Poppy Day

Annie Murray

On a freezing evening in March 1914, a young woman was walking through Deritend, the old iron and tinsmiths’ district of Birmingham. Jessica Hart was dressed in the serviceable clothes and sturdy boots of a country girl and the bundle she carried, wrapped in a bright patchwork quilt, was hugged close to her as if for comfort. She was looking fearfully about her, longing to see a friendly face, but no one among the drab crowds trudging home from factories and shops even troubled to look at her.

Evening seemed to come too early to these dark streets. At home, dusk would only just be edging across the fields, now green with spring shoots, whereas here, whichever way she looked the light was obscured by buildings, their smoking chimneys pouring out filth which begrimed every roof, every wall and window. A hard lump rose in Jess’s throat. The city was a noisy, stinking place.

‘’Scuse me!’ She hurried towards a bobby, strolling his beat along the main road, known as Digbeth. ‘Can yer direct me? I want to go to Allison Street.’

The policeman saw a pretty face looking out from under a snug black hat with a white band, wisps of brown hair visible round it. Even in the murky light he could see her rosy complexion which confirmed her as a stranger to the city as much as the desperate look in her eyes. And she was so sweet he’d have liked to kiss her.

‘You’ve passed it already. Tell yer what – where is it yer want exactly? I’ll take yer along.’

Soon they turned off the main road and Jess was relieved to be away from the clashing of hooves and loud rattle of the trams, but the sight of this mean-looking side street made her heart sink even further. Is this really where they live? she thought. But what shall I do if they’ve moved on and no one knows where they’ve gone? Her mind played with every possibility of disaster. The thought of spending the night wandering these terrifying streets and alleys was more than she could stand.

‘Fifty-three, did yer say?’ Sensing her agitation he led her along the regiment of blackened dwellings, speaking to her as if she were a child. ‘Not far – see – yer was nearly there . . .’

The houses all opened directly on to the pavement. Jess saw someone watching her from behind one of the windows opposite, their breath misting the pane.

‘I’ll just see yer awright.’ The policeman stood back as Jess put her bundle on the step and raised a trembling arm to knock.

In a moment the door opened a little way and the scrawny face and shoulders of a young woman about the same age as herself appeared.

‘Yes? What d’yer want?’

‘I—’ Jess’s throat was dry. She could manage barely more than a whisper. ‘Are you Polly?’

The girl scowled, pulling the door even closer to her chest as if prepared to slam it shut.

‘Why? Who’re you then? – Mom!’ she called over her shoulder. ‘There’s some wench ’ere . . .’

‘Is your mother Olive?’

This provoked a look of even greater suspicion from the girl, but the door was yanked out of her hand and an older woman pushed herself into view. Her hair was scraped severely back from a tough, worn-looking face and there was a large mole at the top of her right cheek, close to the outer corner of her eye.

‘What’s going on?’

Jess felt herself recoil. It was as she most feared. They’d gone. This hard-faced woman couldn’t be her! And yet that mark on her cheek, the voice . . . ‘Olive? Olive Beeston?’

The woman’s eyes jerked back and forth between her and the young policeman. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Jess Hart – Louisa’s girl.’ As she spoke her voice cracked under the pressure of suppressed tears. ‘Only, if the Beestons don’t live ’ere any more can yer tell me where they went? I must find them ’cause I’ve nowhere else to go! Olive Beeston’s my auntie.’

‘Jess! Mom, it’s little Jess!’ the girl shrieked.

Her mother stared, taking in the dark eyes, the curvaceous shape of the young woman in front of her, then sunk down on the step, leaning limply against the door jamb, her face drained of colour.

For a few moments Olive Beeston could only manage a series of groggy sounds. She sat forward, head down between her knees. Another girl appeared at the door and stood staring.

‘She get like this often, does she?’ the policeman said.

‘No – never!’ Polly was biting at the end of her thumb as she stared at her mother.

After a moment Olive began to straighten up again, taking deep breaths.

‘She looks better,’ Jess said. ‘She is my auntie then?’

Polly nodded.

Jess thanked the policeman and when he’d gone, Olive Beeston managed to sit up properly and look at her.

‘What’s going on, Mom?’ Polly’s voice was gentler now. She looked up at her sister’s frightened face. ‘I don’t know what’s come over ’er, Sis. Look – ’er’s shaking like a leaf!’

‘I’ll be awright, stop mithering.’ Olive tried to stand up but failed, and sank back on to the step. Glancing across the road she said, ‘I’m giving that nosey old bag o’bones over there summat to chew on awright.’ She looked up into Jess’s face and after a moment the tension in it was replaced by a poignant kind of pleasure.

‘So – Louisa’s Jessica. God in ’eaven – I never thought you’d grace us with a visit, wench. What’re yer doing ’ere?’

‘I need somewhere to . . . I’ve . . .’ Jess had held on to her emotions all day, but now she burst into desolate sobs. ‘Oh Auntie Olive, please, please say you’ll help me!’

Olive poured dark, frothing tea into thick cups and sawed at a loaf of bread. There was silence now that Jess had sobbed out the long and short of her story.

She felt them all staring at her: Polly, Bert and Sis – her cousins, who she wouldn’t have recognized if she’d met them on the street, and the babby, Ronny, who couldn’t have been more than two or three and could barely see over the table. Jess hadn’t known about him.

The room was small and cramped, the table squeezed in close to the range. The mantel was covered by a length of plum-coloured cloth with a pattern of white flowers, a pewter candlestick holding it down at each end and a clock ticking loudly in the middle. On the wall above hung an oval mirror. Olive had lit the gas, trying to control the shaking in her hands, and the room was warm and cosy from the fire.

Jess took a slice of bread and margarine and chewed ravenously on it. She was light-headed from hunger, having had nothing all day but a cup of tea at Leamington station, and her head was aching violently.

Olive didn’t join them in sitting down. She took a long, considering slurp of tea and clinked the cup back down hard on its saucer.

‘So she wanted yer wed and out from under ’er feet, is that it?’

Jess nodded, tears welling in her eyes again. Her stepmother Sarah had forced her into a loathsome betrothal to a man called Philip Gill, her father’s assistant in the forge. Jess’s father had raised no objection, however hard she begged him. He took Sarah’s side in everything, and it was this lack of care for her, his rejection of her true feelings that hurt most.

She looked across at her aunt, her one hope, and was chilled by the bitterness on Olive’s face. She folded her arms tightly and her voice was as grim as her expression.

‘And you just took off, without a word or a thought for anyone, is that it?’

‘I didn’t . . .’ More tears escaped down Jess’s cheeks and her head throbbed harder. All this way she’d come, terrified and worried sick, and now her aunt was turning against her as well. ‘. . . didn’t know where else to go, what to do!’

Olive leaned towards her with such ferocity that Jess began to tremble. ‘And what d’yer think I’m s’posed to do about it, wench, eh? Don’t yer think I’ve got enough on my plate already?’ She straightened up again, glaring at her.

‘Mom,’ Polly protested. ‘Our Jess’s come a long way – don’t go on at ’er.’

Jess was momentarily encouraged by the kindness in Polly’s voice. And she saw Bert winking at her across the table, which also restored her courage.

‘Jess can stop ’ere for a bit, can’t she? She could bunk up with me and Sis.’

‘She can ’ave my bed if she wants!’ Sis, sixteen and hungry for anything new to happen, was all for it.

‘Please,’ Jess implored. She could see her aunt eyeing her little bundle and her hat on the chair by the door. ‘I’ve nowhere else to go. I’m not going back there, not for nothing. I’ll walk the streets or sleep in a doorway, but I won’t go back and marry ’im – I might just as well kill meself!’

‘Oh what are yer canting about, yer daft wench.’ Olive stood, glowering at her and Polly. Jess waited, face so full of pleading emotion that no one with a heart could have resisted.

‘Ah Mom,’ Bert said. ‘Yer can’t turn ’er away, can yer? She’s family.’

‘Will yer stop carryin’ on?’ Olive dismissed him. ‘I’m trying to think.’ She came at Jess again, forefinger wagging.

‘Teking off and leaving everyone else to face the music’s in the blood in this family . . .’ she was shouting.

Jess glanced desperately at Polly. She hadn’t a notion of what her aunt was raging about. Polly’s expression indicated that neither had she.

Olive brought her face up so close to her that Jess could smell tea and bad teeth on her breath. ‘D’you ’ear me?’

‘Yes,’ Jess whispered. ‘Yes, Auntie.’

Olive straightened up abruptly. ‘Poll, Bert—’ She jerked her head towards the ceiling and the two of them left the table without a word and disappeared upstairs, Olive following them.

Jess put her head in her hands, tears running out between her fingers. ‘Where’m I going to go? It’s nearly dark, and I’m so scared! What’s happened to Auntie? I thought she’d be good to me!’

‘’Ere—’ Sis put a skinny arm round Jess’s shoulders. ‘What yer carrying on like that for? She said yer could stop ’ere for a bit, daint she?’

Jess looked round, bewildered, her eyelashes wet. ‘Did she? When?’

Sis giggled. ‘Don’t yer speak the King’s English? Course our Mom’d never turn yer away – ’owever ’ard she might be on yer.’

The house, back-to-back with another, had a living room and tiny scullery downstairs with two bedrooms above. Bert slept downstairs on the sofa, Olive had Ronny in with her in one bedroom and the sisters shared the other. In the candlelight Jess saw a tiny room with the girls’ iron bedsteads crammed into it, leaving barely enough room to squeeze a straw mattress in between them on the bare floorboards. Olive had no other spare bedding to speak of except an old grey bolster.

‘If yer want any more you’ll ’ave to put yer coat over yer,’ she said.

‘I’ve got the quilt.’ Jess showed her.

Olive stared at it. ‘Did
she
make that?’

‘Yes – it’s the only thing of Mom’s I’ve got.’

However poor and spartan the room, Jess felt light-hearted with relief at the sight of her place for the night under a roof with this long-lost part of her family.

Sis, snub-nosed, freckled and cheerful, was full of excitement at having a guest.

‘It’s gunna be a laugh ’aving you sleeping with us, cousin Jess. I ’ope yer can stop for a long time.’

‘Let’s just worry about tonight for now, shall we?’ Jess smiled. She liked the look of Sis, with her cheeky expression. Polly’s face was more severe.

The three of them bedded down together, Polly and Sis’s bedsprings screeching noisily as they settled in. Jess lay smelling the fusty smell of the room mixed with camphor and sweat and a faint trace of urine. This last smell was coming from somewhere close by and Jess turned and made out the white shape of a chamber pot near her head.

‘Can I move the po’ a bit? Could do without it under my nose.’

‘Sorry,’ Polly chuckled from the bed above her. ‘Shove it down the end there.’

Jess’s headache had eased a little, and she was exhausted, longing for sleep, but her cousins, agog for details, weren’t having that.

‘Come on then, Jess,’ Polly commanded. ‘Tell us all about ’im – this husband-to-be of yours.’

Jess could just make out Polly’s angular shape, lying on her side, leaning over her.

‘The wedding’s s’posed to be Sat’dy.’

‘What –
this
Sat’dy!’ Polly’s tone was awed. ‘You really ’ave taken off at the last minute – ’ere, d’you know, you’ve jilted ’im, ’ain’t yer! You know ’ow they say that . . . “She was jilted at the altar!” And now you’ve gone and done it! Ooh, but they’ll be livid with yer!’

‘I’m scared stiff they’ll come looking for me.’ Jess could feel her cousins listening in the dark. She felt ashamed, a failure, not brave and colourful as Polly was making out.

‘Who is ’e?’ Sis asked shyly.

‘Yes – what’s so terrible about ’im then?’

‘His name’s Philip Gill. I’ve known ’im nearly all my life because ’e worked for my dad at the forge. He’s much older than me – thirty already . . .’

‘
Thirty
!’

‘She – Sarah, my stepmother – decided it. She never said a word to me ’til she’d already asked him, and then ’owever much I argued and begged them it were too late. I was already promised. They ’ad the banns read so quick, people were looking me up and down to see if I was – you know – in trouble.’

She heard Sis give a little snickering laugh in the dark.

‘That was after she made me walk out with ’im. ’E just started turning up, Sundays. I was working up the farm and Sunday was the only time I had off. I opened the door and there ’e was, said e’d come to take me out. And I never knew a thing about it before then.’

‘And is ’e really ugly and horrible?’ Polly was enthralled, as if hearing about the giant in a fairy story.

‘Well,’ Jess said. ‘’E’s awright really. Kind enough. But ’e makes my flesh creep.’

That Sunday last winter, she’d opened the cottage door to find him on the step, scrubbed up in his Sunday best, hands stiffly clasped in front of him, feet positioned just too far apart to look normal. He’d grown a beard in the last couple of years, which made him appear even older.

‘You and I are to go walking,’ was all he said.

Jess laid one hand on her chest. ‘Me – go walking with you?’ she repeated like an idiot.

Philip beamed at her. In the winter sunshine his ears were the dull, thin-skinned red of newborn mice.

Without asking him in, Jess went next door to where Sarah was darning, her two children, Jess’s half-sister and -brother, Liza, eleven, and Billy, nine, sitting beside her.

‘It’s Philip,’ Jess whispered, pulling the edges of her cardigan together in agitation. ‘Says he wants me to walk out with ’im.’

‘Oh—’ Sarah looked up with a wide smile. ‘Didn’t I say he’d asked? That’ll be lovely for yer! You run along and ’ave a nice time.’

She spoke loudly, making sure Philip could hear.

‘
But I don’t want to go
,’ Jess hissed urgently. ‘Why do I have to?’

Sarah’s expression darkened. She stood up, a wool sock in one hand, gripping Jess’s arm with the other.

‘Now you listen to me, miss. Philip’s keen on yer and he’s a good lad and ’e wants to make you ’is wife. You take yer chances where you can in this life. Now you’ll go, and you’ll be nice to him, d’you hear?’ Her neck was doing its chicken movement, as it did when she was irritated.

Polly was eager for details. ‘So you walked out with ’im?’

‘For two months.’

‘And – what did ’e do – what’s ’e like?’

Jess shuddered. ‘’E’s just – ’orrible. I mean ’e wouldn’t hurt a fly. It ain’t that. ’E lives with ’is Mom and sister still and the house was damp and it smelt horrible – of dogs . . .’

‘I’d’ve thought there’s worse things to stink of!’

‘Ooh no, it was horrible, Polly – and ’e was like a dog with fleas ’imself whenever I was about. Couldn’t keep still. And we’d not a word to say to each other . . .’ Jess looked up into the gloom, the lump coming up in her throat again. There were those horrible walks, Philip all nods and twitches and hissing intakes of breath through his teeth, looking at her sideways all the time. Their silence. Jess rooting round for conversation.

‘Bit warmer today,’ she said, as the winter shrank back.

‘Ar, it is,’ Philip nodded enthusiastically. ‘Warmer now, oh yes . . .’ pressing down on his cap, as he often did, as if afraid it was about to jump off his head. ‘Spring coming, that’ll be.’

More silence. Jess had rolled her eyes impatiently. Now it’s your turn to say summat, she thought. But not much ever came from him.

He grew bolder, taking her hand in his huge, rough one. One day he stopped her, at the edge of the estate belonging to the Big House. The field beside them was fuzzed with green, like threadbare corduroy. His big, wet lips fastened on hers. Jess felt a disgusted pressure mounting inside her, as if her blood was trying to force its way out of her veins.

‘I just couldn’t,’ she told Polly and Sis. ‘Ooh no, never. Not ’im.’ She couldn’t put into words the revulsion she felt at the idea of marrying Philip. It was just wrong: it seemed to go against nature.

‘Dad would’ve made me. He never ’ad time for me after Mom died. He just went along with anything
she
said. You can’t just be
made
to want someone. Your Mom’d never force yer on someone yer didn’t want, would she?’ Jess looked up at Polly in the dark. She needed reassurance that she was not wrong and wicked like they’d made her feel.

‘Yer an ungrateful little madam!’ Sarah had shrieked at her. ‘You should take what yer offered and feel lucky like other folk!’

‘No,’ Polly said. ‘Course not.’

‘She don’t need to – our Poll’s courting!’ Sis said.

‘Oi you – shurrup!’

‘Are yer?’ Jess asked, finding herself surprised at the fact.

‘Well . . . sort of . . .’ Her voice came coyly through the darkness. ‘’E’s nice, Ernie is.’

‘I think you’re brave, Jess, I do,’ Sis interrupted. Maybe she’d already heard quite enough about Ernie. ‘Leaving like that and coming all the way over ’ere.’

‘All that woman wanted was to get me out,’ Jess said fiercely. ‘Ever since she come to live with us. Well she’s got what she wanted now all right. But at least she ain’t buried me alive with Philip!’

‘I couldn’t just go off like that,’ Polly said. ‘I’d be frightened to death.’

‘It wasn’t brave. I just ’ad to, that’s all. And anyway, I cut up my wedding dress.’

Polly gasped, then Jess heard her loud laugh. ‘My God, Jess – you’re a one, ain’t yer!’

Sarah had become almost motherly once the banns were being read. She’d explained to Jess about the physical side of marriage. It wasn’t too big a surprise: there were too many animals about for that. But the thought of the bits of Philip she’d seen, let alone those she hadn’t, and the smell of him – was enough to make her sick. And Sarah made Jess’s dress.