Poppy's Dilemma Read online

  ‘That I do. Show me a bloke as don’t and I’ll show you an elephant that can purr like a kitten.’

  ‘How old is your old woman, Jack?’

  ‘Not so old. Thirty-one. And not bad looking, considering she’s had seven. Two of ’em died, though, Buttercup.’

  ‘Aye, well when she’s forty-one her teeth’ll very likely fall out and all her hair. Then you’ll be gawping at even more women … younger women … and wondering why on earth thou ever messed with her in the fust place.’

  ‘Well, she was a right pretty young thing when we jumped the broomstick,’ Lightning said. ‘Fourteen, she was, and pretty as a picture. I was about nineteen.’

  ‘Aye,’ replied Buttercup. ‘But, by God, how quick they go to seed. The time will come when thou would’st rather kiss a scabby hoss.’

  Lightning laughed. ‘Who knows? Mebbe …’ The water in the tin began bubbling. ‘I’ll drum up.’ His pipe clenched between his teeth, he poured some of it into his metal bottle and followed it with his mashings.

  ‘Just think,’ Buttercup said. ‘You and that Sheba o’ thine have got nothing to look forward to now but the workhouse or the grave.’

  ‘That’s it, cheer me up,’ Lightning said. ‘And what have you got to look forward to?’

  ‘Whatever I set me mind on,’ came the reply. ‘And if I want e’er a woman, I’ll have one, without it laying on me conscience.’

  ‘Have you never loved a woman, Buttercup?’

  ‘Oh, aye, to be sure. When I was younger and a lot safter than I bin now.’

  ‘Have you ever thought what it’d be like to have a little house o’ your own? To have the woman you love bring you your dinner on your own best bone china while you was warming your shins in front of a blazing fire?’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ Buttercup replied. ‘I was close to it once. Sadie Visick was her name. Met her while I was working once diggin’ up Wiltshire. Any road, I put Sadie in the family way …’

  ‘Then what?’ Lightning asked. ‘What steps did you take?’

  ‘Bloody big steps. I bloody well hopped it, sharp. I couldn’t see meself tethered down by e’er a wench and a screaming brat. Any road, as a navvy, what chance hast thou got o’ living a decent life? All around it’s dirty and depraved. Filthy, unkempt men like me and thee, Lightning, wi’ no money, one shirt to we name and a pair of boots what leak like a cellar in a flood. When was the last time you ever saw a priest?’

  ‘You mean one o’ the billycock gang?’

  ‘Aye. Some churchman who’d have a good try at saving thy soul, putting thee on the straight and narrow?’

  Lightning shrugged. ‘Dunno if I want to see any o’ them stuck-up bastards. Dunno if I believe in God, to tell you the truth, Buttercup. I’d rather there was no God. If He’s keeping a tally on me and my misdeeds, I’ve got a fair bit of accounting to do come judgement day.’

  ‘Aye, me an’ all,’ Buttercup confessed. ‘Like I said, I never did right by Sadie Visick, though her was comely enough and pleasant with it. I wonder whether her had a little chap or a wench …’

  ‘Does it matter after all them years?’ Lightning commented. ‘It’s history now.’

  Eventually, the chickens were cooked. The two navvies ate well and drank their hot tea, talking ceaselessly. So engrossed were they in their conversation that they stoked up the fire and their gum-buckets and talked into the night, never once thinking about beer. Tired, they eventually fell into a contented silence, firm friends, and slept soundly on the ground till daylight, awaking to air that was as full of the sounds of spring as it was of perfume. The ardent songs of nesting birds was as strange to both men’s ears as the whisper of water from the stream as it lapped over the stones and gravel of its bed.

  They rekindled the fire and Lightning fried the eggs Buttercup had stolen in a bit of fat left over from the chicken, using his shovel as a frying pan. While they ate, they consulted the dog-eared map that Buttercup pulled out of his pantry, and pored over it.

  ‘Why … Mickleton’s no distance, judgin’ by this,’ Buttercup said, looking up from the map. ‘We’ll be there by drumming up time. I just wish I could read the blasted thing.’

  Chapter 3

  According to the navvies’ convention for nicknaming, anybody who was short and stocky was liable to be called ‘Punch’. But, to differentiate between the several Punches inevitably working together on the same line, they had to be further identified by some other pertinent feature. Thus, Dandy Punch was so named because of his taste in colourful and fancy clothes, as well as for his stockiness. He was about forty years old as far as anyone was able to guess, but he might have been younger. He was employed by Treadwell’s, the contractors, as a timekeeper, and one of his tasks on a Saturday was to collect rent from those workers who occupied the company’s shanty huts as tenants. Lightning Jack had been gone a week when he called on Sheba.

  Poppy answered his knock and stood barefoot at the door of the hut, her fair hair falling in unruly curls around her face. Her eyes were bright, but they held no regard for Dandy Punch.

  ‘Rent day again,’ he said, a forced smile pinned to his broad face. His eyes lingered for a second on the creamy skin of Poppy’s slender neck as he tried to imagine the places covered by her clothing. ‘Comes around too quick, eh? But never too quick to see you, my flower. Heard from your father?’

  Poppy shook her head.

  ‘Well, no news is good news. Is your mother here?’

  Sheba had lingered behind the door, and thrust her head around it when she was summoned. ‘You’ve come about the rent … As you know, Lightning Jack has made himself scarce. He asked me to say that if you could put the rent down as owing … he’d look after you when he got back.’

  ‘When’s he coming back?’ Dandy Punch asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know, eh? Has he jacked off for good?’ He arched his unpitying eyebrows and fumbled with the thick ledger he was carrying, which bore the records of what was owed.

  ‘No, he’s coming back. For certain. I just don’t know when.’

  Dandy opened his book, licked his forefinger and thumb and flipped through the handwritten pages unhurriedly. ‘He already owes a fortnight’s rent. Ain’t you got no money to pay it?’

  Sheba shook her head. ‘He said you’d be able to cover it somehow, till he got back. As a favour.’

  His eyes strayed beyond Sheba, into the hut, drawn by the sight of Poppy. She was pulling on a stocking as she sat on a chair in the shabby living room, and had pulled the hem of her skirt up above her knee. Dandy Punch tried to see up her skirt, but the dimness inside thwarted him.

  ‘I owe Lightning Jack no favours,’ he declared, irked. ‘D’you think you’ll be able to pay me next week?’

  ‘I doubt it. With Lightning away, how shall I be able to? But he’ll pay you when he gets back. He’ll have found work. He’ll have been earning.’

  ‘I bet you charge these lodgers fourpence a night to sleep in a bunk,’ he ventured.

  ‘Or a penny to sleep on the floor.’ Sheba was trying to hide her indignation. ‘But that’s got nothing to do with you. None of ’em have paid me yet for this week … or last.’

  ‘Well, all I can do for now is enter in me book that you owe me for this week as well. Let’s hope Lightning’s back next week so’s he can settle up.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ Sheba agreed.

  Dandy Punch touched his hat, taking a last glance past Sheba at Poppy, who was pulling up the other stocking, unaware of his prying eyes.

  Sheba shut the door and sat down. Her two younger daughters, Lottie and Rose, were outside playing among the construction materials stacked up in the cutting. The baby was propped up against a pillow on a bed. Poppy adjusted her garter and let the hem of her skirt fall as she stood up.

  ‘I wish I knew what me father was doing,’ she commented. ‘If only he could write, he could send us a letter.’

  ‘Even that wouldn’t do us
any good,’ Sheba replied, ‘since none of us can read.’

  Poppy shrugged with despondency. ‘I know.’ She grabbed her bonnet and put it on. ‘I’m going into Dudley again with Minnie Catchpole now I’ve finished me work. Can you spare me a shilling?’

  ‘A shilling? Do you think I’m made of money? You just heard me tell that Dandy Punch as I’d got none.’

  ‘Sixpence then.’

  Sheba felt in the pocket of her pinafore. ‘Here’s threepence. Don’t waste it.’

  A Staffordshire bull terrier scampered through the dust of the camp in front of Poppy and Minnie as they walked along the Netherton footpath towards Dudley town in the afternoon sunshine. After a morning scrubbing the wooden floor and laundering the men’s available rags, the prospect of seeing Luke once more was appealing.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d been seeing this Tom on the quiet?’ Poppy asked, as they began the climb to Dudley.

  ‘’Cause I want to keep it a secret. Dog Meat would murder me. Don’t breathe a word. Not to a soul.’

  ‘As if I would.’

  ‘And that Luke asked specially if I could bring you with me today. He took a real shine to you, you know, Poppy.’

  Poppy smiled shyly. ‘He seemed decent an’ all. I liked him … But I couldn’t do with him what you do with that Tom – or with Dog Meat.’

  ‘Nobody’s asking you to.’

  ‘As long as he don’t expect me to. I see and hear enough of it with me mother and father going at it nights. It always seems as if me mother don’t like it, the way she moans. As if she’s just putting up with it to save having a row with me father. As if it’s her duty. It don’t appeal to me at all.’

  Minnie burst out laughing. ‘Oh, you’ll change your mind all right once you’ve got the taste for it,’ she said. ‘Everybody does. And I’m sure your mother likes it as much as anybody.’

  ‘Maybe she does. Was Dog Meat the first lad you ever did it with, Minnie?’

  Minnie laughed again. ‘No. I did it first with Moonraker’s son, Billy, when I was thirteen.’

  ‘And did you like it?’

  ‘Course I liked it. Else I wouldn’t have done it again. You do ask some daft questions, Poppy.’

  ‘But what about if you catch, Minnie? What about if you get with child?’

  ‘There’s ways to stop getting with child. It pays to know how if you’m going with chaps regular.’

  It amazed Poppy how canny Minnie was for a girl of sixteen. She cheated on Dog Meat without a second’s thought, and he had no idea just how she was carrying on with other men.

  ‘Don’t you ever feel guilty?’ Poppy enquired. ‘Going behind Dog Meat’s back while he’s at work?’

  ‘Why should I? He’d do the same on me. He very likely does, if he gets the chance.’

  Their conversation continued in the same vein until they reached The Three Crowns, where Minnie had arranged to meet Tom and Luke. The two lads were already waiting when the girls arrived. Poppy smiled bashfully at Luke and he smiled back, baring two front teeth that were black as coal.

  ‘It’s nice to see you again, Poppy,’ he said. ‘I didn’t really expect to, after the other Friday.’

  But her eyes were fixed on his gruesome black teeth and she could not avert them. Why hadn’t she noticed those teeth before? He must not have smiled. He must have been too self-conscious of them and kept his mouth shut every time she looked his way. And besides, it had been dark when they walked down Vicar Street that night. Thank God she hadn’t kissed him. The thought of kissing him with those tarred tombstones in his mouth was repulsive. So Poppy quickly lost interest in Luke.

  ‘I fancy a walk round the town,’ she said experimentally, trying to extricate herself from his company. ‘I got threepence and it’s burning a hole in me pocket.’

  ‘I’ll come with yer,’ Luke said. ‘Tom and Minnie won’t mind being on their own together.’

  She finished her drink, resigned to the idea that Luke was not going to be that easy to shake off. They walked around the town for a while until Poppy decided she really must go. Luke was uninteresting, he had little to say and, while she allowed him to walk with her as far as the gasworks, she pondered on the density of men in general and of this Luke in particular.

  As Poppy walked down Shaw Road, she saw Dog Meat walking almost parallel with her below in the cutting, having just finished his shift. It was inevitable that they would meet before either reached their huts.

  ‘Hello, Poppy.’ He greeted her with a friendly grin that concealed his fancy for her.

  ‘Hello, Dog Meat. How’s the work going?’ she asked, hoping to divert him from the inevitable question about Minnie’s whereabouts.

  ‘It’s good,’ he answered in his thick, gruff voice. ‘I’ve bin labouring for the bricklayers … Hey, I thought you was going out with Minnie this afternoon.’

  ‘I had to be back early,’ Poppy lied. ‘I just left her. She’ll be back in a bit.’

  The following Monday, a young navvy tramped into the encampment at Blowers Green looking for work. He was tall and lean and his broad shoulders gave no impression of the toil of carrying his wheelbarrow and tools over the miles. His very appearance was a monument to his strength and fitness. His eyes were a bluish grey with the glint of steel about them. He asked somebody to direct him to a foreman and found himself in an untidy office with Billygoat Bob, the ganger.

  ‘So what’s your name?’

  ‘They call me Jericho.’

  ‘Jericho what?’

  Jericho shrugged. ‘Just Jericho.’

  Billygoat tried to read the young man’s mind, thinking that he must be hiding his real identity for some reason, like so many of the navvies, but there was something about the lad that led him to believe he was not hiding anything. His hair was long, which meant he hadn’t been in prison recently. The name Jericho must be the only one the lad knew, but such a thing was not entirely unusual for somebody who was navvy-born.

  ‘I take it you’ve worked on the lines before?’ Billygoat asked.

  ‘Aye. I’ve been on the Leeds and Thirsk. But ’tis finished now. Afore that I worked on the Midland.’

  ‘What work have you been doing, lad?’

  ‘I done excavating, barrow-running, shaft-sinking …’

  Billygoat eyed the younger man assessingly. ‘I can find you work excavating, Jericho. Your pay will be fifteen shillings a week for shifting twenty cube yards a day. Anything more will get you a bonus. Can you manage that?’

  Jericho smiled. ‘I can manage twenty cube yards easy. I’ll take the job. Do you know of a hut where I can get lodgings?’

  ‘You’ll get a lodge over at Ma Catchpole’s.’ Billygoat pointed to a shanty that he could see from his office, and Jericho leaned forward to get a glimpse of where he should be heading. ‘They call it “Hawthorn Villa”.’ Billygoat smiled at the irony. ‘Tell the old harridan I sent you.’

  ‘Can you sub me a couple of bob till payday?’ Jericho asked.

  ‘I’ll see as you get a sub – as soon as you’ve finished your first day’s work.’

  So Jericho collected his things from where he had dropped them outside and made his way over to the hut that Billygoat had pointed out. He knocked on the door and a pretty young girl with dark hair and brown eyes answered it. Her hands were wet from the work she was doing and she wiped them quickly on her apron as she smiled at him with approval.

  ‘Yes, what do you want?’ the girl asked, and self-consciously tucked a stray wisp of hair under her cap.

  ‘Is this Hawthorn Villa?’

  The girl nodded. ‘That’s what everybody calls it.’

  ‘Good. I’m after a lodge. Billygoat told me that Ma Catchpole might have a spare bunk.’

  ‘Ma Catchpole is me mother,’ the girl replied. ‘I’m Minnie. Am you new here?’

  ‘I just got here.’ He smiled and his magnetic steel-blue eyes transfixed Minnie.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  �
��Folk call me Jericho.’

  ‘Jericho, eh? Well come in, Jericho.’ She stood back to allow him in and he towered above her. ‘I bet you’re thirsty after your walk. Fancy a glass of beer?’

  ‘I could murder a glass of beer, Minnie.’

  She went over to the barrel that was standing on a stillage beneath the only window on that side of the hut and took a pint tankard, which she filled. She handed it to Jericho with an appealing smile.

  ‘How much do I owe you?’

  ‘Nothing. You can have your first pint free.’

  He quaffed it eagerly and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. ‘Thanks. I don’t get a sub till I’ve finished me first shift.’

  ‘Then you’d better get a move on.’

  Jericho emptied his tankard and handed it back to Minnie. ‘Can you show me the bunk I’ll be sleeping in?’

  ‘Gladly.’ She glided over the floor to the dormitory the lodgers occupied and opened the door, which creaked on its hinges. ‘That one, I think,’ she said, pointing. ‘Fourpence a night. Have you got fourpence for your first night?’

  He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a few coppers. ‘Just about.’ He handed her fourpence. ‘Where do you sleep, Minnie?’

  She looked at him knowingly, then tilted her head towards the door. ‘In that bedroom there … with me mother and father and the kids …’

  During the afternoon on the same day, Poppy had to go to the tommy shop owned and operated by the contractor, to buy beef, bacon, tea, condensed milk and bread. Minnie had also gone to the shop and Poppy entered just as Minnie was being served.

  ‘I’m glad I’ve seen you,’ Poppy whispered. ‘I wondered what had happened after Saturday. Did Dog Meat tell you I saw him after I left you and Tom? It was just as he was finishing his shift. Did he ask you where you’d been?’

  Minnie grinned artfully. ‘There was no harm done, Poppy. He didn’t have any idea as I’d been with another chap. Even if he had, I would’ve denied it. He’s easy to fool, that Dog Meat.’ She collected her purchases and stuffed them into her basket. ‘I’d better go. I’ve got a load of work to do yet. We got a new lodger in our hut. Calls himself Jericho. He’s young and … well, Poppy … I come over all wet-legged when he’s near me. I don’t half fancy him.’