Opal Plumstead Read online

  ‘Oh, I like that! I think it’s wonderful that you’re a suffragette, Mrs Roberts. I shall be one myself when I’m older,’ I said.

  ‘I like your spirit, Opal. You might try coming along to meetings now.’ Mrs Roberts felt in her desk drawer. ‘Here’s a leaflet about our local gatherings.’

  ‘Thank you!’ I was certain Mother would forbid it if she knew about it – but she didn’t have to know, did she!

  ‘Now, let’s talk about work,’ said Mrs Roberts, looking serious.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Roberts, I have tried to be very good and diligent and I haven’t fought Patty again, I promise,’ I said.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she said. ‘I know you’re speaking the truth too, because I’ve had a chat with George. So I think that, as you’ve kept your side of our bargain, I might keep mine. As from Monday you will work in another part of Fairy Glen altogether.’

  ‘Oh, really!’ I had to clench my fists to stop myself clapping my hands. ‘Can I try rolling out the sugar paste now?’

  ‘No, you’re not going to work on the factory floor. Come with me.’

  Mrs Roberts stood up and led me out of the room. She took me further down the corridor to another room. On the door was one word, written in fancy looping lettering: Design.

  My heart started thudding. Mrs Roberts smiled and opened the door. It was almost as if she had that magic wand in her hand. The design room was quite wonderful: a large cream-painted studio with big windows and astonishingly bright electric lights. There were desks up and down the room in neat rows, reminding me of school. Women sat there, each wearing a delightful green pinafore instead of white overalls. The desks were set out with paintboxes even larger than my cherished box at home, china water jars and a selection of fine paintbrushes. Each woman was diligently painting onto a large padded satin box lid. I recognized the designs from the Fairy Glen deluxe gift range for fondants, toffee chews and candy kisses: flowers for the fondants, a meadow scene for the toffees, and butterflies for the candies. I sucked in my breath when I saw the flower box for the fondants. It brought back such sweetly painful memories.

  ‘I have decided to try you in the design department, Opal. It’s a decision that might well surprise that art teacher of yours. You will find it’s a very exacting job, but a little more varied than moulding. My ladies work on all three designs. They’re allowed two extra fifteen-minute breaks to rest their hands and eyes.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Roberts! If I can work here, I won’t need any break whatsoever, I shall be so extremely happy,’ I declared.

  ‘I’m not saying this is a permanent position, Opal. I’m simply giving you a week’s trial. You might not be competent enough artistically. Don’t get too excited.’

  I tried to calm down, but I couldn’t help feeling thrilled. I wanted to fling my arms round Mrs Roberts and thank her for the opportunity, but I knew this would horrify her, especially in front of all the other women. I contented myself with taking her hand and shaking it earnestly for a very long time.

  ‘I will be an exemplary artist, Mrs Roberts, just you wait and see,’ I promised.

  I WASN’T QUITE exemplary. It was more difficult than I’d realized, painting straight onto satin. The women kept little scraps of rag to dab and absorb any mistakes, but you had to be very quick and deft because the satin was unforgiving. We didn’t paint freehand, doing our own variations on flowers, meadows and butterflies. We worked to special templates, the design very faintly pencilled onto the satin pad. We were given colour charts so that each petal, each wing, each blade of grass was the correct shade of chrome yellow, cobalt blue or emerald green. I didn’t always feel that the colours were exactly right. They could be a little harsh and bright, but I understood that they needed to be eye-catching to tempt folk to buy the boxes.

  They weren’t always true to nature, either. The meadow was dotted with yellow primroses and red poppies, which looked very decorative, but surely they flowered months apart? The butterflies were painted with dazzling designs of green and purple and rich crimson, not a combination ever seen on our shores. I knew that even the exotic Red Admiral wasn’t truly crimson. The flowers for the fondant box were all an astounding flamingo pink against a gold background. I was encouraged by this imaginative approach.

  ‘Perhaps we could try a variation – maybe blue roses against silver?’ I suggested to Miss Lily.

  I wasn’t sure if ‘Lily’ was her surname or her Christian name. Everyone used it with a special reverent tone, as if she were a Mother Superior. She had joined Fairy Glen as a designer when Mrs Roberts’ father-in-law first opened the factory, and had been a stalwart member of the team since she was a young girl. She was now a very old woman, with a little monkey face and a stooped back, but her hands were rock steady and she was still the finest painter in the design room.

  She had a gentle, encouraging nature and took infinite pains with me, setting me to practise my brushstrokes on sugar paper day after day before letting me start on a satin box lid. She showed me various techniques for brush control and the smooth application of paint. When at last she considered me ready to work on a lid, she watched closely, telling me where to start. She showed me how to apply the background, how to add a drop of dew to a rose petal, a glint in the meadow stream, and sunlight on a butterfly wing – to glorious effect. She seemed to like me, and gave little claps of approval from time to time. ‘That’s the ticket, dear,’ she’d murmur.

  I relaxed a little under her benign care, but when I suggested blue roses for a change, she quivered in horror.

  ‘We never do blue roses, dear. That would be far too fanciful. Our roses are always pink – but we do have a blue butterfly in the right-hand corner of the candy kisses box, see. Once you’ve practised enough with roses and mastered the meadow stream, then you can try the butterflies. Is blue perhaps your favourite colour, dear?’

  ‘Not especially. I just thought it might be an idea to add a little variety,’ I said.

  ‘Oh no. No, no, no. Fairy Glen gift boxes never vary,’ Miss Lily said firmly. ‘This is the way we’ve always done them. This is the way we will always produce them. Always,’ she added, in case I hadn’t quite understood.

  I didn’t want to upset her, so I didn’t pursue my idea any further. Every time I finished a box lid, Miss Lily picked it up and took it to the window to examine it in daylight. She peered at it minutely, looking for any tiny variant, clearly not quite trusting me.

  I wasn’t a fool. I was so happy working in the design room I didn’t want to risk being sent back to the fondant room in disgrace. I almost forgot that the rest of the factory existed now. We didn’t eat in the canteen at lunch time. Miss Lily’s girls all brought their own lunches – daintily cut squares of bread with a sliver of cheese or slice of ham. When they saw that I had no lunch with me on my first day there, they all contributed a morsel until I had a generous meal. A woman from the canteen brought in cups of tea and penny buns on a trolley mid-morning, and more tea and a slice of plain cake in the afternoon. Mrs Roberts herself often joined us for our tea breaks and chatted amicably, mostly to Miss Lily, but she took the trouble to say a word or two to all the girls, including me.

  ‘Are you a little happier now, Opal?’ she asked.

  ‘Utterly, blissfully so,’ I said. ‘Can I take it I’ve passed my week’s trial, Mrs Roberts?’

  ‘You can indeed, Opal,’ she said.

  It was so wonderful to be free of the fondant room. I missed Geoff a little because he had been kind to me, but I didn’t miss Patty or the other girls in the slightest. I hardly saw Maggie and Jess now that I ate my lunch in the design room. It started to be a little uncomfortable when I bumped into them before or after work.

  ‘Oh, you’re one of the bottles now, are you?’ said Maggie.

  The rest of the factory called the design women this because of their bottle-green pinafores.

  ‘Like it in design, do you?’ said Jess. ‘Yes, it’s more your kind of place, young Opal.’