Nancy Carson - Poppy’s Dilemma

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.