Opal Plumstead Read online

  ‘I was meaning to go there these hols, but Mother’s sister suffragettes have made that impossible,’ said Morgan, squeezing Mrs Roberts’ hand. ‘I do hope you don’t decide to copy Slasher Mary, Mother. I shall have to examine your handbag every time you go out to make sure you’re not hiding any little axes.’

  I was astonished that he should talk about the suffragette cause so lightly. I wondered if Mrs Roberts would object, but she simply laughed at him. It was clear that Morgan could say or do anything and she’d still be charmed.

  So the soup and the fish were consumed quite easily, but my apple pancake stuck in my throat when he asked his simple question about puddings. We didn’t have puddings at home, apart from a plum pudding on Christmas Day. If we were still hungry and desperate for something sweet, we’d fill up on bread and jam, but that was hardly a pudding. I’d had puddings at school, but they were the institutional kind and bleak in the extreme, mostly sloppy milk concoctions of rice or semolina or tapioca, all disgusting.

  ‘I don’t think I’m particularly a pudding girl,’ I said at last, ‘though these apple pancakes are superb.’

  Morgan expressed surprise and started talking about his favourite puddings, both at home and at school. I felt as if someone had gently loosened my corset. I had felt constrained discussing music and literature and art because Morgan knew so much more than me and had such intellectual, cultured views. But now that he was chattering away about treacle sponge and bread-and-butter pudding, he sounded as silly as any other boy. He even looked younger, a crumb or two of sugar gleaming on his lip before he remembered to check, wiping it quickly away with his napkin.

  Mrs Roberts and I had fallen into a routine of a quick stroll around her beautiful garden before she called her chauffeur to drive me home mid-afternoon. But today she said gently, ‘I think I am a little too tired for a garden walk today, Opal. You won’t be too disappointed if I have a rest? I’ll call Mitchell to drive you home.’

  ‘That’s right, Mother, you have a little snooze. I’ll take Opal round the garden,’ said Morgan.

  Mrs Roberts flushed. I could see that this wasn’t what she wanted at all. She had clearly planned to get rid of me in as polite a way as possible so that she could have Morgan all to herself.

  ‘I think I’d better go home now,’ I said quickly.

  ‘Oh, please don’t!’ said Morgan. ‘I shall enjoy telling you all the proper Latin names of the plants. It will give me a chance to show off like anything and feel splendid. Do say you’ll stay.’ He turned to Mrs Roberts. ‘You don’t mind, Mother, do you?’

  ‘Of course I don’t mind, darling. I think it’s a very jolly idea. Perhaps I shall forgo my nap so that I can be impressed by your botanical knowledge too.’

  ‘Oh no, you’ll quibble and correct my pronunciation. You know you’re more knowledgeable than me.’ He kissed her on the cheek. ‘You have your rest, Mother.’

  She gave in gracefully and gathered up her bag. ‘You’ll see Mitchell for me, won’t you, Morgan, so he can take Opal home? Goodbye, dears.’

  She drifted off in a soft cloud of lilac scent. I felt a little uncomfortable and wondered if Morgan had deliberately out-manoeuvred her.

  ‘Come, let’s go into the garden,’ he said. He reached out and took my hand. He kept hold of it as we went out through the French windows and onto the path. He behaved as if it were the most casual and ordinary of gestures. Did upper-class men hold hands with girls when they barely knew them? Or did he think of me as a little girl and himself as a kind uncle figure? I tried to relax, but it was impossible. I held my arm incredibly stiffly, while the hand at the end of it seemed to have tripled in nerve endings. They all tingled against Morgan’s cool palm. It was a relief when he dropped my hand to pluck a strand of ivy from a flowerbed – yet I immediately wanted him to take hold of it again.

  ‘You can’t always pluck ivy right out. We should dig up the roots. When my parents first came here, the garden was a dense jungle of ivy, like the garden surrounding the Sleeping Beauty. Do you know that fairy story?’

  ‘I love all the Fairy Books, especially the Blue,’ I said.

  ‘My mother’s created a beautiful garden, but it’s hard to maintain. The ivy’s always there, trying to creep back. The garden really comes into its own in May, when all the rhododendrons and azaleas are in full bloom. Wait till you see all the pinks and reds and purples.’

  ‘It’s beautiful now. I love all the soft spring colours,’ I said, looking at the pale drooping hellebores, the pink and white tulips, the little yellow crocuses and tiny blue scillas dotted everywhere. ‘Come on, then, tell me their Latin names.’

  ‘I don’t want to bore you. I’d certainly bore myself.’ He breathed in deeply. ‘Doesn’t it smell marvellously fresh out here! Sometimes at school, stuck in that muggy atmosphere of chalk and lunch-time stew and stale boy, I close my eyes and try to remember exactly how this garden smells. Or I listen hard, blocking out the drone of masters and the crude whispers of all the chaps, and hear blackbirds and thrushes and the soft rustle of leaves.’

  ‘You don’t like school?’

  ‘No, I hate it. The lessons are interesting sometimes, but I don’t like being cooped up with all the others. You never get any time when you can be on your own, and yet it somehow feels lonely too, even though you’re rushing around in great groups all the time and sleep surrounded by other chaps snoring. Did you like school?’

  ‘Some of it. I liked learning, but I detested all the silly rules. I felt lonely too. I had a friend, a very good friend in many ways, but I couldn’t really talk to her – not about things that are really important.’

  ‘Do you still see her now?’

  ‘She’s not allowed to see me,’ I said. ‘I suppose your mother’s told you of my circumstances?’

  ‘Yes, she has,’ said Morgan, a little uncomfortably. ‘I think you’re jolly brave. I believe you were unhappy when you first came to work at Fairy Glen?’

  ‘I was in the fondant room at first. It was so boring doing the same thing all the time and I couldn’t get on with the other girls.’

  ‘Those girls! Mother insists I come to the factory every now and then, as I suppose I’ll be in charge some time in the future. They’re so bold. They call all kinds of things after me. It’s kindly meant, but I always go bright scarlet and then Mother laughs at me, which makes it worse. But you’re happier now you’re the chief designer?’

  ‘I’m not really. I just do my fairies. They’re not great art or anything – they’re very whimsical.’

  ‘Mother’s shown me. I think they’re brilliant, and so does she. She’s shrewd enough to realize you’re a tremendous asset to Fairy Glen – I can quite see why she’s taken you under her wing.’

  ‘She’s been wonderful to me,’ I said. ‘I admire her tremendously.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Morgan. ‘She’s always been the most terrific mother. I suppose she’s spoiled me rotten. She didn’t just read me The Jungle Book, or the King Arthur stories, or Treasure Island – she’d play the games with me too. She’d fashion me wonderful outfits. I was Mowgli in bathing drawers, or a medieval knight in knitted chain mail and a wooden sword, or a pirate with a kerchief round my head and a toy parrot on my shoulder.’

  I was silent, trying to imagine my mother indulging me similarly.

  ‘Then we’d make up our own imaginary games. They were the best. We played endlessly in the garden. It was our own fairyland, and we had to make our way from the house to the very end hedge without being spotted by the fire-breathing dragon who hid in the densest rhododendron bush, or the giant six-headed water snake who might rear up out of the stream and strike at us with six forked tongues.’

  ‘Goodness, didn’t this give you nightmares when you were little?’

  ‘Yes, you’re absolutely right. I never woke up my nanny, who slept in the room next to me. I always pattered downstairs and along the corridor to find Mother. Whenever I curled up with her I felt safe. Th