‘Abroad? When?’
‘I leave on Saturday.’
‘Saturday?’ Her heart sank. ‘So soon?’
‘Yes, Poppy, so soon.’
‘But that’s the day after tomorrow. I wish you’d told me sooner.’
‘I didn’t want to tell you sooner … oh, for purely selfish reasons. I wanted – I needed – to revel in your devotion for as long as I could. I’m going to miss you, Poppy. I know I’m going to miss you terribly. It will be unbearable, but I’m determined to endure it. Only then can I be sure. Only then will I have been truly fair to both of you.’
‘I think you are being truly unfair by leaving me. ’Specially just after you told me you love me. It makes no sense, Robert. It don’t make no sense at all.’ Her bottom lip began to quiver and she bit it appealingly.
He looked at her and saw how emotional she was. ‘You’re not going to cry, are you?’
‘What d’you expect me to do? So what if I do?’ She sniffed defiantly and stemmed her tears, wiping her eyes with her long sleeve. ‘But why should I give you the satisfaction?’
‘I have cried, Poppy.’
‘You? Honest?’
‘Why should I not? I feel this just as acutely as you, believe me. I am just as capable of hurting inside as you are. I am just as capable of shedding tears.’
‘But you’re a man.’
He laughed self-mockingly. ‘And men don’t shed tears in your world.’
‘I never seen nobody.’
‘Well … perhaps they’re all too intent on presenting a very masculine front. I know how tough and nonchalant they all purport to be.’
‘Is it because you’re ashamed of where I come from that you’re leaving, Robert?’ she asked pointedly. ‘Aren’t you just trying to escape from me?’
He shook his head emphatically. ‘Escape? From you? The only escape I am trying to effect is from my own ridiculous indecision. As for where you come from, Poppy, that is of no consequence whatsoever. I love you. To me, your background doesn’t matter.’
‘But you’d have trouble introducing me to your family …’
He laughed ruefully. ‘One or two of them might well have to be convinced. But that would be their problem, not mine.’
‘So when will you come back?’
‘In about a year. I told you.’
He felt in his pocket and pulled out a folded slip of paper. ‘Here … Take this. It’s the address of my widowed Aunt Phoebe. She used to be a teacher and I’ve already spoken to her about you. She’ll be happy to continue your lessons if you still feel inclined. She can teach you so much more than I could, since she has the right books and many years’ experience teaching different subjects. I urge you to present yourself to her at some time.’
She took the slip of paper, opened it and looked at it before she put it in the pocket of her skirt. She would read it later when she returned to Rose Cottage.
‘In any case,’ he went on, ‘it will be to the benefit of both of us if you make contact with her. It is to my Aunt Phoebe’s that I will send you a message in a year’s time, whether you are still interested in receiving it then or not. Odds are that you won’t be, and serve me right. Odds are that you will have forgotten all about me. Nor would I blame you. You’re still only sixteen, remember, Poppy, with emotions like quicksilver—’
‘My emotions are not like quicksilver,’ she protested at once. ‘They’re constant. And another thing – yes, I’m sixteen, like you say. Not a child. A grown woman.’
‘I was about to say, Poppy, that it might take me more than a year to be entirely sure of my feelings—’
‘Maybe less,’ she suggested.
‘Maybe. Who knows? Either way, I shall only move when I’m certain.’
‘Then you might never move,’ Poppy suggested ruefully. ‘What if you fall in love with some pretty girl wherever you are and never come back. Then I shall never see you again. Ever.’
‘It’s not beyond the realms of possibility, I suppose,’ Robert replied. ‘In which case I shall let you know. But I have my doubts. I know myself too well, Poppy.’
They walked on, hand in hand. Poppy was desperately trying to come to terms with what had happened. She was gratified beyond belief to hear Robert’s confession of love, elicited by her own, but her sadness that he was immediately depriving her of it overshadowed that. Now she had to wait another year at least before she would know her fate. A year was a long, long time to a sixteen-year-old, even though she was a grown woman.
The end of August brought with it a change in the weather. Gone was the humid heat, replaced by cool rain that fell steadily for two days, turning the dust of the Blowers Green encampment into a quagmire. Dog Meat and Jericho squelched through the sludge of the workings near a little community known as Woodside and headed back to the encampment along the gravelled trackbed they had already laid. Other navvies tramped before them and behind them, heads hung low, a weary army.
‘Bloody good job it’s payday tomorrow,’ Jericho remarked. Rain was dripping from his sodden hat and trickling down the back of his thick neck, but what was a mere trickle of water when his clothes were already saturated, not only from the rain but from the hot sweat of his body?
‘Payday might be all right for you, old mate,’ Dog Meat said, ‘but it ain’t gunna mek a scrap o’ difference to me.’
‘What d’ye mean by that, Dog Meat?’
Dog Meat hoicked his pick and shovel onto his shoulder as if they were a pair of rifles. ‘I mean I already owe too much in truck to Treadwell’s and on me scoresheet at The Wheatsheaf. By the time everybody’s had what I owe there’ll be sod all left.’
‘Don’t drink so much,’ Jericho advised plainly. ‘Don’t spend all your money on drink.’
‘A man has to have a drink, Jericho. Christ, the work we do, we need a drink after it to numb the aches and pains.’
‘I have no bother with aches and pains,’ Jericho said.
‘Aye, well, maybe you’m a fitter man than me.’
‘I like a glass or two of ale, but I don’t drink so much as you, Dog Meat … Tell me, do you get any succour from the Catchpoles? Apart from sleeping with their daughter, I mean …’
‘For all the use she is lately.’ Dog Meat emitted a scornful laugh. ‘For a wench o’ sixteen you might expect her to be a bit more
