by Nancy Carson
‘Well, talk o’ the devil … Here her is, that sprightly young filly o’ thine, Sheba.’
‘What’s that you’re carrying?’ Sheba asked.
Poppy raised the book in her hand. ‘Oh … a book. Robert gave it me to read.’
‘Thou canst read then, eh?’
‘Somebody I know is learning me.’
‘That young engineer chap I mentioned,’ Sheba said.
‘Robert Crawford,’ Poppy informed her for the umpteenth time.
‘Can’t say as I know him yet,’ Buttercup said. ‘But it’s a fine thing, bein’ able to read an’ write. Keep it up. It’ll stand thee in good stead. But, tell me, wench … in all the excitement of learning to read, hast thou forgot about washing me shirt?’
‘No.’ Poppy felt herself blushing, not sure if he was mocking. ‘That’s why I’ve come back early. To wash your shirt, and anything else that needs a good wash.’
‘Good lass.’ He stood up, took off the garment and threw it onto another chair close by. ‘Thy fairther, God bless him, always said thou was a good little lass. He always said thou would’st mek somebody a splendid wife.’
‘Just as long as he ain’t a navvyman … Is there some hot water, Mother?’
‘Should be.’ She turned to Buttercup. ‘See? I told you as much. She’ll have no truck … Are you going out tonight, our Poppy?’
Poppy picked up Buttercup’s shirt and shrugged as she made her way over to the stone sink. ‘I don’t know. It depends whether Minnie wants me to. Or even Jericho.’
‘What if neither is about?’ Buttercup asked.
‘Then I’ll stop in and start to read me book. It’s wrote by a young woman, Robert says. He says I’ll like it.’
‘Robert says so, eh?’ Sheba flashed a knowing look at Buttercup. ‘Well, if Robert says so, you can bet you will …’
That warm summer’s evening, Poppy went to Hawthorn Villa to call for Minnie.
‘You’ve just missed her, my flower,’ Ma Catchpole informed her. ‘Her went out half hour ago.’
‘Is she likely to be long? I mean has she gone out with Dog Meat for the night?’
‘That drunken bugger? No, Dog Meat went up the Grin and Bear It as usual. He must be in truck up to his arsehole, the money he spends on beer. Leastwise, I doubt if anybody’s saft enough to lend it him.’
‘Well, if she comes back soon, send her round for me, would you, Mrs Catchpole?’
‘I’ll tell her as you’ve bin after her, young Poppy.’
Poppy ambled back towards Rose Cottage disconsolately, disappointed that her friend had not called for her. Saturday nights they always went out together while Dog Meat went drinking. Maybe Minnie had sloped off to see some young beau she’d met. Maybe even that local lad again, called Tom. Often had she sung Tom’s praises. Poppy picked up a stick from the ground and sat on the front step of the hut, scratching letters in the dust.
Then she remembered her book. She could make a start on that. If she could read only the first page she would be mightily proud of herself. She would have achieved something. Back inside the hut she picked up her book and took it into the bedroom. She plumped up her pillow and, still dressed, lay on the bed and opened the book to the first page of the story. Slowly, carefully, she built up each word.
‘Chapter One. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife …’ Goodness! Did that apply to Robert as well? He was surely in want of a wife … It was wonderful how it all made sense. Already Poppy was spellbound. She could hardly wait to complete the next sentence. She read for ages and fell asleep fully dressed, only to wake fully dressed next morning, her brother and sisters having failed to disturb her when they retired to bed.
On Monday, after the works had shut for the night, Poppy skipped along to the house the company had occupied, which served as offices. Gingerly, she climbed the linoleum-clad stairs to Robert’s office and, to her great relief, saw him sitting at his desk, which was, as usual, covered in maps and diagrams. He turned and smiled to greet her when he heard her footsteps.
‘Poppy! I thought you weren’t coming.’
‘Am I late?’ she queried. ‘I’m not surprised. There was a lot of the men about. I waited till they’d all cleared off, then waited a bit longer.’
‘Sensible,’ he said. ‘We don’t want tongues wagging, do we?’
Poppy shrugged. It would make no odds to her if they did. Indeed, too many folk already knew that Robert Crawford was teaching Poppy Silk to read for it to remain a secret for long. But she understood that he wished for greater discretion.
‘I brought my book,’ she said. ‘I’ve been reading it. I love it.’
He smiled warmly. ‘Good. Read some to me. Let me hear how you are faring.’
She sat in the chair beside him and read the first page while he listened and prompted from time to time, watching the wonderfully animated expressions on her face and in her crystal clear eyes. As she spoke the words, he was captivated again by the beautiful sensuous shapes her lips adopted, and he ached inside for her. It struck him then that love can be the most wondrous thing, but it can also be the most torturous if the object of your love is forbidden.
After a few minutes she stopped reading and looked up at him with wide, questioning eyes.
‘Your reading has improved immensely, Poppy,’ he said. ‘Already you are reading faster than you were before. But perhaps we should concentrate on some spelling and punctuation. Do you have your writing book with you?’
She fished in the pocket of her skirt, withdrew it and placed it on the desk.
‘Just a few of the more difficult words you’ve come across … acquaintance …’
‘What’s an acquaintance, Robert?’
‘A friend,’ he answered patiently. ‘Not necessarily a close friend, but somebody whom you know. Somebody with whom you are acquainted.’
She nodded her understanding.
‘So write acquaintance down, Poppy …’ He spelled it out for her and she methodically inscribed it in her steadily improving hand. ‘Now daughter … extraordinary … considerable … neighbourhood …’
Poppy wrote down many words, and did it with a zeal for learning that could not fail to impress Robert Crawford. He went on to explain the rudiments of punctuation: full stops, commas, inverted commas, colons, semicolons, question marks. Poppy nodded thoughtfully as each was explained, as she absorbed the knowledge like a sponge absorbs liquid.
‘You have done extremely well,’ he said. ‘You are learning much quicker than I ever imagined you would.’
‘Am I?’ she replied with a gratified smile that turned into a blush.
‘And I have a small gift for you, to mark my recognition of the hard work you have put into your efforts. Efforts which are quite voluntary, and thus the more laudable.’
‘Laudable?’
‘Praiseworthy, Poppy. Deserving.’
‘Then why didn’t you say praiseworthy or deserving, instead of lordabubble? Anyway, what sort of gift have you got for me? Another book?’
‘No …’ He leaned forward and stretched out to retrieve a parcel of brown paper and string that lay under his desk near his feet. ‘Here …’ He smiled, eager to see her response. ‘I want to watch your expression as you open it …’
‘What is it?’ She looked at him with a mixture of apprehension and delight as she took the parcel from him.
‘You’ll see.’
Eagerly she undid the knots in the string and discarded it, then set about carefully unwrapping the box. It had a lid, which she lifted it a little and then let fall again to prolong the pleasure of anticipation. Robert watched her, as excited as she was, urging her to reveal the contents. She removed the lid and gasped.
‘Robert! Oh, Robert, it’s a pair of dainty black boots with ’lastic sides. Oh, thank you, thank you. How can I thank you enough?’
‘Well … a kiss would suffice.’
‘O
h, I’ll give you a hundred kisses – a thousand.’
She leaned forward with her typical lack of inhibition and their lips met. Their arms went about each other in tentative desire … Tentative, because each was aware of the forbidden nature of their fervour. She withdrew her lips with profound reluctance and regret, and rested her forehead on his chest, unable to quieten the sincere love she felt for him.
‘Oh, Robert …’ she breathed, her voice so strained with emotion that she needed no further words.
He hugged her tight and nuzzled his cheek against her lush, fair hair. Why did he torture himself so? Why indeed did he torture her? It was so obvious even to him that she was head over heels. It must be correspondingly obvious to her that he was equally besotted. Yet what remedy did they possess? How could they possibly satisfy their love?
‘Shall I try on the boots?’ she said, sensitive to his dilemma and not wishing to augment the pain by prolonging it.
‘Of course … You see, Poppy …’ He swallowed hard in his effort to regain his composure. ‘Your prayer for a pair of boots has been answered.’
‘I know,’ she said, sitting down again and slipping her clogs off. She looked him squarely in the eye. ‘And when I go to bed tonight, I’m going to say another prayer, if it’s that easy to get what you want …’
Chapter 12
Robert Crawford set off home with his awkward two-wheeled contraption. The hill ahead of him was daunting in the heat, and too steep to treadle his way up. So he gripped the handlebars, took a deep breath, and began pushing the heavy machine. Workmen turning out of the pits and ironworks made their way home or to the nearest beer shop, sweating in their shirtsleeves, their jackets and waistcoats bent over their arms or tossed over their shoulders. Women struggled with bags and baskets of provisions, irritated by whining children who tugged at their skirts or walked under their feet.
Robert’s thoughts were focused on Poppy Silk. Should he take advantage of her love for him and trifle with her, or should he take her devotion seriously? Common sense told him he should do neither. He should steer well clear of her, with or without his two-wheeler. His heart, however, was urging him to do both … Well, such was his confusion. Ever since he first became acquainted with Poppy, she had enchanted him. Consequently, he had lost interest in the fine decent girl to whom he was already engaged. To that respectable girl, any interest he showed was pretence.
It was flattering to have two very pretty girls vying for his affection. He was, however, uncompromising in his determination to be fair to both.
Yet he was becoming increasingly aware that the mutual fondness he and Poppy shared was special. He also realised that the effect of its denial was torture on him. How long could he tolerate it? How long was he prepared to? Furthermore, what effect was his warm attention, but ultimate denial, having on Poppy?
To her detriment, Poppy was the daughter of a mere railway navvy, and a product of that ungodly, itinerant sect that were all but outlawed by decent society. She was uncultured, untutored in anything until he himself had shown her the rudiments of reading and writing. She had been raised in that shady circumstance where morality was non-existent, where violence was the norm and thieving was accepted. In her world, life itself was dominated by the subversive lure of beer and whisky, and just how much of it the men could drink before falling over or maiming each other in fights. She wore clothes that were odd, old, unfashionable and sometimes shabby. He had been so dismayed by her poverty-stricken clogs that he had been only too happy to buy her a decent pair of boots. Without some radical change in her, he could not possibly take her home to meet his parents and say, ‘This is Poppy Silk, whom I adore and want to marry. This is the woman I prefer over the more refined, more respectable girl you expect me to wed. This is the woman I want to bear my children and bring them up in a clean, respectable home, who will teach them to become model citizens. This is the woman I expect you to admire and take to your hearts, despite her shabbiness and her total ignorance of the niceties of life, despite the rigid social conventions that rule our lives, of which she has no grasp, albeit through no fault of her own.’
They would laugh at him.
They would scorn him and think he had gone utterly mad.
If he tutored her from now till doomsday … Yet despite her faults, was Poppy Silk not the dearest, the most delightful soul? Her hair was a dishevelled mess much of the time, but was it not lovely for all that, and the most divine shade of wheat that had been sun-ripened to perfection? Was its texture not that of the softest spun silk? Was she not also the girl with more youthful grace and zest than any other he had met? Would her enchanting face not be the envy of the most strikingly beautiful goddess? Did she not possess the clearest, biggest, bluest eyes imaginable? Was her nose not the most exquisitely formed, her neck the most elegant, her lips not the most delicious that ever man kissed? And those were only the parts of her he’d had access to. There lay concealed other, perhaps even more beguiling, attractions. And besides these outward manifestations of beauty, did she not also possess the sweetest nature, the most admirable, intelligent demeanour?
Even so, what could he do? He must be fair to both these young women who had taken over his life, else he would not be able to live with himself. Indecision was his enemy, but he could not decide what to do to be fair, not only to them, but to himself as well. Procrastination could cause him to lose this one enigmatic girl who he was certain would be the love of his life. Hesitancy could induce him, through a reluctance to be cruel to the other, into a marriage that was destined to fail. Indecision, procrastination, hesitancy … These were his failings, but at least he was aware of them. Somehow, he must work out a solution.
He had reached the top of the hill and was perspiring in the July heat. In front of him King Street was a downhill run before it levelled out. He could ride from here. The flow of the breeze against him as he rode would cool him. So he cocked his leg over the frame of the two-wheeled machine and shoved off.
A solution of sorts began to take form in his mind, which could be fair to both girls and to himself. It seemed the only way he could extricate himself from this dilemma and emerge with a clearer understanding of what would ultimately be the best thing to do. He needed time. Only then could he become more rational. Time would enable him to sort himself out, free him from the perplexity of all-consuming emotions, which were intensified in turn by his own refusal to submit to them. Poppy, meanwhile, might fall prey to the foul attentions of one of the roughnecks among whom she existed. He must be aware, therefore, that while in one sense a friend, time might also turn out to be a traitor and rob him of her.
Robert had reached the brow of the hill where Waddams Pool became Dixons Green Road. A little further on, the splendid home of his family stood in its own extensive grounds. He rode his machine into the drive and put it away in one of the stables at the rear, realising he had no recollection of the ride home, save for his thoughts. However, he had made an important decision. Now, he must implement it.
A month passed. A month in which midsummer progressed in a succession of hot and sultry days, when only occasional dark clouds drifted like bruises across a sky that quickly healed. In the distance towards the rolling Clent Hills, in the patchwork of fields beyond the chimney stacks, wheat and barley revelled in the warm breeze and ripened, waiting to be harvested. In some fields, hay had already been cut and stood in stooks, like little huts ready to be occupied by hobgoblins.
Work on the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton was, yard by yard, day by day, shifting further away from the encampment at Blowers Green. Thus it was taking the men longer to get to the workings and longer to return to their lodgings after their toils. The stables were moved so that the mules and horses could be closer to where they were needed. Still there was no sign of the permanent way being laid.
Sheba’s morning sickness persisted and her belly, though hardly yet any bigger, was getting firmer. Tweedle Beak had twigged that she was pregnant but, no
t unnaturally, assumed the child was his. So far, Sheba had not denied it, biding her time for the right moment. Minnie Catchpole and Jericho continued their sensuous liaison clandestinely. Minnie remained ignorant that Dog Meat had prostituted her for the price of a gallon of beer, and so eager was she to make herself available to Jericho that he saw no sense in paying Dog Meat for the subsequent use he made of her. As far as Minnie was concerned, it was a love match. Jericho, however, was tiring of the intrigue. There was still that other finer-looking girl who had not yet succumbed to his charms.
Poppy had noticed that neither Minnie nor Jericho seemed to be available to go out nights. If she had alienated Minnie in some way she was sorry, but could not think how she could have done it. Jericho? Well, he had most likely just grown tired of getting nowhere with her.
Poppy, though, remained preoccupied with Robert Crawford. He continued to give her lessons two or three times a week and was delighted at the progress she was making. He remained equally preoccupied with Poppy but sought not to show it, wishing to give her neither encouragement nor false hopes, for he was minutely aware of her devotion to him. In that month, Robert had laid his plans assiduously and everything was in place.
Poppy also made a decision as she sat on the front step of Rose Cottage playing with the dog that belonged to Waxy Boyle, one of the lodgers. The dog was rolling on its back in the dust, enjoying the ecstasy of having its belly rubbed. When Poppy ceased, it thrust its cold, damp nose under her hand, selfishly urging her to continue. But she was deep in thought and the dog did not appreciate the fact. She had intended to say a prayer later that night, as Robert had taught her, to ask God to deliver Robert safely, permanently into her heart and her life and to propose marriage. But, when she thought it through, she decided she wanted neither favour nor interference from God. Robert must make any decision himself. He must make his own way to her because he wanted to, without God’s prompting. Besides, God would think her as self-centred and as greedy as the young whelp she was teasing now, if she demanded too may favours.
