‘Where did you learn to fight like that, a swotty little milksop like you?’
‘I was angry.’
‘Listen, I didn’t know it was your pa in the paper. I knew it had to be some relation, but not someone you were really close to.’
‘I love my father more than anyone in the world, even though he’s in prison,’ I declared.
‘I love my pa too, though since his accident he’s got a right temper when you cross him,’ said Patty. She paused. ‘You’ve got a right temper too!’
‘Mrs Roberts isn’t going to dismiss us, though,’ I said.
‘I know. She’s a good sort really, though she can make you feel bad,’ said Patty. ‘Very bad.’ She suddenly stuck out her arm. I jumped, thinking she was going to strike me again. But then I realized she wanted to shake hands.
I stuck my own arm out, still a little warily. We shook hands awkwardly and then sprang apart again, blushing. Patty gave a little nod and then disappeared into a cubicle. I ran out of the room and back onto the factory floor.
Freddy collared me anxiously. ‘Oh, Opal, my Lord, look at your nose!’ he said. ‘I’ll slap that Patty from here to next week for doing that to you.’
Poor gangling Freddy was never going to be a match for sturdy Patty, and perhaps even he knew that, but I smiled warmly at him.
‘You don’t need to do that, Freddy. We’ve sorted it out now. Anyway, I hit her too. And scratched her face.’
‘My goodness, you’re quite a girl. My girl.’
‘Your friend, Freddy, your friend,’ I said.
I wondered if he’d still want to be my friend if he read the Daily News himself. I thought perhaps he would. He was a sweet lad. In many ways I wished I could care for him.
Work was more peaceful now. I still found moulding incredibly tedious, but I worked diligently all the same. I wanted George to give a good report of me to Mrs Roberts. Patty left me alone now. Maybe she was worried about Mrs Roberts too, but she seemed less hostile. Perhaps it was because I’d stood up to her at last. Maybe she even felt a little sorry for me. Whatever it was, we could work in the same room without any tension now. We weren’t exactly friends, but we weren’t bitter enemies, either.
The other girls followed her lead and became a little friendlier. Nora still made a few snide remarks from time to time, but she was easy to ignore. I longed to find just one girl who might become a proper friend. I was still missing Olivia badly. In fact, I’d written to her once, a long letter reminding her of all the fun we’d had together, reminiscing about our favourite jokes, our special games, our solemn secrets. I finished it as follows:
I know your mother has forbidden you to see me – but couldn’t you sneak out and meet me at the graveyard? No one would ever spot us there. I don’t finish work till six, but I could be there by quarter past if I run all the way. I know that might be a bit late, so what about Saturday or Sunday instead? You could pretend you were going out to tea with some other girl from school. I won’t be able to manage to give you a proper grand tea myself, but I can give you Fairy Glen sweets – lots of them!
Please please please be a sport and show me we’re still close in spite of everything and that you still feel affection for
Your loving friend,
Opal
I didn’t send it to Olivia’s house because I was sure her mother would be suspicious, open it herself and confiscate it. I sent it sealed in another letter to Mr Andrews at school. This meant I had to write to him too.
Dear Mr Andrews,
It was so good of you to visit me. I remember your kind words every day. I wish I could say I’ve taken your advice to heart, but if I’m strictly truthful I have to admit I’ve been a lazy girl and done little private studying so far. However, I have been working hard at the factory and seem to be making progress, though there has been one little altercation. Quite a big one actually, but Mrs Roberts has dealt with me very fairly (unlike Miss Mountbank!).
I dare say you will have seen that there has been a travesty of justice. My poor father has been sentenced to a year’s hard labour.
I am sorry the writing is a little blurred above. When I wrote the last paragraph, I could not help crying and a few of my tears splashed onto my writing paper.
I am hoping that Olivia might still be my friend, so I wonder if you would be very, very kind and give the enclosed letter to her. I know I shouldn’t ask it of you, but these are exceptional circumstances, and I hope you still feel kindly towards
Your sincere former pupil,
Opal
I am sure Mr Andrews passed on my letter immediately, but I had to wait more than a week for Olivia to reply. Her response was horribly brief.
Dear Opal,
I can’t. Be your friend, I mean. I just don’t dare. I’m so sorry. I do still care about you tremendously, though, and wish things were the way they used to be.
Love from Olivia
I cried again when I received the letter.
‘For goodness’ sake, Opal, what’s the matter now?’ said Mother.
‘Olivia won’t be my friend any more,’ I wailed. ‘Her mother won’t allow it.’
‘Well, I can’t say that I blame her. If Olivia’s father was in prison, I wouldn’t want you to play with her,’ said Mother.
‘Yes, but I wouldn’t let that stop me being her friend,’ I replied.
‘That’s because you’ve always been a contrary, disobedient girl.’ Mother sighed as she looked at me. Then she smiled at Cassie, as if to say, You’ve never given me any trouble.
If only she knew. Cassie was still secretly seeing Mr Evandale while spinning Mother endless tales of trysting with Philip Alouette.
‘You can’t carry on like this, Cass,’ I whispered that night when Mother was asleep.
‘Yes I can,’ she said serenely.
‘But Mother’s bound to find out. I’m amazed she hasn’t insisted that you invite this Philip back to our house for tea.’
‘She won’t do that, not now she’s so hideously embarrassed about our circumstances. She’d be worried about scaring Philip away. He can be wretchedly disdainful, you know.’
‘Cassie, he’s not real!’
‘He’s become real to me – and I find him a complete bore. How Mother can believe I’d be interested in such a pompous-sounding idiot, I don’t know.’
‘Just be jolly glad she does,’ I said. ‘She’ll be expecting an engagement soon, and then she’ll have to meet him,’ I said.
‘Well, maybe I’m engaged in real life already,’ said Cassie.
‘What?’
‘Shush! You’ll wake Mother.’
‘You are pretending, aren’t you?’
‘Look.’ Cassie crouched by the candle in my room and reached down inside her nightgown. She drew out a length of black silk ribbon with a ring dangling on the end.
‘Oh my goodness!’ I peered at the ring. It was a gold signet ring set with a square black onyx, a seed-pearl rampant lion embedded in the stone.
‘It’s Daniel’s ring. He’s had it all his life,’ said Cassie. ‘But he’s given it to me. It’s a little big for me and he says he’ll have it altered, but I don’t want to risk spoiling it as it’s so perfect. I can’t wear it anyway, not yet.’
‘But is it a real engagement ring? He’s asked you to marry him?’
Cassie fidgeted a little. ‘He’s asked me to be his love,’ she said.
‘That’s not the same thing.’
‘It’s better,’ said Cassie. ‘Oh, Opie, he really does love me, and I love him with all my heart. You’ve no idea how wonderful it is. You don’t understand. You’re too young.’
‘You’re young too – much too young to be seeing a middle-aged man,’ I said. ‘Especially when all your meetings are so – so clandestine.’ I wasn’t even sure what the word meant, but it sounded sophisticated and superior. I was struggling to hold my own, my feelings in a turmoil.
‘If you don’t watch out, he’ll have his wicked
way with you,’ I said. It was a phrase frequently used in Cassie’s trashy romantic novels.
‘Maybe he’s done that already,’ she murmured.
‘I know you’re simply teasing me,’ I said.
Cassie giggled.
‘You are teasing, aren’t you?’ I said.
‘Of course I am,’ she said – but I couldn’t be sure.
I lay awake worrying long after Cassie had crept back to her own room. I couldn’t tell Mother. She would be heart-broken, and Cassie would never, ever forgive me. I had a mad fantasy of confronting this Mr Evandale and telling him not to toy with my sister, but I was sure he would only laugh at me. I imagined him as a pantomime villain with a twirly moustache and a furtive manner, and shuddered at the thought. I told myself that Cassie was a fool to be taken in by such a man. I thought of all the Pre-Raphaelite paintings of fallen women – their stricken faces, their wretched attitude. How could my sister be so stupid? Yet she seemed so happy, positively rapturous. Perhaps I was jealous of her as well as concerned.
I was feeling so bereft, I became ridiculously jealous of Mother’s babies too. She had abandoned her washing business. It was too hard on her sore hands, she hadn’t had enough customers to make a proper living and, worst of all, a frightening woman with a fierce face and arms like a navvy came knocking on the door one night demanding to see her. It turned out that she was a washerwoman too and lived only three streets away. She insisted that Mother was stealing customers from her, and she’d better stop or she’d boil Mother’s head along with the sheets and put her through her own mangle for good measure.
Mother decided she had better look for different employment. She tried doing the rounds of shops and factories all over again, with a humiliating lack of success. Then she ran into a young woman on the same job-seeking mission, carrying an infant in her arms because she had yet to find a reliable babyminder.
‘I’ve brought up two fine girls. I’m very good with babies,’ Mother found herself saying. ‘I’ll mind your child for you.’
It wasn’t long before she found herself minding four infants – two babes in arms, a determined little creature who crawled everywhere and had to be kept on a lead like a dog, and a docile little girl of three who loved playing with the bright scraps of silk and satin that Cassie brought home from work. Mother doted on the babies, making them soft little mashes to eat, crooning to them while they drank, and playing peekaboo games when they were awake. She didn’t even blink when she changed their reeking napkins.
I wondered if Mother had once been so doting and demonstrative towards Cassie and me. I had no memories of being sung to or rocked to sleep, but of course I would have been too little to remember. I was certain that she had never held me close or played with me when I was as old as four or five, though I could clearly remember her smacking me hard for climbing into the kitchen cupboard and ‘cooking’ with some flour and a few pots and pans. I also remember her forever wiping my face with a damp rag, twitching my skirts into place and buttoning my boots.
I did have the fondest memories of Father dandling me on his knee and reading aloud to me from The Blue Fairy Book. In fact, I rescued the battered old copy from Father’s bookshelf and wept all over it. I fingered the embossed gold illustration of a witch on the blue cover, remembering how I’d once shivered in delicious fear at the sight of her. I read all my favourite stories about Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella and Rumpelstiltskin. As I read, I could hear an echo of Father’s gentle voice as he turned page after page, patiently amusing me.
I wished they’d allow families to send books to prison. I’d tried to pack up a parcel of all Father’s favourite reading as a Christmas present, but Mother said I was being foolish.
‘Prisoners are not allowed Christmas parcels from home. I’ve already enquired,’ she told me.
It was so dreadful thinking of Father on Christmas Day, with no loved ones, no festive meal, no presents. Our own Christmas was bleak, but at least Mother and Cassie and I had each other. Poor Father must be desperately lonely.
‘Why don’t we all visit Father?’ I asked now. ‘I must come too. Cassie can dress me up again. I could leave the starch from the factory in my hair.’
Mother said I was talking nonsense and she very much doubted the prison authorities would allow Cassie inside, let alone me. I wrote eagerly to Father all the same, telling him to take heart, his family were thinking of him all the time and would visit him as soon as we’d saved the rail fare.
I was totally dashed when Father responded as follows:
Dearest Lou, Cassie and Opal,
Please do not put yourselves to the trouble and expense of visiting me. I don’t think I could bear to let you see me in my current situation. It would only be distressing, most of all to me. Far better that you put me out of your minds altogether, until I can return home and be
Your loving husband and father,
Ernest
‘Perhaps he doesn’t really mean it,’ I faltered.
‘He’s made it plain enough, Opal,’ said Mother.
‘I think we should go anyway,’ I said.
‘It would be foolish to go all that way and spend so much money if your father refuses to see us. We must respect his feelings. He’s ashamed.’
‘But he shouldn’t feel ashamed. Mrs Roberts has been in prison and she acts as if she’s proud of it.’
‘What? The Mrs Roberts who owns Fairy Glen? She’s been in prison?’
‘She’s a suffragette and she’s been arrested at demonstrations,’ I said.
‘Then she’s a total fool,’ said Mother. ‘I don’t hold with these hysterical women throwing bricks at windows and behaving like hoydens. They’ve no business interfering in politics. They should leave it to the men who know best.’
‘I think women should be educated until they know just as much as men,’ I said. ‘Mrs Roberts is utterly splendid. I think I shall become a suffragette when I’m older.’
‘Then you’ll end up in prison too, and God help us,’ said Mother. ‘I don’t want to hear any more of this nonsense. And anyway, it’s different when you go to prison for a political cause. I’ll bet she had an easy time of it because she’s a high-born lady. She won’t be doing hard labour like your father.’
‘It’s so wicked that he’s been given such a hard sentence. We know he didn’t embezzle all that other money,’ I said passionately.
‘We can’t positively know, Opal,’ said Mother. ‘And we do know he wrote out a cheque to himself. That’s a crime in anyone’s book. When I was a girl, I knew an old man who was so hungry he dug up some potatoes in a farmer’s field – just four or five potatoes. He was caught and sentenced to five years’ hard labour.’
‘But that doesn’t make Father’s case any less unfair,’ I said.
‘Opal, you’re making my head spin. You can be so aggravating at times. Why can’t you be more like your sister?’ Mother nodded at Cassie. She was sitting demurely in her chair, making herself a new petticoat, embroidering daisies all around the hem.
Yes, and I dare say she’ll be showing off those daisies to her darling Mr Evandale, I shouted – but only inside my head.
I stomped up to my room and read The Blue Fairy Book. When was my fairy godmother going to appear and wave her magic wand?
When I trudged into the factory the next morning, Mr Beeston beckoned to me.
‘Hold your horses, Opal Plumstead. Mrs Roberts wants to see you this morning,’ he said.
My throat went dry. What had I done now? I hadn’t been in any more fights. I had moulded obediently, hour after hour. I completed more boxes than any of the other girls because I had a steady hand and I didn’t waste time gossiping.
‘Don’t look so stricken,’ said Mr Beeston. He reached out and snatched at my nose with his fingers. Then he made a fist of his hand with the thumb poking through, like a little nose. ‘Dear, oh dear, what am I doing, stealing your funny little button nose. Shall I give it you back?’ He dabbed at my
forehead. ‘There! Back in place. No – whoops! Doesn’t it go under your eyes?’
‘Mr Beeston, I’m not a child.’
‘No? What are you, then, an ancient old woman? Well, child or crone, trot along to see Mrs Roberts, quick sharp.’
‘She’s not going to dismiss me after all, is she?’ I said fearfully.
‘There’s only one way of finding out,’ said Mr Beeston, flapping his hand in the air. ‘Off you go.’
I went along the corridor, smoothing my hair and checking the buttons on my dress. It was one of Cassie’s cast-offs, a tartan worsted for the winter. Although she’d turned up the hem and taken it in a great deal at the chest and waist, it was still far too roomy. I looked like a little girl dressing up in her mother’s clothes.
I knocked on Mrs Roberts’ door, wishing I didn’t feel so nervous. It had been chilly on the way to work, yet now the tartan dress stuck to my back and my hands were clammy on the doorknob.
‘Come in!’
I went in, and even though I knew what the room was like now, its splendour still took me by surprise. There was a beautiful new arrangement of bulrushes in one of the tall Japanese vases, and a willow-pattern bowl of dried rosebuds on the desk filled the whole room with their sweet musky smell. In spite of my anxiety, I resolved at once to have bulrushes and rosebuds in my bedroom at home.
Mrs Roberts was looking especially splendid too, in a white silk blouse with lace trimming and a jade-green skirt with a purple cashmere shawl delicately arranged around her shoulders.
‘Good morning, Opal,’ she said. ‘Oh my, your tartan dress looks very delightfully Scottish.’
‘It was my sister’s. It suited her a lot more than it suits me,’ I said. I wondered if she would think it too direct if I complimented her on her own apparel.
‘I love your own outfit, Mrs Roberts. I think green and purple must be your favourite colours,’ I said.
‘And white. Do you know why?’
‘Because they go stylishly together.’
‘Well, I hope they do, but that’s not the reason. They’re the colours of the suffrage movement. White for purity, green for hope, and purple for dignity.’