Nancy Carson - Poppy’s Dilemma

Published by Avon an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton in 2003 as Poppy Silk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2015

This ebook edition published by HarperCollins Publishers in 2016

Cover design © Debbie Clement 2016

Nancy Carson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008252342

Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780007948482

Version 2018-01-09

POPPY’S DILEMMA

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

She did not really want to be there, but Poppy Silk loitered compliantly with her friend Minnie Catchpole outside the alehouse, which was called ‘The Wheatsheaf’, but somewhat appropriately known by some as the ‘Grin and Bear It’. Poppy was wearing the only reasonable frock she possessed; second-hand and made of red flannel with buttons down the front. It was a size too big for her slender figure and had cost her mother a shilling. Her black worsted stockings and inelegant clogs were made more conspicuous by the frock’s short skirt. Despite the frock, and despite her reluctance to be among her own kind, Poppy had seldom been short of admirers lately. She had the face of an angel, strikingly beautiful, manifesting all the innocence of the unenticed, and yet she was much too worldly to warrant a halo.

There was a stiff breeze, not uncommon for the middle of May, and the evening sky was shredded with sprinting clouds. The road, growing dustier and more uneven the longer the dry spell lasted, was strewn with old news-sheets that flapped like misshapen birds against the wind.

The Wheatsheaf stood alone, surrounded by wasteland on one side and the Old Buffery Iron Works on the other. Within spitting distance was a collection of wooden shanties that lined the Blowers Green section of the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway, which was just another of the huge civil engineering enterprises under construction.

The event was payday and it only occurred monthly. A horde of railway navvies had assembled in blustery sunshine two hours earlier at The Wheatsheaf, Poppy’s and Minnie’s fathers among them. The tavern was where they reaped their monetary reward for four weeks’ gruelling labour minus, of course, what they owed in truck to the contractor. Most were the worse for drink. Their pockets were bulging with money, which was begging to be spent on beer, whisky, or whatever other libation would intoxicate them into sublime oblivion and render painless their aching backs and limbs. Some had ventured further afield in their search for it, but were now returning, having boisterously worn out their welcome at other public houses and beer shops, and even wobble shops, which were illicit drinking houses.

Poppy and Minnie were not the only girls aware that it was payday and hoping to be treated at least to a drink; many neighbourhood girls had gathered, hoping some of the navvies’ hard-earned money would trickle down to them. Minnie, the flightier and more buxom of the two, struck a pose calculated to attract the favourable eye of the young workmen who were there in abundance, and she was flattered when some young buck whistled his approval. Poppy, though, was not so sure about those others who sidled up and made bawdy suggestions, even though those suggestions elicited girlish giggles, or feigned indignation, depending on what was being suggested and by whom.

‘I reckon our dads have forgot we,’ Minnie commented.

‘They forget everything once they’ve got the beer in ’em,’ Poppy replied realistically. ‘Shall we go inside and ask ’em for money so’s we can buy our own?’

A particularly well-built navvy, who looked old enough to be her father, suggested something spectacularly indecent to Minnie. She stared at the man in mock outrage for a moment or two, yet inwardly remained unruffled, before she turned round to reply to Poppy’s question. ‘I ain’t going in there. We’d get mauled to death by this lot o’ dirty buggers. I don’t mind somebody young, but not that lot o’ dirty old buggers.’

‘Well, I ain’t stoppin’ here much longer,’ Poppy said, glancing apprehensively at the same man. She turned to Minnie. ‘They ain’t doing to me what they done to that Peggy Tinsley the other week down by the Netherton turnpike. Seven of ’em, there was, she reckoned. They just left her there lying in the grass after. She couldn’t walk properly for days. And her best bonnet blowed away in the wind.’

‘Poor soul,’ Minnie commented, but with little sympathy. ‘Still, I’m glad it wasn’t me. If they’d done to me what they done to her, and Dog Meat had found out, it would’ve spoiled me chances.’

‘Why do they call that chap o’ yours “Dog Meat”?’ Poppy asked. ‘Does he eat dogs or summat?’

‘Course not. It’s ’cause he used to sell meat for dogs to the swells afore he was a navvy. Any road, it’s just a nickname. Everybody’s got a nickname.’

‘I ain’t got a nickname, Minnie.’

‘Nor me, but your dad has – “Lightning Jack”.’

Poppy smiled and her blue eyes sparkled. ‘So’s yours – “Tipton Ted” … Come on, where shall we go? We ain’t gunna get a drink here. And I want to be safe in me bed asleep come turning-out time when they’re all drunk and a-fighting.’

‘Let’s have a walk up the town,’ Minnie suggested with a gleam in her eye. ‘Let’s see what the swells am up to.’

As they were about to go, a packman carrying a case came up to them. He opened it up and displayed rows of necklaces, earrings, bangles and other trinkets.

‘Buy a necklace, Miss?’ he suggested to Poppy. He lifted one out and held it before her throat where it tantalisingly out-glittered the glass and paste example she was already wearing. ‘It’d look a treat on you with your pretty face, wouldn’t it?’ He regarded Minnie beseechingly, in an attempt to elicit her support. ‘Wouldn’t she look a picture, eh, miss?’