The Potato Factory (69 page)

If the association with the humble potato was a peculiar inheritance for a beer of quality this did not occur to Mary. While she had a very tidy mind she was still a creature of intuition, and she did what felt right to her even when logic might suggest she do otherwise. Mary was wise enough to know that few things in this world are wrought by logic alone, and that where men are often shackled by its strict parameters, women can harness the power of their intuition to create both surprising and original results.

In her mind Mary saw the chiselled stone of her malt house and the larger building of the brewery beside it with its enormous brick chimney rising above the trees. She would sometimes stand beside the falls which thundered so loudly they drowned out all other sound, and within the silence created by this singular roar, she would conjure up the entire vision. Mary could plainly see the drays lined up around the loading dock, hear the shouts of the drivers to make the great Clydesdale horses move forward, their gleaming brasses jingling as they left the Potato Factory to take her barrels of ale and beer to tavern and dockside. She looked into the bubbling water which rushed over smooth stones at her feet and saw it passing through imaginary sluice gates and along some elevated fluming and into the buckets of a giant iron water wheel which would power the brewery machinery. And sometimes, when the dream was complete, she would smack her lips and, with the back of her hand, wipe imagined froth from her mouth as though she could truly taste the liquid amber of her own future creation.

This world is not short of dreamers, but to the dreamer in Mary was added a clever, practical and innovative mind which once committed would never surrender. All grand schemes, she told herself, may be broken down to small beginnings. Each step she took, no matter how tentative it might seem, would be linked to her grand design and would always be moving towards it, if only a fraction of an inch each time. This was a simple and perhaps naive philosophy based on perseverance, on knowing that the grandest tapestry begins with a single silken thread. And so the first thing Mary did upon leaving the Cascade Brewery was to apply for a licence to sell beer. And here, once again, she had prevailed on the long-suffering Mr Emmett to help her with the recommendations she needed to obtain it.

Mary decided that even though she lacked the resources to start her own brewery she had sufficient to rent a smallish building which had once been a corn mill at the mountain end of Collins Street and which backed directly onto the banks of the rivulet. She named it the Potato Factory and converted it into a home brewery. In the front room she created a shop where citizens could buy a bottle of beer to take home. She used a small rear room in the building as her sleeping chamber and paid one of the mechanics at the Cascade Brewery to construct a small lean-to kitchen at the back. The remainder of the space in the old mill was given over to making beer.

The malt and yeast Mary used were of the highest quality, and she bought her hops from a wholesale merchant who imported it from England, as the product grown in the Derwent Valley was not yet of the highest standard. She made a light beer with a clean taste which was much favoured by the better class of drinker among the labouring classes, tradesmen and the respectable poor, and she soon attracted the favourable attention of the Temperance Society. Temperance members agreed to abstain entirely from the use of distilled spirits, except for medicinal purposes, so the society actively encouraged the drinking of beer, though in the home and not in public houses where, in the boisterous company of fellow drinkers, they might enter into the numerous evils, both moral and physical, which follow the use of spirits.

Her beer did not have 'the wallop' to appeal to the majority of drinkers, but the Temperance movement was growing rapidly in numbers, and right from the outset Mary prospered. She soon put a product on the market which she labelled 'Temperance Ale', and in six months it had become her mainstay. Mary, if only in the smallest way, was up to her eyes in the beer business, and at the same time she was favoured by the authorities for the quality of her product and the prompt manner in which she paid her taxes. There were even those within the third class, the tradesmen, clerks and smaller merchants, who considered that some day she might be admitted into their lofty and hallowed ranks.

But if Mary's great good luck had well and truly begun, the opposite to it lay waiting at her doorstep. Hannah and, eighteen months later, Ikey, were released into the community as ticket of leave convicts.

*

Ikey barely survived his seven years until he received his ticket of leave. He had neither hate nor dreams but only greed to keep him from despair.

Money had never meant anything to Ikey except as a means to an end. He played for the sake of the game - money was simply the barometer to show when he had won. He wasn't a gambler, for he figured his chances most carefully, weighing the odds to the most finite degree. Now, with seven years of penal servitude behind him, the game was no longer worth the candle. If he should return to his old life of crime and be caught again he knew he would certainly die, either in servitude or by means of the dreadful knotted loop.

Ikey told himself that, should he obtain the second half of the combination to the Whitechapel safe, he would retire to some far haven where he would live in peace and run a small tobacco business, with perhaps a little dabble here and a little negotiation there. But secretly he knew that he was a creature of London and captive to its crepuscular ways. He had disliked New York, and Rio even more, and judged the world outside England by these two unfortunate experiences. He knew that a return to crime in any significant way in Hobart Town would be both foolish and short-lived. Ikey was a marked man in the colony.

Three years on the road gang and two years thereafter as a brick maker in the penal settlement of Port Arthur, and another two returned to Richmond Gaol had been quite enough for him. His health had been destroyed in the damp road camps and in the brick pits. He had lost the courage for grand larceny, his bones ached with early rheumatism and his brain creaked for lack of wily purpose.

All that was left for Ikey was the determination to get from Hannah her half of the combination to the safe. He would lie in his cell at night and his heart would fibrillate with terror that he should not succeed in this. He knew that Hannah would have the support of her children when she received her ticket of leave, but that he might well be destitute, for he could not hope for mercy from his alienated family. But what Ikey feared most in all the world was not their rejection, or being forced into penury, but that people might see Ikey Solomon, Prince of Fences, had entirely lost his courage.

Hannah received her ticket of leave in early November 1835, with the proviso that she be restricted to the district of New Norfolk, a small country town on the banks of the Derwent River, some twenty-five miles upstream from Hobart Town. Her behaviour as a convict had proved troublesome for the authorities and they wished to remove her from the boisterous atmosphere and temptations of Hobart.

Hannah had objected strongly to this assignment as she was of a good mind to enter her old profession. Hobart was host to the American whaling ships during the season, as well as to sealers and convict transports, and to this itinerant population was added a large underclass of criminals and society's dregs well suited to Hannah's style of bawdy house.

She had pleaded her case to remain in Hobart because of her children, which was not an untruthful assertion. She asked for custody of Sarah and Mark from the orphanage, and begged that they might all be allowed to live with David and Ann, who now resided in the tiny cottage which had once been Ikey's tobacconist shop.

The chief magistrate finally agreed to a compromise. Ann was now fourteen and David sixteen and they were considered adults who no longer required the ministrations of a mother. But as Sarah had only just turned twelve and Mark was ten years old, they were allowed to accompany their mother to New Norfolk.

Being a practical woman Hannah soon enough adapted, taking up with a certain George Madden, an emancipist who had become a wealthy grain merchant, and also acted as a district constable.

Hannah was happy enough to swap bed for bread in preference to finding employment as a servant in the small town and Madden, who had a reputation as an energetic though often difficult man, also felt himself well served. He had gained the services of a skilful concubine in exchange for two children accustomed to life in an orphanage, who knew to stay well away from irascible adults.

Living with Madden allowed for a lazy life and Hannah was content to lord it over most of the locals as a grand lady on the arm of a wealthy and handsome man. That there was a good deal of gossip from the country folk regarding her lewd behaviour troubled her not at all. The people of New Norfolk were of no consequence to Hannah. They were emancipists who had served their sentences on Norfolk Island and later settled New Norfolk, and in the peculiar pecking order of the Van Diemen's Land convict, they were considered below the station of a main islander.

As for the few free settlers in the town, Hannah knew that no amount of airs and graces or playing at the
grande dame
could persuade them to include her in their society.  So  she made no  attempt to enter it. Besides, New Norfolk was only a temporary expedient forced upon her, and Madden a most convenient happen-stance. She dreamed of securing the fortune which lay waiting for her in the safe in Whitechapel and moving to Hobart Town, or perhaps even the mainland. There her wealth would soon secure good marriages for her two pretty daughters and sound careers for her two remaining sons.

Hannah also knew that sooner or later she would be confronted by the irksome presence of Ikey Solomon. But she comforted herself with the fact that he would need to serve at least seven years before he could expect his ticket of leave. This left her two years to contemplate her future, and to put into place several plans in order to defeat Ikey in that singular purpose which would preoccupy their lives the moment he was released.

Ikey must somehow be lulled into giving her his part of the combination. Hannah knew he would only do this if he felt completely confident about their shared future, and controlled their joint fortune. To accomplish the task of gaining Ikey's complete confidence, she needed to gather her family together and win back the affection of David and Ann, her two elder children. In particular David, who would play an important part in the plan to undermine her husband.

However, there was another reason why Hannah wished to regain the esteem and love of the two elder children still in Van Diemen's Land. She was determined to destroy any affection they might feel for Mary Abacus. Hannah was convinced that Mary had sought revenge for being transported. She felt certain that Ikey's scar-faced
goyem shiksa
whore had deliberately set out to steal the hearts and minds of her children, and turn them against their own flesh and blood.

Of course, this was entirely untrue. Mary was not even aware that Hannah had been the cause of her downfall. But no amount of persuasion would have convinced Hannah this was so. She had brooded on the matter too long, and what she had imagined in the dark recesses of her own vengeful mind had become an unshakable truth. Hannah had also concluded that Ikey and Mary were the collective cause of her demise, and it was a matter of personal honour to regain the love of David and Ann. She vowed to live long enough to punish Mary for plotting against her, and stealing her children's love.

Hannah intended to persuade David to win the complete trust of his father, while secretly maintaining his loyalty to her. After contriving a reconciliation with Ikey and convincing him that they should serve out their old age together, Hannah presumed David would logically be chosen to return to London, open the safe, and bring the contents back to Van Diemen's Land.

To this end Hannah needed David and his sister to settle in New Norfolk. She planned that they would take up a separate residence there so that when Ikey obtained his ticket of leave she would appear to leave Madden out of loyalty and affection for her real husband, and welcome Ikey back into the bosom of a loving and united family.

Hannah immediately set about cultivating the affection of her two elder children, who were frequently invited upriver to New Norfolk. This had not been a difficult thing to achieve. Ann had acted as a mother to young Mark and had always cared for her younger sister, and when Hannah had removed them from the orphanage Ann had been broken-hearted. She persuaded David that they should take the boat to New Norfolk and pay their respects to their mother, so that they might visit Sarah and Mark.

The first visit had been highly successful and was followed at regular intervals by others. Hannah was always sure to pay their two and sixpenny each-way ticket on the boat, and to furnish their return to Hobart with a handsome hamper, its crowning glory being a large fruit cake with sugar icing. She knew this to be a special favourite with David, who craved sweet things.

George Madden, too, seemed taken with Hannah's elder son. Hannah was pleasantly surprised when he offered David a position as a clerk in his grain business. Ann, most anxious to be close to her siblings, had pleaded with David to accept the offer. David, who was too bright for the dullards who were his superiors at the Hobart Water Works, and flattered by Madden's interest, accepted the position with alacrity. David rented the cottage in Liverpool Street, and brother and sister moved to New Norfolk.