I stared at the great golden mass, fascinated. Alfred took a phial, pulled open a lump of the golden glory and sprinkled a few drops here and there, kneading them in quickly to distribute the flavour.
‘What is he making?’ asked Mr Beeston.
I sniffed. ‘Lemon drops!’ I exclaimed. ‘Oh, he’s going to make hundreds of lemon drops.’
‘No, our Alfred isn’t a one-trick pony, dear. We pride ourselves on our variety of sweets at Fairy Glen,’ said Mr Beeston. ‘Let’s see what he tackles next.’
Alfred cut off another lump of sugar dough and sprinkled it with a different phial.
I sniffed again. ‘Peppermint!’
Alfred kneaded the new piece of dough thoroughly, turning it time after time and slapping it about on the slab.
‘It must be quite cool now,’ I said.
‘Only on the surface,’ said Mr Beeston. ‘You try sticking your little finger right inside the sugar dough, Opal Plumstead.’
I did as he suggested and gave a little squeal. It was still boiling hot. I had to suck my finger hard. Mr Beeston and Alfred laughed at me.
Alfred seemed to have hands made of cast iron, because he continued working the dough without flinching. Then he suddenly seized it and flung it over a great hook set in a post. I stared, open-mouthed, as he pulled the sugar into a great shining strand, then threw it over the hook again and again and again, his rhythm as regular as a metronome. As he worked, the yellow syrup turned pure white before my eyes.
‘It is magic,’ I said.
I watched Alfred make several skeins of peppermint, then carry them to another corner to lay them in front of a row of gas jets. He went backwards and forwards making more pliable candy, keeping it warm once it was successfully pulled.
He now coloured one of the skeins bright pink.
‘To make raspberry drops?’ I asked.
‘To make pink-and-white kisses,’ said Mr Beeston.
‘Kisses!’ Olivia and I had often bought these lovely little pink-and-white sweets, giggling as we popped each one in our mouths, comparing it to an imaginary kiss.
‘Kisses are pink and white,’ I said. ‘How do they get mixed up together?’
‘Look, look!’
Alfred snipped off another lump of white, pulled it together with the pink, then folded them firmly. He fed them into a little machine, placing the pink and white mixture between the rollers, like Mother passing shirts through our mangle. There was a grinding noise as a young lad turned the crank of the machine. The dough came out the other side, a long strip of pink and white marked into small squares.
‘See to it, Freddy,’ said Mr Beeston. The young lad beat it firmly, and it divided into familiar little kisses.
Mr Beeston consulted his pocket watch and speeded up our tour. I watched sugar syrup being mixed with gum and turned into a paste spread out on a marble table. It was punched out into little lozenges with a tin tube. I saw the syrup boiled extra vigorously until it turned brown, and was then sprinkled with slices of coconut to make dark coconut candy, cut into slabs when cold. I saw sugar mixed with great slabs of butter over the flames, the smell so sweet and rich my mouth watered.
‘It’s toffee!’ I said, and watched as my favourite toffee chews were concocted, a toffee layer poured on the slab and left to cool a little, then a layer of flavoured soft sugar dough, and then another layer of toffee. It seemed so strange to me now that when I’d popped one in my mouth I’d never wondered how each toffee chew had been constructed.
‘Where will I work, Mr Beeston?’ I asked, wondering if I could turn the handle of the kiss machine, or cut the slabs into little squares.
‘You’ll be upstairs, missy, with the other young girls,’ he told me. ‘Come with me. And pick up those skirts, I can’t have you taking a tumble.’
I clutched handfuls of my unwieldy overall and made my way up the rickety spiral staircase at the end of the vast hot room. I was clearly showing too much leg because Freddy, the young lad on the factory floor, gave a loud whistle. I blushed scarlet, my shirt sticking to me under the starched overall.
‘Careful now,’ said Mr Beeston as we got to the iron landing. He opened a door and I stepped into a strange new room with a stifling atmosphere. Mr Beeston had said that young girls worked upstairs, but at first glance the room seemed full of grey-haired old grannies. I wiped my steamed-up glasses on the sleeve of my overall and peered again. No, they were girls – girls with pale grey hair and pale grey skin and pale grey overalls.
‘What’s happened to them?’ I whispered in alarm.
‘These are my ghost girls,’ said Mr Beeston. ‘I lock’em up here for months if they give me any cheek and they go grey when they don’t see the sunlight.’
I stared at him.
He nearly split his sides laughing at me. ‘You believed me! Just for a moment you believed me!’ he spluttered.
I hadn’t seriously believed him, but I smiled foolishly to be obliging.
‘It’s starch, Opal Plumstead. Don’t look so worried – it soon washes off,’ said Mr Beeston. ‘Here, Patty, let me demonstrate to our little new girl.’
He gestured to the black-haired girl who had called me a guy. She was stooping over a large shallow box, and rolled her eyes, but came and stood before us, grey hands on hips.
I knew she’d been as pink and white as a candy kiss half an hour ago. Mr Beeston took a white handkerchief from his overall, licked the corner with his big pink tongue, and then wiped it on her cheek. The handkerchief was smudged with grey, while she was left with a pink stripe on her face.
‘Have you had your bit of fun now, Mr Beeston?’ Patty said.
‘Yes indeedy, Miss Pattacake. Back to your work now. Do you see what the girls are doing, Opal? They’re making starch moulds – all different shapes, see.’ He opened a drawer and showed me a selection of sticks with a dozen little plaster balls like halves of marbles fastened to each one. He went over to Patty’s box of starch powder and pressed it down lightly. It left a row of little hollow shapes.
I thought hard. ‘Fondants!’ I said.
‘Fondants indeed. These are the standard moulds, but we’ve got rosettes, bows, little fish, flowers, all sorts for our seasonal novelties. Come with me.’ He steered me towards the corner, where two men in protective aprons hunched over another big copper pan.
‘Here’s my burly twosome, George and Geoff,’ said Mr Beeston. He patted their rolled-up shirt sleeves. ‘See the muscles! It’s a wonder they don’t join the circus as strongmen.’
The older man, George, took the vast copper pan and lifted it off the flames as easily as a teacup. He poured some of the fondant mixture into a smaller pan with a little spout. Then young Geoff delicately poured his mixture into each of the holes in the starch powder in the box.
‘They go off to the drying room over there and will be left until tomorrow. Then they are given their special finish – look, over here,’ said Mr Beeston. He took me over to another girl, who was standing in front of shallow pans and yet more boxes. She poured sugar syrup over the hardened fondants. We waited a little, and then watched the sugar crystallize on the shapes. She drained the syrup off to be used again and showed off the finished fondants, shining like precious jewels.
‘Here, sample the wares,’ said Mr Beeston, and he picked out a gleaming fondant and popped it in my mouth. I pressed my tongue against it, my whole mouth filling with sweetness. It was the taste of Happy Days, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘There now, Opal Plumstead. Isn’t it sweet to work at the Fairy Glen sweet factory?’ said Mr Beeston.
‘Yes, sir,’ I replied uncertainly.
‘So we’ll set you to work straight away,’ he went on. ‘Patty, you’re in charge of this little lass.’
My heart sank as the dark girl looked up again, her eyebrows raised quizzically.
‘Keep an eye on her, show her what to do, and generally be kind to little Opal Plumstead,’ said Mr Beeston.
&nb
sp; ‘Yes, sir,’ said Patty. ‘As if I’d be anything else,’ she added with emphasis.
All the other girls in the room tittered ominously.
THEY STARTED THE moment Mr Beeston left the room. All the girls crowded round me, leaving their work. George and Geoff watched impassively.
‘Opal Plumstead? What kind of a name is that?’ asked Patty. ‘Is that really your name or is old Beeston fooling about? Hey, I’m talking to you.’ She gave me a poke in the chest.
‘Stop it!’ I said, my voice sounding high and strange. ‘Don’t you dare poke me!’
‘Well, tell us your name, then,’ said Patty.
‘It’s Opal Plumstead, as you very well know.’
‘Opal Plum-in-the-mouth Plumstead!’ she said in a ridiculous approximation of my accent. ‘Oh-pal? Well, you’re no pal of mine, little squirt.’
‘What you come to work here for, girl? You’re not a factory lass,’ said one of the other girls.
‘She doesn’t look like any kind of lass. Look at her chest. Flat as a pancake!’ said another.
I felt myself blushing painfully. I glanced at George and Geoff, horrified that they might have heard.
‘Yes, why have you come slumming it here, Opal Plum? I bet you’re the swotty type, wearing them stupid specs. Did you blot your copy book and get chucked out of school, then?’ Patty demanded.
‘No I didn’t! I was going to stay on. I had a scholarship!’ I declared.
This was a big mistake. They all went ‘Ooooh!’ and then squealed with laughter. I wanted to slap their silly faces, but they outnumbered me twenty to one, and they all towered above me too.
‘A scholarship girl! Oh, swipe me, are we fit to be in your presence?’ Patty said. ‘Maybe we should all curtsy to the superior brain in your noddle. Or maybe we’ll just knock it about a bit, teach it that life isn’t all sums and grammar and silly rules. Knock-knock, Plumbrain.’ She hit my head twice with her knuckled fist, sending my cap even further down my face.
They all roared with laughter at that.
‘You’re the one without any brain at all, treating me so horribly. Mr Beeston told you to be kind to me!’ I shouted.
‘Oh, temper temper! What are you going to do, then? Go running to old Beeswax?’ said Patty.
I hesitated. I wasn’t a total fool. I knew how girls reacted if you told tales to a teacher. I felt a wave of longing for St Margaret’s, where I’d been important, and I’d had Olivia for a friend. It was fatal thinking about her. I felt the tears pricking my eyes.
‘Oh look, I do believe she’s going to cry!’ said one of the girls.
I struggled desperately. ‘I am not crying,’ I said fiercely. ‘I’m here to work. Now, will you please show me what to do?’
‘If you’re so clever, you can work it out for yourself, Plumbrain,’ said Patty, and she turned her back on me.
‘Very well,’ I said. I went to the drawer of moulds and selected a stick. I moved to a pile of starch boxes. I set about making shapes with my stick and its half-marbles. I felt I was doing a reasonable job, but then Patty came and peered.
‘Let’s see . . .’ She took hold of the box and shook it deliberately, so that all the shapes were sifted over with loose starch. ‘Whoops!’ she said. ‘Better start again.’
This time I couldn’t stop my tears dripping down into the powder.
‘Here now.’ It was Geoff, the younger man with rosy cheeks. ‘Yes, that’s coming along fine. We have a set number to do of each pattern. You stick with the rose design and work your way through all the boxes. Then, when we’ve filled them up with our sugar mixture, they all go in the drying room and you start all over again with a fresh box.’
I sniffed inelegantly. ‘Is that all I do? I don’t do anything else?’ I thought perhaps he was teasing me, but he shook his head solemnly.
‘Nothing else. It’s a nice easy job, ain’t it?’ He leaned nearer and whispered in my ear, ‘Don’t let the other girls get you down. It’s just their silly way. They’ll ease off soon enough.’
I looked up at him gratefully, but this was a mistake too.
‘Would you believe it! She’s making sheep’s eyes at Geoff already, the little minx!’ said Patty. ‘You watch out, Geoff, or I’ll tell your missus.’
‘Less of your cheek, Miss Pattacake,’ said Geoff, and he gave her a pat on the bottom.
Patty squealed. There was a little whirlwind chase around the room until she blundered into a box and sent it flying, starch going everywhere, making us all choke.
The older man, George, shook his head. ‘Now then, simmer down, you lot,’ he said. ‘Especially you, Patty, or I’ll throw you in my pot and boil you into syrup.’
He spoke lightly, but even so the girls settled down, and Patty swept up the spilled starch and applied herself to her own boxes. I hunched over mine. My back started aching terribly. I couldn’t believe we were required to stand all day long. I took a pride in moulding neatly for a while, but long before an hour was up I was finding the work incredibly tedious. I was used to the variety of school, with a different lesson every forty minutes. It was so hard to keep doing the same simple repetitive thing. I felt like an infant in a sandpit, making mould after mould after mould.
Patty and the other girls chattered away together. They were ignoring me now, thank goodness, but it was hard to be deliberately left out of all the conversation. I couldn’t have joined in anyway. They were saying the most unspeakable things about their sweethearts. I kept blushing for them, wondering how they could say such things aloud, let alone in front of Geoff and George. Mercifully the two men didn’t seem to be listening. They talked to each other, debating the qualities of different brown ales, so I couldn’t join in that conversation, either.
I wondered what my prim teachers would think of my listening to these factory folk. I would tell Mother, and then surely she wouldn’t insist that I work here. What would Father say? But perhaps he was having to suffer worse treatment in prison. I began composing a painting in my mind: Father and me as martyrs with uplifted eyes and soulful expressions, being terribly tortured by prisoners and factory girls. I decided to portray Patty as a certain lady of Babylon.
Mr Beeston looked in halfway through the desperately long morning. He watched over me for a few minutes. My hands started shaking and I grew clumsy with my stick, but he didn’t seem to notice. ‘Excellent, excellent!’ he said. ‘You’ve taught her very well, Patty.’
Patty smirked, but her eyes flicked to me warily. I held my tongue and stalked over to the drying room with my completed tray.
Mr Beeston poked my cheeks when I came out. ‘How many dried fondants have you popped in your mouth in secret, eh, Opal Plumstead?’
‘None, Mr Beeston!’ I said indignantly.
The temptation had been great but I wasn’t a fool. You couldn’t pilfer a fondant out of a finished box without leaving an obvious gap.
‘Not the slightest bit peckish?’ he said, sounding surprised. ‘Don’t you care for our fine Fairy Glen fondants, Opal Plumstead? You ate one readily enough earlier.’
‘I love them, Mr Beeston, of course I do,’ I said.
‘Then you must claim your new girl’s perks, little silly! Didn’t Patty explain? Here!’ Mr Beeston strode into the drying room and returned with a big box of finished fondants.
‘Here we are – for your delectation and delight,’ he said, laying the box beside me with a flourish.
‘What do you mean?’ I said uncertainly.
‘Gobble as many as you want, my dear. Make the most of it. You won’t ever get the chance again.’
‘Are you teasing me, sir?’ I asked.
‘Me? I’m the most deadly serious chappie in Christendom.’ He tweaked my nose and then went off, leaving the full box beside me.
I looked at the glowing fondants. It was a select assortment: vanilla, rose, lemon, pale peppermint green, and apricot. Could I really eat them? Patty was watching me, hands on her hips. She made no attempt to snatch
one for herself. That made me even more suspicious. Perhaps it was a dummy box, though the fondants certainly looked and smelled delicious. If I put one in my mouth, maybe I’d discover it was made of cardboard. Then they’d all burst out laughing.
I ignored the fondants determinedly and got on with my moulding.
Geoff came over and peered at my work. ‘You’re very neat,’ he said politely.
‘Thank you,’ I said. I didn’t dare look up at him in case Patty started cat-calling again.
‘You’re not eating your fondants!’ he said, sounding surprised.
‘Well, I’m not sure they’re real,’ I mumbled.
‘Of course they are!’
‘But am I really allowed?’
‘You get cracking, girl. I ate my way through three whole boxfuls my first day,’ said Geoff.
‘Would you like one now?’ I asked.
‘No fear,’ said Geoff. ‘Can’t stand’em now. That’s the whole point, see. First day you eat as many as you want. You get so sick you can’t bear the thought of eating them ever again. So there’s no pilfering on the job. Go on, help yourself.’
So I reached out and took a rose fondant. It was even more delicious than the one Mr Beeston had given me. I savoured it slowly as I moulded, and then tried an apricot. It was even better, its slight tanginess blending beautifully with the sugar coating. I sampled a lemon, and a peppermint, then a vanilla – and then I started all over again.
Eating them was so soothing, it helped take my mind off my boring task. I could quite easily see how Geoff could get through three boxes. I’d do that too – maybe even manage more! I’d eat fondants all day long and never sicken. They didn’t realize what a sweet tooth I had. I finished the entire box, but now I wasn’t so sure about starting another. My teeth felt furry with sugar and my whole throat seemed coated with soft, slimy fondant cream. The smell of sugar crept right up my nostrils. The sweets I’d already eaten started churning in my stomach. I was scared I might disgrace myself and be sick. I thought of the ladies’ room, so far away – down all the stairs and right through the factory. Would I be able to make it that far? But I couldn’t be sick here, in front of everyone. I felt the sweat start out on my forehead.