Читать книгу The Sweeping Saga Collection: Poppy’s Dilemma, The Dressmaker’s Daughter, The Factory Girl - Nancy Carson - Страница 16

During the weeks that she got to know Robert Crawford, Poppy had become acquainted with the regularity of his comings and goings on the construction site. But work was moving along the trackbed away from the encampment towards Brierley Hill, and she could not always be certain lately that he would be where she thought he might be. In an endeavour to ‘accidentally’ bump into him as he left his office one dinner time, she tarried between the foreman’s hut and Shaw Road, then between the tommy shop and the road. It was the first Thursday in July and the weather had turned, so that you could have been forgiven for thinking it was April, with all the showers alternating with the sunshine that shimmered blindingly off the wet mud.

While she drifted from one point to another, scanning the area for sight of Robert, she saw another man walking towards her. He was unmistakably a navvy, with a bright yellow waistcoat, a moleskin jacket, a quirky cap, and well-worn moleskin trousers with knee-straps to stop the rats running up his legs. He wore odd boots as well, one the colour of dried blood, the other a light tan. Poppy did not know him, so assumed he had been on tramp and was seeking work. As he entered the encampment he touched his cap and smiled amiably. He reminded her strangely of her father, except that he looked older.

She heard the sound of wheels chattering over the road surface and Robert appeared from the top of the hill, riding his machine. Her heart went into her mouth, for she had not the slightest idea what she might say to him. She just wanted to see him, to talk with him, to try and glean whether this unfulfilled love was as painful for him as it was for her. Robert had been on her mind so much these last few days and nights that she was becoming preoccupied. If only he hadn’t told her how he felt. If only he had kept his feelings and his hands – and his kisses – to himself, they could have gone on as they had hitherto, teacher and pupil, friends who merely harboured admiration and respect for each other at arm’s length, who kept their ardour unspoken and under control. But his confession that he was taken with her, and then his frustrating but tantalising self-restraint, had only fuelled her interest and desire the more. She was hooked, yet she understood that hooking her was not what he had intended. What she did not know was that Robert Crawford had also of late adopted the habit of either perambulating or riding – ostensibly in connection with his work – Poppy’s likely routes.

As he approached, she thought she detected a blush from him as he drew to a halt, though it could have been the exertion of riding, even if it was downhill.

‘Oh, hello, Robert,’ she said, endeavouring to show a decorous amount of astonishment at finding him in the very place she had come to look for him.

‘Hello, Poppy,’ he greeted with equal surprise, uncertain how he stood now with this perplexing girl.

‘Fancy seeing you here. I was just on me way to the tommy shop.’ She ignored the pertinent reality that it took twice as long to get to the tommy shop by way of Shaw Road than her usual route of walking through the cutting.

‘And I was just on my way to find my colleague Slingsby Shafto,’ he felt compelled to explain, ignoring the equally pertinent reality that he was travelling in precisely the wrong direction. ‘Are you well?’ he asked awkwardly.

‘Oh, yes. I’m very well, thank you. Are you?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, yes. I’m not altogether enamoured of this change in the weather, though. Rain makes everywhere so muddy and slows down the work.’

‘Oh, I know,’ she said. ‘All the men moan like whores when the rain comes.’

‘Poppy!’ Robert exclaimed, unwittingly slipping into the role of tutor. ‘You really must temper your similes.’

‘I haven’t a clue what you’re on about.’

‘What you just said … the men moaning like … like whores. You would never say that in polite conversation.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t know,’ she replied defensively, disappointed at her little blunder, which highlighted once again the class difference between them. ‘It’s what the men say, Robert. I didn’t know it was a … what?’

‘A simile.’

‘A simile?’

‘Yes. Of course, it’s perfectly normal to use similes, but yours is too inappropriate for polite conversation.’

Oh, yes, we’re having polite conversation, more’s the pity, she thought, as she regarded his mouth and yearned for him to kiss her. Why couldn’t she make it less formal and tell him bluntly that she loved him, that her emotions were all upside down because of him? ‘So, what’s a simile?’ she said instead.

‘A simile is when you compare something to something else to enhance its meaning,’ he answered, unaware of the turmoil inside her. ‘Such as saying the full moon hangs like a silver disc, or … or … your eyes are like limpid pools … for example. Any such phrase using the word like or as is often a simile.’

‘I’ll try and remember, Robert. I’ll try and use good, respectable similes in polite conversations in future,’ Poppy said obligingly.

He smiled. ‘I hope you will.’

‘But what about Albert in the tommy shop?’ she said, with an impish twinkle in her eyes.

‘What about Albert?’ he replied, with the feeling he was being led into some tender trap or other.

‘Well, will he be offended if I tell him the place stinks like a midden?’

Robert laughed. ‘I doubt it. With Albert it’ll be like … like water off a duck’s back.’

‘Oh, you’re sharp today.’ She looked at him mischievously. ‘You’re sharper than a pig’s jimmy.’

‘Now, I’m not certain whether that’s a simile or a metaphor,’ he said, and went on his way amused.

Poppy was not really going to the tommy shop even though she ambled towards it. When she could see that Robert had gone inside the foreman’s hut, she turned around, acting as if she’d forgotten something, and headed wistfully back to Rose Cottage. She so missed him already. She ached for the opportunity to be alone with him again, to try and win his love. She imagined she had been so close to being his, yet the possibility was all but lost. The pain of unrequited first love increased inexorably and jostled at her heart.

As she approached the hut she became aware of the navvy on tramp whom she’d seen a few minutes earlier walking alongside her as she neared the hut.

‘Howdo, Miss,’ he greeted. ‘Bist heading for Lightning Jack’s by any chance?’

‘Yes,’ she said, instantly throwing off her preoccupation at hearing her father’s name. ‘I’m his eldest daughter, Poppy.’

‘Well, is that the truth? Nor should I be surprised. Just look at thee … He said th’art a fine-looking wench. He told me thou tek’st after thy mother in looks. Is thy mother about, young Poppy?’

‘She’s in the hut, mister. Have you got some news o’ me father?’

‘Aye, I come bearing news o’ thy fairther.’

Poppy looked with apprehension at his grave expression and opened the door of the hut to let him in. The men, who had just finished their dinners, were about to go back to work, leaving their mess to be cleared up by Sheba and Poppy, and her sister Lottie. They trooped outside as Buttercup entered.

‘Mother, this man’s on tramp and he says he’s got news o’ me father.’

Sheba looked up and beheld the man with interest as she wiped her hands on her apron. ‘You’ve got news o’ Lightning Jack?’

‘I have that, missus. Lightning Jack and meself met up on our way to the Mickleton tunnel, and we’ve bin muckers ever since—’

‘Is that where he’s gone? The Mickleton tunnel?’

‘Aye, that’s where he got to. That’s where we both bin a-working – side by side.’

‘So what have you come to tell me that he wouldn’t come and tell me himself, mister?

‘Buttercup, missus. Folk call me Buttercup … And it ain’t that he wouldn’t come himself … He couldn’t.’

‘Couldn’t?’ Sheba said.

‘Nah.’ Buttercup shook his head solemnly. ‘’Cause the daft bugger blowed himself up.’

Sheba slumped into a chair, the use suddenly draining out of her legs. ‘What exactly d’you mean, Buttercup? What d’you mean, blowed himself up?’

‘It was an accident, Sheba. I’ll call thee Sheba if th’ast got no objection. It was a tragic accident.’

‘So he’s dead?… Or is he still alive?’

‘He’s dead, poor bugger. I’m sorry to say.’

There was a wail of anguish from Poppy, as piercing as the cry of a vixen that has lost a cub. At once she went to her mother for mutual consolation and threw her arms about her. ‘Me dad’s dead!’ she keened. ‘Oh, no. Please God, don’t let him be dead.’

Sheba threw her arms around her daughter. Tears filled her own eyes and she began to tremble at the awful revelation. ‘How did it happen? When did it happen?’

‘Last Thursday,’ Buttercup said. ‘He’d packed gunpowder into the face of the rock to blow it and lit the fuse. He hivvered and hovered – I could see his candle in the darkness, not shiftin’ – and I called him to come away quick. “I’m a-coming,” he called back. But then he fell, Sheba, and I reckon as he twisted his ankle or summat, ’cause he dain’t shift no more. It’s dark in them tunnels, Sheba – night from dawn till dawn – and it’s my guess as he couldn’t mek out where he was a-walking, ’specially as he must’ve had the bright light o’ the fuse still flickering in his eyes, making all else seem darker by comparison. I rushed out to fetch him, but I was too late. The gunpowder exploded well afore I could get to him, and I reckon it was the blast what killed him. He was showered wi’ great lumps o’ rock any road. If he’d lived he’d most likely have ended up a cripple.’

‘My poor, poor Jack,’ Sheba moaned.

‘Aye. Poor Jack, and no two ways about it. Ye was all most dear to his heart, Sheba.’

In her state of already heightened emotions, Poppy released another great howl of lamentation at these powerful but simple reminders of his affection for them, and Sheba hugged her tight. Not only had she lost Robert, but now her father was gone also. Forever. Never would she be able to take his hand and tell him things that she longed to tell him now; feelings she had never thought necessary to divulge to him when he was alive.

‘And what about his burial?’ Sheba asked.

‘He was buried Tuesday. I set off on tramp to let thee know as soon as ’twas over.’

‘I can’t get over it, Buttercup.’

‘Nor me, Sheba. It seems unbelievable. I liked Lightning Jack. We was good muckers … Here, I brought thee his things, look.’ Buttercup picked up the bundle that he’d laid on the floor between his feet and put it on the table in front of Sheba. ‘Summat to remember him by.’

Sheba let go of her grieving daughter and opened up the bundle. She took out Jack’s metal tea bottle, the tin in which he kept his mashings, the pouch in which he kept his tobacco, his gum-bucket still reeking of the stuff. There was a razor, a shaving brush that had seen better days, and the remains of a bar of soap. Sheba saw these things and wept.

‘Well, Buttercup,’ she said eventually, drying her eyes and sniffing as she remembered her duties as regards hospitality. ‘How long since you’ve eaten?’

‘Oh, I had a bit o’ breffus somewhere round Halesowen.’

‘Then you’ll be clammed. I’ll rustle you summat up. Our Poppy, unlock the barrel and serve Mr Buttercup a quart.’

‘That’s real decent o’ thee, Sheba,’ Buttercup said. ‘Thou know’st what it’s like on tramp.’

‘That I do,’ Sheba replied.

‘Tell me, Sheba … Dost think there’ll be work here for me?’

‘You can but ask. See Billygoat Bob. But the tunnel here’s finished, ’cept for want o’ the permanent way being laid. I daresay there’s other work, though. Folk am coming and going all the time. It’s a different contractor now.’

‘Well, when I’ve had that bite I’ll seek out this Billygoat Bob. I see as thou tek’st in lodgers, Sheba. Cost find a bunk for me?’

‘Oh, I’ll organise you a bunk, Buttercup. Have no fear … only fourpence a night.’

Word spread around the encampment about Lightning Jack’s death like a straw fire fanned by hot wind. A steady flow of navvies and a few women came to see Sheba to pay their respects. Poppy, however, her emotions already running high, took to her bed and sobbed the whole afternoon. If only she’d known, when he’d left that Saturday morning in May, that it would be the last time she would ever cast eyes on her father. She would have prevented him going somehow, hidden him somewhere close by till the fuss and palaver had died down. Even a spell in prison would have been infinitely preferable to his needless death. Such a horrible, sudden death at that. Now he was gone, there was so much she wanted to say to him, so much she wanted to hear.

Poppy refused food when Sheba asked if she was ready to eat late that afternoon, and took only a mug of hot tea. As she lay, her eyes puffy from her constant tears, the door to the bedroom opened and Sheba announced that Poppy had a visitor. The girl sat upright, knowing it could only be Robert Crawford and instantly sorry that he was about to see her at her ugliest, with red puffy eyes. But he might feel sorry for her. Her tears might elicit more tenderness from him; tenderness she craved. Through the haze of tears he was indistinct, but it did not look like the Robert Crawford she knew and loved, and her heart sank. She wiped her eyes, and was surprised to see Jericho standing there holding a posy of flowers.

‘I din’t know what to get you,’ he said clumsily. ‘So I brought you these. I’m that sorry to hear about your dad.’

Poppy forced a smile, touched by his unexpected consideration. She took the flowers from him and held on to them. ‘That’s kind,’ she said, realising the barracking he would have got from his fellow navvies for doing something as unmanly as taking flowers to a girl. ‘Thank you, Jericho.’

‘Folk have told me how you thought the world o’ your dad. O’ course, I din’t know Lightning Jack, but folk have told me all about him. He sounds like the sort I woulda liked having a drink with – and working with, o’ course.’

Jericho’s voice was surprisingly soothing. He was not saying all the right things, but it seemed he understood. He was giving support in his own limited way. Poppy’s eyes flooded with tears again at his compassion and he squatted on the roughed-up bed beside her.

‘Would you like a mug of tea?’ she asked, remembering her hospitality and wiping her tears again. ‘I’ll make you one.’

‘Nay, my wench,’ Jericho answered. ‘I’ll not bother you in your grief. But I’ve a mind to call and see how you are later, if you’ve no objection … Maybe you’ll feel a bit brighter later.’

She nodded. ‘That’s very kind, Jericho,’ she answered sincerely.

Jericho did call later. Poppy did not feel any less grief-stricken but she was pleased he had shown an interest and had taken the trouble to see how she was. She walked out with him later down the footpath to Cinder Bank and into Netherton. He chatted easily, talking about this and that, and she believed he was trying to take her mind off her grief. They stopped at a public house in Netherton. The flagged floor of the public bar was strewn with sawdust; a few rickety tables and stools were the only furniture. Two men kept nudging each other and eyeing up Poppy with lustful looks. Jericho tolerated it for a while then approached them.

‘Have you had an eyeful yet?’ he asked them collectively.

‘Well, her’s a comely enough wench but for the queer frock,’ one of them answered, calm, confident, grinning, defiant. ‘Yo’ cor blame we for lookin’, though. Why? Dun yer want to mek summat of it?’

‘If you like,’ Jericho replied. ‘Would you like to take a wander outside, eh?’

‘No, Jericho,’ Poppy pleaded. ‘Don’t fight again on my account.’ She knew she would feel even more beholden to him.

‘I’ll not stand by and hear them insult you, Poppy,’ he said, handing her his jacket. ‘I’ll gouge their guts out.’

He led them all outside. The man Jericho had addressed handed his jacket to his mate and stood poised with his fists up.

‘Just the one of you, eh?’ Jericho taunted. ‘I’ll fight the pair o’ you together if you’ve a mind.’

‘It’ll on’y tek one to bump yo’ off, you cocky bastard,’ goaded the local man.

Jericho hitched up his trousers and grinned, and his opponent lunged out at his head. Jericho deftly sidestepped the punch, intercepting it with an upward sweep of the arm, then struck the local man hard on the jaw with a sickening crunch. The man put his hand to his mouth and looked at it to see if blood had been drawn. Seeing the man’s guard was down, Jericho hit him again and the poor fellow slumped to the ground with a lip that was oozing blood.

A crowd was gathering, murmuring, watching intently, inexorably drawn to the fight. ‘Who’s this big bugger who’s just downed Billy Webb?’ somebody asked, obviously surprised that somebody should.

Billy Webb struggled to his feet and his arms shot out at Jericho like the lashes of a whip. But few jabs made contact and they only succeeded in angering Jericho the more. Jericho struck out again at Billy Webb and missed, whereupon Billy landed a telling punch into the stomach that made Jericho wince. Jericho leered in defiance, looking for an opening to drive home a blow. He fought to win and there were no rules. Everything was fair: punching, kicking, kneeing and clinching. Both men were masters of scrapping, a hard-learned craft born of too many cruel fights, too many split lips, blackened eyes and aching limbs, but Jericho was the younger man and the bigger. In a short time his advantage began to tell, while his opponent began to lose confidence.

The growing crowd watched in stunned silence. Their local champion was about to be beaten. After one more blow to the mouth, Billy Webb went down … and stayed down.

‘Now you, my friend,’ Jericho said, offering Billy’s mate the opportunity to avenge the defeat of his friend.

The mate put his hands up defensively. ‘I’m no fighter, my mon. I’m a drinker. Let me buy you a drink and we’ll part friends.’

‘I’d see to me mate first, if I were you,’ Jericho said. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll buy me own beer.’

He turned to Poppy for his jacket. Embarrassed, she handed it to him.

‘Shall we go now?’ she suggested, uncomfortable, feeling that hostile eyes were on her for being the cause of this Billy Webb’s downfall.

‘Shall we buggery! I’m having a few more drinks yet, my flower. It’s thirsty work fighting.’ He inspected one of his fists that had become grazed in the scrap, licked it and wiped it on his jacket.

Poppy watched him, disconcerted by the wild, glazed look in his eyes. It was obvious that Jericho enjoyed fighting. Clearly he derived some strange sensual satisfaction from the physical exertion, the exhilaration of danger, or at gaining physical superiority over another.

‘Why do you have to fight?’ she asked as he sat down, having bought himself a fresh tankard of beer.

‘’Cause that’s how I argue – with me fists.’

‘But you hurt folk, Jericho.’

‘I ain’t hurt you, have I?’

‘No …’

‘So why are you harping on about it?’

‘But that’s twice you’ve fought over me. I don’t desire it, Jericho.’

‘But it’s a measure of how much I think o’ yer.’

‘So is that how you let somebody know how much you like ’em? By fighting?’

‘Can you think of a better way?’

Poppy didn’t answer. Of course there were better ways. Her thoughts turned to Robert Crawford and his gentleness. There was a world of difference between the two men. Jericho was typical of all navvies – he argued with his fists, his aggression justified by the twisted logic for which an excess of alcohol was responsible. Conversely, was Robert Crawford typical of all men who purported to be gentlemen?

She finished what was left of her drink and looked intently at Jericho. ‘I want to go now. I’m going anyway, whether you come with me or not. I ain’t gunna stay here any longer.’

‘Go then,’ he said sullenly. ‘I’ll find me another wench.’

But then she remembered how considerate he had been, how sympathetic. ‘Oh, come on, Jericho,’ she pleaded. ‘You’re not going to let me walk that path all by myself, are you? What if one of these here follows me? What if I get set on?’

He drained his beer and stood up. ‘I’d kill anybody who touched you, Poppy. Come on, then. Let’s went.’

The low sun threw long shadows as they walked hand in hand along the footpath back towards the encampment. Tall grasses and thistles waved lazily in the summery breeze and a white butterfly settled on a cluster of shepherd’s purse. The rain that had half threatened all day had not fallen, but bags of dark cloud still chased each other ominously across the sky.

Poppy and Jericho spoke little on the way back. He was reliving, in a silent, very personal exhilaration, every blow he had cast and received. A good hard fight energised him, set the blood coursing through his veins. And after every good hard fight he felt the insistent need for a woman. The one was a counterbalance to the other. The brutal punches and kicks, clenched fists striking the sturdy flesh and bone of some other man in desperate anger, could only be neutralised by the soft caress and accommodating smoothness of a woman’s willing body.

‘I want you, Poppy Silk. Let’s lie down in the grass.’

She looked at him apprehensively, seeing the lust in his narrowed eyes. He had been taken like this each time she had seen him fight. The first time, after he’d fought naked, he’d wanted her to go behind the hut with him. The second time, after the fair, he’d tried to seduce her under the bridge that they were approaching again now.

‘I won’t rest till you’re my bed wench,’ he said earnestly. ‘I had a word with Dog Meat. He reckons it’ll be all right if you and me sleep together in Tipton Ted’s hut. We could hang a sheet round the bunk for a bit o’ privacy.’

He was going far too fast, taking far too much for granted.

‘I don’t know if I want to do that, Jericho. I don’t want to be anybody’s bed wench.’

‘Don’t you love me?’ he asked, as if there were no earthly reason why she shouldn’t.

‘I like you,’ she replied. ‘Course I like you. You’ve been kind to me.’

‘But you don’t love me.’

‘I can’t say as I do.’

‘I’ll make you love me.’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t see how—’

He took her in his arms with a roughness she did not enjoy and searched hungrily for her lips. Poppy was in two minds whether to submit but, in the same instant that she felt Jericho’s ungainly kisses, she remembered Robert Crawford’s sweet, stimulating caresses, and had to turn her face away.

‘What’s up wi’ yer?’ Jericho asked, impatient. ‘Are you still hankering for that bloody chickenshit of an engineer? That Crawford?’

‘No, course not,’ she answered, averting her eyes away from his.

‘Christ almighty, I’ll kill the little bastard. I swear, I’ll swing for him if ever you are.’

‘I’m not, Jericho,’ she protested with a vehemence that was sham but convincing. ‘Course I’m not.’

‘So what’s up wi’ yer then? Why d’yer keep saying no to me all the time?’

‘Jericho …’ She uttered his name softly, soothingly. ‘It’s not that I don’t like you … I do. But I don’t want to be anybody’s bed wench, woman, whore, wife, or whatever else you want to call it. Not even yours, Jericho … Don’t you understand? I want to be Poppy Silk, owned by nobody but meself. I don’t want to have to sleep with somebody every night of my life and end up having a babby every ten months, like some o’ the women I know.’

‘You’re a bloody icicle,’ Jericho proclaimed angrily. ‘Christ, there’s more warmth in a dead nun than there is in you. I’d throw you to the ground and take you here and now, but I’d most likely skin me dick to shreds trying to shove it up your stone-cold cleft.’

‘And what do you expect from somebody who’s just had news of her father’s death?’ Her eyes filled with tears as another wave of grief subdued her. ‘Don’t you understand that I got other things on me mind than lying with you, Jericho. Leave me be. Just leave me be …’

So it was not late when Poppy returned to Rose Cottage that evening. The hut was quiet. All of the men had gone out drinking. Sheba was subdued and Poppy could tell that her mother had been crying.

‘Did you tell Tweedle Beak about me dad?’

‘Yes, I told him,’ Sheba replied.

‘And what did he say?’

‘Not much. He said as he was sorry, but I think he was a bit relieved.’

‘You mean because he won’t have to face me dad now?’

Sheba nodded. ‘I reckon that’s why.’

‘Did you tell him that you’re carrying me father’s child?’

Sheba shook her head dejectedly. ‘Not yet. I’ll tell him when I’m ready … If I think it’s worth telling him at all.’

‘You’ll have to tell him sooner or later.’

‘Or let him think the child is his …’

‘Mother, you wouldn’t … Would you?’

‘What else can I do, our Poppy? If he knows the child is Lightning Jack’s he’ll disown me. He wouldn’t stand to be ridiculed. We would all be back where we started when your father went on tramp. We’d all end up in the workhouse.’

‘Oh, Mother …’ Poppy sighed. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘Lord knows … Oh, there’s a note here …’ Sheba fished in the pocket of her apron and pulled out a cream-coloured envelope, which she handed to Poppy. ‘It was pushed under the door o’ the hut after you’d gone out. I hoped as you might be able to read it.’

Poppy took the envelope and recognised her own name written clearly on the front. Her heart went to her mouth as she tore it open. She withdrew the notepaper inside and scanned it for words that she could recognise. Some words were immediately recognisable, some she had to build up, but it was written in a precise hand that was easily legible.

‘What does it say?’ Sheba enquired fretfully.

‘Mother, I’m trying to read it …’

It was hard to construct the words, many of which she had not learned, but she built them up logically from the letter sounds she knew, and it all made sense.

‘It’s from Robert,’ Poppy said softly, her heart beating fast.

‘Read it to me, our Poppy.’

‘It says, “Dear Poppy, I heard today of the sad death of your father. The news came as a shock to me, so it must be an even greater shock to you and your family. I want you to know how distressed I am to hear of it. I can only begin to imagine how you must feel. Please pass on my … con-dol-en-ces” … I think that’s the word … “to your mother. If there is anything I can do please let me know. Your friend … Robert Crawford.”’

‘Well, that’s decent of him,’ Sheba remarked. ‘Thank him for me when you see him.’

‘I will, if I see him …’