‘Here,’ said Sheba. ‘Have this key and unlock the barrel ready. They’ll be red mad for their beer as well.’
Poppy took the key and unlocked the barrel. No sooner had she done it than the door opened and Tweedle Beak stepped inside, carrying a dead rabbit.
‘Cop ote o’ this and skin and gut it, young Poppy, wut? I’ll have it for me dinner with a few taters. And doh forget to tek the yed off.’
Poppy looked at the sad, limp thing with distaste. Drawing and skinning dead animals was not her favourite pastime, but she took it from Tweedle and dropped it into the stone sink.
‘All right if I help meself to a jar o’ beer?’ Tweedle enquired.
‘So long as you give me the money first,’ Poppy replied.
He lifted a mug from a hook that was screwed into a beam above his head and began to fill it from the barrel. ‘Yo’ll have yer money, have no fear. I’ll tot up how many I’n had and pay your mother after. Eh, Sheba?’
Sheba turned around from her copper. ‘I’d rather I totted it up meself.’
‘Never let yer down yet, have I?’
‘No. You’m one of the decent ones, Tweedle. Any road, the first time you don’t pay will be the last.’
Tweedle uttered a rumble of laughter. ‘Yo’m a fine, spirited wench and no two ways, Sheba,’ he said, stepping up to her from the barrel and slapping her backside. ‘And yo’ve got a fine arse an’ all, eh?’
‘My arse is my own business,’ Sheba proclaimed, feigning indignation at his familiarity. ‘So just you keep your hands to yourself.’
Poppy noticed with surprise that her mother had blushed, and pondered its significance. Tweedle laughed again, and the facial movement seemed to make his long nose even more pointed.
He swigged at his beer eagerly then looked over to Poppy. ‘Hast skinned me bit o’ rabbit yet?’
Poppy said that she had, and reached for a chopper that was hanging on a nail, to sever its head. Already, there was blood and entrails on her hands.
Tweedle refilled his mug. ‘Yo’m a decent wench an’ all, young Poppy …’Cept for yer damned cheek,’ he said with a matey grin.
Poppy placed the skinned rabbit on the wooden table and hacked its head off. Then she picked up the head and threw it into a pail that was standing on the floor beside her to collect the rest of the kitchen debris. She drew the innards like an experienced butcher and cleaned inside the carcass while Tweedle watched.
‘Yo’d mek somebody a lovely wife, young Poppy, and that’s the truth. Her’s got the mekins, Sheba, wouldn’t yer say?’
‘Oh, she’s got the makings and no two ways.’
‘Her’d be a heap of fun in bed an’ all, I’ll wager. Bist thou a-courtin’ yet, Poppy?’
‘No.’
‘Has nobody tried to bed thee? Nobody fought over thee?’
‘No.’ She looked up at Tweedle with a steady gaze that belied her years, to add emphasis to her response.
‘What a mortal bloody waste—’
There was a knock on the door and it opened. Dandy Punch, the timekeeper, thrust his head round the jamb. ‘Rent day,’ he called officiously. ‘Have you got some money for me this week, Sheba?’
Sheba had not been looking forward to this visit. Resignedly, she dried her hands on her apron and went to the door. ‘You can come inside if you want to.’
Dandy Punch stepped inside. At once his eyes fell on Poppy, who was wrapping the skinned rabbit in the linen, ready to hang it in the copper with Tweedle Beak’s potatoes.
‘It’s three weeks since Lightning Jack sloped off,’ Dandy Punch said. ‘Now you owe rent to the company for five weeks. Unless you pay me today, Sheba, I have to tell you you’m to be evicted.’
Evicted … Sheba sighed heavily, well aware that if she was evicted she would have no alternative but to go on tramp, taking her children with her. They would have to sleep rough under the stars. If they failed to locate Lightning Jack – a likely situation – they would be picked up in some town or village as vagrants and shipped off to the nearest workhouse. Almost certainly she would be separated from her children, and they would all have to wear workhouse clothes to set them apart from everybody else. But this was what it had come to, and she could not afford to wait for Lightning any longer. Why hadn’t he come back? Didn’t he realise the predicament his absence would put her in?
‘Your young son earns money, don’t he?’ Dandy Punch said. ‘Can’t you pay me what you owe with that?’
‘What he earns don’t keep us in victuals, let alone rent,’ Sheba said ruefully.
‘Well, there’s the money you get from selling the beer …’
‘The beer has to be paid for. They don’t dole it out to us out of the kindness of their hearts.’
‘But you make a profit on it.’
‘Otherwise there’d be no point in selling it,’ Sheba agreed. ‘But ’tis a small profit, and not enough to keep us. Besides meself and the one who’s at work, I got four children to keep.’
‘The other problem you got, Sheba, is that with Lightning Jack gone, you got no entitlement to stop in this hut. Lightning Jack was the tenant, and only somebody employed by the company is entitled to a tenancy. He ain’t a company employee any more, Sheba. And neither are you.’
Sheba sighed, and Poppy looked on with heartfelt dismay at her mother’s impossible situation.
‘What about my son, Little Lightning?’ Sheba suggested. ‘Couldn’t he be the tenant?’
‘Is he twenty-one?’
Sheba shook her head ruefully. ‘He’s twelve …’
‘Then there’s no alternative. Eviction’s the only answer. It’s a problem you’ll have to face, Sheba … Unless …’ His eyes met hers intently and Sheba could tell he had a proposition to make.
‘Unless what, Dandy Punch?’ She looked at him with renewed hope.
‘Unless I can have your daughter …’
‘Me daughter?’ Sheba looked at him in bewilderment. ‘What do you mean exactly?’
‘Let me have your daughter and I’ll pay off the rent you owe. And I’ll let you stop in the hut till Lightning comes back. He’ll have to pay the rent he starts owing from this week, though.’
Sheba was still bewildered by the offer. ‘What do you mean exactly, when you say you want me daughter?’
Dandy Punch scoffed at her apparent naivety. ‘You don’t strike me as being that daft, Sheba. I want her for me woman. I want her to keep me bed warm.’
‘I ain’t going with him,’ Poppy shrieked in panic from the stone sink where she was scraping potatoes. ‘Don’t let him, Mom. I’d rather go on tramp. I’d rather end up in the workhouse.’
‘But, Poppy, it’d mean we could stop here, me and the kids, till your daddy came home,’ Sheba reasoned. ‘I wouldn’t have the worry o’ going on tramp and missing him coming the other way. We might never see him again. We could end up in the workhouse.’
‘No, I won’t,’ Poppy insisted. ‘I’d rather go in the workhouse. I’d rather die.’ The thought of Dandy Punch mauling her in his stinking bed and slobbering all over her filled Poppy with a sickening revulsion. ‘And you should be ashamed, Mother – prepared to let me go to him just to save yourself.’
Sheba