Читать книгу The Sweeping Saga Collection: Poppy’s Dilemma, The Dressmaker’s Daughter, The Factory Girl - Nancy Carson - Страница 21

Dandy Punch, the stocky timekeeper, called at Rose Cottage after work had finished on Saturday to collect the rent. Poppy answered the door to him and was gratified to see him drenched to the skin as he hunched under his hat as if it might afford adequate shelter from the rain.

He bid her an obsequious good morning, which made her flesh creep. ‘You look a picture today, young Poppy,’ he said with a slavering leer, his voice as smooth as lard. ‘But then, you always do.’

‘I’ll fetch me mother,’ she said offhandedly, at once turning her back on him.

‘Is Tweedle Beak about yet?’ he called after her. ‘I’d like a word if he is.’

Having heard, Tweedle rose from a chair and, in his shirtsleeves, went to the door. His hand was in his pocket delving for the money to pay the rent in anticipation of Dandy Punch’s asking for it. He counted out the exact amount then handed it over to the timekeeper who, in turn, made a mark in his collection book.

‘A word, if you please, Tweedle …’

Dandy Punch turned away from the door and from the hut, signifying to Tweedle that the conversation should not be overheard. Tweedle followed him, closing the door behind him.

‘What can I do for you, Dandy?’ he said, eyeing resentfully the dark clouds above that were spilling their contents over him.

‘Quite a bit, I fancy, Tweedle. They say as how one good turn deserves another …’

‘Oh?’

‘You remember after Lightning Jack left … I turned a blind eye to you paying the rent on this hut …’

‘Turned a blind eye?’

‘Well, it was all done unofficial, Tweedle. Strictly speaking, Treadwell’s like to have gangers renting the huts, not ordinary navvies. Gangers have a bit more sway with the lads who lodge, you understand.’ He turned up the collar of his coat. ‘But since I knew you was trying to protect poor Sheba and her brood, I had to admire you for it. It was a noble thing to do, Tweedle. Very noble. There was no fear of me turning round and saying you couldn’t do it, neither to you nor any of the gaffers.’

‘What am yer after, Dandy Punch?’

‘Well … the time’s come when I reckon it behoves me to ask a favour in return … And not just a favour for meself, Tweedle, ’cause I’ll be doing you one as well.’

‘What is it you want?’ Tweedle asked pointedly. ‘Come on, mek it quick. I’m getting bloody drenched.’ He did not take kindly to having it identified that he owed a favour to anybody. That which Dandy Punch had done he had not perceived as a favour, more in the line of duty.

‘Well … this lottery as you’m about to run … I reckon as you’ll be wanting somebody to write out the lottery tickets, putting the names on, and keeping an account of the money you collect.’

‘Listen, Dandy, I can keep an account o’ the money meself without any help from you or anybody else. But yo’ could write the names on the tickets, if yo’ve a mind, ’cause I can’t. Already I’ve took a pound each off the Masher, off Fatbuck, off Waxy Boyle and Windy Bags.’

‘Hang on … Let me write ’em down …’ Dandy Punch fumbled between the pages of his dog-eared rent book for his blacklead. He licked the lead and began to write, hunched over his book to keep it dry. ‘Masher … Fatbuck … Waxy … Who was the last one you mentioned?’

‘Windy.’

Dandy wrote it down. ‘Let me know who they are when you take their pounds and I’ll see to it as there’s a ticket wrote for every pound took, eh?’

‘Fair enough, Dandy.’

‘Now look, Tweedle …’ Dandy tucked his book under his arm and felt in the pocket of his trousers. He drew out a handful of coins and counted them into Tweedle’s hand. ‘That’s five pounds, Tweedle … Now what you can do for me in return is to let me have two tickets for each of me pounds, so as I have ten tickets for five pounds. That’s my discount, like, for helping you to operate the lottery, and for turning a blind eye to your tenancy.’

Tweedle shook his head. ‘It ain’t enough,’ he said, seeing an opportunity to profit further. ‘It ain’t enough to warrant that sort o’ discount. Look, Dandy, it strikes me as yo’m keen to win this Poppy, eh?’

‘That, I am. Right keen. She’s a fine madam.’

‘And that’s why you want to boost your chances, I can see that. Well, all I can say is boost ’em good and proper by paying for ten tickets and write yourself twenty. Yo’d be almost certain to win the wench. I can’t say fairer than that.’

Dandy Punch hesitated and sucked on his lips. ‘Ten pounds is a lot o’ money, Tweedle … I’d invest it without a second thought if you could guarantee as my name would be picked out o’ the hat … Nobody else need know, o’ course.’ He tapped his nose and winked. ‘It’d be just between us two. You could still collect the money off the other chaps and make a tidy profit.’

Tweedle Beak considered it for no more than two seconds. ‘Give me twelve quid, Dandy, and I’ll guarantee it. But so sure as yo’ breathe a word o’ this to anybody, I’ll skin thee alive.’

‘Have no fear. It’s just between you and me, Tweedle. And I’m a man of me word. I knew we’d understand one another. Just let me know who’s paid and I’ll write out their tickets as well.’

Tweedle leered. ‘Not that they’ll see the light o’ day, eh, Dandy?’

‘Oh, they’ll have to be put in the hat, Tweedle. But mine’ll be a different colour. Whoever does the draw will have to know what colour to pick out.’

‘Oh, that’s easy fixed,’ Tweedle said. ‘Leave that to me.’

Poppy’s elusive dream of winning Robert Crawford lay ravaged. The first couple of days without seeing him was not in itself so bad, for she could imagine his being there still, perhaps in his office, but too busy to see her while he attended to problems on his section of the railway. The truth, however, was irrevocably registering that she might never see him again, inducing the severely acute pains of adolescent emotion, for which she had no antidote as yet. Never had she known such feelings of desolation and hopelessness. His departure could only be interpreted as rejection; and it hurt. By God, it hurt.

On the Sunday morning, she awoke early, disturbed by a gnawing inner awareness of her heartache, for there was no respite in sleep. Tweedle Beak lay alongside Sheba, his hooked nose the sail of a coal barge heaving on the erratic swell of his raucous snores. Her brothers and sisters were contained in their sound, juvenile slumbers, their faces the epitome of innocence. Poppy got out of bed and crept barefooted into the communal living room, leaving the creaking door ajar behind her to prevent the mechanical clack of the latch waking anybody. She stood shivering, peering out of the cracked windowpane that overlooked the chaotic squalor of shanties. Another damp dawn was breaking. Out of habit, she raked the ashes out of the fire, shovelled them into an iron bucket ready to heap onto the midden, and laid a new one. Her thoughts, though devoid of hope, were only of Robert Crawford. She’d had no time to come to terms with the torture his going away had wrought. Her desires, her goals, lay in ashes. Life was no longer worth the living.

She lit the fire and knelt before it, little more than a child but with all the high-strung emotions of a woman. With a match, she lit the paper at the base of the fire and watched as it ignited the strips of wood in turn. These newly kindled sticks represented her first encounter with Robert; the flame of fondness had caught, tentatively at first, then more surely, just as it had with the sticks. It was never a sudden thing, more a growing realisation that she needed to be near him as often as she could, to feed off his intellect, his sincerity and his kind attention. Always, there was that initial warmth that drew her to him, like the warmth now that induced her to huddle over the yet ineffectual flames.

Robert’s going was a bereavement. She felt it more acutely than the grief following her father’s death. It was all the more painful and tormenting because Robert had admitted that he loved her heart and soul, and because she had not tried hard enough to detain him. What inner turmoil was he suffering now that he had gone? It could be no harder to bear than her own.

The pieces of wood beneath the coals were burning brighter now, like her love had burned bright during her early infatuation. Soon it would change, transfer its glory to the lumps of coal that were already glimmering at the sharp edges where the yellow flames lapped around them. So was her love transmuted to a higher plane, the better she got to know him. The pure fire of her passion would burn even brighter and for a long, long time, rooted as it was in the less volatile but more substantial substructure of admiration and respect that she had always harboured for Robert. This was the fuel of her emotions, like the coals were the fuel of a long-burning fire. Hers would last her lifetime, young as she was, inexperienced as she was. Instinctively, she knew it.

‘What are you doing up so early?’ a voice said quietly.

Poppy turned around and saw her mother standing at the bedroom door in her nightgown. ‘I woke up early.’

Sheba ran her fingers through her bedraggled hair and yawned. ‘Is it worrying you then, our Poppy?’

‘Is what worrying me?’ She was uncertain as to whether her mother was referring to Robert’s departure.

‘This scheme of Tweedle’s?’

‘What scheme?’

‘You haven’t heard?’

‘Heard what?’

Sheba pulled a chair from under the rickety table and sat down. ‘I thought you must have heard from somebody. Everybody’s talking about it.’

‘Nobody’s told me anything.’

‘He’s running a lottery. A pound a ticket. You’re the prize, our Poppy.’

‘Me?’ Poppy laughed with incredulity. ‘What a cheek. Who does he think he is?’

‘Well, he’s the breadwinner.’ Sheba, unsmiling, hunched her shoulders and pressed her hands together between her thighs for warmth and Poppy perceived from her mannerisms that it was not a joke. ‘I reckon he must think that keeping us gives him the right.’

‘The right? What sort of prize am I supposed to be? Does whoever wins the lottery expect a kiss or something?’ she asked naively.

‘Oh, more than a kiss, our Poppy. The deal is that you jump the broomstick with the winner.’

‘What! I’ll kill meself first. What if it’s somebody like Crabface Lijah or Fatbuck?’

‘On the other hand, what about if it’s Jericho or the Masher?’

‘The Masher’s all right. But I wouldn’t want to sleep with him.’

‘Well, as I see it, you’ve got no say in the matter, our Poppy. And I don’t see as it matters any road, now your Robert Crawford’s gone. One chap’s much like another in the dark, our Poppy, when you’m a-lying under him. And it was no good setting your cap at him any road. He would never have stooped to a navvy’s daughter.’

‘Yes, he would,’ Poppy protested. ‘He loves me.’

‘Ah …’ Sheba nodded mockingly. ‘That must be why he’s buggered off …’ She rolled her eyes at what she perceived as Poppy’s naivety. ‘Listen, our Poppy, I want you to go along with this scheme of Tweedle’s, ’cause it’ll bring in a heap o’ money at the end o’ the month, he reckons. I’m hoping as I’ll be able to have me a new coat and a new pair o’ boots for the winter out of the proceeds. And I daresay as he’ll treat you as well.’

Her mother’s attitude implied far more than mere profit to Poppy. ‘So, you’m letting him believe he’s the father of the child you’m carrying then?’

‘I might as well,’ Sheba admitted with a shrug. ‘There’s no sense in upsetting the apple cart now. Who else would look after us and keep us on the outside of the workhouse?’

Poppy appreciated her mother’s dilemma but made no comment. That she should be a sacrifice to her mother’s wellbeing, however, did not fill her with joy. On the other hand, she could be neither the instrument of her downfall, nor the downfall of her brothers and sisters. There seemed little alternative but to go along with Tweedle’s scheme, however abhorrent. Whatever fate awaited her, she could accept it passively; it would be as nothing compared to her losing Robert. Then what if Robert returned in a year and wanted to tell her he wished her to be his bride after all? Well, she would not have the opportunity to discover it. She would be none the wiser; therefore, nor would he be. By then she might be miles away, living on some far distant railway construction site, already the bed partner of another man. By then she might be carrying a child or have one at her breast. So better to believe he would never come back for her.

‘I don’t see as I’ve got much choice, Mother,’ Poppy said.

If Robert were still here it would be different. She would go to him, tell him what had been planned for her and take his advice. But he had gone. He could give her no advice, offer no help. She was at the mercy of Tweedle Beak, who only wanted to exploit her. There was nobody to talk to. Least of all the men, who must surely condone the scheme without exception. She was at a dead end.

‘Well, the fire’s caught nice, our Poppy,’ Sheba remarked. ‘Let’s get the kettle on.’

The fire …

The fire symbolised her love for Robert. Whatever happened, whoever she was expected to live with and lie by, that flame of love would never extinguish. So she resigned herself to the necessity of tolerating the unwanted fumblings of a man she did not love, found repulsive and had no respect for, while her poor heart forever ached for Robert Crawford.

Dog Meat’s financial difficulties were made worse by the need to obtain a new pair of work boots from the tommy shop. Having tried them on for size and comfort, he signed for them, then trudged out into the clinging mud of that first Monday in September. His mates mocked him when they saw him, some asking whether they were made of pig skin, others whether he had made a pig of himself with Minnie on his day off. He suffered ribald and insensitive comments about Jericho and Minnie. His standing in the community had diminished, he had lost whatever esteem he had previously earned, and he was painfully aware of it. Nor was Minnie sympathetic. It reflected badly on her that she was still associated with him after her apparent conquest of Jericho had been made common knowledge. Dog Meat clung to her, however, like a man drowning in a river clings to a tuft of overhanging grass as the current tries to pull him under.

The new Parkhead Viaduct straddled three prongs of a watery fork that was the junction of three canals. It was built entirely of wood. Sturdy trestles supported the thick planking above, which drummed beneath the abrasive scrunch of two hundred pairs of leather boots, stomping out of step across the span. Dog Meat was one of the men traversing the viaduct on his way to the cutting, avoiding the company of other navvies. Suddenly, he was aware of another person walking alongside him and he turned his head with resentment to see who.

‘Morning, Dog Meat. Smart new boots th’ast got there.’

‘Buttercup! Don’t you start! I’m pig-sick o’ folk taunting.’

‘Pig-sick, eh?’ Buttercup smiled at Dog Meat’s unwitting self-mockery. ‘Well, I bain’t about to needle thee, lad. I had it in mind to ask what thou thought about Tweedle Beak holding a lottery for young Poppy Silk.’

‘You wanted to ask me?’ Dog Meat queried, looking at Buttercup with an unbelieving eye.

‘Aye, thee. Th’ast got an opinion on it, I tek it.’

‘Huh. I just wish I could afford to buy a ticket. She’d be a good woman, would Poppy.’

‘Better than yon Minnie Catchpole?’

‘Yes. Even though there’s talk of Poppy and that young engineer—’

‘The engineer? Aye, but sod all will ever come o’ that, Dog Meat. The lad’s buggered off. Abroad, I heard. Any road, he was on’y learnin’ her to read and write.’

‘And I wonder what else,’ Dog Meat suggested cynically. ‘Why else would he bugger off?’

‘He wouldn’t need to bugger off if he’d got young Poppy into trouble. She’s on’y a navvy’s daughter. Who from his class cares about such as her? Now … if it was some daughter o’ the gentry …’

‘It’s a useful skill to have in a woman, reading and writing,’ Dog Meat said after a thoughtful pause. ‘’Specially when you can’t read and write yourself. If I won Poppy in the lottery I could be done with Minnie.’

‘Or has Minnie already done with thee, Dog Meat?’ Buttercup asked pointedly. ‘I mean to say, she’s had Jericho ferreting up her frock regular, by all accounts.’

Dog Meat shook his head resolutely. ‘Just the once.’

‘Oh, just the once, eh? Yo’ sound as if yo’ know all about it after all.’

Dog Meat frowned with puzzlement at Buttercup. ‘Aye, just the once,’ he affirmed. ‘He only paid me for the once any road.’

‘Paid thee?’ Buttercup grinned. ‘Yo’ mean you sold him the wench?’

‘He gi’d me the price of a gallon o’ beer. It was only for one jump, though.’

The older man guffawed. ‘Methinks you sold her too cheap, Dog Meat.’

‘You do?’

‘He’s bin cheating thee, that Jericho. He’s been seen going in and coming out of the tunnel a few times with that Minnie o’ thine.’

‘The bastard!’ Dog Meat exclaimed at the realisation. ‘How many times?’

‘The Lord only knows, Dog Meat. How many times a night could thou manage it?’

‘Christ! He must owe me a fortune,’ Dog Meat cried, at once sorting his priorities. ‘I’ll part him from his money one road or another.’

Later that day, as Buttercup strutted towards Rose Cottage after his day’s work, he espied Poppy Silk scolding Rose, the younger of her two sisters. He slowed down, waiting for the argument to die, then called Poppy’s name. She halted and straightened her apron when she saw him, then smiled with embarrassment at having been thus seen.

‘Hello, Buttercup,’ she greeted, looking up at him expectantly.

‘Poppy. I’m glad as I’ve caught thee. There’s summat as I wanted to talk to thee about. Can you meet me after? It ain’t summat as I want to discuss where other folks can hear.’

She looked at him mystified. ‘If you want. What time? Where?’

‘When the others am in the alehouse getting fuddled. Meet me by the bridge where the road ends and the footpath starts – towards Netherton.’

‘I know it,’ she answered. ‘About eight?’

‘Eight’ll do. It’ll be getting dark by then. Don’t let on to anybody as you’m meeting me.’

She nodded, wondering what on earth he wanted to see her about. Back inside the hut she continued with her work, cooking the meals that the lodgers had left with her, that were wrapped in linen and steeping in the boiling copper. One by one she drained them and plated them before she handed them out to their respective owners.

Most men took beer with their meals, a taster before the serious drinking that would ensue later. After they had eaten, the men would linger, talking, putting the world to rights, before they dispersed to change into their more flamboyant clothes.

‘You’ll make somebody a grand wife,’ was a common compliment in anticipation of the fate that was to befall her.

‘Somebody? I wonder who?’ she would reply, irrespective. To another she added, ‘Just as long as it ain’t you. So please don’t buy a lottery ticket.’

When the work was done, Poppy glanced at the clock. It was almost eight and she was aware that Buttercup had left the hut. She took off her apron, teased her hair and slipped out without saying a word. She hurried to Shaw Road and walked hurriedly downhill, looking behind her to see if anybody was watching. It was still slippery with mud underfoot, but the rain had ceased and the sky was clear. Buttercup was already waiting by the bridge, smoking his clay pipe.

‘Sorry if I kept you waiting, Buttercup.’

‘It meks no odds, young Poppy,’ he said kindly.

‘What did you want to see me about?’

‘I wanted to know how thou feels, wench,’ he replied. ‘Having known thy father as well as any man, being privy to his hopes and dreams and taking to him the way I did, I feel a mite responsible for thee, young Poppy. I sort of feel entrusted to be thy guardian.’

She smiled up at him gratefully. ‘What do you want to know? How I feel about men drawing lots for me?’

‘Aye. That sort o’ thing.’

‘What do you think about it, Buttercup?’

‘I think it’s a scandal.’

‘Do you think my father would’ve sold lottery tickets to get shut of me, or to profit from me?’

Buttercup shook his head. ‘Never in a million years. It was one of the big regrets in me life that I dain’t have the privilege of knowing thy father longer, Poppy. But I know well enough that he would never have sacrificed thee to the gamble of a lottery. Lord knows who’s likely to have the winning ticket. It’s just as like to be somebody you detest as one of them handsome bucks.’

‘I don’t want to be drawn by anybody, Buttercup, handsome or not,’ she said. ‘I always swore I’d never end up with a navvy …’

‘Don’t none of ’em appeal?’

She shook her head.

‘What about Dog Meat?’

She pulled a face. ‘’Specially not Dog Meat. He ain’t got the brains of a gnat.’

‘Who then?’

‘Why? Are you going to fix it somehow?’

‘Me fix it? Nay, wench. Tweedle Beak’ll let me nowhere near him nor his lottery to meddle with it.’

‘Are you going to buy a ticket for me, Buttercup?’

He laughed at the thought. ‘Nay, wench.’

‘Please, Buttercup,’ she pleaded softly. ‘I wouldn’t mind if you won me. At least I know you’m kind. I know you’d be gentle.’

‘Nay, wench,’ he said again, flattered that she had the nerve to say it. ‘Thou wouldn’t want an old bugger like me. Now, thy mother … Now that’d be a different kettle o’ fish. I’m nearer thy mother’s age …’

‘Do you like my mother, Buttercup?’

‘Oh, I think she’s a fine, plucky woman, Poppy. I can’t say as I’m enamoured o’ the shit heap she sleeps with, though.’

She giggled. ‘Nor me … But why did you mention Dog Meat?’

‘Oh … It’s nothing to do with me really …’

‘Tell me …’

‘Well, it’s just that he admitted to me this morning how he’d let Jericho have young Minnie Catchpole for the price of a gallon o’ beer.’

‘Have her?’

‘Aye. Have her. To do as he wanted with her for one night. Dog Meat was desperate for money and Jericho was desperate for a woman. Dog Meat’s always desperate for money, from what I can see of it.’

‘And did he? Jericho? Have her, I mean.’

‘Oh, aye. The trouble was, the bastard was having her most every other night after it, but not letting on to Dog Meat. They used to go in the tunnel regular for their shenanigans.’

Poppy was unable to say anything for some seconds, so startled was she by this news. There were so many questions to ask, and she didn’t know which to ask first.

‘But it was Jericho wanting to buy thee off Tweedle who started this whole business of the men drawing lots for thee,’ Buttercup explained.

‘If Dog Meat took money for Minnie’s favours, Buttercup, that means he sold her for a common whore.’

‘Aye, that’s the way I see it, Poppy.’

‘Poor Minnie …’

‘And yo’ ain’t sore with Minnie for having Jericho?’ he asked. ‘One or two say as how you was sweet on Jericho.’

‘I never was, Buttercup. I was only ever sweet on Robert Crawford, the engineer who was teaching me to read and write.’

Buttercup smiled and his eyes creased in that way which always seemed to enhance his likeableness. ‘I knowed it! And now he’s buggered off, eh? Never mind. Maybe he’ll come back for thee, young Poppy.’

‘I’m sure he will. He told me he loved me … For all the good it’ll do me once I’m carrying somebody else’s child.’

‘So did he ever tek advantage of thee, young Poppy, this engineer?’

‘No, he never took advantage of me, Buttercup, more’s the pity. Robert is too much of a gentleman for that. He said he esteemed me too much.’

‘Christ, then he must be a gentleman. He must have meant what he said. I’d stick out for him, if I was thee.’

‘Except that with no prospect of escaping that lottery, my future is already sealed.’

‘Aye, it’d seem that way,’ Buttercup agreed.

When she returned to the encampment, Poppy called at Hawthorn Villa hoping to see Minnie. For once, Minnie was in, and Poppy said she wanted to talk to her. The full moon tinselled the dew that settled on the shepherd’s purse, on the thistles, and on the spiders’ webs so intricately engineered in between. Poppy related to Minnie what Buttercup had told her of Dog Meat’s arrangement with Jericho.

‘And I thought it was ’cause Jericho loved me,’ Minnie declared ruefully. ‘Lord, what a fool I’ve been.’

‘He don’t love anybody but himself, Minnie,’ Poppy consoled. ‘And I wouldn’t have no truck with him any more after that, if I was you.’

‘I won’t, I won’t. But it means Dog Meat sold me, Poppy.’ Minnie was visibly annoyed. ‘He sold me for money, as if I was a whore.’

‘It’s true.’

‘Well, why should he have the money, Poppy, if it’s me what’s doing the work? Oh, I’ll show him. As sure as day’s day, I’ll show him …’