to pay the rent in anticipation of Dandy Punch’s asking for it. He counted out the exact amount then handed it over to the timekeeper who, in turn, made a mark in his collection book.
‘A word, if you please, Tweedle …’
Dandy Punch turned away from the door and from the hut, signifying to Tweedle that the conversation should not be overheard. Tweedle followed him, closing the door behind him.
‘What can I do for you, Dandy?’ he said, eyeing resentfully the dark clouds above that were spilling their contents over him.
‘Quite a bit, I fancy, Tweedle. They say as how one good turn deserves another …’
‘Oh?’
‘You remember after Lightning Jack left … I turned a blind eye to you paying the rent on this hut …’
‘Turned a blind eye?’
‘Well, it was all done unofficial, Tweedle. Strictly speaking, Treadwell’s like to have gangers renting the huts, not ordinary navvies. Gangers have a bit more sway with the lads who lodge, you understand.’ He turned up the collar of his coat. ‘But since I knew you was trying to protect poor Sheba and her brood, I had to admire you for it. It was a noble thing to do, Tweedle. Very noble. There was no fear of me turning round and saying you couldn’t do it, neither to you nor any of the gaffers.’
‘What am yer after, Dandy Punch?’
‘Well … the time’s come when I reckon it behoves me to ask a favour in return … And not just a favour for meself, Tweedle, ’cause I’ll be doing you one as well.’
‘What is it you want?’ Tweedle asked pointedly. ‘Come on, mek it quick. I’m getting bloody drenched.’ He did not take kindly to having it identified that he owed a favour to anybody. That which Dandy Punch had done he had not perceived as a favour, more in the line of duty.
‘Well … this lottery as you’m about to run … I reckon as you’ll be wanting somebody to write out the lottery tickets, putting the names on, and keeping an account of the money you collect.’
‘Listen, Dandy, I can keep an account o’ the money meself without any help from you or anybody else. But yo’ could write the names on the tickets, if yo’ve a mind, ’cause I can’t. Already I’ve took a pound each off the Masher, off Fatbuck, off Waxy Boyle and Windy Bags.’
‘Hang on … Let me write ’em down …’ Dandy Punch fumbled between the pages of his dog-eared rent book for his blacklead. He licked the lead and began to write, hunched over his book to keep it dry. ‘Masher … Fatbuck … Waxy … Who was the last one you mentioned?’
‘Windy.’
Dandy wrote it down. ‘Let me know who they are when you take their pounds and I’ll see to it as there’s a ticket wrote for every pound took, eh?’
‘Fair enough, Dandy.’
‘Now look, Tweedle …’ Dandy tucked his book under his arm and felt in the pocket of his trousers. He drew out a handful of coins and counted them into Tweedle’s hand. ‘That’s five pounds, Tweedle … Now what you can do for me in return is to let me have two tickets for each of me pounds, so as I have ten tickets for five pounds. That’s my discount, like, for helping you to operate the lottery, and for turning a blind eye to your tenancy.’
Tweedle shook his head. ‘It ain’t enough,’ he said, seeing an opportunity to profit further. ‘It ain’t enough to warrant that sort o’ discount. Look, Dandy, it strikes me as yo’m keen to win this Poppy, eh?’
‘That, I am. Right keen. She’s a fine madam.’
‘And that’s why you want to boost your chances, I can see that. Well, all I can say is boost ’em good and proper by paying for ten tickets and write yourself twenty. Yo’d be almost certain to win the wench. I can’t say fairer than that.’
Dandy Punch hesitated and sucked on his lips. ‘Ten pounds is a lot o’ money, Tweedle … I’d invest it without a second thought if you could guarantee as my name would be picked out o’ the hat … Nobody else need know, o’ course.’ He tapped his nose and winked. ‘It’d be just between us two. You could still collect the money off the other chaps and make a tidy profit.’
Tweedle Beak considered it for no more than two seconds. ‘Give me twelve quid, Dandy, and I’ll guarantee it. But so sure as yo’ breathe a word o’ this to anybody, I’ll skin thee alive.’
‘Have no fear. It’s just between you and me, Tweedle. And I’m a man of me word. I knew we’d understand one another. Just let me know who’s paid and I’ll write out their tickets as well.’
Tweedle leered. ‘Not that they’ll see the light o’ day, eh, Dandy?’
‘Oh, they’ll have to be put in the hat, Tweedle. But mine’ll be a different colour. Whoever does the draw will have to know what colour to pick out.’
‘Oh, that’s easy fixed,’ Tweedle said. ‘Leave that to me.’
Poppy’s elusive dream of winning Robert Crawford lay ravaged. The first couple of days without seeing him was not in itself so bad, for she could imagine his being there still, perhaps in his office, but too busy to see her while he attended to problems on his section of the railway. The truth, however, was irrevocably registering that she might never see him again, inducing the severely acute pains of adolescent emotion, for which she had no antidote as yet. Never had she known such feelings of desolation and hopelessness. His departure could only be interpreted as rejection; and it hurt. By God, it hurt.
On the Sunday morning, she awoke early, disturbed by a gnawing inner awareness of her heartache, for there was no respite in sleep. Tweedle Beak lay alongside Sheba, his hooked nose the sail of a coal barge heaving on the erratic swell of his raucous snores. Her brothers and sisters were contained in their sound, juvenile slumbers, their faces the epitome of innocence. Poppy got out of bed and crept barefooted into the communal living room, leaving the creaking door ajar behind her to prevent the mechanical clack of the latch waking anybody. She stood shivering, peering out of the cracked windowpane that overlooked the chaotic squalor of shanties. Another damp dawn was breaking. Out of habit, she raked the ashes out of the fire, shovelled them into an iron bucket ready to heap onto the midden, and laid a new one. Her thoughts, though devoid of hope, were only of Robert Crawford. She’d had no time to come to terms with the torture his going away had wrought. Her desires, her goals, lay in ashes. Life was no longer worth the living.
She lit the fire and knelt before it, little more than a child but with all the high-strung emotions of a woman. With a match, she lit the paper at the base of the fire and watched as it ignited the strips of wood in turn. These newly kindled sticks represented her first encounter with Robert; the flame of fondness had caught, tentatively at first, then more surely, just as it had with the sticks. It was never a sudden thing, more a growing realisation that she needed to be near him as often as she could, to feed off his intellect, his sincerity and his kind attention. Always, there was that initial warmth that drew her to him, like the warmth now that induced her to huddle over the yet ineffectual flames.
Robert’s going was a bereavement. She felt it more acutely than the grief following her father’s death. It was all the more painful and tormenting because Robert had admitted that he loved her heart and soul, and because she had not tried hard enough to detain him. What inner turmoil was he suffering now
