Читать книгу Poppy’s Dilemma - Nancy Carson - Страница 10

Waiting for Wednesday was, for Poppy, like waiting for her plum pudding at Christmas. As one o’clock approached, she tried hard to remain calm, anxious not to give her mother any hint at all that she was leaving her to do the cooking and the feeding of lodgers, just to meet a young man – and one above her station at that. Sheba would get to hear of it, no doubt. Somebody was bound to see them and report back. Nor would Sheba be pleased. But Poppy would handle that crisis when it arose …

She had taken the trouble to wash her hair the night before. She had cleaned her clogs and her fingernails. In the family’s overcrowded bedroom she’d stood at the washstand and enjoyed a thorough wash down, feeling fresh and confident after it. She had laundered her stockings, and inspected the clothes she intended wearing, which, to allay any suspicion, would have to be a working frock.

So, at five minutes to one, she took off her pinafore, tidied her hair and looked at herself briefly in the ancient, mildewed mirror that hung by a piece of string from a nail near the door. If only she had a more alluring frock to wear, but to change it and put on her best red one would have been to broadcast her intentions. So she resigned herself to the fact that she must make do. At least the frock she was wearing was clean. Poppy failed to realise that she looked good in whatever she wore. She was blessed with a beautiful face and a complexion as fair as her flaxen hair. She possessed a natural daintiness and elegance of movement which, had she been dressed in silks or velvets, would have been perceived as grace.

She put on her bonnet and slipped out without a word to her mother. The rain of Monday had ceased and the weather had changed for the better again, with sunshine and a gentle breeze. Thankfully, the mud of the encampment was drying out. Poppy walked towards Shaw Road at the intersection with the footpath where she was supposed to meet Robert, her heart thumping in anticipation. While she waited, first looking up Shaw Road for sight of him, then self-consciously at her clogs, she felt conspicuous, certain that the wary eyes of the encampment were on her and suspicious of what she was up to.

Before too long she heard the familiar clack-clack of the iron-rimmed wheels traversing the craggy surface of the road. She turned to see Robert hurtling towards her, a grin on his handsome face, and her heart lurched.

He’d remembered.

‘Have you been waiting long?’ he asked, when he came to a stop beside her. ‘Sorry if I kept you waiting. I was held up by Mr Shafto – you know, the sub-assistant – wanting some information about some measurements I’d taken.’

Poppy smiled at him brightly. ‘It don’t matter, Robert. I was a bit early … but I had to get out when the chance came.’

‘I presume, then, that you haven’t changed your mind about riding with me?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I ain’t changed me mind, but I was thinking about what might happen if we fell off,’ she said, vividly recalling her dream.

He shrugged. ‘We could, of course. It’s entirely possible. But if the fear of it puts you off, I’ll be extra careful that we don’t. It’s not as if you’re going to be an enormous weight to carry. You’re quite small really. Why don’t you get on?’

She stood close to him and turned around so that she could sit on the crossbar of his machine. It felt hard against her rump, like the bar of a gate.

‘You need to sit back a little bit further,’ Robert said, ‘so that the machine balances. And so that I can get my feet on the treadles.’

She pushed herself further on and felt the crossbar under her backside. Robert was steadying the handlebar and his right arm formed a barrier that she could lean against to prevent her toppling over backwards.

‘Are you ready? Lift your feet higher … no, higher … I have to reach the treadles. Don’t worry, I’ll hold you.’

He scooted off and, after a couple of initial wobbles, they began travelling in a commendably straight trajectory. The road was pitted and bumpy and the frame of the machine transmitted all those bumps to Poppy. Her very bones juddered, but it was exhilarating. The wind was in her hair and against her face as they gathered speed, and she heard herself shrieking with excitement. They hurtled underneath the new railway bridge and approached a grassy mound that vaguely marked the end of Shaw Road and the start of the undulating footpath to Netherton. As they rode over it, Poppy’s innards rolled over and seemed to reach her throat in an unbelievable sensation, making her whoop with delight. She was between Robert’s arms, holding on to him tightly while he steered the machine, conscious of his left leg rising and falling under her skirt as he controlled their speed with the treadles. The ground over the footpath seemed softer, with no hard bumps to bruise her bottom and the backs of her thighs more. She would not mind falling off now and rolling into the long grass at the side of the footpath with Robert …

But they did not fall off. They bowled past tiny cottages in desperate need of repair, past the Old Buffery Iron Works that glowed red at night-time, flaring the dark sky with an eerie crimson glow. They skimmed past the Iron Stone pit with its huffing, clanking steam engine. Robert slowed down the machine as they reached the turnpike road from Netherton to Dudley at Cinder Bank, and carried on over fields. Just before they reached a fishpond, they stopped.

‘Well?’ Robert said. ‘Did you enjoy that?’

Poppy was breathless after the ride. ‘Oh, I loved it, Robert.’ She hooted with laughter, and with the back of her hand wiped away wind-induced tears that had traced a watery line across her flushed cheeks.

She sat on the crossbar pressed against him, still trapped between his arms, radiant with excitement. Robert looked at the delightful profile of her face. She was close enough for him to steal a kiss if he wanted, although he did not take advantage. Instead, he smiled with satisfaction at the few moments of joy he’d brought to this enigmatic girl, by giving her something as simple as a ride on his rudimentary two-wheeled machine.

Feeling Robert’s strong right arm protectively at her back, Poppy was loath to dismount, but she let her feet fall to the ground and eased herself forward. As she stood, her skirt brushing the side of the machine, she hoped Robert would invite her for another ride at some time.

‘Well, we have a long walk back,’ he commented, himself dismounting. He turned the two-wheeled contraption round and began pushing it in the opposite direction. ‘I’ve been working on a design for another machine,’ he said to Poppy as she ambled beside him. ‘Similar to this one but with a better means of propelling it forward. I’m convinced that something like it has immense commercial potential.’

She turned to him and smiled with admiration, uncertain of the meaning of the words ‘commercial’ and ‘potential’. If only she was educated. If only she had been given some schooling, she would be more able to talk with him on his level.

‘What time do you have to be back at work?’ she asked, mundanely.

‘Half past one. Mr Lister, the resident engineer, gets rather rattled if I’m late.’

‘So what time is it now?’

He took his watch from his fob and checked it. ‘Quarter past. We’re easy on.’

‘Good. I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble on my account.’

For the first few yards of their walk back, there was a pause in their conversation. Poppy noticed the wild flowers growing at the edges of the black earth footpath – buttercups, daisies, ragwort, dandelions. Thistles were thriving too, growing tall in the warmth of the May sun and the recent rain, and it struck her how beautiful they were to look at, if not to touch.

‘Thank goodness we didn’t fall off into those thistles,’ she remarked. ‘We’d have been scratched to death.’

‘Or into nettles,’ Robert replied easily.

She nodded. ‘Oh, yes, I hate nettles.’

‘So do I.’

‘Do you like being an engineer, Robert?’

‘Actually, yes, I do.’ He turned to look at her face, always an entertaining mix of earnestness and gaiety. He was fascinated as well at how easily she could turn from one subject to another. ‘It’s interesting being an engineer. There’s something different to deal with all the time.’

‘What sort of things do you have to do?’

‘Oh, measuring and marking out, tracing plans, trying to calculate whether the spoil we take from a cutting will be sufficient to build an embankment. I’m handy with a pair of brass dividers, a blacklead and a straight-edge.’

‘I’ve often wondered,’ Poppy said, her face suddenly an icon of puzzlement, ‘if they start driving a tunnel from more than one place, how they manage to meet exactly in the middle.’

Robert laughed, fired with admiration for her curiosity. ‘By candles, usually,’ he replied.

‘Candles? How do you mean?’

‘Well, it’s dark inside a tunnel, Poppy. So what you do is to line up the centre line of the tunnel by exactly placing lighted candles at predetermined intervals. When you have three candles exactly in line as you match them up against the cross hairs on your theodolite, then you know your tunnel is straight – or level, if you’re taking levels.’

‘What about if there’s a bend in the tunnel?’

He laughed again, astonished at her grasp of engineering problems. ‘Before you start excavating a tunnel, you sink narrow shafts along the way,’ he explained. ‘These shafts would already have been pinpointed during a survey. The centres of those shafts meet the centre line of the tunnel perpendicularly and, if they’re not in direct line – in other words, if they form a bend – you follow the line they form. Do you understand?’

Poppy nodded and emitted a deep sigh. When Robert looked at her again, her expression was serious, almost grave.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, concerned. ‘Are you worrying about your father?’

‘Oh, no, I was just thinking how lovely it must be to be educated. To be clever enough to do all the things you do.’

‘Oh, I’m not particularly clever,’ he said modestly. ‘But having had a decent education enables me to earn a good living, I admit.’

‘I wish I was educated. It’d help me get away from the navvy life. If only I could read and write …’

‘Don’t you like the navvy life?’

‘Would you like it?’

‘Probably not,’ he admitted. ‘But I work with the navvies, such as your father. I find them agreeable enough, by and large – when they’re sober, anyway. Ask them to do a job, explain what you want, and they do it. They work like the devil, shifting hundreds, even thousands of tons of earth in no time. You must have watched an excavation and seen how, in only a few days, they can transform a landscape. They don’t mince their words either. If they have something to say, they say it. But living with them?… I imagine some of them are inclined to be uncouth.’

‘I don’t know what that word means, Robert – uncouth. I hope you’ll excuse my not having been educated.’

‘Uncouth?’ He smiled kindly. ‘It means rough, rude, barbarian.’

Poppy laughed. ‘Oh, yes. Most of them are uncouth … barbarian … See? I’ve learnt two new words a’ready. I do wish you could teach me more …’

‘I’m afraid that what I know is limited to engineering and surveying, and not much use to a young woman,’ he said realistically.

He turned to look at her, sympathy manifest in his eyes. This girl was not like the navvies to whom she belonged. She was apart from them, a cut above, bright – extremely bright – thirsting for an education which had eluded her, and thence for knowledge to lift her out of her humdrum existence. It was a worthy aspiration, too. If her life took the normal course one would anticipate of a navvy-born girl, she would be expected at her age, or even younger, to be the compliant bed partner of whichever buck navvy was first to claim her, if not of her own volition then either by buying her, or by fighting somebody else for her. It would be a sin if she were so treated and thus doomed for lack of education. She was worthy of so much better. Her self-respect raised her above the meagre expectations of navvy women. It was truly a wonder she had not already been claimed …

‘Where the hell d’you think you’ve been?’ Sheba angrily asked Poppy when she re-entered Rose Cottage. ‘Fancy sloping off when we was finishing off the dinners. Where’ve you been? You’ve been gone nearly an hour.’

Some of the navvies were still in the room, sitting at the round table, their legs sprawling, big boots seeming to take up most of the floor space. The place reeked with an unsavoury mixture of pipe tobacco smoke, beer, sweat, cooking and rotting vegetables.

‘I had to go out, Mom,’ Poppy replied quietly with a guilty look, turning away from the navvies so that they shouldn’t hear.

‘Had to?’

‘I promised to meet somebody. I couldn’t let them down.’

‘Bin a-courtin’, my wench?’ one of the men, called Waxy Boyle, asked through a mouthful of dumpling.

‘It’ll pay her not to have bin a-courtin’,’ Sheba railed. ‘Not when there’s work to be done. Who did you go and meet?’

Poppy blushed. Blushing was becoming a habit which she did not enjoy. ‘I’ll tell you after, not that it’s any of your business.’

‘I’ll give you none of my business, you cheeky faggot. Get your apron on and do some work, you bone-idle little harridan. Any road, I’ll get to know soon enough, whether or no it’s any of my business.’

‘I ain’t been courting, Mom,’ Poppy added defensively. She removed her bonnet and hung it up on the back of the door. ‘I ain’t courting nobody. I just went to meet somebody.’

‘A chap or a wench?’

‘I’m not saying.’

The assembled navvies laughed raucously. One of them said that it must be a chap, because she’d admit it if she’d only met a wench.

‘It’s time her had a chap,’ Tweedle Beak said to Sheba as he cut a slice of tobacco with his pocketknife from a stick of twist. ‘A fine-lookin’ wench like young Poppy. By the living jingo, I wish I was ten or fifteen years younger.’

‘She can have a chap – I couldn’t give tuppence who he was – and he’d be welcome to her,’ Sheba replied. ‘But when she’s supposed to be helping me she’ll stay here and work.’ She turned to Poppy. ‘So get cracking, and knuckle down to it.’

Two more weeks passed and Lightning Jack had not returned. In that time, Chimdey Charlie, whom Jericho had fought and beaten over a pillow that wet and muddy night, had sloped off, owing money to Ma Catchpole for his lodgings. Many speculated that he must have left feeling ashamed at being belittled by Jericho in front of his mates. Ashamed or not, he obviously felt vengeful, because he took with him the pillow he had lost to Jericho. Jericho, however, had gained much respect from winning that fight. Few men were prepared to challenge him, having seen the ruthless efficiency and strength with which he had quickly overcome and downed Chimdey Charlie.

Jericho had not bothered Poppy since, either. She noticed his ignoring her, but she was steeped in thoughts of Robert Crawford. It did seem odd, though, that Jericho should suddenly fail to pay her any attention at all after the fuss he made over her at first. Evidently he was just another of the faithless type she’d heard about, the type that blows hot and cold, fickle, unpredictable. For all that, she was a little intrigued. How could somebody show such an obvious interest one day, then turn away from her the next? Maybe she had expressed a little too strongly that she was not like the other girls he’d met, that she was not easy meat. Yet he’d said he rose to such a challenge. Well, he hadn’t risen to this one – and thank goodness.

Another person who had not been near Poppy, although he had not been entirely avoiding her, was Robert Crawford. Actually, he found her totally disarming, which began to worry him seriously. He was torn between leaving her be, because of her lowly upbringing and complete lack of any station in life, and the desire to gaze upon her striking countenance once more. If he could find a plausible excuse to see her again he would. He had considered offering her some help in overcoming the same lowliness that was manifestly dividing them. But how could he help? It would hardly be seemly to give her money, even if he could afford it. He could hardly whisk her away from the encampment and set her up in a lodging house without the world accusing him of keeping a very young mistress, when that was not his intention. Such an accusation would not do his situation any good at all, with all the responsibilities it entailed.

So he didn’t go out of his way to see Poppy. He lacked the excuse. In any case, he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea and think he harboured a romantic interest. How could he possibly be interested in the illegitimate daughter of some navvy who’d had to flee the site to avoid prosecution and likely transportation? Just because her face was angelically beautiful and he couldn’t keep his eyes off her … Just because there was this undeniable grace and elegance behind the rags and tatters and hideous clogs that she wore … He would be a laughing stock. All the same, it was a great sin that that same undeniable grace and elegance would never have the chance to surface and decorate the world. It was a greater sin that her natural intelligence would never have the opportunity to shine through. Could it not be nurtured somehow and put to good use, at least for the benefit of the navvy community, if not for society in general?

If only he could devise some way of helping her without compromising either of them. She was worthy of help, that Poppy Silk. She deserved better than the unremitting mediocrity of the life she led. She warranted something more uplifting than constant exposure to the crushing, unrestrainable coarseness and brutality of the navvies’ encampment to which she was shackled. But what? How could he, a mere engineer, possibly help her?

And then he had an idea.

On the first Saturday of June, as it was approaching yo-ho – the time when navvies finished their work – Sheba and Poppy were sweating over the copper. Lottie and Rose, Sheba’s younger daughters, were outside in the sunshine. Her son, Little Lightning, was still at work. Each man’s dinner was wrapped in a linen cloth and boiled in the copper, tied to a stick from which it hung. Because the women could not read, each stick bore identifying notches. If a stick had five notches cut into it, it belonged to Tweedle Beak. If it had three notches it was Waxy Boyle’s, and so on.

They chatted as they worked, speculating on how much Crabface Lijah had paid for his bit of beef and a few spuds, how much Brummagem Joe’s lamb shank had cost, which he was intending having with a cabbage that was also netted in the copper.

Poppy looked up at the clock over the outside door and saw that it was five minutes to one. ‘I expect we shall be trampled underfoot in a few minutes,’ she said, anticipating the hungry navvies.

‘Here,’ said Sheba. ‘Have this key and unlock the barrel ready. They’ll be red mad for their beer as well.’

Poppy took the key and unlocked the barrel. No sooner had she done it than the door opened and Tweedle Beak stepped inside, carrying a dead rabbit.

‘Cop ote o’ this and skin and gut it, young Poppy, wut? I’ll have it for me dinner with a few taters. And doh forget to tek the yed off.’

Poppy looked at the sad, limp thing with distaste. Drawing and skinning dead animals was not her favourite pastime, but she took it from Tweedle and dropped it into the stone sink.

‘All right if I help meself to a jar o’ beer?’ Tweedle enquired.

‘So long as you give me the money first,’ Poppy replied.

He lifted a mug from a hook that was screwed into a beam above his head and began to fill it from the barrel. ‘Yo’ll have yer money, have no fear. I’ll tot up how many I’n had and pay your mother after. Eh, Sheba?’

Sheba turned around from her copper. ‘I’d rather I totted it up meself.’

‘Never let yer down yet, have I?’

‘No. You’m one of the decent ones, Tweedle. Any road, the first time you don’t pay will be the last.’

Tweedle uttered a rumble of laughter. ‘Yo’m a fine, spirited wench and no two ways, Sheba,’ he said, stepping up to her from the barrel and slapping her backside. ‘And yo’ve got a fine arse an’ all, eh?’

‘My arse is my own business,’ Sheba proclaimed, feigning indignation at his familiarity. ‘So just you keep your hands to yourself.’

Poppy noticed with surprise that her mother had blushed, and pondered its significance. Tweedle laughed again, and the facial movement seemed to make his long nose even more pointed.

He swigged at his beer eagerly then looked over to Poppy. ‘Hast skinned me bit o’ rabbit yet?’

Poppy said that she had, and reached for a chopper that was hanging on a nail, to sever its head. Already, there was blood and entrails on her hands.

Tweedle refilled his mug. ‘Yo’m a decent wench an’ all, young Poppy …’Cept for yer damned cheek,’ he said with a matey grin.

Poppy placed the skinned rabbit on the wooden table and hacked its head off. Then she picked up the head and threw it into a pail that was standing on the floor beside her to collect the rest of the kitchen debris. She drew the innards like an experienced butcher and cleaned inside the carcass while Tweedle watched.

‘Yo’d mek somebody a lovely wife, young Poppy, and that’s the truth. Her’s got the mekins, Sheba, wouldn’t yer say?’

‘Oh, she’s got the makings and no two ways.’

‘Her’d be a heap of fun in bed an’ all, I’ll wager. Bist thou a-courtin’ yet, Poppy?’

‘No.’

‘Has nobody tried to bed thee? Nobody fought over thee?’

‘No.’ She looked up at Tweedle with a steady gaze that belied her years, to add emphasis to her response.

‘What a mortal bloody waste—’

There was a knock on the door and it opened. Dandy Punch, the timekeeper, thrust his head round the jamb. ‘Rent day,’ he called officiously. ‘Have you got some money for me this week, Sheba?’

Sheba had not been looking forward to this visit. Resignedly, she dried her hands on her apron and went to the door. ‘You can come inside if you want to.’

Dandy Punch stepped inside. At once his eyes fell on Poppy, who was wrapping the skinned rabbit in the linen, ready to hang it in the copper with Tweedle Beak’s potatoes.

‘It’s three weeks since Lightning Jack sloped off,’ Dandy Punch said. ‘Now you owe rent to the company for five weeks. Unless you pay me today, Sheba, I have to tell you you’m to be evicted.’

Evicted … Sheba sighed heavily, well aware that if she was evicted she would have no alternative but to go on tramp, taking her children with her. They would have to sleep rough under the stars. If they failed to locate Lightning Jack – a likely situation – they would be picked up in some town or village as vagrants and shipped off to the nearest workhouse. Almost certainly she would be separated from her children, and they would all have to wear workhouse clothes to set them apart from everybody else. But this was what it had come to, and she could not afford to wait for Lightning any longer. Why hadn’t he come back? Didn’t he realise the predicament his absence would put her in?

‘Your young son earns money, don’t he?’ Dandy Punch said. ‘Can’t you pay me what you owe with that?’

‘What he earns don’t keep us in victuals, let alone rent,’ Sheba said ruefully.

‘Well, there’s the money you get from selling the beer …’

‘The beer has to be paid for. They don’t dole it out to us out of the kindness of their hearts.’

‘But you make a profit on it.’

‘Otherwise there’d be no point in selling it,’ Sheba agreed. ‘But ’tis a small profit, and not enough to keep us. Besides meself and the one who’s at work, I got four children to keep.’

‘The other problem you got, Sheba, is that with Lightning Jack gone, you got no entitlement to stop in this hut. Lightning Jack was the tenant, and only somebody employed by the company is entitled to a tenancy. He ain’t a company employee any more, Sheba. And neither are you.’

Sheba sighed, and Poppy looked on with heartfelt dismay at her mother’s impossible situation.

‘What about my son, Little Lightning?’ Sheba suggested. ‘Couldn’t he be the tenant?’

‘Is he twenty-one?’

Sheba shook her head ruefully. ‘He’s twelve …’

‘Then there’s no alternative. Eviction’s the only answer. It’s a problem you’ll have to face, Sheba … Unless …’ His eyes met hers intently and Sheba could tell he had a proposition to make.

‘Unless what, Dandy Punch?’ She looked at him with renewed hope.

‘Unless I can have your daughter …’

‘Me daughter?’ Sheba looked at him in bewilderment. ‘What do you mean exactly?’

‘Let me have your daughter and I’ll pay off the rent you owe. And I’ll let you stop in the hut till Lightning comes back. He’ll have to pay the rent he starts owing from this week, though.’

Sheba was still bewildered by the offer. ‘What do you mean exactly, when you say you want me daughter?’

Dandy Punch scoffed at her apparent naivety. ‘You don’t strike me as being that daft, Sheba. I want her for me woman. I want her to keep me bed warm.’

‘I ain’t going with him,’ Poppy shrieked in panic from the stone sink where she was scraping potatoes. ‘Don’t let him, Mom. I’d rather go on tramp. I’d rather end up in the workhouse.’

‘But, Poppy, it’d mean we could stop here, me and the kids, till your daddy came home,’ Sheba reasoned. ‘I wouldn’t have the worry o’ going on tramp and missing him coming the other way. We might never see him again. We could end up in the workhouse.’

‘No, I won’t,’ Poppy insisted. ‘I’d rather go in the workhouse. I’d rather die.’ The thought of Dandy Punch mauling her in his stinking bed and slobbering all over her filled Poppy with a sickening revulsion. ‘And you should be ashamed, Mother – prepared to let me go to him just to save yourself.’

Sheba quickly weighed up her daughter’s comments. She caught the eyes of Dandy Punch and could not resist a defiant smile. ‘She’s right, you know. I should be ashamed. I don’t think she fancies you that much, by the sound of it, Dandy Punch. I ain’t got the right to sacrifice her. She’s got notions of her own.’

Dandy Punch looked somewhat embarrassed. ‘Well, it’s your last chance,’ he said, trying to recover his composure. ‘And if your daughter can’t see the benefit to her as well as to yourself, then she needs a good talking to, and a clip round the ear to boot, for being so stupid.’

‘Oh, I don’t think she’s stupid,’ Sheba said. ‘Just particular.’

‘In that case …’ He coughed importantly in an effort to redeem some of his ebbing prestige. ‘In that case, I’ll be along this afternoon with the bailiffs—’

‘Hang on, Dandy bloody Punch …’ Tweedle Beak spoke. He arose from his chair and walked over to Sheba’s side. ‘I’m glad as I waited and listened, and watched you mek a bloody fool o’ yerself, Dandy Punch, lusting after this innocent young wench here. D’yer really think as a young madam like that is likely to be enticed by some dirty, pot-bellied ode bugger like thee? An’ any road, I’m an employee o’ the company and there’s nothing in the rules what says as I cor be the tenant, if I’ve a mind.’ He felt in his trouser pocket and drew out a handful of gold sovereigns which he handed to the timekeeper. ‘Pick the bones out o’ that lot and gi’ me the change I’m due. I pay the rent here from now on. I’m the tenant in this hut, so write my name in your blasted book … And Sheba here is my woman, if anybody wants to know.’ He put his arm around her shoulders proprietorially. ‘Does anybody say different?’

Tweedle Beak looked at Sheba and their eyes met. It seemed to Poppy that her mother’s silence was consent enough.

Poppy went out that afternoon. She avoided Dudley town and its hordes of people; she avoided The Wheatsheaf with its navvies on their Saturday afternoon randy. She wanted to be alone, to think over just what her mother had let herself in for. Deep in thought, she headed towards Cinder Bank, walking the route she and Robert Crawford had taken on their ride. The hot June sun was on her face, but it did not warm her. She sat on a stile and, with her head in her hands, pondered the prospect of lying in the bed next to her mother and hook-nosed Tweedle Beak. For, despite her tender years, Poppy was canny enough to realise that Tweedle had not done what he had done out of charity; he would claim his rights over her mother that night. Sheba must have known, too. She must have been well aware. Poppy tried not to think about the grunting antics that would be performed with a vengeance as Tweedle drunkenly asserted his manhood and his possession of her mother, but mental images of them invaded her mind. The disturbing reality would arrive soon enough.

She reached out and snatched a stalk of twitch grass. Absently, she split the stem with her fingernail and felt the moist sap oozing between her finger and thumb. Poppy had imagined that her mother was grieving over the absent Lightning Jack, but perhaps she wasn’t. Perhaps she, too, was just yet another woman of easy virtue. Perhaps even she was hungry for a man by this time. Poppy’s respect for her mother was under siege. What sort of example was the woman setting? Would it be easy for her to submit so readily to such a man? Was virtue so easily corrupted? Was Sheba really so corruptible that she could rashly sell her own body to Tweedle Beak for the price of a few weeks’ rent, and Lightning Jack due back at any moment? Poppy was confusing herself with all these questions which she could not answer. Maybe Sheba had sacrificed herself to protect her from the clutches of Dandy Punch.

Her thoughts turned to Minnie. Minnie was easy; her skirt would be up in a trice for no more than a manly smile and a glass of beer. Why were some women like that? Why did they lack self-respect? Why did they cheapen themselves so? It made no sense. They were no better than the men. They were just as bad, just as depraved.

It then occurred to Poppy that maybe her father wasn’t coming back. Maybe he’d used the threatened appearance before the beak and the prospect of transportation as an excuse to get away from a woman he’d been itching to leave for some time. Maybe his promise to return was just empty words. Maybe he’d already found a woman before he left and had sloped off with her. Men did that sort of thing. Maybe Sheba realised it. Even Poppy had known of several who had absconded, never to be heard of again.

So Lightning Jack could surely expect no better from Sheba. He knew the system. He was aware Sheba could not remain in a hut without him. He must also have known her sexual appetite; after all, she was not particularly old – only thirty-one – even though she looked older. Lightning must have known that some other hungry, healthy navvy would seize the opportunity to bed his woman in his absence. The trouble was, his absence suggested he did not care.