' Hawk asked with his hands.
'Aye, but also to remember the first rule o' doing business, my dear!'
Hawk had a peculiar way of raising his left eyebrow when he wished Ikey to explain further.
'Always leave a little salt on the bread!' Ikey explained.
Hawk's eyebrow arched again and Ikey wondered how best he should answer him. He found Hawk's demeanour most strange, for at thirteen the boy had developed an acute sense of fairness and a natural dignity, and already the men who worked at the Potato Factory deferred to him willingly and took their instruction from him without the slightest hint of malice. These were rough men, born to the notion that the possessor of a black skin was the most inferior man who walked upon the earth's surface, yet they seemed to love the boy and eagerly sought his smile.
Though the kidnapping greatly saddened him, and his love for Tommo had left some part of him permanently distraught, Hawk retained no bitterness from the terrible experience with Mad Dog Mulray. The men who worked for Mary seemed to sense this and respected him accordingly.
Ikey had been pushed into the street from the moment he could crawl about in the courts and alleys of the rookery, and only a minority of the children who had crawled in the filth with him had survived childhood. As soon as he could run from authority he was sent out to scavenge and pilfer what he could from the streets. He had learned from the very beginning that the means of life were desperately scarce and that they went to the toughest. Cunning, quick responses to opportunity and danger, freedom from scruples and courage were the ingredients of survival. The costermonger with his fly weights made a living while the drudging bricklayer went under. The prostitute on the corner fed her children while those of the bloody-fingered woman who stitched gunny sacks starved to death. In a few fortunate minutes a gang of urchins could rob a badly loaded dray and earn more from the goods than their parents could earn in a week of labouring.
Ikey accepted the terms of this society where only the strong survived. But on the first day his father had pushed him onto the streets to trade with a tray of oranges and lemons he had been confronted with a new conundrum, a contradiction to all he instinctively knew in the game of survival. A rabbi had stopped the small boy and enquired as to the cost of a lemon.
'That'll be a ha'penny to you, rabbi,' Ikey had answered cheerily.
'Vun lemon is vun half penny? For twelve, how much?'
'Sixpence o' course!' Ikey replied cheekily. The reb was a foreigner and even if he was a rabbi he must be treated with a certain English disdain.
'Ja, so, let me see, I take only vun lemon for vun halfpenny, or thirteen for six pennies?'
'No, sir, rabbi, that be wrong! Them lemons be twelve for a sixpence!' Ikey corrected.
The rabbi sighed. 'So, tell me, my boy. You like to sell twelve lemons or vun lemon?'
'Twelve o' course, stands to reason, don't it?'
'Then ve negotiate! You know vot is negotiate?'
Ikey shook his head. 'Does it mean you be tryin' to get the better o' me, sir?'
'Very goet! You are a schmart boyski. But no, negotiate, it means I must vin and you also, you must vin!' The rabbi spread his hands. 'You sell more lemons and also, I get more lemons!' He smiled. 'You understand, ja?'
'But you gets one lemon what you 'asn't paid for!' Ikey said, indignant at the thought that the rabbi was trying to bamboozle him.
'Alvays you leave a little salt on the bread, my boy. Vun lemon costs vun half penny, twelve lemons cost six pennies, then vun lemon you give to me, that is not a lemon for buyink, that is a lemon for negotiatink, that is the little salt alvays you leave on the bread, so ven I vant lemons, I come back and you sell alvays more lemons to the rabbi, ja?'
'I tell you what, rabbi, 'ow's about twelve lemons and an orange for a sixpence, what say you?'
The rabbi laughed. 'Already you learnink goet to negotiate,' he said as he took the orange which cost a farthing and the dozen lemons and paid Ikey the sixpence.
'Always leave a little salt on the bread' had become an important lesson in Ikey's life. From the beginning he had always paid slightly above the going price for the stolen merchandise brought to him and it had played a significant part in earning him the title Prince of Fences. The rabbi had been correct, his 'customers' stayed loyal and always returned to him. Ikey had come to believe that 'leaving a little salt' was the reason for his good fortune and the source of his continued good luck. Ikey, like most villains, was a superstitious man who believed that luck is maintained through peculiar rituals and consistent behaviour.
And so Ikey explained the theory of a little salt on the bread to Hawk, who seemed to like this lesson more than most and made Ikey write it out on a slip of paper for him so that he might copy it into his diary. Ikey quickly wrote: Remember, always leave a little salt on the bread.
It was about this time that an event occurred which would change forever the lives of future generations of both families who carried the name Solomon.
Like most great changes there was very little to herald its coming, for it emerged out of a simple puzzle which Ikey, in a moment of mischief and amusement, had composed to bemuse Hawk, although, as with most things concerning Ikey Solomon, it contained a hidden agenda.
Ikey was becoming increasingly rheumatic and found his nightly sojourn around the Wapping and waterfront areas especially difficult. On some nights, out of weariness of step, he would remain too long in one place, and therefore be unable to complete his rounds on time or even to arrive at the Whale Fishery. More and more he relied on Hawk to help him at the races and afterwards he went straight to bed so that he could rise at midnight to do his rounds. He also became more preoccupied with death and was a regular and conscientious member of the new Hobart synagogue.
Ikey also realised that if Hannah and David and his two sons in New South Wales were determined to wait until his death so that they might claim the entire contents of the Whitechapel safe, he was left with a most peculiar dilemma: how to convey his combination number without telling either Mary or Hawk about the safe until he was certain he was on his death bed. It was still his greatest hope that Hannah and David would relent and agree to a fifty-fifty share of the safe and that Hannah would entrust the opening of the safe to his youngest son Mark and to Hawk, who would each separately hold a half of the combination.
Ikey had several times made this proposal only to have it rejected by Hannah and David. They insisted on the eight-part split and grew increasingly confident that they would soon be in possession of the entire contents as Sarah would often express her genuine concern at Ikey's frailty when she visited her family in New Norfolk.
Hannah knew also that Ikey could not openly leave his half of the treasure to Mary or her nigger brat in his will for fear that the authorities might confiscate it. Nor could he write his combination into it because, as his wife, she had the right to attend the reading of the will so that, even if Ikey told Mary or Hawk his combination number, without the addition of her own they could do nothing.
David had once suggested, if only to spite them, that Ikey on his death bed might go to the authorities about the Whitechapel safe, so that they received nothing. Hannah knew this to be impossible given Ikey's nature. And in this she was right. Even if Ikey had not wished to leave his share of the treasure to Mary and Hawk, he could never bring himself to allow the laws of England to triumph over him, even though he should be dead. Rather a thousand times the perfidious Hannah and her odious sons than the greedy coffers of England.
Ikey would have liked to tell Mary about the safe and its contents but he dared not do so for fear she would immediately know that the incident where David had presented him with the severed finger of an Aboriginal child had been brought about, not by his son's demand for Mary's brewery, but because of Ikey's reluctance to trust them with his half of the combination to the Whitechapel safe.
Though it was not possible to prove, Mary strongly believed that Hannah and David were more than mere scheming opportunists when they set up the finger scam. She was convinced they had genuinely attempted to kidnap Tommo and Hawk and their plan had gone disastrously wrong. Though Ikey did not admit it, he, too, had always felt that David knew a great deal more than he had said.
But if Ikey did not have the courage to face Mary's wrath, he knew that before he died he must confess his guilt and tell her of the reward he was to give her as penance. To this end Ikey taught Hawk how to value jewellery and as much as he could about the characteristics of each precious stone and how they should be
