Potato Factory

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Ha!’ Ikey barked. ‘Trustworthy by your own word! I am the King o’ Spain and the Chief Justice by my own word!’

  ‘No, sir, but the Prince o’ Fences and known chiefly for just dealin’ by the admiring word o’ others,’ Mary said quickly.

  Ikey, despite himself, was impressed with this quick wit. He knew himself to be a positive wizard with numbers and calculations, and enjoyed the flattery, though he knew it to be false. Ikey’s heart had never so much as skipped a beat in the vaguest general consideration of charity or goodwill or justice, not ever, not even once since he’d been an urchin selling lemons on the streets of Whitechapel. Though he didn’t believe a word of Mary’s tale, even had it been true it would have drawn no emotion from him. Mutilation was so common in his experience that he hadn’t even flinched at the sight of Mary’s grotesque hands. Children being consumed by fire was a nightly occurrence as soon as the weather turned cold. The scar on her face told him all he needed to know about her. Moreover, it annoyed him that Mary had shown not the slightest sagacity in the concocting of the story she told. The least he would have expected from her was a letter from a screever, slightly worn and faded and perhaps even somewhat tear stained, purporting to come from the captain of the vessel from which her imagined husband had been swept overboard and to testify to this tragic event. Such a document would be readily available for a shilling or two from any forger, a fundamental requirement if the slightest degree of deception was to be practised. In Ikey’s opinion Mary clearly lacked the most elementary criminal mind and he could waste no further time with her. The contest of numbers, an absurdity of course, was a quick way to be rid of her, to send her packing, for good and all.

  ‘Bah! Beads and wire against me! Impossible, my dear, quite, quite absurd, ridiculous, improper and impossible!’

  Mary sensed from this outburst that Ikey’s curiosity had been roused and, besides, his voice was somewhat mollified. She smiled, a nice, demure smile.

  ‘Announce me any five numbers in any number of digits in any combination of multiplication, division, addition and subtraction you please,’ Mary challenged. ‘If I best you in this purpose, then I pray you listen to me plea for a position as your clerk.’

  ‘And what if I best you, me dear? What will you give me?’ Ikey liked the idea of a challenge and the ferret grin appeared upon his face.

  Mary smiled and her pale countenance was momentarily most pleasantly transformed, for she had an even smile that would light up her face and cause her lovely green eyes to dance, though this was beyond the ability of Ikey to notice. Po-faced once more, Mary stooped to lift the hems of her skirt and the two dirty calico petticoats beneath to just above her thighs. What Ikey witnessed was a pair of shapely legs quite unencumbered.

  ‘It is all I ‘ave to give, but I know meself clean, sir,’ she said, trying to imagine herself a respectable though destitute widow so that her words carried sufficient pathos.

  ‘Ha! Clean by your own word! Trustworthy by your own word! Bah! Not good enough for the master o’ the ‘ouse to pay for, but good enough for me, is that it, eh?’

  Ikey, who had been standing in front of Mary now moved over to his clerk’s desk. He removed the ledger from it and placed it on the ground, then reaching for a piece of paper from a small stack placed beside where the ledger had been he laid it squarely in the centre of the desk-top. Then he fumbled briefly within the recesses of his coat and produced a pair of spectacles which he took some time to arrange about his nose and hook behind his large hairy ears. Then he removed the coat and hung it upon the coat-stand.

  The absence of his coat made Ikey look decidedly strange, as though he had been partly skinned or plucked. Mary was surprised at how tiny he appeared standing in his dirty embroidered waist-coat and coarse woollen undershirt beneath. It was almost as though Ikey wore the heavily padded great coat, which stretched down to touch the uppers of his snouted boots giving the effect of a much larger man, to conceal from the world his diminutive size. That he should choose to remove it now so that he could more rapidly move his arms to write indicated to Mary that he had taken her challenge seriously. Or, otherwise thought so little of her presence that he cared nothing for her opinion of his physical stature or the rank, ripe cheesy odour which came from his tiny body as he climbed upon the stool and hunched over his desk.

  Ikey glanced scornfully at Mary over his spectacles as he took up his quill.

  ‘You shall ‘ave your challenge, my dear, and if you win, which I very much doubt, I shall make enquiries as to your past.’ Ikey paused and shrugged his shoulders. ‘If you pass you shall ‘ave your billet, you ‘ave me word for it.’

  Mary laughed. ‘And your word, it is to be trusted and mine is not, sir?’

  Ikey did not reply, nor even look up, but he liked the point and the boldness it took to make it. He turned away from Mary’s direction and briefly rubbed the tip of the quill with his thumb and forefinger, testing its sharpness, whereupon he dipped it into an inkwell and dabbed its point on the blotter which lay beside it.

  ‘But if you lose. . .’ Ikey looked down at the area of her skirt, now once again concealing her legs, and pointed the tip of his goose quill at its hemline. ‘Lift, my dear, lift, lift, a little ‘igher if you please!’

  As Mary’s skirts rose slowly to her thighs, she tried desperately to remember some past incident of embarrassment so that she would appear to flush with modesty. Instead she felt herself growing angry and fought to contain her temper while her face remained impassive. ‘Now turn around, my dear, right around, that’s it! Now lift, ‘igher. . .Ah!’ Mary now stood with her back to Ikey. ‘That will do very nicely, my dear,’ his voice grown suddenly hoarse. ‘You may turn around again, though keep your skirt raised if you please.’

  Mary’s face was a deep purple as she beat back her rising anger. The display of her buttocks and now her cunny did not dismay her, it was the feeling of complete powerlessness which angered her. She was at Ikey’s mercy. The billet he was empowered to give her could mean the beginning of a new life for her, but if he summarily dismissed her, she felt certain that she would not survive. She dropped her hands from her skirts and did not look directly at Ikey for fear her eyes might betray her anger.

  ‘Ah, you ‘ave done well to flush, my dear. A touch of modesty is most becoming in a laundry woman, even in a poor widow what ‘as lost ‘er darlin’ ‘usband and precious little ones, the one in water, the terrible stormy briny and t’others in a roastin’ pit, the crackle o’ hell itself!’ Ikey paused and smiled his ferret smile. ‘Perhaps you will make a modest clerk, a very modest clerk, so modest as not to be a clerk at all but altogether something else, eh? What do you say, my dear?’

  ‘I shall be most pleased if you would give me your calculation, sir,’ Mary said quietly. She kept her eyes averted, fearing that should she glance up she might lose control and spoil her chance to take him on at calculations.

  Ikey leaned backwards in the high chair showing a surprisingly large erection through his tightly pulled breeches. He was most gratified at this unexpected event. He could not remember when he’d been so encouraged by a woman’s display of immodesty, especially a woman such as the one who stood before him. Women and sex seldom entered his mind. He had thought simply to humiliate Mary and to erode her confidence before the contest by showing her he knew her to be a whore, yet she had stirred a part in him so seldom stirred that he had almost forgotten that it was possessed of a secondary purpose beyond pissing.

  Ikey looked down at his swelling breeches with some approval, then looked up at Mary with a mixture of pleasure and fear. If anything, this woman, with her ridiculous contraption of wire and beads, had gained the upper hand and he knew he must do something at once to regain the advantage. The thought of losing to her caused an immediate diminishing within his breeches, but upon his becoming aware of this, the perverse monster came alive again, pushing hard against the cotton of his breeches.

  Ikey concentrated desperat
ely and cast his thoughts to embrace his wife Hannah, an act of mental flagellation which was at once sufficient to damp down the unaccustomed fire that burned in the region of his crotch.

  Waving the goose feather quill in an expansive gesture above his head, Ikey announced to Mary, ‘If you should lose, do not despair, my dear. Mrs Solomon, a woman of a most benign nature and generous heart, who ‘erself is an expert on,’ Ikey coughed lightly, ‘. . .er, figures. . .is in need of someone capable of your very well-presented, ah, hum. . .figurations.’

  Ikey moved forward, leaning both his elbows on the desk so that the area of his loins was concealed. His bony shoulders were hunched up above his ears to make him look like an Indian vulture bird. ‘You will do very nicely, my dear, very nicely indeed, my wife will be most pleased to make your acquaintance!’ Ikey felt immediately better for knowing what Hannah might do to the woman who stood before him should she lose to him.

  Mary remained silent nor did she change her expression, though she was acquainted with Hannah’s vile reputation and Ikey’s insidious suggestions were not lost on her.

  ‘I shall need a surface upon which to place down me abacus,’ was all she said in reply.

  Ikey motioned her to a small table and chair and Mary seated herself, placing the brightly beaded abacus at the required distance in front of her. Her voice was hardly above a whisper. ‘I am ready please, sir.’

  ‘Mmph!’ Ikey said in a tight voice. ‘Ready you may be, but beat me you shan’t, not now, not never and not likely!’

  It is a matter of history how Ikey threw all sorts of mathematical computations at Mary and before he could properly ink his quill her flying fingers sped the coloured beads this way and that to find the answer. This she announced in a steady voice free of emotion, fearing to upset Ikey if she appeared too bold and forward with her triumph over him.

  She need not have feared, for had she whispered the answers in a voice most demure and modest she would have upset Ikey no less. He soon grew furious and, it being in his nature to cheat, attempted to grab back the advantage by trying to think ahead the total of the sum before announcing it. Yet Mary bested him, beat him on every occasion, until finally he was forced to concede defeat. This he did with the utmost bad temper, claiming a headache, a blunt quill and the mix of blacking ink in his pot not to his usual liking.

  ‘You ‘ave won the first round, my dear,’ he finally mumbled without grace. ‘The second test remains.’

  Mary held her gaze steady as Ikey continued. ‘Now we shall ‘ear of your past, my dear, for the position of my clerk is one requiring great trust and I shall want to know that your background is spotless, blameless and pure as churchyard snow.’

  Mary knew the game was up. The hideous little man was playing with her. She now realised that he’d been playing with her from the beginning, though she felt sure she’d caught him by surprise with the abacus. Why, she now asked herself, had she not simply told him the circumstances of her life? Why would her feigning of respectability, a widow fallen upon hard times, have influenced this odious creature? Perchance he would have preferred the real story of her descent into debauchery and whoring. It was much more the world he knew and understood.

  Mary could feel her temper rising, the heat of her anger suffusing her entire body. She rose without haste from where she was seated and, taking up her abacus from the table, moved in slow, deliberate steps towards where Ikey sat smiling triumphantly at the counting desk. She came to a halt in front of the desk and it seemed that she was about to beg him for his mercy, but instead she lifted the abacus above her head and swung it as hard as she might at the grinning little fence. The abacus caught him on the side of the head and sent him sprawling from the high chair onto the floor. Ikey’s spectacles launched from his head and landed with a clatter in the corner behind him.

  ‘You can keep your poxy job, you bastard!’ she cried. ‘Fuck you!’

  ‘No, no! Please! Don’t ‘it me! Please, no violence! I beg you, missus! Anythin’, take anythin’, but don’t beat me!’ Whereupon he began to sob loudly.

  ‘You shit!’ she said disgusted, though the anger had already gone half out of her voice as she looked at the pathetic, whimpering weasel cowering at her feet.

  Ikey, sensing the danger was over, let go of her leg. He scrambled frantically to his haunches and with his arms propelled himself backwards into a corner. He sat down hard upon his spectacles which promptly broke and pierced through his breeches and cut into his scrawny bum.

  ‘Ouch! Fuck!’ he yelled, then lifting his arse he felt frantically at the damaged area and his hand came away with blood on the tips of his fingers. He looked down at his bloody paw, his expression incredulous. ‘Blood! Oh, oh, I shall faint! Blood!’ he sobbed. ‘I shall bleed to death!’

  Mary moved towards him, the abacus raised above her shoulders ready to strike him again. Ikey, sobbing, pulled up his knees and covered his head with his arms.

  ‘No, no! I’ll pay you! Don’t ‘urt me! For Gawd’s sake, I beg you! Don’t ‘it a poor man what’s bleedin’ to death!’ Ikey, cringing in the corner with his arms about his head, waited for the blow to come.

  ‘Get up, you gormless lump!’ Mary snapped.

  Ikey scrambled hurriedly to his feet, sniffing and sobbing, snot-nosed and flushed with fright. Mary grabbed him by his scrawny neck and steered him towards the counting desk, bending him over it so that his arms hung over the front and his head lay upon its writing surface. Then she placed the abacus on the floor beside the desk.

  ‘Now be a man and don’t cry while I remove the glass from your arse,’ she laughed.

  It was at that precise moment, crouched with his bleeding bum facing her and his miserable head face downwards on the desk that Ikey knew for certain he was deeply and profoundly in love for the first and only time in his life.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Ikey found Mary to be a studious and diligent clerk, quick to learn even if somewhat lacking in experience. He also knew that working for him was Mary’s only chance to make something of her life and that consequently she would work tirelessly to bring her change of fortune about. Ikey exploited the situation and he paid her little and worked her late with no thought of gratitude for her services, though, each week, he paid her the agreed sum without demurring.

  Mary was content with such an arrangement. An amorous Ikey was only acceptable if the experience was infrequent and she soon realised that her skill at numbers made her indispensable to him and that she need no longer show her gratitude to him on her back. It did not take long for Mary’s quick mind to grasp the peculiar language of Ikey’s ledgers and to learn the ways of disposing stolen goods throughout Europe and America. She soon showed that her bookkeeping skills extended to a good head for business. Ikey found himself possessed of a clerk who managed his affairs exceedingly well, though it concerned him greatly that Mary had come in the process to know a disconcerting amount about his nefarious dealings.

  It was time to put a little salt on the bread but he could not embrace the idea of raising her salary. Not only because he was exceedingly mean, but also because it involved the idea that he was pleased with her progress, or even that he admitted to himself that Mary had become indispensable to his wellbeing. To Ikey, who could flatter a penny out of a pauper’s hand, the notion of openly caring for another human was the most dangerous idea he could conceive of, a weakness which would, he felt certain, lead inevitably to his demise.

  As Mary’s confidence grew her natural impetuosity returned and with it her lively temper which caused her to argue with Ikey, for she found him stuck in his ways and not readily open to new suggestions. She became convinced that Ikey’s connections in Amsterdam and Brussels were cheating him in the melting down of silver and gold and the resetting and re-cutting of diamonds.

  Ikey would say, ‘It is appropriate that those who cheat should also be cheated. It is in the nature of thievin’, my dear. There is a saying among my people, “Always put a little sal
t on the bread.” It means, always leave a little something for the next man, leave a little extra, a little taste on the tongue, a reason to return. It is true in business and it is even more true in the business o’ fencin’!’

  How curious it was then that Ikey, who understood this principle so well, could not see how to bring it about with Mary, that is without perceiving himself as made impossibly vulnerable in his emotions.

  Mary’s mind lacked the subtlety of her opponent but she was not entirely without gall. She knew herself to be worked hard for very little remuneration and she expected no less. But by showing her concern for Ikey’s interest in other matters, she was proving her loyalty to him.

  Besides, she had a plan which concerned the house in Bell Alley and so she worked without complaint, becoming more and more indispensable to Ikey until she perceived his concern that he could no longer afford to be without her. Then she made the suggestion to Ikey that she work without salary at his bookkeeping and that, in addition, she be allowed to open a brothel in Bell Alley in partnership with him.

  Ikey was delighted. It meant that she was fully compromised. She would do his bookkeeping and add even further to his gain and, at the same time, completely negate his fears. Mary, he told himself, knew decidedly more of whoring than of clerking, and as the mistress of a brothel as well as his bookkeeper she would be tied to him for ever. Greed was the only emotion Ikey trusted in himself as well as in others. An agreement was struck between them whereby Ikey would put up the capital for the brothel for which he would receive seventy percent and Mary thirty percent after the deduction of running expenses. Moreover, the house would still be a repository of stolen goods, it being possessed of a large attic, and the dry and commodious cellar would also be in Ikey’s sole possession.

  The last point was a master stroke on Ikey’s part. Through Hannah he had met a notorious Belgian forger who had been forced to escape from the authorities in several European countries and had proposed a business deal. The forger, a man named Abraham Van Esselyn, was also a Jew. Moreover he was deaf and dumb and, if he was to make a living at his craft, needed a partner. Ikey was ideally suited to this purpose, for he could procure all the materials needed for a sophisticated forgery operation through his various contacts and had an established network of fellow Jews in Europe and America through whom the fake banknotes could be laundered. He would set up a printing operation in the cellar at Bell Alley.