Opal Plumstead (37 page)

It was a relief when Mrs Evans announced that lunch was served. It wasn’t our usual picnic affair. This was a formal luncheon in the dining room: game soup, then some kind of delicate white fish, with a potato dish that was all swirls as if it were cream, and then apple pancakes with cinnamon sugar.

‘I’m so spoiled. I always get apple pancakes as soon as I come home. They’ve been my favourites since I was a little boy,’ said Morgan. ‘What’s your favourite pudding, Opal?’

So far I had been more or less holding my own during the lunch-time conversation. Morgan had asked me about school, and we had had a long and interesting discussion on English literature. He had seemed pleased to find that I had read a lot of the nineteenth-century novelists, though he was amused when I spoke of Elizabeth and Emma and Jane and Maggie and David and Pip as if they were intimate friends I’d known since childhood. He suggested I might care to read some French and Russian novelists too. I expressed enthusiasm, though privately I wasn’t sure that I could tackle them, even in translation. Then we’d spoken of music. I could talk of Bach and Beethoven and Tchaikovsky because Mr Andrews had taught me well. I could offer a coherent opinion when the conversation turned to art, though I decided I had better not refer to the poor slashed Rokeby Venus. Morgan asked if I’d been to the National Gallery and I simply nodded.

‘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. That was all long ago, of course. I was sent away to school when I was seven. It came as a bit of a shock.’

‘I don’t think I could ever bear to send my child away to school – if I were a lady I mean, and rich enough to do so. Though I’m not going to have any children because I’m never getting married,’ I declared. I blushed because it sounded so shrill and ridiculous.

‘I thought all girls wanted to get married and have children,’ said Morgan. ‘Not that I really
know
any girls – just cousins, and sisters of chaps at school. They all seem like identical dolls, very pretty but rather terrifying, with blank china faces and staring glass eyes. But you’re not like a doll at all, Opal. You’re the most real girl I’ve ever met. We can talk properly, and you’ve got stuff to say too. You don’t giggle or try to flirt.’

‘I don’t know how to, even though I’ve watched my sister Cassie at it long enough. She is a world expert.’

‘And what does Cassie do? She doesn’t work in the factory too, does she?’

I hesitated. ‘No. She did have an apprenticeship at a milliner’s. She’s very good at sewing, but I’m not sure she’s continuing.’

‘Why, what is she going to do now?’

I knew Mother would die if I told anyone, but I wanted Morgan to know everything.

‘I think she’s an artist’s model,’ I admitted.

‘Oh I say, how splendid,’ said Morgan.

‘Don’t tell your mother, though. It’s not very respectable. My own mother is horrified. She wants nothing more to do with Cassie, though she was always her favourite.’

‘You weren’t the favourite, then?’

‘No, certainly not with Mother. Father used to be fond of me – he encouraged me with my book learning – but I think he secretly preferred Cassie too, because she’s so pretty and beguiling. I’ve never been anyone’s favourite.’ I blushed again because now I sounded so pathetically self-pitying.

‘Well, you’re my favourite girl,’ said Morgan, taking my hand again.

We meandered up and down the paths. I didn’t learn a single Latin name for any plant, but Morgan pointed out various trees, including a quaintly named handkerchief tree and a monkey-puzzle. He showed me a nuthatch, a tiny wren, and a green woodpecker. The only bird I saw first with my short sight was a black-and-white magpie.

‘Look for a second one,’ said Morgan. ‘Don’t you know that old magpie rhyme –
One for sorrow, two for joy
?’

I peered until my eyes watered but couldn’t spot another magpie. I didn’t care. I felt as if I’d seen a whole flock of magpies because my heart was so full of joy.

We ended up in the little Japanese summerhouse. The wooden seat inside was cold and damp after days of rain, but the elephant was voluminous enough to cushion me, and I’d have sat on a bed of nails so long as I had Morgan beside me.

‘Mother got carried away with this whole Japanese thing,’ he told me. ‘She used to conduct her own version of the tea ceremony, with little jade-green bowls decorated with fish. Blue carp are the Japanese symbol for boys, so I liked them well enough, but I can’t say I ever enjoyed that traditional green tea. It’s definitely an acquired taste. And I was always far too fidgety to kneel in the authentic way.’

‘Your mother’s so full of amazing ideas.’

‘Yes, she is, but she tends to get almost too passionately absorbed – in me, in the garden, in the running of the factory, in the suffrage movement. That worries me particularly. You know she went to prison for demonstrating?’

‘Twice. I think that’s incredible,’ I said.

‘The second time nearly killed her. She went on hunger strike, and so they force-fed her. She still has deep scars inside her mouth from where those monstrous wardresses prised her lips open. She was desperately frail when she was released. She couldn’t eat properly for weeks. You go to these meetings with her, Opal. Don’t let her get carried away. If she goes to prison a third time, it will truly finish her.’

‘I’ll try, but I can’t really tell her what to do.’

‘I don’t know about that. Mother says you’re very opinionated and outspoken.’

‘Oh dear, that makes me sound dreadful.’

‘I think you’re splendid. How old are you, Opal – only fourteen?’

‘Nearly fifteen.’

‘I think you’re amazing for your age. I was absolutely hopeless when I was fourteen. I lounged about and mumbled at people because I didn’t have a clue what to say. Still do, sometimes. But it’s different with you.’

‘It’s different with you too.’

I couldn’t quite believe this was actually happening. It was as if I were imagining Morgan, making him up in my head. It was all so easy, so extraordinary.

We sat in the little Japanese house for the rest of the afternoon, talking the whole time. When Morgan eventually summoned Mitchell to take me home in the car, he said he would come too, to keep me company.