Tiger Men (12 page)

‘What are you’re getting at, Ma?’ Sensing advice imminent Mick’s interest had waned. ‘You think this Jefferson Powell could offer me a job, that’s it, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, that’s it exactly.’

‘As a waterman on a ferry boat?’ He did little to disguise the sneer in his voice.

‘What’s so bad about that?’ she demanded. ‘You’ve got to start somewhere and you have the wherewithal: you’re an experienced sailor. What else have you got to offer?’ She could see that her reasoning, sound though it may have been, was making no impression. ‘I’m telling you, Mick, if you want an honest job with the prospect of advancement, you need look no further than Jefferson Powell.’ She plonked her mug on the table and leant in with fierce intent. ‘He’s going up in the world Jefferson is, and you want to know why?’

‘Why?’ He didn’t even bother feigning interest. She’d tell him anyway.

‘Because he married the old man’s daughter, that’s why. And Hamish died last year. McLagan left everything to Jefferson Powell, lock stock and bleedin’ barrel.’

‘Well, well, well.’ Mick smiled. Now that really
was
a matter of interest. ‘How very clever of Jefferson Powell.’

‘I’ve heard tell he’s expanding the business,’ Ma said, glad that she’d finally made an impact, ‘and a bright young man like you could move up the ranks real fast. That is if you had a mind to make something of yourself.’

Mick wondered why Ma was showing such concern for his future.

‘You don’t have to be born to the gentry here, Mick,’ she continued. ‘A man can be accepted if he works hard and proves himself. Half the toffs in Van Diemen’s Land aren’t gentry anyway: they’re pretenders when all’s said and done. And they know it, what’s more. You’ve just got to play the game is all.’

‘Why are you doing this, Ma?’

‘Eh?’ She was caught out.

‘Why the sudden interest in my well-being?’

The question was a little confronting, and Ma wondered why herself. She’d developed a soft spot for the lad, it was true, but she knew it went deeper than that. Perhaps young Mick O’Callaghan had become the son she’d never had. Perhaps he was making up for those much regretted self-induced abortions forty years before, when she’d been on the game. Or perhaps he was the boy she and Sid might have produced if by then she hadn’t deprived her body of the ability. She had her girls around her, it was true, all of whom were like daughters, but she’d like to have had a lad of her own.

‘Just an old woman’s motherly advice, son,’ she said with a touch of humour. That was as close to the truth as she was prepared to go.

Mick grinned. ‘There you are now, you see? I always said you’ve a real soft heart underneath.’

Ma ignored the charm; it was commitment she was seeking. ‘So if I have Len line things up, you’ll see Jefferson then?’

‘Sure, I’ll see him.’ What do I have to lose? Mick thought, and it’ll keep the old girl happy. ‘But there’s someone else I’d rather see first.’

‘Oh?’

‘Where would I find Red when she’s not at Trafalgar?’

He can’t be serious, Ma thought. Hadn’t he heard a word she’d said? ‘You don’t want to set your sights on a girl like Red, Mick.’

He laughed. ‘I’m hardly setting my sights on her, Ma. I just want to meet up with her is all.’

‘You’ll be after more than a chat, I’ll warrant,’ she replied drily. ‘And you say you don’t pay? She’ll knock you back quick as look at you.’

He gave a careless shrug. ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ he said, ‘we’ll see.’

Right, Ma thought, if he won’t listen to me then let him learn it the hard way. ‘Try the ten o’clock mass at St Joseph’s tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Red’s a good Catholic girl, at least she pretends to be. She goes to church every Sunday.’

‘Thanks, Ma, much obliged.’ He drained his mug and stood. ‘And thanks too for the rum,’ he said.

‘Shall I see if Len can get Jefferson Powell lined up for next week?’ Ma remained persistent to the end.

‘Why not?’

Mick had half expected, given Ma’s warning, that Red might knock him back on business grounds. His ego had convinced him that she found him as exciting as he did her – why else would she have flirted with him so outrageously – but he was prepared to accept a rejection. Red was a working girl after all. He was totally unprepared, however, for the response he received.

She hadn’t noticed him in church; there’d been no reason why she should, for he’d sat up the back. And dressed in his charcoal grey suit and silk waistcoat as he was, with his top hat resting on his knees, he’d no doubt blended in with the other gentlemen present. He hadn’t taken part in the holy communion – that might be pushing his luck, given that he and God had parted ways – but he’d watched her receiving the sacraments and thought how serenely beautiful she looked. Her dress was less showy than the preceding day’s, her skirt not as full and of cotton not velvet, her bonnet bordering on austere without frills and lace, the pelisse replaced by a simple paisley shawl. She seemed so demure, he thought, a lady through and through.

He ducked outside towards the end of mass and waited in Macquarie Street, watching as the congregation left the church. She’d been in no hurry to get home it seemed, for she’d lagged behind, dawdling with the stragglers, and she might even have passed him by had he not stepped in front of her.

‘Hello,’ he said, waiting for her to make some comment upon his fine clothes and his shining top hat. He looked devilishly handsome and he knew it.

But she made no comment at all. Her expression was unreadable as she stepped around him and walked on.

Undaunted, he kept pace with her. ‘I noticed you in church,’ he said, ‘and as you appear once again to be unaccompanied, I thought I might offer my services as your escort.’

‘You know where Trafalgar is then, do you? I’m headed there.’ Her eyes remained trained directly ahead.

Although a little nonplussed Mick didn’t miss a beat. ‘Yes, I know where Trafalgar is.’

‘I take it Ma told you. Just like she told you I’d be in church.’

‘Ma told me a lot of things,’ he said with a smile, deeming it wise to keep the exchange light-hearted.

‘Like what?’ She halted abruptly and turned to him.

‘Well . . .’ He hesitated. She didn’t seem on the attack, but her manner was so direct he was a little unsure what to say.

‘Did she tell you that I can only be had for money, and that if you don’t have any then you won’t stand a chance?’

‘That’s exactly what she said.’ Mick did away with the niceties. If Red wanted to get straight to the point, then that’s the way they’d play it.

‘But you thought that in your case I’d make an exception, didn’t you, Mick?’

Her fox eyes flickered over him the way they had outside the baker’s shop, appraising him, taking in every detail, and Mick’s heart started to pound. She liked what she saw: he could feel it.

‘I only know that we shared something,’ he said. ‘Something happened between us, Red, you must have felt it yourself.’

‘Well, I’ve decided I
will
make an exception in your case,’ she said, and he held his breath, hardly daring to believe his good luck. ‘You’ll be the exception who won’t stand a chance no matter how much money you have.’

The words came as such a surprise that he stood for a moment trying to work them out, wondering whether perhaps he’d got them in the wrong order, whether perhaps he’d heard incorrectly. But with a cold and calculated intent to wound, Red drove her message home even harder.

‘My favours are bought by gentlemen, Mr O’Callaghan, and no matter how finely you dress you’ll never be a gentleman.’ She gathered her paisley shawl tightly around her shoulders, warding off the bite of winter. ‘Face it, Mick,’ she said, ‘you’re as common as muck,’ and she left him standing there in the broad, dusty avenue of Macquarie Street.

O
n first meeting, Jefferson Brindsley Powell appeared everything Ma had promised. He also appeared everything Mick had expected.

‘You’ll learn from Jefferson, Mick,’ Ma had said when he’d popped in to see her before setting off for the McLagan house, which was a twenty-minute walk away in Battery Point. She’d insisted upon vetting his appearance, warning him that Jefferson Powell was not one to be impressed by ‘fancy clobber’. ‘He’s a man of true values is Jefferson,’ she’d said after giving her approval to the moleskin trousers, boots and woollen jacket. She’d felt dubious about the signal red kerchief knotted at Mick’s throat, but she’d wisely said nothing: Mick wasn’t Mick without a touch of flamboyance. ‘A gentleman through and through, he is. You can tell just by being in his company. If you want to move up in the world, Mick, as I know you do, you can learn a lot from a classy gent like Jefferson Powell.’

Ma’s lecture, surprisingly enough, had not grated with Mick, for indeed he intended to learn a great deal from Jefferson Powell. Driven by his humiliating encounter outside the church with Red, he was now determined to better himself. He would not do so in order to prove his worth to Eileen ‘Red’ Hilditch, whom he had chosen to despise. What would a whore from the backstreets of Dublin know of the gentry anyway, apart from the tricks she’d learnt between the sheets? He would make his mark for his own sake. He would become a gentleman with the best of them, and Jefferson Powell, obviously a smart operator with an eye to the main chance, would provide the wherewithal.

The McLagan house in Napoleon Street, which Jefferson had inherited just the previous year upon the old man’s death, was attractive and roomy with wide wooden verandahs and a pretty front garden where the winter-bare fronds of birch trees drooped gracefully over green grass and flowerbeds. Although not opulent, the overall effect was one of space and comfort, luxuries unknown to the residents of Wapping. Not bad, Mick thought as he tapped lightly with the brass door knocker, not bad at all for a convict who’d spent four years in Port Arthur, albeit as a
political
prisoner.

‘Mr O’Callaghan, welcome, I’m Jefferson Powell.’

To Mick’s surprise, the door was opened by none other than the man himself. To his further surprise, the man himself was dressed in a flannel shirt, breeches and leather jerkin. By all appearances he could have been a labourer.

‘How do you do, Mr Powell?’

Mick accepted the hand on offer and the two shook.

‘Come on in, please do.’ Powell’s accent was distinctly American, but his voice was well modulated and pleasing to the ear. It’s a voice that has the ring of a gentleman, Mick thought.

‘Thank you, sir.’ He responded with just the right air of deference to a prospective employer and one ten years or so his senior before stepping into a pleasingly light and airy front sitting room with windows that looked out over the garden and down the hill to the broad expanse of river beyond. There was no-one else in sight, but from another part of the house, he could hear the sound of children’s voices.

‘Let’s go through to my office, shall we?’

Powell led the way to a door at the far end of the sitting room and Mick followed. He was impressed already. Jefferson Powell was everything he’d been led to believe. In his mid-thirties, sandy-haired and strongly built, he was good looking certainly, but it was his manner that impressed above all, for his manner belied his working man’s garb. Powell bore the easy grace and confidence of one secure in his standing in society. Ma was right, Mick thought, the man has class.

He was ushered into a masculine room that smelt of wood and leather. Finely carved model boats of all size and description lined the surrounding shelves and an imposing desk made of local pine was strewn with plans and designs which at even a glance Mick could see were of vessels.

‘Take a seat, Mr O’Callaghan; please make yourself comfortable.’ Jefferson left the door slightly ajar and circled the desk to sit opposite. ‘I’ve been told you’re a close friend of Ma Tebbutt’s,’ he said.

Mick wasn’t sure how he should reply. Certainly, the contact had been made through Ma, but should he admit to a close personal friendship? She did after all run a brothel in Wapping.

‘I know Ma, yes,’ he said, hedging a little, buying time. ‘A good woman . . .’ Fortunately that was enough.

‘A good woman indeed,’ Jefferson said in hearty agreement. ‘As was her husband, Sid, God rest his soul.’

Mick automatically crossed himself, an instinctive and meaningless gesture, but it did not go unnoticed by Jefferson.

‘You knew Sid Tebbutt, did you?’

‘Sadly, no, sir. I’ve been in Van Diemen’s Land only eight months now.’

‘Ah yes, of course: so I was told. You were a seaman aboard the
Maid of Canton
, I believe.
’

‘That’s right, Mr Powell. I served aboard the
Maid
for three long years, I’m proud to say: one of the finest vessels in existence.’ Mick and Ma had agreed there was no need for Jefferson Powell to know he’d signed up for a one-way voyage only, and as a deckhand. Better he should have served his apprenticeship and be fully qualified, they’d decided.

‘Forgive my asking,’ Jefferson said, puzzled and with an air of apology for he had no wish to pry, ‘but given your calling, what led you to forsake a life at sea?’

Mick could have felt cornered, but he didn’t. Suddenly he saw an opportunity, and he grabbed at it. ‘I think, perhaps, I may not have had a true calling at all, sir. I think perhaps the sea may have been an escape to me.’

‘An escape, in what way?’

‘I got myself into a spot of trouble in Ireland, sir. Not of any criminal kind, I can assure you,’ he paused thoughtfully before adding, ‘although the British might not agree with me there.’ Mick’s mind was ticking over furiously, recalling Ma’s story of Powell’s past. The man was an idealist, or at least he had been in his youth. Surely, Mick thought, just a hint of his own past would find favour.

‘Like many of my fellow countrymen I am a nationalist, sir,’ he said, ‘and in joining those who choose to take a stand for their beliefs I placed myself in a rather dangerous position.’ Powell’s bound to identify with such a story, and it isn’t far from the truth anyway, Mick thought. The only variance in his case was that due to his disastrous botch-up it was his own mob that was after him rather than the British. ‘I am no fugitive from justice, Mr Powell,’ he said, ‘but had I remained in Ireland I may well have become so.’