Authors: Bryce Courtenay
‘Mama, the workers and the publicans yes, maybe a grand picnic for them. As for the rest they despise us, they’ll come to laugh, you’ll be giving them more bitch-faced pleasure than they’ve enjoyed in years. I doubt also that the governor will accept.’
‘Yes he will, he knows what side his bread is buttered,’ though Mary secretly doubts that Governor Hamilton will accept her invitation. He’s a nice enough cove, but his wife, Lady Teresa, is a frightful snob with her nose held high enough to look down upon Mount Wellington, never mind the hoi polloi. Mary takes a final shot at Hawk’s objection. ‘You’ve made me wait all this time, she could be nigh six months pregnant by now! I may not live long enough to see me own great-grandchild!’
Hawk gives a bitter little laugh. ‘Mama, if you have to cut the umbilical cord with your own teeth, you’ll be at the birth!’
‘Yes, well, you’re not denying me a proper wedding. Next you’ll be telling me you’ll not give the bride away.’
Hawk feels he cannot protest any longer. ‘May as well be hung for a sheep as a goat,’ he grins.
‘Good, then that’s settled,’ Mary says, trying hard to conceal the triumph in her voice.
The wedding is truly a grand affair with the governor in attendance at St David’s Church, though not at the reception afterwards, which is held at the racecourse, there being no other venue sufficiently large to contain the crowd. Three dozen oxen and at least four times as many lambs are roasted and it seems all of Tasmania is in attendance. Mary has reluctantly made a concession to the local society members by creating a grand banquet for them in the Members’ enclosure.
She explains this separation of the classes to Hawk. ‘I don’t want the nobs and the true merinos walking about among the mob with the ordinary folks chewing a bit of a chop and having a good time feeling obliged to bow and scrape and thinking they’s not just as entitled to be there as the nobs.’
In fact, she only visits the Members’ enclosure once, to present and to drink a toast to the bride and groom, whereupon the three of them promptly leave the nobs to themselves, joining the picnic on the course. Hawk, meanwhile, remains with the common crowd.
*
In the months that follow the wedding not much is worthy of mention. Teekleman, having secured the prize, does not go astray and within a few weeks, almost on cue, Hinetitama announces that she is experiencing nausea. ‘Morning sickness,’ Mary announces gleefully to the cook, ‘a little strained broth if you will, Mrs Briggs.’
On time and with surprisingly little fuss, given Hinetitama’s size, Ben Solomon-Teekleman is delivered by a midwife, with Dr Moses standing by, enjoying an excellent Portuguese sherry or two in Hawk’s study.
The lack of complication in Ben’s delivery will characterise him all his life. He is a happy and uncomplaining baby who seldom cries, a child who is good at sports, gathers friends around him easily, is in the middle ranking at school and is seldom less than cheerful. Later, he predictably becomes a young man who takes life in his stride. Neither boastful nor arrogant and oblivious to the wealth at his command, he is much loved by a wide range of mates and accepted as their natural leader. At five feet and ten inches in his stockinged feet he is neither short nor tall but powerfully built, dark-haired and brown of eye with a hint of Maori about his broad brow and strong jawline. A handsome young man by all appearances, he is also an excellent shot and a natural horseman.
His sibling, Victoria, born fifteen months later, has a difficult birth and Dr Moses announces that Hinetitama will endanger herself if she attempts to have more children. She is as fair as her brother is dark, a blonde with almost violet eyes and with a slightly olive skin. While Mary dotes on both children it is to Victoria that she is most naturally attracted. The little girl, much to Hawk’s consternation and her great-grandmother’s delight, is stubborn as a mule, and, in Mary’s last year of life, at three years old already shows an exceptional intelligence. She sits beside the old woman, doing basic sums on the abacus, the bright beads never ceasing to delight her.
‘She’s the one!’ Mary cackles. ‘She’s the one!’ Mary at the age of eighty-five still has all her faculties intact, though she is becoming increasingly hard of hearing. ‘Damned good thing too,’ she often says. ‘I’m tired of hearing all the nonsense people go on about.’ She was never one to suffer fools gladly but now she has become a thoroughly cantankerous old woman, the only exceptions being her great-grandchildren, though even they are sent packing when they become too boisterous for her. She no longer goes to the Potato Factory every day but still insists that Hawk talk the day’s business over with her as she takes a glass of sherry and watches the sun setting over the Derwent.
At half-past five in the afternoon and half an hour sooner in the winter she is to be found in her accustomed chair on the porch overlooking her magnificent garden. Further off still the city snatches the last of the late afternoon sunlight and finally she looks out upon the river beyond it, that brightest ribbon of water that first brought her as a young convict woman over sixty years ago to the shores of Van Diemen’s Land.
Though Mary enjoys the magnificent sunset and the closing down of the day, that is, on those good days when the ever changing Tasmanian weather allows it to occur, this is not the reason she is at her station at precisely the same time every evening. She waits for the green parrots.
‘My luck, here comes my great good fortune!’ she shouts as the flock approaches, wheeling towards her, seeming to be skidding on the glass-bright air. Her poor broken hand is clasped around the little gold Waterloo medal that hangs from her neck. Then as the birds pass over she releases the medal and clasps her hands to her bosom, cheering them on as their raucous screeching fills the space above her, drowning out her own calls of delight.
It is a ritual which never varies and which is of the utmost importance to her wellbeing. The very site for her magnificent home was selected over several months of observation and only after carefully determining the exact morning and evening flight path of the rosellas.
Apart from Ikey’s Waterloo medal, sent to her in Newgate Prison in a moment of aberrant generosity Ikey himself could never satisfactorily explain, the parrots have always signified her new beginning, her second chance and her subsequent great good fortune.
She now recalls how she first witnessed a flock of parrots in flight as the Destiny II was leaving the Port of Rio de Janeiro, the convict transport having called in to take on supplies of food and fresh water before proceeding to Van Diemen’s Land.
Mary was hidden behind two barrels at the stern of the vessel, having escaped from the ship’s hospital where earlier she had lain in wait for the vile Potbottom, to recover her Waterloo medal which he had stolen from her. The departing ship had reached a point between Fort San Juan and Fort Santa Cruz when she witnessed a flock of macaw parrots flying across the headland, their brilliant plumage flashing in the early morning sun.
As the birds rose Mary could see the Sugar Loaf, the majestic peak that towers above the grand sweep of the bay and dominates this most beautiful of all the world’s harbours.
With the flock of macaws captured against an impossibly high blue sky Mary felt a surge of exhilaration. It was the first time during the long and dreadful voyage from England that she held the slightest hope that what remained of her life would not continue in abject misery and end in her premature death.
Her kind were usually dead at the age of thirty-four and some a great deal earlier. With seven years of incarceration on the Fatal Shore ahead of her, she had little reason to expect a life free of misery or, for that matter, of her death not arriving at the normally predicted time.
Then, at sunrise many weeks later, as the Destiny II lay at anchor in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel prior to catching the early morning tide to take them up river to Hobart Town, a flock of bright green parrots had flown overhead calling a raucous welcome down to her. From that moment, when Mary had seen the parrots enter her life for a second time, she accepted the emerald green rosella as her good luck, her great good fortune. Never a day in her subsequent life passes without her going out to greet them at sunrise and, as she is doing now, to send them on their way at sunset.
The following morning, for the first time in her new life, Mary fails to rise. She is always up before the servants and when she doesn’t appear on the balcony, Martha Billings, who usually stands in the garden where she can observe the birds and Mary at her customary place, goes hurrying to the back of the house and into the kitchen to tell Mrs Briggs.
Mrs Briggs, all bustle and fuss, hurries up the stairs and arrives panting at Mary’s bed-chamber door. She knocks tentatively. ‘You all right, dear?’ she calls softly and then, when no sound comes from the room beyond, she knocks more loudly. She hears a faint call to enter and shyly enters Mary’s bed chamber.
Nobody within living memory has ever seen Iron Mary in bed and Mrs Briggs is surprised at how small and frail she looks with the blanket drawn up against her chin. ‘You must call Hawk,’ Mary whispers.
‘Oh my Gawd!’ Mrs Briggs gasps, immediately bursting into tears.
‘Call Hawk, you silly woman,’ Mary rasps.
With her hands covering her face Mrs Briggs runs from the bedroom.
Hawk arrives a few minutes later wearing a dressing gown over his nightshirt. He has already shaved but not yet had the time to dress.
‘Mama!’ he exclaims as he enters. ‘You are not well?’
The sight of the frail little woman almost lost in the large brass and enamel bed leaves him with a deep sense of shock. While Mary is an old woman, such is her character that only strangers note her advanced age. Those who have been around her for most, if not all of their lives, see only Mary, or if they are among the unfortunate, Iron Mary, but nevertheless both her friends and her enemies regard her as an indestructible force.
‘I shall call Dr Moses,’ Hawk says. ‘How do you feel, Mama?’
Mary lifts her hand. Even though she is in bed, she still wears mittens to hide the deformity of her hands, they are as indispensable to her as her lace sleeping bonnet. ‘No, I don’t want him fussing about. Will you call Hinetitama and the children to my bedside but first…’
Hawk interjects. ‘Mama, you are never taken sick, please let me call Dr Moses.’
Mary doesn’t bother to answer. ‘Hawk, listen to me,’ she says, her voice barely above a whisper. She pats the eiderdown beside her, signalling that he should sit beside her on the bed. As Hawk sits, the weight of his huge body sinks the bedsprings, so that Mary is almost in a seated position. ‘Now listen to me carefully,’ she repeats. ‘In the safe in my office is a brown manilla envelope, it’s got a black seal, not red like the usual. Open it, read it carefully.’ She pauses to take a breath.
‘Then in the drawer of the desk you will find a stick of the same black wax. I want you to reseal it, so it’s returned just the way it was.’ The effort at talking is taking its toll and Mary rests for a moment, her chest heaving with the effort. ‘If the Dutchman behaves well, you will give it to him before you die, or leave it to him in your will.’ Mary rests again before continuing. ‘If he plays up after I’ve gorn, tell him you now possess the document and send him away. Tell him if he returns you will take the appropriate action.’
‘Mama, hush, hush, you’re not going to die,’ Hawk says, alarmed, putting his huge black hand to her brow. It is cold and clammy and his heart skips a beat.
There is a trace of a smile on Mary’s lips. ‘Yes I am. If I says so, that’s it then, ain’t it? Do you understand what I’m saying about the Dutchman?’
Hawk nods. ‘Yes, Mama.’
‘Now call Hinetitama and the children in.’
‘Mama, I feel I should call Dr Moses.’
Mary sighs and then remains silent for a few moments as though she is trying to decide. ‘No,’ she says finally, ‘I’ve had enough, I heard the birds pass over this mornin’ but I weren’t there to see them.’ It is said as though it is her final word, no different to her dismissal of some proposition put to her in business. ‘Go now.’
Hawk taps softly on the door of Hinetitama’s bed chamber then opens the door a crack to look in. She is awake but still in bed beside her husband, who is snoring, his fat belly rising and falling well above the level of his head and the bolster it rests against.
In the years they have been together Teekleman has almost doubled in size, his girth well beyond the possibility of joining his fingers about it. Hawk opens the door a little wider so that his niece might see his face. ‘You decent?’ he whispers.
‘What is it?’ she asks, climbing out of bed. She is wearing a cotton nightgown to her ankles and her dark hair falls naturally to her shoulders, seeming not disturbed by her sleeping. Hawk thinks how pretty she looks, though a woman now of thirty-two she still appears to be ten years younger. He wonders, as he has so often done, what she sees in the fat Dutchman, for she seems as besotted by him as ever.
Hawk points to Teekleman and brings his finger to his lips. ‘Come to Mary’s room,’ he says softly and then goes to fetch Ben and Victoria from the nursery.
With Teekleman excluded and the remainder of her little family gathered around her, Mary first kisses Ben and sends him off to his breakfast. She holds Victoria a moment longer. ‘You shall have my abacus, my precious,’ she whispers before releasing her.
‘Are you ill, Great-grandmamma?’ Victoria asks in the clear tones of a child. ‘Are you going to die?’
‘Run along now, darlin’,’ Mary says softly.
‘No! I won’t and you can’t make me,’ the child replies, looking defiantly at Mary.
‘Go!’ Hinetitama admonishes her. ‘Do as Great-grandmamma says.’
‘No!’ Victoria replies, folding her little arms and walking backwards until her bottom brushes against a small chaise longue and she jumps up and wriggles, with her arms still folded, until she is seated defiantly upon it. She hasn’t, for one moment, taken her eyes off Mary.
‘Stubborn,’ Mary whispers, though it seems more a compliment than an admonishment. Then with a slight gesture of her hand she draws Hinetitama closer so that she is where Hawk previously sat. ‘I have made provision in my will for you and the children, my dear. You are to have your own house with servants provided and the income from a trust fund I have set up for the children until Victoria reaches the age of thirty and Ben thirty-two.’