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
h a beautiful Japanese lacquer haberdashery box. It had an intricate pattern of birds and flowers on the shiny black top, and a special fitted lift-out tray with little cotton-reels tucked neatly into place.

  I liked sewing even less than Mother, but I felt ferociously envious of that glorious box, and it didn’t help when Cassie produced a casket of otto violet soaps that she’d bought with the change. The soap for general use in our house was harsh red carbolic. The ugly smell lingered for hours after every wash.

  ‘My personal soap,’ said Cassie, sniffing her delicate pale purple tablets. She kept them in her dressing-table drawer, taking them backwards and forwards to the sink, because she didn’t trust anyone else not to use them.

  I longed for my own japanned box and fragrant soap, but I held true to my own vision. I waited until Saturday and dressed in my Sunday best frock, deep green with black buttons all the way down to the hem. It made me look very sallow and the long skirt was too tight for me to stride out comfortably, but I hoped it added a year or two to my age.

  I told Mother I was going to spend the day at Olivia’s house. I didn’t go anywhere near my friend. I needed to make this expedition by myself. I’d decided to go all the way to London.

  The journey was easy enough. I knew Father’s route to work, and in the past we’d made several family trips to the West End to see the Christmas decorations. I took the local bus to Putney, changed to a number 14, and caught a number 81 at Piccadilly Circus, travelling at the front of the top deck with the wind blowing my hair. Little boys breathed down my neck, wanting to bag the front seat for themselves so that they could pretend to drive the bus, but I wouldn’t budge. I stared round-eyed at all the sights, envying Father for taking this magical trip to London every day, though I knew he hated commuting. I had no clear idea of direction, and several times panicked a little, wondering if the bus was going the right way, but in Holborn I spotted the great Gamages department store at last, and shot down the steps.

  I wandered aimlessly around the store for half an hour, seduced by all the wonderful things on display. The toy department was especially beguiling. I was too old for toys, of course, and I didn’t particularly care for the French and German china dolls with their disconcerting haughty expressions, but I loved the soft toys, particularly the expensive stuffed animals – the monkey, the cat, the Welsh terrier and the wonderful jointed white polar bear. I couldn’t help handling them each in turn. I set the monkey capering, I made the cat mew and the dog bark, and I took the polar bear for an amble along the glacier of the glass counter.

  I loved the miniature worlds too – the grocer’s shop with its jars and packets and tiny scales, and the farmyards with their finger-sized sheep and cows and goats. Most of all I loved the big Noah’s Ark. I took off its red roof and saw all the animals stabled two by two in compartments, the fierce creatures with sharp teeth prudently separated from the small and the fluffy. I had always ached for a Noah’s Ark as a child: I imagined carrying it to the park on a rainy day and setting it to sail on the duck pond. I looked at the price tag, but, alas, it was twenty-three shillings and sixpence, much more than I could afford. I mustn’t get diverted anyway. I was here to buy a paintbox.

  I went to look at the painting sets in the toy department, but they only had little tins of eight colours, the same as my one at home.

  ‘Don’t you have any bigger tins?’ I asked the young male shop assistant.

  ‘Of course, madam,’ he said.

  This nearly started me giggling like a fool, because it was the first time anyone had ever addressed me as ‘madam’. I struggled to compose myself as he gave me instructions on how to get to the art department.

  Oh, that art department! It was total heaven. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d spotted great celestial beings with wings gliding about the easels and sketching pads and the huge boxes of paints.

  I was tempted to try oil paints like a real artist, but I knew Mother would never stand the smell in our small house. I looked at water colours – glorious boxes of Landseer and Winsor & Newton. I fingered the japanned tins, but then I was distracted by gleaming mahogany boxes with brass clasps. They had thirty-six pans of paint, with fine brushes and a water glass and a fat tube of Chinese white. There was a nine-shilling box, the exact sum I had in my pocket bar the sixpence I needed in bus fares to get home. It seemed like an omen. I had to have that paintbox.

  Another assistant wrapped it carefully for me. ‘It’s quite heavy, madam. If you’ve other purchases to make today, you could always use our delivery service.’

  ‘No thank you. I shall carry it easily,’ I said.

  I didn’t want to be parted from my glorious paintbox for a second. I’d paid for it and it was truly mine.

  I’d planned to do a little sightseeing while I was in London, but my skirt seemed to have got even tighter, hobbling my knees, and my best boots were a little small for me now so that my toes were crammed painfully against the leather. I was hungry and thirsty, but I didn’t have enough money left for a cup of tea and a currant bun in an ABC. I needed to go to the lavatory too, but didn’t even have a spare penny.

  If I’m honest, I was also a little scared of wandering too far. I didn’t have a map and I’d been to London only half a dozen times in my life. I was pretty certain I’d get lost if I set off on foot for Liberty’s Eastern Bazaar or the National Gallery or the Zoological Gardens. So I caught the three buses back home, clutching my precious parcel to my chest, and arrived just after lunch time.

  ‘I thought you were staying at Olivia’s for the day?’ said Mother. ‘I hope you’ve had lunch, because there’s hardly any cold meat left. I gave your father an extra slice because he’s been working so hard, bless him. And what’s that great big parcel you’re lugging around? Have you gone and bought yourself a sewing box too?’

  ‘It’s a paintbox,’ I said.

  ‘A paintbox? But you’ve got a perfectly good paintbox already,’ said Mother. ‘What a waste of your father’s money!’

  ‘It’s not at all a waste if it’s what Opal wants,’ said Father, sliding his slice of corned beef onto an extra plate and adding some beetroot and a tomato. ‘Here, Opal, have a bite of this. Is it a good paintbox, dear?’

  ‘It’s the best,’ I said. ‘The very, very best. Oh, Father, thank you so much.’

  ‘You’re more than welcome. You enjoy your paintbox.’

  I painted my first picture for Father in gratitude. I painted him on a splendid throne, dressing him in a crimson smoking jacket, Prussian blue trousers and viridian Turkish slippers. He had a pen in his hand and was writing in a magnificent manuscript book. Mother stood looking up at him on his high throne. Her hands were clasped in admiration, her eyes rolled upwards in ecstasy. I’d made her look a little ridiculous, so I clothed her in her coveted blue silk in compensation. I drew Cassie and me kneeling at each side, looking suitably awed. I painted flowers in Cassie’s long hair and had her stitching busily at a preposterous hat on her lap. I painted my own new paintbox by my side, and myself painting on a sketching pad – a tiny version of the portrait of Father, with a pin-sized me painting a minute picture. I drew Billy the budgie flying over Father’s head, like a cobalt-blue representation of the Holy Ghost. I put the title of the painting right at the top in scarlet lettering: Happy Days.

  Cassie came banging in and peered at my painting. ‘You’re so weird, Opal,’ she said. ‘And you’ve got the hat all wrong. Ladies don’t care for huge great hats all over flowers and fruit and feathers. Small is chic now, you silly girl.’

  But when I shyly tapped at Father’s bedroom door to show him my painting, he was delighted.

  ‘Darling girl, it’s a witty little masterpiece. You’ve got all the likenesses just so, and it’s such a clever idea. You’ve got the most singular talent, Opal. I’m so proud of you.’

  I felt as if I were growing blue feathers on my back like Billy’s, ready to fly me up to the ceiling. When the painting was completely dry, Father t
ook down one of Mother’s insipid kitten lithographs, prised it out of its frame, and inserted my Happy Days painting under the glass.

  He went to hang it above the mantelpiece in the living room.

  ‘Are you sure, Ernest?’ Mother asked.

  ‘Of course! Our Opal’s painted a little masterpiece,’ he said.

  ‘She has painted it very well, but I’m not at all sure about the composition. It looks a little like a copy of a holy picture,’ Mother said, lowering her voice.

  ‘Exactly!’ said Father. ‘That’s the whole point.’

  ‘But won’t visitors think it blasphemous?’

  ‘I should hope they’d appreciate its inventive homage.’ Father carefully hooked the string at the back of the frame over the nail in the wall. ‘There, in pride of place!’ he said.

  Mother still looked extremely doubtful, but she didn’t like to argue with Father nowadays. It wasn’t worth fussing about visitors’ opinions because we very rarely had any visitors. Both Mother and Father had always kept themselves to themselves. Cassie had a whole gaggle of girlfriends, but she generally went to their houses or met them in the town after Sunday lunch. I just had my one friend, Olivia, and she liked my paintings.

  Father went back to his work. He said he had finished the corrections and adaptations already, but he was copying out a new neat version to make it easier for the publishers to read. This took him many days. His wrists swelled painfully and his fingers were rubbed raw with the pressure of his pen, but he persisted industriously, and at long last finished it. He called us all to watch him write The End with a flourish. Then we all cheered and hugged him.

  Mother took the precious manuscript to the post office in the morning and sent it off. ‘I actually kissed the parcel for luck!’ she said.

  Then we started waiting. Waiting and waiting and waiting. We hoped Father might hear in a couple of days, a week at the very most. How long could it take to read a manuscript, after all? Another week went by, and then another.

  ‘Oh Lord, do you think Pa’s rewritten manuscript got lost in the post?’ said Cassie.