Opal Plumstead Read online

‘I love your door-knocker! Can I give it a big rap?’ I asked.

  ‘Feel free,’ said Mrs Roberts.

  I thumped hard. After a little while the door opened and a servant stood there, looking surprised. She was a middle-aged woman, not a little girl like Jane – a stout grey-haired person in a black dress and an old-fashioned crisp white hat and apron. She looked very smart, apart from the strange greyish carpet slippers on her feet. I learned later that she had trouble with her bunions, and Mrs Roberts was happy to let her walk around in comfort.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Evans. You were urgently summoned because I have an eager young guest,’ said Mrs Roberts.

  Mrs Evans shook her head at me, but still managed to look welcoming. ‘In you come, miss,’ she said, opening the door wide.

  ‘Welcome to another Fairy Glen,’ said Mrs Roberts, leading me inside.

  The hallway was extraordinarily light because of a high atrium, with sunlight streaming downwards. There were palms in great brass pots and paintings beautifully displayed on both walls, just like an art gallery: pale maidens drifting in drapery, lounging beside pools or wanly embracing lovers.

  ‘Very Pre-Raphaelite,’ I said, showing off.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Mrs Roberts, amused. ‘In fact, the one over there, the moonlit girl, is a Burne-Jones.’

  ‘Oh my goodness, a real one!’ I said, gazing at it in awe. I knew that Mrs Roberts was wealthy, but hadn’t realized she was rich enough to own proper art.

  I wanted to linger in the hall, poring over every painting, but Mrs Evans took my hat and coat and then ushered me into another lovely light room with a crackling log fire in the peacock-tiled fireplace.

  ‘Let’s get warm,’ said Mrs Roberts, sitting in a velvet chair and holding her hands in front of the fire. ‘Mrs Evans, perhaps you could be an angel and fix us a kind of picnic lunch so we could have it here in comfort rather than in the chilly dining room?’

  ‘Certainly, madam,’ she said. ‘I’ll rustle up a few savouries – and would the young lady fancy cake, or a fruit pie?’

  ‘I think perhaps both,’ said Mrs Roberts.

  I sat down on the chair beside her, but I couldn’t stop my head swivelling round to take in the rest of the room. It was all so light and airy and elegant. It made me realize how cramped and poky our own parlour was. Even the chairs and chaise longue had style, sleek and simple in subtle shades of soft blue and dove grey, compared with our over-stuffed crimson sofas. There was a large black Japanese screen in one corner, with gold cranes flying across it. On one wall I saw Japanese embroidered silks showing strange mountains and streams, with more cranes standing on one leg as if taking part in a dance.

  In pride of place in an alcove lit with a beautiful purple, green and white lamp was an illuminated scroll with three angels at the top.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘I was presented with the scroll when I came out of prison. I’d been on hunger strike and had to endure the horrors of force-feeding.’

  ‘Oh goodness,’ I said.

  I had seen illustrations in the papers of women being held down while terrible tubes were forced down their throats. The depiction of the process had always made me shudder. I’d no idea that Mrs Roberts had been quite so militant and so extremely brave.

  ‘You may go and look at it properly if you like,’ she said.

  I went to examine it, awed. But then I became distracted by a quartet of smaller paintings in gold frames. I couldn’t work out the subject matter, but they were very brightly coloured and intriguing.

  I peered closer and saw that they were the most enchanting fairy paintings. The first was of a fairy wedding, with a diminutive bride and groom, and robin, blue-tit and butterfly guests. The second was a fairy school, with small elfin creatures sitting at toadstool desks. The third was a fairy nursery, with babes hanging in walnut-shell cradles from lavender spikes. The fourth was a fairy race, with little jockeys on saddled grasshoppers.

  ‘They’re wonderful!’ I said, gazing at each one.

  ‘They were my wedding present when I came to live at Fairy Glen,’ said Mrs Roberts. ‘I’ve always thought them a little whimsical, but Morgan adores them. He used to play the most elaborate fairy games when he was little. He fashioned his own fairies out of pipe cleaners and scraps of silk and made fairy houses out of boxes. He took such pains. He lined them with moss and picked fresh flowers for them every day.’

  ‘Morgan?’

  ‘My son.’ Mrs Roberts pointed to a portrait above the fireplace.

  It was of a solemn little boy in a sailor suit, with big brown eyes and a mop of fair curls like the boy in the ‘Bubbles’ advertisement.

  ‘He’s lovely too,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ said Mrs Roberts. ‘I miss him terribly when he’s away. When he finishes university, he will take over the running of the factory.’

  I considered the luxury of being born Morgan Roberts, able to go to Oxford and then run his own factory!

  Then I was diverted by Mrs Evans’ picnic. When Cassie and I had picnics, we ate bread and dripping, then bread and jam, and a slice of seed cake if we were lucky. Mrs Evans brought us truly fairy food: little mushroom tartlets, oyster patties, miniature veal-and-ham pies, a sliced tomato and carrot salad, a purple plum pie with a large jug of cream, and a marmalade sponge cake with crystallized oranges on top. We had home-made sweetened lemonade to drink in glorious glass goblets.

  I ate and drank with immense gusto while Mrs Roberts nibbled and sipped. When I was finished at last, she told me to put my coat on again because she wanted to take me on a tour of her garden before I went home.

  I was rather disappointed. I wanted to stay much longer. In fact, I never ever wanted to leave this amazing house. I’d seen the garden, hadn’t I? – two very formal flowerbeds with ornate ankle-high hedges forming a crisscross design.

  But she led me further down the hallway, through the dining room and out through the French windows into what suddenly seemed like fairyland itself. Mrs Roberts’ back garden was bigger than a whole park, but it wasn’t laid out formally. It meandered up and down as far as the eye could see, with more rhododendron bushes and azaleas and magnolias, and many other trees and shrubs I didn’t recognize. A stream trickled through all the greenery, crossed in several places by little bridges like the ones on willow-pattern plates. When we’d walked the entire length of the garden, I saw a small Japanese summerhouse decorated with orange lanterns.

  ‘Oh, it’s so beautiful!’

  ‘It is, especially in spring and summer.’

  ‘How wonderful to have inherited such a garden.’

  ‘I didn’t. Well, I inherited the land, but it wasn’t a garden at all. There were flowerbeds and a lawn at the back of the house, but this was mostly meadow land when I came here as a young bride. I cultivated it all myself. It’s taken many years to get to this stage.’

  ‘You made it all? You planted all the trees and bushes?’ I said, gazing at slender Mrs Roberts and her smooth white hands.

  ‘I did plant a lot of the bushes, but I had a little troop of gardeners to do the really heavy digging. Three are still with me now. We’ve all matured together, along with the garden. I have to leave its care to them now, because I must run the factory too, but I try to have a stroll in my garden every day, winter as well as summer.’

  ‘You are a truly inspirational lady, Mrs Roberts,’ I said fervently.

  I PROUDLY TOLD Mother all about my splendid day. I thought she’d be incredibly impressed. She always seemed delighted when Cassie was invited to Madame Alouette’s (though of course this was pure invention). But although Mrs Roberts was a far grander lady, Mother seemed determined to be unenthusiastic.

  ‘You met her at a women’s suffrage meeting?’ she said. ‘How could you go to such a thing, associating with all those dreadful women? As if we’re not in enough trouble with your father! If you get arrested too, then we’ll really be in queer street.’

  ‘I’m not goi