The Sweeping Saga Collection: Poppy’s Dilemma, The Dressmaker’s Daughter, The Factory Girl
commented. ‘It’s history now.’
Eventually, the chickens were cooked. The two navvies ate well and drank their hot tea, talking ceaselessly. So engrossed were they in their conversation that they stoked up the fire and their gum-buckets and talked into the night, never once thinking about beer. Tired, they eventually fell into a contented silence, firm friends, and slept soundly on the ground till daylight, awaking to air that was as full of the sounds of spring as it was of perfume. The ardent songs of nesting birds was as strange to both men’s ears as the whisper of water from the stream as it lapped over the stones and gravel of its bed.
They rekindled the fire and Lightning fried the eggs Buttercup had stolen in a bit of fat left over from the chicken, using his shovel as a frying pan. While they ate, they consulted the dog-eared map that Buttercup pulled out of his pantry, and pored over it.
‘Why … Mickleton’s no distance, judgin’ by this,’ Buttercup said, looking up from the map. ‘We’ll be there by drumming up time. I just wish I could read the blasted thing.’
According to the navvies’ convention for nicknaming, anybody who was short and stocky was liable to be called ‘Punch’. But, to differentiate between the several Punches inevitably working together on the same line, they had to be further identified by some other pertinent feature. Thus, Dandy Punch was so named because of his taste in colourful and fancy clothes, as well as for his stockiness. He was about forty years old as far as anyone was able to guess, but he might have been younger. He was employed by Treadwell’s, the contractors, as a timekeeper, and one of his tasks on a Saturday was to collect rent from those workers who occupied the company’s shanty huts as tenants. Lightning Jack had been gone a week when he called on Sheba.
Poppy answered his knock and stood barefoot at the door of the hut, her fair hair falling in unruly curls around her face. Her eyes were bright, but they held no regard for Dandy Punch.
‘Rent day again,’ he said, a forced smile pinned to his broad face. His eyes lingered for a second on the creamy skin of Poppy’s slender neck as he tried to imagine the places covered by her clothing. ‘Comes around too quick, eh? But never too quick to see you, my flower. Heard from your father?’
Poppy shook her head.
‘Well, no news is good news. Is your mother here?’
Sheba had lingered behind the door, and thrust her head around it when she was summoned. ‘You’ve come about the rent … As you know, Lightning Jack has made himself scarce. He asked me to say that if you could put the rent down as owing … he’d look after you when he got back.’
‘When’s he coming back?’ Dandy Punch asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know, eh? Has he jacked off for good?’ He arched his unpitying eyebrows and fumbled with the thick ledger he was carrying, which bore the records of what was owed.
‘No, he’s coming back. For certain. I just don’t know when.’
Dandy opened his book, licked his forefinger and thumb and flipped through the handwritten pages unhurriedly. ‘He already owes a fortnight’s rent. Ain’t you got no money to pay it?’
Sheba shook her head. ‘He said you’d be able to cover it somehow, till he got back. As a favour.’
His eyes strayed beyond Sheba, into the hut, drawn by the sight of Poppy. She was pulling on a stocking as she sat on a chair in the shabby living room, and had pulled the hem of her skirt up above her knee. Dandy Punch tried to see up her skirt, but the dimness inside thwarted him.
‘I owe Lightning Jack no favours,’ he declared, irked. ‘D’you think you’ll be able to pay me next week?’
‘I doubt it. With Lightning away, how shall I be able to? But he’ll pay you when he gets back. He’ll have found work. He’ll have been earning.’
‘I bet you charge these lodgers fourpence a night to sleep in a bunk,’ he ventured.
‘Or a penny to sleep on the floor.’ Sheba was trying to hide her indignation. ‘But that’s got nothing to do with you. None of ’em have paid me yet for this week … or last.’
‘Well, all I can do for now is enter in me book that you owe me for this week as well. Let’s hope Lightning’s back next week so’s he can settle up.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ Sheba agreed.
Dandy Punch touched his hat, taking a last glance past Sheba at Poppy, who was pulling up the other stocking, unaware of his prying eyes.
Sheba shut the door and sat down. Her two younger daughters, Lottie and Rose, were outside playing among the construction materials stacked up in the cutting. The baby was propped up against a pillow on a bed. Poppy adjusted her garter and let the hem of her skirt fall as she stood up.
‘I wish I knew what me father was doing,’ she commented. ‘If only he could write, he could send us a letter.’
‘Even that wouldn’t do us any good,’ Sheba replied, ‘since none of us can read.’
Poppy shrugged with despondency. ‘I know.’ She grabbed her bonnet and put it on. ‘I’m going into Dudley again with Minnie Catchpole now I’ve finished me work. Can you spare me a shilling?’
‘A shilling? Do you think I’m made of money? You just heard me tell that Dandy Punch as I’d got none.’
‘Sixpence then.’
Sheba felt in the pocket of her pinafore. ‘Here’s threepence. Don’t waste it.’
A Staffordshire bull terrier scampered through the dust of the camp in front of Poppy and Minnie as they walked along the Netherton footpath towards Dudley town in the afternoon sunshine. After a morning scrubbing the wooden floor and laundering the men’s available rags, the prospect of seeing Luke once more was appealing.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d been seeing this Tom on the quiet?’ Poppy asked, as they began the climb to Dudley.
‘’Cause I want to keep it a secret. Dog Meat would murder me. Don’t breathe a word. Not to a soul.’
‘As if I would.’
‘And that Luke asked specially if I could bring you with me today. He took a real shine to you, you know, Poppy.’
Poppy smiled shyly. ‘He seemed decent an’ all. I liked him … But I couldn’t do with him what you do with that Tom – or with Dog Meat.’
‘Nobody’s asking you to.’
‘As long as he don’t expect me to. I see and hear enough of it with me mother and father going at it nights. It always seems as if me mother don’t like it, the way she moans. As if she’s just putting up with it to save having a row with me father. As if it’s her duty. It don’t appeal to me at all.’
Minnie burst out laughing. ‘Oh, you’ll change your mind all right once you’ve got the taste for it,’ she said. ‘Everybody does. And I’m sure your mother likes it as much as anybody.’
‘Maybe she does. Was Dog Meat the first lad you ever did it with, Minnie?’
Minnie laughed again. ‘No. I did it first with Moonraker’s son, Billy, when I was thirteen.’
‘And did you like it?’
‘Course I liked it. Else I wouldn’t have done it again. You do ask some daft questions, Poppy.’
‘But what about if you catch, Minnie? What about if you get with child?’
‘There’s ways to stop getting with child. It pays to know how if you’m going with chaps regular.’