Poppy Read Online Free Page B

cider—a farthing a glass, a halfpenny if hot—and dazzled by the whirling lights from the carousels, the denizens of Cutler’s Fields slowly began to enjoy themselves. The spectres of disease, starvation, and cold were banished on that one magical day. Where there was life in their rags, there was hope. Anything could happen. Just look at Poppy Duveen! No one called her Penny-lope anymore.
    Poppy was feeling very wealthy indeed. Her pay had been raised to twenty-five shillings a week. She spent as little as possible on herself, and any money left over was given to Ma Barker, who locked it away in a large tin box in Poppy’s bedroom.
    Even Mrs. Tyson was tipsily leaning against her husband’s thin, tubercular chest and smiling dreamily up into his face while everyone smiled indulgently and prophecied her fifteenth would be on the way.
    Ma Barker’s great laugh rang out through the thudding rain, along with the cry “Roll Up! Roll Up!” from the gypsies. A man lit matches and ate them, affording Emily and Josie exquisite joy. Alf, the bread delivery boy, bemused by cider and music, awaited Poppy’s arrival, a wilted bouquet of Channel Islands daffodils behind his back. He had walked all the way to Covent Garden and back to get them early in the morning. “Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms…” played the barrel organ, and everyone sang the song Thomas Moore wrote about poor Kitty Packenham before she became the Duchess of Wellington, way back before the Battle of Waterloo. In the Pig and Crumpet, Bert Smith, immersed in a gin haze, reflected how he had never seen so many people in the old pub, and since he was seeing two of everyone and everything, his view was understandable.
    Was there ever a place like Cutler’s Fields?
    “It is absolutely, divinely horrible!” cried Freda, peering through the misted windows of His Grace’s brougham. “Have you ever seen such squalor?”
    His Grace did not reply. He was wishing he had not come. Freda was delightful in bed, and boring and vulgar out of it. He would allow her but one half hour to gloat and then return her smartly to her own home, making his escape.
    His liaison with her had drifted along fairly comfortably for several months, fueled by passion on her side and tepid familiarity on his. The duke had never married, nor did he intend to. His cousin, a stolid and worthy young man, would inherit the duke’s title and estates when he died, and the duke had quite simply never been in love. No hopeless passion had marred his life so far, as no calf yearnings for some unattainable female had spoiled his youth. He had satisfied his masculine urges with a series of mistresses, chosen for their beauty and their ability to remove themselves from his well-ordered life exactly when he wished.
    He ruled his vast estates and his many sponging relatives, including Freddie Plummett, with a rod of iron.
    Followed by two footmen holding umbrellas over their heads, the duke and Freda began to promenade along Cutler’s Fields. Now, in more middle-class surroundings, they would have occasioned a great deal of comment and would have received a great deal of toadying. But the poor, in their way, were very like the aristocracy and had a healthy contempt for outsiders, and Freda was quite piqued to find they were all but ignored.
    The madcap heroine had just begun to inflict herself upon London society via novels and the stage, and so Freda decided to enliven the occasion by being madly gay. While the duke waited patiently she climbed on a gilded hobby horse, screaming with laughter as she was whirled around and around, allowing her skirts to ride up above her ankle. “Tart,” said a man behind the duke with cockney indifference, and the duke found himself agreeing with him wholeheartedly. Still, he had promised himself to give her half an hour. And so he endured it while she clambered down from the carousel and insisted on shying coconuts and sampling Mr. Barker’s cider