Tiger Men (38 page)

‘Do you remember when I personally invested in the new electric tram system, Father? You wouldn’t have a bar of it. Do you recall how you laughed at me?’

‘Yes, yes?’ Silas’s tone clearly demanded to know where this was leading.

‘Well, I currently stand to make a great deal of money, for as you will have witnessed yourself, the people of Hobart have taken the trams to their hearts. Yet at the time you told me electricity was
the tool of the devil.
Those were your words, Father – your very words!’

‘And I’m not at all sure I wasn’t right,’ Silas muttered rebelliously.

‘With the greatest respect, sir, a new century beckons. Scientific advances are being made every day.’ Reginald took his father’s mutterings to be purely defensive. ‘What about that William Davidson fellow from New Zealand? In the ’80s when wool prices fell by a third, what does he do? He builds a slaughterhouse at Oamaru, refits the
Dunedin
with a compression refrigeration unit and ships frozen lamb to Europe! Refrigerated shipping! What a dashed clever notion. Now there’s a man who moves with the times.’

Silas’s expression was a baleful glare, but as it usually was and as he’d made no further attempt to halt his son’s flow, Reginald decided to follow through with his test.

‘I believe our own Henry Jones is cut from the same cloth,’ he said. ‘Jones is gaining momentum each day with his IXL exports –’

But by now Silas had had quite enough. ‘Don’t talk to me of Jones. It was men like Jones who brought the colonies to their knees barely three years ago. Have you forgotten the Great Banking Crisis?’

‘No, Father, I have not, but –’

‘Well I’ll tell you here and now it was brought about by the likes of Jones and his IXL. Yes, yes, and your New Zealand fellow and his refrigeration. Rash young entrepreneurial types creating a false economy, encouraging a flood of foreign investment to choke our financial system.’ Silas was angry now. ‘The banks collapsed! Half the companies in the country suspended trading!’

‘You’re exaggerating, Father –’

‘I most certainly am not! We have only recently recovered from the worst financial depression this country has experienced and impatient young men like your Mr Jones will lead us straight into another one! Let me tell you, boy,’ Silas shook his gnarled fist, ‘it will be over my dead body!’

How Reginald wished he could arrange that.

‘Calm down, Silas.’ Mathilda was concerned. ‘Please dear, please calm down.’ She cast a look of appeal at her son.

‘Yes, do calm down, Father,’ Reginald responded obediently, ‘you mustn’t get yourself so worked up.’ Perhaps, he thought, there might come a day when one of his father’s temper tantrums would lead to a heart attack. God he wished the old man would die: it was positively obscene he should have lived this long. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you so. Drink your tea, Father, do.’

At least I know where I stand with regard to Henry Jones, Reginald thought. He was not in the least surprised, but good God, if the mention of IXL Jam elicited a response like this, just imagine the reaction he’d get if he suggested investment in the hops industry? The Stanford name associated with the production of liquor? Never! Oh well, he and Nigel would manage. They always did. He and Nigel were masters of subterfuge.

Nigel Lyttleton of Lyttleton Holdings & Investment was ten years older than Reginald, but their families had had business connections for years. Nigel had been six years old and his sister eleven when their father Geoffrey had committed suicide, but their mother Phyllis had soldiered bravely on, appointing experts to run the company until her son was of an age to assume his rightful place at its head. Nigel, with virtually no memory of his father, had remained quite dispassionate about the suicide. Indeed he appeared to rather relish the fact that he worked in the same office where his father had blown his brains out. ‘In that very chair,’ he would say, pointing to the Queen Anne walnut elbow chair. He’d kept the chair when he’d modernised the office. A damned uncomfortable thing, he never used it, but being a collector’s item it was worth a fortune – besides which it made such an interesting talking point. ‘And to this day no-one has any idea why he did it,’ he would say with a shrug.

Reginald and Nigel had an excellent business arrangement. They were chairmen of their respective companies and each sat on the board of the other. Far from being rivals, they were collaborators who surrounded themselves with carefully handpicked supporters. Clever lawyers and accountants ensured that transactions were within the boundaries of the law, and the board members of both companies were ‘yes men’ who were easily manipulated by minds as astute as Reginald’s and Nigel’s. Silas’s position as a director of Stanford Colonial was titular only. He was invited to attend board meetings on a quarterly basis, more as a measure of respect than anything, and keeping him unaware of certain company investments was not particularly difficult.

Reginald watched as his father, still agitated, sipped his tea in an effort to calm down. Silas Stanford’s deception was a source of great satisfaction to Reginald.

‘I shall pay a visit to the property next week, Father,’ he said. He didn’t really want to, the countryside bored him, but it would placate the old man if he did so. ‘I’ve been remiss of late, I know, and I shall enjoy seeing Amy and Donald and Edwin.’

Mathilda flashed a look of gratitude to her son. A visit to Pontville would surely please Silas, who was forever complaining that Reginald showed no interest.

But Silas merely scowled. ‘It won’t do you any good, you know. They won’t listen.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Amy and Donald and Edwin. They’re committed to Merino production: you won’t be able to talk them around.’

‘Oh good heavens above, Father, that was not my intention.’ Reginald gave a laugh of sheer delight. ‘As if I would do anything behind your back,’ God, how he did enjoy the game. ‘I must go now, Mama.’ He crossed to the sofa and retrieved his straw boater. ‘No, no,’ he said as his mother rose from her chair, ‘don’t see me to the door. I know my way out.’ He kissed her on the cheek.

‘Take care, Reggie.’

‘I shall. Goodbye, Father. I enjoyed our chat as always.’

Silas responded with a grunt. Why did the boy so get on his nerves! Then he caught his wife’s glance. ‘Good news that Evelyn’s in fine health,’ he said, trying his best to sound gracious. ‘Give her my best wishes when you get home.’

‘Of course.’

But Reginald didn’t go home to Stanford House. At least not for some time. It hadn’t been his intention from the start. He had no desire for Evelyn’s company.

Instead of walking the one block down to Davey Street, he turned right along Macquarie, and then right again into Molle Street. He needed nurturing of the kind his heavily pregnant wife could not offer. But then even in the early days of their marriage, Evelyn had never excited him the way Shauna could. In fact Reginald doubted there was a woman on earth able to match the talents of his mistress.

He passed the T-junction of Collins, crossed over Liverool Street and stopped at the stone cottage on the corner.

He gave his special knock and the door opened, only a foot or so, just wide enough for the shaft of sunlight to hit the fiery red mane of her hair.

‘Hello, Reginald,’ she said, fox eyes gleaming.

Four whole years and still just the look of Shauna O’Callaghan excited him.

‘Come in,’ she whispered.

O
f the five O’Callaghans, Shauna was the only one to have inherited her mother’s colouring. Her two older sisters and her two younger brothers had the dark-haired, olive-skinned gypsy looks of their father. But there was no denying, the O’Callaghans were striking, every single one them. Heads turned when an O’Callaghan walked down the street.

‘It’s in the blood,’ Mara the eldest would say with a toss of her raven black hair. The comment could be taken as arrogant, but it wasn’t really. The O’Callaghans had inherited not only their looks from their parents, but also their boldness. They did not shy away from speaking their mind, or in Mara’s case, simply making a statement.

Their father, Mick, had weathered time exceptionally well. At least it would appear so: in truth he was plagued by a stomach ulcer that gave him hell. But he was still slim and blessed with a fine head of hair and a bounce in his step – there remained a boyishness about Mick O’Callaghan. The grey at his temples and the crinkles about his eyes, particularly when he smiled, only added to the roguish quality that had always been there and, although now in his sixties, he looked a good twenty years younger. Indeed, Mick O’Callaghan seemed ageless.

Eileen had not fared as well. She was still striking, but the fire of her beauty had faded and she looked her age. The fierce red of her hair was now a gingery grey and her body had thickened with the birth of five children. But there remained something arresting about Eileen, something that people at times found confronting. It was her demeanour, the way she carried herself with such pride, and the way those animal eyes seemed to see into the minds of others. Eileen O’Callaghan was a strong woman, with a tough streak that could appear ruthless to some.

Mick and Eileen still lived in the cottage in Hampden Road, indeed the very same cottage where they’d brought up their five children. Things had not worked out quite as Mick had intended. He hadn’t become the rich man he’d presumed he would, and the Hunter’s Rest hadn’t proved the automatic road to success he’d imagined he could make it. All of which was his own fault. He’d taken the easy way out right from the start, appointing a manager to do the hard work while he posed as the publican and gambled away much of the profits. The manager he’d chosen had proved slack, the pub had gone downhill, and Eileen, after bearing the situation for a full five years, had issued her ultimatum.

‘Your daughters will need an education, Mick,’ she’d said, ‘and that takes money. If you don’t mend your ways I’ll leave you, and I’ll take the girls with me, I swear I will.’

Whether or not her threat was an empty one, the mere thought of life without Eileen and his three little girls had been incentive enough for Mick. He’d cut his gambling back to a minimum, sacked the manager and worked hard to bring the pub back to the glory days it had known under Ma Tebbutt’s reign. He’d also introduced a lucrative sideline that Ma had not been involved in: the sale of contraband liquor. French cognacs, Scottish whiskies and fine Spanish sherries were among the many commodities smuggled into Hobart to avoid import tax. They fetched an excellent price on the black market. The Hunter’s Rest had proved an ideal storage venue and sales outlet and Mick had proved the perfect middleman between the smugglers and the wealthy drinkers, who wanted ready access to the best alcohol money could buy at the best price it could be bought. Paying off the police and the customs officers who occasionally visited the premises had been simple. Every official who covered the Wapping area could be bought.

Through Mick’s endeavours, the family’s fortunes had improved immeasurably, but he and Eileen had not sought to enhance their own lives. They lived comfortably enough anyway and they liked their cottage. Instead, every penny had been put aside to provide the all-important education Eileen demanded for their daughters.

‘They will have the opportunities I was denied,’ she had insisted. ‘Never mind that they’re girls, they’ll receive a proper education.’

Eileen had actually felt guilty when her first three children had all proved to be girls. First Mara, then Kathleen, then Shauna – couldn’t one of them have been a son? she’d thought.

‘I’m sorry, Mick,’ she’d said as she’d laid back wearily against the pillows, her new baby, also weary from the effort of being born, now sleeping peacefully in her arms.

‘What for?’ he’d replied with his irrepressible grin. ‘Look at her, will you? Just look at that hair.’ Shauna had been born with a downy flame-red skull-cap. ‘How could you not love a thing like that now?’

‘But you wanted a son, I know you did.’

‘Rubbish,’ he’d said dismissively. Of course he’d wanted a son – Mick had ached for a son – but it would not stop him loving his daughters. ‘What good are boys, I ask you? Wastrels every one of them. There’s much more money in girls.’

‘No, I won’t have that,’ she’d said firmly. ‘Our daughters are not going into the business. I will not allow it.’

‘Of course they’re not, are you daft?’ He’d been surprised and even a little shocked that she’d presumed he meant such a thing, particularly as he’d only been trying to comfort her. But then that was Eileen. There were times when even Mick could not fathom his wife. ‘We’ll marry them off to wealthy men is what I meant. There’s money to be had in marriage.’

‘There certainly is,’ she’d agreed, ‘and if not marriage, a benefactor. Wealthy men abound in Hobart.’

A benefactor, Mick thought. Isn’t that rather like going into the business? But then he supposed marrying for money was too, wasn’t it? Either way, his girls would make wealthy matches, of that there was no doubt.

‘Just look at her, Eileen,’ he’d said, running the tip of his little finger over the child’s perfect mouth, ‘between us we’ve bred beauties, that’s for sure.’

‘The next one will be a boy,’ she’d promised, and she vowed to herself that if it wasn’t, then she’d keep having girls until she produced a son. And not just for Mick. Eileen wanted a beautiful boy of her own.

Two years later, in the winter of 1862, Colin O’Callaghan was born, a perfectly formed baby, as beautiful as his sisters.

Mick was ecstatic, a son and heir. As the child grew, he even proved himself a very replica of his da: audacious and cheeky, with winning ways. Mick recalled his father’s proud boast about himself when he was a boy.
He could charm the wings off a butterfly that one
, Patrick Kelly would say,
and the butterfly would walk away flightless and happy. The boy has the true gift, there’s no doubt about it
. Mick spoiled his son shamelessly, rarely disciplining young Col even when he knew the child was telling a tissue of lies. ‘The gift’ after all, if put to good use, could prove a valuable tool in life. By the age of six, Col O’Callaghan had his father under his spell.