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

as your father. I find them agreeable enough, by and large – when they’re sober, anyway. Ask them to do a job, explain what you want, and they do it. They work like the devil, shifting hundreds, even thousands of tons of earth in no time. You must have watched an excavation and seen how, in only a few days, they can transform a landscape. They don’t mince their words either. If they have something to say, they say it. But living with them?… I imagine some of them are inclined to be uncouth.’

      ‘I don’t know what that word means, Robert – uncouth. I hope you’ll excuse my not having been educated.’

      ‘Uncouth?’ He smiled kindly. ‘It means rough, rude, barbarian.’

      Poppy laughed. ‘Oh, yes. Most of them are uncouth … barbarian … See? I’ve learnt two new words a’ready. I do wish you could teach me more …’

      ‘I’m afraid that what I know is limited to engineering and surveying, and not much use to a young woman,’ he said realistically.

      He turned to look at her, sympathy manifest in his eyes. This girl was not like the navvies to whom she belonged. She was apart from them, a cut above, bright – extremely bright – thirsting for an education which had eluded her, and thence for knowledge to lift her out of her humdrum existence. It was a worthy aspiration, too. If her life took the normal course one would anticipate of a navvy-born girl, she would be expected at her age, or even younger, to be the compliant bed partner of whichever buck navvy was first to claim her, if not of her own volition then either by buying her, or by fighting somebody else for her. It would be a sin if she were so treated and thus doomed for lack of education. She was worthy of so much better. Her self-respect raised her above the meagre expectations of navvy women. It was truly a wonder she had not already been claimed …

      ‘Where the hell d’you think you’ve been?’ Sheba angrily asked Poppy when she re-entered Rose Cottage. ‘Fancy sloping off when we was finishing off the dinners. Where’ve you been? You’ve been gone nearly an hour.’

      Some of the navvies were still in the room, sitting at the round table, their legs sprawling, big boots seeming to take up most of the floor space. The place reeked with an unsavoury mixture of pipe tobacco smoke, beer, sweat, cooking and rotting vegetables.

      ‘I had to go out, Mom,’ Poppy replied quietly with a guilty look, turning away from the navvies so that they shouldn’t hear.

      ‘Had to?’

      ‘I promised to meet somebody. I couldn’t let them down.’

      ‘Bin a-courtin’, my wench?’ one of the men, called Waxy Boyle, asked through a mouthful of dumpling.

      ‘It’ll pay her not to have bin a-courtin’,’ Sheba railed. ‘Not when there’s work to be done. Who did you go and meet?’

      Poppy blushed. Blushing was becoming a habit which she did not enjoy. ‘I’ll tell you after, not that it’s any of your business.’

      ‘I’ll give you none of my business, you cheeky faggot. Get your apron on and do some work, you bone-idle little harridan. Any road, I’ll get to know soon enough, whether or no it’s any of my business.’

      ‘I ain’t been courting, Mom,’ Poppy added defensively. She removed her bonnet and hung it up on the back of the door. ‘I ain’t courting nobody. I just went to meet somebody.’

      ‘A chap or a wench?’

      ‘I’m not saying.’

      The assembled navvies laughed raucously. One of them said that it must be a chap, because she’d admit it if she’d only met a wench.

      ‘It’s time her had a chap,’ Tweedle Beak said to Sheba as he cut a slice of tobacco with his pocketknife from a stick of twist. ‘A fine-lookin’ wench like young Poppy. By the living jingo, I wish I was ten or fifteen years younger.’

      ‘She can have a chap – I couldn’t give tuppence who he was – and he’d be welcome to her,’ Sheba replied. ‘But when she’s supposed to be helping me she’ll stay here and work.’ She turned to Poppy. ‘So get cracking, and knuckle down to it.’

      Two more weeks passed and Lightning Jack had not returned. In that time, Chimdey Charlie, whom Jericho had fought and beaten over a pillow that wet and muddy night, had sloped off, owing money to Ma Catchpole for his lodgings. Many speculated that he must have left feeling ashamed at being belittled by Jericho in front of his mates. Ashamed or not, he obviously felt vengeful, because he took with him the pillow he had lost to Jericho. Jericho, however, had gained much respect from winning that fight. Few men were prepared to challenge him, having seen the ruthless efficiency and strength with which he had quickly overcome and downed Chimdey Charlie.

      Jericho had not bothered Poppy since, either. She noticed his ignoring her, but she was steeped in thoughts of Robert Crawford. It did seem odd, though, that Jericho should suddenly fail to pay her any attention at all after the fuss he made over her at first. Evidently he was just another of the faithless type she’d heard about, the type that blows hot and cold, fickle, unpredictable. For all that, she was a little intrigued. How could somebody show such an obvious interest one day, then turn away from her the next? Maybe she had expressed a little too strongly that she was not like the other girls he’d met, that she was not easy meat. Yet he’d said he rose to such a challenge. Well, he hadn’t risen to this one – and thank goodness.

      Another person who had not been near Poppy, although he had not been entirely avoiding her, was Robert Crawford. Actually, he found her totally disarming, which began to worry him seriously. He was torn between leaving her be, because of her lowly upbringing and complete lack of any station in life, and the desire to gaze upon her striking countenance once more. If he could find a plausible excuse to see her again he would. He had considered offering her some help in overcoming the same lowliness that was manifestly dividing them. But how could he help? It would hardly be seemly to give her money, even if he could afford it. He could hardly whisk her away from the encampment and set her up in a lodging house without the world accusing him of keeping a very young mistress, when that was not his intention. Such an accusation would not do his situation any good at all, with all the responsibilities it entailed.

      So he didn’t go out of his way to see Poppy. He lacked the excuse. In any case, he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea and think he harboured a romantic interest. How could he possibly be interested in the illegitimate daughter of some navvy who’d had to flee the site to avoid prosecution and likely transportation? Just because her face was angelically beautiful and he couldn’t keep his eyes off her … Just because there was this undeniable grace and elegance behind the rags and tatters and hideous clogs that she wore … He would be a laughing stock. All the same, it was a great sin that that same undeniable grace and elegance would never have the chance to surface and decorate the world. It was a greater sin that her natural intelligence would never have the opportunity to shine through. Could it not be nurtured somehow and put to good use, at least for the benefit of the navvy community, if not for society in general?

      If only he could devise some way of helping her without compromising either of them. She was worthy of help, that Poppy Silk. She deserved better than the unremitting mediocrity of the life she led. She warranted something more uplifting than constant exposure to the crushing, unrestrainable coarseness and brutality of the navvies’ encampment to which she was shackled. But what? How could he, a mere engineer, possibly help her?

      And then he had an idea.

      On the first Saturday of June, as it was approaching yo-ho – the time when navvies finished their work – Sheba and Poppy were sweating over the copper. Lottie and Rose, Sheba’s younger daughters, were outside in the sunshine. Her son, Little Lightning, was still at work. Each man’s dinner was wrapped in a linen cloth and boiled in the copper, tied to a stick from which it hung. Because the women could not read, each stick bore identifying notches. If a stick had five notches cut into it, it belonged to Tweedle Beak. If it had three notches it was Waxy Boyle’s, and so on.

      They chatted as they worked, speculating on how much Crabface