Solomon's Song

by Bryce Courtenay

  It soon became apparent that Ben was an indifferent scholar with his eyes constantly turned to the schoolroom window and the promised freedom of what lay beyond. But the ten-year-old Victoria, who would rush from primary school to sit in on the last hour of Ben’s lessons, proved to be a naturally gifted learner, in particular with numbers. She would often confound Mr Wickworth-Spode as her little fingers blurred across the abacus to return an answer to a sum in the time it took a bemused Ben to chew a couple of times at the end of his yellow pencil.

  When it was Victoria’s turn to come under the total influence of the redoubtable husband-and-wife team, they doted on her and gave their every attention to her education. It was a happy childhood with the rigours of a sound education admirably mixed with the easygoing business of life in the country, and Hawk keeping a sharp eye on their progress when he visited them once a fortnight from Melbourne. Hawk brought Victoria at eighteen to live with him in Melbourne while Ben remained, by choice, in Tasmania learning hop farming, taking over the management and the general supervision of the hop farms when he turned twenty-one. Mr and Mrs Wickworth-Spode retired to the cottage with Mr Wickworth-Spode doing the books for the four estates and Mrs Wickworth-Spode keeping the kitchen supplied with vegetables.

  Despite her private tutors and an education which proves to be well in advance of the people she meets of her own age, Victoria doesn’t see herself as above her contemporaries. They know her as a young woman with a confident and outgoing personality and friendly disposition.

  By contrast, she constantly earns the disapproval of the senior law clerk and even sometimes makes her opinions known in the august presence of one or another of the male partners when she believes an injustice has been perpetrated. She is also prepared to accept their rebukes if she is proved to be wrong, though she seldom lets her emotions override her logic and so she is more often right than wrong, which doesn’t endear her to any of the men. If it were not for the importance of Hawk’s personal financial dealings with the firm and the fact that her marks in the periodic law examinations are the highest in the State of Victoria, it is doubtful that Slade, Slade & Hetherington would continue to employ her.

  Hawk can see that she is unhappy and attempts to mollify her. ‘My dear, it is never wise to bite the hand that feeds you, they will not change their ways because you have proved them to be fools. Stay the course, bite your tongue, be patient, your time will come.’

  ‘But, Grandpa, it is not my intention to seem difficult, I wish only that they will be just and fair.’

  Hawk laughs. ‘Justice requires integrity and there is little enough of that among lawyers. They would sooner get rid of you than have to deal with their own consciences.’

  ‘But it’s not fair!’ Victoria protests. ‘The poor are evicted from their homes so that our clients can build factories on the site rather than find locations where electricity, gas, drainage and roads must first be built. Then they erect sweatshops in which women work for starvation wages!’ Victoria has already picked up the vernacular of the Labor Party. ‘That is just one case I am working on,’ she continues. ‘What’s more they will win. They’ll win because there is no one able to oppose them!’

  Hawk looks at Victoria shrewdly. ‘Have you thought to find out who owned the homes from which the poor were evicted?’

  ‘Of course,’ Victoria snorts. ‘The rich slum landlords who sell them to the developers at a huge profit but which is still less than what it would cost to develop virgin land with all the utilities to be resourced.’

  ‘Ah, there you have it, the very principle upon which English law is based, the right of property over the rights of the common man. Throughout the history of English law the penalties for damaging property have always been greater than those for harming people. The law has always protected the “haves” and punished those who have nothing. It is very simple, my dear, it is the “haves” who have always made the laws.’

  ‘But, Grandpa, they are hypocrites and the mayor announces to the world at large that they are clearing the crime-infested slums for the benefit of the city when their true motive is to build factories convenient to the city, the railways and the port! The mayor is one of the shareholders in their development syndicate!’

  ‘And what would you have them do? Build homes for the poor with hundred-year mortgages and no interest payments?’ Hawk chuckles. ‘Ours is a profit-based society with the upper class owning the capital, the middle class utilising it and the working class enduring the consequences. The poor will always be among us and while there is very little profit to a lawyer in defending a poor man’s plea for justice, there is a great deal of money to be made out of helping a rich man to exploit him. That, my dear Victoria, is what you are up against and, quite frankly, I don’t like your chances.’

  ‘But we are supposed to be an egalitarian society where Jack is as good as his master.’

  ‘In my experience wherever there is a master and a Jack travelling along the same road, it is Jack who carries the master’s portmanteau but the master who gets paid for the wares within it. Money, not class, is the equaliser in this country, Victoria, which is perhaps better than class controlling it. No profession understands this better than those who practise at the law.’

  Victoria looks up, appealing to Hawk. ‘Grandpa Hawk, they are not even clever men, they think to please their clients with sycophantic advice, invitations to the races at Flemington and the cricket at the MCG and suppers of roast beef and claret at the Melbourne Club. They are rapacious, selfish and vainglorious and would step over a beggar rather than throw him a coin. They don’t even get their Latin right!’ Victoria says in a final expression of her frustration.

  ‘Spoken with all the insight of the very young,’ Hawk laughs. ‘If brains and Latin were the sole criteria for success in business there’d be a poor living in store for most of us.’ Nevertheless, he is delighted with Victoria’s strong sense of justice but realises that, while he shares it, his attempts to be just and honest have brought nothing but misery and failure into his own life.

  Victoria will often outline a case to him in which she has acted as articled clerk and Hawk learns that she has a capacity to see both sides of a question and draw a quick and accurate conclusion. If ever she should qualify and find herself in charge of handling a case in front of a magistrate, he knows she has a tongue that can cut like a whip and an ability to quickly spot a fool, whether barrister, solicitor, witness, defendant, policeman or magistrate. Victoria may not be a blood relation of Mary Abacus, but she has the same uncanny ability to know what is wheat and what is chaff, what is useful and what is pure hyperbole. Perhaps it is the same instinct Tommo had as a gambler, to know what was real and what was bluff.

  At the age of twenty-two Victoria sits for her final law examinations and passes with flying colours. During the course of a celebratory dinner, Hawk, admittedly somewhat reluctantly, points out to her that there may be some future advantage in being counted among the members of Melbourne’s society. He adds that while he believes himself not suitable as a black man to make her introductions he can quite easily find the right chaperone to do so.

  Victoria is mortified by this suggestion. ‘Grandfather, how could you think such a thing? You of all people!’ she cries. ‘It is everything I am against! They are the people who exploit the workers, who cheat and lie and rob the poor and you want me to join them?’ She is barely able to conceal her anger at Hawk’s suggestion.

  ‘Not all of them. Not all rich people exploit the poor,’ the ever reasonable Hawk protests.

  ‘I can’t think of any who don’t!’ Victoria snaps, letting her indignation override her logic.

  Hawk laughs. ‘Well, I can.’

  ‘Who? They’re all the same. I see them every day.’

  ‘Well, you, my dear, soon you’ll be richer than most of them. You don’t exploit the poor.’

  Victoria is scornful in her reply. ‘Tush, the money Ben and I get when we’re thirty from Grea
t-grandmother’s will won’t make us rich?’

  ‘Rich enough, but the money you will inherit from me, I daresay, will make you the richest woman in the nation.’

  ‘But that’s obscene!’ Victoria cries, then quickly adds, ‘I shall give it all away!’

  Hawk laughs again. ‘It won’t make a lot of difference if you do. You and Ben will inherit a majority share in Solomon & Teekleman. As fast as you give it away your wealth will be renewed.’

  ‘But, Grandfather Hawk, they are among the worst of the slum landlords and the developers! Did you know that they employ only Freemasons?’

  Hawk nods. ‘One of David’s little innovations.’

  ‘It’s not little. Freemasonry, as you no doubt know, requires some expense which, generally speaking, is beyond a poor man’s resources. So David made it a condition that anyone who works for the company must be a Freemason and then the company pays for the regalia and, furthermore, as an incentive to join, the company pays their sick and old-age benefits as well.’

  ‘Yes, well, I’ve always thought it one of the few acts of real generosity emanating from David Solomon.’

  ‘Generosity my foot! You know what that means, don’t you? The benefit funds are administered by the Independent Order of Oddfellows, who have strong links with Freemasonry. Grandfather, they are in each other’s pockets up to their armpits.’

  ‘I would think that perfectly legitimate. If you’re going to pay for the workers’ benefits you have every right to choose the friendly society you are going to involve.’

  ‘You still don’t get the point!’ Victoria exclaims. ‘Lots of the company’s workers are poor but they are Protestants and now Freemasons. Lots of Catholics are poor but they are forbidden by the Church to be Freemasons. So Solomon & Teekleman deliberately pick their so-called slum areas to buy and then to clear for the building of factories, offices and middle-class homes where the workers’ cottages are predominantly Catholic, knowing that their own workers are unlikely to be sympathetic to their plight.’

  ‘My dear, the Freemasons are not villains, in fact integrity, honesty, moral and social virtue are the cornerstones of their beliefs. I feel sure, if they thought Abraham, as Grand Master of the Melbourne Lodge, was forcing his workers to join the brotherhood, they would soon enough do something about it. It is, I believe, one of the strongest tenets of the movement to render practical aid to the less fortunate members of the community. By helping the poorer of his own workers to embrace the brotherhood and by ensuring some sort of sinecure for them in sickness and old age, isn’t Abraham doing just that?’

  ‘Yes, but only for his own workers! The unions are powerless to prevent them from going ahead with a particular development by utilising the only weapon they have, to bring the company workers out on strike. As Freemasons, the company employees have elected not to join the various unions. Did you know the company does not employ a single member of a union! Nor can the unions bring the workers from the outside contractors and suppliers out on strike against them, because Solomon & Teekleman are virtually self-sufficient, they largely own all their own equipment and the resources to complete a “slum clearance” as they are so fond of calling it.’

  ‘Just for a moment, let’s take the company’s point of view. What have they done wrong? You call it exploiting the poor, they call it much-needed slum clearance. They are not the government, they are not required to make decisions as to what benefits the poor and what doesn’t, they are not a social welfare organisation, they are an organisation working within the law to make a profit. Moreover, they can be said to have looked after the welfare of their own employees very well indeed and, furthermore, it is the collective decision of those employees not to join a union. I can see that there may be a moral issue here for you and, of course, also for the unions involved, but in the purely practical sense Solomon & Teekleman have done nothing wrong. They are in a commercial sense completely blameless.’

  Victoria suddenly stops and brings her fingers to her lips. ‘My God, I never thought of it!’ She points to Hawk. ‘You’re one of them, a Freemason, aren’t you?’ She doesn’t wait for Hawk’s reply. ‘That’s why you’re defending Solomon & Teekleman, isn’t it?’

  Hawk laughs. ‘Freemasonry is a secret society in that it doesn’t disclose its members, but you are quite wrong, Victoria, I am not a Freemason, nor am I defending the company in which both your name and mine appears, but I do try to be a fair-minded and logical human being.’

  ‘But, Grandfather, what I say is true! They have completely manipulated the situation in their favour. John Curtin, the head of the Brunswick branch of the Labor Party to which I belong, says they’re virtually bulletproof. Frank Anstey the federal MP says the same. John Curtin says they’ve got a battery of lawyers ready to defend Sir Abraham’s actions every time he passes wind! It’s simply iniquitous and this is a company which, in part anyway, you and I own! My name, for God’s sake, is Teekleman! How can I hold my head up? How can I live with that?’ Victoria cries despairingly.

  ‘Come now, my dear,’ Hawk comforts her, handing her his handkerchief, for she has begun to cry. ‘It’s not as bad as all that, there’s still the Potato Factory under Tom Pickles, as decent a man as they come.’

  ‘Tom Pickles! Don’t give me Tom Pickles as your example. He is Master of the Grand Lodge of Tasmania!’

  ‘How do you know all this, Victoria?’ Hawk asks sternly.

  ‘I heard it at the Labor Party conference last April. From the Tasmanian delegates.’

  ‘Victoria, the Potato Factory has always been a strictly ethical company in its outside dealings, and the workers were always happy. It was your great-grandmother’s pride and joy that she neither cheated nor lied in her dealings with others. She would say, “I’ve done enough o’ that in me life and ’ad the same done to me often enough. From now it’s all on the square, do unto others what you’d want for yerself.”’

  Victoria nods. ‘According to the Hobart delegate, it’s the same there as here, no problems within, with the Freemasonry and health benefits and pension fund thing working, but the company’s outside dealings have been described as industrial rape and pillage. All kept very quiet, mind, money and Freemasonry are a powerful combination in Collins Street, but it seems this is equally true of Elizabeth Street, Hobart.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me how you felt before now?’

  Victoria bows her head and is silent awhile, then says softly, ‘There was nothing you could do about it.’ She looks up at Hawk, her eyes sad. ‘I didn’t want you to be hurt, Grandfather. You and Mary Abacus built the Potato Factory to be a fair place, a great and good company, you worked so hard to make it the best, now it isn’t any more.’

  Hawk remembers how, when Victoria was first articled as a law clerk and started to see the lack of corporate morality and greed from the inside and realised she was inadvertently a part of it, he wanted to tell her then that in a few years she and her brother would be the major shareholders again in Solomon & Teekleman, that she would have the power to change things if she eventually became chairman.

  But he held his tongue at the time, knowing that it would be eight years before she came of age to exercise her proxy, by which time, with no experience in the company, she would have little chance of competing with Joshua Solomon. He also had to consider that he might well be dead or enfeebled and no matter how brilliant his grand-daughter proved to be, she would have little hope of fighting Abraham and Joshua on her own for control.

  Now, with Hinetitama’s death and his ability to assume control again and with the declaration of war, everything has changed and the odds have evened up for Victoria. Everything but one thing, Hawk’s rapidly advancing age. He is already a septuagenarian and knows he is running out of time. He must move quickly if he is to get Victoria up and running as future competition to Joshua. There is only one way he can do this. He must once again confront David Solomon.

  Hawk has no doubt that Victoria will be a match for Jo
shua Solomon if they compete on equal terms. As two people they are very different. Victoria is brilliant, confident, stubborn with a sharp tongue, perhaps a bit of a bossy boots, but without pretension, loyal and honest and much loved by her friends.

  Joshua, on the other hand, seems of an altogether different disposition. On a superficial level he appears somewhat foppish and it would be easy to take him too lightly. But Hawk does not intend to make this mistake, Joshua is David-trained and Solomon-bred and while, on the surface, he may seem the antithesis of his uncouth and irascible grandfather, the old man appears pleased with the job he has done on his grandson and that is warning sufficient for Hawk.

  In the year Joshua Solomon has been back from Oxford it is already established among the mothers in Melbourne’s social circles that he is the big catch of the season. It seems he has no disadvantages beyond his odious grandfather who, fortuitously, must leave this mortal coil at any time. They titter among themselves and count Joshua’s many blessings. He will be rich beyond avarice, is blue-eyed, fair-haired and handsome as can be, he is well mannered and utterly charming, with the affectations and speech of a young English gentleman. To the society matrons with unattached and eligible daughters, Joshua Solomon seems almost too good to be true. To their daughters he is truly to be swooned over.

  To the patriarchs of Melbourne’s business community he represents the new age, the end of the gold-rush mentality with its rough and ready business ways. Joshua is one of the scions who will define business in the new century, just the sort of young business leader to represent the new Melbourne. An Oxford blue in both cricket and rugger where he played in the 1911 Australian rugby tour of

  England and Wales, starring on the wing in the test against Wales, he now plays cricket for Victoria. He is urbane, bright, educated and informed. While his Jewish father is sufficient reason for him to be blackballed by the Melbourne Club, he has been accepted with alacrity as a member of the Australia Club. Old codgers in the club, witnessing the young man playing at billiards, turn to each other and remark, ‘Splendid young chappie. Wish we had ten more young members made of the same solid metal, eh?’