Tommo and Hawk

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘What’s ya mean?’ she asks, horrified. ‘Become respectable-like?’

  ‘Well, yes, sort of.’ I cannot quite imagine Maggie completely respectable.

  ‘Jesus, Hawk! What’s you on about? Respectable? Is you ashamed o’ me?’ Her lips begin to tremble, but then she gains control and her big blue eyes come to fire. ‘You bastard! You nigger bastard!’

  I hold her tight against my chest as she yells at me in anger. ‘Lemme go, you black shit! Lemme go!’

  ‘Maggie, Maggie! Hush! I’m asking you to marry me! To have my children.’

  Maggie goes totally still in my arms and I release her.

  ‘Brats?’ she asks.

  ‘Aye!’

  ‘Me own brats? Oh Jesus!’ Maggie begins to sob.

  I don’t know what to do. I thought to see her anger or scorn, but not these tears. I pat her on the back. ‘You’d like to have children, then?’ I query, anxious that I may have said completely the wrong thing.

  Her head buried in a pillow, Maggie nods. Then her sobs begin afresh. ‘Brats,’ she howls, ‘oh, shit! Oh, oh, oh!’

  I continue patting her and then begin to stroke her back and thighs. My hand wanders over her tight, sweet derrière to the inside of her legs, and I let my finger slide into her warm and creamy place. Maggie opens up to receive me, and I push her gently onto her back and enter her. Her sobs turn to whimpers and moans, and I think how beautiful she is and how much I love her. ‘Oh, Hawk,’ she cries, wrapping her legs tight about me. ‘Oh darling, Maggie’s coming! Oh, Jesus! You bastard, you lovely bastard! Brats! Me own!’

  Afterwards, she sits up almost immediately. ‘You wants me to marry you? Be respectable-like?’ she wonders. ‘I ain’t never been respectable. Don’t suppose I’ve got the knack.’

  ‘You’ll get the hang of it soon enough,’ I laugh.

  Maggie makes a pair of dainty fists and knuckles away another rush of tears. She’s sitting cross-legged on the bed, her blue eyes red-rimmed from crying, but her pretty mouth is set firm. ‘On your wages? No bloody fear, mate! Respectable takes money. I ain’t gunna be respectable washin’ the bleedin’ floor, scrubbin’ pots ‘n’ pans. I’m a respectable whore, not a bleedin’ respectable scullery maid!’ She looks at me fiercely. ‘You can shove yer respectable up yer arse, Hawk Solomon! I’ll work and keep ya ‘til you makes somethin’ out o’ your life!’ She stops and thinks for a moment. ‘And not out o’ fisticuffs neither, I ain’t marrying a prize-fighter. O’ course, you can fight this once against the Bolt!’

  ‘Then you’ll marry me? Oh, Maggie!’ I go to embrace her but she pushes me away.

  ‘Only if I stays what I am ‘til we can afford better. I ain’t gunna scrub no floor for no one! I loves ya, Hawk, with all me heart, but I ain’t gunna go down on me knees for no bastard!’

  ‘Maggie, it doesn’t matter to me what you are. I love you with all my heart too.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘it don’t matter to you. I know that now. I didn’t never think it could ‘appen to me. Oh sweet Mary, Mother o’ Jesus, I loves ya, Hawk Solomon!’

  I hold her for a while. ‘Maggie,’ I say eventually, ‘now you must meet our mama.’

  Maggie draws back. ‘But she don’t like me!’

  ‘Of course she will. Mary will love you, you’ll see!’ Then I see Maggie has brought her hand to her lips and wears a look of consternation. I hear again her last words in my mind. ‘What did you say?’ I ask slowly, my heart pounding.

  ‘I said what if she don’t like me?’

  ‘Maggie! That’s not what you said!’ I frown.

  ‘Orright,’ Maggie says tremulously. ‘We has met. I’ll tell ya the whole story. Tommo think yiz gunna get beat. Hurt bad. He asked your mama to come up here!’

  ‘What, here? To Sydney?’

  Maggie nods and sniffs. ‘We needed her help!’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Oh, Hawk, don’t ya see? There’s only one way yiz can win. The Bolt’s got to take a dive, least that’s what Tommo thinks!’

  ‘And you? Do you think that?’ I ask her. Maggie drops her eyes but says nothing, her fingers playing with the corner of the pillow. I grasp her by the shoulders. ‘Answer me! Is that what you think, Maggie?’

  ‘Leggo, yiz hurting me!’ she cries, but I continue to hold her. ‘Please! Yiz bruisin’ me, Hawk!’

  I cannot bear the idea of hurting Maggie and all the anger goes out of me. I sigh. ‘I can’t possibly win no matter how much training I do, so Tommo’s going to fix the fight! Is that it?’

  Maggie’s eyes grow big. ‘Hawk, yiz the bravest man I’ve ever known. It’s just…’

  ‘Just what?’

  ‘Well, Tommo says you can’t learn enough technique in time to fight the Bolt, no matter what. I know prizefighters and I thought you could win but he’s made me believe you’re gunna get hurt.’ She tilts her head at me.

  ‘Oh, Hawk, I don’t want them to hurt you! The Irishman will be too crafty and cunning. You don’t have the skill to take him on! You said so yerself, remember?’

  ‘Yes, but I’ve changed my mind.’

  ‘That don’t change nothing!’ Maggie exclaims. ‘Think the Irishman’s gunna shit his pants ‘cause you’ve changed your bleedin’ mind?’

  ‘You’re wrong. It changes everything,’ I say. ‘We’re going to set it up so that Mr Sparrow lays down all his money against me, and then I’ll take on the Lightning Bolt fair and square and win—even if I get killed in the process.’

  ‘But why?’ Maggie pleads. ‘I can take care o’ yiz. And you’ll soon get on in yer job, get a raise! We don’t need to do this bloody fight!’

  ‘Maggie, you forget what Mr Sparrow’s done to Tommo! He’s a mongrel. You can’t let the mongrels win.’

  ‘Oh bull!’ Maggie exclaims. ‘What’s been done to Tommo he’s done t’ himself! There’s always a Mr Sparrow. Get this one and another’ll take his place soon enough. World’s full o’ bastards what you calls mongrels—always has been, always will be!’

  ‘It’s more than that, Maggie. It’s what happened to Tommo and me when we were brats. Mr Sparrow’s a part of that. It’s time to change our fates.’

  ‘I dunno what yiz talkin’ about, I’m sure,’ Maggie sniffs.

  ‘Yes, well, be that as it may, Tommo’s got to answer for himself, and so do I. Part of the answering is believing the mongrels don’t always win. You can’t just give in to evil, you have to fight it! If you don’t, it destroys you. If I have to fight the Irishman to beat Mr Sparrow, then I shall. And I mean to win.’

  ‘But you will win!’ Maggie insists. ‘That’s it, ain’t it? We bribe the Irishman to take a dive, and Mr Sparrow loses all his loot on the betting ring. Abra-bleedin’-cadabra! You’ve won!’

  I sigh. ‘Maggie, you have not heard a thing I’ve said. I can’t win by cheating!’

  ‘Shit, why not? What’s wrong with cheating, all of a sudden? What’s Tommo been doing these past weeks to raise your stakes if it ain’t cheatin’?’ Maggie asks.

  ‘That’s different! To bribe the Irishman to lose is to be just like Mr Sparrow. All the things that have destroyed us—me, Tommo, even you—are the result of good men standing by and watching, while mongrels like him corrupt the human soul!’

  Maggie shrugs. ‘Well, I shouldn’t worry about it too much. Nobody’s gunna bribe nobody. She ain’t got the money.’

  ‘She? Who hasn’t?’

  ‘Mary bloody Abacus!’

  ‘Maggie, you’ve met our mama, then?’

  Maggie sticks out her chin. ‘Yes I has. Tight as a squid’s bum, that one! I don’t mean t’ insult yer mama, Hawk, but Tommo said she’d be willin’ t’ pay the bribe.’ Maggie pauses, then meets my eye. ‘Well, it ain’t so.’

  ‘Maggie, what has Tommo told you about Mary?’

  ‘He told me she were rich.’

  ‘Oh Lord. And then?’

  ‘I started t’ cry, ‘cause if she were and you also, then you wouldn’t love me
when ya went back to Hobart Town. Rich blokes fuck whores, but they don’t marry ‘em. But now I knows different. She told me she ain’t got no money.’ Maggie looks at me, still near to tears. ‘She don’t like me, Hawk. She said I were a whore!’

  ‘Well, you are, aren’t you?’ I say, cuddling her. ‘You say so yourself!’

  ‘Yes, but the way she said it, it were different.’ Tears begin to roll down Maggie’s cheeks. ‘At least she can’t think me a gold digger if she ain’t got no money to give ya.’

  I can see in my mind what’s happened. Mary’s arrived dressed in a simple black dress, hair brushed tight under a dark bonnet, looking plain as a crow, hoping to seem a respectable working class woman. She’s taken one look at Maggie and made up her mind in an instant. So she cried poverty, thinking to send the little gold digger away.

  I sigh at these thoughts. ‘Maggie, you aren’t marrying Mary Abacus. You’re marrying me, Hawk X Solomon!’

  ‘I suppose,’ she says doubtfully. ‘But I’m glad she ain’t rich after all. I can look after ya, Hawk, honest. I’ll work harder. We’ll save a bit, we’ve got me rooms and we won’t starve.’

  ‘How long has Mary been in Sydney? Does Tommo know she’s here?’

  ‘Tommo knows. She’s at the Hero of Waterloo. She only came in last night. Mr Harris sent a lad to tell me. I got her a nice room, paid a week’s advance meself, full board.’ Maggie looks accusingly at me. ‘She didn’t even say ta!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Maggie. Mary’s pretty plain-spoken, that I’ll admit, but she is not usually rude. She’s a good woman, Maggie, you’ll see. Did she truly call you a whore?’

  ‘Good as! It were the way she looked at me. I wore my best outfit too and me new magpie hat from Mr Myer’s Emporium. It were me red silk gown, what I bought from Farmer’s after the Ben Dunn fight. I wanted to do ya proud, Hawk, so your mama’d think I were pretty enough for yiz! I even wore one o’ them Chinee silk shawls what Barney Moses give me, so she wouldn’t see me tits.’

  I close my eyes. I can just imagine the set of Mary’s thin lips when she first set eyes on my darling Maggie in all her finery. As to what she’ll have to say to me when we meet, I am loath to think!

  Chapter Twenty-three

  TOMMO

  The Rocks

  July 1861

  Hawk’s flaming mad about our plan to bribe the Bolt. He says I’ve lost me marbles. He even threatened to get Caleb Soul to take charge of our side of the arrangements. I tried to tell him I didn’t think he could win no matter what, ‘cause he don’t have the experience to fight a pug like the Bolt.

  And Ho Kwong Choi’s turned out to be no help to us. On me first visit to Tang Wing Hung’s opium den, after we gets back from Lambing Flat, old Ho tells me he can’t help us none. He said he couldn’t remember nothing what could be useful to Hawk. But I reckons it’s a set-up—he spoke to Mr Tang Wing Hung after all, what told Mr Sparrow, what warned the old man not to help Hawk.

  I should’ve saved me breath, tryin’ to persuade Hawk to my way o’ thinking. Hawk’s a stubborn bugger and once he’s made up his mind he don’t change it too often. He reckons if we win by cheating, we ain’t beaten greed, greed’s beaten us. And if it ain’t a straight victory over the Bolt, then we’ll still be in Mr Sparrow’s power—and he’ll have won after all. As usual he’s done a measure of practical thinking about the whole set-up too. What he’s come up with isn’t half bad, even if it won’t be of any use in the end.

  Hawk points out that the Bolt has now fought and won against most of the champions of the various states. He’s already beat Ben Dunn as well as Fred Woods and Jimmy Shanks, and all of them stopped well short of twenty rounds. Ben Dunn did best, lasting nineteen rounds before his corner threw in the sponge. Bell’s Life in Sydney reckons the local champs have given the Lightning Bolt no trouble whatsoever—his ringcraft and cunning had them well and truly beat.

  ‘The Bolt boasts that he hasn’t done a lick of training and that against Jimmy Shanks he took a bottle of Irish whiskey into the ring to drink between rounds!’ Hawk looks at me most earnest. ‘Don’t you see, Tommo? He’s well cashed from the bouts and from betting on himself. He’s ready to return home after one last easy fight. Maybe I can’t match his cunning but I’ve got height and reach and strength. I reckon I can outlast him, wear him down ‘til his legs give in.’ Hawk smiles. ‘The Bolt hasn’t yet had an opponent who could do that. All of them have been old pugs, not one of them a day younger than thirty-five, and not trained for stamina.’

  ‘Hawk, it won’t come to that,’ I argues. ‘Bare-knuckle fighting’s a dirty business. There ain’t no rules for sportsmen! It’s a free-for-all in the clinches. He’ll stamp on your insteps, knee you in the bollocks and head butt you as he pulls you in. It ain’t about stamina or about outlasting him. It ain’t even about punching. It’s about fighting cunning!’

  But Hawk won’t listen to none of what I tells him and so I’ve done me best to see he gets the right training. Most of the past two weeks I’ve been waking early so I can watch him spar before I goes for me smoke and night of poker. It ain’t left me much time for Mary, what’s been in Sydney since we got back from Lambing Flat. She’s still at the Hero o’ Waterloo and after telling me she ain’t gunna get involved none ‘til she’s seen for herself what’s goin’ on, we’ve barely spoke—what suits me just fine, thank you very much.

  Since he started training proper, Hawk’s built his strength up and has shown himself a quick learner. Bungarrabbee Jack and Johnny Heki, the Aborigine and Maori blokes what’s training him, are old-timers and knows all the dirty stuff what’s likely to come his way.

  Johnny Heki loves Hawk like a brother and they chatters away together in the Maori tongue for hours. Hawk has Maori tattoos of a very high order and so is much respected by Johnny, who imagines me brother is fighting for his people’s honour. In a way that’s true. I reckon Hawk’s fighting for all of us what’s been wronged—all what’s been taken advantage of, as he sees it.

  Johnny tells Hawk how the dirty fighting’s done in the clinches, when the referee’s to the back of you so he can’t see what’s going on below the belt. He shows Hawk how to stand with his feet wide-spaced, so that he can lean against his opponent and still keep him from getting too close. Johnny Heki and Bungarrabbee Jack reckons the Bolt will try to draw Hawk in, and that’s where Hawk can do his best work. They teaches him how to use his knee in a groin and grab his opponent’s bollocks. But it’s not the kind o’ fighting me brother takes to, it’s too low-down and dirty for him.

  Instead, Hawk must learn to avoid having these things done to him. So his trainers show him how to rest his head on his opponent’s shoulder when he’s pulled close to prevent a head butt. Hawk must keep his head above his opponent’s shoulder at all times, ‘cause if the canny Irishman can lower it to his chest, he’ll surely poke his fingers into Hawk’s eyes or get two fingers up his nostrils, tearing his nose so bad the fight must be stopped for the blood what’s pouring out. Everything, Hawk’s coaches explain, happens in the clinch, in the hugabug. So Hawk must use his reach and strength to avoid the clinch.

  Both blokes teach Hawk how to defend himself from body blows and, in particular, from blows below the belt. They reckons Hawk can only learn one good combination punch in the time they’ve got, so they teaches him how to lead with a left and follow through with a right. Bungarrabbee Jack calls this the ‘one-spot, two-shot, left-right, bang-bang!’ He makes Hawk practise this combination over and over again ‘til he can do it without thinking. Hawk’s left can drive a man back several paces and the right hook what follows up and under the heart will lift his opponent’s feet off the ground. The Aborigine slaps his palms together as though he is dusting them, ‘Ten times, boss! One-spot, two-shot, left-right, bang-bang! Ten times one fight, all over—sleepy time!’ Bungarrabbee Jack reckons if Hawk can land a good left and a right under the heart ten times during the fight he’ll stop any man on the planet.

  They
also school him to keep hitting under his opponent’s heart, what’s much better than trying to hit him in his head, where Hawk could easily break his hand and leave himself defenceless.

  ‘Same spot, boss!’ Bungarrabbee Jack keeps repeating, as he drives his fist under Hawk’s heart. ‘Keep hittin’ him same spot! Time come he can’t stand no more. Same spot, eh!’

  Then, just a few days ago, things really began to look up. Hawk were hauling barrels up to the wine loft as part of his training, when a boy apprentice comes to say there be a Chinaman at the gate. He hands Hawk a scrap o’ paper what the man has given him. Hawk sees that the note is in his own handwriting and has his name and the Tucker & Co. address. It’s the note he gave Wong Ka Leung—or Ah Wong as he calls him—when he left him in Yass after they’d fled from Lambing Flat.

  Hawk goes immediately to the gate to greet the Chinaman. Me big brother is most anxious that Ah Wong should get one o’ the bags o’ gold I won from Callaghan. Yours truly argues against it. After all, I won it fair and square—it ain’t the celestials’ no more—and Hawk’s done enough by rescuing Ah Wong and his family.

  But Hawk as usual sees it quite the opposite. ‘We’ve profited, but he’s lost everything! He can’t go back to Lambing Flat. He’s skint, poor bastard, with a wife and child to support, and we’re rich. It isn’t fair he should suffer more while we benefit from his misfortune.’

  ‘So what about the other five bags o’ gold? They must’ve been took from the Mongolians too?’ I says, just to make trouble.

  Hawk sighs. ‘There’s an old Chinese proverb, Tommo. “Every journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” We don’t know the others who lost their gold, but we do know Ah Wong. He is our first step to making things right.’ Where Hawk’s learnt a Chinese proverb I’m buggered if I know. Them books he reads go straight into his head and he don’t seem to forget nothin’. Stuff comes out when you least expects it.

  So Hawk goes to the gate to welcome Ah Wong, and gives him money for food and arranges to meet him later that night in Chinatown, at the scrag end o’ the Rocks.