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'.
Chapter Thirty-one
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.
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.