Opal Plumstead

by Jacqueline Wilson

  We ate bread and cheese for lunch, Mother all the time wondering what Cassie would be eating.

  ‘I should imagine it’ll be French cuisine at Madame Alouette’s,’ she said excitedly.

  ‘Mother, she’s not really French – she just pretends to make her shop seem more impressive.’

  ‘I’m sure she has French relations. Doesn’t Philip usually live in Paris? I’m sure Cassie’s invitation is his doing. She’s always been Madame Alouette’s pet, I know that, but she’s never asked her for the day before. Oh, Opal, I wonder how she’s getting on.’

  I was wondering too – and worrying. After lunch Mother went for a nap and I went to my room. I got out my precious paintbox, stroking its beautiful wood, admiring all its pristine paint pans, gently tickling my cheeks with the brushes. Then I started sketching. I drew Cassie posing in her green dress, her hair tumbled past her shoulders, her dress unbuttoned, showing her impressive bosom. I caught her expression, her stance. When I started colouring her, she became almost too real. It was as if I were actually spying on her.

  I drew Mr Evandale. I knew he had warm brown eyes and longish hair and bohemian clothes, though obviously I couldn’t attempt a true likeness as I’d never seen him. I drew him smiling as he painted Cassie’s portrait, his teeth large and prominent. I gave him a very long nose like a snout. I didn’t just give him long hair, I made him hairy all over so that the skin emerging from his white silk shirt was like a fur pelt.

  I expected Cassie to come back at supper time, but she didn’t. She stayed out half the evening, until I was in agony.

  ‘She said she’d be back for supper,’ I wailed, unable to eat my own fish pie for fretting.

  ‘Don’t take on so, Opal. Madame Alouette’s obviously invited her to dine with them. It’s a real compliment. They must be very taken with her,’ said Mother, unperturbed.

  I couldn’t explain why I was so worried. I kept having terrible visions of a wolf-like Evandale attacking Cassie. I didn’t even know exactly where he lived, so I couldn’t go in search of her. I was reduced to pacing the parlour, watching the clock tick on and on relentlessly.

  At ten, when Cassie still wasn’t home, Mother started to get a little anxious herself.

  ‘Of course, they may have invited her to stay the night,’ she said doubtfully. ‘But she hasn’t any night things with her – and she’d surely send word to us?’

  ‘Oh, Mother, I do hope she’s all right,’ I said.

  ‘Of course she is, silly girl,’ said Mother, but she’d started to watch the clock too.

  When we heard the sound of the key in the door at ten to eleven, we both ran into the hall. There was Cassie, rosy cheeked in the gaslight, beautiful in her green dress.

  ‘Cassie darling! At last! Did you have a good time?’ Mother asked eagerly.

  ‘Oh yes, I had a splendid time,’ said Cassie, picking up her skirts and twirling up and down the black and white tiles.

  ‘I can see that! I assume Philip was there. I doubt whether Madame Alouette herself could put such a sparkle in your eyes,’ said Mother.

  ‘Philip?’

  ‘Don’t try to bluff, dear. You can’t fool your mother.’

  ‘Oh, Philip!’ said Cassie. ‘Yes, of course, he was there.’

  ‘I’ll make us some cocoa and you must tell us all about it,’ said Mother.

  She hurried into the kitchen while Cassie unpinned her hat and hung her little cape on the hatstand.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I whispered urgently.

  ‘Oh yes!’ breathed Cassie. ‘Wait till we’re in bed. I have so much to tell you!’

  ‘You haven’t been good, have you?’ I said.

  ‘Shush! No, I’ve been a little bit bad – and it’s been marvellous,’ Cassie said, giggling.

  Mother called us into the kitchen. ‘Don’t start telling Opal. I want to hear too,’ she said.

  Cassie sat at the table sipping cocoa, and told Mother a long elaborate tale of a day with Madame Alouette. She said the house was very elegant – French style, of course, with striped wallpaper and a lot of gilt and china cherubs. The garden was large, with a beautifully manicured lawn where they all played croquet after luncheon. Cassie said yes, Philip was there, with a sister and several of his old school chums. It had all been delightfully jolly. Cassie said she’d tried to go home at five but they wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Philip positively insisted I stay for supper. I didn’t want to worry you, Mother, but it would have seemed so rude to refuse,’ she said.

  ‘I wasn’t worried at all, dearie. I knew you’d be having a good time.’

  ‘Madame Alouette made me feel so welcome. She’s always kind to me at the shop, but she’s a different person when she’s at home. She was treating me almost like a daughter. She even hinted that one day she saw me taking over. Think of it – Madame Cassandra!’

  I stared at Cassie, astonished. She was so incredibly convincing that I started to wonder if it were really true. Perhaps she’d run away from Mr Evandale and sought refuge at Madame Alouette’s. And the nephew really had been there and taken an interest in her, because now she was telling us all about his schooldays and his boxing tournaments and studying in Paris, and his determination to take Cassie there one day to show her all the sights.

  Mother kept giving little oohs and ahhs, drinking in every word as if it were champagne. At last she grew tired, yawning and rubbing her feet, which were troubling her after our long tramp around the town.

  ‘Come on, Mother, let us put you to bed,’ said Cassie.

  ‘I shall never sleep, darling. I’m so excited! All my dreams have come true. I knew you’d meet a wonderful young man one day, but I never thought it would be Madame Alouette’s nephew. It couldn’t be more perfect.’

  ‘Now don’t go making plans, Mother. It’s early days yet,’ said Cassie. ‘Perhaps Philip has his eye on any number of Madame’s protégées.’

  ‘I know none of them could hold a candle to my girl,’ said Mother, kissing Cassie’s flushed cheek.

  We all went up to bed, and for all her protestations Mother was snoring hard five minutes after we’d tucked her up.

  ‘Right, Cassie,’ I whispered, pulling her into my cupboard. ‘Tell all.’

  ‘Oh Lordy, I don’t know where to start. And I’m tired out, spouting all that rubbish for Mother’s sake. Did it sound too ridiculous?’

  ‘It sounded amazing. I was starting to believe you.’

  ‘It is amazing if you could only see the nephew. I very much doubt he’s interested in girls at all, and he certainly looked down his nose at me,’ said Cassie. ‘Luckily Daniel is totally enchanted.’

  ‘Daniel?’

  ‘Daniel Evandale. Do you know what he said? He said I was a young English rose just coming into bloom.’ Cassie giggled affectedly. ‘He said I even smelled like a rose, and my skin was as soft and velvety as a rose petal.’

  ‘You’re making it up. You’ve read too many silly romantic novels.’

  ‘No, this time I swear I’m speaking God’s honest truth. If you think that’s romantic, you should hear some of the other things he said. He loves my hair and said I was like that girl in the fairy tale who let down her hair. What’s she called again?’

  ‘Rapunzel. Cassie, you took down your hair?’

  ‘It was for the portrait. Daniel said I looked far too stiff and formal with my hair up. He didn’t want to paint me like some stuffy society lady.’

  ‘So how did he portray you? Like a young Eve?’

  ‘No! I was fully dressed – though not in my actual dress. He had this beautiful white frock he wanted me to wear, perhaps a little décolleté, but totally decent, I promise you, Miss Prim. It showed off my figure to perfection, even if I say so myself.’

  ‘You changed your dress in front of him?’ I squealed.

  ‘Shush! You’ll wake Mother. No, I went behind a Japanese screen. This is how artists work with their models. It’s all very proper and accepted, I assure you.’


  ‘You don’t know that. It’s just what he’s told you.’

  ‘Well, all right, then, I don’t know and I don’t care. All I know is that Daniel is the most heavenly man I’ve ever met and he’s totally smitten with me, Opie. He thinks I’m—’

  ‘A wretched English rose just coming into bloom – you’ve already told me,’ I said. ‘So he painted you all day long and half the evening too?’

  ‘Well, he painted me a lot of the time, but we had to have little breaks, of course. You’ve no idea how tiring it is, keeping the same pose all the time, though Daniel played us music. Some of the time it was shouty opera, but he made it quite interesting by telling me all the stories. Opera’s very sad, you know. They don’t seem to like happy endings. But then he played me some music-hall songs, and they were terribly comical. Daniel knew all the words and sang along. Do you know, if he wasn’t an artist I do believe he could go on the stage. He was astonished when I said I’d never been to a music hall. He said we should remedy that as soon as possible, which sounds very hopeful, doesn’t it?’

  ‘But Mother hates music halls. They’re very vulgar and the wrong sort of people go there.’ I was only parroting what Mother said, but I blushed to hear myself speak. I sounded so prim and disapproving. I didn’t really have any strong feelings about music halls. The strongest feeling I was experiencing now was envy.

  ‘Mother won’t know. I’ll make out I’m going somewhere else – with Philip,’ said Cassie.

  ‘You can’t keep this up for ever,’ I protested.

  ‘I can so – at least until Daniel proposes, and then Mother will be so thrilled she won’t mind that he’s a little older than me.’

  ‘Cassie, you’re living in cloud-cuckoo-land. He might well propose something to you, but it won’t be marriage. You’ll end up ruined, with a baby.’ I tried to make myself sound worldly wise, though I still only had a hazy idea of how this would happen. I’d gleaned a little information from books. Tess of the d’Urbervilles had been quite educational, but there hadn’t been any detailed descriptions.

  ‘Oh, you’re such a gloomy old fusspot, Opie. I’ll be fine, you’ll see. And one day – hopefully one day quite soon – there’ll be a ring on this finger.’ She rubbed the significant finger on her left hand as if she could magic a ring there by sheer willpower alone.

  CASSIE SPENT EVERY Sunday with Daniel Evandale. She said he often met her after work and took her off to tea as well. One evening he took her to the bar of the hotel and gave her champagne!

  ‘Champagne!’ I echoed. ‘Oh, what does it taste like, Cassie?’

  ‘Marvellous.’

  ‘Yes, but what kind of marvellous?’

  ‘It’s very bubbly and it tickles your nose.’

  ‘Like ginger beer?’

  ‘Well, a little, but much better. And we ate oysters.’

  ‘But you hate shellfish,’ I said. Cassie had screamed in disgust when Father once bought us a bag of whelks on a trip to the seaside.

  ‘I must admit they look disgusting, but Daniel showed me how to tip them down my throat and they were marvellous too,’ said Cassie.

  ‘If Daniel showed you how to tip a wriggly worm down your throat, you’d say it was marvellous,’ I said. ‘How is your portrait in the white dress progressing?’

  ‘Oh, that’s more or less finished. He works on all the background when I’m not there. He’s started another painting of me now.’

  ‘In another white dress?’

  ‘Without a dress this time.’ Cassie went into peals of laughter when she saw my face.

  ‘Naked?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I’m wearing my stockings and my hat.’

  ‘Nothing in between?’

  ‘It’s a very artistic pose,’ said Cassie.

  ‘You really take all your clothes off? Your corset and your drawers?’

  ‘I said it’s artistic. Goodness, you’ve seen all those pictures in art books.’

  ‘I could no more take my clothes off in front of a man than fly!’ I declared. I imagined undressing in front of Freddy or Geoff, or Mr Beeston or dear Mr Andrews, and blushed at the very thought. Cassie seemed to have stepped onto an entirely different planet. It was bizarre thinking of her being so grown up and daring when she was still my own sister, scratching herself and humming maddeningly and yelping like a hyena if anything amused her. ‘Don’t you feel dreadful standing there with him staring at you?’

  ‘Well, to be truthful, I felt terribly anxious the first time I took off my dress and all my other things. I wouldn’t come out from behind the screen for ages and ages. Daniel had to coax me out, and then, when I did, I blushed all over. It was so embarrassing. But Daniel said such lovely things. He was so gentle and reassuring, and admiring too, that I soon calmed down. I don’t turn a hair now.’

  Cassie managed to give an entirely fictional account of her Sunday activities to Mother, elaborating endlessly on life at Madame Alouette’s. Mother was extremely inquisitive, listening attentively, her mouth slightly open like a child hearing a bedtime story. She and Cassie grew closer than ever. I felt terribly left out.

  I wrote to Father – long letters in which I bared my soul and told him everything. I fretted over Cassie’s secret trysting and fumed over my wretched lot at Fairy Glen. I didn’t send these letters, of course. I folded them up into tiny squares and hid them in my fondant fancy treasure box. I wrote him conventional real letters, submitting them for Mother’s approval, and he sent one in return. It was very short and uninformative. I was still simply addressed as ‘and Opal’.

  But then we received another letter, brief and to the point.

  My dearest Lou, Cassie and Opal,

  I have been told my trial is at Kingtown Assizes on 5th December. Pray God they will be lenient with me.

  Your own loving husband and father,

  Ernest

  Mother read the letter through, and then collapsed in tears. It was as though she’d been able to put Father right out of her mind while she was concentrating on Cassie’s fictional social success with Madame Alouette’s family. Now she seemed steeped in despair all over again.

  ‘Oh, Mother, you will go to the trial, won’t you? It’s so important that Father sees you there,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know whether I can bear it,’ she sobbed.

  ‘What about Father? We must think of him. Well, I shall go. I look much older now I’m out at work,’ I said determinedly.

  ‘Don’t wash the starch out of your hair – that’ll help!’ said Cassie.

  ‘How can you joke at a time like this? Oh Lord, I shall die if it’s all over the papers again,’ said Mother. ‘What if any of my customers see? And – oh, horrors – what about Madame Alouette? She’ll never want her nephew consorting with the daughter of a convicted prisoner.’

  ‘He’s not convicted yet, Mother. He might still be let off with some kind of penalty or fine,’ I said, though I did not really think it was possible.

  ‘Madame Alouette only reads the fashion journals,’ said Cassie.

  ‘But what about Philip?’ Mother wailed.

  ‘Oh, bother Philip,’ said Cassie, forgetting herself. ‘Listen, I’m coming to the trial too. I’ll make out to Madame that I’ve had hideous toothache or some such thing.’

  ‘You mustn’t! I can’t have either of you girls jeopardizing your jobs,’ said Mother, but she was no match for the two of us together.

  I hugged Cassie when we were on our own. ‘I’m so glad you’re coming too,’ I said.

  ‘I feel so bad that I didn’t come to the magistrate’s court, but this time we’ll go together.’

  ‘Perhaps you can help me dress up a little? I looked like a clown when I tried last time.’

  ‘Of course I’ll help, silly. Oh dear, why ever did I start this Philip nonsense? The wretched man’s getting on my nerves and I don’t even know him!’

  ‘Cass, what about Mr Evandale? Wha
t will you do if he reads about Father in the newspaper?’ I said.

  ‘He already knows about Father,’ said Cassie.

  ‘Oh my goodness, how did he find out?’

  ‘I told him, silly.’

  ‘And he didn’t mind?’ I thought of Olivia and the pain of never being able to see her again.

  ‘He found it intriguing. I wasn’t going to breathe a word, but he was teasing me about being – what was it? – a bourgeois little girl from the suburbs. It was because I was so shy about taking my clothes off. It annoyed me, and so I declared I wasn’t at all bourgeois – how could I be with a father in prison? Then he got frightfully interested. He’s one of those chaps who loves to mix with what he calls “low life”, but I don’t think he knows any real criminals. Now he knows a criminal’s daughter,’ said Cassie.

  ‘Don’t! Father isn’t a real true criminal. Maybe the judge will realize that,’ I said.

  ‘Opal, he’s pleading guilty.’

  ‘Yes, but that shows he’s really honest,’ I said desperately.

  ‘You’re not using your famous intellect now. But I suppose it’s understandable. You do love Father so,’ said Cassie.

  ‘Don’t you love him?’

  ‘Of course I do, but I could shake him for being such a fool.’

  ‘He just wanted to please us, to please Mother.’

  ‘I know, you keep saying that. But that’s not the way to do it. He should have stood up to Mother more, been a little more manly. That’s the way to please a woman,’ said Cassie, as if she’d suddenly become a world expert on affairs of the heart.

  We were all up very early on the fifth of December. We couldn’t face any breakfast, apart from strong cups of tea, but we spent a long time getting ready. I submitted to Cassie’s ministrations. She swept my hair up in an elaborate style, marshalling it determinedly into place with a whole army of steel pins. My face looked very stark and exposed and my spectacles very prominent.

  ‘Oh dear, I look like a schoolmarm,’ I said in dismay.