Opal Plumstead (14 page)

‘Of course you can’t! St Margaret’s is for the daughters of
gentlemen
.’

‘My father might be a thief, but he is still a gentleman,’ I said.

I heard a scuffle on the stairs and got a glimpse of Olivia hanging over the banisters, looking stricken.

‘Please come down, Olivia – I must talk to you,’ I called desperately. But she scuttled back across the landing into her bedroom.

‘Olivia isn’t allowed to talk to you any more,’ said Mrs Brand. ‘Now go home at once. Shut the door on her, Jane.’

Jane started to close the door, her white face creased with misery. ‘I’m sorry, miss,’ she whispered, and then she slammed the door shut.

ON MONDAY MORNING
I walked to the Fairy Glen factory, so frightened I could barely put one foot in front of the other. As I got near, I became part of a milling throng of jostling girls, burly men walking three or four abreast, and larky boys dashing about, laughing and joking. I felt like a hopeless alien in a foreign country. When I got to the tall factory gates, I stopped in my tracks, grasping the railings, not sure I could go through with it.

Then the factory clock struck eight. There was a last surge of workers, and I got swept along with them, across the yard and in through a dark doorway. They rushed off purposefully in different directions. I stood dithering, not having a clue where to go or what to do. It was far worse than my first day at school. I had to struggle not to dissolve into tears like a five-year-old.

‘Can I help you, missy?’ A plump man in a white coat came out of his office and looked at me kindly.

‘Oh please!’ I said. ‘I’m new and I don’t know where to go.’

‘You’re coming to work here? We don’t take on little girls! How old are you? Ten? Twelve?’

I wasn’t sure whether he was serious. ‘I’m fourteen,’ I said, trying to sound dignified.

‘Oh I say, quite the little lady,’ he said. ‘What’s your name, dear?’

‘Opal Plumstead.’

‘My goodness, that’s a name and a half. Well, Opal Plumstead, we’d better get you kitted out and then I’ll give you a grand tour of the factory. I’m Mr Beeston. I’m the floor manager. Your boss. So mind your “p”s and “q”s when you’re talking to me, and give me a curtsy to show you know your place.’ His eyes were twinkling. I was pretty sure he was teasing me, but I bobbed him a curtsy all the same.

He shook his head at me, chuckling. ‘You’re a caution, Opal Plumstead. Right, first we have to get you a cap and overall. I’ll have to ask you to pin that pretty pigtail out of sight. We’re very hygiene conscious at Fairy Glen.’ He took me to a storeroom and gave me a floppy white cap and a starched white overall and showed me the door of the ladies’ cloakroom.

There was a girl standing at the mirror, brushing her long black hair in a leisurely way, as if she were in her own bedroom. She saw me staring at her and stuck out her tongue.

I didn’t know whether to stick mine out at her, or not. I turned away and struggled into the overall. It was far too big for me, the hem brushing the floor, the cuffs reaching to my fingertips.

The girl burst out laughing. ‘Well, you look a right guy!’ she said, expertly twisting her hair up into a thick knot on top of her head. She crammed her cap on over it and sauntered off.

I struggled hard to force my own limp hair into a knot, but I didn’t have a brush or enough pins so it kept collapsing. I pulled the cap on as low as possible so that it contained all the loose ends. I looked ridiculous with it resting on my eyebrows, but it couldn’t be helped.

‘That’s a good lass,’ said Mr Beeston when I crept out again. He looked me up and down. ‘Bit tight on you, seeing as you’re such a big girl!’

I stared and then gave a timid snigger at his joke.

‘That’s right, girly. Have a little laugh. You don’t want to walk about as if you’ve got the collywobbles. Now come with me and I’ll show you around. It’s a sight for sore eyes, I’m telling you!’

He led me down a corridor and then opened a heavy door. Immediately there was an extraordinary jammy, sugary smell, so strong that it made my head swim.

‘Mmm, yes – delicious, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Follow me, then, little Opal Plumstead.’

We entered the vast hot room. Workers in white overalls were toiling at great copper pans. Mr Beeston took me by the elbow to stand beside a large burly man who was tending a huge copper cradle, rocking it like a baby and stirring the contents with intense concentration.

‘What is he cooking?’ I whispered.

‘Take a peep,’ said Mr Beeston.

I peered in cautiously and saw that he was stirring almonds, gently browning them.

‘Ready now! Sharp with the syrup, young Davey,’ called the burly man.

‘Young’ Davey was a thin, wizened man in his fifties, but his sinewy arms were strong enough to lift a two-handled copper pan full of sugar syrup. He propped the pan on an iron frame by the cradle, taking over the rocking, while the burly man dipped a big ladle into the thick syrup and then flung it over the hot almonds. I watched carefully as a glaze formed around each one.

‘Oh my goodness. So . . . are these sugared almonds?’ I said.

‘Well done, Opal Plumstead. Ten out of ten for you. No, nine out of ten, for they’re not sugared almonds just yet. The first coating has to dry – then what do you think will happen?’

‘He’ll pour another ladleful in?’ I said.

Mr Beeston nodded. ‘The whole process is repeated for an hour or more until each almond has several coats. Next time you bite into one, missy, see how they crackle into little layers, thin as paper. Try counting how many layers each one has. Then you’ll know how many ladlefuls have gone into the whole process. Magical, isn’t it?’

‘Yes it is! Can I take a turn with the ladle?’ I said, wanting to show willing.

‘Not for a long while, lass,’ said the burly man. ‘It’s skilled work. We can’t trust a peck or two of Jordan almonds to a little kid still wet behind the ears.’

Mr Beeston smiled at me. ‘Still, we like’em keen. Here’s another process you’ll want to try your hand at, missy, but you’ll have to get trained up for this one too.’

He steered me down aisles to where another man was boiling up more syrup in a great copper kettle. ‘This is Alfred. Alfred the Great,’ he told me.

‘Is that sugar you’re boiling, Mr Alfred?’ I asked timidly.

‘Sugar and water. We make all sorts of sweets that way, with different shapes and flavours,’ said Alfred.

We watched him pick up a basin of cold water.

‘Aha! You look carefully, missy,’ said Mr Beeston.

The man chilled his hand in the water for a few seconds, and then, astonishingly, thrust it into the boiling syrup, scooped some out, then plunged it back into the cold water. It was caked all over with light yellow flakes of brittle sugar.

‘It’s just like a magic trick!’ I exclaimed.

‘No, no,
this
is the magic part,’ said Mr Beeston as Alfred buttered a large marble slab. He tested the syrup again with his extraordinary hand-and-cold-water trial, and then poured the contents onto the marble. It spread rapidly, but then cooled so quickly that it was easily contained within little iron bars.

I stared at the great golden mass, fascinated. Alfred took a phial, pulled open a lump of the golden glory and sprinkled a few drops here and there, kneading them in quickly to distribute the flavour.

‘What is he making?’ asked Mr Beeston.

I sniffed. ‘Lemon drops!’ I exclaimed. ‘Oh, he’s going to make hundreds of lemon drops.’

‘No, our Alfred isn’t a one-trick pony, dear. We pride ourselves on our variety of sweets at Fairy Glen,’ said Mr Beeston. ‘Let’s see what he tackles next.’

Alfred cut off another lump of sugar dough and sprinkled it with a different phial.

I sniffed again. ‘Peppermint!’

Alfred kneaded the new piece of dough thoroughly, turning it time after time and slapping it about on the slab.

‘It must be quite cool now,’ I said.

‘Only on the surface,’ said Mr Beeston. ‘You try sticking your little finger right inside the sugar dough, Opal Plumstead.’

I did as he suggested and gave a little squeal. It was still boiling hot. I had to suck my finger hard. Mr Beeston and Alfred laughed at me.

Alfred seemed to have hands made of cast iron, because he continued working the dough without flinching. Then he suddenly seized it and flung it over a great hook set in a post. I stared, open-mouthed, as he pulled the sugar into a great shining strand, then threw it over the hook again and again and again, his rhythm as regular as a metronome. As he worked, the yellow syrup turned pure white before my eyes.

‘It
is
magic,’ I said.

I watched Alfred make several skeins of peppermint, then carry them to another corner to lay them in front of a row of gas jets. He went backwards and forwards making more pliable candy, keeping it warm once it was successfully pulled.

He now coloured one of the skeins bright pink.

‘To make raspberry drops?’ I asked.

‘To make pink-and-white kisses,’ said Mr Beeston.

‘Kisses!’ Olivia and I had often bought these lovely little pink-and-white sweets, giggling as we popped each one in our mouths, comparing it to an imaginary kiss.

‘Kisses are pink
and
white,’ I said. ‘How do they get mixed up together?’

‘Look, look!’

Alfred snipped off another lump of white, pulled it together with the pink, then folded them firmly. He fed them into a little machine, placing the pink and white mixture between the rollers, like Mother passing shirts through our mangle. There was a grinding noise as a young lad turned the crank of the machine. The dough came out the other side, a long strip of pink and white marked into small squares.

‘See to it, Freddy,’ said Mr Beeston. The young lad beat it firmly, and it divided into familiar little kisses.

Mr Beeston consulted his pocket watch and speeded up our tour. I watched sugar syrup being mixed with gum and turned into a paste spread out on a marble table. It was punched out into little lozenges with a tin tube. I saw the syrup boiled extra vigorously until it turned brown, and was then sprinkled with slices of coconut to make dark coconut candy, cut into slabs when cold. I saw sugar mixed with great slabs of butter over the flames, the smell so sweet and rich my mouth watered.

‘It’s toffee!’ I said, and watched as my favourite toffee chews were concocted, a toffee layer poured on the slab and left to cool a little, then a layer of flavoured soft sugar dough, and then another layer of toffee. It seemed so strange to me now that when I’d popped one in my mouth I’d never wondered how each toffee chew had been constructed.

‘Where will I work, Mr Beeston?’ I asked, wondering if I could turn the handle of the kiss machine, or cut the slabs into little squares.

‘You’ll be upstairs, missy, with the other young girls,’ he told me. ‘Come with me. And pick up those skirts, I can’t have you taking a tumble.’

I clutched handfuls of my unwieldy overall and made my way up the rickety spiral staircase at the end of the vast hot room. I was clearly showing too much leg because Freddy, the young lad on the factory floor, gave a loud whistle. I blushed scarlet, my shirt sticking to me under the starched overall.

‘Careful now,’ said Mr Beeston as we got to the iron landing. He opened a door and I stepped into a strange new room with a stifling atmosphere. Mr Beeston had said that young girls worked upstairs, but at first glance the room seemed full of grey-haired old grannies. I wiped my steamed-up glasses on the sleeve of my overall and peered again. No, they were girls – girls with pale grey hair and pale grey skin and pale grey overalls.

‘What’s happened to them?’ I whispered in alarm.

‘These are my ghost girls,’ said Mr Beeston. ‘I lock’em up here for months if they give me any cheek and they go grey when they don’t see the sunlight.’

I stared at him.

He nearly split his sides laughing at me. ‘You believed me! Just for a moment you believed me!’ he spluttered.

I hadn’t seriously believed him, but I smiled foolishly to be obliging.

‘It’s starch, Opal Plumstead. Don’t look so worried – it soon washes off,’ said Mr Beeston. ‘Here, Patty, let me demonstrate to our little new girl.’

He gestured to the black-haired girl who had called me a guy. She was stooping over a large shallow box, and rolled her eyes, but came and stood before us, grey hands on hips.

I knew she’d been as pink and white as a candy kiss half an hour ago. Mr Beeston took a white handkerchief from his overall, licked the corner with his big pink tongue, and then wiped it on her cheek. The handkerchief was smudged with grey, while she was left with a pink stripe on her face.

‘Have you had your bit of fun now, Mr Beeston?’ Patty said.

‘Yes indeedy, Miss Pattacake. Back to your work now. Do you see what the girls are doing, Opal? They’re making starch moulds – all different shapes, see.’ He opened a drawer and showed me a selection of sticks with a dozen little plaster balls like halves of marbles fastened to each one. He went over to Patty’s box of starch powder and pressed it down lightly. It left a row of little hollow shapes.