Poppy's Dilemma

by Nancy Carson

‘I shall not be deterred by your resistance to repentance, you know, Minnie,’ Virginia said. ‘God’s bounteous love is too potent a force to resist for long. So I shall not be despairing of you.’

  Minnie smiled appreciatively. ‘I know you’m a good person, miss. You’m well meaning an’ all that. You’m welcome here any time. We can always enjoy a mug o’ tea together, eh? But I ain’t gunna promise that I’ll ever tek up this church lark … Nor give up me whorin’.’

  Chapter 21

  In his eagerness to see Poppy, Bellamy was a few minutes early collecting her for the drive to the Clent Hills. She was in her bedroom when he arrived, putting the final touches to her hair. Looking in the mirror, she pinched her cheeks and checked her teeth before she ventured down, wearing a walking dress of dark green woollen cloth, a little shorter than the day dresses she wore in the house. As she stepped downstairs she could hear Bellamy and Aunt Phoebe talking in the drawing room. She appeared at the door and smiled affably at him.

  ‘Hello, Bellamy. I just need to put on my mantle and bonnet.’

  ‘If I were you, I’d put on that scarf you’ve knitted,’ Aunt Phoebe advised. ‘And take my muff as well. It’s chilly today.’

  ‘All right, Aunt.’

  Poppy returned after a few minutes, with Dolly behind her.

  Bellamy stood up and smiled at Poppy. ‘My cart is outside,’ he said, denigrating his gig.

  ‘What time do you intend getting back home?’ Aunt Phoebe asked, accompanying them to the front door.

  ‘What time d’you want me to be back, Aunt Phoebe?’ Poppy asked.

  ‘In time for you to have tea before we go to church. No doubt by then you’ll be starving.’

  ‘I’ll make sure we’re back by then, Aunt,’ Bellamy said.

  He helped Poppy into the gig before clambering in himself. ‘I’m glad the weather’s so fine today, Poppy. A beautiful sunny day, even if it is verging a bit on the chilly side. D’you think you’ll be warm enough?’

  She nodded reassuringly. ‘I reckon so.’

  ‘Good.’ He clicked to the horse and flicked the reins and they both turned to wave to Aunt Phoebe.

  ‘How far is it to the Clent Hills, Bellamy?’

  ‘About six miles, I think.’ He turned onto the Rowley Road and headed up hill. ‘It’ll take us an hour. Maybe less. We’ll have plenty of time for a walk. I asked my father the best way of getting there and he advised me to go via the Lye Waste.’

  She shuffled herself comfortable in the seat. ‘Does your father know you’re seeing me then?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ He turned to feast his eyes again on her face. ‘He sends his regards.’

  ‘That’s kind of him.’

  At the top of the hill he avoided looking in the direction of the toll house on the right, but flicked the reins again. The horse broke into a trot and soon they were passing Tansley House.

  ‘I always think your house looks so grand,’ Poppy commented.

  ‘Mausoleum, Poppy. It’s an absolute mausoleum. Costs my father a fortune to run and maintain. We need our own railway just to ferry in coal for the fires.’

  ‘I bet you could build one.’

  ‘A railway? Maybe we should build a spur from one of the Earl of Dudley’s pits.’ He chuckled at the thought. ‘I must suggest it to Father.’

  ‘Well, Aunt Phoebe tells me that’s what you Crawfords do. You’re civil engineering contractors, she says. So, has the family firm ever built any railways?’

  ‘A section here and there. But the mania for building new railways is over now. The best days are gone. There’s no money for it any more and even less enthusiasm. We’ve been mostly concerned with other public works, like reservoirs, inclined planes, sewers and docks. We tendered for work on the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton, but my father’s a shrewd old devil, you know. He put in a price that he knew they wouldn’t accept. Said they were bound to get into financial straits, in which case he might not get paid. It looks as if he might have been right. They shut up shop for lack of money and the damned line ain’t finished. Of course, they’re looking to the Great Western to bail them out, but we hear rumblings as well that Rufford’s, the bank that supports them, is a bit suspect. Despite all that, it seems they can’t agree on far too many points of policy.’

  ‘It’s a shame,’ Poppy said from the heart.

  ‘A shame it is, and no question … But enough of this talk of business. I’d hoped for lighter conversation … I want to know about you, Poppy. Tell me about your family. Tell me how you came to be Aunt Phoebe’s companion. You suddenly appear in our lives like a wondrous vision.’

  Poppy pondered what she should tell him. She didn’t want to tell him any lies because it was against her nature. Yet she could hardly tell him the truth, for the truth was too demeaning and would almost certainly mean being shunned in future. So she decided to stall until she could think of how to answer.

  ‘How is your younger sister?’

  ‘Well, I believe. She writes regularly from school.’

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Oh, she’s an absolute pest when she’s home. Let’s not discuss her.’

  Poppy laughed at that. But it was not Elizabeth she was interested in anyway. ‘Have you heard from your brother Robert since?’

  ‘Nothing since. But they say no news is good news. I mean bad news travels fast, don’t it?’

  ‘How’s his fiancée taken his going away?’

  ‘Ain’t seen her, Poppy. She’s been to Tansley House since Robert went to Brazil, I believe, but not when I’ve been there. Anyway, you were about to tell me all about you and your family.’

  ‘My family, yes … My family are in railway building …’ She looked up at him and beamed, defying the apprehension she felt inside if Bellamy’s questioning became too intense.

  He hooted. ‘Well … now there’s a coincidence if ever I heard one! Fancy that. Nobody said, you know. What are they working on now?’

  ‘To tell the truth I’m not sure. My father had to go away to work … last summer … He met with an accident and died. Now—’

  ‘Good Lord!’ he interjected. ‘That’s damned bad luck. You lost your father, eh? My condolences, Poppy. I wouldn’t have mentioned it … I often worry about my father meeting with an accident on one of the sites, you know. He wants to be involved in everything. He’s always on site with the men. Can’t keep him away. I think he’s got a secret yearning for the muck and the mud, and the men’s swearing. It reminds him of his youth, I suppose. Sounds as if your father was the same.’

  Poppy smiled angelically. She had told Bellamy no lie. But to her surprise he had likened what she’d told him to his own family’s situation. Well, there seemed little sense in allowing him to think otherwise.

  ‘And what about your mother?’

  ‘My mother thought it would be a good idea if I went away … to see a bit more of the world …’ To see why the rest of the world fared better might have been nearer the truth. ‘I was told about this lady … So I presented myself at her door one day … She turned out to be Aunt Phoebe.’

  ‘Well, I’m blessed. Just think. If you hadn’t, you and I might never have met. Aunt Phoebe deserves to be beatified. Anyway, it’s so obvious she thinks the world of you, Poppy.’

  ‘I think the world of her. She’s been so good to me …’

  They fell silent awhile as Bellamy negotiated the cobbled streets beyond St Thomas’s church. They drove down the Pedmore Turnpike Road where they crossed the unfinished and unloved Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway. Seeing it again brought a lump to her throat. It was deserted, save for some young lads playing on part of the levelled strip of land. No navvies, drunk or sober, populated it now.

  On to Pear Tree Lane. The landscape was desolate here, devoid of vegetation. Not one blade of grass dared show itself against the clammy black earth that glistened with mud and melanite puddles in the bright sunshine after days of enduring April rain. Both sides of the r
oad were afflicted with the dismal spoils of coal mining. Slag heaps loomed, some higher than several houses, and the primitive headgear of pits looked like the skeletons of automata picked clean by some monstrous vulture. Scores of chimney stacks, idle on God’s appointed rest day, pierced the sky, which was, for once, blue and free of smuts. Tomorrow, the same chimney stacks would come alive, volleying upward great columns of acrid smoke. A little further on they passed the Earl of Dudley’s burgeoning ironworks. Its dark furnaces, even on a Sunday, were as hot as Hades, and endless plumes of smoke – vast, brown, woolly serpents – reared up into the atmosphere. Locomotives, like well-trained animals, hauled slag for tipping, iron bars as thick as tree trunks for puddling.

  Neither Poppy nor Bellamy commented on the bleakness. It was part of everyday life, something that was visually tolerated but financially encouraged, for wealth grew out of it; a landscape wilfully ravaged by man in his relentless quest for prosperity. A necessary evil. Poppy had never minded it; she had never known anything different until she had spent some time in Aunt Phoebe’s lavish garden, shut away from it all. In that quiet idyllic corner, she might have been a hundred miles away from the industrial canker that blighted the rest of the Black Country. So it must be for Bellamy. So it must have been for Robert.

  They pressed on, Bellamy making little jokes about this and that in an effort to make Poppy laugh. They passed through an area of stubbly fields and small impoverished farms until the road led them among rows of shabby cottages, close packed, with angled roofs crowded this way and that, miserably poor. A place known as the Lye Waste, built on the side of a hill and in fear of sliding down it. The air was heavy with smoke. Poppy held her nose and felt like retching at the sickening stench.

  ‘What’s that stink?’ she exclaimed, forgetting herself. ‘It’s ’orrible.’

  ‘Burning clay from the brick kilns apparently,’ Bellamy told her. ‘My father said it might reek a bit.’

  Stunted children in rags ran barefoot through the dirty, muddy streets. Men, drunk on cheap beer, tottered from one alehouse to another till their money was gone, urinating in any convenient alley, behind any corner. Young women, with the haunted look of the old and weary, stood on their front doorsteps and gossiped with neighbours, with nothing to look forward to but tomorrow. Tomorrow, and the chink of hammer on anvil as they wrought one iron nail after another with mind-numbing, soul-destroying monotony in the hot forges in their back yards. Poppy saw them and her heart bled. Never had she seen such grim poverty, such woeful conditions. The navvies’ encampment at Blowers Green was gruesome enough, but it was a paradise compared to this. It served as a grisly reminder of just how fortunate she had been lately.

  ‘Do we have to come back this way, Bellamy?’ she asked. ‘I don’t fancy going through that place again.’

  ‘I’m not sure. Perhaps we can avoid it.’

  But just as quickly as they had come upon the Lye Waste, they passed through it and were surrounded by countryside as pretty and smiling as anywhere in England.

  Soon they were near Hagley, at the very foot of the Clent Hills. They reached the village of Clent through lanes that were fairy grottoes of overhanging trees, their budding limbs casting an intricate tracery of shadows in the slanting sun. They drove on up, past a pretty church, the hill becoming steeper.

  ‘D’you think we ought to get out of the gig and walk?’ Poppy queried. ‘Make it easier for the poor horse?’

  ‘Poor horse be damned,’ Bellamy replied. ‘He’s well cared for. He’s fed and watered regularly, groomed. Let him earn his keep.’

  Poppy shrugged. It was not the response she had anticipated. She felt she should get out anyway. She had some sympathy for the animal, but was reticent about asking Bellamy to stop, lest he refused and made her feel silly. Perhaps ladies were not supposed to consider the welfare of animals. She would ask Aunt Phoebe.

  On and on they went, climbing higher and higher, until the road levelled out and they were on a high ridge. A vast panorama stretched out before them. Bellamy stopped the gig and stepped down.

  ‘That’s quite a view, Poppy.’

  He walked round the gig and took her hand to help her down. She went to the other side and looked out. They were facing north, the slanting sun peering over their shoulders. He came up to her and stood beside her.

  ‘What can you see?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Right there on the horizon …’ He put his arm around her proprietorially, leaned his face towards hers and pointed. ‘Dudley Castle keep. Can you see it?’

  ‘Just about.’

  ‘And there’s the spire of St Thomas’s …’

  ‘Oh yes … But all those chimney stacks, look …’

  ‘And that conglomeration over to the right, look … That must be Birmingham.’

  ‘Have you ever been to Birmingham, Bellamy?’ she enquired, the thought of it appealing to her sense of adventure.

  ‘A few times. Have you?’

  ‘Never … Someday, maybe …’

  ‘Someday I’ll take you.’

  Well, someday he might, but she would not press for it.

  ‘At the moment we – Crawford and Sons Limited, that is – are involved with the Borough Council and the Commissioners there over the planning of a huge project, to build a new sewerage and drainage system. We are awaiting the order to proceed. It will keep us occupied for years and make us a fortune.’

  ‘So you will be rich, Bellamy.’

  ‘We don’t do so badly now.’

  She smiled. ‘Shall we walk on? Up there?’

  ‘Let’s … I’ll tether the horse to the fence.’

  ‘I bet he could do with a drink of water, Bellamy.’

  ‘There’ll be a trough in the village on the way back,’ he answered indifferently.

  He took her hand and they began walking, climbing a grassy knoll. It was hard going and he had to hold on to her hand and pull her. At the top they found a bench and sat on it, glad of the rest.

  ‘I can’t get over the view,’ she said pensively. ‘You know, if I can see these hills from my bedroom window, I wonder if I can see Aunt Phoebe’s house from here.’

  Bellamy looked at Poppy and was enchanted by the look of earnest curiosity on her face. He was moved to put his arm around her shoulders again and hug her. ‘I suspect not,’ he said quietly. ‘I imagine it’s too far distant to see without a telescope. See how small even the castle looks …’

  ‘Pity. We could’ve waved to her.’

  He laughed. ‘Oh, Poppy, you’re such a delight …’

  ‘No, I bet you anything she’s looking towards this place now wondering why she can’t see us … Don’t laugh. I bet it’s true.’

  He looked at her adoringly. ‘Will you accompany me often, Poppy? Will you agree to see me as often as you can?’

  She stared at some cows that were lying down chewing cud in a field below. ‘I wonder what the time is. Is it time we should be starting back?’

  ‘Please answer my question, Poppy.’

  She looked into his eyes apprehensively, a look he mistook for one of expectancy. He was thus encouraged, and cleared his throat nervously. ‘Listen … I confess I’m fairly taken with you, Poppy … No, more than that … I’m mesmerised.’

  A shadow crossed Poppy’s face. She avoided his eyes now and looked down at her gloved hands, primly held together in her lap. ‘You shouldn’t say such things, Bellamy,’ she replied, feeling suddenly hot in the cool air, her voice little more than a croak of uncertainty.

  ‘Why not, pray? I can’t help being taken with you. It’s not something I choose.’

  ‘No? But you could turn away from me. If that’s how you really feel, you could resist.’

  ‘Why should I resist? Besides, I don’t have that sort of willpower.’

  ‘I think it would pay you to resist, Bellamy.’

  She was reminded of having to ward off Jericho and his lustful advances – more than once. She r
emembered how she was then; a waif in tatty clothes, but evidently appealing nonetheless, ignorant of the finer things in life, but aware there must be something infinitely better than allowing herself to sink to the life of a navvy’s doxy. Of course, at that time she was suffused with desire for Robert Crawford, but uncertain as to his feelings for her … Funny how nothing had changed in that respect, for all her finery now, for all Aunt Phoebe’s tutoring. She might speak a little differently in company these days but she had to think about it still; it was not yet second nature to sound all her aitches and form her vowel sounds more roundly. She had to remember to hold herself with greater elegance and bearing. She had to consciously assume an air of confidence that she did not entirely feel, even though she believed she had fooled many people, including Bellamy. Her feelings for Robert Crawford had not changed though. She was still holding out for him, however slim the prospect of attaining him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Bellamy exclaimed. ‘I’m going too fast, I suspect. I apologise, Poppy. I should give you time to get used to the idea of how I feel about you. I should give you time to think. Gracious, you must have scores of admirers … I admit to being impatient, you know … Well, now at least you know how I feel … that I want you for my own.’

  ‘I’m flattered, Bellamy. But I can’t—I don’t—’

  ‘Why not, Poppy? I don’t see why not.’

  ‘Because I don’t want to become romantically involved. I like you, Bellamy, but don’t expect anything more than that.’

  She met his eyes steadily now and tried to read them. They were so like Robert’s in shape and colouring; even the faint creases around the lids … Yet something was missing. They did not have the look of gentle, warm compassion that Robert’s eyes exuded. Oh, Bellamy’s were not unkind, not thoughtless nor giving any hint of deceitfulness, but there was this look of self-assurance – a sort of arrogance that comes from having everything you set your heart on – that was never present in Robert’s look.

  ‘Don’t say anything else now, Poppy. Don’t put too much stress on it. I mean, it’s not as if I’ve asked you to marry me. I’ve merely let you know that I am very much taken with you.’