Mary moved from the old Female Factory where she had spent the past eighteen months to the new one where, for a short period, she returned to work in the bakery. If new meant a larger factory it did not mean a better one. The new female house of correction was a remodelled distillery, secured cheaply by the government, and its site in the damp valley of the Hobart Town rivulet, under the shadow of a large hill which blocked almost all direct sunlight for a large part of the year, was most unsuitable. It was damp and dark and so unhealthy that during the first winter in the new Factory eighteen inmates and twenty-seven newborn babies died from bronchial illnesses.
While the kneading of dough was hard work, Alary found it pleasant enough. The ovens were warm on the cold days of drizzle and sharp, cutting winds which blew up the wide Derwent River from the coast in winter. Van Diemen's Land has a contrary climate and lies sufficiently close to the Antarctic Circle to have at least one of its toes permanently in ice. No local would be brave enough to pronounce a part of any day of the year safe from sudden bone-chilling cold, when summer's blue brilliance is turned, with a malevolent growl from atop the great mountain, into the misery of a winter gale.
The year and a half spent in the old Female Factory had not, at first, been easy for Mary. The overcrowded conditions, the constant fighting among the prisoners and the fact that the Factory was as much a brothel as a prison, made the day-to-day effort to survive most onerous. But Mary, convinced that her luck in life had changed the moment she had set foot in Van Diemen's Land, set about the task of surviving until she was granted her ticket of leave.
Life in a female gaol is no different from that of a male one – dominance and strength are usually all that matter. With Ann Gower at her side, Mary set about the conquest of her fellow inmates. She grew her nails until her twisted hands had the appearance of wicked claws. Ann Gower let the stories of Mary in Newgate and the raking of Potbottom's back be known. She also conveyed the fact that Mary had been crowned queen of the prisoners on the voyage because she had defied the authorities, earned a flogging and won the day. This was sufficient to make Mary Abacus greatly feared and respected among the prisoners without ever having to fight any of the inmates.
The prisoners at the Female Factory soon came to realise that Mary was on their side and was not a leader simply so that she might benefit herself or her cronies at their expense. The authorities also accepted that Mary's leadership was not necessarily to their disadvantage. She did not directly challenge their authority but, instead, organised the prostitution and the distribution of grog and tobacco in the Factory. Mary's past experience of running a brothel and organising the lives of the girls within it made life in gaol a great deal more bearable for all.
It was the custom of the Factory to elect female overseers and task mistresses from the prisoners and the superintendent of the Factory begged Mary to take such a position but she refused. They were obliged to accept that Mary carried more unsanctioned authority than those prisoners they had trusted with such a position. They also knew that those convicts appointed overseers would answer to Mary before them.
Payment by the troopers for services from the prison whores was now, as it had been at Egyptian Mary's, made not to the individual whore, but directly to Mary. She in turn negotiated the price of tobacco and grog among the corrupt turnkeys and, provided they did not become too greedy, paid them what they demanded. Mary retained a small percentage of the capital earned and paid the remainder to the prisoners who were owed it. This she did in money or in kind.
The clicking of her abacus could often be heard late into the night as she reconciled her ledgers. Mary's calculations were scrupulously correct and, while there are always those in a mutual society who whisper that the bookkeeper is a cheat, the ten percent she took from each transaction was considered by most to be fair for the task she undertook.
In fact, it had been an attempt by the prison officials to squeeze too great a profit from the prisoners which had consolidated Mary's position and proved the value of the ten percent levy. Those who profited dishonourably from the poor wretches under their care demanded an even higher price for their tobacco and grog. Mary refused and at the same time withheld the services of the prostitutes to the government troopers.
The Female Factory was unofficially endorsed by the military command as a soldier's brothel, and when it ceased to work the prison officials were forced to admit, in answer to the discreet though annoyed enquiries from the military command, that they could not alleviate the situation. This was the cause of much private embarrassment although, publicly, Governor Arthur had used it to his benefit. In fact, with much pomp and ceremony he had presided over an official commendation to the chief gaoler for having successfully put down prostitution in the Female Factory. In the same hour of the governor's departure the barracks commander had demanded, supposedly with the blessing of the governor, that 'the good work on behalf of my troopers be resumed at once!'
During the two-week strike Mary used the funds she had accumulated from taking her ten percent cut to purchase grog and tobacco which she dispensed to the workers while they were unemployed.
By organising the prison urchins, who could come and go as they pleased and, besides, had no problems evading the porter at the gate, Mary showed the corrupt officials that she had the means of bringing in adequate supplies of the commodities they had fondly imagined they exclusively controlled. Pressure continued to mount from the troopers who had come to see the Female Factory as their rightful source of recreation and so it was not long before commonsense prevailed. The turnkeys asked that the former prices should be maintained.
But Mary demanded the prices come down. She was sentenced to solitary confinement on bread and water on a trumped-up charge, but this manoeuvre was an abject failure. The prisoner whores refused to cooperate, although in all other things their behaviour was exemplary. In a pact which they named 'Legs crossed for Mary' they refused to lie on their backs on behalf of the Crown, and the authorities, fearing a public outcry, could not be seen to punish them.
Mary was released from solitary after only two days and a fair deal was struck with the turnkeys. Nothing like this had ever happened before. The fact that Mary had been prepared to be punished for their ultimate benefit deeply impressed the prisoners, and she now possessed their loyalty.
Mary also concerned herself with the prison urchins, and conducted a school for them for an hour each day in which they were taught to read and write. This ragged school was a great pride to the mothers of the children and also to many of the other prisoners, who were generally illiterate. They took comfort in the fact that ignorance was not, as they had been so often told, a permanent curse placed upon their kind by a malevolent God. Even the whores looked with satisfaction upon the slates the children carried and regarded these as a positive proof that their work was not unworthy.
However, it should not be construed that Mary's presence in the Female Factory had turned it into a place of calm and order. Prison is still an institution where the back is broken with hard labour and the soul is destroyed by despair. Despite Mary's efforts, this vile degradation had not changed in Van Diemen's Land. Sadness and despair are ingredients without which the recipe of prison cannot be made acceptable to society. If the old Female Factory had never worked better than under Mary's leadership, this was only that it was a lesser kind of hell on earth. One of the most palpable examples of this misery was the inevitable consequence of institutionalised prostitution, the illegitimately born child.
A great many of the children did not survive long. The poor diet in the Female Factory resulted in serious malnutrition and many mothers could not produce sufficient breast milk to feed their babies. Those infants which did survive were removed from their mothers as soon as possible after birth and sent to the orphanage, which was known as 'the nursery'. One of the most commonly heard sounds in the Factory was of a mother wailing at the enforced loss of her child, for it cannot be supposed that the whore has less love for the miracle within her womb than does the wife of a preacher.
However, this was not thought to be the case by the authorities and many of the population and proof thereof was rendered when a female convict, Mary McLaughlan, was executed for killing her newborn baby. Though children died like flies from the lack of food, hygiene and warmth in the Factory, this was thought to be quite in order, whereas the act of a mother putting her tiny infant out of misery, so that it should not suffer longer than its day of birth, was regarded as a crime so gross that the whole island was deeply shocked at this example of the brutalised convict mind. When Mary had gently asked her namesake why she had taken the life of her infant the little Scots woman had wept bitter tears. 'Acht, I couldnae bear the bairn t' suffer. I had nae milk in me teets nor ought t' save its wee life.'
The Reverend William Bedford, the drunken chaplain to the convicts who, in God's name, had been among the large concourse assembled to witness the last moments of Mary McLaughlan, preached a sermon while almost sober in the prison chapel on the Sunday following the hanging.
'She stood dressed in a snow-white garment with a black ribbon tied about her waist and a certain hope of forgiveness supported her in her final hour and, it is my belief, she died contrite and resigned.' Bedford looked about his congregation. Not all were prisoners and the townsfolk sat separated from the lewd looks of the male convicts by a curtain. 'On the falling of the drop, the instant before her mortal scene was closed, she did utter but three words of penitence, "Oh! my God!" though this may well have been a curse, I have chosen to see it as a plea to heaven for forgiveness! Hers was the dreadful crime of murder, the cold-blooded killing of the little innocent offspring of her own bosom.' He paused again, for he was in good form and had for once the complete attention of his congregation. 'Well has this first step to error been compared to the burning spark which, when lighted, may carry destruction to inconceivable bounds. But will mankind take a lesson from this?' He shook his head slowly then banged his fist upon the pulpit. 'Cannot the horrible tenacity be broken with which the Devil keeps his hold, when once he has put his finger on his victim?' The Reverend Bedford let this last sentiment reach the minds of his congregation before he added in a voice both sorrowful and low, 'I think not'.
And so the act committed by a desperate woman was entered into the history of the island as the most heinous of all crimes committed in that place of infamy.
Mary had always had a great love for children, though she would never be able to bear one of her own. She came to look upon the children in the orphanage as belonging to the women in the prison and therefore as her responsibility. Her heart seemed torn asunder when each newly weaned infant was taken away from its mother. On many occasions she had begged the prison authorities to allow the infants to stay, or even that the mothers might be allowed to visit their children at the orphanage on the Sabbath.
The reply had always been the same. The prisoner mother had no rights to a child born out of wedlock, nor could the prison authorities accept responsibility for its care. The best interests of the newborn infant were served away from the malignant pollutants of the prison atmosphere, where under the supervision of a benign government, a child would benefit from a Christian upbringing in the Reverend Thomas Smedley's Wesleyan Orphanage.
And so Mary had passed the first year and a half of her sentence in Van Diemen's Land, though one more aspect should be added which was to be of paramount importance to her future. She was naturally inclined to gardening, though she couldn't think why this should be, as her life had been spent almost entirely on cobblestones in decaying courts and alleys devoid of even a blade of grass. The names of flowers were quite unknown to her, but for the daffodil, rose and violet, and these three only because urchins sold them on the streets of London.
She loved to work in the potato patch and never failed to be surprised when, upon pulling up a dark green, hairy-leafed plant she would find attached to its slender roots great creamy orbs fit for the plate of a king. A little further digging would reveal more of the wonderful tubers and her hands, buried in the rich, damp soil, would for a moment seem whole, her long, slender fingers restored and beautiful.
In the new Female Factory her knowledge and disposition for gardening were recognised, and she was allowed to leave the bakery and spend all her prison working hours at this task. Mary talked to the Irish women in the Factory about the manner of growing potatoes, and learned much from them which improved the crop grown in the prison gardens. This, in particular, from Margaret Keating, who added further to her knowledge with information on the making of poteen, sometimes known as 'Irish whisky'. This is usually made from barley, but potatoes may be used instead. Though each kind has an altogether different taste, both are most astonishingly intoxicating.
Mary soon showed that her proficiency with potatoes carried over to Indian corn, cabbage, carrots and other vegetables. She asked that Ann Gower be allowed to work with her as well as several of the Irish women accustomed to working the soil, including Margaret Keating. She also asked that a good-sized shed be built so that the garden implements could be safely stored and the seeding potatoes successfully propagated. Behind this shed she proposed to build a hothouse for propagating seeds. This, she convinced the prison authorities, was because of the unpredictable weather, where frosts and cold snaps late into spring and early summer could destroy half an acre of vegetable seedlings overnight. This second project was considered to be outside the authority of the prison as it involved the purchase of glass, and was referred to the chief clerk of the colonial secretary's department, Mr Emmett.
Mary had greatly impressed Mr Emmett, who saw her use her abacus to calculate the cost of losing two crops as they had done the previous year to sudden cold snaps. She had offset this against the price of the materials, all of which, but for the glass used in the construction, were made by the male prisoners with only the smallest cost to the treasury.
For the hothouse Mary proposed a clever modification. She planned to build into one of the brick end walls a kiln which could be worked from the outside of the building. Ann explained to the authorities that one of the Irish women, skilled in the making of pots, had discovered a clay pit near the rivulet. The clay there was thought to be of excellent quality for pots. Mary proposed that they would produce water and plant pots for sale to the townsfolk and, with the advent of the hothouse, ornamental plants could be grown. The profits from this enterprise would go directly to the coffers of the colony. The chief clerk now took a keen interest in the hothouse as if the idea had been his own. He accepted the proposal and agreed that the hothouse should be built, together with the abutting kiln, a pottery drying shed and two wheels for turning the clay.
Mary had yet another modification in mind, though not one she thought to mention to the chief clerk. She requested of the prisoner bricklayer to construct a wide hearth on the inside of the end wall of the hothouse, which contained the kiln on its outside. This would be back-to-back with the kiln, so that there would be a fireplace with a good platform, wide working mouth and a double chimney flue shared by both hearth and kiln.
When, to Margaret Keating's precise instructions, the structure was complete, they had the basis of a first-class poteen still. The kiln could be fired separately from the outside and the hearth, if needs be, made to carry a fire of its own on the inside. Mary had a carpenter construct a door to the opening of the hearth, which had four stout wooden shelves built into its outside surface. If the authorities should arrive unexpectedly when the still was in progress the fire could be quickly doused, and the door closed to conceal it. Numerous pots containing plants could be hastily placed upon the shelves as though this was their permanent resting place. Smoke from the recently doused fire would carry up the chimney, where it could always be explained as being caused by the operation of the outside kiln.
All that was now required was the equipment needed to place within the hearth. This consisted of the numerous thin copper pipes which would be fed through the back wall of the hearth into the kiln so that they would be further heated by it, as well as the two chambers needed for the condensation and distillation of the spirit. These copper chambers would reside within the mouth of the hearth, where only a very small fire was needed to keep the water within the main cylinder producing the steam required for the distillation of the potatoes which had been set to ferment.
Ann Gower, who had not the slightest inclination to use a hoe or break her back in a potato patch, was nevertheless perfectly willing to work in a trade she knew best. Whoring in prison gained only a sixpence at a time, whereas in the private enterprise of the prison gardens she could command a quick shilling. She was given the task of procuring the pipes, cylinders and other equipment required for the still.
Ann took up permanent residence in the newly completed shed, where she soon attracted a regular clientele. She quickly discovered those among her clients who had the means to steal, or the skill to fashion and install what Mary required in pipes and cylinders, valves and taps.
They had been most fortunate to chance upon a randy mechanic who was masterful in his knowledge of pipes and pressures. By employing his considerable engineering skill Mary constructed a still which, with the turning of no more than half a dozen nuts, could be disassembled and quickly hidden in a specially constructed cavity, which was revealed by lifting one of the large flagstones which comprised the floor of the hothouse.
In return for their services, those few men who had been involved in supply and construction of the still were happy enough to be repaid in a free weekly fulfilment from Ann Gower for the period of 'snow to snow'. This was the time from the last snowfall on Mount Wellington to the first of the following winter, or, if they were exceedingly unlucky, to a summer fall, which was not unknown in these parts.
Mary Abacus and Ann Gower, with the help of Margaret Keating, had created the two things most in demand on the island, strong drink and lewd women, and both at a price most attractive to the customer.
Governor Arthur was determined to stamp out drunkenness within the female prison, and his orders were that any turnkey caught selling grog was to be instantly dismissed and severely punished with three hundred strokes of the lash. While it had been comparatively easy to use the children to smuggle tobacco and liquor into the old Factory, it was considerably harder in the new, where they were regularly searched by the guards at the gates.
Now Mary and her partners could not only sell grog to the free population but they could also bring into prison significant quantities of the fiery poteen concealed in the loads of vegetables delivered to the kitchen each evening.
The three women worked well together, Ann Gower being utterly loyal to Mary and Margaret Keating being a quietly spoken and sensible woman who was a political prisoner. Within six months of the completion of the still, having served three years in prison, she was assigned to an emancipist of good repute who offered at the same time to take her as his wife.
To her husband's surprise she brought with her a small but much-needed cash dowry, the source of which he was sufficiently prudent not to enquire about. And so Margaret Keating left her two erstwhile partners to enjoy a life of hard work and the utmost respectability, where she would lose one child and raise four others in the happiest of family circumstances. Mary took over the working of the poteen still.
Both Mary and Ann Gower knew well enough that whoring and strong drink taken together spelled trouble, so they were careful not to create a convivial atmosphere about the running of their business. Hobart Town abounded in sly-grog shops where all manner of homemade liquor could be obtained. This was a most potent and dangerous concoction and often laced with laudanum. When the revellers became too drunk and noisy they were given a finishing glass which consisted of a strong poison and was designed to render the drinker unconscious so that he might more easily be thrown out onto the street or, if he was a whaler with a pocketful of silver American dollars, robbed of all he possessed.
Men were not permitted to congregate or drink on Mary's prison vegetable plot, but only to use Ann's services or make a purchase of grog. A single transaction, the purchase of a 'pot', as a small container of poteen became known, took two minutes. A double transaction, a 'pot 'n pant', took no more than ten, a shilling being paid for each service, after which the recipient was required promptly to scarper from the premises.
Mary's poteen soon earned a reputation for its excellent quality and as men must always put names to things, this being especially true for things clandestine, where a wink and a nod may be involved, or a euphemism employed, some began to call the enterprise 'The Potato Patch'.
'Where are you going, mate?' a man might enquire of another.
'To the Potato Patch,' would be the reply.
However, late one winter's afternoon a trooper, not a usual customer, after obtaining his two shillings worth demanded company to go with his proposed drinking. When promptly ordered to leave he grew most cantankerous and, stumbling away, he turned and yelled at Mary.
'This place be shit! It be nothing but a damned potato factory!'
The name stuck and Mary's still became known as 'The Potato Factory'. It was a name thought most excellent to those who used its services, for it contained some character and style, which is an essential ingredient in any decent man's drinking habits, the Potato Patch always having had about it a somewhat base and primitive feel.
Now it might be supposed that an operation such as this would soon enough be the subject of the tattle tongues to be found in great numbers in a women's prison, and that the prison officials would soon come to know about it. But Mary and Ann Gower saw to it that the prisoners had drink sufficient to keep them happy, and that their children had clothes and physic when they had colic or were otherwise taken with sickness. Mary reigned as Queen no differently in the new Female Factory than she had done in the old.
Similarly, it must be expected that a customer of the Potato Factory would at some time reveal its whereabouts to such as an undercover plainclothes constable set about gathering useful information within the premises of a brothel or a tavern. Gossips and narks are among the most virulent forces at work in any convict community, but no sooner had one sly-grog outlet closed down than another would spring up in its place.
Even if human weakness is more often exercised than human strength, a community such as was to be found in Hobart Town could keep its secrets well. Most of the people who walked the streets were either emancipists, ticket of leavers or active prisoners, and all felt they had just cause to resent authority and to keep some things secret from the free settlers whom they disliked almost as much.
Mary saw to it that the troopers connected with the Female Factory were kept silent with a regular supply of poteen. Furthermore, several key members of the local constabulary would receive a pint-sized 'pot' with a tight wooden cork, brought in by a street urchin each week. And, at least one magistrate was known to consider Mary's poteen 'The purest water o' life itself!' and took pains not to ask his clerk, who declined to take payment for it, where he habitually obtained it.
Mary's vegetable garden and pottery continued to prosper and the prison authorities had no cause to complain. Abundant vegetables and sacks of splendid potatoes arrived at the Female Factory kitchen and, while much of this fresh produce never found its way onto the prison tables, being appropriated by those in charge, this did not concern Mary. She well understood that those in charge had even further reason not to look too closely behind the cabbage leaves.
From time to time, the chief clerk, Mr Emmett, would receive a reasonable sum of money, being the proceeds for the sale of plant and water pots. He would receive the funds together with a summary of what had been sold, to whom and at what price. A clerk sent about the town confirmed Mary's reconciliation correct to the penny – all this in Mary's neat hand, the columns precisely drawn and the addition and subtraction without error. The payment would always come together with a handsomely turned pot which contained some exotic forest bloom, Mr Emmett being famous for his garden and his cottage, Beauly Lodge, was considered the most beautiful in Hobart Town. Once, for his daughter Millicent on her tenth birthday, Mary sent a standard rose, a veritable pin cushion of tiny, perfectly formed pink blooms.
Mr Emmett, observing the honesty and integrity of Mary Abacus, called on the Female Factory to offer her the position of a clerk with the colonial secretary's department. But, though Mary had declared herself most flattered, she declined the offer.
'Do you not understand, Mary, that there are no women in my department or, I dare say, in any other? You should perceive this as a great honour.' Mr Emmett smiled and then resumed. 'No woman, I'll wager, and never a convict woman has been placed in so great and fortunate a position of trust on this island, my dear!'
Mary wondered how she could possibly think to refuse. Then she looked down at her twisted hands and her eyes filled with bitter tears at the memory of the cold winter morning in London's docklands, when she had left Mr Goldstein's warehouse with her heart singing. How in the swirling yellow mist the male voices had risen to envelop and crush her…
The harsh memories flooded back and Mary was most hard put to restrain herself from weeping.
'I'm sorry, sir, I may not accept. There be reasons I cannot say to you, though me gratitude be most profound and I thank you from the bottom o' me 'eart.' Then she looked up at Mr Emmett, her eyes still wet with her held back tears. 'I prefers the gardens, sir. The air be clean and the work well disposed to me ability.'
Mr Emmett made one last effort to persuade her. It was apparent that he did not like being refused and now spoke with some annoyance. 'There are few enough on this cursed island who can read or write, let alone reconcile a column of figures! Good God, woman, will you not listen to me? You are…' he took a moment to search for words, '… wasted in this… this damned potato patch of yours!'
'Then let me teach sir!' Mary pleaded urgently. 'So that we may make more of our children to read and write and meet with your 'ighest demands!'
'Teach? Where? Teach who?'
'The orphanage, sir. The prison brats. If I could teach three mornings a week I could still manage the gardens.'
Mr Emmett looked bewildered. 'Your suggestion is too base to be regarded with proper amusement, Mary. These are misbegotten children, the spawn of convicts and drunken wretches!' It was apparent that he had become most alarmed at the thought. 'They cannot be made to learn as you and I may. Have you no commonsense about you, woman?' He shook his head and screwed up his eyes as though he were trying to rid his mind of the thought Mary had planted therein. 'First you refuse my offer, now this urchin-teaching poppycock! These children cannot possibly be made to count or write! Surely you know this as well as I do? Have you not observed them for yourself? They are creatures damned by nature, slack of jaw and vacant of expression, the cursed offspring of the criminal class. I assure you, they do not have minds which can be made to grasp the process of formal learning!' He smiled at a sudden thought. 'Will you have them to do Latin?'
'Ergo sum, "I am one",' Mary said quietly. 'I were born a urchin same as them, slack-jawed and vacant o' face the way you looks when you be starvin'!' She cocked her head to one side and attempted to smile, though all the muscles of her lips could manage was a quiver at the corners of her mouth. She reached up to her bosom and clasped the Waterloo medal in her hand. 'Only three mornings?' she pleaded. 'I begs you to ask them folk at the orphanage, sir.'
The chief clerk seemed too profoundly shocked to continue and for some time he remained silent. 'Hmmph!' he growled at last. 'I shall see what I can make of it.' He shook his head slowly, clucking his tongue. 'Clerks out of street urchins, eh? I'll wager, it will be as easy to turn toads into handsome princes!'
A week later Mary received a message to see the Reverend Thomas Smedley, the Wesleyan principal at the orphanage in New Town which had been given the surprising name of the King's Orphan School, though no teaching whatsoever took place in the cold, damp and cheerless converted distillery which served as a home for destitute and deserted children. With this invitation came a pass to leave the prison garden so that she might attend the meeting scheduled for the latter part of the afternoon.
The Reverend Smedley was a short, stout man, not much past his fortieth year, who wore a frock coat and dark trousers, both considerably stained. Neither was his linen too clean, the dog collar he wore being much in need of a scrub and a douse of starch. He wore small gold-rimmed spectacles on a nose which seemed no more than a plump button, and the thick lenses exaggerated the size of his dark eyes. Though it was a face which seemed disposed to be jolly, it was not. Any jollity it may have once possessed was defeated by a most profoundly sour expression. The Reverend Smedley was clean shaven and his cheeks much crossed with a multiplicity of tiny scarlet veins, a curious sanguinity in one so young and not a drinking man. He was a follower of Charles Wesley and, unlike his Anglican counterparts, was sure to be a teetotaller. Instead of adding a rosy blush, these scrambled veins upon his fat cheeks exacerbated further his saturnine expression. It seemed as though he might be ill with a tropical fever, for apart from his roseate jowls, his skin was yellow, while a thin veneer of perspiration covered his podgy face. To Mary he looked a man much beset by life who was in need of the attentions of a good wife or a sound doctor.
'What is your religion, Miss… er, Abacus?' Mary had been left to stand while Thomas Smedley had flipped the tails of his frock coat, and sat upon the lone chair behind a large desk in the front office of the children's orphanage.
'I can't rightly say, sir. I don't know that I 'as one.' Mary paused and shrugged. 'I be nothin' much o' nothin'.'
'A satanist then? Or is it an atheist?'
'Neither, sir, if you mean I believes in the opposite or not at all.'
The Reverend Thomas Smedley looked exceedingly sour and snapped at Mary in a sharp, hard voice which contrasted with his flaccid appearance.
'Do you, or do you not, have the love of the Lord Jesus Christ in your heart? Have you or have you not, been washed in the Blood of the Lamb? Are you, or are you not, saved of your sins? If not, you may not!' These three questions had been too rapid to answer each at a time and his voice had risen fully an octave with each question so that the last part was almost shrill, shouted at Mary in a spray of spittle.
However, at their completion he seemed at once exhausted, as though he had rehearsed well the questions and they had come out unbroken and, to his surprise, much as he had intended them to sound. Now he sat slumped in his chair and his head hung low, with his chin tucked into the folds of his neck, while his chubby hands grasped the side of the desk and his magnified eyes looked obliquely up at Mary as he waited for her reply.
'May not what, sir?' Mary asked politely.
'Teach! Teach! Teach!' Smedley yelled.
'I do not understand, sir? I shall not teach them either of lambs or washing of blood, or sins and least of all of God, but of the salvation of numbers and letters, sir.'
The clergyman looked up and pointed a stubby finger at Mary. 'I am not mocked saith the Lord!' he shouted.
Oh, Gawd, not another one! Mary thought, casting her mind to the dreadful Potbottom, though outwardly she smiled modestly at the Reverend Smedley. 'I had not meant to mock, sir, my only desire is to teach the word o' man and leave the business o' Gawd to the pulpit men, like yourself.'
'God is not business! God is love! I am the way, the truth and the light saith the Lord! Unthinkable! Quite, quite, unthinkable!' His eyes appeared to narrow and his fat fist banged down upon the desk. 'Unless you are born again we cannot allow you to teach children! How will you show them the way, the truth and the light? How will you example the love of Jesus Christ?'
'Who is teaching them now?' Mary asked, hoping to change the subject.
'They have religious instruction twice each day,' the principal shot back angrily. 'That is quite sufficient for their need.'
'Oh, you have used the Bible to teach them to read and write,' Mary said, remembering this was how the Quaker women had suggested they perform this task on board ship.
'We teach salvation! The love of the Lord Jesus and the redemption of our sins so that we may be washed clean, we do not teach reading and writing here!' the preacher barked. 'These children shall grow up to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, that is the place for which they are destined in the Scriptures. They are no less the sons of Ham than the blacks who hide in the hills and steal our sheep. These orphan children are loved by the Lord, for He loves the sparrow as well as the eagle, the less fortunate as well as the gifted child.'
'Then, with Gawd's permission and your own, I will teach them to be more fortunate, sir. Surely Gawd will see no 'arm in such tinkering?'
Reverend Smedley looked up at Mary who stood with her back directly to the open window so that the light from behind flooded into the tiny room to give her body a halo effect, though, at the same time, it caused her features to darken, so that, to the short-sighted clergyman, she seemed to be a dark, hovering satanic form.
'Tinkering? Permission? God's permission or mine, you shall have neither. You shall have no such thing! You are not saved, you are not clean, you are not born again, you are an unrepentant and dastardly sinner whom I have every right to drive from this temple of the Lord!'
Mary sighed. The worst that could happen to her was that she be sent back to the Female Factory and to the prison gardens and this was no great matter. She was not in the least afraid of the silly little man who yapped at her like an overfed lap dog. Her fear was for the orphan children, for the child she had been herself, for the fact that had it not been for the Chinee contraption of wire and beads she would have remained in darkness. Her fear was that if she were not permitted to teach these orphan children they would grow up to perpetuate the myth that her kind were a lower form of human life, one which was beyond all salvation of the mind and therefore of the spirit.
'What must I do to be saved?' she asked suddenly.
The clergyman looked up surprised. 'Why, you must repent, of course!'
Mary shrugged and raised her eyebrows. 'Then I repent,' she announced simply.
Smedley sat up, suddenly alert. 'That's not proper repenting. You have to be sorry!'
'So, I'm sorry, sir,' Mary sighed. 'Most sorry.'
'Not me! Not sorry to me, to the Lord Jesus! You have to go down on your knees before Him and repent!'
'Repent or say I'm sorry? Which is it to be?' Mary asked.
'It's the same thing!' Thomas Smedley shouted. Then abruptly he stood up and pointed to the floor at Mary's feet, where he obviously expected her to kneel.
'No it ain't! It ain't the same at all,' Mary said, crossing her arms. 'I could be sorry and not repent, but I couldn't repent and not be sorry, know what I mean?'
'On your knees at once. The glory of the Lord is upon us!' the Reverend Smedley demanded and again jabbed a fat, urgent finger towards the bare boards at Mary's feet.
Mary looked about and indeed glory had entered the tiny room. A shaft of pale late afternoon sunlight lit the entire space, turning it to a brilliant gold, and small dust motes danced in the fiery light.
Mary looked directly at the clergyman. 'If I repent, can I teach?' she asked.
'Yes, yes!' Smedley screeched urgently. 'Kneel down! Kneel down at once! His glory be upon us!'
Mary knelt down in front of the desk and the Reverend Smedley came around from his side and placed his fat fist upon her head. 'Shut your eyes and bow your head!' he instructed. Then he began to pray in a loud and sonorous preacher's voice which Mary had not heard before.
'Lord I have brought this poor lost lamb to Thee to ask Thee to forgive her sins, for she wishes to repent and accept Your Glorious salvation and receive life eternal so that she may be clasped to Your glorious bosom and receive Your everlasting love.' There was a silence although it was punctuated several times with a loud sucking of the clergyman's lips as though he were undergoing some mysterious ecstasy. Then suddenly his preacher's voice resumed. 'Thank you precious Jesus. Hallelujah! Praise His precious name!'
Mary felt his hand lift from her head and in a tone of voice somewhat triumphant but more or less returned to its former timbre the Reverend Smedley announced calmly, 'Hallelujah, sister Mary, welcome to the bosom of the Lord Jesus Christ, you are saved, washed in the blood of the Lamb! You may rise now.'
Mary rose to her feet. 'That was quick,' she said brightly. 'When can I start, then?'
The Reverend Smedley smiled benignly. 'You have already started on the journey of your new life. God has forgiven you your sins, you are a born again Christian now, Mary!'
'No, no, not that,' Mary said impatiently. 'When does I start with the brats?'
For a moment the Reverend Thomas Smedley looked deeply hurt, but then decided not to turn this expression into words. He had scored a direct hit with the Lord and saved another sinner from hellfire and he was not about to cruel his satisfaction.
'Why, tomorrow morning. You will be here by eight o'clock and will have fifty pupils.' The Reverend Smedley paused and looked at Mary. 'Though we have no slates, or bell, or even board or chalk and nor shall we get them if I know anything of the government stores!' The irritable edge had returned to his voice.
Mary turned to leave. 'Thank you, sir!' she pronounced carefully. But she could barely contain her excitement and took a deep breath, though she was unable to conceal her delight. 'Thank you, I'm much obliged, sir.' She held her hand out and the Reverend Smedley shuddered and involuntarily drew back, so that Mary's crippled paw was left dangling in the air. Then he scuttled to the safety of his side of the desk and opened the ledger to reveal a letter which had been placed between its covers. He spoke in a brusque voice, attempting to conceal his terror at the sight of Mary's hands.
'It says here in your letter of appointment from the governor that you are to take the noon meal with myself and my sister. Have you learned proper table manners, Miss Abacus?' It was obvious to Mary that the image of her hands at his table was the focus of Smedley's question.
Mary suddenly realised that her appointment to the school was not the decision of the irritable little clergyman at all, but that Mr Emmett had independently secured her position from Colonel Arthur himself. The interview with the Reverend Smedley was simply a formality.
'Blimey, sir, I ain't been born again no more'n two flamin' minutes, I ain't 'ad no time to learn proper Christian manners!' She held up her hands. 'They ain't pretty but they works well enough with a knife and fork and I knows what spoon to use for puddin'.' She turned and took the two steps to the door then turned again and grinned at the preacher. 'See you tomorrow, then!'
Mary had no sooner escaped through the front door than she reached for the Waterloo medal and, clutching it tightly, rushed down the path away from the orphanage. She should have told the fat little bastard to sod off, but her heart wasn't in it. A little way down the road she turned and looked up at the great mountain towering above the town.
'Thank you,' she said quietly to the huge, round-shouldered mountain, then she threw caution to the winds. 'Thanks a million, rocks and trees and blue skies and Mister oh-so-magic Mountain!' she shouted at the top of her voice. Mary remembered suddenly that yesterday had been her birthday and that she was twenty-nine years old, though for a moment she felt not much older than the children she would begin to teach in the morning.
'Go on, then, send us a nice bright day tomorrow, will you, love?' she shouted again at the mountain. To Mary's left, high above the massive swamp gums, a flock of brilliant green parakeets flew screeching upwards towards the summit of Mount Wellington. 'Tell 'im I want a real beauty! A day to remember!' she yelled at the departing birds. 'Thanks for the luck!'