pulled his watch out from his fob and checked the time. ‘I really must go, Poppy. I’m glad I’ve seen you and had the chance to talk to you. I hope your father will soon return.’ He shoved off with his feet, travelled a few yards and stopped again near the entrance to the workings. ‘Look, if you’d like to try riding this machine of mine, you can meet me sometime, if you like.’
‘To ride it, you mean?’ Poppy queried.
‘Yes. You said it looked like fun, and it is.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she remarked hesitantly. ‘I mean, I don’t think it would be seemly … the sight of me on a hobby horse.’ She was thinking about her skirt having to be hitched up. ‘Not very ladylike.’
He laughed, somewhat melted by this prepossessing young girl as he realised her predicament. Even to the uncultured young daughter of a navvy, modesty was still evidently a consideration. ‘You could sit side-saddle on the crossbar with me, while I rode.’
‘All right, I will,’ she agreed, with a shy smile and a nod. ‘When?’
‘Tomorrow?… No, not tomorrow, unfortunately. I have to take some measurements on the Brierley Hill section … Wednesday. I have my dinner at about one o’clock. I could meet you here, if you like. We could whizz down the rest of Shaw Road as fast as a steam locomotive. And beyond if we wanted to.’
She chuckled with delight. ‘All right. Wednesday.’
He waved, turning his machine into the compound, and she watched him dreamily as he leaned it against the wall of the hut the foremen used as an office.
The womenfolk of the navvies tended to be as sober as their men were drunken. Many were navvy-born, spending their whole lives tramping from town to town, from one huddle of shanties to another. A few had been seduced into following some strapping, carefree, well-paid and handsome navvy who entertained them royally in an effort to impress as he was passing through their town or village. Navvy-born girls, who knew no other life, grew up early and adopted the habits and attitudes of the older women when as young as twelve or thirteen. They worked hard from early morning and into the night, cleaning huts and boots that were forever dirty by virtue of the work the men did. They bore the navvies’ children, nurtured them and brought them up as best they could, fretting over their health and well-being. Their particular kind of self-respect seldom extended to matrimony, however, save for their own version of it, which was solemnised by the couple jumping over a broomstick, and then consummating their union in front of as many drunken spectators as could be crammed into the room that housed their bed. Because Lightning Jack was a ganger, he was entitled to take lodgers into the hut he rented from the contractor. Sheba was therefore expected to keep the fire going, darn endless pairs of socks, do the washing, the mending, and the cooking for those paying lodgers.
Poppy and Minnie lived in similar circumstances in different huts that were essentially alike. They were obliged to help their mothers and did so, reliably and willingly. But like their mothers, they were no more than unpaid skivvies. Their rough way of life gave them insights into the goings-on between men and women from which girls in different circumstances would be thoroughly protected. These goings-on affected some more than others, although nothing ever shocked them for they were immune. Minnie, for one, was exhilarated by the sights and sounds of others engaged in sexual intercourse – sights and sounds that she often encountered – and these antics influenced her own lax attitude to sex. Sex was no remarkable phenomenon; it was a commonplace, everyday occurrence to which she attached no greater reverence than she did her other natural bodily functions, except that sex was mightily more pleasurable. Consequently, you might go out of your way to enjoy it.
Poppy, on the other hand, was somewhat differently affected. She preferred to postpone the fateful day or night when she would, for the first time, be expected to similarly indulge. And she had been remarkably adept in pursuing that goal. The thought of doing it on her ‘wedding night’ in front of a drunken, unruly mob did not suffuse her with either joyful or eager anticipation.
When they had finished their work that evening, Poppy brushed her fair hair, put on her coat and went out into the rain to call for Minnie. Already the ground of the encampment, which had been dry and dusty for weeks, was suddenly a quagmire and her clogs squelched in the mud as she picked her way through it. She reached Ma Catchpole’s hut, tapped on the door, opened it and put her head round. Minnie’s father, known as ‘Tipton Ted’, was supping a tankard of beer through his unkempt beard and sucking on his gum-bucket alternately as he sat soaking his feet in a bowl of hot water, his moleskin trousers rolled up to just below his knees. He greeted Poppy amiably and asked if she had any news of her father. She replied that she hadn’t.
Minnie then appeared from the little bedroom. She had made a special effort with herself and looked neat and tidy. Her face glowed shiny from the effects of soap and water and her dark hair hung down in tight ringlets under her bonnet.
‘I’m ready,’ she said to Poppy, and bid goodnight to her folks.
‘Where shall we go?’ Poppy asked when they were back outside in the rain.
‘Anywhere we can find shelter,’ Minnie replied, stepping into a mudbath at their front door. ‘Look at me boots already. This front door’s a muck wallow. Dog Meat and me dad will be moaning like hell tomorrow. It’ll be that hard to get the muck out of the wagons when it’s wringing wet and stuck together in a stodge.’
Instinctively, they walked towards the footpath and Shaw Road, stepping over black puddles in the half light.
‘Have you seen much of that Jericho since?’ Poppy enquired.
‘Yes, I took him some dinner on a tray. He’s got matey with Dog Meat already. They’m going to the Grin and Bear It together. I fancy going there and seeing ’em.’
‘You mean you fancy seeing this Jericho.’
Minnie nodded and smiled as she glanced at Poppy.
‘I met somebody today,’ Poppy coyly remarked.
‘Oh?’
‘An engineer who works for Treadwell’s. I reckon he’s about twenty-three.’
‘An engineer?’ Minnie sounded incredulous. ‘How did you meet him?’
‘When I was walking back from the tommy shop. He came past me riding a two-wheeled machine like a hobby horse. He recognised me. He’s the one I told you about who came to our hut with that vile policeman, when me father jacked off. Any road, he stopped to talk. He asked me if I’d heard from me father. He was ever so friendly, and he seemed kind – as if he really cared.’
‘What’s he look like?’ Minnie asked.
‘Ooh, handsome,’ Poppy said with a dreamy smile. ‘And he’s got such lovely, kind eyes. I really liked him, Minnie.’
‘You liked him? The likes of you have got no hope of getting off with somebody like an engineer, Poppy. Engineers am educated. Unless he just wants to get you down in the grass and give you one.’
‘He didn’t strike me as being like that,’ Poppy replied defensively. ‘He called me “Miss Silk”. Can you imagine? Me? Miss Silk?’
‘He
