Nancy Carson - Poppy’s Dilemma

‘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.