course there are few, if any, still alive who heard it performed by Sperm Whale Sally. If there were, they would be too enfeebled to remember, leastways to make a comparison. Nevertheless, the imagination of the patrons at the Whale Fishery is heightened by the prospect and their pulses are quickened with the thought that tonight they may hear more than they have ever bargained for.

  The tavern is brought to silence as the giant Teekleman puts up his hand in acknowledgment of the request. In truth, it has been done at the instigation of Isaac Blundstone, who has prompted a patron to call out. Hinetitama has spent two weeks perfecting the song and so is well prepared to render it.

  ‘Ja, this is a goet, I ask her.’ He turns to Hinetitama. ‘Perhaps, maybe also, you can sing this song, you think you can remember the words?’

  ‘Yes she can! Yes she can!’ the mob chorus back. ‘Sing us the Sperm Whale Sally song
! Sing “John Rackham”!’

  Slabbert Teekleman raises his hand for silence. Then when the pub grows quiet again, though this is not achieved without some effort from the more sober among the crowd shushing those who are not far off drunkenness, Teekleman announces, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give for you, Princess Hinetitama, the Maori Queen of Song!’

  There is much applause, whistling and encouragement, for Hinetitama is, in herself, a curiosity, a Solomon by birth and a member of the richest family in Tasmania who is to sing for them in a common public-house entertainment. Many of the patrons have brought their wives and some of their children who crowd against the wall at the back near the doorway.

  Hinetitama acknowledges the crowd. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ she says, ‘I shall try to sing this lovely shanty, I don’t know that I can do it sufficiently well and I beg you all to help me please.’ Hinetitama has become so accustomed to speaking correctly and she knows she must sound quite the toff to the crowd, but she does not revert to her original accent, knowing it will be seen as an affectation.

  She is wearing her brightest gown, an off-the-shoulder velvet in cerise, a bright clear red which shows off the light brown skin of her shoulders and arms to perfection. The hairstyle, worn in the modern idiom, is a swept-up look, gathered like a wide garland about the circumference of the head, with the hair smooth and tight pulled from the centre of the scalp, and turned back and tucked under at the peripherals. But she has ignored this flight of fashion and wears her hair in the traditional Maori style, combed smooth, straight and shining to the waist, a raven-dark cascade which shows not the slightest trace of grey. She wears a double tiara of gardenia flowers, and her lips, left in their natural state, are almost the exact match of her gown. She is still an attractive woman and there are many in the crowd, not all of them men, who speculate how ever Fat Slab, the Dutchman, can have captured such a fragile beauty. There are some among them, with several drinks too many below their belts, who crudely speculate that he must surely crush her, if ever he can get it up sufficient to mount her for a smooey. Another remarks that, with his great gut interfering, his plunger could never hope to reach her pouch.