Opal Plumstead (28 page)

‘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.’

They were both perfectly pleasant, but it was clear they no longer thought of me as their little pet. Even Freddy changed his attitude after a while.

At first he acted as if he were heart-broken. He waited for me outside the factory and walked all the way home with me, though he lived in the other direction.

‘I can’t stand it that you’ve become a bottle,’ he said. ‘I don’t ever get to see you now. It’s not the same at all. Why did you have to go and leave me?’

‘Oh, Freddy, stop it. You know I hated it in that awful fondant room. I’m so much happier now. Don’t you want me to be happy?’ I said.

‘But I want to be happy too. I need to see my girl.’

‘Freddy, for pity’s sake, I’m not your girl. We’re friends, that’s all. And we can still be friends, if that’s what you want.’

‘You know that’s not at all what I want,’ said Freddy. ‘Why won’t you walk out with me on a Sunday?’

I struggled to find some response that wouldn’t be too unkind. I couldn’t tell him the simple truth: that I wanted to spend my precious weekends painting and reading. The last thing I wanted to do was walk stiffly around the town with Freddy from Fairy Glen, and I definitely didn’t want to end up canoodling with him in back alleys on Sunday evenings. I’d grown fond of him in a rather exasperated kind of way, but when I imagined his long spidery arms wrapped around me, his big lips on mine, I couldn’t help shuddering. Heaven knows what Cassie got up to with Mr Evandale. I knew with a certainty that I wanted no part in that sort of behaviour.

I kept trying to make Freddy go home, but he insisted on following me right up to my front door. He seemed relieved that I lived in a modest terraced house. He peered eagerly at the peeling paint on the front door, the broken boot scraper, the crumbling plaster on the window frames. Father had never been any good at house maintenance, and Mother and Cassie and I had no time or inclination for such things now.

‘You need a man about the place,’ said Freddy. ‘I could fix things for you, Opal.’

He was notoriously ham-fisted on the factory floor, and frequently tripped over his own boot laces and sent everything flying with his flailing arms.

‘It’s very kind of you to offer, but I couldn’t possibly accept,’ I said quickly. ‘I must go now, Freddy.’

‘Aren’t you going to invite me in? It’s about time I met your folks,’ he persisted.

‘Not tonight, Freddy,’ I said – meaning
not ever
.

But Mother must have heard our voices at the door. She opened it and stared at us. She had a grizzling baby on her hip. When it saw us, it stared comically too, forgetting to whine.

‘Opal?’ Mother said. She peered at Freddy in the dark. ‘Who’s this?’

He stood up straight, practically clicking his boots together like a soldier, and stuck out his hand.

‘How do you do, Mrs Plumstead. It’s an honour to meet Opal’s ma. I’m Freddy Browning, Opal’s sweetheart,’ he declared.

‘No you’re not. Don’t take any notice of him, Mother. He’s just a daft boy from the factory. Go
home
, Freddy.’

‘Opal! Don’t treat the poor lad so dreadfully,’ Mother reprimanded me. ‘Come in and have a cup of tea, lad. Opal’s kept you very quiet.’

‘Because there’s nothing to tell. Please go home, Freddy,’ I wailed, but it was no use.

Mother practically seized Freddy’s wrist and pulled him inside. She insisted on taking him into the parlour and lit a fire for him. We only sat in there on Sundays, spending every other evening huddled in the kitchen.

Mother went bustling away with the baby while Freddy and I sat in the parlour. I tried to feed the fire with rolled-up newspaper. When it still wouldn’t catch properly, I held a whole sheet of paper in front of the fireplace to help the draught.

‘Careful! You’ll set yourself on fire doing that. Here, let me.’ Freddy elbowed me out of the way with his long arms and made a great to-do of feeding the fire himself.

He had less skill than me and made it smoke dreadfully, but at last a log started burning properly.

‘There!’ he said, a satisfied grin on his face.

‘Thank you, Freddy,’ I said, though it was a struggle to sound grateful.

Mother came into the parlour with a tea tray, the baby crawling behind her. Cassie followed. She’d only had five minutes, but I saw she’d brushed out her hair, unrolled the sleeves of her blouse and taken off her work pinafore. She had a good stare at Freddy, her eyes bright. He looked astonished.

‘This is my sister, Cassandra,’ I said. ‘And this is Freddy. He’s just a friend.’

‘Hello, Freddy. How lovely to meet you.’ Cassie was all smiles and dimples, though she could hardly take a shine to poor plain Freddy, especially when he started slurping his tea noisily.

Mother was preoccupied with the baby, trying to stop it from grabbing the few ornaments in the parlour. It took hold of an antimacassar from the chair instead, crumpling it up and crooning to it as if it were a dolly.

‘Is she a little sister?’ Freddy said.

‘She’s a friend’s child,’ Mother said quickly, not wanting to admit to being a babyminder, though Freddy was clearly no higher up the social scale than we were.

‘She’s a bonny little thing.’

‘She’s rather a pest,’ said Cassie, picking up the baby. She wasn’t any keener on the babies than I was, but she couldn’t help playing peekaboo with the child and the antimacassar, knowing it set off her curves and soft arms delightfully.

Freddy chuckled at them both. I glared at them. I didn’t want his attention, but I hated to see him enchanted with Cassie, like every other male in the world. Cassie certainly didn’t want Freddy, but she cooed and giggled with him and asked him endless questions about his job at Fairy Glen. She wasn’t truly interested – she was barely listening – but Freddy explained in immense and tedious detail the whole process of sweet-making.

He accepted a second cup of tea and several slices of bread and jam – we didn’t have any cake to offer him. Mother cut the crusts off the bread and arranged it in red triangles to make it look fancy. Freddy ate it enthusiastically, managing to get a smear of jam across his chin.

‘Freddy!’ I hissed, tapping my own chin.

He felt in vain in his pockets for a handkerchief, and used his sleeve instead. I blushed for him and longed for him to depart. When he finally did, a full hour and a half later, I expected Mother and Cassie to mock terribly.

‘Well well well, Opie! You never said you had a young man,’ said Cassie, bored of the baby now and wedging it into a corner of the sofa. (Its mother was on a late shift and wouldn’t be fetching it until gone nine.)

‘He’s not my young man. As if I’d want someone like him,’ I protested, though I felt mean saying so.

‘I don’t know – he seems a reasonably polite young man, though his manners are a bit rough and ready,’ said Mother.

I stared at her.

‘We’ve come down in the world, Opal. It’s no use having big ideas any more,’ she said. She clearly meant
I
shouldn’t have any big ideas. ‘You can’t necessarily expect to be as lucky as Cassie with her Philip.’

Cassie smiled smugly and I could have slapped her.

‘Perhaps you’d like to invite Philip round to tea, Cassie,’ Mother went on. ‘If you give me enough warning, I could put on a bit of a show. We could always skimp on a few meals to make sure it’s a really slap-up tea. Won’t you consider it, dear?’

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea, Mother,’ said Cassie smoothly. ‘He might start asking awkward questions, and I’m afraid our home is very humble compared with the Alouettes’.’

Mother winced at the word ‘humble’. She stopped trying to persuade Cassie, and took the infant off to change its napkin.

‘You are so crafty, Cassie,’ I said irritably.

‘You’re the crafty one! I tell you everything about my Daniel – well, practically everything – yet you’ve never said a word about your factory sweetheart.’

‘He is not, not,
not
my sweetheart!’

‘He seems very sweet on you.’

‘Nonsense. He couldn’t keep his eyes off
you
while he was here,’ I said.

‘So why does that put you all in a flounce if you don’t care a jot about him?’ said Cassie, silencing me.