Tommo and Hawk

by Bryce Courtenay

  Then she turns and sees Hawk’s face and her bottom lip begins to tremble. She reaches up and pulls off the bonnet with its empty cage and throws it to the floor. ‘Oh, oh, oh!’ she sobs and slides down, with her back against the wall. She starts to howl, her head between her knees.

  Mary bangs her fist against the table so that everything rattles. ‘She’s a whore!’ she screams at Hawk. Our mama ain’t wiped the gravy from her face and it’s gone pale with rage. The scar down her cheek be bright purple, and her beautiful green eyes is on fire.

  There follows complete silence, ‘cept for Maggie’s crying. Slowly, Hawk gets up and walks over to Maggie. He takes her gently under her arms and lifts her to her feet. Then he swings her up so that she’s got her arms about his neck and is sobbing into his chest. He turns to Mary. ‘Perhaps she is, Mama,’ he says quietly, ‘but she’s mine and I love her.’ He carries Maggie out of the room, out of the pub, and down the street towards the Argyle Cut as I watches from the window.

  Back in the room, Mary’s still sitting like she’s got the headmaster’s cane stuck down the back of her black dress. I can’t see her expression ‘cause she’s got her back turned to me.

  ‘Mama,’ I says, trembling in me boots as I does so, ‘Maggie’s a nice girl, truly. She don’t drink much as a rule. She were scared, that’s all, and took a drop too much.’ I go to sit in my chair, though I feels like running away—scarpering out o’ there like Hawk and Maggie. I looks up to meet Mary’s eyes and, to me surprise, she’s smiling!

  ‘Hawk’s got himself a good un, Tommo. Lots o’ gumption, that Maggie, ain’t scared o’ life like most. Bit narrow in the hips though. Birthing won’t be no picnic, but we’ll get a good midwife to attend.’ Mary’s laughing now. ‘Mr Harris says she’s got a good head on her shoulders, owns her own chophouse and the building it’s in.’ She’s laughing while she wipes the gravy from her face. ‘A bit headstrong, mind, she’ll need a bit o’ straightening out, but I reckon she’ll get there.’

  ‘Mama, Maggie ain’t easy to push around,’ I say, starting to like Mary for the first time.

  ‘Hmmph! I daresay we’ll learn to live with her and her with us.’ Mary dabs the napkin to her lips then folds it carefully and puts it on the table. Her eyes fill with tears as she looks at me. ‘Tommo, please come back to Mama? Come home, lovey?’

  ‘Mama, I ain’t no good for you!’

  ‘Oh no!’ she protests. ‘You’re good enough for the likes o’ me, son. I weren’t an angel myself!’ Her eyes glisten with tears though she tries to smile. ‘Ha! Fancy me, Mary bleedin’ Abacus, calling Hawk’s Maggie a whore. Me what’s been the very same. That’s funny, that is, me the respectable one!’ Then she stops and clears her throat.

  ‘I know about the opium, Tommo,’ she says, very quiet.

  I’m shocked. ‘Who told ya?’ I asks, tryin’ to look like I don’t feel guilty.

  ‘Hawk. He made it a condition.’

  ‘Condition?’

  ‘Well, a condition if you were going to come back. Him too. If ever you was to come back, I’d have to accept that you’re…’ she thinks a moment, trying to find another way to say it, but Mary can’t not call a spade a bloody shovel, ‘addicted to the poppy.’ Then she adds quickly, ‘He told me about your wound, I mean, how it gives you great pain and you need the opium.’

  ‘Mama, I told you I was no good,’ I says. ‘But Hawk ain’t got no right to be telling you about the opium!’

  Mary sighs. ‘Tommo, he had to tell me. He won’t come back ‘less you do, he’s said that to me, time and again since I been here. He’s told me that if you two was ever to come back it would have to be on your terms, you’d have to agree and me too.’ Mary smoothes the tablecloth in front of her with both hands. ‘Well I do, I agree.’ She looks into me eyes.

  ‘Mama, how long would it last? I can’t work in the brewery, I ain’t the type. I’m a gambler, cards is me life.’

  Mary reaches over and pats me hand, then leaves her hand covering mine. I look at them together, mine all mangled from the wilderness, hers from the bad things what happened at the docks.

  ‘Tommo, I ain’t goin’ to judge you,’ she says, giving a bitter little laugh. ‘Me, judge? I ain’t got no bleedin’ right, have I? I was addicted meself to the stuff once. Opium and a few other things what I don’t care to talk about.’ Her voice is very soft now. ‘I love you for what you is, Tommo Solomon. What I done after you come back from the wilderness were wrong and I beg your forgiveness! But I never stopped loving you.’ The tears are rolling down her cheek and I feel a lump in me own throat. ‘Never for one moment, through all the dark years, did I ever stop loving you. “Tommo’ll come back,” I’d say to myself every morning as I woke and every night before I closed my eyes. And wherever you was, I’d always say, “Good night, Tommo. Mary loves you, darling.”’

  ‘Oh Mama!’ I bursts into tears. I can’t help it, it’s like a dam in me’s just burst and I can’t hold back the flood. All the loneliness of the wilderness comes back—the cold, the beatings, what the timber getters done to me when I were a little brat. I blubs and blubs and Mary rises from her chair and comes t’ hold me. Then she starts to cry and the pair of us is howling and hugging and I’m seven years old again and Mary’s got me in her lap and I’m safe, Tommo’s safe again.

  Mary orders a bottle of Cape brandy for me and I has a drink as she begins to talk. It’s like it’s all been bottled up in her as well. We already knows from her letters that things were bad ‘tween her and David and Hannah. But now Mary pours it all out like she wants me to hear it straight.

  It seems old man Madden, what’s now married Hannah, is stricken with the gout and crippled with arthritis, so he spends all his days in bed or in a bath chair. Hannah and David has took over his timber and wheat-milling business, with David proving a sharp businessman. It ain’t long before he and Hannah sees their chance to make things difficult for mama by making it hard for her to get her supply o’ brewing hops.

  New Norfolk, where David and Hannah lives, be the best climate for the growing of hops and they buy up land and plant hops. They also purchase in advance, at guaranteed prices per bushel, the crops of all the other hop growers. They even gain control of all hops imported from New South Wales and Victoria. Soon Hannah and David have got a monopoly and Mary can’t get her hops from nowhere ‘less she imports ’em from England and sometimes from Cape Town, what’s both unreliable and expensive.

  Then David does nearly the same thing with Mary’s supply o’ glass by buying into the Tasmanian Bottle Co. Now Mama can only obtain her bottles from Melbourne, what adds greatly to their cost. He’s even building his own brewery in Launceston to compete with her.

  Mary tells me all this and shrugs. ‘I’ve only got one pair of hands and none what I can trust or ask for advice ‘cept Mr Emmett. I need my boys to come home. Hawk tells me you got a quick mind, Tommo.’

  Well, o’ course I’m pleased by this as well as worried for her. ‘But Hawk says Mr Emmett’s always helped you lots, Mama? Can’t he keep an eye on David and Hannah? See what they’s up to?’

  ‘He did help me a great deal, it’s true. But with the death of his wife, Gawd rest her pernicious soul, he’s retired, so he can’t no more,’ Mary replies.

  I knows Mary has a soft spot for Mr Emmett, what’s always helped her from the very beginning when she were in the Female Factory. Whenever she was with him she were like a young girl, giggling and flirting. Even as brats, we knew that, beside us, Mary’s only great love were for Mr Emmett. She cared for Ikey too, but that were different. For days before she was going to see Mr Emmett she’d be in a regular dither, burning the porridge and dropping things. And her what’s always rushing around would take t’ standing about and daydreamin’ with half a smile on her face, her head tilted to one side.

  What with Mr Emmett being a true merino and a married man, and Mary thinking herself a common ticket-of-leave, there weren’t much chance o’ their friendship t
urning into something more. But now Mary’s wealthy and Mr Emmett a widower on a government pension, so perhaps it ain’t impossible after all.

  ‘Mama, what about Mr Emmett and you?’ I asks, screwing up me courage.

  Mary goes quite scarlet. ‘Tommo, mind your tongue!’ she gasps, like I’ve just used a dirty word in front o’ the vicar.

  I laugh at her embarrassment. ‘Well, you loves him, don’t you?’

  ‘Mind your own business!’ Mary retorts, but she won’t meet my eye.

  ‘Why don’t you ask Mr Emmett? No harm in asking, is there? Him alone and you alone, two lonely people. It don’t make no sense not to!’

  ‘You think I should ask him?’ Mary ain’t too sure she’s heard me right. ‘Propose to Mr Emmett? Me?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense, Tommo. Mr Emmett’s a gentleman and me common as muck! Chalk and cheese! It ain’t possible for them two things to get together. The whole bleedin’ island would sink under the shame of it!’

  ‘Mama, Hawk says there ain’t no one person better than another. It’s how we lives what matters, not how we’s born.’

  ‘Hawk’s right too, but try telling that to the governor’s wife, what calls me Miss Abacus like some reptile hissing it out. The nabobs don’t marry the thingumabobs in this world, Tommo!’

  ‘All right, well at least put Mr Emmett on your board of directors. Hawk reckons ya should, least that’s what he said to me. Ain’t no harm in that, is there? It’ll keep his wise head working, Hawk says.’

  ‘Hawk said that?’ Mary looks pleased and I can see she thinks it a fine idea.

  Never in me life have I talked like this with Mary. When I comes out o’ the wilderness, she thought me a bit of an idjit. She’d talk to Hawk about the brewery and the business but never to me. Now she’s treating yours truly like she wants my opinion, and I must say I likes it!

  ‘Perhaps, perhaps,’ she says, folding and unfolding her napkin again. ‘Anyways, that’s quite enough nonsense about Mr Emmett!’ She throws her napkin aside. With the finger of her glove she picks at a spot o’ dried gravy on her bodice. ‘Now listen, Tommo, I wants to talk to you about Hawk and the Irishman. The more I sees, the less I like of this fight. We must stop it at once, at all costs. How does we do it, Tommo?’

  ‘Mama, we can’t! Hawk’s got it into his noggin that this be a fight between good and evil. He reckons the evil began with Ikey and carried through to Mr Sparrow, what’s got me under his thumb now.’

  ‘That Sparrer’s bad news and no mistake. But Hawk blames Ikey for all this?’ Mary asks, surprised.

  ‘Not Ikey hisself. Hawk loved Ikey, we all did. It be what happened to us because of Ikey’s greed. That’s what Hawk says he’s fighting.’

  ‘Oh me Gawd!’ Mary thinks a while. ‘Ikey were not the only one who were greedy. Hannah were even worse and now David.’ She pauses, then says softly, ‘Even me.’

  ‘That’s just it! Like Hawk says, it’s a canker, it festers and turns everything rotten. Greed destroys everyone it touches!’

  Mary’s lips are pursed as she listens. ‘Tommo, let’s not forget the hard things what happened to Ikey too. He were a creature of the times, a survivor. To be a poor Jew in London when Ikey were a child was to be treated as dirt—lower than dirt! The lowest villain there was would think himself better than a Jew and spit on him. That ain’t no way to treat another human being, but Ikey survived all that and he beat all who would destroy him.’ Mary looks at me. ‘Don’t forget how much he gave me and you boys. Ikey were a truly remarkable man, Tommo.’

  ‘Mama, I’ve told Hawk that. It’s not Ikey what’s the problem. If it weren’t for Ikey I couldn’t have survived the wilderness. But Hawk says, if it weren’t for Ikey we wouldn’t have been took by the wild men in the first place. If Ikey had shared his fortune with David and Hannah, we wouldn’t have been kidnapped and there wouldn’t have been no wilderness for me and for Hawk.’

  ‘It weren’t quite as simple as that,’ Mary protests, though I can see from her expression that this line o’ thinking ain’t entirely new to her. ‘It were Hannah wanting more than she were entitled to! It were her greed more than anything!’

  ‘Mama, how is we to know what Hannah really deserved? Who knows what went on ‘tween her and Ikey?’ I shrug. ‘I’m just tellin’ ya what Hawk thinks. When Hawk gets an idea in his head nothing’s gunna shake it out. He thinks Mr Sparrow’s another example o’ greed destroying everything it touches. And he’s got a point. Mr Sparrow turns everyone what works for him into addicts and drunkards, and when they’s no further use, he throws them out onto the street to die.

  ‘Now, with the fight, Mr Sparrow thinks to take all the little punters to the cleaners. He’s tempting ’em to bet every cent they has with his odds, when he knows Hawk can’t win. For him, Hawk losing to the Irishman be a certainty. If he thinks Hawk’s got a chance, he’ll do something to stop him. Hawk says it’s always the little people what gets preyed upon.’ I draws breath. ‘He says somebody’s got to stand up for the poor and that if we expects it to be somebody other than ourselves, it ain’t never gunna never happen. The villains will win again!’

  Mary sighs and remains quiet a long time. ‘We could still bribe the Irishman to lose? Hawk don’t have to know. The poor will get their winnings, Sparrer Fart—or your Mr Sparrow as he now calls himself—will be ruined and Hawk won’t be hurt too bad in the meantime!’

  ‘Well,’ I says, ‘there’s a lot o’ “wills" in there, ‘cept the one you ain’t thought about at all. You will lose Hawk forever if he finds out. I sees that now. I were wrong even to think of it in the first place, Mama. Completely wrong! Wrong to ask you to come and wrong to ask you for the money to make the bribe.’

  ‘I’m glad you did, Tommo. It’s given me a chance to see you and Hawk again. And to help you, if I may.’

  ‘Mama, if Hawk thinks you and me and Maggie don’t believe in him, he would never get over it. He knows he’s gunna need a miracle to win, but our Hawk believes in miracles!

  ‘Matter o’ fact, he works so hard at his training that I’m beginning to believe in ’em meself. He soaks his hands in brine every day and they be hard as mallets. He’s training with Bungarrabbee Jack and Johnny Heki and Ah Wong’s uncle, too. They’s all saying that if Hawk can just stay on his feet long enough and keep out o’ the clinches, he might win the fight.’

  I can see Mary ain’t convinced by this so I goes on. ‘Best thing we can do is believe in Hawk—and hope,’ I says. ‘Hawk be the bravest man I’ve ever seen and he’s awful strong, Mama.’

  ‘I’m coming with you to the fight,’ Mary says suddenly. ‘If me boy’s gunna be hurt, he’ll need his mama.’ Mary looks defiant at me, thinking I’m gunna object. ‘And I want Hawk to know I does believe in him, with all me heart and soul.’ She grabs her handbag from the floor beside her chair. ‘Tommo, I want you to put five hundred pounds on our Hawk to win. Mind, you put the bet with our Mr Sparrow so it costs him dear and he knows it when the time comes. We want him to know the true price of underestimating the underdog, eh, Tommo?’

  Mary snaps open her bag and digs into it. She brings out a roll of banknotes as thick as me forearm and slaps it down on the table in front of me. ‘Now take me to Maggie. I’d best make things right with her and start making plans for the wedding and all. You’ll be Hawk’s best man and I’ll ask Mr Emmett to give Maggie away! Let’s be off!’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  TOMMO

  New South Wales

  August 1861

  I walk around with Mary’s five hundred quid stuffed inside me coat for near on two weeks before I figures what to do with it. I can’t just do what she reckons and put the whole lot on Hawk. Mr Sparrow would smell a rat straight away! A hundred quid placed on the Irishman by a squatter or a big merchant would be all right. But if five hundred or even one hundred were put on Hawk, all the sporting gents’d want to know what rich fool made such a stupid bet! Or else th
ey’d want to know what was going on with Hawk, in case they too should be stickin’ their money on him. Either way, it wouldn’t be wise to plonk the whole lot down on me twin at once. Finally I decides to get Caleb Soul and a few of his mates to dole it out for us in smaller bets of twenty quid or so. Even this be a big bet on Hawk and in the days what follow it causes noise enough.

  The fight’s just a week away but we must leave Sydney today to be sure o’ making it. Its location’s a secret so’s the law can’t prevent it, but we has to go to Yass, where we’ll find out where it’s at. Mary’s hired a coach-and-four for all of us, with full provisions for the six days’ journey. One thing’s certain, the fight ain’t gunna be at Lambing Flat. Since the riot there, the diggings have been crawlin’ with about two hundred military men, marines and police.

  We sets out on our journey and I reckon Mary and Maggie, what’s made their peace together, would be enjoying themselves if it weren’t for the flies. We’ve had a bout of warm weather and the flies are swarming everywhere. We take to startin’ out early, to try and avoid ‘em, but the moment the sun comes up, the little black flies comes to life again and they keeps up with us all day. They stick to the horses so that scarcely a patch o’ horse hair can be seen beneath them. They gets in our eyes and noses and mouths. Luckily Caleb Soul, in his trap behind us, has brought along netting what Maggie makes into veils and attaches to our bonnets and hats, giving us all a most mysterious appearance!

  But if the flies is bad, the blowflies is worse. They get into the woollen blankets by day and spoil ‘em. They lay their larvae and in a matter of hours the blankets is covered in patches a foot square with maggots, what are at once fried by the sun and stick to the blankets. Again, Caleb saves the day by wrapping the blankets up in lengths of oilskin before sunrise and protecting them against the blowflies.

  At first Maggie and Mary stay in roadside inns overnight, with us camped nearby. But soon they’s complaining about the bed bugs and the noisy drunks, both of which be plentiful! They decides to camp with us, rough though it be.