Lubji was trying to trade twelve potatoes and three buttons for a bucket that didn’t leak when he became aware of a distinguished gentleman in a long black coat standing to one side, patiently waiting for him to complete the bargain.
The moment the boy looked up and saw who it was, he rose and said, “Good morning, Mr. Lekski,” and quickly waved away his other customer.
The old man took a pace forward, bent down and began picking up the objects on the top of the box. Lubji couldn’t believe that the jeweler might be interested in his wares. Mr. Lekski first considered the old coin with the head of the Czar. He studied it for some time. Lubji realized that he had no real interest in the coin: this was simply a ploy he had seen him carry out many times before asking the price of the object he really wanted. “Never let them work out what you’re after,” he must have told the boy a hundred times.
Lubji waited patiently for the old man to turn his attention to the center of the box.
“And how much do you expect to get for this?” the jeweler asked finally, picking up the gold ring.
“What are you offering?” inquired the boy, playing him at his own game.
“One hundred korunas,” replied the old man.
Lubji wasn’t quite sure how to react, as no one had ever offered him more than ten korunas for anything before. Then he remembered his mentor’s maxim: “Ask for triple and settle for double.” He stared up at his tutor. “Three hundred korunas.”
The jeweler bent down and placed the ring back on the center of the box. “Two hundred is my best offer,” he replied firmly.
“Two hundred and fifty,” said Lubji hopefully.
Mr. Lekski didn’t speak for some time, continuing to stare at the ring. “Two hundred and twenty-five,” he eventually said. “But only if you throw in the old coin as well.”
Lubji nodded immediately, trying to mask his delight at the outcome of the transaction.
Mr. Lekski extracted a purse from the inside pocket of his coat, handed over two hundred and twenty-five korunas and pocketed the ancient coin and the heavy gold ring. Lubji looked up at the old man and wondered if he had anything left to teach him.
Lubji was unable to strike another bargain that afternoon, so he packed up his cardboard box early and headed into the center of the town, satisfied with his day’s work. When he reached Schull Street he purchased a brand-new bucket for twelve korunas, a chicken for five and a loaf of fresh bread from the bakery for one.
The young trader began to whistle as he walked down the main street. When he passed Mr. Lekski’s shop he glanced at the window to check that the beautiful brooch he intended to purchase for his mother before Rosh Hashanah was still on sale.
Lubji dropped his new bucket on the ground in disbelief. His eyes opened wider and wider. The brooch had been replaced by an old coin, with a label stating that it bore the head of Czar Nicholas I and was dated 1829. He checked the price printed on the card below.
“One thousand five hundred korunas.”
4.
Melbourne Courier
25 October 1929
WALL STREET CRISIS: STOCK MARKET COLLAPSES
There are many advantages and some disadvantages in being born a second-generation Australian. It was not long before Keith Townsend discovered some of the disadvantages.
Keith was born at 2:37 P.M. on 9 February 1928 in a large colonial mansion in Toorak. His mother’s first telephone call from her bed was to the headmaster of St. Andrew’s Grammar School to register her first-born son for entry in 1941. His father’s, from his office, was to the secretary of the Melbourne Cricket Club to put his name down for membership, as there was a fifteen-year waiting list.
Keith’s father, Sir Graham Townsend, was originally from Dundee in Scotland, but at the turn of the century he and his parents had arrived in Australia on a cattle boat. Despite Sir Graham’s position as the proprietor of the Melbourne Courier and the Adelaide Gazette, crowned by a knighthood the previous year, Melbourne society—some members of which had been around for nearly a century, and never tired of reminding you that they were not the descendants of convicts—either ignored him or simply referred to him in the third person.
Sir Graham didn’t give a damn for their opinions; or if he did, he certainly never showed it. The people he liked to mix with worked on newspapers, and the ones he numbered among his friends also tended to spend at least one afternoon a week at the racecourse. Horses or greyhounds, it made no difference to Sir Graham.
But Keith had a mother whom Melbourne society could not dismiss quite so easily, a woman whose lineage stretched back to a senior naval officer in the First Fleet. Had she been born a generation later, this tale might well have been about her, and not her son.
As Keith was his only son—he was the second of three children, the other two being girls—Sir Graham assumed from his birth that the boy would follow him into the newspaper business, and to that end he set about educating him for the real world. Keith paid his first visit to his father’s presses at the Melbourne Courier at the age of three, and immediately became intoxicated by the smell of ink, the pounding of typewriters and the clanging of machinery. From that moment on he would accompany his father to the office whenever he was given the chance.
Sir Graham never discouraged Keith, and even allowed him to tag along whenever he disappeared off to the racetrack on a Saturday afternoon. Lady Townsend did not approve of such goings on, and insisted that young Keith should always attend church the following morning. To her disappointment, their only son quickly revealed a preference for the bookie rather than the preacher.
Lady Townsend became so determined to reverse this early decline that she set about a counter-offensive. While Sir Graham was away in Perth on a long business trip, she appointed a nanny called Florrie whose simple job description was: take the children in hand. But Florrie, a widow in her fifties, proved no match for Keith, aged four, and within weeks she was promising not to let his mother know when he was taken to the racecourse. When Lady Townsend eventually discovered this subterfuge, she waited for her husband to make his annual trip to New Ze
aland, then placed an advertisement on the front page of the London Times. Three months later, Miss Steadman disembarked at Station Pier and reported to Toorak for duty. She turned out to be everything her references had promised.