Tommo and Hawk

by Bryce Courtenay

  That’s the difference ‘tween Hawk and me. I sees a mongrel clear as daylight. Not a very important mongrel, mind, but one what can cause us harm and what’s got power over us. Hawk sees a man what’s on the bones of his arse, what’s closer to prisoner than to policeman, trapped by what he is and where he be. A man what’s dying same as the town around him, sinking into nothin’.

  Hawk is a fair man, fair in his heart and mind. He don’t understand that fair be not understood by such as Nottingham or even, matter of fact, by such as me. Fair don’t come into the reckoning of poor folk. Hawk sees someone to be pitied and yours truly sees danger. Hawk be about to mess things up proper by trying to get Nottingham to let us escape for five pounds. Hawk don’t understand how a gambler’s mind works.

  ‘This game o’ poker, we’re in, then?’ I takes up the question again.

  ‘Fifty-fifty?’

  ‘Fifty-fifty, solemn oath,’ I shoots back.

  ‘Remind me what happens if you lose?’

  I shrug. ‘You ain’t no worse off and we still be Auckland-bound. But if we wins, what then?’ I asks.

  This is the moment o’ truth. I sense that even Hawk knows this. I try to keep the smile on me gob, hoping that I haven’t struck too early, that me smile means it don’t seem too important to know the answer if I’ve read him wrong.

  Nottingham don’t know for sure if we’ve got the five sovs, but he’s got to figure we must have, or there’s no point. Thank Gawd Hawk ain’t shown it to him. Then I thinks, Christ Jesus! What if Hawk don’t have it and he is bluffing? Nah, Hawk don’t have the gall, he’s got the money all right. Nottingham has to figure he has, too. So what’s his options? He can take it by force— there be three constables as well as himself and we be in chains and manacles. Five pounds be a lot of money. Or, he can gamble there’s more to come if I can win at poker. It’s time for all Ikey’s lessons to pay off.

  ‘Sergeant Nottingham, sir, if you’d be so good as t’ remove me manacles for five minutes, perhaps you’d care to witness the skill what’s being brought to our side.’

  Nottingham looks me up and down and I guess he figures there ain’t all that much to me and that even he might make a show of capturing me should I try to scarper. Besides, the cell is locked behind him. We waits and he don’t say nothing. If he says no, we’re done like a dinner.

  ‘Righto!’ he says and, taking the keys from his belt, opens me manacles.

  Well, it’s all sporting stuff. Ace where no ace should be. Ace, King, Queen, Jack dealt straight off after Nottingham has himself shuffled the pack. ‘Take a card please, Sergeant? Any card.’ I offers the pack wrong-side up and he selects a card blind. ‘Turn it over and put it down,’ I points to the four picture cards already spread face up. He turns his card and puts down the Joker, amazement writ all over his rough gob. Then he smiles and I know we has won. Greed be the most dependable of all human characteristics.

  ‘Righto, you can count me in,’ he growls.

  ‘Just a moment, Sergeant, what about our winnings?’ Hawk asks.

  ‘Fifty-fifty!’ he says, indignant.

  ‘Ah! Not what you win, what we win?’

  Nottingham looks puzzled.

  ‘If we are Auckland-bound,’ Hawk continues, ‘and if, as you say, the verdict is already decided?’

  There is a long silence as Nottingham stands thinking, looking down at his broken boots. Then he slowly raises his head and looks squint-eyed at Hawk. ‘You means, what price freedom?’

  Hawk stays stum.

  The gaoler seems to be thinking again, and then he says quietly, ‘Fifty pounds.’

  ‘Fifty pounds!’ Fuck! I’m took completely by surprise. Fifty quid, I’ll wager, be near six months’ salary for a police sergeant! But Hawk don’t even flick an eyelid.

  ‘How big is the game?’ he asks cool as you like.

  ‘Five, six with him,’ Nottingham points t’ me.

  ‘Can’t do it,’ Hawk says firmly. ‘Five-pound stake for each player, that’s only thirty-five pounds. If each isn’t prepared to lose more than his buy-in, we can’t make the fifty. Even if Tommo cleans them all out, which isn’t likely. Let’s say twenty pounds, which will be hard enough?’

  Shit, Hawk’s got twenty pounds on him, I thinks. If Nottingham accepts, he’ll offer him the money right off so that we can scarper, never mind the poker game.

  ‘There’s some what will be willing to lose more than their stake,’ the gaoler says. ‘They don’t muck around.’ He pauses. ‘You scared, is it? Sorry, lads, but I ain’t sticking me neck out for less than half a hundred.’

  Hawk shakes his head. ‘Sergeant Nottingham, it isn’t reasonable.’

  Nottingham laughs, his fat stomach wobbling like a jelly. ‘It ain’t a reasonable world, son. It ain’t reasonable that the jury should hang you in Auckland, but take my word they will. Fifty pounds, that be my first and last offer.’

  ‘You’re on!’ I says suddenly. With twenty pounds I can build a proper scam. But Hawk’s right, to take fifty pounds from a single five-pounds-in game is damned nigh impossible if they’s good players. Even if I does a whole heap o’ relocation I’ll need two games to set it up.

  ‘But it’s got to be two nights, two games. Over two games we’ve maybe got a chance,’ I says to the gaoler.

  Nottingham looks doubtful. ‘Two games? I don’t know if these gentlemen will like that.’

  ‘Tell you what they won’t like? They won’t like playing with a stranger for one game only!’

  Nottingham accepts this. He’s said himself he don’t play cards with a stranger.

  ‘Fifty-fifty if you should not make the fifty pounds for your freedom?’ Nottingham says again.

  We both nod. It is sheer bastardry, but what can we do? ‘Fifty pounds in your hand and you let us scarper, right?’ I want it from his lips once more.

  He clears his throat like he’s even nervous to think of it. ‘Yes, but I’ll have to come after you, mind. Do me duty.’

  Hawk smiles. ‘By going in the wrong direction, I sincerely hope?’

  ‘Aye, I’ll do that by and by,’ Nottingham says, still shifty.

  ‘Two games, right?’ I persist, bringing them two back to the business at hand. ‘Five pounds on the table to buy into each game. The second five held at the end of the first night as surety for the next— right?’ I points to Hawk, ‘Me brother to hold the second game buy-in, in trust overnight. Oh,’ I adds, ‘and two new packs o’ cards, DeLarue & Sons, no other, one blue, one red, we breaks the seals at the table.’

  Hawk looks at me and I shrugs. In for a penny, in for a pound. Worst what can happen is we are transported to Auckland and strung up. I’m making a book on Nottingham’s greed. He’s a gambler himself, he’ll be itching to sit in on the second game and I hopes to make it possible. Nottingham’s a mongrel, and mongrels has to pay.

  ‘Right, two games,’ the gaoler agrees. ‘I think I can arrange that all right. But,’ he points at Hawk, ‘I don’t think they’re gunna let a known murderer hold the stakes overnight.’

  I see Hawk scowl and his eyes grow hard at Nottingham’s accusation that he can’t be trusted.

  ‘Safer than a bank,’ I pipes up quickly. ‘We ain’t goin’ nowhere, is we now?’

  Nottingham laughs, relieving the tension. ‘Righto, the nigger holds the buy-in and the wee lad gets new cards, DeLarue & Sons. By the by, what’s the ante?’

  ‘Let’s say five shillings.’

  ‘Five shillings?’ Nottingham thinks for a moment then nods, ‘Fair enough, lad.’

  ‘With the right to raise it before each hand?’

  The gaoler hesitates then says, ‘We’ll let the others decide, though I can’t see they’ll object.’

  We leave it at that and Nottingham returns the Queen’s bracelets to me wrists. As soon as he’s gone, Hawk asks me in strong lingo what exactly I think I’m doing.

  ‘How much money has we got?’ I ducks the question.

  He hesitates.
‘Twenty-five pounds,’ he says.

  I acts shocked. ‘Shit, why didn’t you say before? I thought I were gunna have to work with five! That I’d have to work a scam where we comes out square the first game so’s we’ve got the deposit for the second. Twenty-five quid, eh? That’s a king’s bloody ransom! Now we can have a proper strategy.’ I grin. ‘With that much, the very best o’ Ikey Solomon be possible.’ I pretend to think for a moment.

  ‘We’ll lose fifteen right off! “Thicken the plot and sweeten the pot,” as Ikey would say.’

  ‘Lose? Fifteen pounds!’ Hawk shouts, aghast. All these surprises is getting his voice up nice and strong.

  I roll me eyes in the manner o’ Ikey. ‘Can’t win in the first game, not kosher, my dears, not to be considered, quite out o’ the question. Absolutely forbidden and not to be entered into!’ I says, mimicking his voice. Hawk laughs despite himself, then grows serious again.

  ‘What if we are taken to Auckland before there can be a second game and we’ve dropped fifteen pounds in the first?’

  ‘Trust me,’ I reply. ‘Nottingham won’t let that happen. He’s a gambler what feels he’s gunna get lucky!’

  But I can’t say I ain’t worried. Any cove what plays regular in a five-pound buy-in is either cashed and most professional in his handling o’ the flats, or apt to practise a little relocation hisself. Either way, such a cove don’t much like losing to strangers and is likely to get violent.

  ‘No grog!’ Hawk says suddenly. ‘Promise me, no brandy, no spirits!’

  ‘Gamblin’ can’t be done without drinkin’, Hawk!’ I protest. ‘Folks gets suspicious if you don’t keep the tipple going.’

  Hawk works his hands in the Ikey manner. ‘Drink and think go together like boys, bishops and bedchambers— it has been known to happen but it is a most unholy alliance, my dears!’ He can do Ikey even better than me.

  I sigh and nod me head. At this rate, I ain’t never gunna taste another drop.

  The game takes place in the gaoler’s office that very night, which leads me to think Nottingham ain’t quite the innocent he seems. A high-stakes poker game don’t come about this quick unless the players expect a pretty evening at someone else’s expense. What, I asks meself, is Nottingham up to? It could mean two things. He’s told the players we’re easy fruit, ripe for the picking. But that be stupid ‘cause he knows we ain’t. So he’s not going to shit on his own doorstep, is he? He’s the one what has to live in this town. It might mean he’s got a two-way bet— all the other players is in the game together against me, a case o’ mutual benefit. Well, I thinks, there’s no point in getting too clever at reading the bastard. I’ll find out soon enough ‘cause that’s what the first game’s for, ain’t it?

  Hawk is allowed in the room but he must be seated three feet behind me, and we is both shackled by the ankle to a chair leg.

  It’s a curious sort o’ group, but no more strange, I suppose, than what’s to be found in any sea port. Seated about the table is a Maori bloke, Hori Hura, what the whites rudely call the Hairy Horror. He is a merry fellow, what wobbles with laughter after every sentence. He can barely reach the card table for his big belly.

  He is accompanied by Messrs Tate and Lyle. These last two are small, rough-looking gentlemen, though they wears good cloth-suits and clean linen with boots what have seen a shine. They is known as Maple and Syrup on account o’ the fact that they’s inseparable and their names is the same as what’s on a Tate & Lyle maple syrup tin.

  It turns out that both Tate and Lyle come to New Zealand as boys in 1844, transported on the Mandarin from Parkhurst Penitentiary on the Isle o’ Wight, young felons to be apprenticed to settlers. But they soon ran away from their masters and took to living amongst the Maori to avoid the law.

  This is how they met Hori Hura, himself only a young un. He is much taken with the pakeha boys, who soon learn Maori and teaches him English, including what Ikey would call a host of lively expressions fit to burn the ears off a church warden. They also teaches him the flats and now, for many years, they has become his partners in trading. Most curiously, there is no mention of what sort o’ goods this trade be in. But they complains that much of their former customers is now took to Auckland, where they themselves wants to go. I reckons their ‘trading’ be of a gambling nature, with visiting sailors their patsy-mark. With so few ships now calling at Kororareka and most stopping off at Auckland, they thinks to move their shady operation to the larger port.

  Maple and Syrup speak of their past with pride. Parkhurst boys is well known in Tasmania too. Such boys almost exclusively start out with a record as thieves. They is nurtured in vice and repeatedly convicted in the quarter-session courts of London Town until they finally appears at the Old Bailey. There they is given their free passage out to New South Wales or Van Diemen’s Land or to New Zealand. Ikey told of how, when he first come to Van Diemen’s Land, he would keep an eye on the Point Puer Reformatory near Port Arthur where the Parkhurst boys were transported, just in case the one and only Sparrer Fart did suddenly appear among ‘em.

  So, I says to meself, if these two bastards, Maple and Syrup, be on the straight and narrow as we’re supposed to suppose, then our gaoler be the real Sheriff o’ Nottingham, I be Robin Hood and Hawk, Maid Marian!

  Then there is the Portugee, Captain de Silva, a small, dark man with a goatee beard and a most handsome moustache, waxed and curled high to almost touch his ear lobes. Nottingham introduces him to all, saying he has only come into harbour yesterday. When he went into the police station to post bond for his crew and pay his customs duty, he happened to enquire if there be a friendly game ashore.

  The last of me erstwhile partners for the night is Mrs Barrett, what’s in fact a man, thin as a rake, wearing a woman’s dress and shawl, hose and boots. His grey hair is tied in a bun behind his neck and he has a long, black and very thin Jamaican cheroot in his mouth. His nose and cheeks is tattooed most unusual, an English rose on each cheek, one full blown, the other in bud, with the leaves and stems joined across his nose and his brow. It is a more friendly-looking tattoo than that of Hori Hura, who, like Hammerhead Jack and the other Maori aboard the Nankin Maiden, is covered in black squiggles and circles over every inch of his ugly gob.

  Each player has brought along his preferred tipple. Hori Hura has rum, Maple and Syrup has Cape brandy, Captain de Silva drinks oporto wine and Mrs Barrett has Bombay gin. Me gut is howling like a dog at the moon with all these elixirs of heavenly transport placed before it. In their shining bottles they be so near to me yet so far from me reach. I has to concentrate all the harder for not drinking than if I were swilling it down, on me road back to drunkenness as Hawk fears.

  To rub salt into the wound, Nottingham explains to all assembled that, because I be a prisoner of Her Majesty, I cannot consume ardent spirits. This be a ploy suggested by Hawk so me abstinence ain’t thought strange. So, here I am dealing the cards for stud poker with a mug o’ stream water which I am obliged to sip, to the constant chaffing and the pretended commiseration of all what sits comfortable and comforted with their favourite tipple at their elbows.

  ‘Now the flats be a game o’ two characters,’ Ikey would say. ‘It is popular thought that if you know the man you know the game he’ll play, but that, my dears, be purest codswallop. Cards bring out the best and worst in a person and often the opposite to what’s expected.

  Timothy Timid can play like a lion and Terrible Tim like a lamb. The flats be the other person in each of us; find this second person and you’ve got your patsy-mark.’

  It’s soon apparent that Hori Hura, and Maple and Syrup be skilled enough but lack true intelligence. Of the other two, Captain de Silva, the Portugee captain is a careful player— highly skilled but one who ain’t prepared to venture too much. Mrs Barrett appears to be the one to watch. Cunning as a rat, he strikes like a cobra. A very pretty player o’ the flats indeed but a mite too hot-headed, and I think he is working a scam, which I will soon enough locate.r />
  I loses slowly but steadily to each of them, dealing them good hands each time it is my turn. I’m losing less than I had hoped to Hori Hura and his Parkhurst boys who are, towards the end of the evening, a little too drunk and do not take all the opportunities me generosity affords them. Each ends the evening with their buy-in still intact and a bit more besides.

  Captain de Silva wins three pounds. Mrs Barrett is the winner for the night with seven pounds— three taken from the captain in the final hand when only the two are left in the game and de Silva is forced to see Mrs Barrett by matching his last bet or dropping out. I be surprised when he chooses to drop out as I know he holds a better hand than Mrs Barrett.

  This brings me to the whole point of the night. While I has managed to lose nigh upon fifteen pounds, I has also been able to substitute both packs with me own, which I have previously marked. I have took in with me the brand-new red and blue packs Hawk bought me on the night we went ashore from the Nankin Maiden. These has been marked in Ikey’s secret manner so it be almost impossible to discover. By the end of the night I has both decks substituted and I know every card on the table. This is why I know that if the Portugee captain had asked to see Mrs Barrett, he would have taken the pot. He’s most cautious and this worries me some, for I also sees in him a hungry predator.

  In all we are down fourteen pounds and sixteen shillings when the game finally comes to an end. With Mrs Barrett the big winner, local pride is intact and I has established that this fine lady-man is not in league with the other three locals, nor is he near as good as de Silva. I cannot be sure that he ain’t in cahoots with Nottingham, but me final reading of him is that he cannot be relied on to win consistently. Nottingham would know this too.

  As for the other three, they are clearly a syndicate, and Nottingham would, I reckon, be most reluctant to make a deal with them. Besides, he is all scowls at me loss and most hard put to show a brave face. I got to conclude that our gaoler has took us in good faith as a partner. But I still reckon there is something I has missed; something I has failed to speculate upon. ‘Scratch around, look in the dark corners,’ I hear Ikey saying to me. ‘It will be there, stored in the old noggin box.’