Opal Plumstead

  ‘Watch out, she’s going to chuck any minute!’ said Patty.

  I took a deep breath. ‘No I’m not. I’m perfectly fine,’ I said, willing this to be true.

  Then a bell suddenly clanged loudly and all the girls stopped moulding and practically ran out of the room.

  ‘Oh goodness, is it a fire alarm?’ I asked.

  George and Geoff shook their heads at me as they took the great copper pan off the flames and stood it on a large rack.

  ‘It’s dinner time,’ said Geoff. ‘Follow us – we’ll show you where to go.’

  ‘I – I’m not sure I want any dinner,’ I said.

  ‘Course you do, silly girl. It’ll settle those fondants.’

  Geoff was very kind, but I wished he wouldn’t call me silly. It was so humiliating not knowing the simplest thing. I wasn’t sure he knew the state of my stomach better than I did, but I let him take me by the elbow and lead me downstairs. George started to take an interest in me too, telling me several times to ‘Perk up, little lass.’

  The dining hall was in another building altogether. A rich savoury smell was seeping through its doors. For a moment my stomach lurched alarmingly and I thought I might have to make a run for it, but then I breathed deeper, hoping that the meat and vegetables might counteract the cloying sweetness inside me.

  I followed Geoff and George into the dining hall and looked at the milling crowd in alarm. There were unruly queues at the serving hatches, some wanting soup, some meat, some pudding, some content with a cup of tea and a bun. There was an even longer queue at a desk, where people balanced trays. People ate at long tables, but I saw that the men all sat on one side, the women on the other. I’d hoped to nestle near Geoff and George, but it looked as though I’d have to chance my luck with the girls. I resolved to sit as far away from Patty as I could.

  I went to join the meat queue, surprisingly hungry now. It looked better than school dinners: boiled beef and carrots and mounds of fluffy mashed potato. I waited politely in the queue, furious when several girls with pointy elbows squeezed past me.

  ‘There is a queue,’ I said.

  ‘Oh Lordy, there’s a queue, is there! Well, swipe me pink,’ said one girl.

  ‘A queue, indeed! And there’s me thinking it was a free-for-all,’ said another.

  They both stayed exactly where they were. I tried to ignore them, but they started making fun of me now, commenting on my ill-fitting overalls and ridiculous cap. So it wasn’t just Patty. All the girls were coarse and unkind. This factory was even worse than I’d feared. I wondered about running out of the dining hall and hiding in the ladies’ room. Oh dear, if only I’d done so! But I stuck it out and waited until I was at the front at last. I received my plate of meat and veg and was then directed over to the desk. I couldn’t understand why we had to queue all over again, our food cooling on our trays. Then I realized what the folk ahead of me were doing. There was a woman with a cash register at the desk. The people were paying for their meals. A sign above the desk swam into focus.

  THREE-COURSE MEAL

  3d.

  MEAT AND VEGETABLES

  2d.

  PUDDING OR BUN

  1d.

  It was just like a restaurant. I’d been a fool to think the meal was provided for free. I didn’t have tuppence for my meat and veg. I didn’t even have a penny for a bun. I had no money at all.

  I felt the shame of it wash over me. I stood dithering, peering around for Geoff or even Mr Beeston, wondering if I could possibly pluck up the courage to ask them to lend me the money, but I couldn’t spot either of them now. I waited until I was at the head of the queue.

  ‘Tuppence please,’ said the woman. She was so fat she oozed out on either side of her seat and hid it totally, so it looked as if she were squatting in thin air. Perhaps she ate the thrupenny, tuppenny and penny choices all day long.

  ‘Please, I’m terribly sorry – I’m new, you see. I didn’t realize we had to pay for our meals. I haven’t got any money on me,’ I whispered to the fat woman. ‘Could you possibly see your way to giving me credit just for today?’

  ‘What?’ she said, frowning at me, her chins wobbling indignantly. ‘We don’t give credit here. We’re not a bleeding charity institution. You pays your money and you has your meal. No money – no meal.’

  ‘But what am I going to do with it if I can’t pay,’ I said, staring at my meal in despair.

  ‘Take it back! Now. Before it gets any colder. And don’t try and play this trick again, girl, it ain’t funny.’

  I had to carry my wretched tray of food back to the hatch. Some fool thought I was pushing in, returning for a second helping, and objected bitterly. The woman behind the hatch was most put out when I thrust my loaded tray back at her.

  ‘Make up your mind, miss! Don’t you go messing me about again,’ she said.

  I was sure I’d never ever dare return to the dining room. I fled from the hall, across the deserted factory floor, back to the ladies’ room. The fondants were churning around again. I reached a cubicle just in time and was horribly sick. I stayed shuddering and crying behind the locked door for a while and then emerged shakily to wash my face.

  I got another shock when I saw myself in the mirror above the washbasins. I was pale grey. The morning working in the fondant room had done its work. I set about washing it off determinedly. I managed to scrub my face and hands pink again, but my cap and overall were still covered in starch. At least the ridiculous cap was preventing my hair turning grey too.

  I wondered what I should do now. I was still feeling weak from vomiting. The rare times I’d been taken ill at school I was sent to the sick room and encouraged to lie down on the bed with a glass of water and a bowl beside me. I very much doubted that the factory had a similar refuge. Should I just ask to go home because I wasn’t feeling well? I had such an urgent longing to be back in my bedroom with my books and my paintings that I doubled up, moaning.

  ‘Oh my goodness! What’s the matter, child?’ A woman was standing in the doorway, peering at me anxiously. Her cap and overall were snowy white and fitted her perfectly. She had extraordinary blue eyes with dark lashes, and a fine complexion. She stood beautifully, with a ramrod-straight back. If she weren’t obviously a factory worker, I’d have thought her a true lady. Her voice sounded like a lady’s too, quiet and melodious.

  I straightened up, feeling incredibly foolish.

  ‘Are you ill, dear?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Well, yes, I’ve just been sick,’ I said.

  ‘Oh dear.’ But the lady looked faintly amused. ‘Is it by any chance your first day here at Fairy Glen?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘So perhaps you spent the morning eating rather a lot of sweets?’

  ‘Fondants, miss. It is allowed, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh yes indeed, but it often has rather unfortunate consequences,’ she said. ‘Shall I fetch one of the girls from the fondant room to look after you?’

  ‘No! I mean, no thank you, miss. I’d sooner be quiet by myself,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not very pleasant in here,’ said the lady. ‘Perhaps you’d like to walk outside in the yard for a while and get some fresh air? You’ll hear the bell when it’s time to go back to work.’

  ‘Yes, I should like that,’ I said.

  ‘Come here.’ She took several pins from her own hair and deftly adjusted my cap, securing it at a much more sensible angle. ‘That looks a bit better, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Oh yes, miss!’

  ‘You are fourteen, aren’t you? You look so young to be working. But at least you’ll be properly looked after here. There’s a lovely family feel to the Fairy Glen factory, don’t you find?’

  I stared at her. What kind of warped family were Patty and all the other girls? But perhaps Geoff was like a kindly big brother, and Mr Beeston was certainly the jolly uncle type.

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  The lady looked perplexed. ‘You don’t look very
happy. You do want to work here, don’t you?’

  This was too much.

  ‘No, of course I don’t want to work here! It’s absolutely awful. I’d give anything in the whole world to be back at school,’ I said. Then I ran out of the ladies’ room, along the passageway and out into the yard.

  It was very tempting to keep on running. I wanted to go home so much, but we had no money. I had to work, even if it was just until the end of the week. We got our wages on Friday lunch time.

  I walked round and round the yard by myself, taking in great gulps of air. It was a sullen, grey day, and there was a faint sour smell from the tannery on the other side of the railway station, but even so the air felt clear and pure after the stifling fondant room. I could still feel little prickles of starch up my nose and in my ears. I could still smell and taste the fondants and I prayed I wouldn’t be ill again.

  When the bell clanged, I clenched my fists and made myself march back inside. I started moulding, my head bent over my boxes, taking no notice when Patty began goading me again.

  ‘What’s the problem, Plumbrain? Why’re you ignoring me? Can’t you hear me? Ain’t you got any ears? Let’s look.’ She snatched at my cap, pulling out the lady’s hairpins. ‘Oh yes, here we are – two sticky-out little lugs.’ She put her mouth close to one of my ears. ‘Hello hello hello!’ she bellowed.

  ‘Stop it! I can hear you perfectly. You just don’t say anything of consequence so I don’t bother to listen,’ I said fiercely.

  ‘Oooh!’ said Patty. ‘Little Lady Muck. Anyfink of consequence, eh! What a blooming cheek. Who do you think you are, talking to me like that?’

  ‘I am Opal Plumstead. And you are a great big uncouth bully,’ I declared.

  ‘That’s it, little Opal, you tell her,’ said Geoff.

  ‘No more joking now. Get on with your work, girls,’ said George.

  Patty pulled a face at him but stopped tormenting me. The other girls started chatting amongst themselves. I moulded on and on in silence, taking each completed box to the drying room. I made rose after rose after rose. I was really hungry now, but I wasn’t tempted to try to eat the sweets again, though Geoff offered me another box. I thought longingly of my supper at home.

  I wondered what sort of lunch they’d given Father in prison. Would it be the bare minimum – a plate of watery gruel, a hunk of butterless bread? Father was so thin already. I wondered if he would actually survive such harsh treatment. Perhaps I would never see him again.

  This thought sent me dangerously close to tears again. I started frantically reciting in my head to distract myself – Tennyson and Christina Rossetti, and long passages from Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When I couldn’t think of any more poetry, I silently sang every hymn I could remember, and then regressed to infant nursery rhymes. I moulded in time to ‘One, two, buckle my shoe’ and marched to the drying room to ‘Seesaw, Margery Daw’.

  I had to start the whole process all over again, but at long, long last, at six o’clock, the bell went.

  ‘Home time!’ said Geoff cheerily. ‘Well done, lass, you’ve worked hard.’

  ‘Yes, you’ll do well here, so long as you try to fit in,’ added George.

  Try to fit in! I would never ever fit in at Fairy Glen. I hated all these awful girls and they hated me too.

  I wasn’t quick enough putting my moulds away and depositing my last box in the drying room. Geoff and George went out of the door, and before I could follow them, two girls seized hold of me.

  ‘Now you’re for it, Plumbrain,’ said Patty. She snatched off my cap, picked up a full box of starch, and emptied it over my head.

  They all screamed with laughter as I gasped and choked, then ran out of the room, leaving me to clear up the terrible mess.

  I FELT TERRIBLE walking home. I’d tried to wash off as much starch as I could in the ladies’ room, but there was nothing I could do about my hair. I felt as if everyone were staring at me, pointing behind my back. It was so dreadful, so shameful. I resolved never ever to go back, no matter what.

  I got home at quarter past seven feeling desperately tired and wretched. I’d had no idea factory hours were so long. I thought Mother and Cassie would be terribly worried about me, but when I got home they were absorbed in other things. I found Cassie stirring minced meat on the stove while Mother sat at the table, assembling little grey rabbits – each one to be cut out of felt, stitched together, stuffed with sawdust, and given bead eyes and an embroidered smile. Fifteen or twenty were lying on the floor with their stiff paws in the air, as if a farmer had been out shooting with his gun.

  ‘Oh, Mother,’ I said. I sat down beside her. She barely glanced at me, stitching rapidly, her eyes screwed up to see properly in the dim gaslight. She didn’t even take in my stiff grey hair.

  ‘How did you get on, dear?’ she asked.

  ‘It was awful,’ I said. I was about to launch into my woeful tale when I saw her dab quickly at her thumb with an old cloth. It was spotted with red marks. ‘Mother, is that blood?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she said.

  I caught hold of her fingers and smoothed them out. The tips were so raw that several were bleeding, and there were great blisters on the two fingers and thumbs in contact with the needle. All her fingers were swollen, especially round the joints.

  ‘Mother, stop sewing! Oh my goodness, you can’t possibly carry on with your hands in such a state. Look, I’ll finish this one.’ I suddenly had a wonderful thought. ‘In fact, you don’t have to do any more. I’ll make the little rabbits. My fingers are strong and nimble. I won’t need to go to the factory any more. I can just stay home and stitch.’ The idea of sewing rabbits all day long instead of going to school would have appalled me last week, but now it seemed a blissful idea.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Opal,’ said Mother, starting stitching again. ‘Piecework is far too poorly paid. I’m getting paid six shillings for twenty-four dozen wretched rabbits. I’ve been stitching as fast as I can with no break whatsoever, and yet I haven’t managed half my quota for the day. You’re getting eleven shillings a week, with a bonus after six months. There’s no comparison, child. You have to stay there, even if you do find it awful. Why was it so bad? Could you not get the hang of the work?’

  ‘Look,’ I said, crouching beside the lamp.

  Mother groaned, and Cassie screamed and came running.

  ‘Opal – your hair! What’s happened to it? Oh Lord, how will you bear it? It’s grey. You’ve turned into an old woman!’ she cried.

  ‘It’ll wash out,’ said Mother. ‘Oh dear, is it the starch? I hoped they wouldn’t put you in that room. Don’t they provide you with caps?’

  ‘Yes, but a hateful girl snatched it off and shook a whole boxful of starch all over me,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ said Cassie. ‘Well, I hope you tipped a box over her and banged it hard on her head for good measure.’

  ‘I couldn’t. She’s much bigger than me. All the other girls take her side,’ I said, trembling.

  ‘Didn’t you tell the supervisor?’ said Mother.

  ‘She can’t do that. They’ll all hate her if she does, and get at her more than ever,’ said Cassie. ‘You must learn to fight back, Opie! Don’t let them get away with it. They’ll always pick on a new girl unless you stand up for yourself.’

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like,’

  I protested. ‘I do so! When I started at Madame Alouette’s, the other girls didn’t like me, especially Rosa, because she always used to be Madame’s pet. She hated it when I was praised. Once Madame told the other girls to watch me making satin rosettes, because I was so good at it, but when I got back from running an errand to the dressmaker’s, I found them all snipped into little pieces. I knew that Rosa had done it, so I bided my time, and then, when she had her back to me, engrossed in her sewing, I snipped off a lock of her hair!’

  ‘Cassie!’ said Mother wearily. ‘I thought Rosa was your friend.’

  ‘
She is now – we’re thick as thieves – but she knows not to mess with me. It was only a little lock of hair anyway,’ said Cassie. She ran her fingers through my hair. ‘Poor Opie. I’ll wash it for you after supper. Oh lawks, the mince!’

  We ate burned mince, lumpy potatoes and watery cabbage. Cassie might be wonderful at making satin rosettes, but she was a hopeless cook. Then we cleared the dishes, gathered as close as we could to the lamp, and set about sewing those wretched rabbits. I could see why Mother’s hands had got into such a state. Cassie was good at sewing, of course, but even she struggled to get the stitches small and tight enough for the four paws, and then it was the devil’s job to push the sawdust in. We worked till gone ten, and then had to give up, still a dozen rabbits short of the suggested daily quota.

  Cassie washed my hair at the kitchen sink, using up a great deal of her Rainbow Silk shampoo, and giving it three rinses to get it squeaky clean.

  Mother was so tired and her hands so sore she couldn’t even undress properly for bed. Cassie and I had to unbutton her and help her into her nightdress.

  ‘You’re like two wounded soldiers,’ said Cassie. ‘I feel so bad that I’m not suffering too. Perhaps I really should leave Madame Alouette’s and work at Fairy Glen like Opal. Then we’d have twenty-two shillings a week. We could live like three queens on that.’

  I couldn’t help selfishly hoping that Mother would agree to this suggestion. If I had Cassie working alongside me, it wouldn’t be nearly as lonely and she’d help me get the better of Patty and her friends. It wouldn’t be so desperately boring moulding all day if I had Cassie to talk to. We could play pretend games again. It had been such fun playing Islands on our river trip.

  But Mother wouldn’t hear of it. ‘You must finish your training, dear,’ she said, giving Cassie a hug.