The Potato Factory

Mary remained silent and dropped her eyes.

'Well?'

Mary looked up slowly and smiled. She knew she could not remain camped under the rock. It snowed on the mountain in winter and she would freeze to death. Her green eyes rested on the chief clerk. 'I could tend your garden, sir, and sleep in your potting shed, if you was to give me rations.'

Emmett shook his head slowly. 'You take me to be too soft, Mary Abacus. Perhaps even an old fool to be used by a pretty woman. You refuse to be a market gardener, yet you would tend my garden?'

'Not soft, or a fool, Mr Emmett, but a person what's been wise and kind and most generous beyond anyone I've ever known.' There were tears in Mary's eyes as she said urgently, 'I shall repay your kindness, I swear. The time will come, I know it!' Mary blinked away her tears. 'It would only be a short while, sir. Until your enquiries prove fruitful, which I know they shall. All speak of you with great respect!'

Emmett looked doubtful and Mary hastily added, 'With the season changing, your roses need pruning and there be much clearing to be done so that your plants may catch the weaker winter sun, and your cold weather vegetables are not yet planted nor straw cut for the seed beds against the coming frost.'

'The potting shed?' Mr Emmett hesitated. 'It's not very big. I daresay we could find a corner for you in the servants' quarters.'

Mary laughed. The previous night spent under the stars had been cold but tolerable, and she had woken to a bright autumn morning with the raucous call of parakeets feeding on the nectar of the butter-coloured eucalypt blossom in the trees above her. Mary knew she had spent her last night with dirty snoring bodies squeezed hard against her sides.

But she hesitated, thinking that to object to this arrangement might cause Mr Emmett to decline her proposition altogether. Finally she found herself saying, 'Sir, I ain't got fancy notions about meself, but I ain't no servant ever no more! The potting shed be more than I'm used to. I have no wish to disturb your household. I have a blanket and mattress roll and will be glorious comfy.'

Mr Emmett looked at her in surprise but then a small smile played at the corners of his mouth. 'Very well, Mary, I shall tell cook to issue you with rations.'

Mary, of course, had sufficient money to live comfortably had she wished to siphon off only a small amount from the contents of the clay pot. She could have stayed in one of the numerous cheap boarding houses which took in ticket of leavers, though the idea did not occur to her. Comfort was not a consideration in her life, and the money she had made from the Potato Factory was to be used only to make a new life. Mary was determined she would have a profession. When she'd earned out her ticket of leave and was free, she would start on her own in business. She didn't much care what business except that it should cater for people's essential needs. She would not touch a penny of the five hundred pounds for any other purpose.

Mary could not light a fire in the tiny potting shed so she spread straw over the cold brick floor. At night she stuffed her clothes with newspaper and in this way remained tolerably warm. During the day she worked in Mr Emmett's garden. He would sometimes visit her when he returned home from work in the early evening, and twice he had brought her a glass of fruit punch flavoured with the heavenly taste of fresh apricots. Mary had scarcely wished to accept the delicious concoction for fear that it might corrupt her resolve.

Mr Emmett always came upon her in the same way. As though to dispel any anticipation Mary might have at his approach, he would precede his arrival by shouting the selfsame words. 'Not much luck, my dear. If I may say so, no blasted luck at all!'

Mary would look up from where she was working and attempt a smile. 'I am much obliged to you, sir,' she would say, standing up at his approach and trying not to show her disappointment.

Mary took two hours each day to try to secure a position on her own, trudging into town if she should see an advertisement in the Colonial Times. This was the only money she spent, sixpence every week to purchase the newspaper. While there were vacant positions aplenty, none of those advertising for a clerk bookkeeper required a female bookkeeper who was a ticket of leave convict. Mr Emmett's letter was beginning to look weary at the folds and greasy at the edges, as though it too was possessed of a forlorn and hopeless disposition.

Mr Emmett tried again to get Mary to join him in the employ of the government but she would not surrender.

A month passed and Mr Emmett's garden was now well prepared for winter. Neat rows of winter cabbage and cauliflower seedlings filled their beds in the vegetable patch. The soil around the standard roses and young fruit trees had been dug around, aired and then bedded down with straw and the garden was now completely cleared of summer's dead leaf. Mary woke one chilly morning and went to the door of the potting shed. The grass outside was silver with hoar frost and, as was her habit each morning, she looked up at the great mountain. Snow had fallen during the night and had turned it into a veritable Christmas pudding. Above it an icy, cobalt sky stretched high and, though she could not see them, she could hear a flock of cockatoos in the trees near by.

'Please, mountain, let something happen today!' Mary appealed to the snow-covered monolith towering above her. 'The work be done in Mr Emmett's garden and I cannot accept no more charity.'

'Mary, Mary! Come here, girl!' She could hear Mr Emmett's excited voice before he reached her. It was just before sunset on the same day and Mary was planting lemon grass. 'Mary, where are you? It's good news at last!'

Mary stood up at Mr Emmett's approach.

'Good news, my dear!' he said a little breathlessly, flapping his arms as he came up to her. 'Mr Peter Degraves the sawmiller is building a brewery at the Cascades and he needs a clerk!'

Mary dropped the trowel she was holding and looked querulously at her benefactor. 'A woman, sir?'

'They'll take a chance on a woman… on you!' Mr Emmett laughed, well pleased with himself.

'Have you told them I be ticket o' leave, sir?'

'Yes, yes, everything! Do not fret yourself, my dear. Mr Degraves has been in debtor's prison himself. He sees nothing to harm him in your past.' Mr Emmett grinned at Mary. 'I daresay those silly Chinese beads of yours will be just the very thing for counting bricks and timber eh?'

'A brewery is it? Will he keep me on when the building is complete?'

'If you serve him well, I don't see why not.'

Mary, unable to restrain herself, burst into tears and Mr Emmett, no taller than she, even by an inch, stood beside her. He patted her clumsily on the back. 'Now, now, my dear, it isn't much, an outdoors job with winter almost here, among crude men loading drays, I doubt it will exercise your skills to any extent.'

'Gawd bless you, sir!' Mary whispered, her voice choked with relief.

'Tut, tut, you have little to thank me for, Mary Abacus. My garden is splendidly prepared for winter and I reward you with nothing but the smell of hops in your nostrils and the cussing of rough men in your ears. I think it a poor exchange indeed!'

'Thank you, sir, I will not forget this.'

'There is little for you to remember on my behalf, my dear,' Mr Emmett said gently. 'You are worthy of much, much more, Mary Abacus.'

The chief clerk of the colonial secretary's department was not to know that on the brisk autumn evening in late May 1831, he had watched a small woman with large green eyes, bright with recent tears, take the first tentative step in what would one day be a vast brewery empire that would stretch around the world. Mary Abacus had discovered the commodity men could not live without and yet was not condemned or forbidden by society.