LITMIR.BIZ

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intimate knowledge of Poppy, but the more significant knowledge that she had willingly allowed it disturbed him even more. She was so vulnerable, exposed to all the lechery and immorality of her kind – especially handsome buck-navvies with pockets full of money, muscles flexing and relaxing visibly beneath their rough clothing. Nothing was taboo in that grim society of theirs. There was never any shame. No wonder she spoke so openly, so frankly, about such things; she didn’t know any better, she saw no wrong in it.

      ‘Shall we begin your lesson?’ he said, wishing to change the subject which was causing him so much concern.

      She nodded keenly and looked into his eyes with frank adulation.

      ‘Let me have your writing pad and blacklead pencil and I’ll begin by jotting down the letters of the alphabet for you.’

      She handed them to him and he began setting down a list of lower case letters in his precise engineer’s hand. ‘First is a … then b … c …’ He wrote them all down from a to z. ‘There’s a good way of remembering them and the order they always come in. Do you know the tune to “Baa-baa Black Sheep”? Well, you can sing these letters to that.’

      He began singing and it made her laugh to hear the sound of a string of letters put to a tune. It sounded so strange, like some foreign language.

      ‘No, it’s not to be mocked, Poppy,’ he said, indignant at being interrupted. ‘This trick will enable you to learn the alphabet very quickly. Just don’t laugh. Listen instead to me …’ He began singing again and once more she giggled, partly at the incongruity of the tune and the letters, and partly at the earnest look on his face and his pleasant voice. Despite her mirth, he carried on to the end. ‘Now you sing it along with me, Poppy … and stop your giggling, else we won’t get anywhere.’

      ‘I can’t sing,’ she protested playfully.

      ‘Yes, you can. You know the tune. After three … One, two, three … “Ay, bee, cee, dee” …’

      Poppy stumbled many times, not knowing which letters were which, but, as they sang it over and over, it started to etch itself into her mind.

      ‘To help you know what sound each letter represents, I’ll write a word beginning with that letter alongside it. “A” is for apple … you see. “B” is for bonnet, like the one you’re wearing … “C” is for cutting, like the navvies dig … “D” is for … drainage … No, that’s not a very good example. “D” is for door …’

      When he’d finished, he said, ‘I want you to take this home and learn your letters. Practise writing them yourself, copying what I’ve written. When you’ve learnt them by heart, I’ll show you how to write capital letters and then we’ll go on to when to use them.’

      ‘I will,’ Poppy promised. ‘Thank you, Robert, for taking the trouble to teach me. I shall owe you so much.’

      ‘Tell me, Poppy,’ Robert said, still somewhat preoccupied by the disturbing revelations about her personal activities. ‘This Jericho … Did you give him any inkling at all that you might agree to be his … his woman?’

      ‘I told him I’d think about it if he gave me time,’ she said frankly.

      ‘So you like him then?’

      ‘He’s all right. He makes me laugh. I don’t know whether I really fancy him that much though … Still, what’s fancying got to do with it? Minnie says that in the dark you can always make-believe it’s somebody you do fancy.’

      ‘I think this Minnie’s a parlously bad influence on you, Poppy. Promise me you won’t agree to becoming Jericho’s woman.’

      ‘But what’s it to you, Robert?’ she asked, for the first time really convinced of his interest in her.

      ‘Well …’ He shrugged. ‘It’s just that … I think you’re worthy of so much better. Save yourself for somebody more fitting …’

      ‘Some duke or earl, you mean?’ she said mischievously.

      ‘Who knows? Stranger things have happened.’

      ‘Not to me, Robert. Never to me.’

      ‘All the same, promise me …’

      She was surprised at the intensity in his eyes. Well, maybe she could use a little guile here. ‘I’ll tell you the same as I told Jericho. I’ll make nobody no promises yet.’

      The Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway received Royal Assent on 4 August 1845, backed by the Great Western Railway who wished to promote another broad-gauge line. By 1846, work on tunnelling had begun at Dudley, Worcester and Mickleton, near Chipping Campden. By 1849, the Dudley tunnel, for which the contractors were Buxton & Clark of Sheffield, had been finished. The actual railway track had not yet been laid, for there was some political argument about whether broad gauge or narrow gauge was to prosper. The contract for the southern section beyond the Dudley tunnel had been awarded to Treadwell’s. Work at the Mickleton tunnel, however, operated by an unfortunate succession of inept contractors, had been beset by problems and was far from complete.

      At Mickleton, where Lightning Jack and Buttercup were working, the exact line of the tunnel had been set out and pegged over the surface, as had the rest of the route. Sinkers then dropped trial shafts along the path of the proposed tunnel to investigate the strata and water content of the rock. Standard practice was to sink a shaft at every furlong, but more if considered necessary by the engineer. Having reached the proper depth, some of those vertical shafts would be widened and lined so that men, horses, tools and materials could be lowered into and raised from the workings on platforms or in huge tubs, hauled by stationary steam engines or horse gins. Headings went out on the correct alignment from the bottom of each shaft in opposite directions until the tunnel was driven through the hill.

      At the end of June, Lightning Jack arose from his bunk in the shack he shared with the other men, dressed and went outside into the early morning sunshine. He breathed in the fresh morning air of the Cotswolds and looked across at the gently rolling hills around him, the patchwork of fields like a far-flung quilt of yellow and green and gold. This was a far cry from the squalid landscape of the Black Country … except for the brown spoil from the tunnel which was turning the top of the hill where they lived and worked into a slag heap of monumental proportions. Soil and rock was ripped from the bowels of the earth beneath his feet and tipped randomly over the hill in separate mounds. One day, perhaps nature would clothe it in trees, in grass and fern, and it would surreptitiously blend into the countryside and leave no clue as to its man-made origin. But now it was an angry boil marring a beautiful face.

      Lightning Jack stood, his hands on his hips, morose despite nature’s unsullied beauty stretched out beyond the dingy heaps of spoil. He likened himself to that spoil; dirty, unkempt, unwashed, undisciplined. He was unshaven too, except for those nights he had been out carrying on with Jenny Sparrow. How he wished he’d never set eyes on the woman. Oh, they’d had their fun. She had lived up to her sensual promise. She could take her share of drink as well, and seem unmarked by it. Sometimes she would even pay her turn. But she was no good for Lightning, and he had discovered it too late.

      Now he yearned for Sheba. He longed to see his children; to ruffle Poppy’s restless yellow curls, to hug his younger daughters Lottie and Rose, to put his arms around his son Little Lightning, to see his youngest child Nathaniel at Sheba’s breast. How were they faring without him, without his protection? Had Sheba managed somehow to engineer a continued sojourn at the encampment at Blowers Green? If not, where might they be now? Well, there was no point in worrying about it. It did not matter any more. It did not matter where they were or how they were faring.

      Lightning Jack heard Buttercup calling him and turned round to look. Buttercup and a score of other tunnellers filed out of the hut, swearing and muttering as navvies did, and headed for the shaft nearby, which was their entrance to the workings. Lightning joined them and fell into step beside Buttercup, behind the others. They reached the head of the shaft, where a steam engine, a great heap of coal penned beside it, chugged and

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