Bryce Courtenay - The Potato Factory

'Mary Abacus. What's it to you if I swear?' Mary challenged., 'Ah, yes! For me? Well it be a delightful hopportunity, Mary Habacus. A most pleasant task to do you…' He paused in mid-sentence and pointed to the abacus under Mary's arm. 'What be that? A contraption is it? Them black and red beads, it ain't witchcraft is it?'

'Abacus. It be an abacus.'

'A habacus, eh? An' pray tell us, what be an habacus if it ain't your name what is also Habacus?'

Before Mary could reply Ann Gower asked, 'What day o' the month and year ya born in, then, mister?'

The small, hairy creature thought for a moment, then decided to co-operate. 'April seven in the year o' our Lord, seventeen seventy-six or near enough, I reckons.' His voice had a cackle to it, his words sharp and fast and somewhat high-pitched like Chinese crackers going off in a bunch.

Ann Gower turned to Mary and whispered from the side of her mouth, 'Show lover boy, darlin'.'

'Lover boy, is it?' The little man had the most astonishing acuteness of hearing, for Mary had barely heard Ann's whisper herself.

Mary shrugged. She was manacled but the clamps were on either end of a good twelve inches of chain so that her hands were more or less free to work the abacus. She rested it on the side of the cart and instructed Ann to hold the abacus firmly. A moment later her twisted fingers began to fly in a clicking and clacking so rapid that the red and black beads slid across their wire runners faster than the eye could possibly follow them. After what seemed only a few minutes she stopped and read the beads.

'You been alive eighteen thousand, six 'undred and sixty-four days. You was borned on a Sunday.' Tapping the abacus, Mary added, 'That be what me abacus does, it counts things.'

'Ho, ho! We's got us a smart one 'as we? A Jack 'n a box what springs out above others! Well, Mary Habacus what's got an habacus what counts, pleased to meetcha, me name's Potbottom, Mister Tiberias Pot-bottom, that be the full complement o' me cartouches.' He spread his hands and grinned disarmingly. 'They calls me, "The Scrapins"! Now can you imagine why that could possibly be, eh?' His head jerked enquiringly from one woman to another, waiting for the women in the cart to acknowledge him with a laugh or some sign of acquiescence. But no laughter or even a nod was forthcoming, for Mary sensed a trap and the others had held back, waiting for her reaction. She remained stony faced looking down at the diminutive creature on the dock.

All at once the bright eager to-and-fro of Potbottom's head ceased and he looked down at his scuffed and worn shoes. His head began to nod slowly as though it were coming to some sort of conclusion. His dark eyes moved to each of the women above him, lingering as though taking in all their details, as if, in his observance, he had suddenly learned much about them and what he found was of the utmost disappointment. His eyes came last to Mary and held her gaze as he spoke.

'Ha! What about leap years, then? Your habacus didn't count no leap years, now did it?' He pointed a sharp finger at Mary and jumped from one foot to the other. 'Ho, ho, habacus ain't such a clever Dick now is it?'

The female convicts all looked questioningly at Mary.

'What you takes me for, an idjit?' Mary sniffed. 'There be eleven in all, they's all counted, leap years and even this mornin's included in.'

The women in the cart clapped and yelled their approval and there was much rattling of chains and laughter at Mary's sharp rejoinder.

'Well, well, we'll soon see about this mornin' included in, won't we?' Potbottom said, his lips drawn to a tight line. 'Welcome aboard His Majesty's convict ship, Destiny II. Destiny be a good name,' he jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the boat, 'for her gracious ladyship. You see, if you be o' the kind what trusts to destiny to supply yer needs, I is most pleased to inform you that you has got it exactly right! On board we supplies all the misery yer heart could desire, lashin's and lashin's o' the stuff, and, as well, we tops it up with despair, more of it than what you could possibly digest in one plain sailin'!'

Mary laughed nervously and the others followed, a titter ran through the cart.

'Oh, now we laughs, does we?' Potbottom's eyes narrowed. 'I knows not how many days you has been alive on Gawd's sweet earth, Mary Habacus, but I makes you this most solemn promise.' Potbottom's eyes held Mary's. 'The worse ones hasn't yet come for you!' He paused and gave her a malevolent smile. 'But they will. Oh deary me, yes! They will, they will!'

Tiberias Potbottom turned his back on them and hurried up the gangway, his short bandy legs making his shoulders jump from side to side, his long arms hanging loose, so that he lurched along very much like the monkey creature he so closely resembled. It was only then that they noticed that one shoulder was higher than the other, that there was a hump, though not overly large, resting behind it. Tiberias Potbottom was a hunchback.

'Blimey! Who'll be touchin' that one's hump for luck,' Mary exclaimed softly.

The women in the cart giggled and watched as Potbottom disappeared on to the deck above them. 'Jesus!' Ann Gower said in a loud whisper. 'Talk about 'ot an' cold! What were that all about?'

'Whatever it were, it ain't good news for me,' Mary sighed. She turned to one of the two turnkeys who'd escorted them on the trip down and who had just that moment returned from reporting to the ship's surgeon-superintendent, the already infamous Joshua Smiles. Neither of their guards had witnessed the exchange between the convict women and Potbottom, who'd brushed past them just as they'd reached the top of the gangway.

'Can you take off our irons now, Mr Burke, we be exceeding tired o' standin'?' Mary asked politely.

'Not till you 'as been counted and numbers taken,' Burke said. 'Sorry, that be regulations.'

A murmur of dissatisfaction came from the cart which caused the second of their guards to raise both hands and pat the air in front of him. 'Now, now, girls, you been good so far, don't you go spoilin' things now!' He smiled up at the women in the cart, 'Besides, Mr Potbottom, what be assistant to ship's surgeon, be 'ere soon enough to count and take your numbers.'

An hour later with the spring sunshine turned unseasonably hot and uncomfortable they still remained standing in the cart. The female convicts had no protection but for their mob caps, their ankles were swollen and painful from standing and their throats were parched for want of water. Many of the older women were close to swooning in the heat. They commenced to shouting, demanding and begging from all who mounted the gangway to release them from their chains and allow them to step down from the cart and into the shade cast by the ship's side. When they were ignored by the coming and going throng they cussed loudly, calling out obscenities. Finally two jack tars appeared at the top of the gangway, the one carrying a small table and the other a chair. They walked down and placed them in the shade on the dock.

'Call the bleedin' baboon what's meant to count us!' Mary shouted angrily at the two tars, her temper quite lost. 'There's some near dyin' for want of a drop o' bloody water!'

'Baboon, is I? Well thank you very much!' Potbottom said, appearing at the top of the gangway. 'A baboon what can count and take numbers, an extraordinary baboon what is blessed with a very long memory for the slightest slight and insults what injure!'

'Oh shit!' Mary said in a loud whisper.

Tiberias Potbottom, a small smile on his face, walked down the gangway and skipped lightly on to the dock-side where he continued on to the table and chair.

'Shit it be, but not for me! Shit it be for such as thee!' He smirked.

He was carrying a large ledger under his arm which seemed to raise his hunched shoulder even higher and now he took it and opened it on the table to show one of its two opened pages half filled with writing. From the side pocket of his worn frock coat he produced a pot of blacking and, undoing its cap carefully, placed it beside the ledger. Then he took a goose feather quill from an inside pocket and this too he laid beside the book. Having completed this task he stepped to the front of the table and placed his hands behind his back, whereupon he commenced to rock on the back of his heels looking up at the women in the cart.