Nancy Carson - Poppy’s Dilemma

‘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.