Nancy Carson - Poppy’s Dilemma

‘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.’