Solomon's Song (9 page)

Hawk is long accustomed to Mary’s temper tantrums. She runs an empire and has become used to being obeyed without question, to being indulged and fawned on by sycophants. Mary has grown to accept as her right the dominion she has over most other people and has become corrupted, if not in deed, for she is a hard but fair trader, but in thought, corrupted by the power she commands and the unequivocal respect she demands for her every decision. Only Hawk may disagree with her and hope to get away with it.

‘No, Mama, you know I think no such thing. What you have achieved in your life is remarkable, but it has not all come about from the sweat of your brow. Tommo is right, there is a part in all of us that may become greedy and avaricious, in each of us there is a mongrel waiting to emerge if the right circumstances prevail.’

‘What do you mean? How dare you say that!’ Mary cries. ‘I have paid me debts to society, I am an emancipist, an honest woman by the letter o’ the law!’

Hawk is hard put to continue and tries to make peace with Mary. ‘Mama, please don’t take it personally. Tommo only wanted that his daughter should be brought up innocent of the white man’s ways. He could not forget what was done to him when he was kidnapped and taken to the Wilderness.’

‘Yeah, well, that were different, that was Hannah and David, them two evil bastards, they done that to the two of you.’

‘Oh?’ Hawk replies, one eyebrow slightly arched. ‘There’s no proof they kidnapped us, but if they did, why do you think they did so?’

‘Hatred!’ Mary spits. ‘Them two hated me and Ikey.’

Hawk sighs. ‘Mama, it were hatred, yes. But it came about because of greed and avarice, because of what was in the Whitechapel safe. Not just their greed and avarice, yours too. We stole that money, you and me, we stole it.’

‘Half of it were Ikey’s,’ Mary protests. ‘Hannah tried to get it all! Pinch the bleedin’ lot!’

‘But she didn’t, we did. It was never our money in the first place, not even Ikey’s half, he didn’t leave it to us in his will, we stole it before he died, remember?’

‘He died unexpected like. Before you come back from England. But he gave us his part of the combination, that shows he intended we should have the money. I know that’s true!’ Mary insists.

‘Mama, you know that’s not true! I worked out Ikey’s combination from his riddle and you got Hannah’s from the orphan school, from Hannah’s daughter, little Ann, who inadvertently spilled the beans. The safe was empty when David arrived, the contents taken by me. We stole it all, but for one ruby ring and Ikey’s note which I planted in the safe for David to read.’

‘Ikey would have given it to us, shared it if he’d lived,’ Mary says petulantly.

‘Ikey never shared anything in his life, Mama. Ikey accumulated, he added and subtracted, but he never divided.’

Mary, despite herself, smiles at Hawk’s concise summary of Ikey’s character.

‘Anyhow,’ Hawk continues, ‘even if he had intended to share with us, only half of it was his to share, the other half belonged to his wife, to Hannah.’ He pauses for emphasis, ‘And we stole the lot!’

‘Yes, well,’ Mary now says, patently growing tired of Hawk’s persistence. ‘Hannah and David kidnapped you and Tommo, they sodding well deserved what they got in return. After what they done to us, to me two precious ones, they ain’t entitled to a brass razoo!’

‘Mama, we can’t prove they did it! That it was them that took Tommo and me from the mountain.’

‘And they can’t prove we took the money from the safe, can they now?’ Mary says triumphantly. She clears her throat. ‘Let me tell you something f’nothing, Hawk Solomon, I know in me heart and soul that they did it, took the two of you, my precious mites, my two beautiful boys, and ruined Tommo’s life.’ She stabs a crooked finger at Hawk’s neck, pointing to the band of silvered scar tissue formed from the wild man’s rope burns about it. ‘And near bleedin’ killed you!’ Then Mary leans into her chair, arching her back and looking at Hawk with ill-disguised scorn. ‘Nothing will convince me otherwise, you hear? Them two bastards are guilty as sin! They done it, I’d stake me life on it!’

‘Ah, but Hannah and David also know in their hearts and souls that we took their money and nothing will convince them otherwise. I daresay they’d stake their lives on it as well,’ Hawk says, then adds, ‘And they’d be damned right to.’

Mary says nothing, looking down over Hobart to the Derwent River, the last moments of the sunset now turning it to gold. There is a lovely calm about the little city at this hour when the lights begin to shine from the windows of houses and cottages on the hill behind the waterfront and from the single row of street lamps that trace the line of the harbour. ‘That money were wrongly come by in the first place,’ she says finally. ‘It weren’t gained on the straight, them two never did deserve it, it were stolen goods, fenced off the poor for a pittance, or gained elseways in an evil manner in Hannah’s vile brothel,’

Hawk remembers how his heart began to beat faster and he suddenly found it necessary to take a deep breath before speaking. He has waited years for this moment and now when it has arrived the roof of his mouth is suddenly dry. ‘Mama, we must give it back,’ he says at last.

Mary can scarcely believe her ears. ‘Give it back? Are you stark, starin’ mad, Hawk Solomon? Give it back! Give what back? Ikey’s money? Do me a favour! Over me dead body!’

‘Mama, you have used it to make a fortune ten, fifty times as big as the one we stole. Think now, if you don’t give it back, then Tommo is right, we must be counted among the mongrels, among the greedy and the avaricious. Mama, don’t you see? If we do not make amends we ourselves are sufficient reason why his daughter Hinetitama must stay with her mother’s people.’

Mary leans forward and glares shrewdly at Hawk. ‘And if I give it back, only Hannah’s half, mind, will you bring Tommo’s daughter to me now?’

‘No, Mama, that I cannot do. I have promised my twin and I must honour my word.’

She pulls back and gives him a short, disparaging laugh. ‘Thought so! Yes, well then them two can go to buggery, they’re getting sod-all from me!’ she shouts, banging her mittened fist against the arm of her chair. ‘They get bugger all, you hear me?’

Despite Hawk bringing up the subject of restitution to Hannah and David several times over the years, Mary won’t budge an inch and the enmity and the hate between the two families continues to grow.

But now, at last, Hawk is bringing Hinetitama to Hobart to meet the formidable seventy-eight-year-old Mary Abacus, who still runs her brewing and business empire with a grip of steel so that those who work for her dub her Iron Mary.

Man’ has had the extreme satisfaction of seeing Hannah Solomon pass away the previous year. She was pleased as punch when David, respecting his mother’s dying wishes, buries her in the Hobart cemetery next to Ikey.

Hannah’s son, having inherited his business interests from his mother’s de facto husband George Madden, has expanded them hugely. David now lives in Melbourne and is a man of considerable wealth. Mary sends an extravagant wreath to the funeral of her mortal enemy with the message attached:

Say hello to Ikey from me

when you arrive in hell!

Mary Abacus.

The day after the funeral Mary purchases the grave lot beside Hannah’s. ‘So I can keep an eye on the bitch when I’m dead,’ she tells Hawk with satisfaction. ‘Mark my words, you can’t trust them lot, dead or alive!’

Mary, Hawk knows, will be delighted with Hinetitama’s unexpected arrival. She will want Hinetitama married as soon as possible and he expects the clash of temperament between the two women in this regard alone to be considerable.

But, in the meantime, he can almost hear Mary saying upon his arrival in Hobart, ‘Oh, my precious Hawk, I shall go to my grave a happy woman, I shall have my great-grandchildren to carry on!’

He doesn’t quite know how he will tell Mary about her granddaughter’s drinking problem. He is doubtful that Hinetitama’s taking the pledge will work, she is too high-spirited, too wild to be constrained, and the dullness and pretension of the better folk in Hobart and her stubborn nature do not bode well for the future. Hinetitama, he thinks, will be more than a match for Iron Mary and Hawk does not expect a calm relationship to develop between them.

But he is wrong. From the outset Tommo’s daughter and Mary hit it off splendidly. Hinetitama is a Maori in her manners and upbringing where respect for one’s elders is a primary consideration. Mary, on her best behaviour for once, seems to like her granddaughter’s feisty demeanour. Hinetitama, though always polite, will not be bullied or told what to do and Mary is forced to seek her co-operation in the plans she has for her.

There is, of course, no initial talk of marriage, Mary being much too cunning to shy the filly before the stallion arrives. She merely asks her granddaughter to embrace the conventions of Hobart society. This includes learning how to dress and behave in polite company, the latest dance steps and, of course, the intricacies and mysteries of acceptable table manners. Her rough manner of speaking is put into the hands of Miss Brodie, a teacher of elocution and correct pronunciation favoured by the true merinos. Her pupil’s pronunciation is subject to the closest scrutiny, with her vowel sounds given the most attention. Hinetitama takes all this instruction in good humour, she has a marvellous ear and can mimic Miss Brodie perfectly and, if she wishes, she can pronounce her vowel sounds to perfection.

Mary laughs as Hinetitama afterwards takes her through every lesson. Mary has selected one teacher for dress, another for deportment, a third for manners and conversation. These are invariably women with big bosoms and hair drawn back into rigid grey buns, who wear brown or black bombazine gowns and stern bonnets and almost always turn out to be middle-aged spinsters of impeccable character, genteel poverty and in precious possession of an over-pronounced and meticulous English vocabulary.

Hinetitama not only repeats a particular lesson in a voice redolent of her teachers’ but she proves to be a clever actress, who takes on their mannerisms as well, often stuffing her own bosom with a small cushion and drawing back her beautiful dark hair into a bun. She will sometimes affect Mary’s reading glasses to perfect a likeness.

Her master of dancing is the ancient Monsieur Gilbert, pronounced ‘Gill-bear’ who dubs himself Professor de Dance and has become a living institution in Hobart. To be tutored by this ageing and doubtfully French dancing master is a prime requisite among the crinolined society and Mary knows she cannot complete her granddaughter’s admittedly crammed social education without a knowledge of all the steps in the latest dances practised in the salons of London and Paris.

Although Hinetitama is forbidden to sway her hips in the seductive style of the Maori, she sometimes includes a bit of a swish, a sway and a naughty thrust of the hips into the rigid and pompous dance steps taught to her, rendering them into an altogether different permutation. ‘Oh, Grandmother, must I learn this funny pakeha dance,’ she laughs. ‘It has no joy in it, how can it catch a man or ready him for the joy of a woman?’

Mary delights in these impersonations which usually take place on the balcony of the big house where Mary always waits at sunset to see the parakeets, her talismanic rosellas, fly over on their way to roost in the trees higher up the mountain. Hawk, in all the time he has known her, has never heard her laugh as much. He can see she is greatly enamoured of her beautiful granddaughter and is even beginning to dote on her. Hinetitama, for her part, tries to co-operate with Mary’s wish for her education, but she has won the battle of the dress. While she will accept the dictates of fashion, she simply refuses the dark shades and plain bonnets insisted upon by its arbiters in Hobart. She elects to have her gowns and bonnets made in the brightest of silks and satins and even the cotton dresses she wears during the day are of the strongest colours.

This is all observed with a tight-lipped disapproval from her social milieu, who regard her as cheap, and her manner of dressing vulgar and ostentatious, although Hinetitama does not seem to notice, or otherwise care for what the young matrons of Hobart may think of her. As for her various tutors, they gossip endlessly among the older society women. While they may privately accuse Hinetitama of constantly drawing attention to herself with her garish finery and her over-bright smile and lack of dignity in front of her tutors, no one is prepared to point this out to Mary for fear of losing their sinecure. They know that the redoubtable Mary Abacus will accept no criticism of her granddaughter beyond the various problems she has given them to correct.

Mary tactfully dismisses Miss Mawson, the spinster in charge of Hinetitama’s wardrobe, paying her over-generously and, without mentioning the matter of fabrics and colour, she compliments the cut and style of the garments the old lady has chosen for her granddaughter. She is secretly pleased that Hinetitama refuses to accept the dull colours of the prevailing fashion. Though Hinetitama is now twenty-five years old she is still a rose in young bud and with her light step, skin colour and raven-dark hair the bright colours suit her very well indeed and Mary thinks will greatly attract the male of the species.

She has also fallen in love with her granddaughter’s voice. When her little Maori princess sings to her of a night she often enough causes the tears to run down her grandmother’s cheeks for the sheer joy of her song.

Mary gradually begins to introduce males into Hinetitama’s life. These are, for the most part, men in their early forties, widowers and bachelors with some breeding or social standing in Tasmanian society. However, Mary has not precluded male members from the more prosperous but coarser business community, who are also invited for sherry and a light supper. With very few exceptions, the men are prematurely bald with stomachs which spill precipitously over their waistlines maintained thus on a bachelor’s diet of ale and stodgy food.

Hobart is not a large place and most of the suitors involved share the same clubs or meet at the Wednesday and Saturday races so that the ‘Wild Wahine’, as one of these hopeful suitors has dubbed Hinetitama, is freely discussed between them. All see her as a filly to be happily mounted and the source of a large and continuing accreditation to their bank accounts. Her dark good looks testify to her tempestuous nature and they roll their eyes in supposed anticipation while speculating on the stamina required to keep up with her primitive savage desires.