Chapter 16

Monsarrat was forbidden from visiting Crotty’s shebeen again. But Eveleigh had said nothing about pies. And the drinkers of the colony were known to enjoy them when they could get them, when the vendor was not racing up into the mountains clutching his hot box, but instead hopping from foot to foot on the banks of the Parramatta River.

Stephen Lethbridge seemed to have a good sense of where to position himself to best advantage. Certainly the hungry men outside the Female Factory where Monsarrat had first met him had taken every pie he had to sell. And the same fate looked to be awaiting the pies Lethbridge had today. He stood at the nexus of George and Church Streets, known to residents simply as ‘the Corner’, where he had told Monsarrat he’d be, where news from the river flowed to meet word from the hinterland.

Lethbridge was making no attempt to attract attention. He didn’t have to. The flotsam which flowed past the Corner often snagged a pie on its way past, leaving payment in its wake. And the gaol wasn’t far away, with its hungry guards. But the prison looked like a rough draft of the building that was now rising opposite it. The stippled sandstone of the older structure was unformed next to the smooth stones of the new one, with each block perfectly straight and showing to best advantage the stone’s lines and patterns.

Ironic that the building opposite the prison was a church. Even more ironic that it was a Catholic one.

Mrs Mulrooney would never have given a second’s consideration to joining Monsarrat for services at St John’s, even had its pastor been a less vicious example of the species than Reverend Bulmer. She cheerfully referred to Catholicism as the one true faith, and Monsarrat didn’t take any exception – his religious observances sprang from social and political considerations, not theological ones.

In any case, it would have felt a little mean-spirited to take exception to the profession of a faith that had been outlawed for so long, whose adherents risked shadowy, terrible fates simply for sending their prayers skyward. Monsarrat had just enough understanding of the situation to know that he didn’t understand anything.

Mrs Mulrooney, he knew, spent her time rather differently while he went to St John’s. She, out of a quiet and genuine faith, went to the small room above the gaol where the Mass was said, with the priest using a plank on two chairs and an earthenware cup in place of a marble altar and silver chalice.

Monsarrat felt a vague unease that she celebrated her genuinely held conviction in these conditions, while he professed his nonexistent belief sitting behind the box-pews purchased by Parramatta’s wealthy. But soon she would have a church to rival his. Those engaged in the work of building it were hungry. And Stephen Lethbridge had an unerring sense of where the hungry were to be found. But his customers were mostly the overseers. Those doing the truly backbreaking work lacked the funds for pies.

‘Mr Monsarrat!’ Lethbridge yelled when Monsarrat was still dozens of yards away. He must have been relatively easy to see from a distance, given his height, his habit of walking with his hands clasped behind his back, which gave him an identifiable rolling gait. This, together with his black coat and somewhat prominent nose, had earned him the nickname of Magpie in Port Macquarie.

‘Mr Lethbridge,’ he said as he arrived on the colonised corner. ‘It occurs to me that I have heard much of your pies, yet not had the chance to sample one.’

‘I’m afraid it’s a pleasure you will have to wait a little longer for, Mr Monsarrat. I am fairly sold out, apart from this misshapen thing, which is promised to a foreman who has gone to fetch the means to pay for it.’ He looked down at a torn pie.

‘Well, I shall have to content myself with some conversation for now, then.’

‘A commodity I am always happy to dispense, sir,’ said Lethbridge, swaying slightly from foot to foot. ‘Is there a particular topic on which you would like to converse?’

‘There is, as it happens. But I must ask, Mr Lethbridge, may I rely on your discretion? You’ve no reason to give me any assurances, of course. However, there is a matter of justice which hinges on my discovering the truth of certain things, and you seem a just man. So have I your word that this conversation will not be reported to anyone?’

‘Of course, Mr Monsarrat. I adore Justice, blindfolded whore that she is. If you’re in the business of tidying her up a bit, I shall not impede you.’

‘Excellent, and I thank you. The topic on which I would like to converse, then, is sly grog.’

‘An interesting matter indeed, Mr Monsarrat. Homer – that’s the Greek gentleman of antiquity, of course, not our friend the good doctor – said no poem was ever written by a drinker of water. I shall have to resign myself to my failure to write poetry, as I don’t touch the harder stuff. While drinkers of water might not write poems, they have a better chance of running up mountains and back at the pace I can produce. And in any case, poetry is usually the last thing on the minds of those in this place who drink substances other than water.’

A man with a red face and the look of one familiar with sly grog ran up to Lethbridge, handed him a coin, received the pie in return and walked off eating it. The whole transaction was accomplished wordlessly. The man clearly had a better use to put his mouth to.

‘Well,’ said Monsarrat, when the man was out of earshot. ‘When our mutual friend of whom you speak tells me of the dysentery he so regularly sees at the hospital, and of the foulness it produces, I might argue against the health-giving properties of water from our river. But I do see your point. I do touch grog, on occasion, but far less often than I used to. It seems I lack the constitution for it.’

Lethbridge nodded. ‘Wise to recognise our limitations, don’t you think?’

‘Were I to list mine, I would be on this corner too long. And in any case, it is not the drinking I would like to discuss, but the procuring.’

Lethbridge nodded. ‘A pleasure to converse with someone with enough wit to realise the two are not necessarily the same,’ he said.

‘Nor, it seems, does all of the grog in Parramatta flow from the same source. You mentioned Crotty to me when we last spoke.’

‘Ah, yes. An example of one of my main contentions when it comes to the properties of drink – that it cannot enhance poeticism when there is none there to enhance.’

‘I fear you may be right. However, it’s not the man’s artistic sensitivities, or lack of them, I’m chiefly interested in. It’s where he and others like him are getting their grog.’

Lethbridge raised one eyebrow, a gesture which carried more impact because his face was the only stationary part of him. ‘Now that’s an interesting topic to be enquiring about, if I may say, Mr Monsarrat.’

‘Interesting? I suppose so.’

‘And you’re not going to enlighten me as to your interest in this matter?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t at this stage, Mr Lethbridge. However, I do assure you that the possibility of sparing an innocent life hangs upon it.’

‘Well, I can tell you – as I already have, of course – that Crotty was one of the unlicensed publicans who got the grog from Church.’

‘Yes. But as you pointed out last time we met, that man’s death does not seem to have stopped the flow of the stuff into the shebeens of the town.’

‘Nor has it. You recall, of course, Socrates McAllister.’

Despite his uncle’s low opinion of him, Lethbridge said, Socrates was not without a certain entrepreneurial spirit. While he would never come close to Philip McAllister’s acumen, he was nevertheless alert for opportunities to profit. One of these, according to Lethbridge, was sly grog.

‘The unlicensed publicans – they can’t really ask for fair dealing because they’re not fair dealing themselves,’ said Lethbridge. ‘So they have to pay whatever their suppliers demand. Especially when they are outside the law, and their supplier has the power to sit in judgement on them.’

‘Can you be sure Socrates was selling rum to unlicensed publicans? How did you come by the knowledge?’ said Monsarrat.

Stephen Lethbridge smiled. It was a genuine, wide smile, but there was a set to it that told Monsarrat there were lines which could not be crossed.

‘We agreed I would respect your need for discretion, Mr Monsarrat,’ he said. ‘Equally, I think it only fair to agree that my sources should remain obscure. I will say that drinkers get hungry, and sometimes so do publicans, and everyone enjoys a chat after a cup of wine or two.’

‘Of course. I meant no offence.’

‘Oh, none taken. However, now we know where the barriers are, I think it would behoove us both to stay within them.’

‘Very well. So Socrates was dealing in sly grog.’

‘Yes, and making a reasonable sum at it as well. Of course, he was only able to do so while he had no competition.’

‘And the competition came from Robert Church?’

‘It seems so. In any case, a number of Socrates’ customers began to complain about the amounts they were being charged. Socrates’ usual response was to say that if they didn’t like the price, they couldn’t have the product. But for the first time some of them responded by saying, very well then, we’ll have none of yours.’

‘And you’re certain it was Church who was providing the competition?’

‘Oh yes. I wasn’t at first. Crotty and his wife were a bit tight-lipped initially. But then they began to suspect that the rum was being watered. And they were vocal about that, I can tell you. To their detriment, of course.’

‘So why didn’t they just go back to Socrates?’

‘Well, Socrates put his rates up, you see. To compensate for the downturn. Most couldn’t afford them, so they decided to stay with Church.’

‘And since Church’s death?’

‘Interestingly, my understanding is that most of them – the ones who want to continue trading – went back to Socrates. Tail between legs, paying more than before.’

Monsarrat recalled Crotty’s comment – that his supply problems were now taken care of.

‘Mr Lethbridge, there is one question I need to ask you, one of the greatest import. As far as you’re aware, did Socrates McAllister know the identity of the man who was undercutting him? Did he know it was Robert Church?’

‘Oh yes, most definitely. He made sure he found out, you see.’

‘And how did he do that?’

‘Well … I’d talk to Crotty if I were you.’

‘Unfortunately I’m not in a position to do so. For various reasons, it’s best I don’t visit his establishment again.’

‘And nor do you need to – he’ll be in town today. Comes in every Thursday to run his errands – one of which is paying McAllister, of course. And afterwards he’s not above visiting the Caledonia Inn. As my pies are all sold, Mr Monsarrat, I’d be more than happy to accompany you there, if it suits you.’

*  *  *

The Caledonia Inn was a far more congenial establishment than Crotty’s pub. Cups that looked clean; chairs and tables, unupholstered but free of dust. And at one of these tables, as Stephen Lethbridge predicted, sat Michael Crotty.

Lethbridge approached him from behind, clapping him on the shoulder as he walked up so that Crotty turned with a start, already halfway out of his seat with a balled fist before he saw who it was.

‘I’m not hungry,’ he said, sitting back down.

‘Just as well, my friend, as I’ve no pies left. Them at the crossroads site ate them all.’

Interesting, thought Monsarrat, that use of ‘them’. He would have bet his ticket of leave that Stephen Lethbridge knew the correct usage, was pitching his speech to his audience. In London or Exeter it might have made him trust the man less, but not here. Verbal disguise was a survival skill he couldn’t blame the man for adopting.

‘Actually,’ said Lethbridge, ‘I was just conversing with a customer of yours. We saw you, thought we’d say hello.’

Crotty looked at Monsarrat for the first time. ‘Yes, Mr …’ he said, his eyes widening slightly.

Monsarrat began to cast around for a fabricated name, but Lethbridge said, ‘Hugh Monsarrat, Government House, no less. An important man.’

Crotty stared at Monsarrat. ‘And what would such an important man be doing in my establishment? I took your word, sir, when you said you were a clerk.’

He would have to be more careful around Lethbridge in future, Monsarrat thought. For all the man’s skills, discretion was clearly not amongst them.

‘So I am, I assure you,’ he said. A lie in spirit, maybe, but certainly not one in fact. He was a clerk, and he had come into some money. Crotty need not know that it was the major’s gift rather than a lucky win.

‘I’m concerned to think that someone from the governor’s cabal is sniffing around my little establishment,’ Crotty said.

‘Tell me, do you have other more illustrious people sniffing around? Anyone expressing an interest in where you get your grog and what you pay?’

‘My business attracts attention from the right people, I’ll say that. They can tell a smart man even if he’s not dressed like an undertaker. They are persuasive. And they can actually drink. I don’t suppose you’d care to get one for yourself, and me while you’re at it?’

‘No, thank you. I don’t … That is, I don’t feel like …’

Crotty snorted. ‘I could tell you have no stomach for it,’ he said. ‘When you left you looked like you were being driven by a gale. After just three cups, albeit three of the new stuff.’

‘Ah, yes, the new stuff,’ said Lethbridge. ‘I’m given to understand that the fare at your place has improved significantly of late.’

‘What would you know of that? You never touch it.’

‘Ah, drinkers talk, you see, when they’re buying pies. Even when the rum they’ve just had has been watered.’

Crotty stood, banged his fist on the table. ‘I don’t water my rum! My grog comes from the same batch as what they serve here.’

‘I know,’ said Lethbridge. ‘I told you, people are saying it’s improved a lot.’

‘And so it has.’

‘Suppliers, though. I make my pies myself, the only way I can make sure they haven’t been messed around with. Can you trust your new man to do the same?’

‘None of your concern, Lethbridge. It’s well known you can’t keep yourself to yourself,’ he said, before turning to Monsarrat. ‘If you are of any importance – and even if you manage to stay on your rung when the new man comes – I can assure you, my supplier would eclipse you. And he goes to great lengths to look after his customers.’