Nancy Carson - Poppy’s Dilemma

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.’

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.’