Opal Plumstead (12 page)

Cassie came home more than an hour early, breathless from running.

‘I told Madame Alouette I had a sick headache – which is true enough, I’ve felt really seedy all day long. Tell me about Father! Oh please, tell me they let him off or gave him a suspended sentence?
Please
tell me,’ she begged.

We told her the grim truth and she wept. Mother and I wept a little too as we huddled together on the sofa, trying not to look at Father’s empty chair.

Mother hadn’t bought any meat for supper. She did not even have the wherewithal to buy three chops or a neck of lamb. We had a strangely comforting nursery tea instead: hot baked potatoes, then bread and milk mushed up into a porridge. We went to bed early, Mother making us Horlicks malted milk. I was sure I wouldn’t be able to get any rest, but within minutes I was sound asleep. I had dreadfully sad dreams about Father. When I woke in the night, I thought for a moment that the past few days were simply part of my nightmare. Then I realized it was all true and wondered how I should bear it.

Mother was up early the next morning, washed and neatly dressed, though her hands were shaking as she cut us slices of bread for breakfast.

Cassie noticed too. ‘I’ll stay home with you today,’ she said.

‘No,
I’ll
stay home,’ I said quickly.

Mother shook her head. ‘You’ll neither of you stay home. You must go to Madame Alouette’s, Cassie, and you must go to school, Opal.’ She said it so firmly there was no arguing.

I set off in my familiar bunchy tunic, my straw hat jammed uncomfortably on my head. It was a relief to smell the chalk-dust and rubber plimsolls, hear the jangling bell and the chatter of a hundred girls. I was back in my own safe school world. Nobody knew about Father – nobody but Olivia.

She stared at me anxiously, wringing her hands. ‘Oh, Opal!’ she said, so tragically that half a dozen girls looked up curiously.

‘Be
quiet
,’ I hissed.

Olivia blinked, looking desperately hurt.

‘I’m sorry I snapped at you,’ I said, when we were alone together at break time. ‘It’s just, you
mustn’t
talk about it. And you must stop looking so sorry for me.’

‘But I
am
,’ she said. ‘Opal, it
is
true, isn’t it? This isn’t one of your big teases?’

‘I wish it was.’

‘But . . . your pa will get off, won’t he? I mean, this is all a ghastly mistake, isn’t it? He’s really absolutely innocent, like the father in
The Railway Children
 . . . That was such a ripping story – it always makes me cry at the end.’

‘This isn’t a story,’ I said. ‘I wish it was.’ My voice wobbled.

‘Oh, Opal, you poor, poor thing!’ Olivia threw her arms round me and hugged me tight.

I put my head on her plump shoulder and cried all over her blouse sleeve.

‘There now,’ said Olivia, rocking me like a baby. ‘Well, don’t you worry, Opal. I’m still going to be your friend for ever and ever, no matter what.’

‘You’re the best friend in all the world,’ I said.

‘Here – these are for you. I bought them yesterday.’ Olivia fumbled down the front of her tunic and brought out a very crumpled bag of toffee chews. There was less than an ounce in the bag, and they were all bitten in half.

‘I checked – these are all banana flavour. I saved them for you,’ she said.

‘Oh, you are kind,’ I said. ‘But we must share them out equally.’

We saved one each for lesson time, because it made the toffee even more enjoyable when it was sucked illicitly, though we had to try very hard not to move our mouths to avoid detection. We had a little competition to see which of us could make her toffee last the longest during mathematics. We opened our mouths at each other whenever Miss Marcus turned to chalk another sum on the board. I won, managing to keep a tiny sliver of toffee on the end of my tongue throughout the entire lesson.

‘I don’t want to eat lunch because it will take away the flavour,’ I said as we queued in the canteen.

‘We’ll buy more after school,’ said Olivia comfortingly.

Her pocket money seemed to last for ever. It seemed likely that she had more money to spend on sweets than Mother did for all our meals. I wondered if I could ask Olivia to spare me a shilling or two on a weekly basis. I knew she’d be generous enough to give it to me, but thinking about it made me blush with shame.

I forced myself to eat double helpings of the dubious steak pie. We always called it ‘rat pie’, and wouldn’t have been surprised to discover a little claw or piece of tail peeping out of the soggy pastry. I ate my watery cabbage and lumpy mash too. I even chewed my way through the jam coconut tart for pudding. This dish was always called ‘blood and dandruff pie’, which didn’t help the digestion. I felt sick by the time I’d finished, but at least I was full, if all we had to eat for supper was bread and milk. I could even nobly offer my portion to Mother.

After lunch we had the terrible hawk-nosed Mounty for a double housecraft lesson. I hoped to be able to snaffle a handful of raisins or a spoon or two of sugar, but Mounty decided to devote the two lessons to a long and dreary lecture on household matters. She gave us timetables for running a decent household, with set hours for every task – mostly ridiculous matters such as sorting through sheets in the linen cupboard and checking for dust swept under the carpet.

‘Old Mounty takes it for granted that we’ll all have servant girls like your Jane to wash the sheets and do the sweeping,’ I whispered to Olivia.

I wasn’t quite whispery enough. Mounty did one of her hawk pounces, flying through the desks and alighting right in front of me.

‘I beg your pardon, Miss Plumstead?’ she said, affecting deafness, even cupping her hand behind her ear in a pantomime gesture. ‘I couldn’t quite catch your contribution to my lecture. Please repeat it and enlighten all of us.’

‘I – I was simply remarking that you are assuming we’ll all have servants, Miss Mountbank,’ I said.

‘Indeed,’ she replied. ‘St Margaret’s just happens to be a school for the daughters of gentlemen. It is the general assumption that most of our pupils will go on to
marry
gentlemen and achieve a respectable standard of living. Of course, we cannot guarantee this, especially in the case of scholarship girls.’ She sprayed my face with saliva as she spat out the word ‘scholarship’.

There was a little gasp. It was clear that she was deliberately insulting me. I thought for a moment of her triumph if she should happen to find out about poor dear Father.
Oh please God
, I prayed,
don’t let it be in the papers
.

‘Ah, that’s obviously struck home,’ said Mounty. ‘But take heart. If you buckle down and learn how to behave like a young lady, then maybe you too will became a proper lady one day, with your own staff.’

I wasn’t going to let her patronize me like that.

‘I very much doubt it, Miss Mountbank,’ I said. ‘But even if I happen to marry an extremely rich gentleman, I shall keep a liberal house, with no servants whatsoever.’

‘So you will do all the heavy work yourself, in your modern establishment?’ said Miss Mountbank.

‘I think we’ll probably
share
any menial work,’ I said boldly. ‘And we will both pursue our careers and not mind terribly about clean sheets and dust.’

‘How very Bohemian,’ said Miss Mountbank, sneering. ‘Well, if you’re deliberating choosing a future life of makeshift grime, my lecture is probably wasted on you, but I’ll thank you to keep quiet so that the
other
young ladies can benefit from my words of wisdom. And if you comment or contradict further, I will give you two hundred lines in detention.’

I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the lesson. It was a huge relief when it was over at last. One more lesson to go – music with Mr Andrews. He was as calm and quiet and dignified as ever, talking to us seriously as if we were equals, never using the heavily sarcastic tone of all the other teachers.

Then he started playing us a Bach violin concerto. It was simply beautiful, and I slumped at my desk, chin on my chest, giving myself over to the music. But then the music became so searingly sweet I could hardly bear it. I was filled with such profound sadness that I couldn’t stop myself sobbing. I tried desperately hard to control myself. I pressed my lips together and clenched every muscle in my face, hiding behind my hands, but I still couldn’t stop my shoulders shaking. I started making terrible snorting sounds. I heard giggling behind me. I knew everyone was staring at me. I felt myself flushing purple with shame.

The music ended just as the bell went for the end of school.

‘Class dismiss,’ said Mr Andrews. I felt his cool hand on my shoulder. ‘Stay where you are, Opal,’ he murmured.

I kept my face covered while everyone else clattered out. Then there was a little silence. I felt a large cotton handkerchief being pressed into my hands.

‘There now,’ he said as I mopped myself as best I could.

‘I’m sorry. I feel such a fool,’ I mumbled.

‘No, you should feel proud to be so sensitive.
I
feel proud that the music has such a wonderful effect on you. My goodness, Bach himself would feel proud. You’re what every music teacher longs for – someone who can listen properly and be stirred to her very soul,’ said Mr Andrews.

I started blushing all over again. I felt such a fraud. I wasn’t really crying because of the music. I was crying because my poor father was in prison and I felt so sorry for him. I felt even sorrier for myself, because I didn’t know what on earth was going to happen next.

MOTHER WAS OUT
when I got home. The house seemed horribly still and silent. For once I couldn’t settle to my homework. I didn’t even want to paint. I just wandered miserably through each room. I couldn’t stop myself going into my parents’ bedroom, opening up Father’s wardrobe, and breathing in the smell of his clothes. I even slipped his old dressing gown round my shoulders, pretending he was standing there in person, hugging me.

I wondered how on earth he was managing in prison without any nightclothes, any washing things, any of his own possessions. As the years went by, Father had been unable to avoid looking a little shabby, his suits very tired, his collars beastly paper, but he always kept his down-at-heel shoes brightly polished. He was very particular about his person, shaving with a cut-throat razor every morning, putting pomade on his hair, clipping his nails. Did prisoners really wear those awful coarse suits with the arrow design? Surely all those men were awful and coarse themselves, not quietly spoken, scholarly gentlemen like Father? Would they mock him and make his life even more miserable?

When Cassie came home from Madame Alouette’s, she found me weeping, sitting right inside Father’s wardrobe, perched uncomfortably upon his shoes.

‘Opal! Oh, come out, you fool! I didn’t know where you were. And where’s
Mother
?’

‘I don’t know. There was no sign of her when I got in,’ I said, snivelling, having to wipe my face on Father’s dressing-gown sleeve.

‘But she’s always here when we come home. Do you think she’s gone to visit Father in . . . you know.’ I’d heard Cassie mutter all sorts of naughty words but she couldn’t seem to cope with saying the word ‘prison’.

‘Whitechurch is too far away and she hasn’t enough money for the journey,’ I said.

‘Then where on earth is she?’

‘I don’t know. She’s probably just gone for a walk to clear her head,’ I said, though this seemed extremely unlikely.

We went downstairs together and made a pot of tea. There were still a few potatoes left, so we scrubbed these and put them in the oven to bake.

‘I’m starving
now
,’ said Cassie mournfully, peering into the larder. The only thing she could find was half a slab of Madeira cake, so stale it was like a solid brick, but we broke off little chunks and nibbled them cautiously.

‘It tastes all right if you suck at it a little,’ said Cassie. ‘Here, let’s go halves.’

‘You can have it. I had a big school dinner,’ I said.

‘I never thought I’d say this, but I actually miss those vile school dinners. Madame Alouette brings all us girls what she calls our “déjeuner”, but it’s just little fancy rolls that you gobble up in one mouthful. The others don’t mind because they’re all set on reducing their figures, the silly things,’ said Cassie, giving her own ample curves an approving glance.

‘You’d better watch out, though, or you won’t be able to squeeze yourself into any of your fancy frocks,’ I said.

‘Don’t! It was so
awful
taking the heliotrope gown back. I had to pretend that Pa had put his foot down – and then I felt so mean, because he’s never stopped me doing anything.’ Cassie started chewing on her thumb, something I hadn’t seen her do for years. ‘Opal, do you think he’ll be all right?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said helplessly.

‘Still, it’s his own wretched fault,’ Cassie said.

‘It isn’t! Well, he shouldn’t have taken the money from the office, obviously, but it was just to please us and make us all happy,’ I said.

Cassie looked at me. ‘You’re meant to have such a sharp mind, Opal, but your moral sense is very blurry. I love Pa just as much as you, but at least I’ll admit that he’s done a very bad thing. A
stupid
thing, because now look at us all. How can any of us ever be happy again?’