I’d paid him money out of the blue.’
Minnie smiled too easily, forgiving him. ‘Shall I get me rug then?’
‘Yes,’ he grinned. ‘I’ll go first. I’ll make me way there now. You come as soon as you can.’
‘There’s just one thing, Jericho …’
‘What?’
‘You was prepared to pay Dog Meat to have me. Well, I resent him selling me. I work for nobody but meself. From now on, you’ll have to pay me.’
‘Pay you?’
‘If you want me, you’ll have to pay me.’
‘How much?’
‘Well … you was prepared to pay a pound a ticket for Poppy, I suppose. I reckon I must be worth ten shillings.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Jericho. ‘I’ll give you a shilling.’
She turned to go.
‘One and a tanner then?’
‘Five shillings,’ she said.
‘Two.’
‘Three.’
‘Two and a tanner.’
‘All right,’ agreed Minnie, with a sparkle in her eye. ‘Two and a tanner. But I want the money now. Afore we start.’
Poppy Silk woke up frowsy-eyed and blinked at the soft, hazy light encroaching into the spartan bedroom through grimy panes. In a flutter of anxiety, she turned her head to see who was lying beside her, having experienced a vivid, disturbing dream. She sighed with relief. Only her mother was at her side. Well, thank the Lord. It had been just a dream and she was safe. Poppy had decided to share her mother’s bed after Tweedle Beak had sloped off; Buttercup, although he had promised to protect Sheba and her children, had chosen to remain in the lodgers’ dormitory … for the time being, at any rate.
Sheba opened her eyes, roused by Poppy’s nervous fidgeting.
‘You’re awake, our Poppy. Are you getting up?’
Poppy stretched, her slender arms poking out of flannelette sleeves and thrust out over the bedclothes. ‘I’ll light the fire.’ She pushed back the blankets and swung her pale legs out, but remained sitting on the edge of the bed.
‘I had a vile dream, Mom.’
‘Oh?’ She sat up and puffed up the lumpy pillow behind her.
‘I’d jumped the broomstick with Dog Meat, and Minnie came chasing after me with the same broom I’d jumped over, except that it had grown to twice the size. Then we was bundled into bed by everybody … with Minnie and Jericho laughing their heads off and watching. Dog Meat was horrible as well. I couldn’t stand him kissing me. His breath stunk horrible.’
Sheba chuckled. ‘Well, you don’t have to kiss him. It was only a dream.’
‘But it could have been real – if Buttercup hadn’t stepped in …’
‘Thank God for Buttercup …’ Sheba mused.
They were silent for a second or two, contemplating the happenings of last night in the light of the fresh perspectives that a decent night’s sleep affords. Poppy was first to resume the conversation.
‘I meant what I said last night, Mom – I love you all, but I can’t go on tramp with you and Buttercup.’
Sheba pushed away the bedclothes and began picking at a fragment of loose skin around her bunion. ‘You’re a grown woman now, our Poppy. You have your own life to lead, and I won’t stand in your way if you want to get out of this rut we’re all in. So what d’you intend doing?’
‘I just don’t belong here,’ Poppy said, combing her fingers through her tangle of yellow hair. ‘I don’t belong on any navvy encampment. I’ve always felt it, for as long as I can remember. I want to find work in service. I want to see how other folk live in their big red-brick houses. I want to sleep in clean sheets, work in clean clothes. I want to live in a warm house, and polish fine furniture and silverware. I want to be where there’s spotless clean floors with no filthy mud, where smelly men don’t swear and spit all the time, where there’s a lock on the privy and I can have a pee and that without having to keep my foot pressed against the door. I wouldn’t mind washing dishes, turning a mangle and pegging somebody else’s washing out. It’d be luxury compared to this.’
‘So when will you go?’
‘Today. I might as well. I’ve got that money Buttercup gave me … But I still think it ought to go back to them as paid Tweedle.’
‘Keep it, our Poppy. That’s my advice. If they was prepared to hand over money to win you, when you was supposed to suffer the consequences and have no say in the matter, then they don’t deserve any money. They’re as bad as Tweedle Beak. They’re all thieves and liars anyway, as likely to pinch off their own grandmothers as off anybody. Like Buttercup says, everybody will think Tweedle’s sloped off with the money anyway. If you intend making a new life for yourself, that money will come in useful.’
Poppy smiled. ‘Yes, it’ll come in useful all right.’ She stood up and the hem of her nightdress fell around her calves. In her bare feet she padded out into the main room and lit the fire as usual.
Poppy left the hut for the last time that same dinner time. She kissed her mother, her two sisters and two brothers a tearful goodbye, and went to say farewell to Minnie.
‘Where are you going?’ Minnie asked, with a sudden avid interest.
‘I’m off to make me own way in the world.’ Poppy smiled bravely. ‘I’ve had enough of the navvy life. And now that me mother and the kids are going on tramp with Buttercup, I thought it was as good a chance as any to get away.’
‘What will you do, Poppy?’
‘I’ll try for work in service.’ She shrugged. ‘It might be a risk, but it’s a risk I want to take.’
‘I’m coming with you.’
Poppy’s eyes sparkled with affection for her friend. ‘Honest? You want to come? What will your mother and father say?’
‘Good riddance, I wouldn’t be surprised. Who cares? Hang on. I’ll just get me things and say ta-ra to ’em.’
While Poppy waited for Minnie she pondered that at best it might be a long, long time before she ever saw her family again, perhaps years; at worst, never. Yet life was like that. Nothing was ever certain. Her father had gone away, forced to do so by circumstances, and all she had of him now were her memories. Robert Crawford had gone, and while he said he would be back, it did not necessarily mean that she would see him again either. But she was surviving, despite these enormous emotional setbacks. It was painful to think of losing
