The Potato Factory

She had even persuaded Mr Emmett to get the authorities to return her battered leather-bound copy of Gulliver's Travels. She used this to create in the breasts of her older children a sense of social justice, so that they might understand that it is the strong who manipulate the weak, and that bondage and poverty are not a natural state ordained by God, but imposed by those who enjoy wealth, privilege and power upon those who have no means to resist or overcome poverty and servitude.

In this way unknowingly perhaps, Mary began to teach the tenets of freedom upon which a community of convict slaves became the most egalitarian nation on earth. Mary and her class of fifty orphan children, together with one hundred and sixty thousand convicted thieves, whores, forgers, conmen, blasphemers, political dissenters, the diseased, illiterate, mentally handicapped flotsam and jetsam upon the sea of English and Irish life, formed the basis of this new nation. Undoubtedly this was the most unpropitious human raw material ever gathered in one place, yet it would be forged into a free and equal people who would never again tolerate a despotic regime or accept that any man's station is above that of any other.

In the matter of books for her pupils Mary enlisted the help of Elspeth Smedley, who rented books in large numbers from the Hobart Town Circulating Library. This institution was presided over by the stern-faced Mrs Deane who, had she known their destination, would not have permitted the books to be released from her possession. Convicts were not allowed to rent books and the thought of orphans reading them, with their dirty little hands, would have caused a great fuss in the small community. As it was, Mrs Deane marvelled at Elspeth Smedley's ability to read so many volumes on every subject, and judged her quite the best-informed woman on the island. Privately she thought the parson's sister's reading was most eclectic, in some things juvenile to the greatest degree while her other tastes were distinctly scholarly. But she did not make the obvious co

The money for the books came, of course, from Mary's Potato Factory, and while Elspeth Smedley may herself have pondered the source of Mary's seemingly unlimited resources, she would not have dreamed of asking her for an explanation. Mary had encouraged Elspeth to become a teacher herself, and in this matter the gentle and retiring spinster sought to stand up to her bucolic older brother.

When confronted with Elspeth's request, Thomas Smedley ordered that she withdraw from the wicked influence of 'the Factory whore', as he had come to call Mary in private. He had long since cancelled Mary's salvation. She had clearly shown by her lack of humility and contrition, and by her willingness to argue with him on every conceivable subject, that her redemption had been nothing but a ruse to win his approval for her orphan school. He forbade Elspeth to enter Mary's class, or even to converse with her at the midday meal.

Elspeth had not disobeyed her brother's instructions. She found, however, that her extreme disappointment at his decision had entirely erased the numerous recipes she carried in her mind, save only for a recollection of how to boil potatoes.

For two weeks, morning, lunch and tea she served boiled potatoes and small beer until Thomas Smedley could stand it no longer, the demands of his stomach finally overcoming his principles. He had become quite pale and listless, and when the pangs of hunger and the desire for red meat could no longer be contained he had taken to walking down into Liverpool Street to take a meal at a chop house. He was a man who loved his food, and the boiled and fried mutton and badly prepared kangaroo flesh available as cheap fare in an eating house, though preferable to boiled potatoes, was not in the least to his liking. Elspeth was most grudgingly allowed to teach with Mary in the orphan school.

It was a decision which possessed the divine power to recall Elspeth's memory. That very night a splendid pot roast, garnished with tiny spring onions and a boat of rich gravy at its side, with a dish of rice and another of vegetables, was placed steaming upon the table, proving once again that principle is soon swamped by the gravy of greed.

David and A

'A

'It's not fair!' A

'What number does that say, A

'Eight 'undred and sixteen, miss,' she exclaimed, then added triumphantly, 'See! I told you I can do big numbers!'

Mary took up the child's slate and, transposing the numbers, wrote 618 upon it. 'What is this number then?' she asked A

The child stared without comprehension at the new number on her slate. 'It's not fair, I could learn it, I could so!' A

Mary, laughing, took A

A

At this sudden recollection of her mother, A

Mary thought little more of the incident until the number 816 began to occur regularly in David's work on the abacus. He would often divide into it, subtract from it or find the various multiples of it.

'What be it with the number eight 'undred and sixteen, David?' Mary had finally asked. 'Were it perchance the number of your 'ouse in London?'

David flushed deeply and with a vigorous, though unconvincing, shake of his head replied, 'No, Miss, it be just a number. I didn't know as I were usin' it particular.'

But Mary noted that David Solomon never used the number again, while A

Though Mary had no time to ponder this childish conundrum she nonetheless tucked the number 816 away. She would not forget it, if only because her mind was so trained to numbers that no digit brought to her attention, for whatever purpose, was ever again forgotten.