LITMIR.BIZ

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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 that he had gone? It could be no harder to bear than her own.

      The pieces of wood beneath the coals were burning brighter now, like her love had burned bright during her early infatuation. Soon it would change, transfer its glory to the lumps of coal that were already glimmering at the sharp edges where the yellow flames lapped around them. So was her love transmuted to a higher plane, the better she got to know him. The pure fire of her passion would burn even brighter and for a long, long time, rooted as it was in the less volatile but more substantial substructure of admiration and respect that she had always harboured for Robert. This was the fuel of her emotions, like the coals were the fuel of a long-burning fire. Hers would last her lifetime, young as she was, inexperienced as she was. Instinctively, she knew it.

      ‘What are you doing up so early?’ a voice said quietly.

      Poppy turned around and saw her mother standing at the bedroom door in her nightgown. ‘I woke up early.’

      Sheba ran her fingers through her bedraggled hair and yawned. ‘Is it worrying you then, our Poppy?’

      ‘Is what worrying me?’ She was uncertain as to whether her mother was referring to Robert’s departure.

      ‘This scheme of Tweedle’s?’

      ‘What scheme?’

      ‘You haven’t heard?’

      ‘Heard what?’

      Sheba pulled a chair from under the rickety table and sat down. ‘I thought you must have heard from somebody. Everybody’s talking about it.’

      ‘Nobody’s told me anything.’

      ‘He’s running a lottery. A pound a ticket. You’re the prize, our Poppy.’

      ‘Me?’ Poppy laughed with incredulity. ‘What a cheek. Who does he think he is?’

      ‘Well, he’s the breadwinner.’ Sheba, unsmiling, hunched her shoulders and pressed her hands together between her thighs for warmth and Poppy perceived from her mannerisms that it was not a joke. ‘I reckon he must think that keeping us gives him the right.’

      ‘The right? What sort of prize am I supposed to be? Does whoever wins the lottery expect a kiss or something?’ she asked naively.

      ‘Oh, more than a kiss, our Poppy. The deal is that you jump the broomstick with the winner.’

      ‘What! I’ll kill meself first. What if it’s somebody like Crabface Lijah or Fatbuck?’

      ‘On the other hand, what about if it’s Jericho or the Masher?’

      ‘The Masher’s all right. But I wouldn’t want to sleep with him.’

      ‘Well, as I see it, you’ve got no say in the matter, our Poppy. And I don’t see as it matters any road, now your Robert Crawford’s gone. One chap’s much like another in the dark, our Poppy, when you’m a-lying under him. And it was no good setting your cap at him any road. He would never have stooped to a navvy’s daughter.’

      ‘Yes, he would,’ Poppy protested. ‘He loves me.’

      ‘Ah …’ Sheba nodded mockingly. ‘That must be why he’s buggered off …’ She rolled her eyes at what she perceived as Poppy’s naivety. ‘Listen, our Poppy, I want you to go along with this scheme of Tweedle’s, ’cause it’ll bring in a heap o’ money at the end o’ the month, he reckons. I’m hoping as I’ll be able to have me a new coat and a new pair o’ boots for the winter out of the proceeds. And I daresay as he’ll treat you as well.’

      Her mother’s attitude implied far more than mere profit to Poppy. ‘So, you’m letting him believe he’s the father of the child you’m carrying then?’

      ‘I might as well,’ Sheba admitted with a shrug. ‘There’s no sense in upsetting the apple cart now. Who else would look after us and keep us on the outside of the workhouse?’

      Poppy appreciated her mother’s dilemma but made no comment. That she should be a sacrifice to her mother’s wellbeing, however, did not fill her with joy. On the other hand, she could be neither the instrument of her downfall, nor the downfall of her brothers and sisters. There seemed little alternative but to go along with Tweedle’s scheme, however abhorrent. Whatever fate awaited her, she could accept it passively; it would be as nothing compared to her losing Robert. Then what if Robert returned in a year and wanted to tell her he wished her to be his bride after all? Well, she would not have the opportunity to discover it. She would be none the wiser; therefore, nor would he be. By then she might be miles away, living on some far distant railway construction site, already the bed partner of another man. By then she might be carrying a child or have one at her breast. So better to believe he would never come back for her.

      ‘I don’t see as I’ve got much choice, Mother,’ Poppy said.

      If Robert were still here it would be different. She would go to him, tell him what had been planned for her and take his advice. But he had gone. He could give her no advice, offer no help. She was at the mercy of Tweedle Beak, who only wanted to exploit her. There was nobody to talk to. Least of all the men, who must surely condone the scheme without exception. She was at a dead end.

      ‘Well, the fire’s caught nice, our Poppy,’ Sheba remarked. ‘Let’s get the kettle on.’

      The fire …

      The fire symbolised her love for Robert. Whatever happened, whoever she was expected to live with and lie by, that flame of love would never extinguish. So she resigned herself to the necessity of tolerating the unwanted fumblings of a man she did not love, found repulsive and had no respect for, while her poor heart forever ached for Robert Crawford.

      Dog Meat’s financial difficulties were made worse by the need to obtain a new pair of work boots from the tommy shop. Having tried them on for size and comfort, he signed for them, then trudged out into the clinging mud of that first Monday in September. His mates

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