Poppy's Dilemma

by Nancy Carson

  Tears trembled on Sheba’s eyelashes and she wiped them with the backs of her hands. ‘You are the most … surprising man, Buttercup,’ Sheba said quietly, sincerely. ‘Oh, I’ve always had this admiration for you, from that first day I set eyes on you. I’ll not deny it. But I never thought … Oh, I’d be privileged to be your woman … Just as long as you can forgive me my dallying with Tweedle Beak.’

  ‘Don’t give it a thought,’ Buttercup said kindly. ‘’Tis a certain fact as you had no choice. You have a choice this time, though. Go with Poppy and live comfortable on Tweedle’s ill-gotten money, or settle with me and let Poppy follow her heart.’

  ‘What do you want to do, our Poppy?’

  ‘I love Robert Crawford, Mother,’ she said without hesitation. ‘I have to follow the path that might bring him and me together. Before tonight, I thought he was lost to me forever.’

  ‘Then that’s settled … Buttercup, you’ve got yourself a family.’

  Buttercup beamed. ‘Capital! Just hang on here while I go and have a word with Dog Meat. Poppy, pass me a sovereign so’s I can give the poor bugger his stake back. He even borrowed it off Tipton Ted Catchpole.’

  Outside the hut they heard the sound of raucous singing and shouting. Poppy went to the door and opened it. A crowd of navvies had gathered in the centre of the encampment, and the women who had been earlier hanging around had evidently joined them. Among them was Minnie. Poppy could see the tall, muscular frame of Jericho, unmistakable in the gloaming. Just then he looked up and saw Poppy silhouetted in the door frame by the feeble light of the oil lamp. He strode over to her intently.

  ‘Poppy, I could’ve killed the swine.’ Jericho’s eyes were ablaze with the after-effects of his fight. ‘To think as he could pull a trick like that to get his dirty maulers on you.’

  ‘I suppose you mean Tweedle Beak.’

  ‘Aye, Tweedle Beak. You’ll not see him again. Nor would you want to, I fancy. I paid six quid for lottery tickets to win you and the bastard tried to fix it so as he’d win himself. If Buttercup hadn’t noticed the rogue ticket lying on the floor …’

  ‘We heard,’ she answered. ‘Buttercup told us.’

  ‘Aye, well, I got my money back. I knocked it out of him. He’ll not pull a trick like that again.’

  ‘Where is he? Tweedle, I mean.’

  ‘Gone. He skulked off with a black eye and a fat lip.’

  ‘Gone already? Good … I’m glad …’

  ‘Poppy …’ His look was intent, hungry, and typical of the way he always was after a fight.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fancy coming a walk with me? There’s things I want to say to you. Things I thought I’d never have the chance to say after tonight’s episode.’

  ‘No, Jericho,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve had enough excitement for one night. And I’ve decided, I’m leaving here in the morning.’

  ‘Leaving? Where will you go?’

  She shrugged, aware that for such a big solid man he seemed emotionally tormented, childishly unstable. ‘I don’t know yet. I can read and write a bit now. I might try my luck applying for a position in service in Dudley somewhere. I’d make a good maid, I reckon.’

  ‘Aye, you would at that. But I want to look after you, Poppy.’ He scratched his head under his hat. ‘I had such grand plans for me and you, if I’d won you in that lottery.’

  She smiled sympathetically. ‘It wouldn’t have worked, Jericho. I have my own dreams …’

  ‘Here …’ He felt in his pocket and pulled out a handful of sovereigns that glinted in the half-light. ‘Have this money. It’s what I took off Tweedle. Keep it … or give it your mother.’

  Poppy shook her head. ‘No, give it back to the men who paid Tweedle. Give it to Dog Meat, if you like – you cheated him out of money, by all accounts …’

  ‘Dog Meat? You heard about that?’

  ‘Yes, I heard.’

  ‘Is that why you won’t come with me now? Because of me and Minnie?’

  She giggled at the thought. ‘No. It’s got nothing to do with that. I’ve told you why.’

  ‘I should’ve known from the first time that I’d never do any good with you, Poppy. You only ever turn me down.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No more than I am.’ He took a step backwards. ‘I’ll leave you in peace then. I might never see you again. I wish you health and happiness.’

  ‘Thank you, Jericho. I wish you the same.’

  He turned and went.

  Jericho went straight to Minnie. She was gossiping with the women about what had happened that night and speculating over the likely consequences. He drew her aside, at which the other women flashed knowing glances at each other.

  ‘Come into the tunnel with me, Minnie,’ he said in a whisper.

  ‘You’ve got a cheek,’ Minnie responded acidly. ‘First you give money to Dog Meat for me, and I was daft enough to believe you took me ’cause you liked me. Then you cheat on him by not paying him what you agreed. You’m a rat, Jericho.’

  ‘I ain’t no rat, Minnie. I really like you. I like doing it with you. I always intended to pay him, but then I thought it might put you in Queer Street with him. I was trying to protect you. He’d have known something was going on if I’d paid him money out of the blue.’

  Minnie smiled too easily, forgiving him. ‘Shall I get me rug then?’

  ‘Yes,’ he grinned. ‘I’ll go first. I’ll make me way there now. You come as soon as you can.’

  ‘There’s just one thing, Jericho …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You was prepared to pay Dog Meat to have me. Well, I resent him selling me. I work for nobody but meself. From now on, you’ll have to pay me.’

  ‘Pay you?’

  ‘If you want me, you’ll have to pay me.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Well … you was prepared to pay a pound a ticket for Poppy, I suppose. I reckon I must be worth ten shillings.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Jericho. ‘I’ll give you a shilling.’

  She turned to go.

  ‘One and a tanner then?’

  ‘Five shillings,’ she said.

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Two and a tanner.’

  ‘All right,’ agreed Minnie, with a sparkle in her eye. ‘Two and a tanner. But I want the money now. Afore we start.’

  Chapter 16

  Poppy Silk woke up frowsy-eyed and blinked at the soft, hazy light encroaching into the spartan bedroom through grimy panes. In a flutter of anxiety, she turned her head to see who was lying beside her, having experienced a vivid, disturbing dream. She sighed with relief. Only her mother was at her side. Well, thank the Lord. It had been just a dream and she was safe. Poppy had decided to share her mother’s bed after Tweedle Beak had sloped off; Buttercup, although he had promised to protect Sheba and her children, had chosen to remain in the lodgers’ dormitory … for the time being, at any rate.

  Sheba opened her eyes, roused by Poppy’s nervous fidgeting.

  ‘You’re awake, our Poppy. Are you getting up?’

  Poppy stretched, her slender arms poking out of flannelette sleeves and thrust out over the bedclothes. ‘I’ll light the fire.’ She pushed back the blankets and swung her pale legs out, but remained sitting on the edge of the bed.

  ‘I had a vile dream, Mom.’

  ‘Oh?’ She sat up and puffed up the lumpy pillow behind her.

  ‘I’d jumped the broomstick with Dog Meat, and Minnie came chasing after me with the same broom I’d jumped over, except that it had grown to twice the size. Then we was bundled into bed by everybody … with Minnie and Jericho laughing their heads off and watching. Dog Meat was horrible as well. I couldn’t stand him kissing me. His breath stunk horrible.’

  Sheba chuckled. ‘Well, you don’t have to kiss him. It was only a dream.’

  ‘But it could have been real – if Buttercup hadn’t stepped in …’

  ‘Thank Go
d for Buttercup …’ Sheba mused.

  They were silent for a second or two, contemplating the happenings of last night in the light of the fresh perspectives that a decent night’s sleep affords. Poppy was first to resume the conversation.

  ‘I meant what I said last night, Mom – I love you all, but I can’t go on tramp with you and Buttercup.’

  Sheba pushed away the bedclothes and began picking at a fragment of loose skin around her bunion. ‘You’re a grown woman now, our Poppy. You have your own life to lead, and I won’t stand in your way if you want to get out of this rut we’re all in. So what d’you intend doing?’

  ‘I just don’t belong here,’ Poppy said, combing her fingers through her tangle of yellow hair. ‘I don’t belong on any navvy encampment. I’ve always felt it, for as long as I can remember. I want to find work in service. I want to see how other folk live in their big red-brick houses. I want to sleep in clean sheets, work in clean clothes. I want to live in a warm house, and polish fine furniture and silverware. I want to be where there’s spotless clean floors with no filthy mud, where smelly men don’t swear and spit all the time, where there’s a lock on the privy and I can have a pee and that without having to keep my foot pressed against the door. I wouldn’t mind washing dishes, turning a mangle and pegging somebody else’s washing out. It’d be luxury compared to this.’

  ‘So when will you go?’

  ‘Today. I might as well. I’ve got that money Buttercup gave me … But I still think it ought to go back to them as paid Tweedle.’

  ‘Keep it, our Poppy. That’s my advice. If they was prepared to hand over money to win you, when you was supposed to suffer the consequences and have no say in the matter, then they don’t deserve any money. They’re as bad as Tweedle Beak. They’re all thieves and liars anyway, as likely to pinch off their own grandmothers as off anybody. Like Buttercup says, everybody will think Tweedle’s sloped off with the money anyway. If you intend making a new life for yourself, that money will come in useful.’

  Poppy smiled. ‘Yes, it’ll come in useful all right.’ She stood up and the hem of her nightdress fell around her calves. In her bare feet she padded out into the main room and lit the fire as usual.

  Poppy left the hut for the last time that same dinner time. She kissed her mother, her two sisters and two brothers a tearful goodbye, and went to say farewell to Minnie.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Minnie asked, with a sudden avid interest.

  ‘I’m off to make me own way in the world.’ Poppy smiled bravely. ‘I’ve had enough of the navvy life. And now that me mother and the kids are going on tramp with Buttercup, I thought it was as good a chance as any to get away.’

  ‘What will you do, Poppy?’

  ‘I’ll try for work in service.’ She shrugged. ‘It might be a risk, but it’s a risk I want to take.’

  ‘I’m coming with you.’

  Poppy’s eyes sparkled with affection for her friend. ‘Honest? You want to come? What will your mother and father say?’

  ‘Good riddance, I wouldn’t be surprised. Who cares? Hang on. I’ll just get me things and say ta-ra to ’em.’

  While Poppy waited for Minnie she pondered that at best it might be a long, long time before she ever saw her family again, perhaps years; at worst, never. Yet life was like that. Nothing was ever certain. Her father had gone away, forced to do so by circumstances, and all she had of him now were her memories. Robert Crawford had gone, and while he said he would be back, it did not necessarily mean that she would see him again either. But she was surviving, despite these enormous emotional setbacks. It was painful to think of losing her father and Robert, and in such short order, but she would come through it. It was amazing how other events occurred to occupy your mind and keep you from pining for all those absent folk you loved so well. Well, so it would doubtless always be. Life went on …

  ‘I’m ready,’ Minnie said, as she closed the door of the shanty they called Hawthorn Villa for the last time, carrying a bundle wrapped in a pillowcase. ‘Where shall we go?’

  ‘Into Dudley,’ Poppy said, as if there could be any question about it. ‘Have you got some money? We’ll have to find somewhere to sleep tonight.’

  ‘I got two and six.’ Minnie looked at Poppy with an expression first of sheepishness and then triumph. ‘I went with Jericho again last night and I made him pay me.’

  ‘Minnie! You never.’

  ‘It was lovely enough, without being paid for it as well.’ She giggled as she recalled it.

  ‘Minnie, you’re the limit.’

  They walked on, speculating on when they might next see their families, and on what they might expect from the great big burgeoning world into which they were about to launch themselves.

  The clock on St Thomas’s church struck three.

  ‘Let’s look in the shops, Minnie,’ Poppy said as they walked down Dudley’s Georgian high street. ‘Buttercup gave me some money. I think I’ll buy me some new clothes. I can’t stand these I’m wearing any longer. I feel like a navvy’s wench in them. I’m determined to get rid of all traces. Lord knows what I must look like to other folk.’

  They walked past elegant dwellings with their porticoes and mullioned windows, past alehouses and hardware shops, haberdashers, milliners, a barbershop. As usual among the shoppers, there was a contingency of drunks stumbling from one tavern to another. A street hawker passed them coming in the opposite direction pushing a handcart. He was selling candles and the two girls avoided him. Horses clopped over the cobblestones, and the wheels of the vehicles they hauled rattled as they rolled over the uneven surface. Near the town hall Poppy and Minnie tarried outside a ladies’ outfitters, gazing at the tempting display in the window. Eager to see what else was on offer, Poppy pulled Minnie inside.

  ‘Can I help you?’ a young woman asked hesitantly, inhibited by their rough appearance.

  Poppy guessed the girl was about eighteen or nineteen. She had a pleasant face with large eyes, and was wearing a plum-coloured muslin skirt flounced and edged with embroidery, and a blouse to match.

  ‘I’m looking for something like what you’m wearing,’ Poppy said brightly.

  ‘I can have something made for you, miss. It could be ready in about a week. Would you like me to take your measurements?’

  ‘Ain’t you got something I can wear now?’

  ‘Only second-hand, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Can I see?’

  The girl eyed Poppy up and down estimating her size, then turned to a rack of clothes. She rummaged through it, hesitating at an indigo garment before moving on to another.

  ‘That blue one,’ Poppy said. ‘Can I see it?’

  ‘I thought about that, but I thought it too old for you, miss. But try it on if you like. It’s about your size, I think.’ She took it from the rail and held it in front of herself for Poppy to inspect.

  ‘It’s a lot nicer than the one I’m wearing. Can I try it on?’

  ‘Yes. You can change through there …’ The girl pointed to a door.

  Both Poppy and Minnie entered the musty changing room and Poppy slipped off her red flannel frock, of which she had become very self-conscious. She saw too how shabby her shift looked in the long mirror before her. She slipped the blue dress on and noticed that it had an underskirt sewn in at the waist. When she had adjusted the fall to her satisfaction, Minnie fastened the eyelets at the back of the bodice. Poppy looked at herself in the mirror, and turned sideways to gain a view of the dress in profile. It all fitted perfectly, emphasising her narrow waist and pert bosom. She smiled with pleasure and, without hesitation, left the changing room and went back to the assistant, with Minnie in tow.

  ‘It fits perfect, look.’

  The girl inspected it, rearranging the fall of the skirt and its flounces. ‘It fits you very well, miss,’ she said sincerely. ‘And you carry it off nicely … But then you have that sort of face and figure.’

  ‘What sort of face and figure d’you mean?’

/>   ‘Well …’ The assistant smiled reservedly. ‘I think you could wear anything and look right in it. Some girls can. I envy you.’

  Poppy smiled at the compliment. ‘How much is it?’

  ‘Half a guinea.’

  ‘I’ll give you eight shillings.’

  The girl shook her head. ‘I daren’t, miss. I’d get the sack.’

  ‘Nine and six, then. Or I’ll go somewhere else.’

  ‘All right … But even at half a guinea it would be a very prudent purchase, miss. It would have cost seventeen shillings and sixpence new. And it looks so well on you.’

  ‘I’ll take it,’ Poppy said. ‘But I need some other things as well.’

  ‘Oh? Whatever help I can give …’ The girl smiled more confidently now.

  Poppy, still conscious of her origins, said, ‘I need a new shift, chemise, stockings, garters … Oh, and a mantle for the winter. Our fathers were navvies, and we’ve just left the railway encampment at Blowers Green.’ She felt sure that an explanation was appropriate. ‘It’s closing down and we’ve decided we want to make our own way in the world. So we need to look neat and tidy if anybody’s going to give us work. If you’ve got any tips you can give us on what to wear for the best, miss, we’d be glad of ’em.’

  ‘Of course. I’d be only too pleased.’ The girl smiled amenably now. These were not only down-to-earth girls and sociable, but they even looked up to her, a mere shop girl. There was also a shilling or two to be made here.

  ‘And when you’ve done me, Minnie wants new clothes as well.’

  ‘But I’ve only got two and sixpence, Poppy,’ she protested.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, Minnie. I’ve got enough for both of us.’

  ‘You didn’t have to buy me a whole new wardrobe, Poppy,’ Minnie said, as they left the shop feeling like real ladies, having decided to wear their new purchases. ‘How much did you spend?’

  ‘Less than four pounds. I told you, Buttercup gave me some money before I left. What use is it unless you spend it?’