Tiger Men

by Judy Nunn

  ‘I don’t work here. I used to once, but not now.’

  ‘Ah.’ There was a pause, Dan was a little confused. ‘So why’d you break up the fight the way you did?’

  ‘I was just looking after Peg. She’s a friend.’

  ‘Really? Had I known that I’d not have entrusted you with my knife.’

  ‘Why did you give me the knife?’ Mick was curious. ‘I didn’t ask you for it.’

  ‘I was lining you up for a chat is all; you interest me.’ Dan smiled his lop-sided smile. ‘There’s something about you that reminds me of myself when I was your age.’

  Mick wasn’t at all sure the remark was a compliment and his dubious reaction was so readable that Dan gave a bark of laughter.

  ‘Oh you’re a damn sight better looking, I’ll grant you that. But you’re out for adventure and a cocky young bastard, just like I was.’ He took another swig of his ale and wiped his moustache again. ‘So tell me, what are you up to now you’ve left the pub?’

  ‘I’ve recently become the manager of the Powell Ferry-Boat Service.’ Mick tried to sound casual, but there was no disguising the ring of pride in his voice.

  ‘My, my, a move up in the world, and a big one by the sound of it.’

  Unsure whether or not he was being ridiculed, Mick made no reply. He stared defiantly back at the older man.

  Dan studied him for a moment or so. ‘You’re a tiger man too, aren’t you Mick?’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean you’re out to catch what you can. I mean you’re after the main chance.’

  ‘And what if I am?’ Mick’s tone was belligerent. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing at all,’ Dan said reassuringly. ‘This town is full of tiger men. Just look around you. The merchants, the builders, the bankers, the company men: they’re all out for what they can get. This is a tiger town, Mick. A place at the bottom of the world where God turns a blind eye to pillage and plunder, and all is fair game. You’re living in a tiger town, my friend.’

  Mick realised that he was not being ridiculed, but he found the exchange disquieting nonetheless. There was something a bit mad about Dan.

  ‘If you want to move up in this world Mick, and I can tell that you do –’ Dan leaned his leathery face close as if sharing a secret ‘– you’d best follow the path of the tiger man, and you know what that is?’

  The question was obviously rhetorical, but Mick found himself resisting the urge to nod.

  ‘You take whatever you can get. And you use whatever you’ve got to take it.’

  The advice, crass though it was, had a familiar ring. How disturbing, Mick thought, to hear my own credo from the mouth of a man like Dan.

  ‘With looks like yours I know what I’d be doing,’ Dan said, ‘and it sure as hell wouldn’t be managing a ferry service.’ He polished off his ale. ‘Find yourself a wealthy woman, my friend. Don’t work for your money. Marry it.’

  He laughed and Mick laughed along with him, joining in the joke.

  But was it a joke? Dan’s words continued to rattle around in Mick’s brain. His encounter with the tiger man had left him decidedly unsettled.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Dan the tiger man and the events of Saturday night paled in comparison to the unsettling experiences of the following week.

  It all started on Thursday, after a card game at Farrington’s.

  Mick had had a good win at the card table and he and the Dimbleby brothers had retired to the bar for cognac and cigars. The personal connection he’d recently made with the Dimblebys pleased Mick as Charles and Gerald Dimbleby were a definite step up the social ladder. Dimblebys, Purveyors of Fine Goods, was an exceedingly reputable company.

  The brothers Dimbleby had, in their early twenties, been sent to the colony by their wealthy merchant father to open up trade for the family business, Dimbleby Senior’s added intention no doubt being to deprive his younger sons of the temptations London offered. Five years on, having successfully established the business, Charles and Gerald were perceived as highly respectable young men of good family, but at heart they remained the ne’er-do-wells they had always been.

  Now, as they downed their cognacs, Charles, the elder by just one year, complained that he was famished, and the ever-randy Gerald insisted he needed a woman. The choice was obvious. There was only one venue that would satisfy them both. Trafalgar.

  ‘Supper and a woman, Mick,’ Gerald urged. ‘What do you say?’

  ‘I don’t want a woman,’ Mick replied good-naturedly.

  ‘Supper then,’ Charles said. ‘You don’t have to have a woman, old chap, and you must be famished surely – we were at the card table for a whole three hours.’

  ‘And they do a marvellous supper at Trafalgar. Oh, do come, Mick.’ Gerald very much enjoyed the young Irishman’s company. There was something rakish and dashing about Mick O’Callaghan. But then Gerald had always enjoyed mingling with his social inferiors, and most particularly with those of suspect background. Which is just as well, he thought, when one is stuck in a place like Hobart Town.

  ‘All right,’ Mick agreed, ‘supper it is.’ Why not? he thought. He’d had an excellent win: he could afford it. And if he bumped into Red, he’d ignore her. In fact he rather hoped he would bump into Red. Ignoring her while in the company of the Dimbleby brothers would be something of a statement.

  Over a year had passed since Mick’s humiliating encounter with Eileen Hilditch outside St Joseph’s Church. During that time he’d dwelt upon neither the woman nor the humiliation. He’d rarely seen her in the street, for which he’d been thankful, and on the odd occasion when he had he’d looked the other way, not wishing to be reminded. One time he hadn’t been quick enough and she’d caught his eye and given a cheery wave as if they were old friends, as if she had no recollection of the insults she’d heaped upon him that day. He had not returned the wave.

  A month or so ago, she’d even left him a message.

  ‘Red said to say hello,’ Evie had told him one Saturday night. ‘She popped in to see Ma yesterday afternoon and as she was leaving she asked me how you was getting on.’

  Mick had been surprised, both by the message and the fact that Ma, with whom he’d just spent the past hour, had made no mention of Red’s visit. But then Ma believed Red was not good for him, which probably accounted for the silence.

  ‘She had no idea you wasn’t working here any more,’ Evie had gone on. ‘Ma hadn’t told her, goodness knows why. Anyway, very impressed Red was to hear you was in the employ of Jefferson Powell, very impressed indeed.’

  He’d made no comment, but he’d felt a smug sense of satisfaction. He’d been unable to resist enquiring, however, about Red’s relationship with Ma, which remained mystifying.

  ‘What’s the connection, Evie? Did Red work here once?’

  ‘Oh yes. Me and Red started out at the Hunter’s Rest around the same time, not long after we got our tickets of leave. Her and me’s got much the same background, you know. We was both transported for thieving when we was sixteen, and being as how we was so young we didn’t even serve a full year.’

  Evie was one of the rare few who admitted to her convict background with complete and utter candour. Mick found it disarming, but he wondered how Eileen Hilditch might react if she could hear her story being so freely bandied about. The thought pleased him.

  ‘Ma took us in and taught us the trade,’ Evie went on, ‘but there wasn’t much Red didn’t already know. And Red was clever too: she’d taught herself style by watching the toffs. Red could mimic the best of them,’ Evie said admiringly, ‘and you’d never tell the difference, that’s real clever that is. So when Trafalgar opened up, Ma encouraged her to move on. Ma knows class when she sees it.’

  ‘How very generous of Ma,’ he said, although such an altruistic action seemed rather odd to him.

  ‘Oh no, Mick, you got it wrong.’ Evie was quick to set him straight. ‘Red didn’t belong here.
Class is the last thing you want at the Hunter’s Rest. Upsets the balance, you know what I mean? Causes trouble among the girls, and the men don’t much care for it anyway. If you put on a bit of style around here they think you’ve got tickets on yourself. Ma knew that.’

  Of course, Mick thought, Ma would.

  ‘Not that she didn’t admire Red for it, mind,’ Evie hastily added. ‘Red wants to get on in the world and Ma respects that.’

  Now, as he walked up Barrack Street with the Dimbleby brothers, Mick was gratified by Red’s apparently renewed interest in him. It would make things all the more pleasurable when he ignored her.

  From the outside, Trafalgar remained the elegant two-storey townhouse it had always been, but its interior was a clear indicator of the purpose this once graceful private residence now served. The furnishings and carpets and chandeliers and lamp fittings were neither tasteless nor vulgar in themselves, but en masse they were just a little too much, as if each was competing for show. The statuettes and paintings and tapestries, many depicting the naked female form, far from being crude were of the finest quality and well executed, but there were just a few too many of them. Trafalgar was a rich man’s playground, a bordello for the wealthily decadent, and it looked it.

  Mick and the brothers were greeted in the front foyer by a stylishly handsome middle-aged woman who did not appear to have been awaiting new arrivals at all, but rather to have materialised out of nowhere.

  ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ she said.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Bingham,’ Gerald replied heartily. He and Charles were obviously well-acquainted with the woman.

  ‘Welcome to Trafalgar, sir.’ She smiled pleasantly at Mick, acknowledging him as a newcomer.

  ‘We’ll be dining, Mrs Bingham,’ Charles announced. ‘We’re famished.’

  The brothers hung their top hats on the brass hat rack by the door, Mick quickly following suit. As they placed their canes in the elephant-foot umbrella stand, he reminded himself yet again that he really must acquire a cane.

  ‘Of course,’ Mrs Bingham said. ‘I shall have a table prepared in the drawing room.’ Then she added the seemingly innocent query: ‘Will you be dining with company this evening, do you think?’

  Gerald dived in before the others could answer. ‘Most definitely yes,’ he said.

  ‘Very well, your table will be ready in ten minutes. Please do go through to the lounge, gentlemen.’ With a gracious wave of her hand she indicated the doors to the left and then sailed off in the opposite direction.

  As they proceeded to the lounge, Mick wondered whether Mrs Bingham was the madam, or whether she was just the general hostess. Whatever she was, she looked as though she’d be at home entertaining royalty.

  ‘Even if one requires only supper,’ Charles explained to him, ‘one is always directed to the lounge first in the expectation that, upon viewing the wares, one will be unable to avoid temptation. And of course if one invites a girl to join one for supper before adjourning upstairs it all adds to the final tally, which suits the management’s purpose admirably. Gerald invariably opts for company at supper,’ he added, ribbing his brother good-naturedly. ‘He says hang the expense, he likes to get in early.’

  ‘I most certainly do,’ Gerald said vehemently. ‘One wants to have the pick of the crop, doesn’t one? Why risk being stranded with the left-overs?’

  The lounge was plush and masculine, smelling of leather and the lingering aroma of pipe tobacco and cigars. Invitingly lit, the room appeared vast, but in actuality was not, an effective illusion having been created by a sea of reflections. With the exception of the wall to the right, which was taken up by the bar, the other walls were all hung with large gilt-framed mirrors, each reflecting the glow cast by the lamps in their ornate wall brackets. And along with the lamp-light was reflected Trafalgar’s pride and joy.

  Mick gazed about in amazement at the bevy of beauty that surrounded him. A girl lounging decadently on a plush leather sofa, a girl seated demurely on a Chippendale carver, a girl lazily reclining in a rattan armchair . . . they were everywhere, dozens of them, all exquisitely beautiful, all elegantly gowned. Then he noticed the same sofa, then the same Chippendale carver, then the same rattan armchair. Then here the same powder-blue taffeta gown, and there the same raven-haired beauty, and he realised there were only five or six girls in all. The mirrors magically increased their numbers to give the appearance, upon initial impact, of a virtual harem.

  ‘Effective isn’t it?’ Gerald said. ‘And several of them aren’t even here. They’re probably serving drinks in the gaming room,’ he gestured to the door directly ahead, ‘or having supper in the drawing room.’ He checked his fob watch. ‘A little early for upstairs yet, I think.’

  They crossed to the bar where, at the far end, two men were in close conversation, checking the girls over like cattle, pointing out various assets.

  ‘Good evening, gentlemen.’ A burly man in shirtsleeves and bow tie greeted the brothers. ‘Evening, sir, welcome to Trafalgar,’ he said to Mick. It was identical to the greeting that had been offered by Mrs Bingham, and clearly the club protocol, with no mention of names or any expectation of introduction. The man’s manner, however, was proprietorial and not at all that of a barman.

  Mick had recognised him instantly. Ruby Jack Clanton was a colourful and well-known figure around Hobart Town. A former all-England bare-knuckle heavyweight boxing champion, his pugilistic fame granted him social access to all circles, his stories being guaranteed to entertain. The giant ruby ring, which he wore on his middle finger and which he swore had been presented to him by an Indian Maharajah, had earned him the title Ruby Jack and, although he appeared a man of independent means, no-one knew exactly where his money came from. Mick now wondered whether perhaps it was Trafalgar.

  They ordered ale and, as Ruby Jack poured their drinks and chatted to the Dimblebys, Mick looked around the lounge. Upon catching his eye, each girl responded in her own seductive way, a saucy smile, a sultry challenge, a cheeky wink. They were all tantalising, but there was no sign of Red. He looked at the door that led to the gaming room. Is she in there? he wondered. Even as he did, the door opened and a girl appeared carrying a tray of goblets. But it wasn’t Red, and he felt a distinct sense of disappointment.

  ‘Good evening,’ the girl said as she placed the tray on the bar, ‘I’m Sylvia.’ She was fair haired and beautiful and her smile was enticing.

  ‘Hello, Sylvia.’ Mick returned the smile.

  ‘After the same again in there, are they?’ Ruby Jack asked her.

  ‘Yes, thanks, Rube,’ she replied.

  The two men at the far end of the bar had taken instant note of the new arrival and, upon registering their interest, Sylvia gave them a pert wave. They gestured for her to join them. She exchanged a glance with Ruby Jack, who nodded, and she left.

  ‘There we are, gentlemen.’ Ruby Jack placed Mick’s and the brothers’ drinks in front of them. He set about tending to the order for the gaming room and signalled one of the other girls to take over from Sylvia, whose duties now clearly lay elsewhere.

  ‘Does Ruby Jack own the place?’ Mick asked Charles when they’d seated themselves a little further down the bar, out of earshot.

  ‘I would say he has a share in it, yes,’ Charles replied, ‘but as to the extent of his investment I’ve no idea. A consortium owns Trafalgar, and no-one knows who that consortium is –’

  ‘The most respectable citizens in the colony, I’d put money on it,’ Gerald chipped in, although his gaze remained fixed on the girls. He’d barely taken his eyes off the raven-haired beauty from the moment they’d arrived.

  ‘That’s probably the truth of the matter,’ Charles said to Mick, ‘but Ruby Jack’s the only one prepared to publicly associate himself with Trafalgar. The consortium really should be grateful because he manages the place most efficiently –’

  ‘Oh come along, Charles, do let’s make our pick.’ Gerald interrupted abruptly; he was becoming
impatient. ‘It’ll get busy soon and I don’t want to miss out on Gerda.’

  Without waiting for a response from his companions, he raised a hand above his head and clicked his fingers at the raven-haired girl who was lounging on the sofa. She rose, languorous and sultry – for that was Gerda’s style – and started towards them.

  ‘All right,’ Charles said unperturbed: he was accustomed to his brother’s rudeness. ‘It’s probably a good idea to get in early while we have the choice. Although frankly, Mick,’ he confided, ‘there isn’t a dud to be had here at Trafalgar. I’d recommend Yvette.’ He pointed to the fair-haired girl perched demurely on the Chippendale carver. ‘She’s French and very athletic, quite the contortionist in fact.’

  ‘I’m not interested in a woman,’ Mick said. ‘Just supper will do.’

  Charles was surprised. He’d automatically presumed that once they’d entered the portals of Trafalgar a healthy young man like Mick O’Callaghan would be raring to go. But he nodded good-naturedly.

  ‘Your choice, old chap,’ he said. ‘I’ll take Yvette then.’

  He waved at the girl in the powder-blue taffeta. She rose to join them, and just at that moment, the door to the gaming room opened.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Mick said. ‘I’ll take her.’

  It was Red.

  ‘Ah.’ Charles grinned broadly. ‘You’ve chosen well, the pick of the crop indeed.’

  As the Dimbleby brothers were joined by the girls of their choice, Mick rose and crossed to Red, intercepting her on her way to the bar with the three empty tankards she was carrying.

  ‘Well, well,’ she said, ‘fancy seeing you here.’

  He wasn’t sure whether he could detect a touch of mockery in her tone, or whether it was simply her genuine surprise at seeing him, but her greeting seemed warm enough and her smile was friendly. He’d forgotten how extraordinarily beautiful she was. Her red hair was not coiffed, but hung free and unadorned, and her simple green satin gown, with clearly no corsetry beneath, exposed her shoulders and bosom to perfection. Unlike the other girls, her complexion was not artificially enhanced. Her cheeks were not rouged and powdered, her lips not reddened with paint. She’s like a wild creature, he thought, natural and flawless in its beauty.