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

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СКАЧАТЬ back soon an’ all, Jack,’ Sheba said. ‘Else we shall be turned out o’ this shant as sure as night follows day. Don’t forget as it’s owned by the contractors. Don’t forget we’re only tenant landlords, and that if you ain’t workin’ for the contractor we’ve got no rights being here.’

      ‘Ask Dandy Punch to cover for us,’ Lightning said. ‘He might ask a favour in return, but that’s fair enough.’ He arched an eyebrow, giving Sheba a knowing look.

      Dandy Punch was the timekeeper. Poppy did not like Dandy Punch.

      ‘Tell him I’ll repay him handsomely as well for his trouble when I get back. Do whatever you think’s necessary, Sheba.’

      Lightning kissed each of his children, gave Poppy a squeeze and clung to Sheba for a few seconds in a parting embrace. Then Poppy watched him turn around and walk out of the hut. Outside, he fastened a length of rope to various points on his wheelbarrow, creating a harness by which he could carry the thing on his back. He picked up his shovel, his pickaxe and his long drills, and tied them together and carried them on his shoulder like a soldier would a rifle. He threw his bundle of clothes over his other shoulder; a stone jar full of beer hung from that. Sheba handed him his straw bag, called a pantry, which held food to sustain him for a day or two. Then, heavily laden, he walked away from them, kicking up the dust as he went.

      Poppy imagined that he had not turned around to wave lest they should see tears in his eyes. More likely, he would have seen theirs and, seeing them, might have been tempted to stay. But he could not stay. To stay might mean transportation. Transportation meant she would never see him again.

      Through a haze of tears, Poppy watched him go. Lightning was a big man, tall and muscular. He was thirty-six years old, or so he believed, but because arduous work had taken its toll he looked nearer fifty. As a child, he had been a farm labourer in Cheshire. He had started work on the railways as a nipper, as a fat-boy greasing axles. Then, at twelve years old, on the construction of the Bolton and Leigh Railway, he’d been promoted to tipper boy, working with a horse and tip-truck, tipping the spoil from cuttings into wagons to be used subsequently as infill on embankments. After that, he worked on the Liverpool and Manchester till its completion. Lightning went back to farm labouring, but it could never offer enough, either in monetary terms or in excitement. So, when he heard about the starting of the London and Birmingham Railway, he tramped to the capital and worked the whole length of that line, starting as a bucket-steerer, but ending up as an excavator. Poppy recalled him telling her once how, at a place called the Kilsby Tunnel, he had witnessed three men, the worse for drink, fall to their deaths down a shaft as they tried to jump across its mouth, playing a game of follow-my-leader. When the London and Birmingham was finished, Lightning eventually joined the construction of Brunel’s Great Western Railway from London to Bristol with its controversial broad-gauge track.

      Poppy turned to her mother, who was holding the youngest in her arms. ‘I wonder just how long it’ll be before we see him again.’ She had heard so many tales of men jacking up and going on tramp, leaving wives and families behind, never to be heard of again.

      ‘Within a month,’ Sheba replied with confidence. ‘Barring accidents. I know your father. He’s a man of his word.’

      ‘Tell me about how you came to be his woman, Mother.’

      ‘I was fourteen,’ Sheba said. ‘Two years younger than you are now. My own father was working on the London and Birmingham, but he’d gone off on tramp and left us. Lightning asked my mother if he could take me off her hands. She said yes, and he gave her a guinea for her trouble. She was glad of it as well.’ Sheba laughed as she recalled it. ‘That day we jumped the broomstick and the shovel together – the nearest a navvy ever gets to being proper wed – and that night I slept in his bed.’

      ‘But did you like him, Mother?’

      ‘Oh, I liked him well enough. He was strong and handsome with his long curls and drooping moustaches, and yet kind and gentle – not like some of them rough buggers. I caught straight away with you, our Poppy, and I had you when I’d just turned fifteen.’

      ‘I don’t know if I want to be a navvy’s woman, Mother,’ Poppy said, almost apologetically. ‘I reckon there’s a better life to be had.’

      Sheba laughed and sat down, unbuttoning her dress to feed the baby. ‘Oh, there’s a better life, I daresay, but I wouldn’t know where to find it. This life is hard, though, tramping from one end of the country to the other, sleeping rough, just looking for work. I have to admit, no change could ever be a change for the worse. But getting away from it is another matter. Lord knows, everybody shies away from us as if we’re lepers when they know we’re navvies’ women. And yet a good many are glad to become navvies’ women – you only have to look how many wenches the single men pick up from the towns.’

      ‘Last night, me and Min went up into Dudley town,’ Poppy said. ‘We looked in the shops. They was full of stuff – beautiful stuff – shoes, frocks, coats, furniture, pots and pans, lovely crockery. And you should have seen how some of the women was dressed … the men as well …’

      ‘The shops in Dudley don’t do truck, do they? With no money coming in now, how am we supposed to get food and clothing except by truck?’

      ‘But that’s what I mean, Mother. If we didn’t have to rely on truck we could have what we wanted.’

      ‘Then you’d best find a feller who don’t drink every penny away in a couple of days, like your father does,’ Sheba said. ‘Somebody who won’t expect you to live on truck for the rest of the time, like most of ’em do.’

      ‘Yes, that’s what I’m saying, Mother. I don’t want to end up with a man that lives like that. So I don’t want to end up with a navvy. I want a house of my own. I want to sit in front of me own fireplace with a good husband and me kids safe abed upstairs.’

      ‘Dreams, our Poppy. And easier said than done. Any road, somebody’s already asked if he can have you.’

      ‘Who?’ Poppy asked with alarm.

      ‘Never mind. Your father wouldn’t agree to it.’

      The rest of the hut’s occupants were stirring. Poppy heard the coughs and groans of men emerging from sleep with thick heads and wondered if it had been one of them that had asked for her. Through the thin partition she could hear the robust breaking of wind, followed by puerile laughter from those who thought it funny, and strings of abuse from those who considered the ensuing stink an intrusion. Somebody stepped outside and, through the small window, she glimpsed Tweedle Beak – so called because of his beaked nose – his back towards her, urinating into a patch of grass. Poppy was maybe the richer for having experienced this life, for nothing shocked her.

      ‘Shall we have some breakfast?’ she suggested. ‘Then I’ll scrub the floor.’

      ‘There’s plenty bread and cheese,’ Sheba said. ‘I’ll get some eggs today and some bacon.’

      ‘Did Father leave you any money then?’

      ‘About ten shillings. But I’ll have money from the beer we sell as well, and from the beds.’

      Something else caught Poppy’s eye through the window. Towards the turnpike road she saw about a dozen policemen assembled, standing alongside a Black Maria and four horses. One of the policemen was clearly giving instructions to the others. Another man in a tall hat, a gentleman by his bearing, accompanied them. Her father had been right.

      ‘The СКАЧАТЬ