Perenna arrived in Sydney on October 20, the day before we were due to fly to England. Those few hours we had together should have been a carefree, happy interlude. The LCT was at sea, Mac was still sober and I had booked sufficient cargoes to keep the vessel going for three months. Also, Perenna had at last got some good news about Tim. The nursing home had written to say that he was much improved, had quite suddenly thrown off his lethargy and was now getting about with the aid of a frame support. But though we did our best, a sense of happy abandon was difficult to achieve, our mood overshadowed all the time by the knowledge that we were both of us putting everything into pawn for the sake of a single aged and rusting ship. We discussed it endlessly. We couldn’t help ourselves.
To my surprise we were met at Heathrow by Tubby Sawyer. I didn’t need to ask him why he was there. Almost the first thing he asked me, after I had introduced him to Perenna and she had gone to phone the nursing home, was whether there were any more sheets of the Solomons Seal, and when I told him all the rest were burned, he said, ‘Marvellous! That’s marvellous! You can tell me all about it as we drive down to the country. But first Josh wants to see you. He’s made the sheet a separate lot and included it in the catalogue.’
Perenna came back radiant. ‘I spoke to him. He even came to the phone himself. He’s so much better.’ Tubby was leading us out to the car park. ‘I’m to ring up again this evening. They say I can see him tomorrow. And to think at one time I despaired of ever seeing him alive again!’
At his office in the Strand, Josh Keegan greeted Perenna as though she were some sort of princess. ‘I have to tell you, dear lady, you’ve made my first big auction. I’ve had acceptances from just about every dealer of importance. I don’t know what it’s going to fetch, that little collection — your great-uncle’s, isn’t it? — but there’s no doubt about the interest it has aroused. I’m serving champagne. There! I’m a businessman, Miss Holland, and I don’t do a silly, show-off thing like that unless I’m on to a winner. And we will have a bottle right now. It’s the best thing after a long flight.’ And as one of the girls came in with a bottle and four glasses on a plastic tray decorated with Penny Blacks under Perspex, he turned to me and in quite a different voice said, ‘Now, where is the sheet? I want to see it.’
While I was getting it out of my briefcase, he picked up a copy of the catalogue, which was lying on his desk, and held it up for us to see. ‘There you are. I’ve taken a chance on what you told me on the phone from Sydney.’ And there it was, on the cover — a reproduction of the two Solomons Seal proofs under the heading: The Incredible Has Finally Happened, and then, below the facsimile of the proofs: The only remaining sheet (60) of the blue Solomons Seal Ship Label is being delivered to the J. S. H. Keegan offices from Sydney in time for this unique auction offering — design collection, proofs, and resulting sheet of the most startling transplant ever perpetrated. ‘There!’ he exclaimed again. ‘You can’t say I haven’t done you proud, eh?’
It was Perenna who asked him what it was all about, but he laughed and shook his head, looking like a learned professor in a relaxed moment as he toasted her, raising his glass and smiling. ‘Commander Sawyer — Tubby — he’s driving you down to Essex, I gather. He’ll explain it.’ And he added hastily, ‘But I think I must say this: The fact that it has aroused a great deal of interest doesn’t mean they’ll bid the price up to a ridiculous figure. They’re businessmen, all of them, and a glass of champagne or two won’t stop them keeping their feet firmly on the ground. We’ve got them to the auction. What happens then … ’ He shrugged. ‘Now, that sheet please.’
By then I had got it out of my briefcase, and he stood looking at it in silence for a long time, the magnifying glass screwed in his eye. Then he shook his head. ‘Pity! All those blotches, and only part original gum. Pity it isn’t mint. If it were in mint condition … ’ He hesitated. ‘But then, I don’t know. Maybe it’s better like this. It’s so obviously been in the heat and humidity of the Solomons. Yes, better perhaps, more real-looking, more genuine. And a nice shade of blue, a genuine Perkins Bacon blue.’ And he winked at Tubby, laughing quietly to himself. ‘It really is quite humorous. He’ll tell you. Very funny indeed. Perkins Bacon, of all people. Such a stuffy, banknote sort of outfit. Theft, forgery … you tell ‘em, Tubby. That’s what I said to Mr Slingsby here when he came to see me months ago, I said I wouldn’t spoil it for you, so you tell ‘em — later.’ He re-filled Perenna’s glass and said, ‘You’ll be attending the auction, I hope, Miss Holland? It could make quite a bit, that sheet.’
She glanced at me, and I nodded. Nothing would stop me being there after what he had said. Five thousand pounds … if that sheet made £5,000, I thought we could manage. That would about double the total capital we could raise. It should just be enough. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Mr Keegan — I’ll be there, listening with bated breath.’
Tubby, with a proper sense of the dramatic, held off from telling us until we had reached his house. He needed his books, he said, to explain it all properly, but that was just an excuse to get the story of the Solomons sheet out of me first. Once we were in his comfortable black-beamed living room with drinks in our hands, and Perenna had phoned the nursing home again to arrange a time to visit her brother next day, he took down from his bookshelves the larger of the two blue-covered volumes of the Perkins Bacon Records. As he stood there, holding it out to me and saying, ‘Ever browsed through these books?’ I knew we were in for one of his lectures. But this time, with so much at stake, he had my full attention.
‘You should,’ he said. ‘To anybody interested in printing, any British collector, they’re fascinating. They don’t cover the GB printings — that was dealt with by Sir Edward Bacon himself in his Line-Engraved Postage Stamps of Great Britain. I’ve got a copy of the 1920 first edition here somewhere. But all the other printings … This first volume deals with British Colonial issues; the other one deals mainly with printings for foreign countries.’ He opened the larger of the two, turning to the end where he had marked it with a slip of paper. ‘Here it is, five-o-nine — the last chapter. That’ll give you the background.’ And he turned it round so that we could read it. It was headed The Beginning of the End.
The Home Government exercised the strictest supervision over the production of the postage stamps of Great Britain, but the Agents General of the Colonial Office, first George Baillie and then Edward Barnard, as also the Agents for the various Colonial Governments, in no way controlled the production of the stamps ordered. The quantity was merely checked on arrival in the Colony. Perkins Bacon classed postage stamps in the same category as needle, soap and tobacco labels, and although the firm usually produced only the supply of stamps ordered, in some cases the quantity printed was greatly in excess of the number immediately required.
This method continued until Penrose G. Julyan was appointed Agent General for Crown Colonies towards the end of 1858. The following documents make it clear that he considered that the dies, plates, paper and other material for the production of stamps ordered and paid for by his department should be under his control.
‘It was back in 1851,’ Tubby went on as we both looked up to indicate we had finished reading, ‘that Perkins Bacon were invited to tender for New Brunswick and Nova Scotia labels. Up to then the only stamps they had printed were the GB Penny Blacks and Red and the Twopenny Blues. During the next seven years they printed stamps for some twenty-five or thirty of our colonies, including Western Australia, and since they were really banknote printers, regarding stamps as much the same as tobacco labels, they probably were a little slack. On Julyan’s appointment as Agent General a running battle began, de Worms recording pages of correspondence interspersed with his comments. What the Agent General was complaining about initially was late delivery, colour discrepancies and other technicalities. Then, in April 1861, he discovered the printers had been approached by Ormond Hill on behalf of two or three stamp collecting friends of his and had released specimens of everything they had printed, six of each stamp. Julyan blew his top over that, switching his attack to security.’