Poppy's Dilemma Page 3

  ‘Ask Dandy Punch to cover for us,’ Lightning said. ‘He might ask a favour in return, but that’s fair enough.’ He arched an eyebrow, giving Sheba a knowing look.

  Dandy Punch was the timekeeper. Poppy did not like Dandy Punch.

  ‘Tell him I’ll repay him handsomely as well for his trouble when I get back. Do whatever you think’s necessary, Sheba.’

  Lightning kissed each of his children, gave Poppy a squeeze and clung to Sheba for a few seconds in a parting embrace. Then Poppy watched him turn around and walk out of the hut. Outside, he fastened a length of rope to various points on his wheelbarrow, creating a harness by which he could carry the thing on his back. He picked up his shovel, his pickaxe and his long drills, and tied them together and carried them on his shoulder like a soldier would a rifle. He threw his bundle of clothes over his other shoulder; a stone jar full of beer hung from that. Sheba handed him his straw bag, called a pantry, which held food to sustain him for a day or two. Then, heavily laden, he walked away from them, kicking up the dust as he went.

  Poppy imagined that he had not turned around to wave lest they should see tears in his eyes. More likely, he would have seen theirs and, seeing them, might have been tempted to stay. But he could not stay. To stay might mean transportation. Transportation meant she would never see him again.

  Through a haze of tears, Poppy watched him go. Lightning was a big man, tall and muscular. He was thirty-six years old, or so he believed, but because arduous work had taken its toll he looked nearer fifty. As a child, he had been a farm labourer in Cheshire. He had started work on the railways as a nipper, as a fat-boy greasing axles. Then, at twelve years old, on the construction of the Bolton and Leigh Railway, he’d been promoted to tipper boy, working with a horse and tip-truck, tipping the spoil from cuttings into wagons to be used subsequently as infill on embankments. After that, he worked on the Liverpool and Manchester till its completion. Lightning went back to farm labouring, but it could never offer enough, either in monetary terms or in excitement. So, when he heard about the starting of the London and Birmingham Railway, he tramped to the capital and worked the whole length of that line, starting as a bucket-steerer, but ending up as an excavator. Poppy recalled him telling her once how, at a place called the Kilsby Tunnel, he had witnessed three men, the worse for drink, fall to their deaths down a shaft as they tried to jump across its mouth, playing a game of follow-my-leader. When the London and Birmingham was finished, Lightning eventually joined the construction of Brunel’s Great Western Railway from London to Bristol with its controversial broad-gauge track.

  Poppy turned to her mother, who was holding the youngest in her arms. ‘I wonder just how long it’ll be before we see him again.’ She had heard so many tales of men jacking up and going on tramp, leaving wives and families behind, never to be heard of again.

  ‘Within a month,’ Sheba replied with confidence. ‘Barring accidents. I know your father. He’s a man of his word.’

  ‘Tell me about how you came to be his woman, Mother.’

  ‘I was fourteen,’ Sheba said. ‘Two years younger than you are now. My own father was working on the London and Birmingham, but he’d gone off on tramp and left us. Lightning asked my mother if he could take me off her hands. She said yes, and he gave her a guinea for her trouble. She was glad of it as well.’ Sheba laughed as she recalled it. ‘That day we jumped the broomstick and the shovel together – the nearest a navvy ever gets to being proper wed – and that night I slept in his bed.’

  ‘But did you like him, Mother?’

  ‘Oh, I liked him well enough. He was strong and handsome with his long curls and drooping moustaches, and yet kind and gentle – not like some of them rough buggers. I caught straight away with you, our Poppy, and I had you when I’d just turned fifteen.’

  ‘I don’t know if I want to be a navvy’s woman, Mother,’ Poppy said, almost apologetically. ‘I reckon there’s a better life to be had.’

  Sheba laughed and sat down, unbuttoning her dress to feed the baby. ‘Oh, there’s a better life, I daresay, but I wouldn’t know where to find it. This life is hard, though, tramping from one end of the country to the other, sleeping rough, just looking for work. I have to admit, no change could ever be a change for the worse. But getting away from it is another matter. Lord knows, everybody shies away from us as if we’re lepers when they know we’re navvies’ women. And yet a good many are glad to become navvies’ women – you only have to look how many wenches the single men pick up from the towns.’

  ‘Last night, me and Min went up into Dudley town,’ Poppy said. ‘We looked in the shops. They was full of stuff – beautiful stuff – shoes, frocks, coats, furniture, pots and pans, lovely crockery. And you should have seen how some of the women was dressed … the men as well …’

  ‘The shops in Dudley don’t do truck, do they? With no money coming in now, how am we supposed to get food and clothing except by truck?’

  ‘But that’s what I mean, Mother. If we didn’t have to rely on truck we could have what we wanted.’

  ‘Then you’d best find a feller who don’t drink every penny away in a couple of days, like your father does,’ Sheba said. ‘Somebody who won’t expect you to live on truck for the rest of the time, like most of ’em do.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I’m saying, Mother. I don’t want to end up with a man that lives like that. So I don’t want to end up with a navvy. I want a house of my own. I want to sit in front of me own fireplace with a good husband and me kids safe abed upstairs.’

  ‘Dreams, our Poppy. And easier said than done. Any road, somebody’s already asked if he can have you.’

  ‘Who?’ Poppy asked with alarm.

  ‘Never mind. Your father wouldn’t agree to it.’

  The rest of the hut’s occupants were stirring. Poppy heard the coughs and groans of men emerging from sleep with thick heads and wondered if it had been one of them that had asked for her. Through the thin partition she could hear the robust breaking of wind, followed by puerile laughter from those who thought it funny, and strings of abuse from those who considered the ensuing stink an intrusion. Somebody stepped outside and, through the small window, she glimpsed Tweedle Beak – so called because of his beaked nose – his back towards her, urinating into a patch of grass. Poppy was maybe the richer for having experienced this life, for nothing shocked her.

  ‘Shall we have some breakfast?’ she suggested. ‘Then I’ll scrub the floor.’

  ‘There’s plenty bread and cheese,’ Sheba said. ‘I’ll get some eggs today and some bacon.’

  ‘Did Father leave you any money then?’

  ‘About ten shillings. But I’ll have money from the beer we sell as well, and from the beds.’

  Something else caught Poppy’s eye through the window. Towards the turnpike road she saw about a dozen policemen assembled, standing alongside a Black Maria and four horses. One of the policemen was clearly giving instructions to the others. Another man in a tall hat, a gentleman by his bearing, accompanied them. Her father had been right.

  ‘The police have come,’ Poppy warned her mother.

  ‘Let ’em come. They’ll not find my Lightning Jack here. He left just in time.’

  The navvies lodging in the same hut grew strangely quiet; the irreverence and laughter were suspended, pending the intrusion of the police, whom they had evidently also seen. One thing was certain, however: if any of them knew anything about the missing trinkets, they were not about to confess it.

  Soon they heard a loud rap at the door and it flew rudely open. A policeman was standing there with a young official employed by Treadwell’s, the contractors. Sheba withdrew the child from her breast and buttoned herself up, indignant at the interruption.

  ‘Are “excuse me” two words you’ve never heard of?’ she asked sarcastically. ‘Is there something you want of me, since you feel entitled to barge into my house?’

  ‘Good morning, ma’am,’ the police officer said, failing to sound
deferential. ‘We are looking for two men who live in these barracks. They gave their names as Jack Silk, better known as “Lightning Jack”, and Joseph Wright, who is also known as “Dover Joe”. I suspect you know why we want them.’

  ‘You can suspect all you like, but there’s no Jack Silk here,’ Sheba said coldly. ‘Nor no Joseph Wright either. But if you want to check for yourselves, I won’t be able to stop you.’

  ‘I’m told Lightning Jack lives here.’

  ‘He used to,’ she responded defiantly. ‘But, thanks to you damned lot, he’s jacked and left us. Lord knows when we shall see him again – if we ever will.’

  ‘He should’ve thought of that afore he committed the crime,’ the policeman said, and nodded to the contractor’s man, who was young and handsome, and vaguely familiar to both Sheba and Poppy. Both men stepped inside the hut. The young man doffed his hat respectfully, but the policeman did not. Poppy appreciated this little demonstration of good manners from the young man and rewarded him with a brief smile, which he returned.

  ‘They’ve committed no crime,’ Sheba retorted. ‘It’s the packman’s word against theirs, but it suits you better to believe the packman, eh? Nobody ever believes there’s any good in a navvy.’

  The policeman ignored her jibe, pulling sheets and blankets off the beds. He bent down to look under them.

  ‘Who’s in the next room?’

  ‘Lodgers,’ Sheba replied. ‘The men you’re looking for ain’t there either.’

  The policeman opened the door and was greeted by eight surly, unshaven men leaning against their disorderly bunks. A birdcage with a tweeting canary hung from one beam; pairs of boots tied together and bags of kit hung from others. The constable spoke to the men and got several grunts in response as they shifted in turn so that he could search through the bedding. A small dog yapped from under a blanket, indignant at being so rudely disturbed.

  The policeman turned to the contractor’s man. ‘Mr Crawford, do you recognise any of these men as the prisoners who were sprung last night?’

  Mr Crawford shook his head solemnly.

  The policeman then addressed the men. ‘Do any of you know where these two men, known to you as Lightning Jack and Dover Joe, might be hiding?’

  All shook their heads and looked suitably solemn.

  ‘Well, we shall find ’em. Be sure of it. And woe betide ’em when we do.’

  This encroachment on the navvies’ early morning routines as they prepared for work was not being well-received in other areas. Many had gathered together in the centre of the encampment and were muttering their dissatisfaction to each other. More joined them and the atmosphere thickened with a menacing air of belligerence. The policemen regrouped, truncheons drawn, the law firmly on their side, watching defiantly, until a lump of wood tossed from somewhere among the navvies hit one of them on the chest.

  The older person, who was dressed in the top hat like a gentleman, moved to the front at once and shouted to make himself heard. He announced himself as a magistrate and told the men that unless they dispersed immediately and went about their business, the consequences for each of them would be serious. They must back off. Nothing was to be gained. The men the law was seeking had given them the slip. Why provoke more trouble?

  So the navvies slowly dispersed. They took up their picks, their shovels and their barrows, and commenced work.

  Only two days before his temporary incarceration at the Dudley lock-up, Lightning Jack had spoken to a navvy who had passed through the Blowers Green workings on tramp. The man had been looking for good, dry tunnelling work and had been disappointed to discover that the Dudley tunnel had already been completed. He’d told Lightning that he’d been working on the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton at Mickleton, but had got into trouble with a card school to whom he owed some unpaid gambling debts, so he’d sloped off. Recalling what this man had told him, Lightning decided to head south and try his luck at Mickleton. That first Saturday, he walked about twenty miles and was refreshed and victualled at a public house in Ombersley, Worcestershire.

  Afterwards, he found a suitable hedge under which to sleep, the weather being settled. Next morning, he awoke under a blue sky and took in a great gulp of the cool morning air, so fresh with the promise of summer, and free of the stench of coal gas that had normally greeted him at Blowers Green. The sight of the leaves stirring gently on the trees, and of the ordered pattern of fields that adorned the landscape, set his heart singing after the muck and filth of the Black Country. Maybe he should have gone on tramp before. He finished what food he had in his pantry, gathered his things together and set off again, intent on reaching Mickleton later that day. At Evesham, stopping for a gallon of ale at a beer shop, he met another navvy on tramp and they got talking. The stranger told Lightning that people knew him as ‘Bilston Buttercup’.

  ‘I’ve never seen anybody less like a buttercup in all me life,’ Lightning said, genially, as they supped. ‘Buttercups are pretty, dainty flowers. You’m as plain as a pikestaff and as ungainly as a three-legged donkey.’

  The stranger laughed good-heartedly at Lightning’s banter. ‘That I am, and no doubt about it. Here … fill thy gum-bucket with a pinch or two o’ this best baccy.’

  ‘Ta …’ Lightning helped himself to some of the tobacco the man was offering and filled his clay pipe. ‘So you’re a Bilston bloke, eh?’

  ‘Bilston born and bred,’ the plain man said, filling his own gum-bucket. ‘Though I’ve been most places.’

  ‘So where are you heading for now?’ Lightning asked.

  ‘The Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton. They say there’s work on the Mickleton tunnel near Campden.’

  ‘That’s where I’m headed. We might as well tramp there together, if that’s all right by you.’

  ‘Let’s have a drink or three together and celebrate the fact,’ suggested Buttercup.

  So Lightning Jack and Bilston Buttercup drank. They drank so much that they lost their resolve to reach Mickleton and, instead, discussed where they would doss down that night.

  ‘Under the stars,’ declared Lightning. ‘There’s nothing like it, and the weather’s fair.’

  ‘Then maybe we should find somewhere afore darkness falls. We can always find an inn afterwards for a nightcap.’

  So they finished their drinks and set off in search of a place to sleep, into countryside that was wearing its vivid green May mantle. They pitched camp just outside a village called Wickhamford, alongside a stream that was invitingly clear. Buttercup contemplated building himself a sod hut, constructed by cutting turf from the ground and stacking it into walls, to be roofed with a tarpaulin.

  ‘So where’s your tarpaulin?’ Lightning enquired.

  ‘Oh, bugger!’ Bilston Buttercup replied with a laugh of self-derision. ‘I ain’t got ne’er un, have I? Damn it, I’ll sleep in the open … Like yo’ say, Lightning, the weather’s fair. Tell thee what – I’ll go and catch us our dinner. Why doesn’t thou gather some wood and kindle us a fire, eh?’

  Lightning did what his new friend suggested. He collected some dry sticks of wood and had a respectable fire going in no time. He carried in his pantry a small round biscuit tin in which he kept his mashings, which was tea leaves mixed with sugar and wrapped in little parcels of paper screwed together at one end. From the stream, he filled this biscuit tin with fresh spring water and set it over the fire to boil. He stood up and stepped back to admire the fire. In an adjoining field he could hear the lowing of cows and knew at once where to get his milk. He took his metal tea bottle, rinsed it in the stream, and clambered through the hedge that surrounded the field. Startled rabbits bolted before him, but the cows regarded him with that indifferent curiosity of which only bovines are capable as he strutted towards them. Already he had picked his cow, its udders bulging.

  ‘Here, come to daddy,’ he said softly and stooped down alongside the compliant animal. As Lightning returned to the campfire with his bottle of fresh warm milk, he saw t
hat Buttercup had arrived back also, and was feathering a chicken.

  ‘Bugger’s still nice and warm,’ he said. ‘Feel.’ Lightning felt. ‘There’s another, yon, for thee.’ Buttercup gestured his head towards the ground behind him. By the flickering light of the fire, Lightning could just make out another chicken lying forlornly dead, its neck broken.

  ‘Feather it, and I’ll draw the innards out for thee,’ Buttercup offered.

  ‘Where did you pinch these from?’ Lightning asked, collecting the chicken from the ground.

  ‘Some farm, yon. I picked up some eggs as well.’

  ‘Let’s hope no bugger heard you or saw you,’ Lightning said, recalling his brief stay in Dudley gaol for allegedly stealing something of similar value.

  When the men had finished plucking feathers, Buttercup drew the innards out of both chickens and washed the hollow carcasses in the stream. Lightning constructed a spit from wood, on which they could cook the two fowls over the fire. Meanwhile the water in the little tin was steaming promisingly. Lightning watched his companion’s face by the light of the flickering fire as he rammed the chickens on the spit and began cooking them.

  ‘What brings you on tramp?’ Buttercup asked his companion.

  Lightning Jack filled and lit his gum-bucket and told his story. ‘But it’s hard to leave a woman and kids. It is for me, at any rate. Some buggers couldn’t give a toss, but I think the world o’ my Sheba. I shall send for her and my babbies just as soon as I got meself settled at Mickleton. What about you, Buttercup?’

  ‘Me? I’m single, me.’ Buttercup turned the chickens on the spit and the fire crackled as it was fuelled with a further sputtering of fat. ‘I wouldn’t be in thy shoes, tied to a woman’s apron strings all thy natural. I’ve seen it all afore, watched men and women and seen how as they make each other as miserable as toads in a bag of flour. Look at another woman and just see how they moan. They swear as yo’m having it off. Dost ever look at other women, Jack?’