The Potato Factory (8 page)

'Please, Mr Solomon, sir,' Mary called, 'can you spare just one minute of your time? I've waited 'ere all night with news that may be o' great benefit to you.'

'What is it, woman? 'Ave you got somethin' to sell?'

'Yes, sir, but I cannot speak of it here, you must grant me time to see you elsewhere. What I 'ave to offer is o' great value. You will wish to see a sample, I feel sure.'

'Where will I come? When? Be quick, it's late! I must be gorn. Where?' Ikey snapped, expecting to intimidate the woman who stood before him.

Mary had thought about this meeting too often to be thrown by Ikey's brusque manner. 'I shall come to you, sir,' she said calmly, though her heart was beating furiously. 'What I shall bring with me will be worth your while.'

'Bah, humbug!' It was unusual for a woman of Mary's standing to confront him unless she had some urgent business, probably of the stolen goods kind. Or she might be a spy of some sort, or a trap set by the runners.

'Who sent you? Who told you to wait 'ere?' Ikey asked.

'I cannot say, sir, I pledged to keep me gob shut, but it ain't no one what means you 'arm.'

'Hmmph! I cannot think that such a man exists,' Ikey sniffed, though his instinct in these things was usually sound and he could feel no malice of intent in the woman who stood before him. 'Very well, tonight, at seven o'clock precisely in Whitechapel. If you are late and not alone you will not be let in. You shall say one word, "Waterloo", to the woman what answers the door, "Waterloo" and no other, do you understand?'

Mary nodded, too nervous and overcome even to thank him as Ikey gave her the address of his home in Whitechapel.

'G'warn, be off with you now and don't you be late, you shall 'ave ten minutes tonight!' Ikey paused. 'That is, if you 'ave something of worth to show me, less, much less, I can assure you, if you doesn't!'

Without a word Mary moved past Ikey and into Win-field Street. She had succeeded in the first step, though she had done so with a trick, a deception, yes, but not a lie. Now she had given herself the chance to pick up the broken pieces of her miserable life and perhaps change it forever.

*

At seven o'clock precisely that evening Mary, carrying her abacus, tapped on the door of Ikey's Whitechapel home. It was not as big a house as any in which she had once worked, but imposing nevertheless and grand for where it stood one street from the Whitechapel markets. The door was answered by a raw-boned woman who appeared to be about forty and whose breath smelled of stale beer.

Mary, afraid even to offer the pleasantry of an evening greeting lest she betray Ikey's instructions, blurted out, 'Waterloo!'

'You're expected t' be sure,' the woman said in an Irish brogue. 'Will you be after followin' me then, miss?' The woman, taking a candle from a ledge in the hallway, then led Mary through the darkened house to the door of Ikey's study where she tapped three times and departed, leaving Mary waiting in the darkness. She had a sense of being watched and then she heard a sniff followed by the muffled giggle of a child, though she could see no one.

In a moment or so Mary heard the rattle of a key placed into the lock and the door opened, though only a crack. The light was behind Ikey's head and Mary could only just make out his long nose, a single beady eye and a scrag of beard in the space allowed by the opening. The door opened wider and Ikey silently stood aside for her to enter the small room beyond. The door closed behind her and she heard Ikey lock it once again.

Ikey brushed past where Mary stood, turned and surveyed her with his hands on his hips. He was wearing his great coat though he'd removed his hat and she now saw his face clearly for the first time. This she found the way she had imagined it to be. That was the point with Ikey's face - to those who saw it clearly it was exactly what you would expect his face to look like if you knew his vocation in life. Behind Ikey stood a coat-stand and beside it a high desk above which a lamp burned brightly. Two further lamps lit the room to give it an almost cheerful look which contrasted markedly with the general darkness of the house.

Ikey did not bid her to be seated, though there was a small table and single chair some four feet from the desk. Mary moved past Ikey and placed her abacus flat upon the table and then returned to where she'd formerly stood.

'Well, what is it? Why 'ave you come? Show me, I 'ave no time to waste.' Had she been a man who might be carrying news of a rich haul, Ikey might have been more circumspect, he might have smiled at the very least, ingratiating himself, but such pleasantries were not necessary for a woman of Mary's sort.

'Please, sir, you 'ave granted me ten minutes, it will take some of this time to tell you me story.'

'Story? What story? I do not wish to hear your story, unless it is business, a story o' the business o' profit, some for who it is who sends you 'ere and some for yours truly! Be quick. I am most busy of mind and anxious to be about me work.'

Mary smiled, attempting to conceal her nervousness. 'You will assuredly profit from what I 'ave to say, kind sir, but I begs you first the small charity of your ears, no more, a few minutes to 'ear a poor widow's tale.'

Mary then told Ikey how she had been recently widowed from a merchant sailor who had been swept overboard in the Bay of Biscay. How she, penniless, had been forced with her darling infant twins to share a miserable room with a destitute family of five and pay each day from her meagre salary for an older child to mind her precious children while she worked as a laundry maid in a big house in Chelsea. How the husband of the mistress of the house took advantage of her desperate circumstances to use her body for his pleasure whenever he felt inclined and without any thought of payment. How one night a most frightful fire had swept through the netherken where she slept with her baby infants and she had been dragged from the flames but had rushed back to save her precious children.

'I bear the marks, good sir, the marks of that terrible tragedy!' She gave a little sob and withdrew the woollen mittens from her hands, holding them up to reveal her horribly blackened and mutilated claws. 'It were to no avail, me little ones was already perished when I pulled them from that ghastly inferno!'

'Ha! Burnt into two roast piglets, eh?' Ikey snorted.

Mary ignored this cruel remark. 'I lost me billet as a laundry maid 'cause of me 'ands and being burned an' all and not even a sovereign from the master of the 'ouse to send me on me way!'

At this point Ikey waved his hands, fluttering them above his head as though he wished to hear no more.

'Enough! I 'ave no need for a laundry maid 'ere, missus. Be off with you, at once, you will get no charity from me!'

'No, sir, you are mistaken,' Mary hastily exclaimed. 'I want no charity. I 'ave come to apply for the position as clerk, the same as what you was lettin' out you wanted, a clerk well acquainted with all manner of bookkeepin'.'

Ikey's face took on a look of bewildered amazement.

'A clerk? You come 'ere to offer your services as me clerk? A woman and a laundry maid is a clerk? 'Ave you gone completely barmy, missus?' Ikey thumped the side of his head with the butt of his hand. 'Bah! This is quite beyond knowing or supposing!' He made a dismissive gesture towards Mary. 'Go away, I'm a busy man. Be off with you at once, you 'ave already taken up too much of me time. Shoo, shoo, shoo!' He made as though to move towards the door.

Mary took the abacus from where she had placed it on the table. 'Please, a moment, sir, Mr Solomon! I 'ave a gift with the Chinee abacus, sir.' She held the abacus up in front of her. 'A most extraordinary gift what will make you very rich, sir!'

'Rich? That thing? A Chinee ... why, it be nothin' but a bit of wire and beads! Coloured beads! What manner o' trickery is this? Beads and laundry maids and 'anky panky, roasted twins and drownings, gifts and very rich! Bah! Go! Be off with you at once!'

'Please, sir, I beseech and implore you. I ask for no charity, not a brass razoo, only for a test.' Mary appealed to Ikey with her eyes. 'Me abacus, that is, me beads and wire, against your astonishin' and well-known and altogether marvellous way with numbers. Ways what people talk about in wonderment.' Mary gulped. 'While I know a poor clerk like me 'asn't got no chance against such as your good self, it's a fair chance I'm a better bet than most men who count themselves clerks.' Then she added, 'And I am trustworthy, most trustworthy and not known to the beaks, you 'ave me word on that, sir!'

'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 tearstained, 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.