by Nancy Carson
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 fr
iend,’ 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 th
e 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 …’
Chapter 10
That same evening, after Jericho had left Poppy near Rose Cottage, he made his way to The Wheatsheaf in a state of high exhilaration and frustrated lust. Fighting did this to him. It was the reason he sought to fight. But each emotion was only one half of the equation, and the lust was an encumbrance unless it could be satisfied, hence his frustration. He honourably forbore to take advantage of Poppy due to her grief over Lightning Jack, but he was desperate for a woman to mollify this virility that burned so ferociously within him.
Dog Meat was sitting in the public house accompanied by a tankard of beer and a ragbag of other navvies bent on getting drunk. He gestured to Jericho to join them. Jericho stood first at the bar and ordered a tankard for himself and one for Dog Meat.
‘I’d have got up and bought you one if I’d got any money left,’ Dog Meat remarked, taking the beer from Jericho gratefully and turning his back on his other mates. ‘I didn’t expect to see you in here. I reckoned you’d be too busy rogering young Poppy.’
