The Sweeping Saga Collection: Poppy’s Dilemma, The Dressmaker’s Daughter, The Factory Girl. Nancy Carson

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СКАЧАТЬ embarrassed by her innocent admission that proclaimed so much. ‘I like being with you, too, Poppy.’

      ‘Honest?’

      ‘I’ve never met anybody quite like you before.’

      They had reached what remained of the large west window. Robert sat down on an outcrop of fallen masonry and gestured for Poppy to sit beside him.

      ‘Somebody else told me that,’ she said with a broad smile of satisfaction as she smoothed the creases out of her skirt, about to sit.

      ‘Oh, who?’

      ‘One of the new navvies, called Jericho. Have you come across him?’

      ‘I know who he is. A big, strapping young man.’

      ‘And handsome with it,’ Poppy added teasingly.

      ‘You think he’s handsome, do you?’ Robert tried to stifle the illogical pang of jealousy that seared through him. ‘So what’s his interest in you, Poppy?’

      Poppy felt herself blush and sheepishly cast her eyes down, looking at the grass and moss sprouting between the limestone masonry. ‘Oh,’ she uttered with as much disdain as she could muster. ‘He asked me to be his woman …’

      ‘He did? Good Lord! And what did you say?’ Robert’s heart seemed to stand still while he waited what seemed like an age for her answer

      ‘I told him I didn’t want to be anybody’s woman, Robert.’

      He breathed a sigh of relief. ‘So when did you tell him that?’

      ‘After he kissed me.’

      Robert felt the breath leave his body and a hammer hit him hard where his heart was. ‘No … I … I meant – how long ago?’

      ‘Oh … Last night. After we’d been to the fair. He saved me from some lad who was trying to get off with me.’

      ‘How very gallant.’

      ‘Well, I thought the least I could do was let him kiss me after, for his trouble.’

      It pained Robert that the great brute had had such intimate knowledge of Poppy, but the more significant knowledge that she had willingly allowed it disturbed him even more. She was so vulnerable, exposed to all the lechery and immorality of her kind – especially handsome buck-navvies with pockets full of money, muscles flexing and relaxing visibly beneath their rough clothing. Nothing was taboo in that grim society of theirs. There was never any shame. No wonder she spoke so openly, so frankly, about such things; she didn’t know any better, she saw no wrong in it.

      ‘Shall we begin your lesson?’ he said, wishing to change the subject which was causing him so much concern.

      She nodded keenly and looked into his eyes with frank adulation.

      ‘Let me have your writing pad and blacklead pencil and I’ll begin by jotting down the letters of the alphabet for you.’

      She handed them to him and he began setting down a list of lower case letters in his precise engineer’s hand. ‘First is a … then b … c …’ He wrote them all down from a to z. ‘There’s a good way of remembering them and the order they always come in. Do you know the tune to “Baa-baa Black Sheep”? Well, you can sing these letters to that.’

      He began singing and it made her laugh to hear the sound of a string of letters put to a tune. It sounded so strange, like some foreign language.

      ‘No, it’s not to be mocked, Poppy,’ he said, indignant at being interrupted. ‘This trick will enable you to learn the alphabet very quickly. Just don’t laugh. Listen instead to me …’ He began singing again and once more she giggled, partly at the incongruity of the tune and the letters, and partly at the earnest look on his face and his pleasant voice. Despite her mirth, he carried on to the end. ‘Now you sing it along with me, Poppy … and stop your giggling, else we won’t get anywhere.’

      ‘I can’t sing,’ she protested playfully.

      ‘Yes, you can. You know the tune. After three … One, two, three … “Ay, bee, cee, dee” …’

      Poppy stumbled many times, not knowing which letters were which, but, as they sang it over and over, it started to etch itself into her mind.

      ‘To help you know what sound each letter represents, I’ll write a word beginning with that letter alongside it. “A” is for apple … you see. “B” is for bonnet, like the one you’re wearing … “C” is for cutting, like the navvies dig … “D” is for … drainage … No, that’s not a very good example. “D” is for door …’

      When he’d finished, he said, ‘I want you to take this home and learn your letters. Practise writing them yourself, copying what I’ve written. When you’ve learnt them by heart, I’ll show you how to write capital letters and then we’ll go on to when to use them.’

      ‘I will,’ Poppy promised. ‘Thank you, Robert, for taking the trouble to teach me. I shall owe you so much.’

      ‘Tell me, Poppy,’ Robert said, still somewhat preoccupied by the disturbing revelations about her personal activities. ‘This Jericho … Did you give him any inkling at all that you might agree to be his … his woman?’

      ‘I told him I’d think about it if he gave me time,’ she said frankly.

      ‘So you like him then?’

      ‘He’s all right. He makes me laugh. I don’t know whether I really fancy him that much though … Still, what’s fancying got to do with it? Minnie says that in the dark you can always make-believe it’s somebody you do fancy.’

      ‘I think this Minnie’s a parlously bad influence on you, Poppy. Promise me you won’t agree to becoming Jericho’s woman.’

      ‘But what’s it to you, Robert?’ she asked, for the first time really convinced of his interest in her.

      ‘Well …’ He shrugged. ‘It’s just that … I think you’re worthy of so much better. Save yourself for somebody more fitting …’

      ‘Some duke or earl, you mean?’ she said mischievously.

      ‘Who knows? Stranger things have happened.’

      ‘Not to me, Robert. Never to me.’

      ‘All the same, promise me …’

      She was surprised at the intensity in his eyes. Well, maybe she could use a little guile here. ‘I’ll tell you the same as I told Jericho. I’ll make nobody no promises yet.’

      The Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway received Royal Assent on 4 August 1845, backed by the Great Western Railway who wished to promote another broad-gauge line. By 1846, work on tunnelling had begun at Dudley, Worcester and Mickleton, near Chipping Campden. By 1849, the Dudley tunnel, for which the contractors were Buxton & Clark of Sheffield, had been finished. The actual railway track had not yet been laid, for there was some political argument about whether broad gauge or narrow gauge was to prosper. The contract СКАЧАТЬ