Poppy's Dilemma

by Nancy Carson

  Sheba had so far told nobody that Poppy was pregnant. After she’d been living on the Silver End encampment a couple of weeks, Jericho plucked up the courage to ask her to go with him one evening to a public house he’d discovered and liked to use. It was the week before Christmas and bitter cold. She wrapped up warm and he took her to The Old Crown, a place not normally patronised by navvies, although Jericho was recognised as one by his mode of dress. He was tolerated, but at arm’s length, as long as he was alone, and as long as he behaved. That night, when he entered with a pretty, fair-haired girl who looked as though she should have had more about her than to dally with the likes of him, he was suddenly regarded with envy and a little more respect.

  A warm fire blazed cheerily in the grate at one end of the saloon, sprigs of holly and mistletoe hung in clusters from the ceiling. A group of men sat round one table smoking clay pipes, supping ale, muttering and nodding as they put the world to rights. Others were accompanied by their women in fancy bonnets, happy to be out of the house for a change. The spirit of Christmas had begun to manifest itself in their laughter and gaiety. Poppy and Jericho sat down at a vacant table and when Jericho had fetched them drinks, they talked desultorily.

  ‘So where’ve yer bin since you left Blowers Green?’ he asked at last.

  She related all that had happened, describing her life at Aunt Phoebe’s, how she had been tutored and thrust into local society. She told him about the religious friend she had made who had ideas of becoming a Quaker, how she had been introduced to bankers and the cream of industrial society. Yet she made no mention of Robert Crawford and his part in her life.

  ‘You done well for yourself, Poppy,’ Jericho remarked, and took another swig of ale from his tankard.

  ‘So did your old sweetheart Minnie Catchpole,’ Poppy said.

  ‘She was never my sweetheart.’

  ‘But you bought her,’ she said disapprovingly. ‘You used her. And she was in love with you.’

  Jericho shrugged. ‘What’s a man to do when his mate says, “Here, you can have a go on my wench for a gallon o’ beer”? And she was comely enough. I’m just a man, Poppy, with a man’s needs. Don’t hold that against me.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Poppy asserted. ‘Anyway, she’s done well for herself since. She’s married now to a wealthy man a lot older than she is. She’s respectable at last.’

  ‘I’m happy for her. It’s good to hear o’ folk doing well for theirselves … What I don’t understand, Poppy, is where that engineer Crawford fits into your adventures, and why you’ve come back to navvydom when you was living the life of a princess.’

  ‘Oh, it’s a long story and I’m quite sure you wouldn’t want to hear it,’ she said.

  ‘Me, I’d love to hear it. If it means you ain’t having nothin’ to do with him any more, I’d like to commend meself. You know well enough how I always wanted you to be my woman.’

  She smiled at him with sympathy in her eyes. ‘Oh, I know, Jericho …’ she said softly. Self-consciously, she averted her eyes.

  ‘But you was always out o’ my reach then … If things have changed …’

  ‘Things have changed, Jericho …’

  His expression brightened at the implication. ‘Then you could do worse for yourself than let me look after you. I’ve changed an’ all, you know, Poppy. I ain’t so wild as I was. I reckon I could just as soon take to religion now.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Aye, me.’ He gave a self-mocking little laugh. ‘I don’t drink nowhere near as much. Dog Meat made me realise how stupid drinking was when he needed drink that bad as he had to sell his woman. He was a useless wastrel, Poppy.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Lord knows. I daresay he’ll turn up sometime, looking for work … And when I found out as Buttercup was me father … That changed me as well. I decided I wanted to be like him. I always liked him and admired him – not for runnin’ off and leaving’ me mother with a bellyful of me – but for his calmness, the way he listens to folk, his compassion. I tell yer, your mother’s found a decent bloke in Buttercup, and he thinks the world of her an’ all.’

  ‘I know,’ Poppy answered wistfully.

  ‘I’m more like him now, Poppy.’

  ‘I think you are,’ she said with a growing regard.

  ‘Well, then … Do you think we might give it a try, you and me, if things am different for you now?’

  She made no reply, peering into her glass.

  ‘Would it help if I told you how much I think of you, Poppy? How much I’ve always thought of you? I never said that to any wench afore, you know. ’Cause it was never true afore. But ’tis true now.’

  She understood the courage it had taken for Jericho to admit as much. ‘Buttercup took on five children,’ she said, deciding to test him. ‘And my mother was carrying Lightning Jack’s baby as well. I couldn’t see you doing that.’

  ‘Well, there’s no need. You ain’t got no kids.’

  ‘No, that’s right.’

  ‘So why mention it?’

  ‘But what if I was carrying a child, Jericho? What if I was pregnant with somebody else’s child? I’ll wager you wouldn’t feel so drawn to me then.’

  ‘Well, you ain’t carrying nobody’s brat,’ he said. ‘Your belly’s as flat as a board … I noticed … You’m too slender to be carrying.’

  She smiled, her blue eyes meeting his for a second, candid, giving too much away.

  ‘You ain’t carryin’ somebody’s brat, are you, Poppy? Oh, tell me you ain’t …’

  A group of carol singers entered the inn, men and women, bringing in a gust of cold winter air. For Jericho it was the cue to rush to the bar before they did.

  ‘Same again?’ he asked Poppy and she nodded.

  The carol singers did not require refreshment, however – not then, at any rate. They stood in a group, one of them carrying a lantern, and began their festive singing with smiles on their faces that were rosy red as they recovered from the outside cold. First they sang a bouncy ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’, by the end of which Jericho had returned from the bar with two more drinks.

  ‘If you am carryin’ somebody’s brat, Poppy, it don’t matter to me that much,’ he said earnestly as he sat down. ‘Buttercup did it, and I want to prove as I can be as good a bloke as Buttercup.’

  She smiled again and felt tears sting the backs of her eyes, so touched was she by his offer. ‘You are a good man, Jericho, and I appreciate your offer—’

  ‘So you am pregnant then?’

  She nodded, without looking at him.

  ‘And do you accept me? I’d be able to look after you. I’d be glad to look after you. And your babby.’

  The carol singers struck up with ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High’, which at once caught the attention of everybody in the room, even diverting Jericho. Poppy listened to the bright, clever harmonies and pondered at the same time what it had taken for Jericho to make such a self-sacrificial offer.

  She was tempted …

  Oh, she was tempted …

  He looked at her, catching her glance, and he gave a smile that for him was tender. ‘Well, Poppy? Am yer gunna be me wench? Am yer gunna let me be your chap? Am yer gunna agree to jump the broomstick wi’ me?’

  But the difference between them was too great. What little learning she’d enjoyed, crammed into but a year and a quarter, had created too much of a gap between them. Jericho was unlearned, ignorant, albeit through no fault of his own. Yet he would be deemed by his peers to be the superior of the two if they paired up. She was so much wiser by dint of her learning and her innate common sense, however. He would come to resent her cleverness, for a woman must never be cleverer than her man. Jericho, it was true, was a changed man. He was infinitely more mature and more considerate. But he was not Robert Crawford. Nor would he ever be like him.

  Her first instinct to get away from the navvies, the instinct that had manifested itself a year and a half ago, was still alive within he
r. Oh, she loved her mother and her brothers and sisters, but she did not enjoy the navvy life and all that went with it. If she agreed to be Jericho’s woman she would be trapped in it forever and her own resentment of her situation would be poison to Jericho. Eventually, she must make a life for herself and her child away from the navvies. She would set off again into the big wide world when she’d had her baby. She would become an experienced teacher and respectable. She would pay somebody to look after her child while she worked. To explain the presence of a young child, she would fabricate some story about her past, a story that would satisfy the old ladies who were so set on their high moral conventions and their immovable respectability. She could buy a cheap wedding ring and say she was a young widow …

  There was a ripple of applause for the carol singers as they ended their carol and began singing a slow, lilting ‘The First Nowell’. It sounded so pleasant, so joyous.

  ‘I can’t be your woman, Jericho,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, I appreciate your offer, but it would be too big a sacrifice for you to make.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge o’ that,’ he responded.

  She shook her head and held his hand across the table. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I am the better judge of it, believe me. You could never love my child as much as you would if it were your own, and I couldn’t stand to see it spurned. But the father of the child as well … You see, Jericho, I loved him dearly and I still do. I shall love him to my dying day, to the exclusion of any other man. You would never be content with that, waiting for me to drop some crumb of love, like a dog waits at the feet of his master for a piece of gristle to be tossed from his plate. I wouldn’t expect it of you. It would be too demeaning, too degrading, for such a worthy man. You deserve so much better.’

  ‘He’s a lucky man,’ Jericho replied quietly. ‘I’m proper jealous of him. But I tell yer straight – if it was me that was the father, I’d be with yer now. I wouldn’t have sloped off like he’s done and left yer in the lurch … like Buttercup did with my mother. Not I, Poppy. Not now as I know what it’s like to grow up without a father …’

  ‘The man I love doesn’t even know I’m carrying his child, Jericho,’ she added defensively.

  ‘Crawford? He took his pleasure. It’s time he did know.’

  She shook her head, smiled sadly and squeezed his hand as the singing filled the room. ‘No … Believe me, it’s best that he doesn’t.’

  ‘I don’t understand you, Poppy. If he left yer in the lurch, how can you not tell him? Why don’t you want him to know, if you love him as much as you say you do? It don’t make no sense.’

  ‘Well, he’d already vowed to marry somebody else …’ She shrugged, indicating her acquiescence. ‘And she told him I used to be a prostitute when I left Blowers Green.’

  ‘You, a prostitute?’ he scoffed aloud, which prompted her to put her forefinger to her lips. ‘You ain’t no prostitute, Poppy. You got too much about yer.’

  She shrugged. ‘He thinks I was … Well, he does now at least.’

  ‘What a stupid bastard! So when’s he getting wed?’

  ‘Christmas Day.’

  ‘Christmas Day? Jesus Christ, that soon?’

  The haunting melody and tender delivery of ‘Silent Night’ hung in the air with the tobacco smoke, sung with such feeling that both Poppy and Jericho felt compelled to listen again. Jericho was seething, however. Only his new-found self-control was preventing him from exploding with anger and frustration at what he had heard. Soon the carol finished, and the revellers in the inn began applauding.

  ‘So would you have him back?’ Jericho queried.

  ‘What do you think?’ she replied. ‘Of course I would. But what chance have I got? He thinks that of me, and he won’t be persuaded otherwise now. And anyway, it’s cutting it a bit fine now.’

  ‘He don’t deserve you, Poppy. It’s best you leave him be.’ Jericho finished his drink. One of the women who had been singing the carols approached him, clutching a gentleman’s top hat, taking a collection. ‘What’s the collection in aid of, missus?’ he enquired.

  ‘It’s in aid of those poor girls who are abused and left with child,’ the woman said with a kind smile.

  ‘I’ll gladly put a shillin’ to that,’ Jericho said, and delved in his pocket.

  Through gossip that he had overheard among the navvies working on the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway, Robert Crawford discovered that there was a girl, described as extraordinarily pretty, teaching reading, writing and elementary arithmetic to the children, and indeed some of the adults, on the Silver End encampment. He was curious to ascertain her identity, since the circumstances and timing suggested it must be none other than Poppy Silk. Especially so, since he had discovered her mother was a resident and had himself taken Poppy there. Yet he could not reconcile the possibility that Poppy Silk could have given up her comfortable existence with his Aunt Phoebe to return to the squalor and immorality of a navvies’ encampment. So he sought out Bilston Buttercup, whom he reckoned should be able to confirm or deny it, and found him alone one afternoon on his way to the site hut.

  ‘Aye, ’tis true, Mister Crawford,’ Buttercup verified. ‘I ain’t privy to the whys and wherefores, but it seems the wench is doing some good.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Robert said. ‘I’m very pleased that she is.’ In a strange way, he felt that some good, some betterment of those poor children who were compelled to live on the encampment, had resulted from his affair with Poppy. ‘But please don’t mention that I asked,’ he added with a wink. ‘Eh, Buttercup?’

  ‘Me? I’m the very soul o’ description, me. I won’t breathe a word, Mister Crawford. Have no fear.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He touched the brim of his top hat and smiled to himself at Buttercup’s unwitting misuse of a word. ‘I’ll be on my way.’

  That evening, Robert decided to pay a visit to Aunt Phoebe, to try and find out the circumstances under which Poppy had left. He was beginning to feel guilty that his rejection of her had caused her to give up unnecessarily the pleasant life she loved so much. After all, that was not what he had intended. Unless, of course, Poppy had admitted that she had been a prostitute and Aunt Phoebe, unable to contemplate such a notion, had asked her to leave.

  The air was cold and clammy, and threatened snow. It would be a delightful thing if it were to snow on Christmas Day, to add a romantic touch to a day that would actually be lacking any, despite his marriage. He arrived at Cawneybank House and tapped the door with the cast-iron knocker. While he waited for somebody to open it, it occurred to him how many heady nights he had slipped from his bed and crept round the back of this house to wait for Poppy to steal down from her bedroom and join him in the summer house. It was a wonder they had never been caught, a miracle nobody had ever found them out. He had a strange, compulsive feeling that if he crept there now, Poppy would be waiting for him, warm, loving and eager to give herself to him, as she always had been. Of course, it was nonsense, but he sighed as it struck him again exactly how much he missed her.

  Esther answered the door.

  ‘Well, it’s Mr Crawford,’ she beamed. ‘Hello, Mr Crawford. Come to see your aunt?’

  ‘If she’s at home, Esther.’

  ‘I’ll just ask.’

  Robert smiled to himself at Esther’s demeanour as he waited in the cold hallway, holding his hat in his gloved hands. The maid returned and ushered him into the small sitting room. A coal fire blazed in the grate.

  ‘Please don’t get up, Aunt.’ He bent down and gave her a kiss on the cheek. ‘I thought it was time I came to see you …’

  ‘Came to see me?’

  ‘Well, I understand Poppy has left you,’ he said, catching her meaning. ‘I’m told she’s gone back to her mother on the new navvy encampment at Silver End near Brierley Hill.’

  ‘Unfortunately so.’ Aunt Phoebe’s demeanour was cold; her face was set in stone.

  ‘I hope it was not as a result of my … my inability to pursue
our affaire du cœur.’

  ‘Why else would she leave, Robert? She was happy here.’

  ‘So why did she leave?’

  ‘Because she did not wish to be an embarrassment to me after the despicable accusations your very silly fiancée made.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Aunt,’ Robert said, still holding his hat and his gloves. ‘It was not my wish that Poppy should leave you. I know how much you thought of her. I’m in no doubt that you miss her very much.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Aunt Phoebe asked pointedly.

  ‘Yes … As a matter of fact, I do … Vastly.’

  ‘It’s such a pity you don’t deserve her, Robert. For obviously believing her to be what Virginia accuses her of being.’

  He made no reply.

  ‘Do you honestly believe that dear, sweet Poppy was a prostitute, Robert? Do you?’

  ‘I don’t want to believe it, Aunt. I certainly don’t. But Ginnie’s evidence is overwhelming. She witnessed her getting into a carriage with a man …’

  ‘And didn’t it cross your mind that such evidence is no more than merely circumstantial?’

  ‘Unfortunately, that evidence is supported by what her erstwhile friend Minnie, Mrs Cecil Tyler, also revealed to her.’

  ‘Oh? Which is what?’

  ‘That Poppy lived with Minnie for a time, sharing a house for the purpose of prostitution.’

  Aunt Phoebe sighed with exasperation. ‘I suggest that this is all a beastly misunderstanding, you know. If I were you, I would pay Captain and Mrs Tyler a visit and discreetly ask Mrs Tyler to confirm Poppy’s innocence. Virginia has either misinterpreted what Mrs Tyler said or jumped to the wrong conclusions – obviously. You will soon find out for yourself that Poppy’s sojourn with Minnie was under duress and meant to be temporary, while she sought employment as a maid. Unable to stand Minnie’s goings-on any longer, she came to me seeking work, because you had given her my name and address. She was desperate to get away. We were immediately taken with each other, and she took little persuading to come and live here with me. Poppy is not a prostitute, Robert, nor ever was. In your heart of hearts you know it. She is too warm, too sensitive … and far too sensible.’