Tommo and Hawk

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Johnny Sullivan says it, too!’ she replies, looking up quickly.

  ‘Maggie, surely you haven’t been hanging about Johnny Sullivan’s Sparring Rooms again?’

  ‘Only the once, to see the Lightning Bolt, the heavyweight champion of all Ireland what’s been landed a week from Belfast.’

  ‘And that’s when Johnny Sullivan called me a coward?’ I shake her softly again. ‘Look at me, Maggie!’

  Maggie lifts her head from the pillow, then props herself on one elbow. ‘Well no, he never said you were a coward.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘He says he could train you up to beat the Bolt, but he don’t know if you’ve got what it takes.’

  ‘What’s that, then?’

  ‘Internal fort-e-tood, he called it!’ Maggie gazes up at me, her big blue eyes still wet with tears. ‘Oh Hawk, you has got it, hasn’t ya?’

  I am forced to laugh again. ‘"Internal fortitude", I think, comes straight from the vocabulary of our friend Mr Sparrow, and not from the likes of Johnny Sullivan.’ I look at Maggie, thinking how much I love her.

  ‘Maggie, I’m no coward, but I’m no animal, either. Beating a man with your bare fists until he is half-dead, what does that make you?’

  ‘Rich!’ Maggie yells, jumping up on the bed and grabbing me around the neck. ‘Stinkin’ bloody rich! Oh, Hawk, you could take me to England to meet Queen Vic, or Lola Montez!’

  I stifle a laugh. ‘A hundred pounds to be beaten senseless? That’s not rich, that’s plain foolish! Anyway, what if I should lose? I’d be beaten stupid with nothing in my pocket!’

  ‘No! Not a hundred pound! Johnny says there’s five hundred pounds to be won. He reckons there’s plenty o’ folks what’ll cover your stake, what’s half of the prize money, with all the Papists betting on the Irishman and all the Protestants on you!’

  ‘Maggie, I’m a Jew!’

  ‘Them too,’ Maggie answers, quick as a flash. ‘Mr Israel Myer and them lot in George Street, they’ll back ya.’

  ‘To the tune of two hundred and fifty pounds, eh? That’s a lot of money, Maggie. A lot of gelt to wager on a bloke who’s had just one lucky fight!’

  ‘Johnny says yiz a natural!’ She pauses then adds, ‘If ya has the internal…’

  ‘Internal fortitude?’

  ‘Yeah, that. He says you’re fast for a big bloke and ya uses your noggin. He says your ploy with the sunset in Dunn’s eyes were a stroke o’ genius.’

  ‘That comes straight from Bell’s Life in Sydney. I read it to you myself, Maggie!’

  ‘No, it’s the truth, Johnny said it too.’

  ‘The only sunset I’m likely to see against the Irishman is the sunset of my life,’ I say. ‘Mr Lightning Bolt is not only the Irish champion but the English as well. If you leave out the Americas that makes him practically the world champion.’ I shrug. ‘Maggie, can’t you see? He’s come out here to clean up the locals, to fight Ben Dunn and the like and take home a pretty penny, because the stupid colonials think their man can win!’

  ‘That’s right! That’s what Johnny said, and Barney Isaacs…’

  ‘And, no doubt, Mr Sparrow!’ I interject.

  ‘I dunno about him.’

  ‘Maggie, you know there isn’t a sporting venture goes on in the colony that he and Fat Fred don’t have a finger in.’

  ‘No, listen, Hawk, listen to me! It ain’t like that,’ she pleads, then jumps off the bed so she’s standing up and has her face close to mine. ‘The Irishman’s gunna fight all comers. Ben Dunn and Fred Woods, Jack Robbins o’ Victoria, Jimmy Shanks o’ Queensland and whatsisname, you know, that bloke in South Australia what beat Jericho Joe, the darkie? ‘Scusin’ me. They’s all coming here to fight him. The punters, them what’s Church of England, will bet on the locals. And o’ course the Tipperary men will bet on their man and be most chuffed at the sight of their own Catholic champion from the Emerald Isle beating the livin’ daylights out o’ the local proddie lads.’

  ‘But wait a minute. Maggie, aren’t you Irish too?’

  ‘Yeah, I am an’ all, a fat lot o’ good it’s done me!’ she shoots back. Then without drawing breath she continues, ‘When the Bolt’s cleaned up, like, and thinks he’s fancy-free, that’s it, ain’t it?’

  ‘That’s what?’

  ‘That’s when we challenges the bugger to fight for a prize of five hundred pounds. That’s more than he’s made beating the living daylights out o’ the local lads. It’s five hundred pounds to win against someone what’s had only one fight. He can’t say no!’

  ‘So all the smart money bets on the Irishman and I get my brains boxed!’

  Maggie draws back. ‘Maybe Johnny’s right, you are scared.’

  ‘Damn right I’m scared!’ I snort.

  ‘Well if all the smart punters are gunna bet on the Irishman, how come there’s some like Johnny what’s willing to wager on you? Answer me that, Hawk Solomon?’

  ‘Maggie, it’s called a sting.’

  ‘A sting?’

  I explain. ‘See, Mr Sparrow has most likely arranged a consortium of sporting gentlemen who are well known to the punters, a few toffs, merchants, squatters, to put the word about that I can take the Irishman.’ I pause. ‘By the way, where do they plan to hold this fight?’

  ‘Johnny reckons one of the gold diggings, they can’t say exactly where as yet, ‘cause of the police.’

  ‘Yes, the goldfields makes sense, somewhere where there’s lots of money and stupidity, all of it available at short notice. It’s perfect for a sting. What are the chances that the only bookmakers allowed to take bets are in the employ of Mr Sparrow and Fat Fred? The odds given on the Lightning Bolt would be,’ I think for a moment, remembering what I’ve heard around the pubs, ‘four to five on—short odds, so as to discourage your ordinary punter and to make sure the Irish don’t win too much. Then on me it’s ten to one!’

  Maggie looks a little puzzled by all of this, but I continue. ‘If I’m not mistaken, there will be a great deal of secret hullabaloo stirred up about me. You know, whispers into hot ears in pubs about my secret training—how I’m punching tall trees to the ground. An incident is reported where some man swears he’s seen me lift a dray cart single-handed to rescue a child in Pitt Street and then wander away into the crowd so I can’t be given the credit. I’ve been spotted pulling a four-in-hand drag down the street and all for a wager of a sovereign. It’s said I can arm-wrestle six men, two at a time, all in a row. A punch thrown in training near kills my sparring opponent who, as a consequence, lies unconscious for a week.

  ‘There’ll even be a tale that when I was a brat some Irishman, believing me to be the very devil, put me in a sugar bag, tied the top, said a brace of Hail Marys and threw me into the river to drown. And to back all this up, there’ll be the famous Parramatta fight, which by now will have me lifting Ben Dunn ten feet off the ground with a single punch that lands fifteen feet outside the ring!’

  Maggie giggles. ‘I’ve already heard some o’ that sort o’ thing!’

  I chuckle too at my imaginings and at Maggie’s smile. ‘Well, anyway, enough of that nonsense. But what will happen is that all the miners and the little punters will be taken in by such stories and will bet heavily on me as a result. And there you have it: the sting is in.’ I take Maggie into my arms so her head is tucked snug into the crook of my neck. It feels wonderful. ‘Will you be there, Maggie Pye, to sweep up all the broken feathers of the dead Hawk and to watch the Sparrow fly away, with his fortune made?’

  Maggie struggles away from me. ‘Hawk, yiz wrong! It ain’t like that at all! I trust Johnny Sullivan. We was brats together, he wouldn’t do no wrong by me!’

  ‘Not by you, my darling, by me, the big, stupid nigger.’

  ‘But he knows I loves ya!’ Maggie protests, most perplexed.

  ‘Of course!’ I say. ‘Who better?’

  ‘Who better what?’ she asks.

  ‘Who better to help set up the sting?’ I say
gently.

  ‘You know somethin’, Hawk Solomon, I’m glad I ain’t got no brains. There’s five hundred pounds going beggin’ and you’re full o’ bullshit about a bee sting! Listen t’ me, ya stupid bastard! I thinks ya can win!’ She looks about her room, her precious home, and waves her arms to include everything in it. ‘See this, it’s took me four years on me back to get this. Four years to sleep in a decent blanket what’s got no bugs and fleas, in a room where you don’t wake up with rats running over yiz! It cost me two ‘undred pound to make this place beautiful.’

  ‘Maggie, two hundred pounds! Why, you could own your own house for a hundred.’

  Maggie clicks her tongue at me. ‘I ain’t completely daft, ya know! I do, don’t I? I owns this building and the chophouse below. How else d’you reckon I got jobs fer Flo and her folks?’ She bounces on the bed. ‘This bed once belonged to William Charles bleedin’ Wentworth, or at least his fam’ly, one of his sisters. Now it’s mine.’ She knocks on the headboard with her fist. ‘Pure cedar, that is!’ She smiles at me and I am taken by the lovingness of her expression. ‘I’d sell it all tomorrow and put every penny I gets fer it on yiz beating the Lightning Bolt. I means it, Hawk, every sodding penny!’

  I hug her tight. ‘Maggie, Maggie, you haven’t even seen the Irishman fight. You’d bet on me without even seeing his form?’

  Maggie grins. ‘I seen your form, Hawk, and not only against Ben Dunn!’ And she begins to pluck at the buttons of my blouse.

  Later, when we’re lying there together, I am reminded again of how big I am and how careful I must be holding her. But Maggie seems happy enough, content to be loved and in my arms. I know little of the fairer sex, but what I’m learning is that they need to be held and cherished, stroked and kissed long after you are empty of passion. This is when kissing has no other purpose but to tell them you love them. I have discovered that in the business of passion, a man’s arms are just as important as what’s between his legs.

  ‘Hawk,’ Maggie says suddenly, ‘the Irish didn’t really put you in a sugar bag and throw you in the river, did they?’

  ‘No more than I pulled a four-in-hand dray quicker than a team of four thoroughbreds,’ I laugh.

  Maggie laughs too. She has a lovely laugh—a sort of tinkle, like a silver bell ringing. It’s the kind of laugh you’d expect from the governor’s wife, a toffy-nosed tinkle, soft as a sunlit morning.

  ‘Hawk, how does ya know? I mean, that it be a sting an’ all?’ Maggie asks.

  ‘Maggie, I took on Ben Dunn because I overheard you and Tommo talking. I was so furious at what he’d done to you, I don’t believe he could have brought me down no matter what he did. He’d have had to kill me standing upright.’

  Maggie kisses me, her lips soft against the silver scar around my neck. ‘Ain’t nobody done that for me nor will again. I ain’t worth it, but I loves ya, Hawk Solomon.’

  I smile, and my heart is full of love for her, but I cannot tell her I love her. Not yet. ‘If I come up against the Irishman I won’t hate him, I won’t feel anything. It’ll just be one man against the other. The difference is that he’s an experienced pugilist and a champion, and I’m just a big nigger with clumsy feet and fists.’

  ‘But what about yer noggin? Johnny said you thinks real good.’

  I grin. ‘It doesn’t need Ikey’s brain to work out that a fast noggin and a slow body is not as good as a fast body and a slower brain!’

  ‘But Johnny said, fer a big un you moves fast and ain’t clumsy!’

  ‘As fast as an elephant dancing the Irish jig!’ I laugh. ‘It would be no contest, Maggie. I’d get my teeth knocked through the back of my throat, and the little people would lose their shirts. Only Mr Sparrow, Fat Fred and various sportsmen, toffs and swells, including your precious Johnny Sullivan, would benefit.’

  Maggie is silent a while and then announces, ‘Hawk, I’ve changed me mind. Them bastards can’t have ya, not even for five hundred pounds.’

  But a mischievous thought has crossed my mind, an idea quite out of character. Perhaps Tommo and Maggie have encouraged in me a daring I never thought to have. ‘Hold still a minute, Maggie. As Ikey would say, “My dears, one good scam deserves another!” I think we should talk to Tommo. On these sorts of matters he is much smarter than I am. After all, he’s beaten Mr Sparrow at cards, which Ikey said was not mortally possible.’

  Maggie looks perplexed but shrugs, and returns to her nap, leaving me to ponder. Should I raise with my twin the possibility of a sting within a sting? And do Tommo and I want to get into another scrape? What would our dear Mary think? Since we’ve been back in Australia, I have written to her every week, telling her of our various doings. I have given much thought to our homecoming and how Tommo and I would fare in Hobart Town.

  Though he denies it, my brother is in the grip of opium. It is no longer the Angel’s Kiss and I can feel the hot breath of Tommo’s devils from the wilderness closing in again. I am beginning to think it could be time to leave Sydney, for there is no opium that I know of to be had in Hobart Town.

  But Tommo, still struggling with his demons, says he is not yet ready to return home. Nor, I confess, am I. There’s Maggie Pye to think of, for a start. I’m not sure she’d like Hobart Town. I would also like to try my hand at shopkeeping—a venture that is of my own doing, not Mary’s—something which would allow me to feed the many hungry children who roam the streets in every place I’ve been. And I can see my little bower bird Maggie Pye doing very well in such an enterprise! If we could acquire the capital, we could open a shop, perhaps in the goldfields. I have kept all the one hundred pounds I won from the Dunn fight for this very purpose—though not without some argument from Mr Sparrow. When the money was handed over, he demanded sixty per cent of the purse.

  ‘Wait on!’ I said. ‘Fair go! Sixty per cent, for what?’

  ‘Expenses, my dear. You were fighting at my venue, engaged in fisticuffs with my fighter,’ he replied imperiously. ’No fear,’ I said, amazed at his audacity. ‘You had a near riot on your hands because the Welshman couldn’t fight. Though it was unintentional, I saved the day and saved your hide.’

  ‘But this is the agreement I have with your brother. It’s what Tommo gives me from his poker winnings as my commission.’

  ‘Sixty per cent?’

  ‘Aye, there are a lot of expenses to this game!’

  ‘None ventured on my behalf, Mr Sparrow. I have no agreement with you and you’ll receive no commission from me!’ I stood my ground.

  ‘I see,’ replied Mr Sparrow. ‘In that case you can go to hell and your brother with yer!’

  ‘What about the future champion o’ the world you was so keen on an hour ago?’ Tommo mocked.

  ‘Business is business!’ Mr Sparrow sighed. ‘Didn’t Ikey Solomon teach you nothing?’ Then his mood grew darker. ‘You know what, Ace O’ Spades? You’re getting too big for yer boots!’ He pointed to Tommo’s feet. ‘My boots! The nigger don’t take care of you, lad. I does! You’d best remember that! You’d ‘ave been nothing, a starving bloody drunk, without me and Fat Fred here!’

  ‘And I’d be a lot less than nothin’ without him, Mr Sparrow,’ Tommo pointed to me. ‘You gets sixty per cent of me card games, me twin gets one hundred per cent of me life!’

  ‘We’ll see how you go without me,’ Mr Sparrow sneered. ‘There’s not a card game in this colony you’ll be part of, son!’ He flounced off and Tommo waved him away with a backward flick of his fingers. ‘Toodle-oo, then.’

  ‘We’ll talk again, my boy,’ Mr Sparrow murmured to me on his way past, wagging his finger. He didn’t say anything further to Tommo but spat to the side of his boots.

  Not five minutes later he came and apologised to us both, all smiles. Straight away I wondered what he was up to.

  ‘It be the excitement of the fight, boys. Me nerves were on edge in case the police arrived and stopped it,’ he explained. ‘I lost my temper. You see, it cost me a pretty penny to stage. What
I asked you for be the commission Ben Dunn would’ve also had to pay.’

  ‘Shall I go and ask Ben Dunn, then?’ I replied, not willing to accept Mr Sparrow’s smarmy apology.

  ‘No point,’ he cackled. ‘You took all the gelt!’ He brought out a Cuban cigar, bit the end in his yellow teeth and fussed about, lighting it up. Then, through a puff of smoke, he remarked, ‘What a fight, eh? Worth losin’ my commission just to see it, lad.’

  But Mr Sparrow’s eyes narrowed as he said this and I could see by the way he chewed his cigar he didn’t like losing his commission one bit. I realised he was the type to sweep insults under the carpet in order to tidy up, but that he would come back to the dirt at a later time, never minding who got brushed aside then. I felt certain I had not heard the last of this business. I knew Mr Sparrow still intended to get the sixty per cent of my prize money, with a great deal of interest added, before he was through with me and Tommo.

  But on the surface Mr Sparrow was all smiles and forgiveness. He wanted Tommo to sit back in on the poker game that night too. ‘Plenty o’ rich pickings, lad. The gold finders pay in kind, nuggets and dust. It’ll be a most profitable enterprise!’ I thought of Ikey, who would never have lost his temper and then come crawling back. Mr Sparrow is not a patch on his old teacher.

  ‘I’ll come, but only for an extra ten per cent of the action,’ said Tommo, cocky as hell. ‘From now on we shares fifty-fifty, including tonight. What’s you say, Mr Sparrow?’

  ‘Oh no, Tommo, I can’t agree to that, lad,’ Mr Sparrow murmured, nice as pie. ‘I’m in business with Mr Tang Wing Hung and must first discuss everything with him.’ He took a puff of his cigar and exhaled. ‘You do understand me, don’t you?’

  I saw at once what he was getting at and my heart sank. More and more, Tommo had been visiting Tang Wing Hung’s opium den before going to his poker game. Now I knew that Mr Sparrow had Tommo in his tiny claws. One word from him and the opium pipe would be withheld from poor Tommo. I closed my eyes and held my breath, ardently hoping that Tommo wouldn’t give in to the threat hanging in the air. It wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen, should Tommo be denied the pipe. I would be with him, and would stay at his side however long it might take to rid him of his new addiction.