LITMIR.BIZ

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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 her father and Robert, and in such short order, but she would come through it. It was amazing how other events occurred to occupy your mind and keep you from pining for all those absent folk you loved so well. Well, so it would doubtless always be. Life went on …

      ‘I’m ready,’ Minnie said, as she closed the door of the shanty they called Hawthorn Villa for the last time, carrying a bundle wrapped in a pillowcase. ‘Where shall we go?’

      ‘Into Dudley,’ Poppy said, as if there could be any question about it. ‘Have you got some money? We’ll have to find somewhere to sleep tonight.’

      ‘I got two and six.’ Minnie looked at Poppy with an expression first of sheepishness and then triumph. ‘I went with Jericho again last night and I made him pay me.’

      ‘Minnie! You never.’

      ‘It was lovely enough, without being paid for it as well.’ She giggled as she recalled it.

      ‘Minnie, you’re the limit.’

      They walked on, speculating on when they might next see their families, and on what they might expect from the great big burgeoning world into which they were about to launch themselves.

      The clock on St Thomas’s church struck three.

      ‘Let’s look in the shops, Minnie,’ Poppy said as they walked down Dudley’s Georgian high street. ‘Buttercup gave me some money. I think I’ll buy me some new clothes. I can’t stand these I’m wearing any longer. I feel like a navvy’s wench in them. I’m determined to get rid of all traces. Lord knows what I must look like to other folk.’

      They walked past elegant dwellings with their porticoes and mullioned windows, past alehouses and hardware shops, haberdashers, milliners, a barbershop. As usual among the shoppers, there was a contingency of drunks stumbling from one tavern to another. A street hawker passed them coming in the opposite direction pushing a handcart. He was selling candles and the two girls avoided him. Horses clopped over the cobblestones, and the wheels of the vehicles they hauled rattled as they rolled over the uneven surface. Near the town hall Poppy and Minnie tarried outside a ladies’ outfitters, gazing at the tempting display in the window. Eager to see what else was on offer, Poppy pulled Minnie inside.

      ‘Can I help you?’ a young woman asked hesitantly, inhibited by their rough appearance.

      Poppy guessed the girl was about eighteen or nineteen. She had a pleasant face with large eyes, and was wearing a plum-coloured muslin skirt flounced and edged with embroidery, and a blouse to match.

      ‘I’m looking for something like what you’m wearing,’ Poppy said brightly.

      ‘I can have something made for you, miss. It could be ready in about a week. Would you like me to take your measurements?’

      ‘Ain’t you got something I can wear now?’

      ‘Only second-hand, I’m afraid.’

      ‘Can I see?’

      The girl eyed Poppy up and down estimating her size, then turned to a rack of clothes. She rummaged through it, hesitating at an indigo garment before moving on to another.

      ‘That blue one,’ Poppy said. ‘Can I see it?’

      ‘I thought about that, but I thought it too old for you, miss. But try it on if you like. It’s about your size, I think.’ She took it from the rail and held it in front of herself for Poppy to inspect.

      ‘It’s a lot nicer than the one I’m wearing. Can I try it on?’

      ‘Yes. You can change through there …’ The girl pointed to a door.

      Both Poppy and Minnie entered the musty changing room and Poppy slipped off her red flannel frock, of which she had become very self-conscious. She saw too how shabby her shift looked in the long mirror before her. She slipped the blue dress on and noticed that it had an underskirt sewn in at the waist. When she had adjusted the fall to her satisfaction, Minnie fastened the eyelets at the back of the bodice. Poppy looked at herself in the mirror, and turned sideways to gain a view of the dress in profile. It all fitted perfectly, emphasising her narrow waist and pert bosom. She smiled with pleasure and, without hesitation, left the changing room and went back to the assistant, with Minnie in tow.

      ‘It fits perfect, look.’

      The girl inspected it, rearranging the fall of the skirt and its flounces. ‘It fits you very well, miss,’ she said sincerely. ‘And you carry it off nicely … But

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