Opal Plumstead Read online

  ‘What?’ I did think her fat, but I knew I couldn’t say so. ‘Of course not, you loopy girl. You’re just . . . comfortable.’

  ‘Mother says I’m getting very tubby,’ said Olivia. ‘She’s bought me this awful corset for Sundays. It’s unbelievably uncomfortable. I can barely talk when I’ve got it on. It flattens my tum a bit, but I bulge out above and below it in a totally disgusting way. I couldn’t even move after I’d tucked into my roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Does your mother make you wear a corset for best, Opal?’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to push up or push down,’ I said, peering at my flat chest and sighing. ‘My mother keeps on berating me as if I’m being wilfully defiant in not growing bosoms, just because Cassie had a figure when she was fourteen.’

  ‘Does Cassie wear a corset?’ Olivia asked.

  ‘Yes, but it’s not one of those really fierce ones. It hasn’t got proper bones.’ I’d secretly tried it on, but it just looked ridiculous on me and I hated the cloying smell of Cassie on it, of powder and musk.

  ‘Mother says I should be mindful of my figure now. She’s stopped letting me have second helps of anything. She’s so mean.’

  ‘I’d swap her for my mother any day,’ I said.

  ‘Why do mothers have to be so difficult?’ said Olivia. ‘I shall be so lovely to my children. I shall let them eat their favourite meals every single day, always with second helps, and I’ll buy my little girl an entire family of dolls and my boy will have a toy fort with a battalion of little lead soldiers. I will play with them all day long while the cook makes our meals in the kitchen and the maid does all the housework.’

  ‘I hope you will let your servants have their favourite meals and give them second helps too,’ I said.

  I had been to tea with Olivia and observed her family’s single servant, a skinny little mite with untidy hair tumbling out of her cap and dark circles like bruises under her eyes. I’d talked to her, asking her name and age and when she had left school as she served us lopsided sandwiches and little scones like stones. She had blinked nervously and mumbled her replies.

  ‘I’m Jane, miss, and I’m thirteen years old, and I only went to school when I was small, miss, because I had to help Ma at home with the little ones.’

  I was shocked to discover that Jane was younger than us. I wanted to find out more about her, but Olivia’s mother was frowning at both of us. Poor Jane’s hands started to tremble. She very nearly dropped a plate of bread and butter and poured half the tea onto the tablecloth. She murmured a desperate apology and fled the room.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Olivia’s mother. ‘We’ve unsettled her.’ She raised her eyebrows and said to me in a tone of gentle reproof, ‘We don’t usually ask personal questions of servants, Opal – at least, not when they’re performing their duties.’

  I felt my cheeks burn. I was terrified that Jane might be punished, all because of me. It seemed such a heartless rule. It was as if they weren’t acknowledging that Jane was a girl, just like Olivia and me – and yet the whole family made a huge fuss of their two smelly spaniels, chatting to them in baby talk, rolling them over on their backs and petting them in a hugely embarrassing way.

  Olivia had put her arm round me when we were ushered off to play cribbage in the parlour.

  ‘Don’t take too much notice of Mother – she can be very stuffy,’ she whispered. ‘And she’s really very kind to Jane. She’s training her carefully and she hardly ever gets cross when she makes mistakes.’

  I wondered what it would feel like to be Jane. I knew I didn’t want to be a teacher – but I certainly didn’t want to be a servant, either.

  ‘Oh Lordy, there are only three toffee chews left,’ said Olivia now.

  ‘You have them. They’re your sweets, after all,’ I said, though I hoped she wouldn’t take me seriously.

  ‘No, no, fair dos,’ said Olivia. She gave me one – banana flavour! – and popped a strawberry chew in her own mouth. Then she bit hard into the remaining toffee.

  ‘Careful! Mind your front teeth. You won’t get that husband of yours if you’ve got a great gap in your mouth,’ I said. ‘Here, let me.’

  I had a go at severing the sticky toffee and was more successful than Olivia. We both chewed happily.

  ‘What about your husband?’ asked Olivia. ‘What will he be like?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I want one,’ I said.

  ‘You have to have a husband!’

  ‘No I don’t. I don’t think it would be congenial at all, having to flap around after a man. I’m not very keen on men, anyway,’ I said airily, trying to sound sophisticated.

  ‘Wait until you fall in love,’ said Olivia, grinning.

  ‘I don’t believe in falling in love,’ I told her. ‘I don’t believe in love itself. I think it’s just a comfort story for adults. Children get to believe in fairies and Father Christmas – adults believe there’s one true person out there. Your eyes meet, and that’s it, you’re in love.’

  ‘But it’s true. Of course you fall in love!’ said Olivia. ‘Look at Romeo and Juliet. See, even your boring old Shakespeare believed in true love.’

  We were studying Shakespeare at school, but in the silly bowdlerized version considered suitable for young ladies. I’d taken a proper volume of Shakespeare’s tragedies out of the library and had learned many passages by heart because I thought they were so beautiful. I’d chanted them at Olivia when I wanted to annoy her.

  ‘Shakespeare was writing poetically. Romeo and Juliet is beautiful because of the words. It’s ridiculous as a plot. It takes place over a matter of days – in which they’re supposed to fall in love so passionately that they risk everything and then die for each other,’ I said scornfully.

  ‘You don’t think it’s like that for real people?’ asked Olivia.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘So why do so many people have sweethearts?’

  ‘Because the young men desire the young women,’ I said grandly, though I couldn’t stop myself blushing.

  I had very little clear idea what sweethearts did when that desire was consummated. Neither did Olivia. I knew that because we’d whispered and giggled over the conundrum many times. We both got the giggles now, choking over the last of our toffee chews.

  ‘But there’s more to love than that,’ Olivia gasped at last. ‘Haven’t you ever felt all swoony over someone?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Not Mr Andrews?’ Olivia suggested slyly, smoothing out our sweet wrappers.

  He was our music teacher, and he was tall and dark. He told us stories about all the tormented composers and played us extracts from their work on his Edison phonograph. I did like Mr Andrews very much.

  ‘Go on! I bet you’d like to kiss Mr Andrews,’ said Olivia.

  That set us giggling again.

  ‘Certainly not! Think how that moustache would tickle,’ I said. ‘Anyway, Mr Andrews has got a wife – I’ve seen her – and he seems very fond of her.’

  ‘There! Husbands and wives love each other, silly,’ said Olivia, twisting each toffee paper round her little finger, turning them into tiny glasses.

  ‘They’re fond at first – that’s the passion. But it wears off. Think of our parents, Olivia – your mother and father and mine.’

  We thought.

  Olivia sighed, looking depressed. ‘Well, I’ll love my babies, even if I don’t always love my husband,’ she said. ‘Let’s drink to that.’ She gave me a toffee-wrapper glass and we touched them together and pretended to drink. Then Olivia consulted her pocket watch. ‘Cripes, look at the time! We’re going to be in trouble.’

  We stood up and ran helter-skelter out of the graveyard, all the way to our respective homes.

  I LIVED IN a house called Primrose Villa. It was a pretty name, but our home was small and stark, one of ninety-eight built in bright red brick in an ugly terrace. We didn’t have any primroses in our garden – just a dusty privet hedge, a square of grass, and some puny rose bushes at th