Tommo grinned foolishly. ‘Sorry, Mr Sparrow,’ he said quietly. ‘I begs your pardon. Sixty-forty as always and no harm done, eh?’
‘Ah,’ smiled Mr Sparrow, ‘that’s much better, Tommo. I only wish yer brother could see it as commonsensical. A little co-operation and all’s well with the world, ain’t that so?’
I wanted to weep. For the first time, I saw how weakened Tommo was by his need for opium, for it had him grovelling to this overblown gnat. I could still taste the blood in my mouth from the fight, but I was almost overwhelmed by fresh rage. I wanted to crush Mr Sparrow and, for the moment, Tommo with him. I had an urge to wring Mr Sparrow’s scrawny, miserable neck with my bare hands, and to put Tommo out of his misery too. I knew then that my brother had succumbed to his old despair, even though I would have done anything to prevent this.
‘Tommo, tell him to go to buggery! We don’t need him!’ I pleaded quietly.
But Tommo looked down at his boots and stayed silent. I felt deeply ashamed for my twin. How was it that I wanted to kill him and love him and hold him and protect him all in the one moment?
‘Tommo! Tell the bastard no, Tommo!’ I yelled, the words coming from deep inside.
Tommo looked at me and I could see he was crying. ‘I can’t, Hawk, the mongrel’s got me!’ he wept, burying his head in his hands.
I turned to Mr Sparrow and grabbed him by the coat front, picking him up off his feet. ‘Leave us! Before I lose my temper, you bastard!’ Then I threw him to the ground.
Mr Sparrow lay at my feet cringing. He covered his face with his hands, thinking I would kick him. Now it was not the great Mr Sparrow, a sportsman game as a fighting cock, but Sparrer Fart, little brat who was terrified. I leant down and took him by the collar, lifting him back up to his feet. He came no higher than my elbow and I could feel his whole body trembling.
‘Please, Hawk,’ he grovelled, ‘don’t hurt me!’ He closed his eyes, expecting the blow to come. ‘I’ll give him fifty-fifty, whatever you wants.’
I let him go, disgusted. ‘If any grief comes to Tommo, any harm, I’ll come for you!’ I growled. ‘I’ll see you pay, no matter what it takes!’
And so here is Sparrer Fart once again in our lives, become ’Mr Sparrow’ as if no longer Ikey’s little pupil. He’s got Tommo in his clutches, and now he wants me. The sting is his revenge on our getting the better of him. He is using Johnny Sullivan, who is using Maggie, the innocent party in all this. I am pretty certain Mr Sparrow’s vengeful mind is pitting me against the visiting Irish fighter so I can get my brains knocked out and he can clean up at my expense.
Ikey would see my idea of beating Mr Sparrow at his own game as an excellent way to get even, with a bit of solid business added. I feel in my bones that I am right and that it is not some crazed idea I have constructed out of my overheated imagination. How I have grown to despise Mr Sparrow. If he has learned his ways from Ikey, then I must think carefully about what this means for Tommo and me, Ikey’s sons.
Sunday is usually Tommo’s night off. On the Sabbath, the toffs, merchants and senior government officials, who enjoy the sportsman’s life on all other nights of the week, generally settle down to Sunday roast with their respectable families. This is their time to pat the heads of their offspring and to grunt while their wives attempt polite conversation. They must also be seen at the evening service, for many will have missed the morning one because they were sleeping off hangovers gained from a night of gambling and carousing with the likes of Tommo and the ever-present Mr Sparrow.
I know Tommo will have risen at about five this afternoon. He will have gone to visit Tang Wing Hung’s opium den, and will be returning shortly to have his evening meal with Maggie and me downstairs at the chophouse run by Flo’s father. I will ask his opinion of my plan then, for Tommo has lost none of his wits.
This is the curious thing about opium. Whereas brandy will cloud the brain, the same is not true of opium which is said by some to promote great clarity of thought. Caleb Soul, my friend and colleague at Tucker & Co., is of this opinion. A pharmacist by profession, he speaks of opium’s powers to promote intellectual thought and cites for example the work of Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and de Quincy amongst other English luminaries.
This is still no reason to embrace opium, nor will I for one moment condone its use for anything other than alleviating pain. These days, Tommo cannot live without the Devil’s Smoke, and it is my sad opinion that he could not give up the celestial poppy even if he most sincerely desired to.
Nonetheless, Tommo is in fine form when we meet for dinner, smiling and sipping quietly at a glass of his favourite Cape brandy. Though it tears at my very soul, I have accepted that he must drink. Accordingly, I have offered him the very best brandy imported by Tucker & Co. He will have none of it, preferring the rough Cape grape to all else. I have noticed that after taking opium he drinks less, though this only in degree.
‘So,’ Tommo says, when I raise the subject of Mr Sparrow’s sting, ‘have you decided to fight then, Hawk?’
I nod. ‘Only this once, and only if we can think up a way for me to win and the money to be made is, as Maggie says, five hundred pounds.’
‘Maggie’s right,’ Tommo says. ‘Mr Sparrow is most confident of the winnings to be had. With the Protestants and the Jews against the Catholics, it be a holy war of sorts, he says. What a strange thing! Here we is, brought up with no religion to speak of, and you’s gunna be promoted as a Jew.’ Tommo chuckles. ‘I reckon Ikey would have a good laugh at that! But Hawk, tell me. Why d’ya want to do it?’
‘The gelt,’ I say.
Tommo grins and shakes his head. ‘Pull the other one, Hawk!’
I look at Maggie, who appears to be most interested in her bowl of Irish stew. ‘It’s true, I want the money—the reason being I want us to open a shop. You and Maggie and me. We could make a tidy sum from this fight—enough to set us up with a shop, perhaps at the goldfields where I’ve heard there’s a fortune to be made.’
‘Come on, Hawk! You’re talkin’ to me, Tommo, your twin! It ain’t in your nature! Since when would you take up fisticuffs to earn money?’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ Maggie asks sharply. ‘Ain’t nothin’ wrong for a man to earn an honest crust at prize-fightin’!’
‘Like I said, it just ain’t in Hawk’s nature, Maggie,’ Tommo sighs. ‘You’ve seen him with the brats. He’d rather give it to others than keep it for hisself! Besides, he’s gunna take a terrible hiding in that fight.’
‘No he ain’t!’ Maggie replies, looking furiously at Tommo.
‘You can’t win!’ he says to me. ‘This bloke’s the champion of Ireland and England, for Gawd’s sake!’
‘Hawk could be the champion o’ the world,’ Maggie protests.
I cut across them both. ‘You’re right, Tommo, it’s not just about the money. Though it’s true, I’d like us to open a shop. In the end, though, it’s not that.’ I pause, not sure that even Tommo will understand what I’m going to say next. I take a deep breath. ‘It’s about getting Ikey out of our souls!’
‘What? What about Ikey? What’s all this got to do with him?’
‘To my mind, everything!’ I lean forward across the table. ‘Don’t you see, Ikey lies at the heart of our troubles!’
‘Hawk, you’re talkin’ nonsense! What’s you mean, Ikey’s the reason for our problems? He’s our father! Without Ikey’s voice in me head, I’d never have come out o’ the wilderness!’
‘Without Ikey, you’d probably never have been taken there in the first place, Tommo!’
Maggie rises from her chair and picks up her bowl of stew. ‘If you two are gunna fight I’m goin’ into the kitchen,’ she says, marching off.
We ignore her and I continue. ‘Tommo, it all started with Ikey’s greed over what was in the safe at Whitechapel—not wanting to share his half with Hannah and his children.’
‘What the hell is you talkin’ about, Hawk? What safe?’
/> In my excitement I’ve forgotten that Tommo knows nothing of the safe full of stolen treasure, which Ikey and Hannah had left buried under the pantry floor of their Whitechapel house. I’d also forgotten my oath of secrecy to Mary, though I suddenly recall her every sharp word as if it were yesterday. ‘Hawk, you’ll not talk to no one about the money, Ikey’s money, ever, you understand? Not even to Tommo, you hear!’
I look up at Tommo. He has to know. My loyalty to my twin is greater than to Mary. And so I tell him the whole story of how Mama and I conspired to win Ikey’s fortune for ourselves. How, while in England to learn about hop-growing, I found the safe and secretly emptied it of its contents, stealing the fortune from under Hannah and David’s nose, and leaving only a ring and a note which said: Remember, always leave a little salt on the bread.
Tommo bursts out laughing, ‘That were clever to use Ikey’s favourite saying!’
I recall how David had fallen defeated to his knees, clutching the ring in his fist.
‘Whatever can it mean? We are done for! My family is destroyed!’ he had wailed. ‘Ikey Solomon has beaten us all!’
‘But it was Mary and I who’d beaten Hannah and David and the rest of Ikey’s family. It was Mary’s revenge for our kidnapping,’ I confide to my astonished twin.
‘Why’d ya never tell me this before?’ he asks.
‘Tommo, forgive me, but Mama made me swear I wouldn’t tell you. When you came back from the wilderness and,’ I pause, ‘all was, well, not right between you two, she felt she could not trust you with the secret of Ikey’s money, and so she asked that I keep it a secret. I didn’t want to, but in the end I agreed. I’m sorry, Tommo.’
‘Never mind, Hawk. You done the right thing. You didn’t know how I’d be.’ He smiles. ‘I didn’t know how I’d be meself. How rich is Mary?’
‘Very!’
‘All from Ikey’s safe?’
‘No, not all. She’s done well for herself, as you know. But still the larger portion by far is Ikey’s money from the safe. So now you know what happened, Tommo. It was greed that led to our kidnapping.’
I swallow. ‘The same greed that made Mary take all of Ikey’s money and then throw us out of our own home. While David Solomon will never know what truly happened to Ikey and Hannah’s fortune, I fear he may have concluded that Mary now has all his parents’ hidden wealth. That’s still the same greed working to destroy us. Even Mr Sparrow putting in the sting is more of Ikey’s greed at work—Ikey, who taught him all he knows!
‘It’s like a curse working over and over again, from which we must somehow escape.’
I want desperately for my brother to understand, but Tommo isn’t listening. ‘You sure us bein’ kidnapped were David and Hannah’s work?’ he asks abruptly.
‘I can’t prove it, but who else would do such a thing? Mama wasn’t rich at the time, and there was no cause for anyone else to kidnap us.’
‘But what happened to us, Hawk? How were we parted? Can you remember? I can’t. I’ve tried a thousand times! I don’t have no memory of what happened after we was took on the mountain.’
‘I didn’t either—at least not until I got my voice back,’ I say to him. ‘Since then it seems to have slowly come back to me, bit by bit, like pieces in a child’s kaleidoscope. Of course, I don’t know what happened to you after the wild man took me away into the mountains.’
Tommo leans forward across the table. ‘Tell me, Hawk.’ His voice is urgent and his eyes bright with hope. ‘Maybe I’ll get better if you tell me!’
I close my eyes and slowly draw back the past. Then I begin to tell my sorry tale.
‘We were climbing down the mountain where we’d been to see the snowline when four men grabbed us. They blindfolded and gagged us, and stuffed us into hessian bags, after binding our feet and hands. Then they lifted us onto some sort of stretcher.
‘They must have struck out across the mountains to a road where they had a cart waiting. All I remember is that when they take us out of the bags, we’re both crying. They take off my gag and give me some water and a crust of bread. Then we’re both put back into our separate bags and onto a horse cart. I must have slept some, because the next thing I remember is hearing a voice shout, “Stand to!” and the cart coming to a halt. Then there are four rapid shots and a man screaming and crying out for mercy. Then another shot, then silence.
‘Soon enough a hand opens the bag and I’m pulled out by my hair. When the gag and blindfold are taken off, I can’t see anything for a while. Gradually I make out a man holding me. Beside the cart lie three of our captors dead, and another further away a bit. All look like they are sleeping—all except one who lies on his back with his arms and legs sprawled and blood coming out his mouth. Already, there are ants around him. I begin to cry again and look about for you, but you’re still hidden in your sack and I can’t reach you. Then the man who shot them comes over and hits me on the side of my head. “Nigger!” he spits. Just the one word. “Nigger!”
‘He is dressed entirely in kangaroo and possum skins but for a trooper’s high-topped white cap, and he is filthy. His beard falls almost to his waist and his hair is wild and knotted on his shoulders. What can be seen of his face is dark with dirt, the skin weathered and criss-crossed with scars. His nose is flattened like a pig’s snout and from it a stream of yellow snot trails down to broken and lopsided lips. His tongue constantly darts out, licking the snot. He is barefoot too, with the soles of his feet cracked and the long toenails all broken.’
‘A wild man,’ Tommo says, and I nod.
‘Then I realise there is another man, mounted on his horse. He is dressed in skins and ragged breeches and boots, ancient and cracked. He too has a ragged beard and his dirty face is deep-burned to a copper colour.’
‘Was he bald?’ Tommo questions me.
‘I think not…’ I think hard for a moment. ‘No, he wore a hat, a bushman’s hat. I remember, he took it off to hide whatever it was he’d taken from the dead men’s pockets in it. He had dark hair and a deep scar across his left eyebrow, running into his hairline.’
‘Well, it weren’t Sam Slit,’ Tommo says. ‘Sam were bald and no scar.’
‘It’s most likely this bastard sold you to Slit, because he takes the cart and horses and you. You are still wriggling in your bag when the wild man takes me away.
‘The wild man puts a rope about my neck and ties me behind his horse. I can’t walk because my ankles have been tied and have lost all circulation. So he drags me along by my neck, me in the dirt and him not looking back. I’m screaming your name, blubbing and choking from the noose about my neck, stones cutting into me. I just want to get back to you.’
It is the first time I’ve spoken aloud about what befell us and now I begin to weep. Tommo reaches out and puts his hand on my shoulder. ‘Hawk,’ he says. ‘Oh Hawk!’ Then I see he too is weeping.
I am grateful it is Sunday night and well past dinnertime by now, so that the chophouse is empty. Tommo and I sit and have a good old cry over the past. I can hear the clatter of dishes and laughter in the kitchen as Maggie makes some joke. After a while, we’re all right again.
‘Can you remember the rest, when Mary come to find you?’ Tommo asks, once our tears have dried.
I nod. This is the darkest of my memories and has only returned to me recently.
‘Can you tell me?’ Tommo gazes at me. ‘Or don’t you want to?’
‘I do remember, and I will tell you,’ I say gently. ‘But first, you. Do you not remember anything of what happened when we were parted?’
‘There must be something. Something what I remembers.’ Tommo gives a bitter little laugh. ‘Though I dunno why I want to. It were all so bloody awful.’ He seems to be thinking and he looks up to the ceiling as he speaks, his blue eyes glistening with tears again, his voice unsteady.
‘I remember going up the mountain, you and me, the first snow, racing up to the snowline.’ Tommo smiles through his tears. ‘Me winning, ‘cause I w
ere smaller and faster and you a bit clumsy on the rock and shale. Then coming down again, to return to Strickland Falls, to Mama.’ Tommo stares straight at me for a moment, his expression so very sad, like a little boy who doesn’t understand what he’s done wrong.
‘And then Slit. Slit and the sweet, sticky smell of the whisky still and the wilderness all about, stretching forever, darker and darker. It be as though I blinked me eyes, and everything changed. One moment I were playing with you on the mountain and the next I were with Slit in the wilderness—Slit beating the daylights out o’ me most days!’
‘Tommo, poor Tommo, let’s not speak of it any more,’ I say, trying to comfort him. ‘I’ll tell you how Mary found me some other time, eh?’
‘No, tell me now,’ Tommo presses me. ‘That silver scar ‘round your neck, it haunts me. I needs to know!’
I close my eyes tightly and feel warm tears run down my cheeks. ‘Every day the wild man led me behind his horse through the high mountains with the rough rope pulling tight around my neck, so that it bled and festered constantly. This went on for months until my neck was worn almost through. At night he’d tie me up, beat me, the rope still around my neck tied to a tree. I couldn’t move away from his blows or I would choke myself. I hoped I would die. He was a monster worse than any in the books Mama read to us. Finally I lost my voice.’
Tommo is in tears again. ‘I could feel it!’ he sobs. ‘In the wilderness with Slit, I could feel your pain, I swear it! When did you lose your voice?’
‘Towards the end, just before Mama came. I don’t know, five months, maybe a bit more. Why, Tommo?’
‘I remember how Slit beat me for weeks ‘cause I couldn’t answer him. Me throat were closed up, shut tight. I knew I could talk, but then again I couldn’t. It were our twinship, I s’pose.’
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