Opal Plumstead Read online

  ‘Oh, Olivia, you waited for me!’ I said, hugging her. ‘But I’ve been ages.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘It felt like twenty-four hours at least. Did the old bat give you extra lines?’

  ‘A hundred more. She hates me.’

  ‘Well, I love you, and you’re my best friend ever, so let’s go to the sweetie shop because I have more funds.’

  We deliberated long and hard in Mr McAllister’s sweet shop, debating the various merits of pear drops and aniseed balls, but I eventually steered Olivia in favour of lime drops, my particular favourite.

  ‘Amy in Little Women got into trouble for sucking limes at school,’ I said. ‘But I think that was the real fruit.’

  ‘I’ve never read that book,’ said Olivia.

  ‘Oh, you must. I’ll lend you my copy.’ I was always lending Olivia my few books, but she didn’t always read them even then.

  ‘What’s your father’s book about?’

  I realized I wasn’t quite sure which novel the publishers had taken. Was it the story about the impoverished student at university? The tome about the daily grind of factory workers? The modern fable about all the animals escaping from London Zoo? I’d read all Father’s manuscripts. I gave Olivia a little précis of each book, trying to make them as dramatic as possible to hold her interest. I impersonated half a dozen stampeding wild animals when I came to the last story, which made Olivia laugh so much she swallowed her lime drop and I had to thump her hard on the back to stop her choking.

  When I got home, there was a wonderful rich smell flooding the kitchen. Mother was making pastry, up to her elbows in flour. She even had a smudge of flour on her pink cheeks.

  ‘I’m making a steak pie. It’s your father’s favourite,’ she said.

  ‘Steak!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘I don’t have to settle with the butcher until next month, and then hopefully Father will have his cheque,’ said Mother.

  She’d clearly bought a lot of items on tick. There was a bottle of port wine and new crystal glasses on the table, a board of cheeses and a big bunch of purple grapes.

  Cassie had spent even more of the money we hadn’t yet got. She came home wearing an amazing green silk dress that set off her red-gold hair to perfection.

  ‘Oh, Cassie, you look a picture!’ said Mother. ‘I’ve never seen you in such a fetching dress. But however much did it cost?’

  ‘It’s all right, Mother, don’t fuss. I got it for a song. I just popped into Fashion Modes in my lunch break, and they were having a special sale of all their slightly shop-soiled dresses. It was half price, I swear,’ said Cassie, swishing up and down the hot kitchen.

  ‘But even so . . .’ Mother said weakly.

  ‘Madame Alouette herself said the dress might have been made specially for me. I’m paying it off weekly, don’t worry, and I’m sure Father will help me out,’ said Cassie, smiling at her reflection in the saucepan.

  Father had been extravagant too. He came home with a positive armful of presents: a big bunch of roses for Mother, a fancy box of Fairy Glen fondants for us all to share and, bizarrely, a little blue budgerigar in a cage.

  We all squealed at the bird. Cassie and I were thrilled, but Mother was clearly not so keen.

  ‘What on earth is that creature doing in my kitchen?’ she said, sounding like her old self again. ‘You know I can’t bear birds, Ernest.’

  ‘I know you don’t like pigeons, dear, or gulls, or starlings or sparrows – but this is a songbird, Lou. I saw it in the market on my way home, and when I heard what they’d taught it to sing, I knew I had to have it. Listen now. Listen!’

  Father cocked his head towards to the cage, as if he fully expected the budgerigar to trill an operatic aria. The bird flapped its wings on its tiny perch, beak closed.

  ‘Never mind, Father, it’s still very pretty,’ I said quickly.

  ‘I’ll teach it to sing,’ said Cassie. ‘Come on, little birdy. The boy I love is up in the gallery . . .

  The bird hopped off its perch and looked around pointedly.

  ‘I think it’s tired and hungry,’ I said. ‘Let’s give it something to eat and drink and let it rest.’

  ‘Let us eat and drink, seeing as I spent the last two hours slaving in the kitchen to make your favourite supper,’ said Mother, still a little irritated.

  I fetched the bird some water in a little dish and Father brought out a packet of birdseed from his pocket. Cassie and I discussed names for the budgerigar. I fancied calling him something poetic, to suggest a creature with wings – Puck, Cobweb, Ariel, Peaseblossom.

  Cassie spluttered derisively. ‘He’s Billy the budgie,’ she said, and somehow that name stuck.

  Billy settled down in his cage while Mother served her great steak pie. We were so distracted by its savoury splendour that we almost forgot the little bird, but while we were all eating fondant creams and grapes for pudding, Billy suddenly threw back his head and sang.

  ‘Happy days!’ he trilled, as clear as anything. ‘Happy days, happy days, happy days.’

  ‘You see!’ said Father, terrifically pleased. ‘You see why I had to buy him, my girls. These are our happy days at last!’

  We hugged Father, all three of us, while Billy chirruped his one little phrase relentlessly all evening, until Mother put the chenille tablecloth over his cage when it was time for us to go to bed.

  THEY WERE TRULY happy days. Father settled himself to work on rewriting his novel about the lacklustre life of a shipping clerk straight after supper and carried on cheerfully halfway through the night. Mother stayed up with him, bringing him tea and lemonade and weak whisky, as if his talent needed constant watering. After several nights of feverish activity they both slept in. Cassie and I were late for work and school, and Father was spectacularly late for the shipping office.

  Mother was agitated, especially when Father told her that evening that he’d been given an official warning.

  ‘They told me if I’m ever as late again they will halve my wages – and a third time means instant dismissal,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Ernest!’

  ‘Don’t look so anxious, Lou! I won’t be needing the wretched position much longer, will I? I very nearly told them to stick their job then and there, but I just about managed to be prudent. But I reckon if the publishers accept one more novel, then I can stop the daily grind altogether and become a free man.’

  ‘Of course, of course, but meanwhile it’s best to be careful,’ said Mother, though she had just treated herself to a fancy Japanese workbasket. It was fitted out with household tape, assorted pins and needles, a tiny pair of scissors with blades in the shape of a bird’s beak, three skeins of darning wool and twenty coloured cottons. Mother didn’t even like sewing, and put off darning our socks and stockings till we had great potato holes, but she couldn’t resist the novelty Japanese basket. She especially liked the scissors, and sat opening and closing them with a little smile on her face, like a child with a new toy.

  Cassie was rather put out. ‘I’m the seamstress of the family, Ma! I’m a professional! Why can’t I have a workbasket like that?’

  ‘You can have my old workbasket, dear,’ said Mother.

  Cassie wrinkled her nose, making it plain what she thought of that idea.

  ‘You shall have a new workbasket too, Cassie,’ said Father magnanimously. He dug into his pockets and brought out two ten-shilling notes. ‘Here you are, girls – one each.’

  ‘But Ernest—’ Mother protested.

  ‘Don’t worry, Lou. I’ll take out a little loan of cash to ease things along until I get my advance from the publishers.’

  ‘But . . . is that wise?’

  ‘Now then, dear, you must leave all money matters to me,’ said Father.

  He had a new authority in the family now. He even seemed to stand taller and walk more briskly, though he was still pale from lack of sleep, with dark circles under his eyes.

  Cassie came home the next day wit