Opal Plumstead Read online

  ‘What about my training?’ I said shakily. ‘What about my scholarship?’

  ‘Oh, Opal, don’t start!’ Mother sighed wearily. ‘I’m too tired for arguments. I’m sorry you don’t like it at Fairy Glen. We’ll keep looking for another job for you. There might be a suitable position in one of the shops, especially just before Christmas.’

  ‘I don’t want to work in a shop! I don’t want to work in a horrible factory. I don’t want to work at all.’

  ‘And what good’s that going to do you?’ said Mother. ‘It will just give you even more airs and graces and turn you into a frump of a bluestocking. And what would you do if you stayed on at that silly school till you’re a great girl of eighteen?’

  ‘I – I could manage to go on to university. Go to Oxford, like Father,’ I said.

  ‘And what good has a varsity education done him,’ said Mother bitterly. ‘Now get to bed and wrap that wet hair up in a towel or you’ll catch a terrible chill.’

  I decided I wanted to get a chill. I hoped I’d wake up so ill and feverish I couldn’t go to work. I lay on my bed feeling wretched, crying into my damp pillow.

  ‘Opie?’ It was Cassie, creeping up to my bed. ‘Don’t cry! I’m so sorry you have to go to that factory. Look, I’ll start making eyes at every passable rich man I come across. If I make a good marriage, I’ll be able to keep us all in style.’

  Cassie’s kindness only made me feel worse. She was doing her best to help out. And although I was angry with Mother, I had to concede that she was trying her hardest to help out too. I knew I should be brave and suffer silently like a martyr, but all I could do was grind my teeth and mutter, ‘It’s not fair, it’s not fair.’

  Father was the only one who would understand, but he wasn’t here. I ached to talk to him. I woke up in the middle of the night, missing him dreadfully, terrified of going back to the factory in the morning. I had so lost my senses I had a desperate urge to call for Father. I even found myself moaning his name aloud, as if by sheer need alone I could summon him through his prison bars all the long way back home.

  I sat up in bed, lit a stump of candle and found my sketching pad. I tried to draw a portrait of Father but couldn’t get the likeness right, though I made four or five attempts. It was as if I’d already forgotten what he looked like, though I’d seen him only last week.

  I tore the crude sketches into shreds and started writing a letter to him instead. I wrote a blow-by-blow account of yesterday’s events, recalling every slur and insult from Patty and the girls. I told Father about the desperate tedium of moulding all day long, the stifling smells of warm sugar and dense starch, the heat, the harsh conditions. My legs were cramped and aching, my shoulders and neck so stiff I could barely move, from standing up hour after hour. I exaggerated my physical woes and wrote paragraph after paragraph about my psychological misery.

  Father was the only member of my family who had taken pride in my scholarship. I knew he’d hoped for a great future for me. Maybe I could have gone to Oxford or Cambridge. I couldn’t take a degree like the gentleman undergraduates, but women were now allowed to study alongside them. I thought of learning Latin and Greek, such strange, magical languages. I hungered after all those wondrous volumes in vast college libraries. I yearned for inspirational lectures. I saw myself walking across grass lawns in medieval colleges, talking to my fellow students.

  But now I had no chance of learning a single phrase of Latin, opening just one of those books, hearing even a sentence of a lecture. I would never tread on one blade of that grass. My only future was the Fairy Glen factory – day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. My prison sentence was even worse than Father’s because I was now trapped for life. I ranted on for several closely written pages, long after my candle flickered and went out. Even after my pad and my pencil fell to the floor I still wrote on in my head.

  I went to sleep and dreamed of the factory. It was staffed by a thousand terrifying Pattys. They prodded and pushed me until I tumbled right into a huge vat of simmering sugar, then they stirred me with great wooden paddles and I felt myself dissolving into sticky syrup.

  ‘I’m me, I have to stay me!’ I screamed, and woke myself up.

  In the dawn light I looked at the long letter I’d written to Father. The last two pages were completely incoherent, the lines swerving up and down and crisscrossing at random. I read it through as far as I could, blushing at my rambling self-pitying rant. What was I thinking of? How could I seriously send such a letter to Father? He would only blame himself for my misery.

  I tore up all the pages in shame and wrote a short, loving note instead:

  Dearest Father

  I’m missing you so much already. I wish I could see you! It must be so sad and lonely and worrying for you. You must be fretting terribly, especially with the thought of your trial before you. Perhaps the judge will be kind and compassionate and understand that you’re not a wicked man at all and let you off lightly. You only wanted to make us all happy. If only the publishers hadn’t let you down over your book! Perhaps you can write another while you are away from us?

  We all love you very much – especially

  Yur loving daughter,

  Opal

  P.S. You mustn’t worry about us. We’re all coping splendidly. I go out to work now and it makes me feel very grown up.

  I didn’t feel very grown up going to work. I felt incredibly little, like a tiny mouse scuttling along the gutter on the way to Fairy Glen. I had been nervous enough yesterday, but today was five times worse because I knew what it would be like.

  Mr Beeston was in his office, and when he saw me through the window, he gave me a cheery wave. I managed to wave back, though my arm felt like lead. He beckoned me in.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Opal Plumstead.’

  ‘Good morning, Mr Beeston,’ I replied.

  ‘Lovely manners! What a girl you are. So, how was your first day?’

  I hesitated. If I told him everything, perhaps he’d move me downstairs. Maybe I could even try rolling out the sugar jellies? I would sooner work anywhere than in the fondant room. I’d even prefer to scrub the water closets all day.

  ‘Speak up, little Opal. You don’t seem like a girl who’s usually lost for words,’ said Mr Beeston.

  My words were sticking in my mouth. If I told him that Patty and her friends had tormented me all day long and then tipped an entire box of starch over my head, he would surely be sympathetic. But what would he say to Patty? I didn’t care if she got into trouble. I wanted that to happen. But what would she do to me afterwards? What would all the others do? I had enough experience of school to know that everyone hates a telltale.

  I cleared my throat. ‘My first day was rather as I’d expected,’ I said carefully.

  Mr Beeston raised his eyebrows. ‘Mmm! Excellent answer! Off you go, then. See if the second day is the same.’

  I collected a clean overall and cap and went into the ladies’ room warily, fearful of Patty. She wasn’t there – but several of the girls from the fondant room were larking about, discussing the men on the factory floor.

  ‘What do you reckon to that Paul – you know, the one with the curly hair? I think he’s a real looker.’

  ‘Listen to her! Sounds like she’ll be down the alley with him at dinner time.’

  ‘He’s a bit too girlish for my taste. I like’em strong and beefy, like Bill. Oooh, what I’d like to do with him!’

  ‘He’s courting Lizzie Seymour. You know – does the candy twists.’

  ‘Her! He’s wasted on her, she’s so niminy-piminy. I reckon if I could just cosy up to Bill, he’d realize he’d be much better off with me.’

  ‘Watch out you don’t cosy too close. Some say it was that Bill got Jenny Moore in the family way.’

  ‘Think I don’t know how to look after myself? Catch me being landed with a baby.’

  ‘Well, teach us, then, because my Sandy’s getting very overheated on a Saturda