Poppy Day Read Online Free PDF Page B

buried, the dead child, a daughter, who had cost her her life, was laid to rest in the same coffin.
    And Olive came. The only break between her black garments was her face, raw with grief, the mole on her cheek very dark against her pallor. Louisa was her younger sister by two years.
    With her she brought Polly. The girl was still bone thin and pallid from city life, but she had more presence now, and a wry look in her eyes.
    William Hart, Philip Gill and a group of neighbours carried the coffin from the curtain shrouded cottage, their feet moving to the toll of the church bell. William was dressed in his Sunday best, his beard brushed flat. He kept his gaze ahead, not looking at anyone. The love of his life was gone, a small daughter no substitute at all. That morning, when Jess tried to go to him, looking for comfort, he had pushed her away.
    ‘Leave ’im be,’ Mrs Guerney commanded her. ‘He’s in no fit state to talk to yer.’
    Olive walked holding the girls’ hands. Jess was dressed in navy, her thick hair gathered into two plaits. She insisted on picking up a brown, stiff leaf and holding it. She had to hold something or she would float away, lost. Her toes roared with the pain of chilblains. Now and then the stiff black stuff which swathed her aunt’s arms brushed against her cheek. Olive squeezed Jess’s hand with her own.
    Friends and neighbours walked with them. At the church Olive waited with the girls at the end of the path as the coffin withdrew. The backs of the men carrying Louisa moved in a stately sway along the little path, and as they disappeared inside, Jess felt Olive’s hand tighten convulsively and a strange shudder seemed to go through her. She drew herself up.
    ‘Come on. That’s men’s work in there. Time to go ’ome.’
    Jess sobbed, distraught as they turned from the church. Looking up she saw tears coursing down her aunt’s face. Olive’s hand kept clenching and unclenching on hers.
    Olive could only stay one more day before going back to Birmingham. She organized for Sarah Guerney to help out in the house. And she tried to take William Hart to task.
    ‘You’ll ’ave to take a bit more notice of ’er,’ she said, eyeing Jess. ‘’Er’s only six and yer all ’er’s got now.’
    He was numb with grief, spoke like a winded man.
    ‘I can’t be a mother to her, now can I?’ Jess heard him say. ‘’Er needs a mother.’
    While Olive was there she seemed like part of Louisa, and was the woman of the house for now. That second day Jess was kept away from school, and played with Polly. Jess took her up the track to meet the farmer’s boys, but they were wary, as if death followed you round like a smell. She and Polly went and cracked the ice at the edge of the pond on the green.
    ‘’Ave yer got nits?’ Polly asked conversationally, shifting a brittle triangle of ice with the toe of her boot.
    ‘No. Don’t reckon so.’
    ‘I wish I ’ad hair like yours. It’s ever so nice, yours is.’
    They were drawn to each other this time.
    The night after Olive and Polly left, Jess lay in bed, cuddled in the deep dip of the mattress. The house was quiet and dark. After a time the stair treads creaked as her father came up, a candle stuck on a saucer. The door squeaked as he crept into her room, the flame wavering.
    Jess pretended to be asleep. Through her lids she sensed the light thinning, bulbing outwards as he held the candle high over her. He looked down at her for a time, then sighed, a massive expulsion of breath from the depths of him. In a moment he went out again, crossing the landing to his cold, silent room. It was the closest he ever came to trying to comfort her.
    Jess lay still, the blackness seeming to pulse round her. She thought about the dark yard below her window: outside it, black fields lit only by an ice-flake moon . . . And beyond them more darkness reaching on forever . . . She began trembling, sobbing, curling into a tiny, tight ball, crying out her