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Authors: Robin Adair

BOOK: Death and the Running Patterer
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“Steady,” said William King. “There’s enough violence in this town. You can’t be judge and executioner.”
The patterer shook his head. “How else could we have stopped them? And how would they have been punished? If it got to court, what would they have been charged with? ‘Taking liberties with blacks?’ Anyway, it would only be our word—and I’m merely a pass-man—against theirs. No one would listen to three old ‘Indians.’ If you are concerned about that business of The Ring … Well, there
is
such a convicts’ secret society—God knows they need someone to help them—and I’ve known men who are members. But that’s the closest I’ve come.”
He had a sudden sobering thought. Was the killer he was seeking perhaps someone who could justify his actions with similar logic: that there were times and places that called for summary justice?
To clear his mind, he turned to the two black men. Only then did he notice that Bungaree’s left arm was hanging awkwardly in its uniform sleeve. “You’re sorely hurt.”
“No, sir. My arm is double-jointed after an old break. Another fight.”
The pieman pointed to Cora Gooseberry, who was now more composed and puffing on her pipe, which she had recovered and relit from the embers of the fire. “Is she all right?”
Bungaree nodded. “They wanted to rob me, too, but all I had was a handful of dumps I was paid on the last two ships I met. If they think I have gold, they’re wrong. All I ever get is dumps. But I thank you, sirs. If you ever need friendship, my people will help you.” He saluted smartly and led his queen back toward the town.
The Old Commodore raised his top hat and held out a huge hand to Dunne and then King. “I, too, am grateful. I owe you a great debt. Call for my services at any time. Just send word to me.” He turned and limped off toward his boat.
THE PATTERER AND the pieman were silent and subdued as they dressed and began to walk away from the battleground. Both had been badly shaken by the fight.
Dunne tried to lighten the mood. “You know, some people say that the name Miller’s Point really refers to Governor Phillip’s secretary, Andrew Miller.”
William King thought about that then shook his head. “That can’t be right. Too much of a mouthful—that would make it Andrew-the-Secretary’s Point!” They both laughed, but soon fell back into their earlier gloom.
The patterer finally mused aloud, “I didn’t really know it until just now, but I could easily kill someone. I was angry enough.”
The pieman nodded. “You don’t even have to be angry. Look at me. I
did
kill someone. And the people you talked and drank with the other day … deliberately or accidentally they may have killed. Captain Rossi was a soldier, Thomas Owens is a doctor—both can cause death. Even the governor was a fighting soldier once. Death’s nothing to them.”
A vagrant thought, lurking in the back of the patterer’s mind, itched suddenly, but he couldn’t scratch it to life.
King pushed through a herd of wild goats blocking their path. “They’re a damn plague—like the parrots everywhere.”
Dunne nodded distractedly. Parrots. Again, like his itch of a moment earlier, he had an uneasy feeling that, for some reason he could not capture, these birds were vitally important.
The patterer shrugged. If the birds had flown from his mind, not so the images of Miss Rachel Dormin, who had invited him to watch her that evening in a theatrical performance.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Judge not the play before the play is done:
Her plot has many changes: every day
Speaks a new scene; the last act crowns the play.
—Francis Quarles,
Emblems
(1635)
 
 
 
 
 
 
A
T THE THEATER LATER THAT EVENING, MR. BARNETT LEVEY reassured a rather breathless Nicodemus Dunne: “Rest easy, dear sir, it’s not over until the fat lady sings!”
The patterer was puzzled by this remark but did not comment. A late reading of news to a demanding but well-paying patron had made the young man late (although happily not too late) for that evening’s performance at the Sydney Amateur Theater, which was noisily crowded.
Dunne knew Mr. Levey well; at thirty, he was much the same age as the patterer and he was the brother of Solomon, the partner of Mr. Cooper in the Waterloo Stores. Solomon was a successful Emancipist, freed after having been transported for seven years for stealing ninety pounds of tea (a charge he still denied). Barnett Levey, on the other hand, was the colony’s first free Jewish settler. Dunne belatedly realized that he could have sought him out in his quest for the meaning of
zuzim
.
The general merchant, builder, banker, grain merchant and bookseller was a busy businessman, but his true love was his theater—at which he wore many hats: owner, entrepreneur, often master of ceremonies, even performer of comic songs. And, of course, he oversaw the sale of drink in the bar of his Royal Hotel, which fronted his business and the theater.
As he entered the auditorium that night, the patterer reflected that, strictly speaking, there should have been no one there at all. Technically, the theater did not exist, for Governor Darling had so far refused to give Levey a license for his playhouse. But the diminutive, rotund young man defiantly mounted his theatricals as “at homes,” “divertissements” or “concerts,” legitimately part of the Royal Hotel’s entertainments. Tonight’s performances had, for instance, been announced as an “olio,” an approximation of the Spanish word
olla
, meaning “stew” or “hotpot.”
In actual fact, Levey’s rift with Darling ran deeper than a simple disagreement over greasepaint and scenery. When Levey had proudly erected his Colchester Warehouse in George Street, with the architectural help of Mr. Francis Greenway, he had added a windmill to the top story.
If the governor was not impressed, the populace loved the confrontation. Tear it down, Darling ordered. Levey refused and pointedly had the freeman’s friend, Mr. William Charles Wentworth, write a letter on his behalf. It informed His Excellency that Levey would demolish his windmill when the government pulled down its own nearby. Stalemate.
As a safeguard against official sanction, Levey called his theater “amateur.” Similarly, he took no money at the door. But Mr. Levey did accept bookings at five shillings for box seats and three shillings in the pit.
As far as the patterer was concerned, a Theater Royal existed in everything except name. Barnett Levey had told him that the pit and boxes could accommodate 700 people, while the stage had, in the entrepreneur’s words, “a due quantity of trapdoors for entrance and exit of the usual number of ghosts for the grave of Hamlet.”
There had been theaters in Sydney before, of course. The debtors’ rooms in the jail had once passed as a playhouse, and another theater had flourished near the Tank Stream, accepting rum and parcels of flour or meat for entry. One patron became overly enthusiastic about obtaining
his
pound of flesh, killing an officer’s grey-hound and passing off the meat as kangaroo. Officials ordered that theater be pulled down, anticipating Governor Darling’s present view of “our prison population being unfit subjects to go to plays.”
The patterer struggled to find his way through the darkened room and the crowd milling before the stage. There was a reek of rum, beer, perfume, unwashed bodies and pipe and cigar smoke. This was not helped by the strong smell coming from the footlights and other whale-oil lamps that needed trimming.
He finally joined Captain Rossi in a box. The policeman smiled. “Well, what brings you—as if I didn’t know—to the Goose?” While most Sydney drinkers properly called Levey’s hotel the Royal, local thespians and their supporters often referred to it as the Goose and Gridiron, a play on Swan and Harp, a name often given to a theatricals’ tavern, and the coat of arms of Britain’s venerable Company of Musicians.
Dunne put a finger to his lips as a comic began a fresh patter.
“Have you heard about the Irishman, the Scotchman, the Welshman and the English officer, all captured as spies by the Froggies before Waterloo? No? Well, the French captain said, ‘You’re all going to be shot at dawn … ′”
The audience booed.
“‘… So you’re entitled to a last request.’ The Irishman said, ‘Begorrah, I’ll have a thousand United Irishmen singing “The Wearin’ o’ the Green.”’ The Scotchman said, ‘Och, man, I’ll listen to 2,000 bagpipers playing as loud as they can.’ The Welshman said, ‘I will hear three thousand bards on Welsh harps.’”
The comic paused for effect. “Then the English officer said, ‘I say, old boy, do you think you could shoot me first?’”
The audience roared its approval.
“I don’t understand it,” said Rossi.
“Never mind,” said the patterer. “Tell me, have I missed Miss Dormin’s performance?”
“I’m sorry, lad, but you have, by a whisker. She was grand in a scene from
Othello
. Oh, when she said, ‘She turn’d to folly, and she was a whore … O, I were damn’d beneath all depth in hell, but that I did proceed upon just grounds to this extremity,’ it was quite a sight and she brought the house down. I’m sorry you weren’t here.”
A new act hushed their conversation. A small man, noted in the program only as “Mr. Palmer, tragedian,” began excerpts from
Macbeth
. As he finished, “Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell,” some alchemy summoned two constables onto the stage and they began to drag Mr. Palmer away.
Over boos and protesting pig-noises from the angry crowd, one constable appealed to Captain Rossi, explaining that the actor was a prisoner out on a pass from the barracks only until nine, and that the time had passed. Rossi consulted his watch, sighed and nodded.
“
Exeunt
pigs and Macbeth,” muttered Dunne.
Two members of a low act, rushed on by Mr. Levey to calm the crowd, sang a couple of ditties designed to appeal more to the battlers in the pit than to any ladies and gents in boxes. They sang:
In St. James’s the officers mess at the club,
In St. Giles’s they often have messes for grub;
In St. James’s they feast on the highest of game,
In St. Giles’s they live on foul air just the same.
The audience then sang along with:
Officers’ wives have puddings and pies,
But sergeants’ wives have skilly.
And the private’s wife has nothing at all
To fill her poor little belly.
The patterer felt his cheeks flush as he half saw Miss Dormin suddenly slip into the empty seat beside him. He was grateful that the gloom disguised his too-obvious pleasure.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said. “I had to change and get out of my stage
maquillage
. And the following acts needed help dressing. Did you see me?”
On the spur of the moment the flustered young man lied, “Of course! You were wonderful!”
“You didn’t disapprove?”
“Of the Bard? Never!”
But now it was time for Mr. Levey to bounce onto the stage to announce a solo rendition by a lady who had delighted the courts of Europe—Madame Greene. Madame walked slowly to center stage, her green gown and evening turban shimmering in the flickering footlights. She looked pale, especially against the vivid slash of green lacquer marking her lips.
Was she nervous perhaps? wondered Dunne. He marveled at this other side to the Queen of the Drabs. At least he now knew what Levey had meant about the fat lady singing!
Madame announced that she would sing the “‘Calcutta Cholera Song,’ for all old India hands.” Her voice was surprisingly light, yet clear and carrying, although she still seemed under strain, as she sang:
Spurn the Hooghly waters,
As the foul miasmas creep.
They steal our wives and daughters,
In pits of lime they sleep.
 
 
But raise your rum, be merry,
Ere the depths of hell you plumb.
Pay a toast to those we bury,
And to those with death to come!

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