Poppy's Dilemma Page 19

  Undaunted, Tweedle Beak pressed on with his plan. ‘Right. A lottery it is then. Two pounds a ticket. Dog Meat, get some paper and a blacklead from Toby’s daughter and ask her to come and write the names down.’

  Dog Meat did as he was bid. He returned with young Selina Watson, a girl so plain that the navvies seldom harassed her.

  ‘Jericho, how many tickets do you want?’ Tweedle asked.

  ‘I want five,’ he answered. ‘But I can’t pay you ten pounds right away. I’ll have to owe you.’

  Tweedle shook his head. ‘I’ll only have tickets wrote what can be paid for.’

  ‘Then I can’t give you no money tonight, Tweedle.’

  ‘Aye, same for me,’ said the Masher.

  ‘And me,’ said Dandy Punch. ‘Why don’t you give us till this time next week to raise the money, them as wants to?’

  ‘Better still, next month’s payday,’ suggested the Masher. ‘By that time, we’ll all have more money. We can save more in the meantime to buy an extra ticket, borrow some even. That way we get a better chance o’ winning.’

  Tweedle looked about him and saw the earnest expressions on the faces of those around him keen to win Poppy Silk. Had he realised she was such a prize, he would have organised a lottery for her long ago. Minute by minute the scheme was gathering momentum and he could see the financial advantage in waiting; more contenders might well be keen to buy tickets as word spread through the encampment. There was also an advantage to be gained by lowering the price to one pound each. More would be inclined to part with a pound, and those fools whose deprived dicks were ruling their heads would buy several tickets each.

  ‘Right,’ said Tweedle. ‘Here’s what I’m gunna do. Tickets’ll be a quid each. The last day for staking your claim is next payday at the end o’ September. Everybody can buy as many tickets as they can afford, depending on how much you want the wench … But there’s a condition …’

  The navvies looked at him expectantly, wondering what condition he could possibly lay down.

  ‘I have to protect me own interests in this. So any one of you young bucks who tries to sweep young Poppy off her feet in the meantime to try and beat the lottery will have his tickets withdrawn … and no refund. Is that clear?’

  The navvies looked from one to the other and nodded.

  ‘I reckon that’s fair,’ the Masher said. ‘It puts paid to any ideas of trying to put her in the family way meanwhile. Do yer agree, Jericho?’

  ‘Why look at me?’ Jericho asked resentfully.

  ‘’Cause you’ve bin sniffing round already, and am likely to sniff round again unless there’s a rule agin’ it … So, do you agree?’

  ‘I reckon so,’ Jericho said with reluctance. He could see his chance slipping away. He had been so close to buying Poppy, but that chance was all but gone now. Now he would have to consolidate his resources and buy as many tickets as he could to boost the odds.

  Chapter 14

  Dandy Punch, the stocky timekeeper, called at Rose Cottage after work had finished on Saturday to collect the rent. Poppy answered the door to him and was gratified to see him drenched to the skin as he hunched under his hat as if it might afford adequate shelter from the rain.

  He bid her an obsequious good morning, which made her flesh creep. ‘You look a picture today, young Poppy,’ he said with a slavering leer, his voice as smooth as lard. ‘But then, you always do.’

  ‘I’ll fetch me mother,’ she said offhandedly, at once turning her back on him.

  ‘Is Tweedle Beak about yet?’ he called after her. ‘I’d like a word if he is.’

  Having heard, Tweedle rose from a chair and, in his shirtsleeves, went to the door. His hand was in his pocket delving for the money to pay the rent in anticipation of Dandy Punch’s asking for it. He counted out the exact amount then handed it over to the timekeeper who, in turn, made a mark in his collection book.

  ‘A word, if you please, Tweedle …’

  Dandy Punch turned away from the door and from the hut, signifying to Tweedle that the conversation should not be overheard. Tweedle followed him, closing the door behind him.

  ‘What can I do for you, Dandy?’ he said, eyeing resentfully the dark clouds above that were spilling their contents over him.

  ‘Quite a bit, I fancy, Tweedle. They say as how one good turn deserves another …’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You remember after Lightning Jack left … I turned a blind eye to you paying the rent on this hut …’

  ‘Turned a blind eye?’

  ‘Well, it was all done unofficial, Tweedle. Strictly speaking, Treadwell’s like to have gangers renting the huts, not ordinary navvies. Gangers have a bit more sway with the lads who lodge, you understand.’ He turned up the collar of his coat. ‘But since I knew you was trying to protect poor Sheba and her brood, I had to admire you for it. It was a noble thing to do, Tweedle. Very noble. There was no fear of me turning round and saying you couldn’t do it, neither to you nor any of the gaffers.’

  ‘What am yer after, Dandy Punch?’

  ‘Well … the time’s come when I reckon it behoves me to ask a favour in return … And not just a favour for meself, Tweedle, ’cause I’ll be doing you one as well.’

  ‘What is it you want?’ Tweedle asked pointedly. ‘Come on, mek it quick. I’m getting bloody drenched.’ He did not take kindly to having it identified that he owed a favour to anybody. That which Dandy Punch had done he had not perceived as a favour, more in the line of duty.

  ‘Well … this lottery as you’m about to run … I reckon as you’ll be wanting somebody to write out the lottery tickets, putting the names on, and keeping an account of the money you collect.’

  ‘Listen, Dandy, I can keep an account o’ the money meself without any help from you or anybody else. But yo’ could write the names on the tickets, if yo’ve a mind, ’cause I can’t. Already I’ve took a pound each off the Masher, off Fatbuck, off Waxy Boyle and Windy Bags.’

  ‘Hang on … Let me write ’em down …’ Dandy Punch fumbled between the pages of his dog-eared rent book for his blacklead. He licked the lead and began to write, hunched over his book to keep it dry. ‘Masher … Fatbuck … Waxy … Who was the last one you mentioned?’

  ‘Windy.’

  Dandy wrote it down. ‘Let me know who they are when you take their pounds and I’ll see to it as there’s a ticket wrote for every pound took, eh?’

  ‘Fair enough, Dandy.’

  ‘Now look, Tweedle …’ Dandy tucked his book under his arm and felt in the pocket of his trousers. He drew out a handful of coins and counted them into Tweedle’s hand. ‘That’s five pounds, Tweedle … Now what you can do for me in return is to let me have two tickets for each of me pounds, so as I have ten tickets for five pounds. That’s my discount, like, for helping you to operate the lottery, and for turning a blind eye to your tenancy.’

  Tweedle shook his head. ‘It ain’t enough,’ he said, seeing an opportunity to profit further. ‘It ain’t enough to warrant that sort o’ discount. Look, Dandy, it strikes me as yo’m keen to win this Poppy, eh?’

  ‘That, I am. Right keen. She’s a fine madam.’

  ‘And that’s why you want to boost your chances, I can see that. Well, all I can say is boost ’em good and proper by paying for ten tickets and write yourself twenty. Yo’d be almost certain to win the wench. I can’t say fairer than that.’

  Dandy Punch hesitated and sucked on his lips. ‘Ten pounds is a lot o’ money, Tweedle … I’d invest it without a second thought if you could guarantee as my name would be picked out o’ the hat … Nobody else need know, o’ course.’ He tapped his nose and winked. ‘It’d be just between us two. You could still collect the money off the other chaps and make a tidy profit.’

  Tweedle Beak considered it for no more than two seconds. ‘Give me twelve quid, Dandy, and I’ll guarantee it. But so sure as yo’ breathe a word o’ this to anybody, I’ll skin thee alive.’

  ‘Have no fear. It’s
just between you and me, Tweedle. And I’m a man of me word. I knew we’d understand one another. Just let me know who’s paid and I’ll write out their tickets as well.’

  Tweedle leered. ‘Not that they’ll see the light o’ day, eh, Dandy?’

  ‘Oh, they’ll have to be put in the hat, Tweedle. But mine’ll be a different colour. Whoever does the draw will have to know what colour to pick out.’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy fixed,’ Tweedle said. ‘Leave that to me.’

  Poppy’s elusive dream of winning Robert Crawford lay ravaged. The first couple of days without seeing him was not in itself so bad, for she could imagine his being there still, perhaps in his office, but too busy to see her while he attended to problems on his section of the railway. The truth, however, was irrevocably registering that she might never see him again, inducing the severely acute pains of adolescent emotion, for which she had no antidote as yet. Never had she known such feelings of desolation and hopelessness. His departure could only be interpreted as rejection; and it hurt. By God, it hurt.

  On the Sunday morning, she awoke early, disturbed by a gnawing inner awareness of her heartache, for there was no respite in sleep. Tweedle Beak lay alongside Sheba, his hooked nose the sail of a coal barge heaving on the erratic swell of his raucous snores. Her brothers and sisters were contained in their sound, juvenile slumbers, their faces the epitome of innocence. Poppy got out of bed and crept barefooted into the communal living room, leaving the creaking door ajar behind her to prevent the mechanical clack of the latch waking anybody. She stood shivering, peering out of the cracked windowpane that overlooked the chaotic squalor of shanties. Another damp dawn was breaking. Out of habit, she raked the ashes out of the fire, shovelled them into an iron bucket ready to heap onto the midden, and laid a new one. Her thoughts, though devoid of hope, were only of Robert Crawford. She’d had no time to come to terms with the torture his going away had wrought. Her desires, her goals, lay in ashes. Life was no longer worth the living.

  She lit the fire and knelt before it, little more than a child but with all the high-strung emotions of a woman. With a match, she lit the paper at the base of the fire and watched as it ignited the strips of wood in turn. These newly kindled sticks represented her first encounter with Robert; the flame of fondness had caught, tentatively at first, then more surely, just as it had with the sticks. It was never a sudden thing, more a growing realisation that she needed to be near him as often as she could, to feed off his intellect, his sincerity and his kind attention. Always, there was that initial warmth that drew her to him, like the warmth now that induced her to huddle over the yet ineffectual flames.

  Robert’s going was a bereavement. She felt it more acutely than the grief following her father’s death. It was all the more painful and tormenting because Robert had admitted that he loved her heart and soul, and because she had not tried hard enough to detain him. What inner turmoil was he suffering now that he had gone? It could be no harder to bear than her own.

  The pieces of wood beneath the coals were burning brighter now, like her love had burned bright during her early infatuation. Soon it would change, transfer its glory to the lumps of coal that were already glimmering at the sharp edges where the yellow flames lapped around them. So was her love transmuted to a higher plane, the better she got to know him. The pure fire of her passion would burn even brighter and for a long, long time, rooted as it was in the less volatile but more substantial substructure of admiration and respect that she had always harboured for Robert. This was the fuel of her emotions, like the coals were the fuel of a long-burning fire. Hers would last her lifetime, young as she was, inexperienced as she was. Instinctively, she knew it.

  ‘What are you doing up so early?’ a voice said quietly.

  Poppy turned around and saw her mother standing at the bedroom door in her nightgown. ‘I woke up early.’

  Sheba ran her fingers through her bedraggled hair and yawned. ‘Is it worrying you then, our Poppy?’

  ‘Is what worrying me?’ She was uncertain as to whether her mother was referring to Robert’s departure.

  ‘This scheme of Tweedle’s?’

  ‘What scheme?’

  ‘You haven’t heard?’

  ‘Heard what?’

  Sheba pulled a chair from under the rickety table and sat down. ‘I thought you must have heard from somebody. Everybody’s talking about it.’

  ‘Nobody’s told me anything.’

  ‘He’s running a lottery. A pound a ticket. You’re the prize, our Poppy.’

  ‘Me?’ Poppy laughed with incredulity. ‘What a cheek. Who does he think he is?’

  ‘Well, he’s the breadwinner.’ Sheba, unsmiling, hunched her shoulders and pressed her hands together between her thighs for warmth and Poppy perceived from her mannerisms that it was not a joke. ‘I reckon he must think that keeping us gives him the right.’

  ‘The right? What sort of prize am I supposed to be? Does whoever wins the lottery expect a kiss or something?’ she asked naively.

  ‘Oh, more than a kiss, our Poppy. The deal is that you jump the broomstick with the winner.’

  ‘What! I’ll kill meself first. What if it’s somebody like Crabface Lijah or Fatbuck?’

  ‘On the other hand, what about if it’s Jericho or the Masher?’

  ‘The Masher’s all right. But I wouldn’t want to sleep with him.’

  ‘Well, as I see it, you’ve got no say in the matter, our Poppy. And I don’t see as it matters any road, now your Robert Crawford’s gone. One chap’s much like another in the dark, our Poppy, when you’m a-lying under him. And it was no good setting your cap at him any road. He would never have stooped to a navvy’s daughter.’

  ‘Yes, he would,’ Poppy protested. ‘He loves me.’

  ‘Ah …’ Sheba nodded mockingly. ‘That must be why he’s buggered off …’ She rolled her eyes at what she perceived as Poppy’s naivety. ‘Listen, our Poppy, I want you to go along with this scheme of Tweedle’s, ’cause it’ll bring in a heap o’ money at the end o’ the month, he reckons. I’m hoping as I’ll be able to have me a new coat and a new pair o’ boots for the winter out of the proceeds. And I daresay as he’ll treat you as well.’

  Her mother’s attitude implied far more than mere profit to Poppy. ‘So, you’m letting him believe he’s the father of the child you’m carrying then?’

  ‘I might as well,’ Sheba admitted with a shrug. ‘There’s no sense in upsetting the apple cart now. Who else would look after us and keep us on the outside of the workhouse?’

  Poppy appreciated her mother’s dilemma but made no comment. That she should be a sacrifice to her mother’s wellbeing, however, did not fill her with joy. On the other hand, she could be neither the instrument of her downfall, nor the downfall of her brothers and sisters. There seemed little alternative but to go along with Tweedle’s scheme, however abhorrent. Whatever fate awaited her, she could accept it passively; it would be as nothing compared to her losing Robert. Then what if Robert returned in a year and wanted to tell her he wished her to be his bride after all? Well, she would not have the opportunity to discover it. She would be none the wiser; therefore, nor would he be. By then she might be miles away, living on some far distant railway construction site, already the bed partner of another man. By then she might be carrying a child or have one at her breast. So better to believe he would never come back for her.

  ‘I don’t see as I’ve got much choice, Mother,’ Poppy said.

  If Robert were still here it would be different. She would go to him, tell him what had been planned for her and take his advice. But he had gone. He could give her no advice, offer no help. She was at the mercy of Tweedle Beak, who only wanted to exploit her. There was nobody to talk to. Least of all the men, who must surely condone the scheme without exception. She was at a dead end.

  ‘Well, the fire’s caught nice, our Poppy,’ Sheba remarked. ‘Let’s get the kettle on.’

  The fire …

  The fi
re symbolised her love for Robert. Whatever happened, whoever she was expected to live with and lie by, that flame of love would never extinguish. So she resigned herself to the necessity of tolerating the unwanted fumblings of a man she did not love, found repulsive and had no respect for, while her poor heart forever ached for Robert Crawford.

  Dog Meat’s financial difficulties were made worse by the need to obtain a new pair of work boots from the tommy shop. Having tried them on for size and comfort, he signed for them, then trudged out into the clinging mud of that first Monday in September. His mates mocked him when they saw him, some asking whether they were made of pig skin, others whether he had made a pig of himself with Minnie on his day off. He suffered ribald and insensitive comments about Jericho and Minnie. His standing in the community had diminished, he had lost whatever esteem he had previously earned, and he was painfully aware of it. Nor was Minnie sympathetic. It reflected badly on her that she was still associated with him after her apparent conquest of Jericho had been made common knowledge. Dog Meat clung to her, however, like a man drowning in a river clings to a tuft of overhanging grass as the current tries to pull him under.

  The new Parkhead Viaduct straddled three prongs of a watery fork that was the junction of three canals. It was built entirely of wood. Sturdy trestles supported the thick planking above, which drummed beneath the abrasive scrunch of two hundred pairs of leather boots, stomping out of step across the span. Dog Meat was one of the men traversing the viaduct on his way to the cutting, avoiding the company of other navvies. Suddenly, he was aware of another person walking alongside him and he turned his head with resentment to see who.