by Nancy Carson
‘Shhh! Folk will hear. Yes. It’s her. She’s now Mrs Cecil Tyler.’
‘Good Lord! How on earth did she pull that one off?’
‘She met him at Aunt Phoebe’s one night after my party. They fell in love.’
‘Good Lord!’ he said again. ‘She has no finesse. And he married her? He obviously didn’t know what she was like.’
‘I don’t think it would have mattered. Let’s face it, he wasn’t in the front of the queue when they were giving out handsome faces. And stranger things have happened.’
The band struck up and those dancing began swaying sedately to the steady rhythm of the Lorelei Waltz. Robert took Poppy in his arms and they glided off.
‘So you met Bellamy at this birthday party of yours?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would that I had been there myself … with you.’
‘So you say now.’
‘Oh, I believe you know it to be true,’ he said, his voice low. ‘I can scarcely believe I’m here now, dancing with you.’
‘But still promised to Virginia,’ she goaded.
He made no response.
‘We are no further forward, Robert. You are no further forward. If you still love me – and I have a suspicion now that you still might – things are just the same as when you went away. You left to sort out your feelings. If you still love me, why haven’t you done it? You’ve had plenty of time.’
‘I did. I sorted out my feelings. But on my way back to you I got shunted into a siding by Virginia, her family and my mother.’
‘Then all I can say is you lack determination. You lack the resolve to get out of it.’
‘Well … I can’t deny it, under the circumstances … However, there was another aspect to the way I reacted. I imagined you must have moved on with your mother and family, and the rest of the navvies. In which case you could have been anywhere in the country and unreachable. I imagined that you might have eventually been seduced by that brute Jericho … even had his child—’
‘Ugh! You thought that of me?’
‘All these things went through my head, Poppy. And not unreasonably. How was I to know otherwise? All these thoughts influenced me. Of course they did. Then … almost as soon as I’d arrived back here, Virginia was here. Yet I wanted you. Oh, I dearly wanted you, Poppy … but I was certain you had gone from me. With Virginia I still had someone … and that was so important to me, coming back home starved of the love of the woman I wanted. She at least had been waiting for me—’
‘As I was.’
‘But I’d imagined you gone, Poppy, just a memory to plague me for the rest of my life.’
‘Well, as you can see …’ She looked up at him defiantly. ‘I am not just an affliction of your memory.’
‘And I am delighted to note it.’ He smiled when she looked into his eyes. A warm smile that elicited a lovely warm glow inside her. He bent his head towards her. ‘I am still head over heels in love with you, Poppy. Nothing has changed in that respect.’
She sighed, a deep, satisfied sigh of relief, and gave him a squeeze. She closed her eyes, oblivious to everything and everybody, and smiled to herself as they swirled around in time to the music. This was the reward for suffering a horribly uncertain day.
He looked into her eyes again and smiled warmly. ‘Now that I have confessed, it’s your turn.’
‘Don’t you already know?’ she asked earnestly. ‘Isn’t it obvious? Do you think I would have waited a whole year if I didn’t love you with all my being?’
‘Say it then. Tell me you love me.’
‘I love you, Robert,’ she breathed, meeting his eyes directly. ‘With all my heart and soul I love you. Only you ever doubted it.’
‘So there really is no romance with Bellamy?’
‘Of course there’s no romance with Bellamy … But there could have been … There was no prior “fastening by the mouth” as you cynically put it …’ A smile lurked behind her sombre façade. ‘Although I know him to be fond of me,’ she went on. ‘Perhaps too fond. He’s asked me to be his, but I’ve never agreed to be. I’ve always kept him at arm’s length. It would’ve caused too many problems.’
‘As if we didn’t have enough.’
‘It might still, if he’s of a jealous nature.’
‘Another bridge to cross when the time comes.’
‘So what do you intend to do now as regards Virginia?’ Poppy asked.
‘Nothing, till you and I have had the chance to talk in private and at greater length. Virginia is staying the night, and so are her parents. I presume they’ll return home tomorrow after tea.’
‘Her parents are here? I haven’t seen them.’
‘They’re in cahoots with my own mother and father, shut away in one of the other rooms. Do you know the Lords?’
‘We’ve been introduced. They seem very nice.’
‘As indeed they are. My, how you have inveigled yourself into society, Poppy.’
While Poppy and Robert were dancing, Virginia sought out Captain and Mrs Cecil Tyler, with Bellamy in tow. They engaged pleasantries, although it soon became obvious that Mrs Tyler was the worse for drink. Virginia was thus content for Bellamy and Captain Tyler to lead the conversation.
‘Rumour hath it that there is likely to be a tie up between Peto’s and Treadwell’s to complete the Old Worse and Worse at last,’ Captain Tyler remarked. ‘I wonder that Crawford and Sons are not in the fray.’
‘Not our cup of tea, Cecil,’ Bellamy replied and sipped his beer. ‘Whatever arrangement anybody makes they’ll no doubt get their fingers burnt. That’s my father’s view, at any rate. We have other fish to fry.’
‘But don’t forget that in the last session of Parliament, an Act was passed to raise the unissued capital of the OWWR by preference shares. Talk is that Peto’s and Treadwell’s will join forces to complete the line on the strength of it.’
‘Are you likely to acquire any such preference shares?’ Bellamy enquired.
‘Depends what they’re offered at, of course.’
‘Sounds risky to me, if you don’t mind me saying so. It’s been beset with problems from start to finish, that railway.’
‘Gosh! All this talk of contracting and high finance,’ Virginia said in an aside to Minnie. ‘I get utterly confused by it all. I swear my father rues the day he realised he would have to make do with daughters. I’m sure it’s one of the reasons he is so fond of Robert. I’m sure he would love to groom him to take over the bank eventually.’
Minnie took a slug of the gin and orange juice she was drinking, emptying her glass. ‘I thought he was an engineer, not a banker.’
‘Did I tell you he was an engineer, Minnie? I don’t recall.’
‘You must’ve,’ Minnie said, trying to cover her slip up. ‘There he is, look. Busy dancin’ …’ She nodded her head in his direction, to divert Virginia’s attention away from herself.
Virginia looked. She thought it odd that, for relative strangers, Robert and Poppy were dancing awfully close; that Poppy ought to have more propriety than to allow such familiarity, but she made no comment.
‘I want another drink,’ Minnie said petulantly. ‘Cecil, will you get me another drink?’
‘How many have you had already?’ he queried, excusing himself from Bellamy.
‘Who’s countin’? You said you like me when I’m tiddly. Fetch me another drink, eh?’
Bellamy drained his own glass. ‘I’ll go. Would you like another, Virginia?’
‘I’ll have a little orange juice, please.’
Captain Tyler and Bellamy headed to the drinks table together.
‘Have you not had enough alcohol, Minnie?’ Virginia asked apprehensively. ‘Maybe you should stop drinking now.’
‘Stop drinkin’? Oh, Virginia, you ain’t gunna start preachin’ at me again, am yer?’
‘Gracious no. You’re a married woman, the responsibility of your husband … But one question has been intriguing me …’ She glanced arou
nd to ensure nobody was listening. ‘Does Captain Tyler know you were once … you know?’
‘Course not. And don’t you tell him, neither. I’m reformed, me. I’m a one-man woman these days. Strictly a one-man woman.’
‘Oh, Minnie. I’m so glad. I’ve prayed for it to happen. You obviously idolise Captain Tyler.’
‘I do that.’
Virginia glanced around anxiously for further sight of Robert and Poppy. She witnessed him whispering into Poppy’s ear and the girl was responding with a gratified smile. Virginia felt a searing pang of jealousy, a sensation she did not particularly like, but one she could not dismiss on account of his infidelity before.
‘Poppy is such a pretty girl, Minnie, and so clever. I question whether I have done the right thing by suggesting she and my fiancé dance together. It seems to me that she is being a little forward with him, the way she’s dancing so close.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with that. She always was a friendly sort of a wench …’Specially if she likes the chap, I mean.’
‘Is that true?’ Her tone revealed her disapproval. ‘How long have you known Poppy, did you say, Minnie?’
‘A good many years,’ Minnie slurred. ‘She’s me best mate.’
‘Fancy … I thought you’d only fairly recently met.’ Virginia looked extraordinarily interested. ‘How did you meet?’
‘When we was kids.’
‘No, how did you meet, Minnie …?’
‘Oh … Our fathers was navvies.’
‘Poppy’s father was a navvy? I find that hard to believe. Are you quite sure?’
‘Listen …’ Minnie beckoned with her finger for Virginia to get closer and leaned towards her ear. ‘It’s a secret, so don’t get blabbin’ it about. If it ever gets back that you said anythin’, I’ll know who said it.’ Minnie realised she had phrased her sentence ridiculously in her inebriation, but her meaning, she believed, was clear.
‘But I don’t understand, Minnie. Poppy’s no navvy’s daughter.’
‘You wunt think so to look at her now, with all her airs and graces. But we left the navvies’ encampment together a twelvemonth ago. We shared that house I had in Gatehouse Fold for a bit.’
‘Last summer, you mean?’
‘End o’ September time.’
‘You mean that dainty, fair-haired girl you used to walk the streets with was Poppy?’
‘I ’spect so.’
Virginia was not convinced. She had to be sure. ‘The first time I saw you, Minnie – the time I was alerted to you – you were with another girl, very pretty with fair hair … I lost track of her, but I suppose, yes … it could have been Poppy. That night, you were under the arches of the town hall and a carriage stopped. I watched you talk to the man inside the carriage – negotiating your price, I suppose – then you both got into the carriage and it drove off.’
‘Yes, that was Poppy. Oh, that was a night …’
‘Gosh!’ Virginia exclaimed. ‘Goodness gracious!’
Virginia was utterly astounded. Poppy had been a prostitute, although evidently now reformed. Or was she even reformed? The way she was dancing so close to Robert, perhaps she was not. Perhaps she had turned herself into one of those discreet, high-class prostitutes who graced society, but only ever with their eye on taking a fortune from men. You would never have guessed. To look at her, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. She had fooled everybody, it seemed. Now she was trying to make a fool of Robert. Yet, maybe she already knew Robert from his working on the Oxford, Worcester and …
‘Listen, Virginia,’ Minnie said looking as serious as she could in her drunken state. ‘That’s a secret ’tween you an’ me. I shouldn’t never have told yer. Her’d kill me if her knew I’d told yer. Swear to me as you won’t repeat it.’
‘Look, here are Captain Tyler and Bellamy with our drinks. I’m going to catch Robert’s eye. It’s time he danced with me.’ Bellamy handed her a glass of orange juice. ‘Thank you, Bellamy. Shall we intercept Robert and Poppy now? They’ve been dancing together quite long enough.’
Chapter 28
The end of Evensong could not come soon enough for Poppy. She suffered several hymns, two readings from the Bible, the abstruse chanting of two psalms as well as the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis. The choir sang an anthem, followed by an unfathomable sermon from Reverend Browne and yet another hymn. Only then was she allowed to escape down the stone steps to the street and the warm air of that summer evening. Aunt Phoebe insisted that they drive her to St Edmund’s church at the other end of the town to meet Robert, not content that her charge should walk there alone.
Poppy had had a long conversation with Aunt Phoebe that morning, and told her all that had transpired. Aunt Phoebe intimated she was glad she was not in her shoes, and warned that she should be prepared for difficult times if Robert refused to marry Virginia after all, and Poppy was recognised as the cause of it.
‘I know,’ Poppy replied. ‘But he has his own life to lead. Nobody can live his life just to suit somebody else, and neither should anybody expect it. I’ll fight any person tooth and nail who says different.’
‘But sometimes it’s unavoidable,’ Aunt Phoebe tried to reason. ‘Princes have married princesses for the greater enrichment of their family or their country, without a thought for themselves, with love never entering into it.’
‘But we’re neither prince nor princess,’ Poppy argued, ‘so we don’t matter. Anyway, Aunt, if he asks me to marry him, I shan’t refuse.’
‘I suspect it won’t be quite so cut and dried, Poppy my dear. There is a great deal at stake.’
The clarence rattled to a stop and Poppy saw that Robert was indeed already waiting.
‘It looks like rain, Poppy,’ Aunt Phoebe said, peering up to the sky. ‘Don’t get caught in it. These summer storms can be quite severe.’
‘I won’t, Aunt.’
Eagerly, she made her exit and, with a broad smile, ran across the street to greet Robert. Aunt Phoebe watched from her seat in the clarence with a great fund of sympathy. She offered a little prayer that Poppy, who was her whole life, should not end up devastated as a result of this love affair.
‘You didn’t forget me,’ Poppy said as she hurried to be with him.
‘How could I?’ His eyes were warm on her and he planted a welcoming kiss on her cheek. ‘I’m only glad that Aunt Phoebe didn’t want to chaperone you.’
‘Oh, she might have wanted to, but I would have resisted with all my being. I take it Virginia didn’t stay too long?’
‘She and her family left after tea, as I thought they would.’
He took her hand and looked her up and down admiringly. She looked bewitching in her Sunday-best dress and bonnet, and her dainty boots that he glimpsed briefly beneath her skirt as she walked. This girl was so outwardly different from the navvy’s daughter he used to meet before, the one he was not so keen to be seen with in public because of her impoverished clothes and unspeakable clogs. For all his self-consciousness then, he had found it impossible to keep away from her. She tantalised him with her angelic face, her slanting blue eyes, her loveable, impish ways, her intelligence and her natural grace, all of which made her the enigma that she was. Now, she surpassed his every dream. She still had all the qualities that had captivated him in the first place, but a year later she possessed a grown-up charm, style and confidence as well, yet none of the arrogance that might have accompanied it.
‘You look astonishingly beautiful, Poppy. I can’t get over you.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, mightily pleased.
‘Shall we walk through the castle grounds?’
She smiled up at him. ‘That was where we said our goodbyes a year ago,’ she answered softly.
‘It’s where we can cancel them out and say our hellos.’
‘Tell me about Brazil,’ she said as they entered the gates. ‘Tell me what it’s like, and what you did.’
He told her what he had seen, what he had done. He told her ab
out the friends he had made, the good times and the hard times they’d shared and the sadness they’d felt over losing a colleague. He held her spellbound. ‘The potential for railway building there is colossal,’ he said. By this time, they were looking down on the area that used to be the old racecourse. It was due to become Dudley Station, but was a building site now. ‘I’m in half a mind to apply for the position of Chief Engineer on the line from Rio to São Paulo when work is scheduled to begin.’
Suddenly, her heart was so full of pain that she believed it would burst. ‘You mean you want to go away and leave me again?’
‘But you would go with me next time,’ he said tenderly. ‘I wouldn’t leave you here again. I presume you would agree?’
She smiled, as quickly relieved. ‘Of course I’d go. I’d go with you to the ends of the earth.’
They ascended into the Triple Gateway that gave access to the courtyard, which in turn was surrounded by the ruined Tudor great hall – the buttery, the kitchens, the stables and the living apartments of the castle. Like most Sunday evenings in summer, there were plenty of other people around, courting couples, couples with young families, some strolling, some sitting on the grass in the centre watching the world go by.
‘Bellamy asked where I was going when I went out,’ Robert said.
‘Oh dear. What did you say?’
‘That I was going to meet a friend I hadn’t seen since I left for Brazil.’
‘Well, that’s partly true,’ she said. ‘When have you arranged to see Virginia again?’
‘I haven’t. But I shall have to …’
He sat down on the grass and tugged her hand, indicating that she should sit beside him. She sat facing him, but side on to him so that her legs and his kissed.
‘I take it you intend to tell her about me … about us?’ she said, arranging her skirt around her shins.
‘Yes, little Poppy, and I’m not looking forward to it.’
‘So do you love me enough to see it through?’ She was hugging her knees and watching him with adoration glistening in her eyes.
‘Of course I do. Please don’t doubt my love for you. It’s been tested for more than a year in Brazil, a year when you weren’t there and I longed to be with you.’
