The Potato Factory

Chapter Thirty-three

The scam which Ikey perpetrated on the evening that Tomahawk and Black Boss Cape Town met became quite famous and was known among the local wags as the glorious night of 'Tit for Tat'. This incident had further enhanced the legend of Sperm Whale Sally and made the acquisition of a Blue Sally talisman even more desirable among the men of the whaling fleet. But it also served to benefit Ikey's own career. He was soon invited to become involved in the local gambling scene, in particular, in the sport of horse racing, which was just then becoming popular in the colony.

Ikey could now be seen at the horse races on a Saturday afternoon where he set up in a small way as an on-course bookmaker, but this did not curtail his nocturnal wandering. It was still his custom to perambulate from one waterfront dive to the next selling his tobacco, and he always finished up at the Whale Fishery to spend the last hour of each night in contented conversations with Sperm Whale Sally, happily recalling old times.

Ikey would sip at a glass of well-watered rum and Sperm Whale Sally would nurse her final quart pot of Bitter Rosie for the night. It was a time when Ikey felt almost like his old self, for Sperm Whale Sally never treated him any differently and did not seem to notice or care about his change in fortune. They were two old friends with a common past, content to be in each other's company, whether silent or merry, both calmed by the presence of the other after a loud and tiring night on the waterfront.

At the end of their hour together, around five of the clock in the morning, and with the help of four cellar-men from the Whale Fishery and Ikey's own puny contribution, which consisted mostly of meddlesome instructions, Sperm Whale Sally was lifted and manoeuvred and finally loaded into a waiting cart and transported by her driver Dick Smith to her rooms in Wapping scarcely half a mile away. Whereupon Ikey would make his way up the hill to the Potato Factory where, half an hour before sunrise, he would habitually take the first meal of the day with Mary.

Both Ikey and Sperm Whale Sally, the former as thin as a rake and plagued by rheumatism, and the other grown even larger than she had been on the night of the tit for tat scam some nine months previously, enjoyed rude good health by the standards of the day. They could be utterly relied upon to be a part of every Hobart night, but for Sunday, when the public houses were closed for the Sabbath.

Ikey therefore felt some concern when he arrived as usual at the Whale Fishery at four o'clock on the morning of the third Tuesday in November to find Sperm Whale Sally absent.

'Where be Mistress Sally?' Ikey asked a cellarman named Orkney, who was sweeping the spent sawdust from the floor. The Whale Fishery was almost empty, with only a handful of whalers still at the bar. Four drunken sailors sat slumped with their heads in their arms over various tables around the room, and two lay unconscious on the floor among the spew, piss and spilt ale. Orkney stopped sweeping and looked about the room.

'She be here earlier, guv, but be gorn a good hour since.'

'What, home?' Ikey queried in surprise.

'I expects not, guv, there were no cart.' He continued his sweeping, clearly having no more to add to the conversation.

Ikey walked over to the long bar where a weary Bridget was washing and stacking pewter tankards along the counter.

'Where be Mistress Sally, Bridget?' Ikey asked again.

The barmaid glanced over to Sperm Whale Sally's customary spot. 'Well I'll be blessed! She were there to be sure an' all, I seen 'er meself, I took 'er a quart pot o' bitter not a half hour since.' Bridget thought for a moment. 'Mind, she were off 'er grub tonight, I don't believe she ate more'n a couple o' legs o' mutton. Weren't no whaler gentleman eating neither, she paid for 'er victuals 'erself.' Noting the concerned look on Ikey's face, she smiled. 'Don't fret, Ikey love, she most probably just gorn outside to do a bit o' woman's business, if you knows what I mean.' Then she added, 'I seems to recall she said she 'ad a bit of a stomach ache an' all.'

Bridget took down a small pewter tankard, filled it to a third of its volume from a small casket of rum and then topped it almost to the brim with water. 'Here you are then, Ikey, your usual.' She smiled and in a comforting voice added, 'Now you sit down, Ikey Solomon. Your friend Sally be back soon with no 'arm done I expects.'

Ikey sat in the flagging chair until Orkney had almost completed sweeping the large expanse of the floor. He pushed the foul sawdust into a large pile which blocked the doorway. This was a signal to anyone seeking a last drink before dawn that they were not welcome to enter. A good hour had elapsed since Ikey's arrival, which meant Sperm Whale Sally had been gone at the very least two hours by the cellarman's earlier reckoning.

'She must have gorn 'ome!' Bridget called over several times. Two of the barmaids who had been clearing up the kitchen had meanwhile been consulted, but both confessed they had not seen Sperm Whale Sally leave.

'It be half a mile to Wapping,' Ikey pointed out. 'She can't walk 'alf a mile home and it takes four people to lift her into a carriage, my dear.' Ikey was irritated at their apparent lack of concern. 'You would have seen her go if she'd been picked up by Dick Smith, besides, he always stops in for a pint before they leaves, don't he?'

Bridget was too tired to respond with any further sympathy and simply shrugged. 'She'll be back, I expects.' Ikey rose from the chair and, slinging his tobacco basket over his arm, asked Bridget for one of the lanterns which hung from the wall behind her.

'I'm going to take a look,' he announced.

'We'll be closing in half an hour,' Bridget said as she unhooked a lantern and handed it to Ikey. 'You be sure and bring it back, Ikey Solomon! Leave it at the back door. Mister O'Flaherty will dock me pay if it don't come back, 'e be most strict about not taking down no lamps from the wall!'

Ikey only grunted, upset that they did not share his concern for Sperm Whale Sally. He stepped gingerly through the pile of putrid sawdust at the door and walked out into the last vestiges of the night. It was half past four of the clock, with the sunrise less than an hour away.

The late spring night was cool, as it always is an hour before dawn, and a chill breeze blew in from the hills across the Derwent River. Ikey searched the dark corners and alleys along the waterfront, and checked under the hulls of two fishing boats pulled up onto a slip for scraping. Then he moved towards the small, dark beach where the doxies took sailors for 'sixpenny quick times' and which Sperm Whale Sally herself used for the consummation of a Blue Sally.

The beach was deserted. Ikey's boots squeaked as he trudged along the sand towards a wooden fisherman's jetty which ran some distance out into the river. Even when the tide was in, a small ramp built over a pipeline directly below the jetty provided a dry platform where drunks would sometimes take shelter from the rain. It was not a good place to sleep as the pipelines carried the entrails, fish heads and scales from a public fish market into the cove, and was notorious for the bravery of the rats who infested it at night when the tide was out. Many a sailor or hapless drunkard, falling into a stupor, had woken in the morning to find half an ear or nose missing, or his toes a gory, bloody mess where the rats had chewed through his leather boots.

Ikey stopped just short of the jetty and placed his basket on the sand. Then he climbed up onto the dark platform, which stank of rotting fish. The lantern cast only a small circle of light and he could hear the rats squeaking and see their darting black shadows as they scurried from the lighted perimeter back into the darkness.

Ikey was not repulsed by the stench or the rats. Rats were not only an integral part of the gaming ring, but an everyday occurrence in Ikey's life. In the rookeries of London rats and foul smells were a given, hardly to be remarked upon.

He moved deeper into the darkest part of the jetty so that the light from his lantern cast a wider glow. What he saw almost made his heart stop beating. A dozen rats sat on the giant shape of Sperm Whale Sally, who lay grotesquely huge and still upon the platform. Ikey let out a terrible moan, for he knew instantly that she was dead.

The rats scuttled away as Ikey plunged forward, missing his footing to land on his knees beside the giant shape of Sperm Whale Sally. Overcome with grief, he laid his head on Marybelle Firkin's cold breast and started to wail.

'Wake up!' he called desperately time and time again, shaking Sperm Whale Sally's massive shoulder. 'Wake up please, my dear!' Ikey sobbed wildly, the intensity of his grief totally unfamiliar to him. After a long while, he gradually became possessed of his wits again and he slowly recited the words of the Jewish prayer for the dead, even though he knew his friend was not of the Jewish faith.

Not since the departure of Billygonequeer had Ikey felt such a terrible loss and now he lay panting on the sand, too weak even to resolve to rise to his knees. People are people through other people; we constantly seek confirmation of our own existence by how we relate to others. In losing Sperm Whale Sally, Ikey was losing a part of both his present and his past. Only two people in his life had neither judged him nor made demands on him: Billygonequeer and Marybelle Firkin. They had accepted him for what he was and in doing so they had defined a softer, more vulnerable Ikey no one else knew. Both had given his life meaning beyond sheer greed and survival, and now both were gone. Ikey had lost more than two friends, he had lost himself; the Prince of Fences was finally dead.

Only Mary Abacus remained. Yet Mary, with her thriving business and her ambition, was growing more and more impatient with him. Ikey knew she now thought him an old man who argued too much and who had little of value to offer her.

The death of Marybelle Firkin filled Ikey with a terrible fear. He thought of himself dying, quite alone, with no one to mourn him and not even a minyan of ten good Jews to lay him properly to rest.

It was at this moment of his own extreme anxiety that he heard the mewling cry of an infant. At first he thought it to be the rats grown bold and moving closer, or some creature crying out in the night. But soon it came again, faint, muffled, but close at hand. Ikey rose unsteadily and held the lantern above the body of Sperm Whale Sally. One side of her bodice had been pulled away so that a great breast lay exposed. It was as if she had been in pain and had ripped at her bodice in some sudden agony. Above the surprisingly small areola of her pink nipple Ikey saw the tattoo of the Indian chief' s head and the word Tomahawk crossed through with the blue X, which Svensen of the Sturmvogel had tattooed to cancel its potency as the symbol of the Merryweather.

Ikey now saw that her dress was soaked in blood, and that the pathetic whimpering sounds came from below her blood-stained skirt.

He quickly sought the hem of her skirt and petticoat and gingerly pulled them over her thighs. Something was moving beneath the sodden cloth and, expecting rats, he jerked the material upwards. What an astonished Ikey saw squirming between the gigantic thighs, were two newborn infants. He gasped, reeling back in shock, and it took a moment for him to recover sufficiently to take a closer look. The tiny bodies were sticky with blood, but he saw that one was the reddish white of any newborn child, while the other was black as the devil himself.

Ikey's heart commenced to beat rapidly, thumping in his chest as though it might jump entirely from his person, for he could see that both infants were alive, their tiny fists tightly clenched and their little legs kicking at the stinking air about them. Each was still attached to the umbilical cord, and from the black one's mouth popped tiny bubbles of spittle. Ikey reached inside his coat and pulled out a length of twine and a small knife he used for cutting plugs of tobacco for his customers. He cut the twine into two pieces about six inches long, tied off the umbilical cord at the base of each tiny navel aperture and then, some six inches higher, severed each of the bloody cords with the sharp blade. He had witnessed this procedure in a hundred netherkens in the rookeries of London where birth was often enough a public occurrence, and onlookers were charged a halfpenny for the privilege of attendance. But he was nevertheless surprised at how well he was coping with this startling emergency.

With this messy task completed, Ikey walked to the water's edge and washed the blood from his hands and from the blade of his knife, then retrieved the basket from where he had left it on the beach. He hastily emptied it by stuffing what remained of the contents into a dozen or so of the pockets in the lining of his coat.

The sun had started to rise and the body of Marybelle Firkin was now clearly visible in the dawn light. Ikey closed his friend's beautiful blue eyes. Then he removed the cloth which lined his tobacco basket, picked up each tiny infant and placed them carefully inside the basket.

The moment they were lifted the babies began to scream and Ikey panicked and swung the basket one way and then another as if it were a cradle. 'Shssh… shssh,' he repeated several times. But when the crying continued he placed the basket down on the sand and instantly a dozen or more flies settled on the babies, attracted by the blood which still covered them. He picked up the cloth and flapped it to set the flies to flight, then covered the basket. To his surprise, the crying stopped. Ikey hastily pulled the hems of Mary-belle Firkin's bloody petticoat and skirt back down to her ankles, and covered her exposed breast with the torn bodice. Then, squinting into the early morning sun, he took up his basket and trudged heavily back along the beach towards the Whale Fishery.

It was completely light when Ikey passed the front door of the public house which was now firmly shut, the last of the drunks and drinkers having been evicted. Ikey walked around the back and left the lantern on the back doorstep. He checked the basket, lifting a corner of the cloth to see that both tiny infants seemed to have fallen asleep, and as quickly as his human burden allowed, made his way up the hill to the Potato Factory where he knew Mary Abacus would be long awake, grown impatient and somewhat cantankerous that he was late.

Ikey tried to picture Mary's surprise. She would, he knew, have cleaned the cold ashes from the hearth, set and lit a new fire and then taken the pot of oats which had been left to soak all night on the shelf above and hung it over the flames to boil. Small beer and a loaf of yesterday's bread would be waiting for him on the table, the meal they shared together every morning when he arrived back from what Mary called his 'caterwauling'. But today would be different and Ikey smiled to himself, not thinking for a moment that Mary might not take kindly to the gift of life he carried in the basket so innocently slung over his arm.

Ikey entered the gate to the Potato Factory and passed down the side of the old mill building to the rear where a small wooden annexe had been built. This contained an accounting office Ikey himself used in the evenings, Mary's bedroom, and the kitchen in which they ate, all facing onto a backyard piled high with beer casks, and which led directly down to the rivulet. The kitchen door was open, and he entered to see Mary stirring the pot of oatmeal porridge with a long-handled wooden spoon. 'Don't turn about, my dear, I have a surprise.'

'Humph! The best surprise you could give me, Ikey Solomon, would be to be on time!' Mary sniffed the air without looking up from the pot and brought her finger and thumb to her nose. 'And the next is to wash! Wherever you 'as been, you stinks worse than ever this morning!'

Ikey ignored her remarks and continued in a merry voice. 'A surprise what is a wish and a desire and a whole life of hopes and dreaming! A surprise what surpasses all other surprises and a delight you never thought you'd experience, my dear!' Ikey started to do a small jig in the doorway.

Mary was not accustomed to mirth from Ikey at such an early hour, and now turned at last towards him. 'Is you drunk, Ikey Solomon?' She placed her hands on her hips, still holding the porridge spoon. 'Surprise is it? No surprises if you please. Sit down and eat. I have a long busy day to begin, while you be soon snoring your head off!'

While she often talked in such a stern manner to Ikey, Mary's remonstrations were seldom intended to be hurtful. She looked forward to his presence first thing in the morning, for he often brought with him bits of juicy gossip passed on by the servants of the pure merinos and the uppercrust in Hobart Town society. Mary had little time to listen to gossip during the day and Ikey often brought her both merriment and useful information.

'Come and see, my dear, come and see what Ikey has brought for you!' The excitement was apparent in his voice as he took three paces towards Mary and then, like a magician at a country fair, whipped away the cloth from the top of his tobacco basket.

Mary reeled backwards, dropping the spoon, her hands clawing at her breasts. 'Oh Jesus! Oh Gawd! What 'ave you done?' she cried.

Ikey laughed and took another step towards her so that Mary now looked directly into the basket. 'This little one be Tommo!' he said, pointing to the tiny pink creature in the basket, then his long dirty index finger moved to the opposite end. 'And this big little 'un be Hawk! A black child to bring you luck and great good fortune, my dear!' Ikey turned and placed the basket on the table. 'What say you, Mary Abacus, my dear?'

The names of the two infants had come to him without any thought, though later he would congratulate himself at the clever notion of splitting the word tattooed on Marybelle Firkin's breast.

Mary was not naturally given to panic and now she again placed her poor broken hands on her hips and looked most sternly at Ikey. 'Ikey Solomon, I hopes you has a very, very good explanation!' she shouted. But while her expression was grim, her heart was beating fast as her mind raced to embrace the notion of keeping the two infants. 'Dear God, how could such a thing be possible?' she said inwardly, her thoughts a whirl of confusion and hope. 'Where? How? Whose be they?' she demanded of Ikey.

Ikey placed the basket on the table and calmly breaking a piece of bread off the stale loaf popped it into his mouth. 'Why, they's yours, my dear!' he said, beginning to chew. He explained to Mary what had occurred. 'Nobody knowed that Sperm Whale Sally were pregnant, my dear, it be possible that she herself did not know,' Ikey concluded.

'Ha! When they find her they'll know!' Mary replied, now somewhat recovered, then she added, 'What about the afterbirth?'

Ikey swallowed the crust he was chewing. Already the terrible private grief he felt at Marybelle Firkin's death was hidden completely from view. 'Rats, my dear, there be scores o' rats by the fish pipe. By now there will be precious little o' the birth bits left. They'll think she been gorn an' haemorrhaged, you know, internal like, and that be the cause o' her death. The coroner ain't going to look too close, she were a whore after all! Natural causes, my dear, that be what he'll say. With twice as much government money to be spent on a double-sized pauper's coffin he won't want no further complications or expenses!'

'She'll be buried proper, Ikey, in St David's burial ground. You'll see to that!' Mary instructed. She ran her hand across her flat stomach. 'But it don't solve nothing. How did I give birth to twins overnight when yesterday I weren't even pregnant?'

'Left on the doorstep, my dear,' Ikey said blandly. 'The men and young Jessamy, they'll stay stum, or even believe it if you say that be how it happened! Plenty o' whores don't want their newborn brats.' Ikey shrugged his thin shoulders. 'You are well known for your charity at the orphanage.' Ikey paused and looked directly at Mary, his scraggy right eyebrow slightly arched. 'O' course, my dear, if you don't want them two, I could always take them off to the foundling home and tell them there what happened this morning.'

Mary gasped. 'You'll do no such thing, Ikey Solomon! That be a death sentence – more newborn brats dies in the Foundlin' than lives to see their first week!' This was true. The first hour of almost every day saw Reverend Smedley officiating at the burial of foundling infants who had not survived their first few days at the home.

Mary had not taken her eyes off the two tiny babies and now she lifted the black one Ikey had named Hawk out of the basket and held him against her bosom. Hawk's tiny mouth, feeling the skin of her neck against his lips, started to suck. That was all it took for Mary to fall utterly and completely in love. 'Give me t'other, Ikey,' she begged, her voice grown suddenly soft. Ikey plucked Tommo from the basket and laid him against her other breast where he too started to suck at the side of her neck. Mary knew, with a sudden, fierce happiness, that she would let no one take her new-found children from her.

Mary looked up at Ikey and tears gathered in her eyes. 'Thank you, Ikey,' she said tenderly. 'Thank you, my love.' Then Mary kissed the fine, matted hair on the infants' tiny heads and started to weep softly. She carried Tommo and Hawk into her bedroom, wrapped each of them in a blanket and placed them in the centre of her narrow bed. She told herself she must prepare hot water to wash away the blood, and tie down their little belly buttons with a strip of linen, then find two good wet nurses from the Female Factory. But for the moment all she could think to do as she looked down at the tiny creatures wrapped in the blanket was to clutch the Waterloo medal around her neck so tightly that the edges of the small medallion cut into the skin of her clenched fist. She turned to the window where the early sun touched the craggy top of the great mountain. 'Please,' she begged softly. 'Please let me keep them! Let them be mine forever!'

After a while she stopped crying and released her grasp on the medal. In the centre of her misshapen hand was a small cut where the edge of the medallion had punctured the skin, and from it oozed a bright drop of blood. Mary, not quite understanding what she was doing, dipped her forefinger into the blood and then returned to where the infants lay on the bed and touched the tip of her bloodied finger to their foreheads, first Tommo, then Hawk.

'You be my life's blood,' she cried. 'You be my everything, I shall never let you go!'