Poppy's Dilemma

by Nancy Carson

‘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 f
rom 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?’