The Potato Factory (73 page)

Though Ikey was no longer in the crime business he could still be persuaded to pay out on a watch temporarily loaned and returned for a small commission added. This was merely the business of being an itinerant pawnbroker conveniently on the spot when a drunk or a sailor found himself without funds in the early hours of the morning. More importantly, Ikey now carried a large basket over his arm filled with various types, sizes, packets and prices of snuff, cigars and pipe baccy, and he moved from place to place selling his wares. If there was only a small profit to be made from this trade it did not overly concern Ikey because it gave him an excuse to spend the hours of the night at perambulation. Once again he was a creature of the dark hours.

This suited Mary perfectly, as in daylight hours Ikey proved a difficult proposition. He would argue with the men at the slightest provocation, and had an opinion about everything. What's more, he was a tiger when it came to debt.

A great many of Mary's customers came from the dock-side area of Wapping, the place in Hobart Town where the poor and the broken lived. Customers who required a drop of credit were a frequent and normal part of Mary's life. But Ikey, who had spent his life among the congregation of the unfortunate, had a very low opinion of the credit rating of the poor, and constantly grumbled and groused at the idea of giving them grog on the slate. Sometimes, when they came to the Potato Factory to beg a bottle or two for the night in advance of their weekly wages, he would soundly dress them down. A penny owed to Mary would irritate him until it was paid. While Mary found it difficult to argue with Ikey's diligence on her behalf, she knew how hard it was for many of her customers to stay on the pledge and not drink the raw spirit made by the sly grog merchants which would rot their stomachs, send them blind or even kill them.

Ikey had become more and more fidgety, often not appearing at the Potato Factory until mid-morning, and even then still bleary eyed. Finally, at about the time his new coat had acquired a suitably greasy patina, Mary tackled him as to the reason for his behaviour.

'It be the sunlight, my dear, seven years o' sunlight, too much o' the bright. Bright be always cruel, in the bright light the evil things done to a man is seen to be normal. I craves the dark. What a man does in the dark is his personal evil, what 'e does in the light 'e does in the name of truth, and that often be the most evil of all. People do not see clearly in the light, but they look carefully into the shadows. In the night I am a natural man, given to the feelings of honesty or deception, quite clear in the things I do, whether for good or for bad. In the light I am confused, for the most awful crimes are committed in the name of truth, and these always out loud, in the blazin' sunlight. It is a feeble notion that good is a thing of the light. Here, in the name of justice, property and ownership, poverty and starvation is considered a natural condition created for the advantage of those who rule, those who own the daylight. The poor and the miserable are thought to exist solely for the benefit of those who are born to the privilege.' Ikey paused after this tirade. He had surprised himself with his own eloquence. 'Ah, my dear, in the dark I can clearly see good and evil. Both can be separated like the white from the yolk. In the light I am blinded, stunned, eviscerated, rendered useless by the burning malevolence which blazes upon the earth with every sunrise.'

Mary had never heard Ikey talk like this, and she did not pretend to understand it all. She knew Ikey for what he was, a man possessed of cunning and greed, not given to the slightest charity. But now she became aware that Ikey had always exploited the rich and she could think of no instance where he had profited by robbing the poor. It was true that, as a fence, he had depended on the desperate poor to do his dirty work, but he had paid promptly and well for what they brought him. Even the brothel in Bell Alley had been for the gentry, where he caused the collective breeches of lawyers, magistrates, judges, barristers and bankers to be pulled down to mine the profit of their vanity, and milk their puny loins and their vainglorious attempts to recapture an imagined youth long since lost to rich food and port wine.

And so Ikey had returned to his old ways, and life at the Potato Factory continued without his avuncular interference, but with the advantage of his instinct for a bad debt approaching, and his sharp eye for any unscrupulous trader's attempt to bring Mary undone.

Mary spent the first hour with Ikey each evening before he started on the ledgers, and she served him the mutton stew and dish of fresh curds he loved. After he had wiped the foam from his beard, and in general declared the satisfaction of his stomach by the emission of various oleaginous noises, she would seek his counsel in those matters of immediate concern to her.

Their relationship was not in the least romantic, and Ikey would never again share Mary's bed. Mary had brought him back into her life because she earnestly believed his gift of the Waterloo medal was the reason for her good fortune in Van Diemen's Land. And it was Ikey who had given Mary her first chance at a decent life.

Mary never forgot a good deed or forgave a bad one, and she repaid each with the appropriate gratitude or retribution. She had always lived in a hard world where no quarter was given; now she realised that an even harder one existed. She had discovered that those who possessed wealth and property were dedicated to two things: the enhancement of what they owned, and an absolute determination never to allow anyone below them to share in the spoils, using any means they could to dispossess them. Mary had not accepted this rich man's creed. She was determined that those who helped her would be rewarded with her loyalty whether they were king or beggarman, while those who sought to cheat her would eventually pay a bitter price.

Against his better judgment she had persuaded Mr Emmett to apply in his own name for Ikey's release and had, through the chief government clerk, secretly paid the bond and secured Ikey's early ticket of leave. In doing this Mary did not seek Ikey's gratitude, but was merely repaying a debt. In offering Ikey the position as her clerk Mary was not seeking to gloat at the reversal of their roles. She was simply keeping faith with her own personal creed.

It should not be imagined that Mary and Ikey formed an ideal couple. They quarrelled constantly. Ikey's imperious ways and scant regard for the proprieties of a relationship where he was the employee often left Mary furious. He was careless about her feelings and often disparaging of her opinions. But whereas the old Ikey may have caused her in a fit of temper to throw him onto the street, she soon discovered that the new Ikey was unable to make a decision. Mary came to see him as the devil's advocate, useful for his incisive mind but now without the courage of his convictions.

Mary was growing in prosperity and she soon had the money to construct a water-powered mill and malt house on her land at Strickland Falls on the slope of Mount Wellington. Although she was still a long way from owning her own brewery, she already sold her high-quality barley mash and malt to some of the smaller breweries, as well as using her superior ingredients to increase her own output.

To her now famous Temperance Ale she had added an excellent bitter, a dark, smooth, full-bodied beer with a nice creamy head when poured well from the bottle. It was rumoured that many of the island's nobs and pure merinos would send their servants to purchase her excellent bitter ale for their breakfast table. This new beer came in a distinctive green bottle and, in marked contrast to the verbosity of the Temperance Ale label, had an oval-shaped label which featured two green parakeets seated on a sprig of flowering red gum. In an arch above them was the name 'Bitter Rosella', which soon became known by all as 'Bitter Rosie', and in the curve below were the words 'The Potato Factory'. Underneath this ran the line which would one day become famous throughout the world:
'Brewed from the world's purest mountain water'.

In the general course of events, the meeting of an acquaintance sixteen thousand miles from where you had last known them would seem to be a miracle. But in the penal colonies of New South Wales or Van Die-men's Land, it was a very common experience. The under class of London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and Belfast were transported in their thousands. Men and women who had lived in the same dark, stinking courts and alleys, who had, as children, starved and played in the same cheerless streets, might run into one another in a tavern crowd in Hobart Town. An old accomplice might tap one on the shoulder and claim a drink and a hand-out, or simply an hour's gossip of people and places known in a past now much romanticised by time and absence.

Ikey came to expect a familiar yell across a crowded room from someone who recognised him from London or the provinces; though in truth, he was previously so well known by reputation that there were some who merely imagined a past association with him. It did not come as a total shock, therefore, when Ikey one night entered the Hobart Whale Fishery, a tavern frequented by whalers, and heard a high sweet voice raised above the noise of the crowd as it sung a pretty ditty. He had last heard that tune at the Pig 'n Spit, and knew at once that the voice belonged to Marybelle Firkin.

Fine Ladies and Gents

come hear my sad tale

The sun is long down and

the moon has grown pale

So drink up your rum

and toss down your ale

Come rest your tired heads

on my pussy ...

come rest your tired heads

on my pussy ... cat's tail!

Jack tars of every nation joined in the chorus so that the tavern shook with their boisterous singing.

Come rest your tired heads

on my pussy ...

Come rest your tired heads

on my pussy ... cat's tail!

Ikey listened as Marybelle Firkin now added a new verse to the song.

Whaleman, whaleman

To Hobart you've come

The hunt is now over

the oil in the drum

So lift up your tankards

and drink to the whale

Come rest your tired heads

on my pussy ...

Come rest your tired heads

on my pussy ... cat's tail!

The notorious tavern on the Old Wharf was crowded with whalemen returned from Antarctic waters with a successful season's catch behind them, and their canvas pockets bulging with silver American dollars, French francs and the King's pound.

The tars spent wildly at their first port of call in months, and the shopkeepers rubbed their hands in glee. But it was at the Hobart Whale Fishery where most of the money was spent. This was the tavern most favoured by the thirsty and randy jack tars, and it was here also that some of the more expensive of the town's whores gathered.

It was almost sunrise before Ikey was able to greet Marybelle Firkin, who loomed large, bigger than Ikey had ever imagined, holding a tankard of beer. Around her on the floor washed with stale beer and rum lay at least a dozen jack tars, quite oblivious to the coming day.

Marybelle Firkin, who now called herself Sperm Whale Sally, put down her tankard of Bitter Rosie and swept Ikey into her enormous arms, lifting him from the ground in the grandest of hugs, until he begged her for mercy.

'Oh Ikey, it is you!' she screamed with delight. Then she placed Ikey down and held him at arm's length. 'You 'aven't changed at all, lovey, 'andsome as ever!' She pointed to Ikey's bald head. 'No 'at! Where's your lovely 'at?'

Ikey touched the shiny top of his head as though he had only just noticed the absence of his broad-brimmed hat. 'It ain't kosher to wear a Jew's 'at here, my dear, and I have yet to find another I prefers.'

Ikey and Marybelle resumed their friendship, though in truth Sperm Whale Sally, as Marybelle now insisted she be called, had fallen on hard times. Though Ikey was largely, though indirectly, responsible for this, she bore him no malice. Her involvement on the morning of his notorious escape had brought her to the attention of the police, and the blind eye previously turned to the existence of the ratting den upstairs was now withdrawn. As a consequence the profits of the Pig 'n Spit had greatly decreased. With the closing down of the ratting ring, Thomas Tooth and George Betteridge had taken it into their minds to find another buyer for their Bank of England bill paper, no longer trusting Marybelle Firkin as their intermediary. When the two men were arrested they had named her to place bond for them, threatening to tell of her involvement if she did not acquiesce. At the plea of
Habeas Corpus,
the judge had set the bond very high and when this had been paid Marybelle Firkin found herself under suspicion and at the same time robbed of all of her available resources.

It was not long before she received a visit from a police sergeant whom she had regularly paid to overlook the existence of the ratting ring. Now, after first extorting a tidy bribe from her, he warned that she was about to be investigated by the City police over the matter of the bank paper.

Marybelle had left that same night under the assumed name of Sally Jones, taking the first available boat from Gravesend, which happened to be sailing on the morning tide for Van Diemen's Land. She had arrived in Hobart Town almost penniless, and had found that the only way she could maintain her voracious appetite was to join the ranks of the world's oldest profession. She had soon enough been christened Sperm Whale Sally by the jack tars who came off the whaling ships. She begged Ikey never to reveal her proper name, lest news of her presence in Hobart Town reach England.