by Nancy Carson
‘No, Aunt. I shall carry this love for Robert Crawford forever. It’ll be the cross I bear through my whole life. I could never love another man like I love him. I loved him the first moment I saw him and I shall love him to the end. No other man could ever take his place. I hope you won’t think too badly of me, Aunt Phoebe, for falling in love with your lovely nephew and for willingly consenting to do the things with him that can only produce a child.’
‘Oh, Poppy,’ Aunt Phoebe sighed. ‘You are not the first, nor will you be the last. But I feared from the start that you would end up with a broken heart. It never occurred to me you might end up with a broken heart and a baby, however. I knew you would have an uphill struggle to oust the likes of Virginia Lord. Her family have too much of a hold on the Crawfords.’
‘But promise me you won’t be fooled by them, Aunt.’
‘Fooled?’
‘Yes, fooled. Don’t let them ever fool you that I was nothing to Robert. I was, and I still am the whole world to him. I know him well enough to know it’s true. He loves me just as much as I love him, no matter how many Virginias he might marry. When two people have been as close as we have, you just know. When he goes to bed at night with her, he’ll be wishing it’s me lying beside him … No, please don’t be shocked, Aunt. I know it, and I draw some comfort from it. But all this has made me realise at last that we can never be together …’
‘Oh, Poppy,’ Aunt Phoebe whimpered.
‘We each want what we want, don’t we, Aunt? All of us. And we pay no mind to whether it’s suitable, or convenient, or wise.’ Poppy sighed, a sigh as profound as her words. ‘But we have to live with what meagre scraps life allows us, even though nothing else in the world will satisfy us except our hearts’ true desire.’
Tears filled Aunt Phoebe’s eyes. ‘I have loved you as if you were my own daughter, Poppy.’
Poppy took Aunt Phoebe’s hand. ‘I know you have. And I love you. I always will. I know that this is hurting you as much as it’s hurting me.’
‘Indeed it is. I feel somehow that I have let you down.’
‘You, Aunt Phoebe? Let me down? Never. I’ve been the instrument of my own undoing, not you. Never you. I’ve let you down. I’m the one who should feel ashamed … And yet I don’t. I can’t. Not for carrying Robert’s child.’
‘Did you have any notion before Dr Grice diagnosed it that you were pregnant?’
Poppy smiled. ‘Oh, yes, Aunt. And before Virginia thwarted me with accusations about my past, I was certain that telling Robert would be the greatest wedding gift I could give him. I’d planned to tell him on our wedding night. He would have been overjoyed. Now, sadly for him, he must never know.’
‘What is your mother likely to say to you if you go back to her?’
Poppy smiled again as she imagined the sort of lewd comment Sheba might make, and Aunt Phoebe was relieved to see a sparkle in her eyes after so much misery.
‘Well? What might she say?’
‘That I should have kept my legs crossed … or some such.’
Aunt Phoebe laughed. ‘No other reprimand?’
‘My mother is in no position to tell me off. She was fourteen when she conceived me, she’s had a house full of children since, and has never been married … Such wantonness must be in my blood, Aunt Phoebe.’
‘I shall be very sad when you leave me, Poppy. I don’t want you to go. I can give you my support here. But I cannot keep you from your mother, if that’s where you think you should be.’
‘It will be for the best, Aunt.’
‘Just so long as you make me one promise …’
‘Whatever you ask of me, I promise it.’
‘That you shall not forget me …’ Another flood of tears rolled down Aunt Phoebe’s cheeks. ‘That you shall visit me as often as you can, and bring your baby as well when your time comes …’ She lifted her spectacles and wiped her eyes.
‘Oh, Aunt Phoebe,’ Poppy sighed, her own eyes glazed and red. ‘Of course I promise it. You are my other mother. I love you no less than my real mother. Of course I shall visit you. You’ll not be able to keep me away.’
‘Then God bless you always, Poppy.’
It was the first Saturday in December, the seventh, that Poppy was driven by Clay to the new navvy encampment in Brierley Hill. Sheba was surprised to see her daughter, but even more surprised to see that she was accompanied by a trunk.
‘Does this mean you’ve come back to live wi’ we?’ Sheba asked, her hands in a bowl of water, peeling vegetables, as she stood at the stone sink in the communal kitchen that occupied one side of the hut.
‘It’s where I belong, Mother.’
‘Belong?’ Sheba scoffed. ‘Here? No, you can’t fool me. You’m too grand to come back to a navvy hut out o’ choice. What’s up? Did you fall foul o’ your Aunt Phoebe?’
‘Not exactly.’ Poppy sighed as she took off her gloves. ‘Do you understand the meaning of the word respectability, Mother?’
‘Yes. I reckon I do.’
‘Well, I find myself carrying Robert’s child, so my situation is not deemed to be respectable. To make matters worse, he’d already vowed to marry somebody else. So, to save Aunt Phoebe any trouble, I deemed it best I left.’
‘You’ve been doing a lot o’ deeming, our Poppy. All them funny words …’
As Poppy had expected, Sheba made no comment whatsoever about her carrying a child.
‘So where you gunna sleep?’ she asked.
‘Are there any lodgers yet?’
‘Why, do you fancy sleeping with one of them?’
Poppy laughed. ‘No, thank you.’
‘Nor with Jericho?’
‘Definitely not with Jericho.’
‘He’ll be disappointed.’
‘That’s his affair. I’ll sleep with my sisters.’
‘And what about when the babby’s born?’
‘I’ll still sleep with my sisters …’ She opened the travelling case and began sorting her clothes, ready to put them away. ‘Where’s Buttercup and the others?’
‘Out. At work.’
‘Does he get drunk?’
‘Not drunk. Not Buttercup. Thank God. Here, let me help you with this lot while the babby’s asleep.’
Together they emptied Poppy’s case and Sheba admired her beautiful clothes as they put them away.
‘D’ya think e’er a one o’ these’ll fit me, our Poppy?’
‘Try one on if you want.’
‘Another time, eh? When I ain’t up to me elbers in water. But they’m too good to be wearing around this dump. Ain’t you got nothing old? Summat you can’t spoil?’
‘Aunt Phoebe made me throw all my old things away. Well, they were horrible … But I’ve still got the blue frock that I bought with the money Buttercup made me take with me when I left Blowers Green. I expect it’s at the bottom of the case.’
‘Well, I should wear that for now, our Poppy. What with all the mud what’s collecting round here, anythin’ decent will be ruined.’
‘Well, I have to keep something decent for my work.’
‘Work? What work?’
‘I work at a charity school in Dudley. I shall still do it.’
‘But it’ll be a tidy walk there and back.’
Poppy shrugged. ‘I’ll do it till I begin to show. After that, it wouldn’t be seemly in a boys’ school. Meanwhile, the exercise will be good for my constitution.’ Her eyes lit up in the realisation that after that, she might still be useful. ‘After that,’ she said, suddenly fired with enthusiasm, ‘I can teach my brothers and sister to read and write … and do arithmetic.’
‘That’s just what they need,’ Sheba agreed. ‘Don’t yer think it’d be better to start teaching your brothers and sisters straight away, rather than tramping to Dudley and back every day?’
‘Yes, I suppose it would. But I’ll have to let them know at Baylies’ first, that I can’t go there any more. It’s only right.’
A wet and foggy darknes
s had fallen over the Brierley Hill encampment that day. The breeze had been non-existent and you could see the mist descending, veiling the surrounding hills, then sinking into the valleys. When the late afternoon came, nothing changed, except that the grey gloom darkened to black.
Work on the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway had recommenced with a vengeance, and the fog did not muffle the sound of colourful language, of picks thudding into the stone-cold earth, nor the scrape of shovels as men probed and dug by the light of lanterns. You could see their indistinct shadows, ghostly figures fringed with soft halos, as they strove with barrows to load the wagons that would tip the shifted dirt further along the temporary line, to be used as infill for an embankment. An engineer appeared in the dimness with a tape measure, a field book and blacklead. He did some calculations by the feeble light of a lamp and went away, shivering with cold, as if all the woes of the world had come to rest on his shoulders.
‘We got him back again, have we?’ Jericho remarked quietly to Buttercup, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder at the young engineer behind him. ‘Crawford, his name is. I remember him from Blowers Green. He was sweet on Sheba’s daughter, Poppy.’
‘Still is, according to Sheba,’ Buttercup replied. ‘There’s talk of ’em getting wed.’
Jericho leaned on his shovel as he watched Robert Crawford disappear into the fog. ‘There’s no accounting for taste.’
‘Whose taste?’ Buttercup queried. ‘Hers or his?’
‘Hers. What’s he got?’
‘Money … class … learnin’ … Not to mention good looks and fine manners.’
‘That’s twattle. Women like their men rough.’
‘Is that what thou think’st?’ Buttercup scoffed. ‘Well, no wonder thou hast no luck with decent wenches, once they get to know thee. Women like to be treated like ladies, Jericho. They like to be treated as if they’m the only thing in the world that matters to a man. They respond better to love and respect than to roughness and rudeness … and drunkenness.’ He picked his watch out of his waistcoat pocket and peered at it by the light of one of the lamps. ‘Nearly six. Time to pack up, eh, son? I’m starved. I could eat a scabby hoss.’
‘There’s enough hacks in the stables,’ Jericho said. ‘Pick yourself one.’
‘No, not I. I’ll mek do wi’ the rabbits and the few taters what Sheba’s cooking.’
They picked up their tools and carried them on their shoulders as they headed back towards the encampment from the new cutting that was already taking shape, followed by several other navvies, all sore and aching from the day’s grind. There was a rude orderliness about the huddle of newly constructed huts that came with their freshness. There was no huge midden heap yet, hardly any rubbish and litter scattered about. But it was just a matter of time … Buttercup wondered why it had to become degraded over time, and wished it wouldn’t. Already the grass that had clad the land hereabouts was muddy from the rain and the constant tramping of scores of boots every day.
‘One day I’m gunna get out o’ this rut,’ Buttercup said to Jericho. ‘One day I shall find meself some genteel employment and live in a quiet country cottage with Sheba, away from all the squalor that goes with navvydom. There’s more to life than the back-breaking work that me and thee have to contend with.’
‘You’re getting soft in your old age,’ came the predictable reply.
‘Aye … soft and sentimental, me …’ He shot a knowing look at Jericho, who picked it up and grinned.
They were at the door of the hut, which had not yet been given a nickname, stamped their feet to shake off the mud, and went inside. It was warm, and the heady aroma of rabbit stew filled their nostrils.
‘How’s my wench?’ Buttercup affectionately asked Sheba, as he took off his boots. ‘Bin busy, Old Shoe?’
‘Yes … We’ve got a new lodger …’ She glanced from Buttercup to Jericho to gauge their level of interest.
‘Oh, ar. What is he? A navvy, a brickie, a blacksmith?’
‘He’s a she,’ Sheba replied smugly.
‘A she?’ Buttercup’s eyes met Jericho’s and registered their mutual curiosity. ‘You mean a wench?’
‘Aye, a wench, o’ course. What else did you think I meant – a she-man?’
‘Who is it?’
Poppy had heard the exchange from the communal bedroom and appeared at the door wearing the blue dress she’d bought when she left Blowers Green. Jericho looked at her and was speechless, not so much at the refined loveliness he beheld, but at the sight of a woman he had desired and had not expected to see ever again.
‘By cock and pie!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s Poppy Silk.’
The year and a quarter had not marred his handsome face nor his physique. His skin was clear and healthy despite his dirty face, and his eyes shone with enthusiasm at seeing her. He had a big droopy moustache that reminded Poppy of her father’s and which made him look even more masculine. Oh, Jericho was the same rough-hewn earth god she had known before. She smiled with pleasure at seeing him again.
‘How lovely to see you, Jericho,’ she said with ladylike aplomb. She turned to the other man. ‘You too, Buttercup.’
‘By Christ, thou’st changed, wench,’ Buttercup said warmly. ‘Thou’st growed up. It’s good to see thee.’
‘You’m here for good?’ Jericho queried, his eyes widening at the prospect.
‘For good, yes.’
Quickly overcoming his shock, he sat down on the nearest available chair and pulled off his boots. ‘Did your mother tell yer I’m one o’ the family now?’
‘More or less.’
‘More or less,’ he repeated, almost with contempt. He looked at Sheba in an earnest appeal. ‘Why didn’t you tell her?’
‘’Cause I thought you might like to tell her yourself.’
‘Tell me what?’
‘I’ll tell her,’ Buttercup chimed in. He turned to Poppy. ‘I dunno what all the fuss is about. It’s simple. It turns out that Jericho’s me own son.’
Poppy’s eyes were wide with surprise at this news. ‘Fancy,’ she said. ‘How did you find out?’
‘We was working together one day and we got to talking,’ Jericho announced, eager now to relate the story to Poppy. ‘We got to talking about where we come from and where we’d been. Buttercup said he’d worked in Wiltshire, and I told him that’s where I come from. Then he said, “What town do you come from?” and I said “Chippenham”. “What was your mother’s name?” he axed me, and I answered “Sadie Visick”. “Sadie Visick?” said he, and I said, “Yes”. “Have you got any brothers or sisters?” he axed, and I said “No”. I said, “Me mother never married”. So he says, “Then you must be the little bastard she had o’ mine,” he said. He said, “How d’you do, son? Nice to meet you.”’
‘And that was it?’
‘That was it. Since then, we’ve bin inseparable. I’m pleased as Buttercup’s me father, ’cause I reckon he’s a decent sort, and I like him.’
Decent enough to disappear when he learnt poor Sadie Visick was carrying his child, Poppy thought, but made no comment. ‘What happened to your mother, Jericho?’ she asked instead.
‘I ain’t seen her for a couple o’ years now. I ought to go back and see how she is.’
‘You really ought. She might need you. What if she’s poorly? What if she’s starving?’
‘She might be in the workhouse,’ Jericho said flippantly.
‘Would you want her to be?’
‘No, she works. She used to work as a cook at an inn in Chippenham. I expect she still does.’
‘You should write to her,’ Poppy reproached.
‘Write? I can’t write. You know I can’t write.’
‘Then I’ll teach you. It’s easy if you put your mind to it. I learnt to write in no time.’
‘And you’ll teach me, Poppy?’
‘Yes.’
‘But Mother can’t read, so it’s no use.’
‘But if you learn to writ
e, she can get somebody else to read your letters to her.’
‘Oh, aye, that’s a good idea …’ He pondered the prospect for a moment. ‘Can we start tonight?’
‘Yes, if you like. When we’ve eaten … We can all start. The young ones as well.’
Chapter 33
Lessons in reading and writing thus began at the new encampment. Within a day or two, Jericho had acquired a blackboard, an easel, writing books and blacklead pencils from somewhere. Nobody asked from where he’d stolen them, for stolen they must have been. Poppy enjoyed her role as teacher, drawing on her experience with Mr Tromans at Baylies’s Charity School and Aunt Phoebe. She felt she was doing some good, fulfilling in a small way a need that she knew had always existed … and it helped take her mind off the heartache she was suffering. If only she had been taught to read as a child, as she was now teaching her brothers and sisters and the other children that lived on the encampment.
Despite the fact that she was in the early stages of pregnancy, she felt well. She’d experienced none of the sickness that women often suffer. Rather, her skin glowed and her hair shone as if in defiance of her condition. She had become resigned to her fate. Her adventure into wealth and society was something she would not have missed for the world – it gave her a more balanced outlook on life – but it was in the past now.
When the navvies complained about the rich and what evil, conniving bastards they were, she could always turn around and say that not all were evil and conniving. She would obstinately declare that the vast majority were decent, law-abiding folk who strove merely for a decent standard of living and to be thought well of by their friends and neighbours – for respectability. As far as Poppy was concerned there was nothing wrong with that. Wealth was infinitely better than poverty. If you were wealthy, you had the potential to help somebody in poverty. If you were poor, you had nothing to offer anybody, except for a sorry tale or two and expressions of envy. She could also tell those who felt most hard-done-by that many wealthy people were conscious of the plight of the poor, of their sad lack of education, of the exploitation of the very young, and they genuinely wished to address those issues. But it could never happen overnight. Even if there were a revolution, things could never happen as quickly as everybody might want. Such reforms must evolve. There was a growing, common will to improve the lot of the poor; things would inevitably change for the better, but all in good time. Having listened to conversations over dinner that had taken place at Aunt Phoebe’s and elsewhere, Poppy had gleaned that already the railways were having a benign effect on trade and intercourse, and that prosperity for all must surely follow. Robert Crawford had taught her that enterprise was the key, and that nothing was impossible.