Solomon's Song (22 page)

‘Father, you will do Joshua a disservice,’ Abraham shouts into David Solomon’s ear. His only hope is to scare the old man into silence with the notion that his precious grandson’s carefully planned career in the army might be affected by his rudeness to the general. He knows David will do almost anything to protect Joshua from coming to any harm in the war.

David sniffs and jerks his head backwards as though to refute this notion, but Abraham knows he has won and lets out a sigh of relief. He will send the military man an abject note of apology accompanied by a box of Cuban cigars and once again plead the weather, his father’s extreme age and his non-existent rheumatic condition and decrepitude.

Sir Abraham Solomon is a deeply conservative man, deficient in imagination, but meticulous in business procedure and placid enough to have always taken his directions from his mercurial father. Confrontation is not a large part of his character and Abraham, unlike his own son Joshua, both fears and dislikes his father. Often brought to the verge of despair by the old man’s unreasonableness, he secretly wishes the miserable old bastard would die, thinking him at least twenty years overdue for the plain pine coffin.

Both he and Joshua have spent their lives attempting to please the old man, but with quite different results. David dotes on his grandson Joshua who can do no wrong in his eyes, while he thinks Abraham, at very best, is an unimaginative plodder with an honest bookkeeper’s mind, not at all the sort to advance the Solomon fortunes.

Abraham has spent his life trying to make David proud of him. A naturally shy and retiring man with a passion for racing pigeons, he has, at David’s instigation, been Lord Mayor, received a knighthood in 1910, and is now the Grand Master of Melbourne’s secret order of Free and Accepted Masons.

These are all positions which David has himself secretly coveted but has made no attempt to achieve. Despite his enormous wealth, David Solomon is aware of his lack of education and the social graces required for public office. His bravado and brusque manner in public are an attempt to conceal a deep-seated insecurity and sense of inferiority he has felt since his early childhood. He is secretive by nature and not at all gregarious, mostly for fear that, despite his wealth, he might be exposed and humiliated as so often happened to him in his childhood.

So Abraham, who has been properly educated in the manners of society, has been forced by the old man to play what is essentially a surrogate role, with his ambitious father calling the shots behind the scenes and taking advantage of the opportunities his son’s public persona and position affords Solomon 8c Teekleman.

As a consequence Abraham has very little sense of his own worth. All his achievements have been reluctant, undertaken only to please the cantankerous old man seated beside him. He is aware that money, placed in the right places and in the right hands, has been the primary reason for his progress in civic affairs. As his father so often says, ‘Money will buy you everything, son, except love. The currency of love is soon spent but the money it will cost you never ends.’ It is one of David’s more benign sayings.

As the mayor of Melbourne, Sir Abraham had the personal satisfaction of having the Solomon family endow the city with a plot of land in St Kilda Road for civic purposes and to finance a new wing for the public library. This sort of largesse could never have emanated from David himself, but Abraham was able to convince his father that the goodwill of Solomon & Teekleman Holdings was at stake. Finally, when it was proposed that the new library wing be named the David Solomon Wing, he agreed even though he had always thought it a crime to educate the masses.

The endowment to the library, in particular, was a quiet source of amusement to Abraham and perhaps the closest he would ever come to avenging himself for the hundreds of humiliations he had suffered at the old man’s hands. David Solomon had never read a book in his life, constantly chastising Abraham as a child for doing so. If it had not been for the protection of his mother, Rebecca, his father would have denied him the pleasure of books, believing they softened the mind.

To David, education meant sending his son to the right school where he would meet the right people and learn the right manners so as to be accepted within Melbourne’s polite society. It never occurred to him to equate Abraham’s education with intellectual progress. Business was all that interested David and he accepted the responsibility of teaching Abraham this himself. In fact, he would later blame his son’s conservative business habits and lack of a killer instinct on too much education. ‘Too many bloody books when you were a child, that’s the problem with you, m’boy!’

Abraham’s career as a Freemason was much more to David’s taste. While he himself did not join, he liked the idea of a secret society of men who ’scratched each other’s backs’ and who covertly agreed not to witness against each other in a court of law. He quickly realised how this might be to his advantage, happily accepting that the price of Abraham’s elevation was the unspoken promise to employ only Freemasons within the family’s vast enterprises. This meant well over two thousand jobs went to the secret brotherhood, which excluded Catholics from its membership. This suited David, too, for he loathed the Irish papists with a fierce and abiding hate. His mother’s de facto husband, George Madden, was an Irish Catholic who had treated David and his three siblings, Ann, Sarah and Mark, with a singular disdain and often enough had beaten them or, as a punishment for some imagined misdemeanour, made them go without food for three days. ‘You English made the Irish starve, boy, now you can do the same,’ he’d say. David had never forgiven the man, blaming his race and religion for their childhood suffering.

Abraham is aware that his father sees him as a far from adequate replacement at the helm of the giant brewing, timber, pastoral and business empire. He knows that he is, at best, the temporary standard-bearer while Joshua is being groomed for the job of ultimately running Solomon & Teekleman Holdings.

Far from resenting his caretaker role, he looks forward to the time when he can hand over to his son and he can get on with his life free from the restraints of business. The only office he cherishes is that of President of the Pigeon Racing Association of Victoria. Furthermore, he blames his wife Elizabeth’s drinking on himself and anticipates a time when he will be able to give her sufficient attention.

With his heart still pounding from witnessing the contretemps between David and the Major General, Abraham folds his arms tightly across his chest in an attempt to crush the anxiety he feels in his gut.

The band is almost upon them with the brass and drums crashing about his ears. Abraham prepares to alert his father that the 4th Australian Light Horse follows. The clopping of 546 horses on the macadam surface of the street and the jangle of their brasses as the mounted troopers move up to take the salute now almost completely drowns out the departing band. Joshua will be the officer riding ahead of the third squadron.

‘Is he here yet?’ the near blind David cries, grabbing his son’s arm. In the din and the cheering of the excited crowd it is impossible to hear him and, besides, Abraham has previously agreed he will tap his father on the shoulder when Joshua’s troop appears. David’s bony fingers are surprisingly strong as they dig deep into the flesh of his son’s upper arm. Abraham sees that the old man’s mouth is spit-flecked with anxiety at the thought of not being ready when his grandson passes by.

Joshua’s troop rides into sight and Abraham taps David on the shoulder, whereupon the old man brings his hand up to his forehead in a salute intended to be rigid, though his hand trembles so that the tips of his fingers set his ear to vibrating. Abraham sees that the old man is crying and he reaches into his pocket for his handkerchief to hand to him when Joshua’s squadron has passed by.

Directly across the street from where the general is taking the salute, black as the devil himself and towering head and shoulders above the crowd, is the magnificent Hawk. He is unseen by David Solomon, but his presence with Victoria is quietly noted by Abraham. During a lifetime of malice and greed, most of it in the name of sound business practice, David has acquired a legion of enemies who would happily slit his throat if they thought they could get away with it. These men, with perhaps one or two exceptions, do not cause David to lose a moment’s sleep. On the other hand, David’s personal hatred for the giant black man is beyond the sum of all of the others. Abraham decides his father has caused sufficient trouble for one day.

Somewhat stooped, at seventy-three Hawk still stands near seven feet tall with a snow-white crop of woolly hair and the Maori moko markings on his proud and handsome face. He provides a natural curiosity for the crowd who try not to stare too blatantly, but occasionally steal furtive glances in his direction. The smaller children have no such reservations and they gawk unashamedly, clutching the hems of their mothers’ dresses until they are pulled away and turned about-face to witness the on-going parade.

Standing beside Hawk, her small white hand in his great black fist, is Victoria, Tommo’s granddaughter who now lives with him in Melbourne. He brought her over from New Norfolk at the age of eighteen to further her education. She is a handsome young woman of twenty-five who has served her articles and passed the solicitor’s examination, but who does not possess, or even wish to embrace, the restrained manners expected of a girl of her social class and wealth. Victoria jumps up and down in excitement, showing her slim ankles and, every once in a while, a daring glimpse of calf as the mounted troopers finally pass and the companies of foot soldiers hove into view, their band playing the popular ‘Skipper’ Francis anthem, ‘Australia Will Be There’. Among them, in the third platoon from the front, is her brother Ben whom she adores with all the considerable love she can pack into a naturally generous heart.

She has observed Joshua riding by, sitting tall in the saddle and ramrod straight and as dashing as can be, with blue eyes and blond hair, the latter inherited from his mother, Elizabeth. Victoria thinks of him as a cousin, though, of course, he is not a relation, and her heart skips a beat at how very handsome he is in his jodhpurs and trim tunic with the polished leather of his Sam Browne belt. She is aware of the enmity between the two Solomon clans, but as Hawk has never dwelt on it, nor fully explained its reasons, it has not assumed any importance in her mind and she feels free to admire the young officer on the big chestnut stallion.

For an instant Victoria regrets that Ben, a magnificent horseman, hasn’t joined the Australian Light Horse but has chosen instead to become a foot soldier so that he can be with all his mates. She can see Ben in Joshua’s place, every bit as handsome, though darker where his Maori blood comes through, a little shorter and bigger around the shoulders and altogether stronger looking. Whereas Joshua looks like an illustration of a British officer in Boys’ Own Annual, Ben has a physical hardness about him that comes from working with his hands on the land where he has spent the last eight years of his life, latterly in charge of the company’s hop and barley farms and pastoral properties.

Although a uniform sits well enough on his strong frame, it somehow looks temporary. Ben is his own man and no institution is likely to transform him into anonymous cannon fodder. While Joshua will gain his authority from his status as an officer, the twenty-six-year-old Ben needs no rank to make men defer to him. He has been appointed a sergeant not because he marches any better or shoots straighter, or has, for that matter, any more experience at the business of waging war. Ben is their sergeant because they want to go to war with him at their side. Though he has enlisted in Tasmania and will rejoin his regiment before it leaves Australian shores, he has come to Broadmeadows, the Victorian military camp, to attend a special weapons training course and so is today acting as the sergeant of a Victorian infantry platoon. It is a most fortuitous situation as Hawk and Victoria would otherwise have been forced to take the overnight boat to Hobart to farewell him.

The clatter of horses’ hooves begins to fade as the Australian Light Horse passes and the infantry brigade are now upon them, the men marching proudly, their chins slightly raised, boots striking the surface of the road setting up a sharp rhythmic cadence, the bayonets fixed to their rifles gleaming against a leaden sky and their heads turned to the eyes-right position to salute the Governor-General.

Hawk is consumed by pride as Ben’s platoon approaches them, though, at the same time, silent tears run down his great cheeks. He has no romantic illusions about the war Tommo’s grandson is marching off to fight. He has seen men kill men before in the Maori wars and has learned that there is no glory to be found in the slaughter of humans. His heart is filled with trepidation for the lad he thinks of as his own grandson and loves with all his heart.

Victoria also weeps, but rather more from excitement, for she has no sense of Ben’s being in danger. Her brother has held her hand since she was a baby and no matter what childish disaster they faced, she always knew he would bring them through it with a self-deprecating grin and a pat on the head. Now, after showing the Germans who is the boss, he’ll return to her unscathed and with that same crooked big smile on his silly gob. They’ll all be together again, Grandpa Hawk, Ben and herself, all that is left of the disparate little family Mary Abacus gathered around her during her long life.

Hawk hasn’t told Victoria that earlier this very morning he has come away from the Sisters of Charity Hospice for Women in St Kilda where for several weeks he has been watching over a dying Hinetitama.

In the inside pocket of his white linen jacket he holds her will, in which she, of sound mind, and in front of a justice of the peace, the Mother Superior, Sister Angelene, and the parish priest, Father Anthony Crosby, has given her proxy to Hawk, making him the trustee for the ten per cent share Ben and Victoria will now own in the giant Solomon & Teekleman Company.