The Sweeping Saga Collection: Poppy’s Dilemma, The Dressmaker’s Daughter, The Factory Girl. Nancy Carson

filled his clay pipe. ‘So you’re a Bilston bloke, eh?’

      ‘Bilston born and bred,’ the plain man said, filling his own gum-bucket. ‘Though I’ve been most places.’

      ‘So where are you heading for now?’ Lightning asked.

      ‘The Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton. They say there’s work on the Mickleton tunnel near Campden.’

      ‘That’s where I’m headed. We might as well tramp there together, if that’s all right by you.’

      ‘Let’s have a drink or three together and celebrate the fact,’ suggested Buttercup.

      So Lightning Jack and Bilston Buttercup drank. They drank so much that they lost their resolve to reach Mickleton and, instead, discussed where they would doss down that night.

      ‘Under the stars,’ declared Lightning. ‘There’s nothing like it, and the weather’s fair.’

      ‘Then maybe we should find somewhere afore darkness falls. We can always find an inn afterwards for a nightcap.’

      So they finished their drinks and set off in search of a place to sleep, into countryside that was wearing its vivid green May mantle. They pitched camp just outside a village called Wickhamford, alongside a stream that was invitingly clear. Buttercup contemplated building himself a sod hut, constructed by cutting turf from the ground and stacking it into walls, to be roofed with a tarpaulin.

      ‘So where’s your tarpaulin?’ Lightning enquired.

      ‘Oh, bugger!’ Bilston Buttercup replied with a laugh of self-derision. ‘I ain’t got ne’er un, have I? Damn it, I’ll sleep in the open … Like yo’ say, Lightning, the weather’s fair. Tell thee what – I’ll go and catch us our dinner. Why doesn’t thou gather some wood and kindle us a fire, eh?’

      Lightning did what his new friend suggested. He collected some dry sticks of wood and had a respectable fire going in no time. He carried in his pantry a small round biscuit tin in which he kept his mashings, which was tea leaves mixed with sugar and wrapped in little parcels of paper screwed together at one end. From the stream, he filled this biscuit tin with fresh spring water and set it over the fire to boil. He stood up and stepped back to admire the fire. In an adjoining field he could hear the lowing of cows and knew at once where to get his milk. He took his metal tea bottle, rinsed it in the stream, and clambered through the hedge that surrounded the field. Startled rabbits bolted before him, but the cows regarded him with that indifferent curiosity of which only bovines are capable as he strutted towards them. Already he had picked his cow, its udders bulging.

      ‘Here, come to daddy,’ he said softly and stooped down alongside the compliant animal. As Lightning returned to the campfire with his bottle of fresh warm milk, he saw that Buttercup had arrived back also, and was feathering a chicken.

      ‘Bugger’s still nice and warm,’ he said. ‘Feel.’ Lightning felt. ‘There’s another, yon, for thee.’ Buttercup gestured his head towards the ground behind him. By the flickering light of the fire, Lightning could just make out another chicken lying forlornly dead, its neck broken.

      ‘Feather it, and I’ll draw the innards out for thee,’ Buttercup offered.

      ‘Where did you pinch these from?’ Lightning asked, collecting the chicken from the ground.

      ‘Some farm, yon. I picked up some eggs as well.’

      ‘Let’s hope no bugger heard you or saw you,’ Lightning said, recalling his brief stay in Dudley gaol for allegedly stealing something of similar value.

      When the men had finished plucking feathers, Buttercup drew the innards out of both chickens and washed the hollow carcasses in the stream. Lightning constructed a spit from wood, on which they could cook the two fowls over the fire. Meanwhile the water in the little tin was steaming promisingly. Lightning watched his companion’s face by the light of the flickering fire as he rammed the chickens on the spit and began cooking them.

      ‘What brings you on tramp?’ Buttercup asked his companion.

      Lightning Jack filled and lit his gum-bucket and told his story. ‘But it’s hard to leave a woman and kids. It is for me, at any rate. Some buggers couldn’t give a toss, but I think the world o’ my Sheba. I shall send for her and my babbies just as soon as I got meself settled at Mickleton. What about you, Buttercup?’

      ‘Me? I’m single, me.’ Buttercup turned the chickens on the spit and the fire crackled as it was fuelled with a further sputtering of fat. ‘I wouldn’t be in thy shoes, tied to a woman’s apron strings all thy natural. I’ve seen it all afore, watched men and women and seen how as they make each other as miserable as toads in a bag of flour. Look at another woman and just see how they moan. They swear as yo’m having it off. Dost ever look at other women, Jack?’

      ‘That I do. Show me a bloke as don’t and I’ll show you an elephant that can purr like a kitten.’

      ‘How old is your old woman, Jack?’

      ‘Not so old. Thirty-one. And not bad looking, considering she’s had seven. Two of ’em died, though, Buttercup.’

      ‘Aye, well when she’s forty-one her teeth’ll very likely fall out and all her hair. Then you’ll be gawping at even more women … younger women … and wondering why on earth thou ever messed with her in the fust place.’

      ‘Well, she was a right pretty young thing when we jumped the broomstick,’ Lightning said. ‘Fourteen, she was, and pretty as a picture. I was about nineteen.’

      ‘Aye,’ replied Buttercup. ‘But, by God, how quick they go to seed. The time will come when thou would’st rather kiss a scabby hoss.’

      Lightning laughed. ‘Who knows? Mebbe …’ The water in the tin began bubbling. ‘I’ll drum up.’ His pipe clenched between his teeth, he poured some of it into his metal bottle and followed it with his mashings.

      ‘Just think,’ Buttercup said. ‘You and that Sheba o’ thine have got nothing to look forward to now but the workhouse or the grave.’

      ‘That’s it, cheer me up,’ Lightning said. ‘And what have you got to look forward to?’

      ‘Whatever I set me mind on,’ came the reply. ‘And if I want e’er a woman, I’ll have one, without it laying on me conscience.’

      ‘Have you never loved a woman, Buttercup?’

      ‘Oh, aye, to be sure. When I was younger and a lot safter than I bin now.’

      ‘Have you ever thought what it’d be like to have a little house o’ your own? To have the woman you love bring you your dinner on your own best bone china while you was warming your shins in front of a blazing fire?’

      ‘Oh, aye,’ Buttercup replied. ‘I was close to it once. Sadie Visick was her name. Met her while I was working once diggin’ up Wiltshire. Any road, I put Sadie in the family way …’

      ‘Then what?’ Lightning asked. ‘What steps did you take?’

      ‘Bloody big steps. I bloody well hopped it, sharp. I couldn’t see meself tethered down by e’er a wench and a screaming brat. Any road, as a navvy, what chance hast thou got o’ living a decent life? All around it’s dirty and depraved. Filthy, unkempt men like me and thee, Lightning, wi’ no money, one shirt to we name and a pair of boots what leak like a cellar in a flood. When was the last time you ever saw a priest?’

      ‘You mean one o’ the billycock gang?’

      ‘Aye. Some churchman who’d have a good try at saving thy soul, putting thee on the straight and narrow?’

      Lightning shrugged. ‘Dunno if I want to see any o’ them stuck-up bastards. Dunno if I believe in God, to tell you the truth, Buttercup. I’d rather there was no God. If He’s keeping a tally on me and my misdeeds, I’ve got a fair bit of accounting to do come judgement day.’

      ‘Aye,