Nancy Carson
Poppy’s Dilemma

Copyright

Published by Avon an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton in 2003 as Poppy Silk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

This ebook edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2016

Cover design © Debbie Clement 2016

Nancy Carson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008252342

Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780007948482

Version 2018-01-09

POPPY’S DILEMMA

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

She did not really want to be there, but Poppy Silk loitered compliantly with her friend Minnie Catchpole outside the alehouse, which was called ‘The Wheatsheaf’, but somewhat appropriately known by some as the ‘Grin and Bear It’. Poppy was wearing the only reasonable frock she possessed; second-hand and made of red flannel with buttons down the front. It was a size too big for her slender figure and had cost her mother a shilling. Her black worsted stockings and inelegant clogs were made more conspicuous by the frock’s short skirt. Despite the frock, and despite her reluctance to be among her own kind, Poppy had seldom been short of admirers lately. She had the face of an angel, strikingly beautiful, manifesting all the innocence of the unenticed, and yet she was much too worldly to warrant a halo.

There was a stiff breeze, not uncommon for the middle of May, and the evening sky was shredded with sprinting clouds. The road, growing dustier and more uneven the longer the dry spell lasted, was strewn with old news-sheets that flapped like misshapen birds against the wind.

The Wheatsheaf stood alone, surrounded by wasteland on one side and the Old Buffery Iron Works on the other. Within spitting distance was a collection of wooden shanties that lined the Blowers Green section of the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway, which was just another of the huge civil engineering enterprises under construction.

The event was payday and it only occurred monthly. A horde of railway navvies had assembled in blustery sunshine two hours earlier at The Wheatsheaf, Poppy’s and Minnie’s fathers among them. The tavern was where they reaped their monetary reward for four weeks’ gruelling labour minus, of course, what they owed in truck to the contractor. Most were the worse for drink. Their pockets were bulging with money, which was begging to be spent on beer, whisky, or whatever other libation would intoxicate them into sublime oblivion and render painless their aching backs and limbs. Some had ventured further afield in their search for it, but were now returning, having boisterously worn out their welcome at other public houses and beer shops, and even wobble shops, which were illicit drinking houses.

Poppy and Minnie were not the only girls aware that it was payday and hoping to be treated at least to a drink; many neighbourhood girls had gathered, hoping some of the navvies’ hard-earned money would trickle down to them. Minnie, the flightier and more buxom of the two, struck a pose calculated to attract the favourable eye of the young workmen who were there in abundance, and she was flattered when some young buck whistled his approval. Poppy, though, was not so sure about those others who sidled up and made bawdy suggestions, even though those suggestions elicited girlish giggles, or feigned indignation, depending on what was being suggested and by whom.

‘I reckon our dads have forgot we,’ Minnie commented.

‘They forget everything once they’ve got the beer in ’em,’ Poppy replied realistically. ‘Shall we go inside and ask ’em for money so’s we can buy our own?’

A particularly well-built navvy, who looked old enough to be her father, suggested something spectacularly indecent to Minnie. She stared at the man in mock outrage for a moment or two, yet inwardly remained unruffled, before she turned round to reply to Poppy’s question. ‘I ain’t going in there. We’d get mauled to death by this lot o’ dirty buggers. I don’t mind somebody young, but not that lot o’ dirty old buggers.’

‘Well, I ain’t stoppin’ here much longer,’ Poppy said, glancing apprehensively at the same man. She turned to Minnie. ‘They ain’t doing to me what they done to that Peggy Tinsley the other week down by the Netherton turnpike. Seven of ’em, there was, she reckoned. They just left her there lying in the grass after. She couldn’t walk properly for days. And her best bonnet blowed away in the wind.’

‘Poor soul,’ Minnie commented, but with little sympathy. ‘Still, I’m glad it wasn’t me. If they’d done to me what they done to her, and Dog Meat had found out, it would’ve spoiled me chances.’

‘Why do they call that chap o’ yours “Dog Meat”?’ Poppy asked. ‘Does he eat dogs or summat?’

‘Course not. It’s ’cause he used to sell meat for dogs to the swells afore he was a navvy. Any road, it’s just a nickname. Everybody’s got a nickname.’

‘I ain’t got a nickname, Minnie.’

‘Nor me, but your dad has – “Lightning Jack”.’

Poppy smiled and her blue eyes sparkled. ‘So’s yours – “Tipton Ted” … Come on, where shall we go? We ain’t gunna get a drink here. And I want to be safe in me bed asleep come turning-out time when they’re all drunk and a-fighting.’

‘Let’s have a walk up the town,’ Minnie suggested with a gleam in her eye. ‘Let’s see what the swells am up to.’

As they were about to go, a packman carrying a case came up to them. He opened it up and displayed rows of necklaces, earrings, bangles and other trinkets.

‘Buy a necklace, Miss?’ he suggested to Poppy. He lifted one out and held it before her throat where it tantalisingly out-glittered the glass and paste example she was already wearing. ‘It’d look a treat on you with your pretty face, wouldn’t it?’ He regarded Minnie beseechingly, in an attempt to elicit her support. ‘Wouldn’t she look a picture, eh, miss?’

‘I got no money,’ Poppy informed him.

‘Got no money? Well, it’s soon got, a pretty wench like thee.’

‘It’s me dad what’s got the money,’ Poppy replied, the innuendo lost on her. ‘But he’s making sure he spends it on himself.’

‘What about you, my flower?’ he said, addressing Minnie.

‘I got no money neither.’

‘The men got paid tonight, didn’t they?’ the packman queried, placing the necklace back in the case and closing it up again. ‘I daresay I’ll be able to prise a sovereign from somebody afore I’m done.’

Poppy and Minnie turned to go. They were content to leave behind the hawker and the local girls who were making up to the young navvies, content to leave behind the guffaws and the swearing, the shouts and the bawling, which were increasing in direct proportion to the amount of beer being drunk. A hundred ordinary workmen, each with a pocketful of money, in even a large public house, could wreak havoc. A hundred drunken navvies, with their own brand of disregard for order and serenity, could triple the chaos. Poppy and Minnie were well aware of it. They were all too aware that towns which were being linked to the railways did not altogether embrace the arrival of hundreds of burly, uncouth men, some with their so-called wives, however transient their stay. It was commonly believed that the shanties they erected alongside the railway workings were hardly fit for pigs, let alone people. And heaven protect decent, God-fearing folk from the unspeakable goings-on inside. But how those men could shift earth!

The girls left the turnpike and walked steadily towards Dudley up a track known as Shaw Road that ran alongside the new cutting the men had been excavating. As they passed the gasworks, chattering amiably, Minnie imparted some very personal secrets about herself and her man Dog Meat.

Poppy giggled in disbelief. ‘You don’t do that, do yer?’

‘Course we do. It’s nice.’

They sauntered between the houses, factories, shops and alehouses of Vicar Street. The granite spire of the recently built St Thomas’s church came into view, pointing the way to heaven as it gleamed ethereally, caught by the sun’s dying orange glow. It was good to be away from the rabble and babble of the navvies. Here was the chance for Poppy to derive some notion of how civilised society functioned.

They reached the church, turned right and headed downhill towards the town hall and the market square. The market square occupied the area that split High Street into two carriageways before joining up again to form Castle Street. Poppy and Minnie nudged each other at the sight of bonneted women in fine dresses and handsome men in cylindrical top hats. A carriage passed them coming in the other direction, its wheels clattering over the uneven surface. Neither girl would have known whether it was a barouche or a phaeton, a landau or a clarence; the only horse-drawn vehicles they could recognise were the tip-trucks that conveyed spoil from the cuttings and the tunnel. Poppy marvelled at the pristine goods on display in shop windows. Soft feather mattresses adorned with clean white sheets and pillowcases lay on bedsteads fashioned from glistening brass. There was highly polished furniture you could almost see your face in. Shoe shops displayed modish boots, cuffed and lace-edged, with delicate heels. Poppy drooled over elegant white dresses – the height of fashion – and beautifully tailored coats, and bonnets bedecked with colourful ribbons and flowers. Oh, it was a fine town, this Dudley, both Poppy and Minnie agreed.

‘If me father’s got any money left after his randying I’d like to get me mother to come here and buy me a pair of them dainty boots,’ Poppy said, knowing it to be a vain hope. ‘I’d love a pair of new boots.’

They ambled on, past the old town hall and market. Things were subtly different in this part of the town. The street was busy with people. Even this early in the evening, several people were stumbling tipsily as they entered or left the profusion of noisy public houses. A few were sitting in sluggish stupors adorning alcoves, or lolling against convenient walls. Women and girls stood around, gossiping animatedly, cackling like hens in a farmyard. Some were overtly trying to tempt men with coquettish looks. Here and there a glimpse of some well-turned ankle promised heaven. Poppy and Minnie giggled at the sight and sound of an old man emptying his nose into the gutter with a voluble snort; that sort of action would hardly offend them, used as they were to witnessing far less refined behaviour. They chuckled even more at the pettiness of a woman walking behind them, who tutted self-righteously and muttered, ‘How disgraceful!’

They walked past the frontages of some more tightly squeezed shops, inns and houses; a succession of stone and red-brick porticoes, forming an unbroken way on both sides of the wide Georgian street. It narrowed as they approached St Edmund’s church, with its red-brick tower overshadowed by the cold grey stone of the old Norman castle on the high adjacent hill.

‘Shall we turn back?’ Poppy suggested. ‘We don’t want to walk down the hill towards the station, there’s no shops down there.’

‘Only the new railway bridge.’

Poppy chuckled. ‘Remember when the first one they built fell down? It’s lucky we weren’t under it.’

They turned around and retraced their steps. As they passed The Seven Stars opposite the town hall and the market place, four youths who were loitering around the doorway called after them. They made disparaging comments about the girls’ clogs, and their unusually short skirts which revealed their shins.

‘Show us your drawers!’ one called, and laughed with satisfaction at his own bravado. Rumour was rife that some working girls were wearing the long johns of their menfolk.

‘Show us your pego, then,’ Minnie replied with equal bluster. ‘If you’ve got e’er un worth showin’.’

With a cheeky grin, the lad put his hands to the fly buttons of his trousers and, fearing Minnie had failed to call his bluff, Poppy turned and walked on. Minnie, laughing, caught her up.

At the side of the road in front of the town hall a woman was arguing with a hawker about the price of a coal scuttle. A middle-aged man with sunken cheeks was sitting on a step, lecherously stroking the blooming cheeks of a full-bosomed woman sitting next to him. A couple of urchins in rags and tatters, who had been nowhere near a bar of soap in a fortnight, rolled over in the gutter and came to blows, one of them squawking with hurt pride.

After only a few minutes, Poppy and Minnie realised that the four youths were following them.

‘Quick, let’s hurry up,’ Poppy urged.

‘Let ’em come,’ Minnie said, unabashed. ‘Mine’s a nice-looking lad.’

‘Oh?’ Poppy queried. ‘What about Dog Meat?’

‘Sod Dog Meat. You take your pick of the other three.’

‘What if Dog Meat sees yer with one of ’em? What if he finds out?’

‘He won’t. He’ll be fuddled out of his mind by now. Any road, I always deny everything.’

‘Are yer gunna go with him then?’ She tilted her head to indicate she meant one of the four lads following at no more than ten yards’ distance now.

‘If he asks me. If he buys me a drink. You want a drink, don’t you, Poppy?’

‘I’m parched.’

‘Well, I’m parched an’ all, and we ain’t got no money to buy one. So let these.’

Minnie stopped and waited for the boys to catch them up. ‘D’you want to buy us a drink?’ she asked forwardly, catching the eye of the lad she fancied.

‘Will you show us your drawers after?’

‘Who says I’ve got any on?’

‘Show us then …’

Minnie shrugged and cocked an eyebrow suggestively. ‘That depends.’

‘Depends on what?’

‘On whether I like yer enough.’

‘Then what?’ the lad asked provocatively.

‘Depends on whether I like yer enough.’ Minnie tantalised him with an alluring look of devilment. ‘Tek me and Poppy for a drink and then it’ll be dark. Who knows what hidey-holes there am round here.’

‘They’m navvies’ wenches, Tom,’ one of the lads murmured apprehensively to the one in charge of these delicate negotiations. ‘From that new cutting down Blowers Green. Yo’ll get yer yed bosted.’

‘They’ll have to catch me fust.’ With a grin, Tom turned to Minnie again. ‘Come on, then. We’ll goo in The Three Crowns.’

It was of no consequence to Poppy and Minnie that The Three Crowns was scarcely more refined than The Wheatsheaf, with its sawdust floor and its spittoons not so strategically placed. Oil lamps hung from hooks screwed into the beams of the low ceiling. The lads barged a way through to the bar and the girls followed compliantly. Soon they were handed a tumbler of beer each, which they quaffed eagerly. They stayed for about an hour, laughing with the lads and their increasingly bawdy humour, until Poppy said it was time she went back to her mother and her brothers and sisters.

‘Stop a bit longer, Poppy,’ Minnie entreated.

Minnie had been getting on famously with Tom; she was obviously equal to his probing indelicacies, and their rapport showed immense mutual promise.

‘No, Min, not with me father out on a randy,’ Poppy insisted. ‘I want to go to my mother.’

‘Luke’ll goo with yer,’ Tom said, keen to part Minnie from her companion and so boost his chances further.

Luke was keen to oblige. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Poppy’s lovely face the whole time but, because of his complete lack of conversation, he had made no impression on her.

‘I’ll walk with yer, Poppy, if yer like,’ he mumbled.

She gave her assent and he finished his beer. Outside, darkness had fallen.

‘So what’s it like, being a navvy?’ Luke asked.

‘How should I know? You should ask me dad. He’s the navvy.’

‘They say it’s hard work.’

‘The hardest job in the world, me dad says.’

‘But they get paid plenty.’

‘And spend plenty,’ Poppy replied, and her contempt for the fact seeped through in her tone. ‘All on beer. They got paid tonight and they was all drunk two hours later. None of ’em will be sober till it’s all spent. About Wednesday at the latest, I reckon. Then they’ll all have to live on truck till the next payday.’

‘What’s truck?’

‘Vouchers,’ Poppy explained. ‘They can buy food, boots and clothes from the contractor’s tommy shop with the vouchers, and then it gets docked off their next wages.’

‘Sounds fair,’ Luke commented.

‘No, it ain’t fair, Luke. Some of the contractors charge a pound for fifteen shillings’ worth of goods. That ain’t fair at all.’

Poppy spied a group of navvies walking towards her and Luke. Even in the darkness you could tell they were navvies by their distinctive mode of dress. They wore white felt hats with the brims turned up, bright neckerchiefs and waistcoats, moleskin jackets and trousers, and big boots. She hoped they wouldn’t recognise her as they approached.

‘You’d best leave me now,’ Poppy suggested, fearing for Luke’s safety.

‘Not till we’ve gone past this lot.’

‘No, they’re navvies from the Blowers Green cutting. If they recognise me, they’ll make trouble for you.’ She looked around for some means of escape. ‘Quick, let’s hide in that alley, out of the way.’

She shoved him into it unceremoniously. There was a gate at the top and he took the initiative and opened it, leading her quickly through. He put his forefinger to her lips, gesturing her to remain silent, and pressed himself to her while they waited. The warmth of his body against her made her heart pound with a bewildering mixture of pleasure at his closeness, and fear at the sound of footsteps, scuffs and the navvies’ muttering and swearing in the alley. But the men were too drunk to know what they were doing or who they had seen, and quickly lost interest in their search. Poppy and Luke lingered a minute longer, enraptured by this enforced intimacy, yet lacking the confidence or know-how to exploit it.

‘You’d best go back,’ Poppy said, when they were out in the street again. ‘I’ll be all right from here. I know the navvies. They won’t hurt me, ’cause of me dad, but they’d kill you if they saw you with me.’

‘Any chance o’ seein’ you again, Poppy?’ Luke asked.

Poppy smiled appealingly and shrugged. ‘You never know. If me and Minnie come up to the town again.’ Luke seemed a decent lad; he’d shown her consideration and a heart-quickening, gentle intimacy she’d never experienced before. ‘Thanks for walking me back.’ She turned and gave him a wave as she hurried on down the road.

The hut Poppy shared with her family and eight other navvy lodgers was a ramshackle affair. It stood amongst a muddle of shacks huddled together in bewildering confusion, as if they had fallen randomly from the sky and been allowed to remain just where they had landed. Heaps of disused planks, discarded bottles and all manner of rubbish littered the place. The huts were owned by Treadwell’s, the contractors, and had been dismantled and reconstructed several times in several parts of the country before their sojourn at Blowers Green in Dudley. Although built predominantly of wooden planking, they were a mix of other waste materials such as engineering bricks and refractories, stone, tile and tarpaulin. Over the door of the hut occupied by Poppy and her kin hung a piece of wood that bore the name ‘Rose Cottage’, nailed there by some joker who’d been blessed with the ability to read and write. At least one of the four panes of glass in each window had been broken; one was replaced with a wooden board, the other a square of cardboard. Rose Cottage had three rooms. One was the communal living room that served as kitchen, dining room, brewhouse and gambling saloon. There was the family’s bedroom, and another separate bedroom for the lodgers, crammed with eight bunk beds and such other accoutrements as the navvies deemed necessary. The kitchen area was nothing more than the space at one end of the hut that had a fireplace. Also crowded in was a stone sink that emptied into the dirt outside, a copper for boiling vast amounts of water, a rickety table and a row of lockers that were the lodgers’ personal tommy boxes. Every navvy provided his own food, which he called his ‘tommy’, and which he paid for in either cash or vouchers from the tommy shop. It often fell to Sheba, Poppy’s mother, to cook it.

When Poppy returned to the hut, Sheba, a mere thirty-one years old, was sitting on a chair in the communal living room nursing her youngest child; her fifth that had survived. Another woman, a neighbour from a similar hut, was with her, smoking a clay pipe they called a ‘gum-bucket’. While they gossiped, they shared a jug of beer tapped from the barrel that stood cradled in a stillage against one wall. Neither woman was drunk but the beer had loosened their tongues, and they were talking over each other in their eagerness to chatter. Poppy undressed herself in the adjacent family bedroom and put on her nightgown. She could hear the women’s conversation clearly, but took little notice as she clambered over the rough, bare floorboards to the two dishevelled beds that were shoved together through lack of space. She slid into the one she shared with her two younger sisters and her younger brother Jenkin, better known as Little Lightning.

Poppy had consumed two half pints of beer and the effect of the alcohol was making her drowsy. The drone of the women’s voices became indistinct and in no time she was dreaming of Luke and his unexpected chivalry. She did not know how long she had been sleeping when she was awakened by the urgent shouts of agitated men and the sudden, alarmed crying of one of the children. Poppy raised her head off her pillow and tried to understand what was happening in the darkness. A lamp flared into life. Men were gathered in the open doorway, and her mother looked anxious as she stood at the bedroom door.

‘What’s the matter?’ Poppy asked as she rubbed her eyes.

‘They’ve got your father.’

‘Who’s got me father?’

‘The night watch. He’s in the lock-up in Dudley.’

‘Why, what’s he done?’

One of the navvies answered. ‘Nothing, as far as we can tell. A packman come in the public house selling baubles. Your father asked to see one and the packman handed one to him. When he asked for it back, Lightning Jack said somebody else had took it to have a look. But he accused Lightning of pinching it.’

Poppy looked with bewilderment at her mother, then at the navvy. ‘And had he pinched it?’

‘Nay,’ he answered. ‘Oh, somebody did, but I don’t reckon it was yer dad. He just passed it to somebody who asked to see it. Any road, the packman went out and the next thing we knowed, the police was there. The men am up in arms, and in the right mood. There’s gunna be trouble aplenty.’

Poppy quickly got dressed. Already she could hear the shouts from an army of angry men outside. Because they were navvies, they were regarded by those who didn’t know and understand their isolated way of life as the absolute dregs of society. Well, the navvies knew and understood their own way of life well enough and they stood together nobly, especially when one of their number was locked up for supposedly committing some felony of which he was innocent. The news had quickly spread. Those navvies who lodged in houses close by had been knocked up from their beds. They answered the call as well and joined those from the encampment, grabbing whatever they could that would serve as a weapon. It was time to set the record straight.

Poppy ran outside. Every man from the encampment still capable of standing must have been there. The ringleader was a ganger she knew only as ‘Billygoat Bob’. In the darkness, she could see that he was standing on a box as he incited the men with his ranting about injustice and bigotry. For the benefit of men who had been drinking elsewhere, he was explaining what had happened at The Wheatsheaf.

‘Nobody thought anythin’ on it, till the packman come back to the Grin and Bear It half an hour later with three bobbies. They came in like three devils, clouting everybody wi’ their blasted copper-sticks. The damned packman pointed out Lightning Jack and Dover Joe, so they dragged ’em out and chucked ’em in the Black Maria. Afore we knew what had hit us, they was away.’

The men were sufficiently inebriated to accept with fiery enthusiasm his tirades on the police and on the packman, which fed their lust for revenge.

‘If any one of you was in trouble, would ye not look to we, your own kind, to help yer in yer travail?’ Billygoat yelled over the hubbub, and there was a thunderous response of accord. ‘Well, Lightnin’ Jack and Dover Joe am innocent, but they’m in that stinkin’ gaol. It’s up to we to fetch ’em out afore they come before the beak and get sentenced. If we fail, they’ll end up doing penal servitude in Australia – that wilderness on the other side o’ the world … And they’ve both got women and families … It could have been you dragged out of that public house, mates. It could have been any one of you …’

A raucous jeer rang ominously through the night and a forest of arms shot up, most wielding pickaxe handles, shovels or hedge-bills. Billygoat stepped off his wooden box and led the incensed army away from the compound and up the hill towards Dudley. One or two stumbled and fell in their drunkenness, but they got up or were helped to their feet by mates bent on avenging this savage oppression.

Poppy followed behind. She had a vested interest. The other women, however, keen to witness some action, were caught up in the fervour of the moment as they hurried to keep up with the men, forming a separate, more passive group. The ragtag army fell more or less into step as they slogged on. Poppy had no idea of the time, but the streets were deserted except for the horde. They strode through the sleeping town, led by Billygoat Bob and those who knew the way, having deliberately followed the Black Maria which carried their comrades to the lock-up.

The two-hundred-strong mob reached the police station in Priory Street, a castellated, red-brick building with a mock portcullis through which they teemed. Hearing the commotion, the two policemen that were on duty presented themselves at the door on the other side of the yard that had rapidly filled up with the ranting crowd. One of the constables asked what the trouble was.

‘We want our two mates, Lightning Jack and Dover Joe,’ Billygoat Bob replied, with all the aplomb of a victorious army general negotiating a surrender. ‘They’ve been locked up for pinchin’ trinkets, but they took nothing. They’m innocent.’

‘Not according to what I’ve been told,’ the policeman said defiantly.

‘Then what you’ve bin told is a pack o’ lies. Some of these men here was in that public house, and they’d swear on their lives that them two men you’m holding had sod-all to do with any theft. Have you found the evidence on ’em?’

‘No, but they could’ve jettisoned that when they saw the arresting officers arrive.’

‘No evidence, eh?’ Billygoat called, loud enough for the throng to hear. ‘No evidence!’ He turned back to the policeman. ‘It strikes me as you should let ’em go, if you got no evidence.’

‘That ain’t up to me,’ the policeman said. ‘There’s nothing I can do. They’ll appear afore the magistrate tomorrow and he’ll decide what should happen to ’em. I’m just doing me duty.’

Billygoat turned to his men. ‘You heard what the constable said,’ he shouted. ‘He’s got no evidence, but there’s nothing he can do about it. There’s nothing he can do for us or our mates inside. He’s just doing his duty. Well, men … we have a duty as well …’

A roar of assent went up and the men surged forward in a mass. The policemen, realising that it was impossible to stand in the way of the mob and live, stood aside while the navvies poured into the police station. Inside, huge muscle-bound men wrenched open doors, pulling some off hinges, until one group came across the cells. Another policeman was on duty there. One of the mob asked him to unlock the padlock and set the prisoners free or be killed. Bravely, he refused. Acknowledging his courage and application to duty, Billygoat gave the order to leave him be. They would wrench the cell door down with physical force.

It took no more than five minutes. The two prisoners were helped out, to broad grins and triumphal cheers.

* * *

As the triumphant navvies and their women lurched back to the encampment, they dispersed into smaller groups. Poppy had gone up to her father as soon as she could get close to him and asked him if he really was innocent of the accusations levelled against him.

‘I’m innocent, my wench,’ he answered, ‘but I doubt the law will ever regard me as innocent. I had a necklace in me hand, I admit it – I was gunna buy it for you, my flower – but somebody snatched it from me and I don’t know who … Where’s your mother?’

‘She stayed with the kids.’

‘Good … I’m glad.’

‘You look worried, Dad …’

‘If I do, it’s ’cause we ain’t heard the last o’ this.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What I say. The line will be crawling wi’ police tomorrer. They’ll never be able to let us navvies get off scot-free. They’ll never let us get away with this.’

They walked on together, silently considering the implications, and Poppy was touched that her father had been about to buy her a necklace. A few of the men were singing lewd songs as they trudged drunkenly homewards. Then, as the various clusters of navvies and women lumbered down Vicar Street towards Blowers Green, Poppy was aware of somebody else at her side and turned to see who it was.

‘What’s goin’ on, Poppy?’

‘Minnie! Where did you spring from?’

‘From that alleyway.’ She pointed over her shoulder. ‘I was with that Tom. So what’s up?’

Poppy told her, then asked what she was doing out so late.

‘That Tom,’ Minnie whispered behind her hand, rolling her eyes self-consciously. ‘He’s a bit of a buck. We was having it against the wall in that alley when we heard this commotion and saw all the navvies marching towards the town. I knew Dog Meat would be among ’em, so I thought it was a good time to leave Tom and get back in bed afore Dog Meat got back. Anyway, at that, Tom says, “Hey, I ain’t finished yet,” so we settled back to doin’ it again. It took longer than I thought …’ Minnie giggled unashamedly. ‘So if Dog Meat ever asks, I was with you on the way up to the gaol, as well as on the way back. I’ve bin with you all night. All right?’

Poppy chuckled. ‘You’re a crafty one, Min, and no two ways. Are you seein’ him again, this Tom?’

‘Who knows? I might. He’s worthy.’

Sheba, who had waited up anxiously for news of Lightning Jack, was overjoyed when he returned to Rose Cottage. She took his arm with concern and drew him to her proprietorially as he entered the hut.

‘Are you hurt, Jack?’ she asked, with sympathy in her eyes. ‘Did the police hurt you?’

‘I copped a clout across the shoulder, but I daresay it’s only bruised. Nothing to fret about.’

‘Oh, Jack, I was that worried. Thank God you’m all right.’

‘Aye, I’m all right, my wench. But I’m famished. Get me summat t’ate.’

‘There’s some bread and cheese.’

‘That’ll do.’

Two loaves of bread stood on the table in the communal living room. Sheba cut a hunk off one and handed it to Lightning with an ample lump of cheese. She poured him a glass of beer from the barrel, and treated herself to a smaller one.

While her father ate his supper, Poppy returned to the bed she shared. As she slid between the sheets, her sisters and brother roused but did not wake. Before long, her father and mother came in, carrying an oil lamp. Lightning Jack had sobered up following his experience in the gaol and was conducting a whispered conversation with Sheba. Then he blew out the flame and clambered into the adjacent bed, followed by Sheba. Poppy heard their stifled grunts and the squeaks of the iron bedstead as they performed their inevitable horizontal exercise. In the adjoining dormitory, the navvies who lodged with them clumped about as they stumbled over each other and swore profusely before they settled down. Poppy pulled the pillow over her head to shut out the various violations of her peace and tried to drift off to sleep, to the accompaniment of her own imaginings. It had been an eventful night.

Chapter 2

Morning came. Sheba and Lightning were up and dressed by the time Poppy awoke. Lightning was tying his clothes up in a bundle and Sheba was regarding him fretfully.

‘I’ll be back as soon as it’s safe,’ Poppy heard him say.

Alarmed, she sat up in bed and called, ‘Where you goin’, Dad?’

‘I’m goin’ on tramp, my wench. The police’ll be swarmin’ round this place like flies round shit, afore you can catch your breath. If they find me they’ll arrest me again. I’m gunna mek meself scarce. In the meantime, I’ll find work on another railway. The bobbies won’t know where I’ve gone and they won’t send men everywhere just to look for me. I’ll either send for yer all or, if the job’s no good, I’ll come back when the dust has settled.’

‘Will Dover Joe go with you, Dad?’

‘He’ll leave here if he’s got any sense, I reckon. But it’ll be best if we don’t go together.’

‘Oh, Dad, I shall miss you,’ Poppy declared with a flush of tenderness for this man, who protected her from the perils and coarseness of living among so many uncultured men. ‘Come back as soon as you can.’

He smiled, but sadness showed in his eyes as he ruffled her wayward fair hair. ‘I’ll be back for you, my flower. I’ll be back for you all. Have no doubt.’

‘You’d best be back soon an’ all, Jack,’ Sheba said. ‘Else we shall be turned out o’ this shant as sure as night follows day. Don’t forget as it’s owned by the contractors. Don’t forget we’re only tenant landlords, and that if you ain’t workin’ for the contractor we’ve got no rights being here.’

‘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 that 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?’

‘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.’

‘That’s a bit too close to home, don’t you think, Min?’

‘I only said I fancied him.’

Poppy chuckled. ‘You’re a right one, you are. Listen, will you be about tonight if I call for you? Or will you be with Dog Meat?’

‘Call for me.’ Minnie gave Poppy a wink and said she’d see her later.

Back outside, the blue sky had given way to dark clouds that threatened rain for the first time in ages. Poppy, carrying her loaded basket, stepped onto Shaw Road to return to the hut. Over to her right stood the head gear and the horse gins of several pits, the tall chimneys of ironworks volleying ever more coal-black smoke into a leaden sky that was already full of it. She was contemplating Minnie’s voracious appetite for men when she heard the rattle of wheels trundling over the uneven surface. Poppy turned to look, expecting to see a carriage. Instead, she saw a man wearing a top hat and frock coat, astride what looked like a hobby horse. As he drew closer, she recognised him as Mr Crawford, the considerate young man from Treadwell’s who had entered the hut with that arrogant policeman on the morning of her father’s unscheduled departure. She watched him and, as he overtook her, she caught his eye and smiled, and he smiled in return. A few yards further on, he drew to a halt and turned around, still astride his two-wheeled machine, waiting for her to catch up.

‘You’re Lightning Jack’s daughter, aren’t you?’ His voice was rich and his accent was definitely not working class. Yet he seemed pleasant and his smile was friendly.

‘Yes,’ she replied, a little surprised that he’d taken the trouble to stop and speak. ‘I’m Poppy Silk. I remember you. You came to our hut with that nasty policeman.’

‘He was nasty, wasn’t he? I thought he was most rude. Have you heard from your father? I wondered if he was all right.’

‘We ain’t heard nothing. We’ve got no idea where he might have gone.’

‘Well, he evidently hasn’t been caught. If he had, you’d have heard.’

‘Do you think so?’ Poppy said, her eyes brightening at the realisation.

‘It’s a certainty. Anyway, it’s so obvious he’d done nothing wrong. I, for one, don’t blame him in the least for scooting off out of the way until the hubbub’s died down.’ There was a sincerity, an earnestness in his soft brown eyes that Poppy found attractive.

She smiled again at the agreeable things Mr Crawford was saying and shifted her basket to her other arm. His smile was a pleasure to behold, the way his smooth lips formed a soft crescent around beautifully even teeth – not a bit like Luke’s.

‘He did handle a necklace, you know,’ Poppy said confidentially, as if she’d known and trusted this young man for ages. ‘He was going to buy it for me, but then somebody snatched it off him and he don’t know who it was.’

‘That’s how I understand it, Miss Silk.’

He’d called her ‘Miss Silk’ … Her … Nobody had ever called her ‘Miss Silk’ before. It made her feel ladylike and important. To hide her face – that seemed to be suddenly burning – she looked down at her clogs peering from beneath her skirt. No man had ever made her blush before.

‘Thank you for calling me “Miss Silk”,’ she said quietly, uncertain how she should react. ‘Nobody ever called me that before. But you can call me Poppy if you like. Everybody calls me Poppy.’

He laughed good-naturedly. ‘A pretty name for a pretty girl. Very well, Poppy. So I shall. And thank you for allowing it. Anyway, your father – I imagine he’ll be back soon. Now that Treadwell’s have agreed to pay for the damage the men caused to the police station, I doubt if any further action will be taken. Especially for such a small item as a necklace.’

‘Oh, that’s grand news,’ Poppy said happily. ‘Does that mean he can come home safely, do you think?’

‘With impunity.’ He smiled that tasty smile again. ‘I would certainly think so.’

A lull followed in their conversation while Poppy tried to work out who ‘Impunity’ was. She considered asking him, but had no wish to belittle herself by showing her ignorance.

‘Is this hobby horse new?’ she asked conversationally.

The frame was made of wood, as were the wheels, but each wheel was furnished with an iron rim. The handlebars and front forks were forged from wrought iron, as were the treadles for his feet at the side of the front wheel.

‘Not quite,’ Mr Crawford answered, and let go of the handlebars to sit back against the pad that shielded him from the larger rear wheel. ‘Actually, it’s not strictly a hobby horse – I don’t know what I should call it. You scoot a hobby horse along with your feet, which is dashed hard on the shoes. This has treadles at the front wheel, as you can see, with connecting rods to these crank arms that drive the back wheel.’ He diligently pointed them out to her. ‘So you don’t have to drag your feel along the ground like you would if you were astride an old hobby horse. Once you’ve got going, you can keep up the motion, just by working the treadles with your feet.’

‘I bet it cost a mint of money,’ Poppy commented.

‘I lost track, to tell you the truth. I built it myself, you see. All except the wheels, which were made for me by a wheelwright. I didn’t really keep a tally of how much it all cost.’

‘Where did you get the idea from?’

‘Well, I was living in Scotland a year or so ago and I saw some chap riding one. I thought, what a brilliant idea. So I made a few sketches and determined to build one just like it. This is the result.’

‘It looks as if it might be fun, Mr Crawford. Is it?’

‘Great fun! It’s cheaper than a horse and it doesn’t get tired or thirsty. You don’t have to find a stable either, nor buy feed … Look, since you’re allowing me to call you Poppy, please call me Robert,’ he said as an afterthought. ‘There’s really no need to call me Mister Crawford.’

Poppy smiled again. ‘Thank you … Robert.’ Savouring the feel of his name in her mouth and on her lips, she said his name again, quietly to herself.

He pulled his watch out from his fob and checked the time. ‘I really must go, Poppy. I’m glad I’ve seen you and had the chance to talk to you. I hope your father will soon return.’ He shoved off with his feet, travelled a few yards and stopped again near the entrance to the workings. ‘Look, if you’d like to try riding this machine of mine, you can meet me sometime, if you like.’

‘To ride it, you mean?’ Poppy queried.

‘Yes. You said it looked like fun, and it is.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she remarked hesitantly. ‘I mean, I don’t think it would be seemly … the sight of me on a hobby horse.’ She was thinking about her skirt having to be hitched up. ‘Not very ladylike.’

He laughed, somewhat melted by this prepossessing young girl as he realised her predicament. Even to the uncultured young daughter of a navvy, modesty was still evidently a consideration. ‘You could sit side-saddle on the crossbar with me, while I rode.’

‘All right, I will,’ she agreed, with a shy smile and a nod. ‘When?’

‘Tomorrow?… No, not tomorrow, unfortunately. I have to take some measurements on the Brierley Hill section … Wednesday. I have my dinner at about one o’clock. I could meet you here, if you like. We could whizz down the rest of Shaw Road as fast as a steam locomotive. And beyond if we wanted to.’

She chuckled with delight. ‘All right. Wednesday.’

He waved, turning his machine into the compound, and she watched him dreamily as he leaned it against the wall of the hut the foremen used as an office.

Chapter 4

The womenfolk of the navvies tended to be as sober as their men were drunken. Many were navvy-born, spending their whole lives tramping from town to town, from one huddle of shanties to another. A few had been seduced into following some strapping, carefree, well-paid and handsome navvy who entertained them royally in an effort to impress as he was passing through their town or village. Navvy-born girls, who knew no other life, grew up early and adopted the habits and attitudes of the older women when as young as twelve or thirteen. They worked hard from early morning and into the night, cleaning huts and boots that were forever dirty by virtue of the work the men did. They bore the navvies’ children, nurtured them and brought them up as best they could, fretting over their health and well-being. Their particular kind of self-respect seldom extended to matrimony, however, save for their own version of it, which was solemnised by the couple jumping over a broomstick, and then consummating their union in front of as many drunken spectators as could be crammed into the room that housed their bed. Because Lightning Jack was a ganger, he was entitled to take lodgers into the hut he rented from the contractor. Sheba was therefore expected to keep the fire going, darn endless pairs of socks, do the washing, the mending, and the cooking for those paying lodgers.

Poppy and Minnie lived in similar circumstances in different huts that were essentially alike. They were obliged to help their mothers and did so, reliably and willingly. But like their mothers, they were no more than unpaid skivvies. Their rough way of life gave them insights into the goings-on between men and women from which girls in different circumstances would be thoroughly protected. These goings-on affected some more than others, although nothing ever shocked them for they were immune. Minnie, for one, was exhilarated by the sights and sounds of others engaged in sexual intercourse – sights and sounds that she often encountered – and these antics influenced her own lax attitude to sex. Sex was no remarkable phenomenon; it was a commonplace, everyday occurrence to which she attached no greater reverence than she did her other natural bodily functions, except that sex was mightily more pleasurable. Consequently, you might go out of your way to enjoy it.

Poppy, on the other hand, was somewhat differently affected. She preferred to postpone the fateful day or night when she would, for the first time, be expected to similarly indulge. And she had been remarkably adept in pursuing that goal. The thought of doing it on her ‘wedding night’ in front of a drunken, unruly mob did not suffuse her with either joyful or eager anticipation.

When they had finished their work that evening, Poppy brushed her fair hair, put on her coat and went out into the rain to call for Minnie. Already the ground of the encampment, which had been dry and dusty for weeks, was suddenly a quagmire and her clogs squelched in the mud as she picked her way through it. She reached Ma Catchpole’s hut, tapped on the door, opened it and put her head round. Minnie’s father, known as ‘Tipton Ted’, was supping a tankard of beer through his unkempt beard and sucking on his gum-bucket alternately as he sat soaking his feet in a bowl of hot water, his moleskin trousers rolled up to just below his knees. He greeted Poppy amiably and asked if she had any news of her father. She replied that she hadn’t.

Minnie then appeared from the little bedroom. She had made a special effort with herself and looked neat and tidy. Her face glowed shiny from the effects of soap and water and her dark hair hung down in tight ringlets under her bonnet.

‘I’m ready,’ she said to Poppy, and bid goodnight to her folks.

‘Where shall we go?’ Poppy asked when they were back outside in the rain.

‘Anywhere we can find shelter,’ Minnie replied, stepping into a mudbath at their front door. ‘Look at me boots already. This front door’s a muck wallow. Dog Meat and me dad will be moaning like hell tomorrow. It’ll be that hard to get the muck out of the wagons when it’s wringing wet and stuck together in a stodge.’

Instinctively, they walked towards the footpath and Shaw Road, stepping over black puddles in the half light.

‘Have you seen much of that Jericho since?’ Poppy enquired.

‘Yes, I took him some dinner on a tray. He’s got matey with Dog Meat already. They’m going to the Grin and Bear It together. I fancy going there and seeing ’em.’

‘You mean you fancy seeing this Jericho.’

Minnie nodded and smiled as she glanced at Poppy.

‘I met somebody today,’ Poppy coyly remarked.

‘Oh?’

‘An engineer who works for Treadwell’s. I reckon he’s about twenty-three.’

‘An engineer?’ Minnie sounded incredulous. ‘How did you meet him?’

‘When I was walking back from the tommy shop. He came past me riding a two-wheeled machine like a hobby horse. He recognised me. He’s the one I told you about who came to our hut with that vile policeman, when me father jacked off. Any road, he stopped to talk. He asked me if I’d heard from me father. He was ever so friendly, and he seemed kind – as if he really cared.’

‘What’s he look like?’ Minnie asked.

‘Ooh, handsome,’ Poppy said with a dreamy smile. ‘And he’s got such lovely, kind eyes. I really liked him, Minnie.’

‘You liked him? The likes of you have got no hope of getting off with somebody like an engineer, Poppy. Engineers am educated. Unless he just wants to get you down in the grass and give you one.’

‘He didn’t strike me as being like that,’ Poppy replied defensively. ‘He called me “Miss Silk”. Can you imagine? Me? Miss Silk?’

‘He definitely wants to give you one.’

Poppy shrugged. ‘He can if he wants. I’m game. I’m meeting him Wednesday. He’s going to give me a ride on his machine.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Minnie laughed, cynically. ‘Then when you both fall off, he’ll look into your eyes while you’m both lying there – you with your frock up round your neck – and ask, “Are you all right, Miss Silk?” then climb right on top of you. His little pego will be up you like a shot, like an eel wriggling up a stream.’

Poppy giggled girlishly. ‘You’ve got a vivid imagination, Min. But I don’t mind if he does. I told you, I really, really like him. I just hope he kisses me to death. Oh, I’d love to kiss them lips of his.’

Minnie whooped with joy. ‘I never thought I’d see the day when you was took with somebody, Poppy Silk.’

‘Nor me neither,’ Poppy answered. ‘But I can’t wait for Wednesday.’

The two girls arrived at The Wheatsheaf. On tiptoe, they peered through the window for sight of Dog Meat. The public house was heaving with those navvies who still had money to spend, as well as black-faced miners from the several pits that were dotted about the area, and iron workers with whom they enjoyed a friendly rivalry. Dog Meat spotted Minnie and Poppy, and went outside to fetch them in.

‘I’ll get yer a glass o’ beer apiece,’ Dog Meat said. ‘Go and talk to Jericho.’

Minnie glanced at Poppy and Poppy saw that Minnie’s face was flushed at the prospect of being with Jericho. Oh, that Minnie fancied Jericho all right.

Jericho was sitting at a cast-iron table, twisting a tankard of beer around with his fingers. He grinned when he saw Minnie, then beamed at Poppy.

‘Who’s this then?’ he said, in his strange accent. His eagerness to know Poppy was evident in his expression.

‘This is my mate Poppy,’ Minnie said.

‘I never seen so many pretty wenches on a job,’ Jericho said with a broad grin. ‘Rare beauties all of ye, and that’s the truth, so ’tis.’

‘Where are you from?’ Poppy asked, also fascinated by his piercing blue eyes.

‘From Chippenham. A good few days’ tramp. Ever been to Chippenham, Poppy?’

‘Not unless the railway runs through it.’

‘The Great Western runs right through it. I’ll take you to Chippenham some fine day. I’ll hire a carriage to take us from the station. A pretty girl like you should be treated like a lady. Nothing less than a carriage and pair would be good enough.’

Poppy smiled reticently, remembering Robert Crawford; inevitably comparing the two men.

‘Have you got a chap, Poppy?’ Jericho asked. ‘If not, I’m just the chap for you. We’d make a fine couple, you and me, eh?’

‘You’re wasting your time trying to butter Poppy up,’ Minnie said jealously, trying to dissuade this new resident away from her friend. ‘She’s already took with one of Treadwell’s engineers. What’s his name, Poppy, did you say?’

‘I didn’t say I was took with him,’ Poppy argued, aware of what Minnie was up to. ‘You said it. Not me.’

‘Only ’cause you am took with him, Poppy.’ Minnie turned to Jericho. ‘Less than ten minutes ago she told me she wouldn’t mind this engineer giving her one – and how she’s meeting him Wednesday and can hardly wait. What did you say his name was?’

Poppy sighed and looked archly at her slender fingers. ‘Robert Crawford.’

‘And he rides one o’ them two-wheeled machines what looks like an ’obby ’orse.’

‘What he built himself,’ Poppy added with pride. ‘’Cept for the wheels.’

‘Well, I can see I got some competition … Still …’ Jericho grinned with supreme confidence. ‘Competition never bothered me afore.’

Later that night, when they had returned to their huts and Poppy was in bed, she heard a commotion outside in the compound. Men’s cheering and jeering voices told her it must be a fight. The sounds of fists slapping against flesh and cracking against bone, the earnest grunts of men in a tussle, confirmed it. She sat up in bed, then threw back the blanket and dragged herself out. She found her slippers in the darkness, put her mantle on over her nightgown, and stepped outside to see who it was. The rain had ceased but mud was everywhere. Silhouetted by the feeble light that fell through the open door of Minnie’s hut, a group of men had gathered, encouraging the two men who were grappling each other. Poppy crept forward to see who was involved but, in the darkness, she could not be certain. She saw Minnie, who had also come out to watch, her head darting from side to side as she tried to see round the shoulders of big men in front of her.

Poppy tugged Minnie’s coat from behind. ‘Who’s fighting?’

‘Jericho and Chimdey Charlie.’

‘What are they fighting over?’

‘A pillow,’ Minnie replied, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. ‘And look … they’m as naked as the day they was born.’ She put her hand over her mouth in mock shock and giggled joyously. ‘He’s a strapping chap, ain’t he, that Jericho?’

Poppy peered through the crowd and tried to catch a glimpse. ‘They must be mad,’ she uttered, and turned to go.

‘He’s got a tidy doodle on him and no mistake,’ Minnie remarked, her eyes sparkling with the reflected light of oil lamps from the hut. ‘Have you seen it?’

‘No, neither do I want to,’ Poppy answered with pious indignation.

But the fight was taking a decisive turn and Poppy continued watching, her natural curiosity getting the better of her. One of the men was down in the mud, prone, and showed no signs of getting up yet awhile. The victor stood over the loser, the muscles of his back clear and defined like live eels wriggling under his skin. He rubbed his hands together, then gave his victim a final kick between the legs. The men began to disperse, discussing the finer points of the scuffle, acknowledging that the winner was a fine fighter, as strong as an ox. Poppy saw that it was indeed Jericho. She turned her back on him and walked away, but he had seen her and called after her, ignoring Minnie.

‘Did you see me beat that vermin?’ he asked excitedly, breathing hard as he caught up with her. His face was unmarked by the fray; only his body had a patch or two of caking mud stuck to it, matted in the dark hairs of his broad chest.

‘I don’t understand what there was to fight about,’ Poppy said indifferently and walked on, determined not to look at him.

‘That spunkless article had got two pillows and I hadn’t got a one,’ he said, following her. ‘So I lifted it off his bunk and put it on mine. He didn’t take kindly to it, so I offered to fight him for it.’

He walked beside her for a while, unabashed by his nakedness, and grabbed hold of her, twisting her round to face him. ‘Kiss me, Poppy,’ he said and his eyes were intensely penetrating, even in the dimness of the night. He thrust his hands inside her mantle and pulled it open. As he drew her to him she could instantly feel the warmth of his body, hot from his exertion, urgently pressing against hers with only the thin cotton of her nightgown between them. As he sought her lips and found them, she felt him harden almost at once, insistent, pressing against her warm belly. For a few seconds she thrilled to the sensation, pleased that she was having such a rousing effect on him.

‘You got nothin’ on under your coat except your nightdress,’ he commented excitedly as he cupped her small bottom in his huge hands. ‘Come with me round the back o’ the hut.’

Poppy pulled herself away from him and wiped her mouth. ‘I will not,’ she said fervently. ‘Don’t think I’m like other navvy wenches, Jericho, ’cause I’m not. Who do you think you are anyway, coming here and thinking I’m going to fall at your feet?’

He looked at her for a few seconds, uncertain how to react, and Poppy was afraid he might strike her for her disaffection. At last he grinned at her. ‘Oh, playing hard to get, eh? Saving yourself for that Crawford, are you? Well, I don’t mind playing that game. You’ll be worth the wait and you’ll taste all the sweeter for it …’ He displayed himself lewdly, cupping himself in both hands … ‘And so will I …’

Poppy turned and ran back to the hut.

She found it difficult to sleep that night, tossing and turning on the feather mattress till it became lumpy. Images of Jericho, naked in the darkness, invaded her mind. Good thing it had been dark. She knew exactly what Minnie saw in him, with his raw good looks, his thick, dark curls and his muscular body that showed not one ounce of fat. But he was arrogant. He knew women fancied him. Women would be there for the taking, wherever he went. But not her. Not Poppy. Oh, he expected her to be like all the others – easy meat. But he had not met anybody like her before. She was not about to be beguiled by the likes of him. Besides, he was just another navvy. Imagine being his devoted woman, sharing his bed at night, bearing his children, yet never sure that he was not bedding some other woman he’d duped with diverting half promises and the prospect of unbounded pleasuring.

So she turned her thoughts to Robert Crawford … Robert Crawford, that gentle soul who was not so high and mighty that he would wilfully pass her by and fail to acknowledge her, even though she was only a navvy’s daughter. He’d called her ‘Miss Silk’. He’d shown her respect and she enjoyed his courtesy. He was so friendly, so easy to talk to. He had no side on him, and yet … His eyes were so bright and alert, and they had been warm on her. Maybe he liked her too, but it could never be as much as she liked him. She would be fooling herself if she allowed herself to believe otherwise. But she wished that he would kiss her. Not roughly, like Jericho, who had stolen a hard slobbering kiss, but warmly, lovingly, with a gentle, sensitive, understated passion that would make her toes curl.

Poppy eventually fell asleep with Robert Crawford in her thoughts. Her dream that night was different from any other dream she had ever experienced. It was not the dream of a child, nor even of a young girl, but of a woman – arousing, stimulating, startling and vividly erotic. It involved herself and two men, both naked, one of whom was riding a two-wheeled machine akin to a hobby horse. She was sitting on the crossbar of the machine in the arms of the naked Robert Crawford, her face against his neck as she nestled in his arms, the wind rippling through her hair, the street flashing past in a blur as they sped down it. And then they fell off the machine into soft long grass and tumbled head over heels. Her skirt was up over her bodice and he was crawling towards her, a look of concern on his beautiful face. ‘Are you all right, Miss Silk?’ he asked, just as Minnie had said he would, but so tenderly. She nodded, smiling as she realised she was naked from the waist down. He scrambled to get on top of her and kissed her lovingly, yet hungrily, and she felt him enter her, so sweetly, so gently, that she hoped the moment would last forever. But in her dream she was also aware of this other naked man, huge, rough and threatening. He came into view and lifted Robert bodily from her and took his place, hurting her, thrashing inside her like some frantic fish caught in a net. She awoke momentarily, tried to exorcise Jericho from her mind and return to Robert … But Robert had gone …

* * *

Lightning Jack and Bilston Buttercup had reached the sweeping curve of Chipping Campden’s High Street on the day they anticipated. They enquired as to the proximity of the railway line and the Mickleton tunnel but the locals, who seemed very respectable, did not seem kindly disposed towards them. Eventually, they were directed out of the village on a north-easterly path. They came to the railway track bed under construction and followed it until it came to a dead end. Lightning Jack speculated that the tunnel workings must be over the hill that lay before them. It was not long before they saw the mountains of spoil, the shaft with its steam engine, and a small shanty town of dilapidated huts. A navvy directed them to a ganger who set them on.

Both men had exhausted their money, mainly on beer, but they were amply fed and watered that evening by the resident navvies, with typical navvy hospitality. Their lodgings were in a hut similar to that which Lightning had left behind at the Blowers Green encampment. The same ganger who had employed them, called ‘Swillicking Mick’ because of the vast amounts of beer he was reputed to drink, operated it.

They ate that evening in the common living room of the hut with the others, enjoying cuts from a massive piece of beef and mounds of potatoes from a huge pot that hung over the fire. The only windows, each immediately either side of the solitary door, were stuck in the middle of the room’s longest wall. The kitchen was located opposite a stack of beer barrels. It was home from home.

Swillicking Mick kept them amply supplied with beer. ‘Pay me when you get paid, lads,’ he said. ‘I’ll not rob thee for it. I brew it meself so it works out cheaper than the stuff from the tommy shop.’

‘It’s decent stuff an’ all,’ Lightning commented. ‘Pour us another if it’s cheap.’

Swillicking Mick’s woman, wearing a leather belt from which hung the keys to the locked beer barrels, duly poured Lightning another and made a note of it in a little book that she withdrew from the pocket of her apron.

‘There’s no decent beer shop hereabouts, so a few on us have begun brewing our own,’ Mick informed them. ‘Course, you can always tramp into Campden. A good many do of a Saturday night. The beer houses want our trade, but the locals ain’t too fond o’ the rumpus we cause. Already they’ve put bars up at the windows o’ some o’ the properties, save ’em getting bost.’

‘The contractors don’t like you brewing your own beer, I’ll warrant,’ Buttercup ventured, nodding in the direction of the barrels. ‘’Specially if they ain’t taking a cut.’

‘Nor would the exciseman if he knew,’ Mick said with a wink. ‘The only problem is, I’m more inclined to sell me beer than work on the construction. So would all the others. It earns us a mint o’ money.’

Mick’s woman, Hannah, began clearing the things away and the men continued talking. There were nine or ten men in the room; it was getting noisier and the humour increasingly boisterous. Then there was a knock at the door; more customers for Swillicking Mick. A group of five or six ruffians entered, one of whom carried a fiddle and a bow. They bought beer, and the chap with the fiddle began playing a lively tune. Several of the men began dancing with each other, their boots hammering on the floorboards. Others were sitting on the floor playing cards, their poaching dogs alongside them, and they complained that the dancing would be understandable if there were women about. At that, the door opened again and half a dozen women and girls squeezed inside.

‘The women from the mill,’ Swillicking Mick remarked with a wink.

It was beginning to get crowded. The card-players cheered and got up from the dusty floor, to engage in a more interesting sport.

One of the women – she looked about thirty years old but was possibly younger – attached herself to Lightning.

‘I’ve not seen you before, have I, chuck?’ she said in her rural drawl.

‘Not unless you can see as far as Dudley,’ Lightning answered.

‘You do talk funny. Is that how they talk in Dudley?’

Lightning grinned inanely; the beer was having its effect. ‘They talk even funnier than me in Dudley. I come from Cheshire. But even Dudley folk don’t sound so weird as you with your quaint country twang. What’s your name, by the way?’

‘Jenny Sparrow. What’s yours?’

‘They call me Lightning Jack.’

‘Well, Jack, you look a big, strong chap to me, with your big, drooping moustaches. Spoke for, are ye?’

Lightning took a swig of beer and wiped his moustache with the back of his hand. ‘What’s it to you? Fancy your chances, do you?’

‘I’m not so ugly as to be discounted, am I, Jack?’

‘Ugly?’ he queried. ‘No, you’re a fine-looking wench, Jenny … And that’s a handsome bosom you’re flaunting.’

Jenny beamed. ‘Maybe you’d like to help yourself to a handful later?’

‘It depends what it’s gunna cost me.’

‘Oh, I don’t do it for money, Jack. I do it for love …’

Chapter 5

Waiting for Wednesday was, for Poppy, like waiting for her plum pudding at Christmas. As one o’clock approached, she tried hard to remain calm, anxious not to give her mother any hint at all that she was leaving her to do the cooking and the feeding of lodgers, just to meet a young man – and one above her station at that. Sheba would get to hear of it, no doubt. Somebody was bound to see them and report back. Nor would Sheba be pleased. But Poppy would handle that crisis when it arose …

She had taken the trouble to wash her hair the night before. She had cleaned her clogs and her fingernails. In the family’s overcrowded bedroom she’d stood at the washstand and enjoyed a thorough wash down, feeling fresh and confident after it. She had laundered her stockings, and inspected the clothes she intended wearing, which, to allay any suspicion, would have to be a working frock.

So, at five minutes to one, she took off her pinafore, tidied her hair and looked at herself briefly in the ancient, mildewed mirror that hung by a piece of string from a nail near the door. If only she had a more alluring frock to wear, but to change it and put on her best red one would have been to broadcast her intentions. So she resigned herself to the fact that she must make do. At least the frock she was wearing was clean. Poppy failed to realise that she looked good in whatever she wore. She was blessed with a beautiful face and a complexion as fair as her flaxen hair. She possessed a natural daintiness and elegance of movement which, had she been dressed in silks or velvets, would have been perceived as grace.

She put on her bonnet and slipped out without a word to her mother. The rain of Monday had ceased and the weather had changed for the better again, with sunshine and a gentle breeze. Thankfully, the mud of the encampment was drying out. Poppy walked towards Shaw Road at the intersection with the footpath where she was supposed to meet Robert, her heart thumping in anticipation. While she waited, first looking up Shaw Road for sight of him, then self-consciously at her clogs, she felt conspicuous, certain that the wary eyes of the encampment were on her and suspicious of what she was up to.

Before too long she heard the familiar clack-clack of the iron-rimmed wheels traversing the craggy surface of the road. She turned to see Robert hurtling towards her, a grin on his handsome face, and her heart lurched.

He’d remembered.

‘Have you been waiting long?’ he asked, when he came to a stop beside her. ‘Sorry if I kept you waiting. I was held up by Mr Shafto – you know, the sub-assistant – wanting some information about some measurements I’d taken.’

Poppy smiled at him brightly. ‘It don’t matter, Robert. I was a bit early … but I had to get out when the chance came.’

‘I presume, then, that you haven’t changed your mind about riding with me?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I ain’t changed me mind, but I was thinking about what might happen if we fell off,’ she said, vividly recalling her dream.

He shrugged. ‘We could, of course. It’s entirely possible. But if the fear of it puts you off, I’ll be extra careful that we don’t. It’s not as if you’re going to be an enormous weight to carry. You’re quite small really. Why don’t you get on?’

She stood close to him and turned around so that she could sit on the crossbar of his machine. It felt hard against her rump, like the bar of a gate.

‘You need to sit back a little bit further,’ Robert said, ‘so that the machine balances. And so that I can get my feet on the treadles.’

She pushed herself further on and felt the crossbar under her backside. Robert was steadying the handlebar and his right arm formed a barrier that she could lean against to prevent her toppling over backwards.

‘Are you ready? Lift your feet higher … no, higher … I have to reach the treadles. Don’t worry, I’ll hold you.’

He scooted off and, after a couple of initial wobbles, they began travelling in a commendably straight trajectory. The road was pitted and bumpy and the frame of the machine transmitted all those bumps to Poppy. Her very bones juddered, but it was exhilarating. The wind was in her hair and against her face as they gathered speed, and she heard herself shrieking with excitement. They hurtled underneath the new railway bridge and approached a grassy mound that vaguely marked the end of Shaw Road and the start of the undulating footpath to Netherton. As they rode over it, Poppy’s innards rolled over and seemed to reach her throat in an unbelievable sensation, making her whoop with delight. She was between Robert’s arms, holding on to him tightly while he steered the machine, conscious of his left leg rising and falling under her skirt as he controlled their speed with the treadles. The ground over the footpath seemed softer, with no hard bumps to bruise her bottom and the backs of her thighs more. She would not mind falling off now and rolling into the long grass at the side of the footpath with Robert …

But they did not fall off. They bowled past tiny cottages in desperate need of repair, past the Old Buffery Iron Works that glowed red at night-time, flaring the dark sky with an eerie crimson glow. They skimmed past the Iron Stone pit with its huffing, clanking steam engine. Robert slowed down the machine as they reached the turnpike road from Netherton to Dudley at Cinder Bank, and carried on over fields. Just before they reached a fishpond, they stopped.

‘Well?’ Robert said. ‘Did you enjoy that?’

Poppy was breathless after the ride. ‘Oh, I loved it, Robert.’ She hooted with laughter, and with the back of her hand wiped away wind-induced tears that had traced a watery line across her flushed cheeks.

She sat on the crossbar pressed against him, still trapped between his arms, radiant with excitement. Robert looked at the delightful profile of her face. She was close enough for him to steal a kiss if he wanted, although he did not take advantage. Instead, he smiled with satisfaction at the few moments of joy he’d brought to this enigmatic girl, by giving her something as simple as a ride on his rudimentary two-wheeled machine.

Feeling Robert’s strong right arm protectively at her back, Poppy was loath to dismount, but she let her feet fall to the ground and eased herself forward. As she stood, her skirt brushing the side of the machine, she hoped Robert would invite her for another ride at some time.

‘Well, we have a long walk back,’ he commented, himself dismounting. He turned the two-wheeled contraption round and began pushing it in the opposite direction. ‘I’ve been working on a design for another machine,’ he said to Poppy as she ambled beside him. ‘Similar to this one but with a better means of propelling it forward. I’m convinced that something like it has immense commercial potential.’

She turned to him and smiled with admiration, uncertain of the meaning of the words ‘commercial’ and ‘potential’. If only she was educated. If only she had been given some schooling, she would be more able to talk with him on his level.

‘What time do you have to be back at work?’ she asked, mundanely.

‘Half past one. Mr Lister, the resident engineer, gets rather rattled if I’m late.’

‘So what time is it now?’

He took his watch from his fob and checked it. ‘Quarter past. We’re easy on.’

‘Good. I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble on my account.’

For the first few yards of their walk back, there was a pause in their conversation. Poppy noticed the wild flowers growing at the edges of the black earth footpath – buttercups, daisies, ragwort, dandelions. Thistles were thriving too, growing tall in the warmth of the May sun and the recent rain, and it struck her how beautiful they were to look at, if not to touch.

‘Thank goodness we didn’t fall off into those thistles,’ she remarked. ‘We’d have been scratched to death.’

‘Or into nettles,’ Robert replied easily.

She nodded. ‘Oh, yes, I hate nettles.’

‘So do I.’

‘Do you like being an engineer, Robert?’

‘Actually, yes, I do.’ He turned to look at her face, always an entertaining mix of earnestness and gaiety. He was fascinated as well at how easily she could turn from one subject to another. ‘It’s interesting being an engineer. There’s something different to deal with all the time.’

‘What sort of things do you have to do?’

‘Oh, measuring and marking out, tracing plans, trying to calculate whether the spoil we take from a cutting will be sufficient to build an embankment. I’m handy with a pair of brass dividers, a blacklead and a straight-edge.’

‘I’ve often wondered,’ Poppy said, her face suddenly an icon of puzzlement, ‘if they start driving a tunnel from more than one place, how they manage to meet exactly in the middle.’

Robert laughed, fired with admiration for her curiosity. ‘By candles, usually,’ he replied.

‘Candles? How do you mean?’

‘Well, it’s dark inside a tunnel, Poppy. So what you do is to line up the centre line of the tunnel by exactly placing lighted candles at predetermined intervals. When you have three candles exactly in line as you match them up against the cross hairs on your theodolite, then you know your tunnel is straight – or level, if you’re taking levels.’

‘What about if there’s a bend in the tunnel?’

He laughed again, astonished at her grasp of engineering problems. ‘Before you start excavating a tunnel, you sink narrow shafts along the way,’ he explained. ‘These shafts would already have been pinpointed during a survey. The centres of those shafts meet the centre line of the tunnel perpendicularly and, if they’re not in direct line – in other words, if they form a bend – you follow the line they form. Do you understand?’

Poppy nodded and emitted a deep sigh. When Robert looked at her again, her expression was serious, almost grave.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, concerned. ‘Are you worrying about your father?’

‘Oh, no, I was just thinking how lovely it must be to be educated. To be clever enough to do all the things you do.’

‘Oh, I’m not particularly clever,’ he said modestly. ‘But having had a decent education enables me to earn a good living, I admit.’

‘I wish I was educated. It’d help me get away from the navvy life. If only I could read and write …’

‘Don’t you like the navvy life?’

‘Would you like it?’

‘Probably not,’ he admitted. ‘But I work with the navvies, such as your father. I find them agreeable enough, by and large – when they’re sober, anyway. Ask them to do a job, explain what you want, and they do it. They work like the devil, shifting hundreds, even thousands of tons of earth in no time. You must have watched an excavation and seen how, in only a few days, they can transform a landscape. They don’t mince their words either. If they have something to say, they say it. But living with them?… I imagine some of them are inclined to be uncouth.’

‘I don’t know what that word means, Robert – uncouth. I hope you’ll excuse my not having been educated.’

‘Uncouth?’ He smiled kindly. ‘It means rough, rude, barbarian.’

Poppy laughed. ‘Oh, yes. Most of them are uncouth … barbarian … See? I’ve learnt two new words a’ready. I do wish you could teach me more …’

‘I’m afraid that what I know is limited to engineering and surveying, and not much use to a young woman,’ he said realistically.

He turned to look at her, sympathy manifest in his eyes. This girl was not like the navvies to whom she belonged. She was apart from them, a cut above, bright – extremely bright – thirsting for an education which had eluded her, and thence for knowledge to lift her out of her humdrum existence. It was a worthy aspiration, too. If her life took the normal course one would anticipate of a navvy-born girl, she would be expected at her age, or even younger, to be the compliant bed partner of whichever buck navvy was first to claim her, if not of her own volition then either by buying her, or by fighting somebody else for her. It would be a sin if she were so treated and thus doomed for lack of education. She was worthy of so much better. Her self-respect raised her above the meagre expectations of navvy women. It was truly a wonder she had not already been claimed …

‘Where the hell d’you think you’ve been?’ Sheba angrily asked Poppy when she re-entered Rose Cottage. ‘Fancy sloping off when we was finishing off the dinners. Where’ve you been? You’ve been gone nearly an hour.’

Some of the navvies were still in the room, sitting at the round table, their legs sprawling, big boots seeming to take up most of the floor space. The place reeked with an unsavoury mixture of pipe tobacco smoke, beer, sweat, cooking and rotting vegetables.

‘I had to go out, Mom,’ Poppy replied quietly with a guilty look, turning away from the navvies so that they shouldn’t hear.

‘Had to?’

‘I promised to meet somebody. I couldn’t let them down.’

‘Bin a-courtin’, my wench?’ one of the men, called Waxy Boyle, asked through a mouthful of dumpling.

‘It’ll pay her not to have bin a-courtin’,’ Sheba railed. ‘Not when there’s work to be done. Who did you go and meet?’

Poppy blushed. Blushing was becoming a habit which she did not enjoy. ‘I’ll tell you after, not that it’s any of your business.’

‘I’ll give you none of my business, you cheeky faggot. Get your apron on and do some work, you bone-idle little harridan. Any road, I’ll get to know soon enough, whether or no it’s any of my business.’

‘I ain’t been courting, Mom,’ Poppy added defensively. She removed her bonnet and hung it up on the back of the door. ‘I ain’t courting nobody. I just went to meet somebody.’

‘A chap or a wench?’

‘I’m not saying.’

The assembled navvies laughed raucously. One of them said that it must be a chap, because she’d admit it if she’d only met a wench.

‘It’s time her had a chap,’ Tweedle Beak said to Sheba as he cut a slice of tobacco with his pocketknife from a stick of twist. ‘A fine-lookin’ wench like young Poppy. By the living jingo, I wish I was ten or fifteen years younger.’

‘She can have a chap – I couldn’t give tuppence who he was – and he’d be welcome to her,’ Sheba replied. ‘But when she’s supposed to be helping me she’ll stay here and work.’ She turned to Poppy. ‘So get cracking, and knuckle down to it.’

Two more weeks passed and Lightning Jack had not returned. In that time, Chimdey Charlie, whom Jericho had fought and beaten over a pillow that wet and muddy night, had sloped off, owing money to Ma Catchpole for his lodgings. Many speculated that he must have left feeling ashamed at being belittled by Jericho in front of his mates. Ashamed or not, he obviously felt vengeful, because he took with him the pillow he had lost to Jericho. Jericho, however, had gained much respect from winning that fight. Few men were prepared to challenge him, having seen the ruthless efficiency and strength with which he had quickly overcome and downed Chimdey Charlie.

Jericho had not bothered Poppy since, either. She noticed his ignoring her, but she was steeped in thoughts of Robert Crawford. It did seem odd, though, that Jericho should suddenly fail to pay her any attention at all after the fuss he made over her at first. Evidently he was just another of the faithless type she’d heard about, the type that blows hot and cold, fickle, unpredictable. For all that, she was a little intrigued. How could somebody show such an obvious interest one day, then turn away from her the next? Maybe she had expressed a little too strongly that she was not like the other girls he’d met, that she was not easy meat. Yet he’d said he rose to such a challenge. Well, he hadn’t risen to this one – and thank goodness.

Another person who had not been near Poppy, although he had not been entirely avoiding her, was Robert Crawford. Actually, he found her totally disarming, which began to worry him seriously. He was torn between leaving her be, because of her lowly upbringing and complete lack of any station in life, and the desire to gaze upon her striking countenance once more. If he could find a plausible excuse to see her again he would. He had considered offering her some help in overcoming the same lowliness that was manifestly dividing them. But how could he help? It would hardly be seemly to give her money, even if he could afford it. He could hardly whisk her away from the encampment and set her up in a lodging house without the world accusing him of keeping a very young mistress, when that was not his intention. Such an accusation would not do his situation any good at all, with all the responsibilities it entailed.

So he didn’t go out of his way to see Poppy. He lacked the excuse. In any case, he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea and think he harboured a romantic interest. How could he possibly be interested in the illegitimate daughter of some navvy who’d had to flee the site to avoid prosecution and likely transportation? Just because her face was angelically beautiful and he couldn’t keep his eyes off her … Just because there was this undeniable grace and elegance behind the rags and tatters and hideous clogs that she wore … He would be a laughing stock. All the same, it was a great sin that that same undeniable grace and elegance would never have the chance to surface and decorate the world. It was a greater sin that her natural intelligence would never have the opportunity to shine through. Could it not be nurtured somehow and put to good use, at least for the benefit of the navvy community, if not for society in general?

If only he could devise some way of helping her without compromising either of them. She was worthy of help, that Poppy Silk. She deserved better than the unremitting mediocrity of the life she led. She warranted something more uplifting than constant exposure to the crushing, unrestrainable coarseness and brutality of the navvies’ encampment to which she was shackled. But what? How could he, a mere engineer, possibly help her?

And then he had an idea.

On the first Saturday of June, as it was approaching yo-ho – the time when navvies finished their work – Sheba and Poppy were sweating over the copper. Lottie and Rose, Sheba’s younger daughters, were outside in the sunshine. Her son, Little Lightning, was still at work. Each man’s dinner was wrapped in a linen cloth and boiled in the copper, tied to a stick from which it hung. Because the women could not read, each stick bore identifying notches. If a stick had five notches cut into it, it belonged to Tweedle Beak. If it had three notches it was Waxy Boyle’s, and so on.

They chatted as they worked, speculating on how much Crabface Lijah had paid for his bit of beef and a few spuds, how much Brummagem Joe’s lamb shank had cost, which he was intending having with a cabbage that was also netted in the copper.

Poppy looked up at the clock over the outside door and saw that it was five minutes to one. ‘I expect we shall be trampled underfoot in a few minutes,’ she said, anticipating the hungry navvies.

‘Here,’ said Sheba. ‘Have this key and unlock the barrel ready. They’ll be red mad for their beer as well.’

Poppy took the key and unlocked the barrel. No sooner had she done it than the door opened and Tweedle Beak stepped inside, carrying a dead rabbit.

‘Cop ote o’ this and skin and gut it, young Poppy, wut? I’ll have it for me dinner with a few taters. And doh forget to tek the yed off.’

Poppy looked at the sad, limp thing with distaste. Drawing and skinning dead animals was not her favourite pastime, but she took it from Tweedle and dropped it into the stone sink.

‘All right if I help meself to a jar o’ beer?’ Tweedle enquired.

‘So long as you give me the money first,’ Poppy replied.

He lifted a mug from a hook that was screwed into a beam above his head and began to fill it from the barrel. ‘Yo’ll have yer money, have no fear. I’ll tot up how many I’n had and pay your mother after. Eh, Sheba?’

Sheba turned around from her copper. ‘I’d rather I totted it up meself.’

‘Never let yer down yet, have I?’

‘No. You’m one of the decent ones, Tweedle. Any road, the first time you don’t pay will be the last.’

Tweedle uttered a rumble of laughter. ‘Yo’m a fine, spirited wench and no two ways, Sheba,’ he said, stepping up to her from the barrel and slapping her backside. ‘And yo’ve got a fine arse an’ all, eh?’

‘My arse is my own business,’ Sheba proclaimed, feigning indignation at his familiarity. ‘So just you keep your hands to yourself.’

Poppy noticed with surprise that her mother had blushed, and pondered its significance. Tweedle laughed again, and the facial movement seemed to make his long nose even more pointed.

He swigged at his beer eagerly then looked over to Poppy. ‘Hast skinned me bit o’ rabbit yet?’

Poppy said that she had, and reached for a chopper that was hanging on a nail, to sever its head. Already, there was blood and entrails on her hands.

Tweedle refilled his mug. ‘Yo’m a decent wench an’ all, young Poppy …’Cept for yer damned cheek,’ he said with a matey grin.

Poppy placed the skinned rabbit on the wooden table and hacked its head off. Then she picked up the head and threw it into a pail that was standing on the floor beside her to collect the rest of the kitchen debris. She drew the innards like an experienced butcher and cleaned inside the carcass while Tweedle watched.

‘Yo’d mek somebody a lovely wife, young Poppy, and that’s the truth. Her’s got the mekins, Sheba, wouldn’t yer say?’

‘Oh, she’s got the makings and no two ways.’

‘Her’d be a heap of fun in bed an’ all, I’ll wager. Bist thou a-courtin’ yet, Poppy?’

‘No.’

‘Has nobody tried to bed thee? Nobody fought over thee?’

‘No.’ She looked up at Tweedle with a steady gaze that belied her years, to add emphasis to her response.

‘What a mortal bloody waste—’

There was a knock on the door and it opened. Dandy Punch, the timekeeper, thrust his head round the jamb. ‘Rent day,’ he called officiously. ‘Have you got some money for me this week, Sheba?’

Sheba had not been looking forward to this visit. Resignedly, she dried her hands on her apron and went to the door. ‘You can come inside if you want to.’

Dandy Punch stepped inside. At once his eyes fell on Poppy, who was wrapping the skinned rabbit in the linen, ready to hang it in the copper with Tweedle Beak’s potatoes.

‘It’s three weeks since Lightning Jack sloped off,’ Dandy Punch said. ‘Now you owe rent to the company for five weeks. Unless you pay me today, Sheba, I have to tell you you’m to be evicted.’

Evicted … Sheba sighed heavily, well aware that if she was evicted she would have no alternative but to go on tramp, taking her children with her. They would have to sleep rough under the stars. If they failed to locate Lightning Jack – a likely situation – they would be picked up in some town or village as vagrants and shipped off to the nearest workhouse. Almost certainly she would be separated from her children, and they would all have to wear workhouse clothes to set them apart from everybody else. But this was what it had come to, and she could not afford to wait for Lightning any longer. Why hadn’t he come back? Didn’t he realise the predicament his absence would put her in?

‘Your young son earns money, don’t he?’ Dandy Punch said. ‘Can’t you pay me what you owe with that?’

‘What he earns don’t keep us in victuals, let alone rent,’ Sheba said ruefully.

‘Well, there’s the money you get from selling the beer …’

‘The beer has to be paid for. They don’t dole it out to us out of the kindness of their hearts.’

‘But you make a profit on it.’

‘Otherwise there’d be no point in selling it,’ Sheba agreed. ‘But ’tis a small profit, and not enough to keep us. Besides meself and the one who’s at work, I got four children to keep.’

‘The other problem you got, Sheba, is that with Lightning Jack gone, you got no entitlement to stop in this hut. Lightning Jack was the tenant, and only somebody employed by the company is entitled to a tenancy. He ain’t a company employee any more, Sheba. And neither are you.’

Sheba sighed, and Poppy looked on with heartfelt dismay at her mother’s impossible situation.

‘What about my son, Little Lightning?’ Sheba suggested. ‘Couldn’t he be the tenant?’

‘Is he twenty-one?’

Sheba shook her head ruefully. ‘He’s twelve …’

‘Then there’s no alternative. Eviction’s the only answer. It’s a problem you’ll have to face, Sheba … Unless …’ His eyes met hers intently and Sheba could tell he had a proposition to make.

‘Unless what, Dandy Punch?’ She looked at him with renewed hope.

‘Unless I can have your daughter …’

‘Me daughter?’ Sheba looked at him in bewilderment. ‘What do you mean exactly?’

‘Let me have your daughter and I’ll pay off the rent you owe. And I’ll let you stop in the hut till Lightning comes back. He’ll have to pay the rent he starts owing from this week, though.’

Sheba was still bewildered by the offer. ‘What do you mean exactly, when you say you want me daughter?’

Dandy Punch scoffed at her apparent naivety. ‘You don’t strike me as being that daft, Sheba. I want her for me woman. I want her to keep me bed warm.’

‘I ain’t going with him,’ Poppy shrieked in panic from the stone sink where she was scraping potatoes. ‘Don’t let him, Mom. I’d rather go on tramp. I’d rather end up in the workhouse.’

‘But, Poppy, it’d mean we could stop here, me and the kids, till your daddy came home,’ Sheba reasoned. ‘I wouldn’t have the worry o’ going on tramp and missing him coming the other way. We might never see him again. We could end up in the workhouse.’

‘No, I won’t,’ Poppy insisted. ‘I’d rather go in the workhouse. I’d rather die.’ The thought of Dandy Punch mauling her in his stinking bed and slobbering all over her filled Poppy with a sickening revulsion. ‘And you should be ashamed, Mother – prepared to let me go to him just to save yourself.’

Sheba quickly weighed up her daughter’s comments. She caught the eyes of Dandy Punch and could not resist a defiant smile. ‘She’s right, you know. I should be ashamed. I don’t think she fancies you that much, by the sound of it, Dandy Punch. I ain’t got the right to sacrifice her. She’s got notions of her own.’

Dandy Punch looked somewhat embarrassed. ‘Well, it’s your last chance,’ he said, trying to recover his composure. ‘And if your daughter can’t see the benefit to her as well as to yourself, then she needs a good talking to, and a clip round the ear to boot, for being so stupid.’

‘Oh, I don’t think she’s stupid,’ Sheba said. ‘Just particular.’

‘In that case …’ He coughed importantly in an effort to redeem some of his ebbing prestige. ‘In that case, I’ll be along this afternoon with the bailiffs—’

‘Hang on, Dandy bloody Punch …’ Tweedle Beak spoke. He arose from his chair and walked over to Sheba’s side. ‘I’m glad as I waited and listened, and watched you mek a bloody fool o’ yerself, Dandy Punch, lusting after this innocent young wench here. D’yer really think as a young madam like that is likely to be enticed by some dirty, pot-bellied ode bugger like thee? An’ any road, I’m an employee o’ the company and there’s nothing in the rules what says as I cor be the tenant, if I’ve a mind.’ He felt in his trouser pocket and drew out a handful of gold sovereigns which he handed to the timekeeper. ‘Pick the bones out o’ that lot and gi’ me the change I’m due. I pay the rent here from now on. I’m the tenant in this hut, so write my name in your blasted book … And Sheba here is my woman, if anybody wants to know.’ He put his arm around her shoulders proprietorially. ‘Does anybody say different?’

Tweedle Beak looked at Sheba and their eyes met. It seemed to Poppy that her mother’s silence was consent enough.

Poppy went out that afternoon. She avoided Dudley town and its hordes of people; she avoided The Wheatsheaf with its navvies on their Saturday afternoon randy. She wanted to be alone, to think over just what her mother had let herself in for. Deep in thought, she headed towards Cinder Bank, walking the route she and Robert Crawford had taken on their ride. The hot June sun was on her face, but it did not warm her. She sat on a stile and, with her head in her hands, pondered the prospect of lying in the bed next to her mother and hook-nosed Tweedle Beak. For, despite her tender years, Poppy was canny enough to realise that Tweedle had not done what he had done out of charity; he would claim his rights over her mother that night. Sheba must have known, too. She must have been well aware. Poppy tried not to think about the grunting antics that would be performed with a vengeance as Tweedle drunkenly asserted his manhood and his possession of her mother, but mental images of them invaded her mind. The disturbing reality would arrive soon enough.

She reached out and snatched a stalk of twitch grass. Absently, she split the stem with her fingernail and felt the moist sap oozing between her finger and thumb. Poppy had imagined that her mother was grieving over the absent Lightning Jack, but perhaps she wasn’t. Perhaps she, too, was just yet another woman of easy virtue. Perhaps even she was hungry for a man by this time. Poppy’s respect for her mother was under siege. What sort of example was the woman setting? Would it be easy for her to submit so readily to such a man? Was virtue so easily corrupted? Was Sheba really so corruptible that she could rashly sell her own body to Tweedle Beak for the price of a few weeks’ rent, and Lightning Jack due back at any moment? Poppy was confusing herself with all these questions which she could not answer. Maybe Sheba had sacrificed herself to protect her from the clutches of Dandy Punch.

Her thoughts turned to Minnie. Minnie was easy; her skirt would be up in a trice for no more than a manly smile and a glass of beer. Why were some women like that? Why did they lack self-respect? Why did they cheapen themselves so? It made no sense. They were no better than the men. They were just as bad, just as depraved.

It then occurred to Poppy that maybe her father wasn’t coming back. Maybe he’d used the threatened appearance before the beak and the prospect of transportation as an excuse to get away from a woman he’d been itching to leave for some time. Maybe his promise to return was just empty words. Maybe he’d already found a woman before he left and had sloped off with her. Men did that sort of thing. Maybe Sheba realised it. Even Poppy had known of several who had absconded, never to be heard of again.

So Lightning Jack could surely expect no better from Sheba. He knew the system. He was aware Sheba could not remain in a hut without him. He must also have known her sexual appetite; after all, she was not particularly old – only thirty-one – even though she looked older. Lightning must have known that some other hungry, healthy navvy would seize the opportunity to bed his woman in his absence. The trouble was, his absence suggested he did not care.

Chapter 6

After an hour or so of trying to make sense of this latest disturbing conundrum, Poppy ambled dejectedly back to the conglomeration of miserable huts that were a blight, even on the ravaged, slag-heaped, chimney-bestrewn landscape around Blowers Green. The sun was hiding behind a bank of grey clouds, depriving the scene even of the joy of colour. As she entered the compound, hungry, for she had not felt like eating after what had occurred, she caught sight of Robert Crawford’s boneshaker leaning against the side of the hut that the foremen used as an office. She turned away, disappointed with Robert over his failure to seek her out after their dinner-time ride, which seemed ages ago. He must be avoiding her, so why give him the satisfaction of thinking that she wanted to see him?

But as she was about to enter her own hut, he came out of the foremen’s and espied her. He called her name and she lost her resolve. His smile, to her delight, did not give the impression that he was sorry to see her – rather that he was decidedly pleased to. They walked towards each other, her smiling eyes glued on his, and they met in the open space at the centre of the encampment.

‘Poppy, how grand to see you,’ Robert greeted. He was wearing his usual top hat and frock coat, and his watch chain hung impressively across his waistcoat. ‘Have you heard from your father yet?’

Poppy shook her head, saddened to be reminded. ‘No, Robert, and I’ve got the feeling he ain’t coming back.’

‘Oh? Why on earth would you think that?’

‘Well, ’cause he ain’t shown up yet. He’s had plenty time now.’

‘But I’m certain he will, Poppy,’ he said, trying intently to reassure her. ‘Any number of things might have conspired to delay him. Maybe he’s found lucrative employment and wants to make the most of it.’

‘Lucrative?’ she queried wearily. ‘You don’t half use some funny words, Robert.’

He smiled his apology, feeling mildly chastised for using words that he should have realised were beyond her knowledge. ‘It means well-paid, gainful.’

‘Gainful or not, he ain’t come back.’

‘Maybe he’ll send for you soon.’

‘Well, it won’t be soon enough,’ Poppy said wistfully. ‘He’s too late already.’

‘Too late? What do you mean?’

Poppy shook her head and averted her eyes. ‘Oh, nothing …’ She felt too ashamed to tell him what had transpired between her mother and Tweedle Beak and the certain consequences of it.

‘You must miss him, Poppy,’ Robert said kindly.

She nodded and tried to push back tears that were welling up in her eyes. ‘Yes, I miss him, Robert. I love him.’

‘There, there …’ He took her hand in consolation but held it discreetly at her side, so that such intimate contact was hidden from view by the folds of her skirt. ‘Please don’t cry, Poppy. I have such a vivid recollection of you laughing and being so happy that I can’t bear to see you crying with sadness.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ She sighed and wiped an errant tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. She forced a smile and Robert gazed into her watery eyes.

‘You have such a lovely smile,’ he said sincerely. He squeezed her hand before he let go of it. ‘Your smile is your fortune, believe me. I remember how you flashed me a smile the very first time I saw you. I asked myself then, why was I so rewarded with such a lovely smile when I was accompanying such an unpleasant policeman on such a thoroughly unpleasant task?’

‘Oh, I could tell you wasn’t like the bobby,’ Poppy said. ‘Besides, you had the good manners to take your hat off when you came in our hut. Even I know it’s good manners for a man to doff his hat in somebody’s house.’

‘I’m happy that it pleased you … that you even noticed.’

‘There’s not much I miss, Robert …’

He laughed at that. ‘And I believe you. But I’m glad I’ve seen you, Poppy. I’ve been meaning to seek you out. There’s something I wanted to suggest …’

‘What?’ she asked, and felt her heart beating faster.

‘Well … Last time we met, you told me that you regret not having had the opportunity of an education …’

‘It’s true,’ she agreed, puzzled.

‘Well … Poppy …’ He fidgeted uneasily, not sure how to word what he wanted to say without her reading into it more than he meant. And then he found the simple words. ‘How would you react, if I offered to give you lessons in reading and writing?’

‘In reading and writing?’ she repeated incredulously, surprise manifest in her face.

‘Yes. I think I could easily teach you to read and write. If you wanted to, that is.’

Her tears were quickly forgotten and she chuckled with delight at the thought. ‘Robert, I don’t know what to say, honest I don’t … D’you really mean it? I mean, d’you know what you’re letting yourself in for? I mean, what if I’m too stupid?’

He laughed dismissively at that, partly because he was amused that she should harbour such an absurd notion, partly because he wished to disguise this illogical lack of poise he sometimes felt when he was with her, even though she was way below his station. ‘Oh, you’re very bright, Poppy,’ he reassured her. ‘You’d learn very quickly. So what do you say? Do you agree?’

‘Oh, yes, I agree, Robert. And thank you. There’s nothing I’d like more. But when would we start?’

‘Well, why don’t we start tomorrow?’

‘That soon?’

‘Yes, why not? Can you meet me tomorrow?’

‘When I’m through with me work. But where would we go?’

‘Ah! I haven’t quite worked that out yet. But if you could meet me somewhere, we could find a quiet spot where I could first teach you your alphabet.’

Poppy looked up at the sky unsurely. ‘Even if it’s raining?’

‘Yes. Even if it’s raining.’

‘So where should I meet you?’

‘Perhaps as far away from this encampment as possible,’ he suggested. ‘To protect your reputation, of course.’

‘My reputation?’ she scoffed. ‘Yours, more like.’

He was not surprised by the astuteness of her remark, but he let it go. ‘Do you know the ruins of the Old Priory?’

Poppy shook her head.

‘Do you know St Edmund’s church at the far end of the town, past the town hall and the market?’

She nodded.

‘Meet me there.’

‘All right. Will three o’clock be all right?’

‘Three o’clock will be fine.’

Poppy smiled excitedly. ‘I’ll bring a writing pad and a blacklead.’

That encounter, and the prospect of another meeting tomorrow, lifted Poppy from her depression. She felt honoured that Robert Crawford was prepared to spend time with her, teaching her to become literate. Did it mean he was interested in her, that he wanted to woo her? The possibility excited her. He must like her, anyway. That much was obvious. Else he wouldn’t have offered to do it. Now, she had to scrounge some money from her mother again, to enable her to go into Dudley to buy a writing pad and her own blacklead.

Some of the black spoil that had been excavated from the Dudley Tunnel at the northern end had been deposited over an area known as Porter’s Field. The sloping elevation that ensued, having been duly compacted, was considered a suitable site for a fair. That Saturday evening in June, Minnie Catchpole decided that the fair that was being held there might provide her and Poppy Silk with some interesting diversions while Dog Meat and his new friend Jericho proceeded to get drunk.

The two girls entered the fair, looked about them excitedly and drank in the lively atmosphere. Traders had set out their stalls on both sides of the broad corridor of the entrance, and misspelled notices advertised their wares. Everything was available, from the finest leather saddlery and boots, through chamber pots, to sealing wax. An apothecary was telling a crowd around him about the benefits of using his balsam of horehound and aniseed for the treatment of coughs and colds, and of Atkinson’s Infants’ Preservative, recommended for those children liable to diarrhoea or looseness of the bowels, flatulence and wind. A herbalist was evidently doing good business in blood mixtures, sarsaparilla compound, piles ointments, healing salve, toothache cure, pills for gout and diuretic pills. A little further on, if you were hungry, you could enjoy a bowl of groaty pudding for tuppence, made from kiln-dried oats, shin of beef and leeks. If that didn’t suit, liver faggots and grey peas were a tasty alternative, as was the bread pudding known as ‘fill-bally’, made from stale bread, suet and eggs, and sweetened with brown sugar and dried fruit.

Poppy’s curiosity inclined her to spend a halfpenny to see a woman who was supposed to be the fattest woman on earth, until a miner emerged from the tent and declared, ‘There’s one a sight fatter ’n ’er up Kates Hill.’ Elsewhere, a man was grinding a barrel organ; his monkey, on a long lead, was jumping from one person to another collecting small change in a tin mug. A crowd had gathered around a stall where they were invited to part with money to ‘find the lady’. Poppy was astounded that she herself never got it right, confident that she had followed the card diligently as it was switched from one place to another in an effort to confound.

In a large tent a company of actors was performing, and not far from that stood a beer booth around which men were gathered in various states of inebriation. A couple of young men in rough clothing called to Poppy and Minnie to join them and, predictably, Minnie couldn’t help but be drawn. Poppy had little alternative but to follow. These lads were the worse for drink, but Minnie played up to them and they plied both girls with a mug of beer each. Poppy, to Minnie’s eternal frustration, was reticent about getting too involved, but Minnie showed no such inhibitions as she willingly accepted another mug of beer and giggled at their lewdness.

Inevitably, Poppy was showing little interest in the attention and bawdy suggestions from the lad with whom she seemed to be stuck. She was not impressed with anybody who did not recognise the folly of getting too drunk and, besides, her earlier meeting with Robert Crawford was still fresh in her mind. Compared to Robert Crawford, this buffoon, who remained doggedly at her side as she was trying to make her escape, was as nothing.

‘Come with me over the fields,’ he slurred, unwilling to concede defeat.

‘I don’t want to,’ Poppy replied earnestly, looking behind to check whether Minnie was following.

‘But I bought yer a mug o’ beer.’

‘It don’t mean you bought me.’

‘Oh? Come more expensive than that, do yer?’

Poppy remained sullenly silent, wishing fervently that the young man would go away.

‘Got a bob on yerself, ain’t yer, for a navvy’s wench?’ he said scornfully.

‘What makes you think you’re any better than me?’ she asked, indignant at his insinuation.

‘What’s up wi’ yer?’ he goaded. ‘Yer mate’s game. Come on, let’s goo over the fields an’ have some fun.’

Thinking that intimate bodily contact might render him irresistible, he put his arm around her waist and drew her to him. When Poppy wriggled in an effort to get away, he held on to her tightly, causing her to wriggle more.

‘Leave me be,’ she said angrily.

‘Poppy! Is this chap bothering you?’ To Poppy’s utter surprise, it was Jericho who spoke.

‘Jericho! Where did you spring from?’

‘Me and Dog Meat just got here. I watched you walking down here. Is this chap bothering you?’

‘Why do chaps always think you’re keen to go off with them?’ she complained.

Even as she spoke, Jericho had the young man by the lapels of his jacket and flung him to the floor. He dived on him, hurling abuse, fists flying, while the poor victim tried in vain to protect his face from Jericho’s vicious blows. Soon, a crowd gathered round and their vocal encouragement added fuel to Jericho’s ardour. There was nothing better than a fight to inflame the passions of a crowd, especially when most had been drinking. To his credit, Dog Meat could see which way this fight was going and, fearing a murder, he grabbed hold of Jericho and managed to pull him away.

‘You’ll kill the little bastard.’

‘That’s what I’m trying to do,’ Jericho rasped, resisting Dog Meat’s restraining hold.

‘No! You’ve hurt him enough. Use your brains. Leave him be. Leave him be.’

Jericho calmed down and the youth, with a swollen eye and his face smeared with blood, struggled to his feet and slipped into the crowd, out of reach. ‘Next time, I’ll marmalise yer,’ Jericho yelled, shaking his fists. He turned to Poppy, who had turned pale with apprehension. ‘Are you all right, my pet?’

‘You didn’t have to hurt the poor chap like that,’ Poppy responded. ‘I could’ve handled him all right.’

‘Jesus! Is that all the thanks I get? I could see you was trying to get away from him. I could see he was being a bloody pest. Who knows what might have happened? You should be grateful I was there.’

Poppy smiled reservedly, unsure how to react to Jericho’s violent gallantry.

Minnie appeared, having seen the wisdom in breaking free of the lad she had been promising so much to. She smiled at Dog Meat and took his arm. ‘I’m glad you come, Dog Meat,’ she cooed. ‘We was just going to the Grin and Bear It to find you, till that chap tried to get Poppy. But you can buy us a drink here, if you’ve a mind.’

‘Nah,’ Dog Meat replied. ‘If that chap fetches a bobby we could be in trouble. Let’s clear off and have a drink somewhere else. There’s plenty places.’

So the foursome left the fair. Dog Meat and Minnie walked arm-in-arm, with Poppy and Jericho behind. They stopped at a public house called The Woolpack in the town and drank outside in the warm summer evening air till closing time. Jericho was successful in occupying Poppy entirely and she told him of her father and how he had been forced by circumstances to leave the encampment. Jericho listened attentively and uttered sympathetic comments.

‘And now if he comes back Lord knows what will happen,’ Poppy said.

‘Oh?’ Jericho queried. ‘What makes you say so?’

‘Oh, because Tweedle Beak has wormed his way into my mother’s bed.’ She saw no harm in mentioning it. He would know tomorrow anyhow, when the wheels of encampment gossip began turning. And besides, she felt the need to talk to somebody, to get it off her chest and gain another opinion.

‘’Tis nothing out o’ the ordinary,’ Jericho said consolingly. ‘’Tis likely anyhow that Lightning Jack has bunked up with some woman, wherever ’tis he’s got to.’

‘But he’s my dad,’ Poppy argued. ‘And I don’t like the thought of him being done the dirty on. Oh, I know me mother was worried about being turned out and having to go on tramp, but I would’ve rather gone on tramp if I’d been her. I wouldn’t have sold meself for the price of a few weeks’ rent, ’specially to the likes of hook-nosed Tweedle Beak. I don’t admire what she’s done, Jericho.’

‘Well, like as not, they ain’t been to bed yet, eh? Like as not, Tweedle Beak’s still swilling beer down his throat.’

‘Like as not,’ Poppy agreed. ‘But when he gets back, my mother’s gunna be lying with him.’ She shuddered at the thought.

‘Jesus, you’re a sensitive soul, Poppy,’ Jericho said. ‘I ain’t never knowed anybody like you afore.’

She smiled up at him. ‘I told you that already. I told you I ain’t like the others.’

‘Nor you ain’t. But what does it matter? Life’s life. Men are men and women are women, and they’ll never be no different.’

‘I don’t know what it is.’ She shrugged and sipped her beer. ‘Maybe it’s ’cause I see too many women giving themselves to men who ain’t worthy to lick their boots. And what do they get for their trouble? A belly full of babby that they’ve got no alternative but to rear. And do the men care? No. The more babbies, the better. “Keep the women babbied,” they say. It keeps ’em out of harm’s way, and shows their mates how fertile they are. Men are like kids, Jericho. I never met one yet who’s grown up … Save for one, maybe …’

‘You mean me?’ he said.

She smiled but didn’t answer him.

‘Oh, you mean that engineer chap who you’m took with?’

‘I never said as I’m took with him … Any road, he ain’t ever likely to be took with me, is he? A navvy’s daughter?’

‘But you like him …’

She shrugged. ‘What girl wouldn’t? He’s a gentleman, good and proper. He’s got good manners and he’s polite. There’s nothing wrong with that.’

‘What’s polite? In this world you gotta take what you want while it’s going, and never mind being polite. When folks are polite to me, I might start being polite to them. But there ain’t much fear on’t.’

‘I hope you’ll always be polite to me, Jericho,’ she said earnestly.

Jericho guffawed. ‘Oh, you don’t half fancy yourself as the lady … I’ll treat you like a woman, Poppy, and no different. Either way, I’ll bed you. And when I do, you won’t be putting on airs and graces …’

Minnie was only half listening to what Dog Meat was saying. She was standing a couple of yards from Poppy and Jericho and she had an ear cocked towards them, trying to catch their conversation. She was feeling peeved that Jericho seemed absorbed in Poppy. Minnie’s face, to anybody who could read it, manifested her jealousy.

After they had left The Woolpack, the four made their way back to the encampment. Jericho continued to monopolise Poppy and walked with his arm around her waist, to Minnie’s annoyance. Drink had made him talkative and Poppy even found him amusing.

‘Am yer comin’ in with us now, Jericho?’ Minnie asked as they stopped close to Rose Cottage, anxious to part him and Poppy before it was too late. They had been far too friendly for her liking.

‘In a bit,’ Jericho replied. ‘When I’ve said goodnight to Poppy.’

‘We’ll wait, if you like.’

‘He don’t want us to wait,’ Dog Meat scoffed. ‘He wants his ten minutes wi’ Poppy. Come on, let’s have you in bed.’

Minnie turned away sullenly and went with Dog Meat.

‘I ’spect you don’t wanna go in yet,’ Jericho suggested. ‘On account o’ Tweedle Beak and your mother, I mean.’

Poppy sighed. ‘What if I do and they’re … you know?’

‘Then don’t go in. Come and sleep with me at Hawthorn Villa.’

‘I’m not sleeping with you.’

‘You will sooner or later. Why not now? The offer’s there … Come a little walk wi’ me then, eh? To pass the time.’

Rather than go into Rose Cottage too soon, Poppy felt it was better to take advantage of Jericho’s company and let him keep her out late. She did not want to be faced with the awful truth of her mother and Tweedle Beak cavorting in bed. It was inevitable, of course it was, but she wanted to delay for as long as possible the dreadful, disgusting moment when she would have to witness it. If luck was with her, she would be able to keep Jericho at bay and return home between Sheba’s and Tweedle’s unspeakable love sessions … and fall asleep before they recommenced. As they started walking again, Jericho reached for her hand and she gave it compliantly.

A three-quarter moon emerged from behind clouds of smoke that issued out of the clutter of chimney stacks, and lent an eerie silver glow to the unnatural landscape. Then all at once the sky glowed red and angry, reflecting the blaze and searing heat from furnaces spewing out white-hot iron, and from cupolas vomiting flame. Set against this bloodshot firmament, those same chimney stacks stood out stark and black, like sentries guarding the headgear of the adjacent coal pits, whose turning cranks and wheels rumbled and clanked, while the steam engines that powered them hissed and sighed in their endless toil. The air was filled too with the penetrating roar of blast furnaces, a sound which was constant, however distant.

Jericho led Poppy down the path towards Cinder Bank, the same path she had ridden along as a passenger on Robert Crawford’s two-wheeled bone-judderer. Poppy thought about Robert, and wondered what he was doing at that very minute. She had no idea of the time; perhaps he was asleep in bed, perhaps he was reading a book on engineering.

Reading … Oh, soon, she would be able to read … but not soon enough.

They stopped walking when they reached the bridge under the railway, and Jericho pressed her against the wall.

‘I don’t half fancy you, Poppy,’ he whispered. ‘I want you to be my wench.’

‘I don’t want to be anybody’s wench, Jericho.’

‘I’ll make you change your mind,’ he murmured. ‘Just give us a kiss.’

She felt obliged to let him, since he had saved her from that overbearing lad at the fair and had seemed sympathetic to her anxiety over her mother. She tilted her head back and tentatively offered her lips. Jericho was upon her like a hog at a sweetmeat and Poppy did not particularly enjoy the experience. His kiss was too wet, his lips slack and slavering through too much alcohol, and his rough tongue, which she imagined as some unutterable, eyeless water vole crazy for entry, invaded her mouth. Without wanting to seem too ungrateful, she tolerated it for a second or two, then had to break off, turning her face away.

‘Don’t you like the way I kiss?’ Jericho asked.

‘It’s not that …’

‘What then?’

‘It’s as if you’re trying to rush me into something, Jericho. I don’t want to rush into anything,’ she said beseechingly. ‘Not with anybody. You’ll just have to give me time …’

‘Time?’ he scoffed. ‘I ain’t got time. I might be dead tomorrow. You know how many men get killed digging cuttings and blowing tunnels. What about if some bastard knocks the legs too soon from under an overhang and a hundred ton of earth and rocks come tumbling down on me and bury me? What then? No, I ain’t got time, Poppy. Don’t ask for time. I want you now.’

He bent his head to kiss her again and she allowed it. Certain that she had submitted, he put his hands to her backside and began hitching up her skirt. At once, she pulled away from him.

‘No, Jericho! Please have some respect for me. You have to respect my feelings.’

‘Respect you?’ he gibed. ‘Bugger me, Poppy, anybody’d think you was that Lady Ward, whose husband owns the Pensnett Railway back there – him as has got the ironworks and the collieries all over the place …’

‘I need time, Jericho,’ she pleaded. ‘Let me get used to the idea first.’ Thoughts of Robert Crawford and her meeting with him tomorrow were more important. What if he wanted her to be his girl? She had to stall Jericho, even though she knew that he was stronger than her and could easily take her by force if he felt so inclined. ‘I need to know you better before I can do what you want.’ She took his hand gently, gambling that she could ensure her safe conduct by seeming helpless; humouring him and promising him all in the future, but delivering nothing. ‘It could be worth the wait, Jericho,’ she whispered tantalisingly, as she led him away. ‘I just ain’t ready yet …’

‘Ain’t you ever been with anybody afore?’

‘No. Never.’

‘Bloody hell … You’re a virgin …’

‘Course I am. Come on, Jericho. Take me back to the encampment.’

‘But what about your mother and Tweedle Beak?’

‘I think I can cope with that now,’ she said, with an assurance she certainly did not feel.

Chapter 7

Poppy waited beneath the old red-brick tower of St Edmund’s church, scanning Castle Street for signs of Robert Crawford and his boneshaker, her head full of the events of last night. Jericho and his amorous advances had set her thinking more about him. There were things about him she liked, but also things she didn’t. She liked his sympathetic nature, and the fact that he was easy to talk to; he had a lusty sort of charm and she could understand why he’d had success with girls. What she didn’t like was his heavy drinking and the readiness for violence manifested in his fighting, which suggested a short temper and instability. Neither did she like his kisses, but maybe she could get him to alter how he kissed if she became his wench.

A string of children all holding hands and dressed in their Sunday best were being shepherded to Sunday school. Some of them looked with curiosity at Poppy, but she smiled back at their innocent faces and stood back to let them pass.

When Poppy had returned to the hut last night all was quiet, but her mother and Tweedle Beak woke her twice with their vigorous antics in that squeaky bed they were now sharing. Poppy had tried her usual trick of pulling her pillow over her head, but she had not been able to shut out the shaking of her own bed, transmitted from theirs. Maybe when the novelty had worn off a bit she might get an undisturbed night’s sleep, but the Lord knew how long that might be.

There was also Robert, of course. Oh, she liked him more than anybody, but she realised she was wasting her time and emotions if she thought he was going to stoop to her level. Yet of all the men she had come into contact with in her limited social world, he was the one with whom she felt she had a true bond. They did not know each other that well, but there was an undeniable rapport, an understanding between them. As yet it remained unspoken – maybe it always would – but it existed. Perhaps it was best left unspoken; the consequences of acknowledging it might present too many insurmountable difficulties, as well as a broken heart.

She scanned Castle Street again and saw him. Today he was without his two-wheeled contraption. He walked towards her with a smile on his face, as usual, and her heart flipped over in a somersault.

‘Have you been waiting long?’ he asked, looking her up and down.

‘No, I only just got here. I got my paper and blacklead, look.’

‘Excellent.’

He tried to hide his disenchantment with her red flannel frock. Not only was it a mighty step down from the pinnacle of fashion and inelegant, but it did not fit her particularly well. It was too big at the waist and the bodice rendered her chest shapeless and ambiguous. It was also too short and revealed the ungainly clogs and rough stockings that clearly signalled her background for all to see. She looked infinitely better in those plain working frocks; at least they fitted her, gave some form to her young figure, which he knew to be alluring enough. Why had he now put himself in a position where he would be seen accompanying this uncultured wench, who to any bystander would appear as nothing more than a whore he’d just picked up? Yet her face was as angelic as ever. Her beautiful eyes were clear and blue and exuded such a look of gentleness and honesty. Her hair beneath her bonnet framed her rounded cheekbones with untamed yellow curls, and her lips looked so gloriously tempting. In different circumstances he might fall head over heels in love with this girl; she had the makings. In their present circumstances – and her in that awful dress – that was impossible. Still, he could not help being drawn. She was truly something of an enigma.

‘Where shall we go?’ Poppy asked.

He wanted to save himself any embarrassment and get as far from the eyes of passers-by as possible. The castle grounds, the entrance to which lay just across the road, would be heaving with strollers in their Sunday best and well-to-do families out in their carriages on a fine afternoon such as this was.

‘I mentioned the Old Priory. I think it would be pleasant in any case to sit among the ruins and begin your lesson there.’

‘Is it far?’

‘No. A six and a half minute walk from here.’

She laughed at his preciseness as they began the short trek. ‘Six and a half minutes? Not five, or ten?’

‘What do you mean?’ he asked, surprised that she should have the temerity to mock him.

‘I suppose it comes of being an engineer,’ she suggested compassionately, at once taking the sting out of his umbrage. ‘You being so exact about the time it takes to walk there.’

‘Ah. I see.’ He laughed at himself when he understood. ‘You have remarkable perception, Poppy. Yes, I suppose it must be comical, put in that context – my engineering background.’

As ever, the town was littered with inebriates tumbling out of the public houses, staggering homewards. Here and there arguments flared over nothing, and Robert took Poppy’s arm as they hurried past The Hen and Chickens on the corner of Castle Street and New Street’s narrow confines, into which they turned. Several rough-looking men eyed them suspiciously as they went by, commenting lewdly on the obvious incongruity that existed between the couple. Soon, however, Poppy and Robert were away from the rabble and the bustle of the area. In less than half a minute they were surrounded by gardens and fields. Over to their right, the keep of the old Norman castle loomed high on its wooded hill.

‘What did you do last night?’ Poppy asked Robert.

‘Last night? Oh … I was invited to dinner. In fact, there was a fair at Porter’s Field I had intended visiting, but in the end I was invited to dinner, as I say.’

‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘Yes, very much. It was a very convivial evening.’

Convivial. What on earth did that mean? ‘I went to the fair,’ Poppy admitted. ‘Pity you didn’t go, Robert. I bet I would’ve seen you there.’

‘Who did you go with?’ Robert asked.

‘With my friend, Minnie Catchpole. You don’t know her, do you?’

‘Is her father on the OWWR workings?’

‘Yes, Tipton Ted,’ Poppy told him. ‘I bet you know Tipton Ted.’

‘Yes, I know Tipton Ted.’

‘Minnie is Dog Meat’s girl. Do you know him as well?’

‘Dog Meat? Yes, I know Dog Meat. Drunken lout. And your friend is his … his bed partner, I suppose?’

‘Yes, course.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Same as me. Sixteen. She’s been sleeping with him since she was fifteen.’

‘And Tipton Ted allows that?’ Robert asked, hardly hiding his disapproval.

Poppy shrugged. It was not her concern.

‘Good Lord! I wonder she’s not become pregnant before now. And she so young.’

‘Oh, Minnie says she knows how to stop getting pregnant. She goes off with other men as well.’

‘Good Lord!’ Robert said again. ‘Goodness, Poppy, I do hope you have more sense than to do things like that yourself. You do strike me as having a lot more sense.’ He looked at her questioningly, for reassurance.

‘Me? Oh, you got me to rights there. I wouldn’t do nothing like that. Mind you, I ain’t been short of offers lately.’

Over to their right they could see the grey ruins of the Old Priory, some ivy-clad walls were still standing but dilapidated, and arched windows still remained, if devoid of glass for a few centuries.

‘How old is this place?’ queried Poppy as they walked across a field of long grass towards it.

‘It was founded around 1160 by Gervase Paganel,’ Robert said, ‘though it never amounted to much ecclesiastically.’

Poppy looked at him sideways because of that big mysterious word, but did not ask its meaning. She imagined it might have something to do with religion, so it held little interest. In any case, Robert did not bother to enlighten her.

‘So it’s nearly seven hundred years old?’

Robert looked at her in astonishment. ‘You worked that out rather swiftly for somebody who can’t read and write.’

‘I can work out sums in my head. You have to when you’re handing money over in the tommy shop, or one of the shops in the town. If they think you can’t count they fleece you rotten.’

He laughed at that. ‘I never thought about it, but yes, I see that. All the men do count their money knowingly, even though they can’t all read.’

‘I know my numbers, Robert. My mother taught me. I can count shillings and pence, and I can tell the time as well.’

‘Good. I wondered about teaching you your numbers. Well, that won’t be necessary, at least.’

‘Oh, but that’s a shame,’ she said, disappointed. ‘It means I shan’t have to see you so often. I like being with you, Robert.’

He smiled, a little embarrassed by her innocent admission that proclaimed so much. ‘I like being with you, too, Poppy.’

‘Honest?’

‘I’ve never met anybody quite like you before.’

They had reached what remained of the large west window. Robert sat down on an outcrop of fallen masonry and gestured for Poppy to sit beside him.

‘Somebody else told me that,’ she said with a broad smile of satisfaction as she smoothed the creases out of her skirt, about to sit.

‘Oh, who?’

‘One of the new navvies, called Jericho. Have you come across him?’

‘I know who he is. A big, strapping young man.’

‘And handsome with it,’ Poppy added teasingly.

‘You think he’s handsome, do you?’ Robert tried to stifle the illogical pang of jealousy that seared through him. ‘So what’s his interest in you, Poppy?’

Poppy felt herself blush and sheepishly cast her eyes down, looking at the grass and moss sprouting between the limestone masonry. ‘Oh,’ she uttered with as much disdain as she could muster. ‘He asked me to be his woman …’

‘He did? Good Lord! And what did you say?’ Robert’s heart seemed to stand still while he waited what seemed like an age for her answer

‘I told him I didn’t want to be anybody’s woman, Robert.’

He breathed a sigh of relief. ‘So when did you tell him that?’

‘After he kissed me.’

Robert felt the breath leave his body and a hammer hit him hard where his heart was. ‘No … I … I meant – how long ago?’

‘Oh … Last night. After we’d been to the fair. He saved me from some lad who was trying to get off with me.’

‘How very gallant.’

‘Well, I thought the least I could do was let him kiss me after, for his trouble.’

It pained Robert that the great brute had had such intimate knowledge of Poppy, but the more significant knowledge that she had willingly allowed it disturbed him even more. She was so vulnerable, exposed to all the lechery and immorality of her kind – especially handsome buck-navvies with pockets full of money, muscles flexing and relaxing visibly beneath their rough clothing. Nothing was taboo in that grim society of theirs. There was never any shame. No wonder she spoke so openly, so frankly, about such things; she didn’t know any better, she saw no wrong in it.

‘Shall we begin your lesson?’ he said, wishing to change the subject which was causing him so much concern.

She nodded keenly and looked into his eyes with frank adulation.

‘Let me have your writing pad and blacklead pencil and I’ll begin by jotting down the letters of the alphabet for you.’

She handed them to him and he began setting down a list of lower case letters in his precise engineer’s hand. ‘First is a … then b … c …’ He wrote them all down from a to z. ‘There’s a good way of remembering them and the order they always come in. Do you know the tune to “Baa-baa Black Sheep”? Well, you can sing these letters to that.’

He began singing and it made her laugh to hear the sound of a string of letters put to a tune. It sounded so strange, like some foreign language.

‘No, it’s not to be mocked, Poppy,’ he said, indignant at being interrupted. ‘This trick will enable you to learn the alphabet very quickly. Just don’t laugh. Listen instead to me …’ He began singing again and once more she giggled, partly at the incongruity of the tune and the letters, and partly at the earnest look on his face and his pleasant voice. Despite her mirth, he carried on to the end. ‘Now you sing it along with me, Poppy … and stop your giggling, else we won’t get anywhere.’

‘I can’t sing,’ she protested playfully.

‘Yes, you can. You know the tune. After three … One, two, three … “Ay, bee, cee, dee” …’

Poppy stumbled many times, not knowing which letters were which, but, as they sang it over and over, it started to etch itself into her mind.

‘To help you know what sound each letter represents, I’ll write a word beginning with that letter alongside it. “A” is for apple … you see. “B” is for bonnet, like the one you’re wearing … “C” is for cutting, like the navvies dig … “D” is for … drainage … No, that’s not a very good example. “D” is for door …’

When he’d finished, he said, ‘I want you to take this home and learn your letters. Practise writing them yourself, copying what I’ve written. When you’ve learnt them by heart, I’ll show you how to write capital letters and then we’ll go on to when to use them.’

‘I will,’ Poppy promised. ‘Thank you, Robert, for taking the trouble to teach me. I shall owe you so much.’

‘Tell me, Poppy,’ Robert said, still somewhat preoccupied by the disturbing revelations about her personal activities. ‘This Jericho … Did you give him any inkling at all that you might agree to be his … his woman?’

‘I told him I’d think about it if he gave me time,’ she said frankly.

‘So you like him then?’

‘He’s all right. He makes me laugh. I don’t know whether I really fancy him that much though … Still, what’s fancying got to do with it? Minnie says that in the dark you can always make-believe it’s somebody you do fancy.’

‘I think this Minnie’s a parlously bad influence on you, Poppy. Promise me you won’t agree to becoming Jericho’s woman.’

‘But what’s it to you, Robert?’ she asked, for the first time really convinced of his interest in her.

‘Well …’ He shrugged. ‘It’s just that … I think you’re worthy of so much better. Save yourself for somebody more fitting …’

‘Some duke or earl, you mean?’ she said mischievously.

‘Who knows? Stranger things have happened.’

‘Not to me, Robert. Never to me.’

‘All the same, promise me …’

She was surprised at the intensity in his eyes. Well, maybe she could use a little guile here. ‘I’ll tell you the same as I told Jericho. I’ll make nobody no promises yet.’

The Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway received Royal Assent on 4 August 1845, backed by the Great Western Railway who wished to promote another broad-gauge line. By 1846, work on tunnelling had begun at Dudley, Worcester and Mickleton, near Chipping Campden. By 1849, the Dudley tunnel, for which the contractors were Buxton & Clark of Sheffield, had been finished. The actual railway track had not yet been laid, for there was some political argument about whether broad gauge or narrow gauge was to prosper. The contract for the southern section beyond the Dudley tunnel had been awarded to Treadwell’s. Work at the Mickleton tunnel, however, operated by an unfortunate succession of inept contractors, had been beset by problems and was far from complete.

At Mickleton, where Lightning Jack and Buttercup were working, the exact line of the tunnel had been set out and pegged over the surface, as had the rest of the route. Sinkers then dropped trial shafts along the path of the proposed tunnel to investigate the strata and water content of the rock. Standard practice was to sink a shaft at every furlong, but more if considered necessary by the engineer. Having reached the proper depth, some of those vertical shafts would be widened and lined so that men, horses, tools and materials could be lowered into and raised from the workings on platforms or in huge tubs, hauled by stationary steam engines or horse gins. Headings went out on the correct alignment from the bottom of each shaft in opposite directions until the tunnel was driven through the hill.

At the end of June, Lightning Jack arose from his bunk in the shack he shared with the other men, dressed and went outside into the early morning sunshine. He breathed in the fresh morning air of the Cotswolds and looked across at the gently rolling hills around him, the patchwork of fields like a far-flung quilt of yellow and green and gold. This was a far cry from the squalid landscape of the Black Country … except for the brown spoil from the tunnel which was turning the top of the hill where they lived and worked into a slag heap of monumental proportions. Soil and rock was ripped from the bowels of the earth beneath his feet and tipped randomly over the hill in separate mounds. One day, perhaps nature would clothe it in trees, in grass and fern, and it would surreptitiously blend into the countryside and leave no clue as to its man-made origin. But now it was an angry boil marring a beautiful face.

Lightning Jack stood, his hands on his hips, morose despite nature’s unsullied beauty stretched out beyond the dingy heaps of spoil. He likened himself to that spoil; dirty, unkempt, unwashed, undisciplined. He was unshaven too, except for those nights he had been out carrying on with Jenny Sparrow. How he wished he’d never set eyes on the woman. Oh, they’d had their fun. She had lived up to her sensual promise. She could take her share of drink as well, and seem unmarked by it. Sometimes she would even pay her turn. But she was no good for Lightning, and he had discovered it too late.

Now he yearned for Sheba. He longed to see his children; to ruffle Poppy’s restless yellow curls, to hug his younger daughters Lottie and Rose, to put his arms around his son Little Lightning, to see his youngest child Nathaniel at Sheba’s breast. How were they faring without him, without his protection? Had Sheba managed somehow to engineer a continued sojourn at the encampment at Blowers Green? If not, where might they be now? Well, there was no point in worrying about it. It did not matter any more. It did not matter where they were or how they were faring.

Lightning Jack heard Buttercup calling him and turned round to look. Buttercup and a score of other tunnellers filed out of the hut, swearing and muttering as navvies did, and headed for the shaft nearby, which was their entrance to the workings. Lightning joined them and fell into step beside Buttercup, behind the others. They reached the head of the shaft, where a steam engine, a great heap of coal penned beside it, chugged and rasped, primed and ready to lower the men into the earth’s cool heart. One by one, they stepped onto the platform and Lightning was the last. As they descended, the familiar sulphurous smell made him cough. The platform began to spin and Lightning began to feel giddy. He braced himself against the twisting motion and focused his eyes on Buttercup.

‘Bist thee all right?’ Buttercup asked his chum, grabbing hold of him. He had noticed a decline in Lightning’s demeanour lately.

‘Aye, fit as a fiddle, me.’

‘Mind as you don’t get giddy.’

‘I’m all right.’

The temperature inside the shaft became cooler the further they descended, and the air felt damp on Lightning’s skin. The light from the open shaft above diminished and the encircling wall grew eerily dark. The rate of descent decreased and the platform halted with a hard bump, which made Lightning’s knees buckle. They had touched the level.

In the workings of the tunnel the atmosphere was oppressive, for want of free circulation of clean air. The smell and smoke of gunpowder from the night shift’s blasts lingered. Lightning and Buttercup made their way in a single file with the others towards their base. There, each lit a candle. The feeble light exaggerated the dimness of the vault and the thick, foggy atmosphere. They took such tools as they needed and, unspeaking, picked their way through pools of inky black water that plopped with incessant dripping from above. They tramped over the temporary rails laid for the tip trucks, which would collect the spoil and be hoisted up the shaft to be emptied over the once picturesque hill above. In the uncertain light they picked their way past huge blocks of stone, planks of wood, scaffolding, and piles of bricks which were manufactured and employed by the million to line the tunnel. Tiny points of flickering light showed where the navvies were working. The sounds of picks, shovels and sledgehammers echoed, mingling with the shouts, hacking coughs and guffaws of the men, and became louder the closer they got to the work face. An army of bricklayers toiled behind them, working like ants to install the vital brick encasement. The tunnel, which up until that point had been cut and lined to its full dimensions, suddenly narrowed. The level floor began to rise steeply and the gang, with Lightning Jack and Buttercup, were at the face and relieving the other workers who had been there all night.

‘Let’s get off our steam packets and get stuck in then,’ Buttercup declared in their recognised slang, ‘else the bloody ganger will be docking us our sugar and honey.’

They took off their jackets and got stuck in, working at a pace that an ordinary mortal would have found back-breaking, by the light of the candles fixed to their hats. Buttercup tightly gripped a six-foot bar of steel, holding it firm against the rock face while Lightning Jack swung a sledgehammer in a great arc with the rhythm of a machine. He aimed it at the end of the steel rod, a drill, and his accuracy was such that he never missed, drunk or sober. Had he missed, he could easily have killed his mate. Slowly, surely, he drove the drill into the rock face. When the hole was deep enough, about five feet, he would pack it with explosive.

Come one o’clock, the ganger blew his whistle and shouted, ‘Yo-ho, yo-ho!’ It was the signal to stop work and take a break. The men tramped back to where the tunnel was level, set a few planks across small stacks of bricks and sat down. One of the navvies, Frying Pan, called one of the nippers to drum up the tea. The nipper, a lad of about ten or eleven, had already set light to a gob of tallow that had been collected in a round tin box, at once doubling the amount of light in the vicinity. He had then placed an iron bucket containing water on an iron tripod astride the flame. Now he added the mashings of tea and sugar which he took from each of the men, and emptied them into the bucket. While it came to the boil, the men wiped the sweat from their brows, ate their tommy and talked.

It began as a noisy meal, liberally laced with ferocious swearing, bravado and laughter, which echoed and re-echoed around the cavern of the tunnel.

‘Still poking that Jenny Sparrow, Lightning?’ Frying Pan asked when talk had reverted to women, as it generally did.

‘Not any more,’ Lightning replied tersely, for it was a sore subject. ‘Not that it’s any o’ your business.’

‘Gone off it, have ye? Had your fill?’

‘Why are you so bloody interested? Fancy it yourself, do you?’

‘I might.’ Frying Pan took a huge bite out of his bread. ‘If every other bugger in the world hadn’t already been there afore me.’

‘Well, I can recommend her,’ Lightning said coldly. ‘Her knows how to draw out the best in a man … if you get me meaning.’

‘Her’s had plenty experience,’ another, Long Daddy, put in.

‘Piss off, the lot o’ yer,’ Lightning rasped, and touchily moved away from the ensemble.

He ambled over to the other side of the wide tunnel with his tommy box and settled himself on a remote pile of bricks. He had no wish to air his private problems with the rest of the encampment. If they wanted to discuss their amorous adventures that was up to them, but he didn’t want to share his.

Buttercup came over to him and sat beside him.

‘What’s up wi’ thee, Lightning?’ he asked quietly. ‘Thou hasn’t been theeself for a week or two. Bist thee upset about summat? That Jenny Sparrow, for instance? I never realised th’ was a-pining for her?’

‘The only one I’m a-pining for is my Sheba,’ Lightning confessed sullenly.

‘For Sheba? Then that’s easy remedied. Collect your money tonight and go off on tramp, back to Dudley and the – what? The Blowers Green workings, did’st thou say?’

‘Aye, Buttercup,’ Lightning said with scorn. ‘But that’s easier said than done.’

‘Why? What’s to stop thee?’

‘Listen, Buttercup,’ Lightning said, and his tone was morbid. ‘You’ve been a good mate to me in the weeks we’ve been together, and I’ve appreciated it – more’n you realise, very like. I want you to promise me summat …’

‘Anything, me old mucker. Just name it.’

‘Well … if anything was to happen to me, an accident like, would you be good enough to go and let my Sheba know? It’d mean going off on tramp for a few days, but it’d mean a lot to me if you’d undertake to do it.’

‘Don’t be so damned gloomy,’ Buttercup said. ‘Tell her theeself. Take theeself home and tell her how much you’ve missed her. All right, so yo’n had a little diversion with that Jenny Sparrow along the way. So what? Sheba ain’t to know that, is she? And any road, yo’ll have gone back to her. She’ll welcome thee with open arms … and open thighs, I’d venture to say.’

Lightning threw a piece of bread down on the ground in frustration. ‘That’s just it, Buttercup … I can’t go back. Not for anything. Not now.’

‘Why not, dammit?’ He looked at his friend, puzzled.

‘Well, Frying Pan’s right. Jenny Sparrow has had plenty experience. Too much of it. She’s gi’d me a dose o’ the rap-tap-tap, and Lord knows what else. I’m even afeared to have a piddle any more, ’cause it’s like pissing broken glass. I ’spect I got a dose o’ the Durham ox as well, just to round it off nice, like. How the hell can I go back to Sheba when I’m afflicted wi’ that? What sort of bloke would knowingly pass on the pox to his woman?’

‘Christ! Well, they reckon there’s plenty of it about.’

‘Aye, but you never think it’s gunna get you, do yer, eh, Buttercup?’

‘I thought you seemed miserable lately,’ Buttercup sympathised.

‘Miserable? I tell you, Buttercup, I’m at me wits’ end. I never felt so bloody wretched in me whole life. I’ve messed things up good and bloody proper. I’ve ruined a perfectly good life wi’ Sheba and me kids. I should be hanged for being so bloody stupid.’

‘So what yer gunna do, me old china plate?’

Lightning shrugged. ‘What the hell can I do?’

‘Come on.’ Buttercup stood up wearily and stretched. ‘Tea’ll be drummed up in a minute or two. I got a little tipple o’ whisky in me bottle. Me and thee can share it. Things won’t seem half so bad after a tipple o’ whisky.’

Lightning Jack and Buttercup shared the whisky, finished their dinners and their tots of tea, and then went back to work. It was time to pack explosive into the hole they had drilled and blow the face of the tunnel to bring down more rock for clearing, more clay for making the bricks. From a sturdy wooden box, Jack picked up a linen bag that had already been filled with gunpowder and packed it deep in the hole, with a length of fuse attached, carefully bunging up the hole with clay.

‘Ready to blow,’ he said to the ganger who was at Lightning’s side inspecting the work.

‘Ready to blow, it is,’ the ganger replied. He cupped his hands like a megaphone around his mouth. ‘Clear the area!’ he called, then blew his whistle. ‘Clear the area!’ He looked around for flickering candles in the darkness, which would tell him where the nearest men were working. ‘I’ll just get that lot to move back,’ he said, turning to Lightning who was waiting to light the fuse. ‘Give me a minute afore you light it. I’ll make sure the way’s clear for you to get away.’

Lightning watched as the ganger’s shadow became more indistinct. He gave him his minute and duly lit the fuse.

‘About to blow!’ he yelled at the top of his voice. ‘Blowin’ up!’

Beneath the shaft, where the men had collected, Buttercup asked for silence.

‘What’s up?’ asked the ganger.

‘Listen … I can’t hear Lightning walking back.’

‘You ain’t about to with all the racket going on down here. Dripping bloody water, the clatter o’ bricks, the squeal o’ them there wheels on the damn trucks, blokes chuntering.’

‘Look. The fuse is lit. Thou canst see it flaring. But where the hell’s Lightning?’

‘Give him a chance. The fuse’ll be at least a minute fizzling afore it sets off the gunpowder. Get your hands over your ears ready.’

‘Nah. I’m going to fetch him. He ain’t come away. Look, I can see his candle. He’s still there, the damned fool, by the fuse.’

At that, Buttercup hurtled off, running towards the fuse that was still fizzing bright and crackling as it burned its way towards the compacted gunpowder. ‘Lightning!’ he yelled. ‘Move theeself! Get back here!’

‘Stay where you are, you bloody fool,’ came the reply echoing towards him through the gloom. ‘Get back and save yourself. You’ve got a bloody errand to run for me, remember?’

‘You arsehole!’ Buttercup bawled angrily as the final, awful realisation of what Lightning was up to struck him. ‘Thee bisn’t doing that. I’m coming to fetch thee. Stamp on the fuse or pull the bugger out. Quick!’

‘Get back, Buttercup,’ Lightning shouted urgently. ‘You’re too late. Save yourself.’

There was a blinding flash of light and Buttercup was thrown to the floor of the tunnel as the wave of the blast reached him. He had the distinct impression that his head had imploded. The deafening sound was palpable as it reverberated along the walls and roof of the tunnel section. The ground beneath him and above him shook and shuddered and he fancied he must be dead already and in the midst of a thundercloud with heaven’s artillery booming. He lay with his hands over his head, fearing a fall of bricks and debris from the roof, but none fell. He looked up but all was black. He could feel the stench of burnt gunpowder in his nostrils, the dense smoke billowing around him making his eyes run.

‘Lightning!’ he called out, knowing it to be hopeless. ‘Lightning! Where bist thee? Answer me!’

But there was no answer. The smoke deadened even the echo of his calls.

His candle had been blown out in the blast. All was darkness. Never in his whole life had he experienced such complete and utter blackness. The pressure of the darkness on his optic nerves was unbearable. He began choking on the smoke. He could taste it. He was swallowing it. He raised himself to his feet, felt in his pocket for his box of matches and tried to light one. As it flared pathetically, all he could see was the dense miasma of black smoke wheeling all around him. If it would stay alight long enough to light a candle, he could look for Lightning Jack.

It was some time before the smoke had billowed and eddied slowly towards the shaft and had been drawn up it. Had the tunnel been open at either end, or even connected to another vertical shaft further along, the natural draught would have drawn it out comparatively quickly, but it took an age with only one shaft open. The rest of the gang had made their way towards him, and the ganger, fearing he had lost two men, was relieved to see that at least Buttercup was still alive.

‘Come on,’ Buttercup said. ‘We’d best see if we can find what’s left o’ the daft old bugger.’

Chapter 8

‘I’d like us to concentrate on double vowel sounds tonight, Poppy,’ Robert Crawford said.

They were sitting in his office, on the first floor of an old house in Abberley Street, off Vicar Street, which the contractors had acquired because it was near the workings. It suited Robert’s purpose admirably. Poppy could learn undisturbed, and Robert would not be compromised by being seen in public with a low-class navvy girl. There was seldom anybody who used the offices after about six o’clock of an evening. And he was privy to a key.

The evening rays of an early July sun streamed through the deep sash window, which was open an inch or two at the top, and fell obliquely onto his huge desk, that was covered in drawings and maps. Poppy sat next to Robert at the desk. They were so close that he was aware of Poppy’s soft warmth as his thigh gently nudged hers as if by accident in the desk’s kneehole.

Robert was hopelessly torn. For two weeks he had contrived to meet Poppy there to give her lessons in reading and writing and, in that respect, both were experiencing singular success. Poppy could already recognise scores of simple words, and write them down in an awkward scrawl. But he had not yet mustered the audacity to suggest anything more than being merely her teacher. He was certain that he had fallen in love with her. If it was not love, it was some other destructive yet utterly overwhelming attraction that he seemed powerless to resist. Whatever it was, he was painfully aware that it could do neither him, nor anybody else, one iota of good. Still, he could not help wanting to touch her, to feel her girlish softness and gentleness. He ached to run his fingers through that tangle of fair curls and feel her delicious-looking lips on his. He was forever trying to glean information as to her likely relationship with that savage they called Jericho, and whether any relationship was flourishing. Always, however, she dismissed it as something trivial. Well, he hoped with all his heart and soul that it was trivial and would remain so.

‘If we have two “o”s together,’ he began to explain, ‘they make the sound you get in the word look.’ He wrote the string of letters down.

‘Look,’ she repeated, forming the word deliberately, and with a delectable pursing of her lips, which gave Robert the renewed and urgent desire to kiss her.

‘And this word – book.’ He wrote that down quickly as well.

‘Book.’

‘Tooth …’

‘Tooth,’ she repeated seriously, oblivious to the effect she was having on him.

Next, he wrote down the word hook. ‘So what do you think this word says?’

She studied the word for no more than a second. ‘’Ook.’

He smiled, acknowledging her ability to work it out quickly. ‘Hook,’ he corrected. ‘You must sound the “h” …’

‘Hook,’ she said exaggeratedly.

‘That’s better. So do you understand the sound a double o makes?’

‘Yes,’ she said, with a certainty that was unassailable. ‘It’s easy.’

‘Good … Ah! You see there’s another … the word good … You’re doing well, Poppy. Extremely well. Now, let’s look at the vowels o and u together … as in house …’

‘’Ouse.’

‘Pronounce the h, Poppy.’

‘Sorry, Robert. House.’

‘Now … mouse.’

‘Mouse,’ she said, looking very serious.

‘Mouth …’ He looked at her lips again. He was fascinated by the way they moved so deliciously as she pronounced the words.

‘Your mouth, Poppy …’

She looked up at him and saw the flame of ardour in his eyes. ‘What about my mouth?’

‘You have such a lovely mouth. I’m sorry, but I want to kiss you. Would you be terribly offended?’

‘No, why should I be?’ she answered with neither hesitation nor inhibition, and felt her heart instantly beating faster at the unexpected enticement.

She leaned towards him and pursed her lips and he could have kicked himself for not having asked before. Her lips were cool and slightly moist, like petals unfurling from the bud. He was all at once aware of her chastity and her sexuality, existing together symbiotically.

‘That was nice,’ she said with wide-eyed sincerity. ‘Hey, you don’t half kiss nice.’

‘Then I’ll kiss you again … But why not close your eyes this time?’

‘I will, if you’ll close yours as well. You didn’t then, so it’s no good telling me to, if you don’t.’

‘I was merely looking to see if you had closed your eyes.’

‘I’ll close ’em then.’

Their lips met again. Poppy peeped to see whether he had closed his eyes and found him peeping at her once more.

‘See?’ she complained, breaking off with a girlish giggle. ‘You’re watching me.’

He laughed self-consciously. ‘I was just checking.’

‘No checking, Robert. If you want me to kiss you and keep my eyes closed, you have to trust me. Don’t keep peeping.’

‘I won’t peep again. On my honour.’

‘Right …’

They kissed once more, and neither dared to open their eyes any more to see if the other’s were shut. The kiss lingered, each savouring the sensation, and she felt his arm come around her and give her an attentive, affectionate hug, which she enjoyed a great deal.

‘I like it when you do that,’ she said.

‘Then why don’t you sit on my lap?’ he suggested. ‘I’ll be able to kiss you more easily and hold you properly, rather than us stretching over.’

Compliantly, she got off her chair and slid into his lap with an appealing saucy smile. She curled up in his arms like a kitten and submitted willingly to his kisses, which she found mesmerising. She stayed like that for half an hour, though it seemed significantly less, enjoying his warm affection, wringing as much innocent pleasure out of it as she was able. Poppy felt herself tingling in the most surprising places. She was peeved at being robbed of the intensifying pleasure when he stopped and said that maybe they should get on with more work.

‘Oh, sod the work,’ she carped.

‘No, Poppy.’ It was the most difficult thing in the world to say no right then, to deny himself, let alone Poppy, this intimacy he’d secretly yearned for. ‘Lord knows what might happen if we lose control of ourselves.’

‘What can happen that neither of us don’t want to happen?’ she asked, baffled at this shattering and unaccountable self-denial of his. ‘Don’t you want me?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said and there was no mistaking the truth of it. ‘I want you.’

‘So, am I your girl now?’

He laughed ruefully. ‘Just a few short weeks ago you told me you weren’t prepared to devote yourself to anybody.’

‘But you never asked me to be your girl, Robert. I would have been, gladly … If you’d asked.’

He emitted a profound sigh. ‘I’m afraid it’s not as cut and dried as that.’

‘But you like me, don’t you? You must do. You asked to kiss me.’

‘Poppy …’ He looked down into the folds of her skirt as she sat in his lap, her warm weight a pleasure. ‘I do like you. I like you much more than I care to admit. But there are other considerations. I don’t just want to take advantage of you.’

‘You wouldn’t be.’

‘Yes, I would, and it wouldn’t be fair … Oh, Poppy … I could so easily—’

‘So easily what?’ she interrupted emotionally, tears filling her eyes. ‘Take advantage of me, you mean?’

He shook his head. ‘No, not take advantage. Didn’t I just say that’s the last thing I want to do? No – I mean, I could so easily fall in love with you.’

‘Then why don’t you?’ she answered with her young girl’s logic. ‘I’d fall in love with you, then you could take advantage of me all you liked. I’d want you to.’

He groaned inwardly. Here, unexpectedly before him, was the promise of heavenly bliss with this girl, and he must surrender it, ignore it as if it wasn’t there. ‘I don’t think you understand, Poppy.’

‘Oh, I think I do,’ said she, as the light of realisation hit her. She got up from his lap and slumped down in the chair she had occupied before. ‘You’re a clever engineer, a real swell, and invited out to slap-up dinners, you say, whereas I’m just a common navvy’s daughter who could never be anything but that.’

‘No, Poppy.’

‘Oh, yes, Robert,’ she sighed. ‘I admit I’ve harboured feelings for you ever since I met you, but I’m daft, aren’t I, to have thought I could ever be anything other than a navvy’s wench?’

‘You can be whatever you want to be, Poppy,’ he said sincerely.

‘But not your girl …’

He did not answer.

She took a rag out of the pocket of her skirt and wiped her tears. ‘Unless I suddenly become a lady, eh? I stand no chance unless I suddenly become a lady with airs and graces, and can look down my nose at everybody beneath me. Well, I’ll never be like that, Robert. I could never be. It ain’t in me. You have to take me as I am or not at all.’

‘I would rather take you as you are, Poppy, believe me …’ He hated to see tears in her eyes. She was hurt and he was responsible. He was sorry and all he wanted right then was to hold her, to comfort her.

She stood up, agitated. ‘No, there’s too much of a gap between you and me. Everywhere you went you’d be ashamed of me. Oh, I understand your difficulty, Robert, but I could never be content neither, thinking I was never good enough for you.’

‘You must never belittle yourself, Poppy.’ He stood up and moved towards her, compelled to put his hands to her slender waist. ‘I think you’re the kindest, most sensitive, prettiest soul I’ve ever met.’ His tone was a taut thread of emotion. ‘I can’t get you out of my mind. That’s the trouble. And it’s driving me mad, Poppy. What am I to do?’

She rested her head against his shoulder as if all the troubles of the world had come to roost on hers. Her eyes were still watery at this unexpected admission of love that had exploded between them all of a sudden, like gelignite going off.

‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘But why should there be such a big to-do about it? I don’t get it. If two people like each other enough …’

‘Dear God …’ he said quietly, his heart heavy. ‘The problem is, you see, Poppy, it’s not that there is a social divide between us. I’m sure that would be bridgeable, for the will to either bridge it or ignore it would indeed be there. It’s just that …’ He hesitated, unsure as to whether to confess his predicament … but, hang it all, he had to, otherwise he was being dishonest … ‘It’s just that I’m already engaged to be married. Yet how I wish I weren’t …’

‘You’re engaged already?’ The possibility had never crossed her mind before. ‘Who to? No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know who she is.’

‘She’s a very respectable girl. I imagine you’d like her.’

‘I’m sure I wouldn’t.’

‘No, maybe you wouldn’t.’

‘I know I wouldn’t. I’d like to punch her nose.’

‘Oh, Poppy, please don’t talk like a navvy.’

‘Well, if you’re engaged, you shouldn’t see me again,’ she said resignedly. ‘Maybe it’d be best to stop my lessons.’

‘Do you want to stop your lessons?’ He was sorry that he had put her unorthodox education in jeopardy by his amorous behaviour.

‘No, why should I?’ she answered defiantly. ‘You’re teaching me to read and write and I’m learning well. I know I am. Why should I stop now just because you’re engaged, just because there’s another girl you’re fond of? I’ll just have to stop liking you like that. Did you know all along how much I liked you?’

He could have hugged her for her kittenish simplicity, her lack of guile, her direct use of simple words. ‘From the outset I hoped you did. I hoped with all my heart that you did.’

‘So why don’t you just give up this girl you’re engaged to, if you’d rather have me? It’s seems the best thing to do.’

‘But I’m promised, Poppy. I knew her long before I met you. Her family and mine are close friends. We are due to be married next year. A man can’t renege on a promise to marry. It’s a question of honour. The girl has to release him from his promise. Otherwise the consequences for him could be very serious.’

‘But if you told her about me … Maybe she would release you.’

He shook his head. The thought of confessing to his bride-to-be and her family that he was in love with the daughter of a navvy filled him with dread. Neither they – nor his own family either, for that matter – would regard him as stable. He would be a laughing stock. They might even try to have him certified to protect the integrity of his fiancée. The difficulties were not too hard to foresee.

‘It’s not as simple as that,’ he said.

‘I’d better stop having me lessons then,’ Poppy said flatly. ‘I’d only want us to start kissing again. And if I can’t have you in the end, I don’t want to start anything in the beginning.’

‘Poppy,’ he sighed. ‘You must continue with your lessons. You said so yourself. It’s vitally important for you that you do. I’ll be on my honour. I promise not to take advantage.’

‘No,’ she said assertively. ‘It’s best we don’t see each other. There’s no point. I don’t want to get worked up into a lather when I’m with you, knowing that you’ll never be mine. No, I might as well start seeing Jericho serious.’

‘Oh, Poppy,’ he groaned. ‘Must you?’

Poppy returned to Rose Cottage in a state of bewilderment. She was so exhilarated at kissing Robert Crawford for so long and his confession that she was always on his mind. Yet she was also deeply frustrated that nothing could come of it. It was as she had always suspected; he liked her, but he was not about to lower himself and become involved with her, especially since he was already engaged to some girl whose family might be wealthy and important. It was hardly worth competing for him because, in her position, she could never have him. Why was life so unfair? Why was it tilted so much in favour of the swells who already had everything?

She entered the hut carrying her writing pad and blacklead and flopped them on the table among the dirty crockery that still littered it. Her mother was sewing patches and buttons onto shirts.

‘It’s quiet in here for once,’ Poppy commented.

‘Well, the babby’s asleep in his crib,’ Sheba replied, pulling a needle on a length of thread. ‘Lottie and Rose am playing in the cutting and Jenkin’s out somewhere with his mates, up to no good, I daresay.’

‘So where’s Tweedle?’ There was a hint of scorn in Poppy’s tone, but Sheba could not be sure of it.

‘Out drinking, with the rest o’ the lodgers … Where’ve you been?’

‘Having a lesson. I’ve been learning words like look, and tooth, and mouth and house.’ She had sounded her h.

‘Hark at you. Sounding all swank. ’Tis to be hoped it gets you somewhere.’

‘I was learning quick. Robert said so.’

‘Was?’ Sheba queried.

‘Yes … was. I’m having no more lessons. I don’t see the point. I can read now.’ She was grossly overstating her ability, but had no wish to enlighten Sheba as to the real reason.

‘That chap Jericho called round after you.’

‘What for?’

‘How the hell should I know? But I can guess. He’s a handsome buck, and no mistake.’

‘If only looks was everything.’

Sheba smiled to herself. ‘Oh, and what would you know about that?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t say as Tweedle Beak was handsome,’ Poppy replied, with a shrug. ‘Would you?’

‘It might help if he was …’

Poppy laughed. There was a pause in their conversation while she put her writing pad in her drawer to save getting it mucked up. ‘What yer gunna do about Tweedle when me father comes home?’

‘Tweedle will just be one o’ the lodgers again.’

‘Providing me dad can get his old job back, you mean.’

‘Even if he can’t, it wouldn’t make any difference. We’d just go on tramp till he found another.’

‘So it is me father you love, and not Tweedle?’ She regarded her mother earnestly. ‘Oh, tell me it is, Mother.’

‘Aye, it’s your father I love.’

‘But what about if he comes back and finds you already pregnant wi’ Tweedle’s brat?’

Sheba bit the thread she was sewing with, severing it, and rested the crumpled shirt in her lap. ‘Oh, well,’ she said, looking intently into Poppy’s eyes, ‘I’m already pregnant. But it’s with your dad’s child. I knew I was carrying afore he went away.’

Poppy smiled happily. It was the best news she’d had in ages. ‘Does Tweedle know?’

Sheba shook her head. ‘Neither does your father.’

‘But you let Tweedle Beak into your bed just the same?’

‘To save us going on tramp and missing your father. As well as all the other reasons. It was the only thing I could do.’

‘But that makes you no better than a whore, Mother,’ Poppy said, more with concern than with any disrespect.

‘All women are whores, our Poppy. We sell that soft place we’ve got between our legs for whatever we want back in return, be it money, protection or just pleasure. It’s a ticket for whatever we want, whatever we need.’

‘What about love?’

Sheba smiled knowingly. ‘Aye, it’s a ticket for love as well. But there’s a difference. You don’t sell it for love, our Poppy. You give it away free. But always be aware of the likely consequences.’

Poppy went to bed that night before her mother and Tweedle, with a great deal on her mind. She was relieved to hear her mother’s confession that it was Lightning Jack she loved, and not Tweedle Beak. Poppy could forgive Sheba her horizontal exploits now that she knew that it was merely an expedient device to protect them all. She was pleased also to learn that she was carrying a child, especially that there was no question but that it was her own father’s child. It was a sort of insurance that when Lightning Jack returned – which, pray God, would be soon – Tweedle would simply fade into the background of navvies from whence he came, and things would revert to normal. No doubt Lightning Jack would thank Tweedle Beak for looking after his woman while he had been away. It was the way of the navvies.

Inevitably, Poppy’s thoughts turned to Robert Crawford and she relived that delectable half-hour in his arms, feeling his lips upon hers. She compared his gentleness and consideration to Jericho’s ill-bred roughness, recalling the time when Jericho had been fighting naked and, naked, took her in his arms afterwards, rubbed himself lustfully against her and expected her to go willingly behind the hut with him. Did she really want Jericho’s violent, slobbering kisses, his clumsy fondling, now she had tasted Robert’s succulent lips?

Poppy recalled how wet she had felt between her legs while she and Robert were in each other’s arms. She was wet now thinking about him. She pulled up her nightgown carefully so as not to disturb her sisters asleep in the same bed, and stroked herself to actually feel it on her fingers. It was wickedly pleasant to rub yourself there. Gently she continued, lying with her eyes shut, her mouth open receiving Robert’s luscious kisses. With the other hand she fondled her breasts, arousing her small pink nipples, and imagined him to be doing it. She hugged herself, making believe it was Robert’s warm, affectionate embrace that was making her hot, before rotating her thoughts to imagine she was actually feeling his smooth, firm flesh. ‘Oh, I love you, Robert,’ she mouthed silently. ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’ As the pleasurable sensations intensified in her groin, she turned her face into the pillow, sure that her insides were melting, disintegrating, but with such toe-curling intensity. The urge to cry out was strong, but she merely took a gasp of air and sighed with disbelief at the extraordinary wild sensation that had come to overwhelm her.

The door opened. Tweedle Beak and her mother appeared, silhouetted against the light of an oil lamp, with Little Lightning hovering in the background holding it. Little Lightning spoke and his mother told him to hush and dowt the flame, lest he wake the others. In the darkness, they all undressed and clambered into bed as silently as they could. It was not long before Poppy heard the faint rustle of sheets yielding to movement and the gentle creak of the iron bedstead, as Tweedle settled with unaccustomed restraint into what had become his regular nightly exercise.

Poppy smiled to herself.

Chapter 9

During the weeks that she got to know Robert Crawford, Poppy had become acquainted with the regularity of his comings and goings on the construction site. But work was moving along the trackbed away from the encampment towards Brierley Hill, and she could not always be certain lately that he would be where she thought he might be. In an endeavour to ‘accidentally’ bump into him as he left his office one dinner time, she tarried between the foreman’s hut and Shaw Road, then between the tommy shop and the road. It was the first Thursday in July and the weather had turned, so that you could have been forgiven for thinking it was April, with all the showers alternating with the sunshine that shimmered blindingly off the wet mud.

While she drifted from one point to another, scanning the area for sight of Robert, she saw another man walking towards her. He was unmistakably a navvy, with a bright yellow waistcoat, a moleskin jacket, a quirky cap, and well-worn moleskin trousers with knee-straps to stop the rats running up his legs. He wore odd boots as well, one the colour of dried blood, the other a light tan. Poppy did not know him, so assumed he had been on tramp and was seeking work. As he entered the encampment he touched his cap and smiled amiably. He reminded her strangely of her father, except that he looked older.

She heard the sound of wheels chattering over the road surface and Robert appeared from the top of the hill, riding his machine. Her heart went into her mouth, for she had not the slightest idea what she might say to him. She just wanted to see him, to talk with him, to try and glean whether this unfulfilled love was as painful for him as it was for her. Robert had been on her mind so much these last few days and nights that she was becoming preoccupied. If only he hadn’t told her how he felt. If only he had kept his feelings and his hands – and his kisses – to himself, they could have gone on as they had hitherto, teacher and pupil, friends who merely harboured admiration and respect for each other at arm’s length, who kept their ardour unspoken and under control. But his confession that he was taken with her, and then his frustrating but tantalising self-restraint, had only fuelled her interest and desire the more. She was hooked, yet she understood that hooking her was not what he had intended. What she did not know was that Robert Crawford had also of late adopted the habit of either perambulating or riding – ostensibly in connection with his work – Poppy’s likely routes.

As he approached, she thought she detected a blush from him as he drew to a halt, though it could have been the exertion of riding, even if it was downhill.

‘Oh, hello, Robert,’ she said, endeavouring to show a decorous amount of astonishment at finding him in the very place she had come to look for him.

‘Hello, Poppy,’ he greeted with equal surprise, uncertain how he stood now with this perplexing girl.

‘Fancy seeing you here. I was just on me way to the tommy shop.’ She ignored the pertinent reality that it took twice as long to get to the tommy shop by way of Shaw Road than her usual route of walking through the cutting.

‘And I was just on my way to find my colleague Slingsby Shafto,’ he felt compelled to explain, ignoring the equally pertinent reality that he was travelling in precisely the wrong direction. ‘Are you well?’ he asked awkwardly.

‘Oh, yes. I’m very well, thank you. Are you?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, yes. I’m not altogether enamoured of this change in the weather, though. Rain makes everywhere so muddy and slows down the work.’

‘Oh, I know,’ she said. ‘All the men moan like whores when the rain comes.’

‘Poppy!’ Robert exclaimed, unwittingly slipping into the role of tutor. ‘You really must temper your similes.’

‘I haven’t a clue what you’re on about.’

‘What you just said … the men moaning like … like whores. You would never say that in polite conversation.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t know,’ she replied defensively, disappointed at her little blunder, which highlighted once again the class difference between them. ‘It’s what the men say, Robert. I didn’t know it was a … what?’

‘A simile.’

‘A simile?’

‘Yes. Of course, it’s perfectly normal to use similes, but yours is too inappropriate for polite conversation.’

Oh, yes, we’re having polite conversation, more’s the pity, she thought, as she regarded his mouth and yearned for him to kiss her. Why couldn’t she make it less formal and tell him bluntly that she loved him, that her emotions were all upside down because of him? ‘So, what’s a simile?’ she said instead.

‘A simile is when you compare something to something else to enhance its meaning,’ he answered, unaware of the turmoil inside her. ‘Such as saying the full moon hangs like a silver disc, or … or … your eyes are like limpid pools … for example. Any such phrase using the word like or as is often a simile.’

‘I’ll try and remember, Robert. I’ll try and use good, respectable similes in polite conversations in future,’ Poppy said obligingly.

He smiled. ‘I hope you will.’

‘But what about Albert in the tommy shop?’ she said, with an impish twinkle in her eyes.

‘What about Albert?’ he replied, with the feeling he was being led into some tender trap or other.

‘Well, will he be offended if I tell him the place stinks like a midden?’

Robert laughed. ‘I doubt it. With Albert it’ll be like … like water off a duck’s back.’

‘Oh, you’re sharp today.’ She looked at him mischievously. ‘You’re sharper than a pig’s jimmy.’

‘Now, I’m not certain whether that’s a simile or a metaphor,’ he said, and went on his way amused.

Poppy was not really going to the tommy shop even though she ambled towards it. When she could see that Robert had gone inside the foreman’s hut, she turned around, acting as if she’d forgotten something, and headed wistfully back to Rose Cottage. She so missed him already. She ached for the opportunity to be alone with him again, to try and win his love. She imagined she had been so close to being his, yet the possibility was all but lost. The pain of unrequited first love increased inexorably and jostled at her heart.

As she approached the hut she became aware of the navvy on tramp whom she’d seen a few minutes earlier walking alongside her as she neared the hut.

‘Howdo, Miss,’ he greeted. ‘Bist heading for Lightning Jack’s by any chance?’