Opal Plumstead

by Jacqueline Wilson

  ‘It took ages to get her into that exact pose,’ said Mr Evandale. ‘Oh well, let’s have a tea break.’

  I knew I was crimson in the face with embarrassment, but Cassie was totally relaxed.

  ‘Have you come to check up on me, Opie?’

  ‘I just wanted to make sure you were all right,’ I said.

  ‘Ah, what a dear sweet sister you are,’ said Mr Evandale, lighting a little spirit stove and putting a kettle on top. ‘Utterly unlike this bad girl.’ He cupped Cassie’s chin and shook his head at her. ‘Is your mother still very upset, Opal?’

  ‘Yes she is.’

  ‘Oh dear. Well, I’ve tried to send Cassie back home, but she clings to me like a little limpet.’

  ‘Oh go on, Daniel, you know you like to have me here. Didn’t you enjoy the lovely steak I cooked for you last night? And I’m going to clean up this old house and buy some new furniture and make it into a proper home for you,’ said Cassie.

  ‘Don’t you dare. I don’t want to live in a little bourgeois nest, tripping over a lot of useless bits and bobs whenever I move,’ said Mr Evandale. ‘I don’t trust your taste at all, Cassie Plumstead. You’re a frills-and-satin-bows kind of girl. You’d dress me in a frilly shirt with a satin tie around my neck if I was fool enough to let you.’

  ‘It would be a vast improvement, I tell you,’ said Cassie, laughing.

  They carried on with this banter non-stop. I wasn’t exactly excluded from the conversation, but neither of them seemed at all interested in my contribution. I felt very lonely and foolish – and also extremely damp in my sodden clothes.

  ‘Here’s your tea, dear,’ said Mr Evandale, and then he exclaimed when he put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Dear Lord, you’re absolutely soaking! You poor child. Take off that coat before you catch your death. Your dress is soaked through too. Cassie, give your sister something dry to wear.’

  ‘No, no, I’m fine,’ I insisted, terrified they’d pull my clothes off me. Cassie might be happy to cavort about naked, but I wasn’t.

  Mr Evandale seized my coat and hat all the same, and took them down to the basement kitchen to dry in front of the range.

  ‘Oh, Cassie, are you really all right?’ I whispered when he was gone.

  ‘I couldn’t be happier,’ she replied.

  ‘Aren’t you worried about upsetting Mother so?’

  ‘There’s no point my worrying about it. I expect she’ll come round eventually,’ said Cassie.

  I think I was looking very forlorn, because she suddenly put her arms around me.

  ‘Goodness, you are damp. I hope you don’t get a chill. There, I am worried about you, Opie. I will miss you dreadfully, but it can’t be helped. I hope you will visit me lots of times.’

  ‘How did Mr Evandale react when you turned up on his doorstep?’

  ‘Oh, he was a little alarmed at first. He thought Mother might rush to the police and try to have him arrested. He did try to send me packing, but I wasn’t having it. I soon won him round,’ said Cassie, dimpling. ‘And now he thinks it’s a very jolly wheeze, especially as he’s got this new idea for a Venus portrait. Look, Opie, it’s going to be so grand.’ She sauntered over to the easel, her sheet trailing, exposing far too much of her.

  The portrait was only lightly sketched out, but already I could see that it was working well. Daniel Evandale was no Velázquez, but he’d set off Cassie’s pearly skin and soft curves against the deep blue satin in a manner that was truly breath-taking.

  ‘Maybe I’ll be hanging in a big gallery in hundreds of years’ time,’ said Cassie.

  ‘I don’t know how you can bear the thought of people staring at you,’ I said, shivering. ‘Cassie, do you think Mr Evandale will ever marry you?’

  ‘I shall work on it, don’t worry. But he’ll have to get divorced first. I don’t want to nag at him too much. He doesn’t like it.’

  ‘Oh, Cass. What would Father say if he knew you were living with a married man?’

  ‘Well, he’s in no position to judge, is he?’ said Cassie sharply.

  Mr Evandale came back upstairs with a bottle of fortified wine and three glasses. ‘Here, have a tot. It’ll warm you better than tea,’ he said.

  I took a wary sip. It didn’t taste anywhere near as pleasant as champagne, but I found after a few sips that it really did stop me feeling so chilled. I drank a little more and the knots in my stomach started loosening. It felt astonishingly good to be sitting here with Cassie and Daniel Evandale. It no longer seemed extraordinary that my sister was modelling so brazenly and living with a married man. Deep down I was still very shocked and upset, but on the surface I could be calm and accepting. I enjoyed being part of this amazing bohemian world where all the rules were so easily broken.

  The wine made us hungry, so Cassie tied her sheet around her like a Roman toga and went to forage for food in the kitchen. I still felt immensely shy of Mr Evandale, but the wine gave me courage. I took a deep breath.

  ‘Mr Evandale—’

  ‘My goodness, you’re very formal, Miss Plumstead.’

  ‘Daniel, you will . . . you will be kind to my sister, won’t you?’

  ‘Cassie doesn’t respond to kindness. She needs firm handling, that girl. A thorough talking to every day, a diet of gruel and water, and I’ll lock her up in a cupboard if she gives me any cheek.’ He paused. ‘I’m joking, Opal.’

  ‘Yes, I know you are,’ I said. ‘But I can’t help worrying all the same. Cassie really shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘It wasn’t my idea. I didn’t suggest she up sticks and set up home with me. It will cramp my style a little. When will I entertain all my other lady friends?’

  ‘I do hope you’re joking again,’ I said shakily.

  ‘Yes I am,’ he said. ‘Don’t frown so. I dare say Cassie and I will rub along very well together. I am truly fond of her. She’s a dear girl. And you’re a dear girl too, being so concerned about your sister.’

  ‘We’re dear girls?’ said Cassie, coming back into the studio bearing a great tray of food. It was just cheese and bread and fruit, but such exotic sorts that I marvelled as I nibbled. I’d thought that cheese was cheese – hard, yellow, mousetrap Cheddar – but this cheese came in different shapes and colours and textures. There was a wheel of blue-veined Stilton that looked and smelled alarming but tasted surprisingly splendid, a soft creamy French cheese that melted on the tongue, and a bright orange Leicester that was truly delicious. The bread was a long crusty stick instead of a proper loaf, and there was plenty of best butter to spread on it. The fruit was amazing too – a huge bunch of purple hothouse grapes and crisp rosy polished apples.

  ‘Where did you shop for all this wonderful food?’ I asked in awe.

  ‘Oh, Daniel gets Fortnum and Mason to deliver from London,’ Cassie said airily.

  I wondered just how much that would cost. It seemed ridiculous that Mother should have been thrilled by Cassie’s ‘match’ with Philip Alouette, when Daniel Evandale was clearly a class above and his private income must be considerable.

  I went home in my dried coat feeling that perhaps I could talk Mother round somehow. Mr Evandale had given me the taxi fare home, but I decided to walk. It had stopped raining and I wanted a long tramp to gather my thoughts. I also needed to sober up a little. I’d had two glasses of wine and felt delightfully swimmy. I didn’t mind the discomfort of my still-damp boots. In fact I felt so light-hearted I skipped the length of several roads, and then played the childish game of not stepping on cracks in the pavement. I rehearsed a little speech to Mother in my head. I felt I could easily win her over with my warm persuasive homily.

  I think I must have been drunker than I realized. When I got home, Mother would barely speak to me, her face a mask of misery.

  ‘Oh, Mother, don’t look like that,’ I cried.

  ‘I know where you’ve been,’ she said. ‘Don’t take me for a fool. You’ve been to see your sister.’ She practically spat the last word.

  ‘Y
es, to see Cassie. You mustn’t worry, Mother. I promise you, Mr Evandale is a lovely gentleman and he’s keeping Cassie in the lap of luxury.’

  ‘She will be living in sin,’ said Mother.

  ‘I suppose so, but they seem very jolly and happy together. Mr Evandale’s house is very grand, and he has fine food and wines.’

  ‘And you’ve clearly been sampling them. Is that creature trying to ruin two of my daughters? How dare he ply wine on a child!’

  ‘I’m not a child, Mother, and it was simply to warm me. I got wet through. Oh, please try to be reasonable. I know just how much you love Cassie. You can’t turn against her overnight.’

  ‘I can and I will,’ said Mother, with steely determination.

  ‘Why must you always be so quick to make up your mind to condemn people?’ I said, losing my temper. ‘You were the same with poor Father when he first got arrested.’

  ‘Hold your tongue,’ snapped Mother. ‘I won’t have it! Oh dear Lord, what have I done to deserve a family like this? A husband who ends up in prison, a daughter who wilfully throws herself away on a married man, and another child who criticizes me endlessly and shows me no respect whatsoever.’

  She put her hands to her head, clutching it desperately.

  ON WEDNESDAY MRS ROBERTS called me into her room at the factory. ‘Look at this, Opal,’ she said, thrusting a newspaper at me. She seemed unusually excited, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed.

  ‘Whatever’s happened?’ I asked anxiously.

  Newspapers made me feel so nervous now. I thought for one mad moment that it might be further dreadful news to do with Father – a riot in his prison perhaps. I found myself staring at a large photograph of a woman, a naked woman. She was beautiful and very shapely, but she had terrifying weals all over her body, as if she’d been savagely attacked. I knew this woman – but she wasn’t real.

  ‘The Rokeby Venus!’ I gasped.

  ‘She’s been slashed!’ said Mrs Roberts.

  ‘How terrible. What mad fiend could have done this to such a wonderful painting?’ I said, my hands trembling as I held the newspaper.

  ‘No, no, Opal. You don’t understand. It was our Mary – Mary Richardson, one of our bravest and finest members. This is a triumph for the movement. We’re on the front page of every newspaper.’

  ‘But the painting’s ruined! She’s slashed it with a knife.’

  ‘No, with an axe. Such courage, and the poor girl was attacked by the attendants. Members of the public hit her cruelly.’

  ‘But why did she choose such a beautiful painting?’

  ‘Read it and you’ll see.’ Mrs Roberts stood up and pointed at the account of Mary Richardson giving evidence at the Bow Street Police Court. ‘She says she had to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history, to protest against a government which is destroying Mrs Pankhurst, the most beautiful character in modern history. There, isn’t that wonderful! Mrs Pankhurst has been sent back to Holloway, and the poor brave soul will be on hunger strike, enduring that terrible force-feeding again. We are all so concerned for her health. And now bold, brave Mary is in Holloway too, with a six-month sentence.’

  I stared at Mrs Roberts. ‘So this is Deeds, not words,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘But it still seems so dreadful to attack a painting with an axe.’

  ‘Would you sooner she attacked a real woman?’

  ‘Of course not. I just think . . . Oh, I don’t know what I think.’ I so wanted to follow Mrs Roberts and believe that everything the suffragettes did was brave and wonderful. I understood that they needed to attract the nation’s attention to the cause. I knew from the graphic accounts at Saturday meetings that suffragettes in prison suffered the most appalling violence. I struggled to feel as Mrs Roberts did – but I couldn’t.

  I went along to the WSPU meeting on Saturday and heard them all speaking jubilantly, especially as the National Gallery had been temporarily closed for fear of further attacks. I listened, I even nodded and pretended approval, but I couldn’t completely agree.

  It was a devastating blow. I had felt that these passionate, powerful women were like marvellous big sisters to me. I had felt part of a wonderful progressive movement. I was accepted and petted and praised as their youngest member. But now I was alone again. I didn’t seem to feel at one with anyone at all now. I wasn’t close friends with any of the girls in the design room, Freddy no longer gave me a second glance, Cassie had left me without a second thought, and Olivia wouldn’t even meet up with me.

  I couldn’t bear to lose Mrs Roberts too, so I managed to hold my tongue and not argue any more about the slashing of the Rokeby Venus. I did not care for the WSPU meetings so much, but I still attended, because more often than not Mrs Roberts invited me home for lunch.

  Those Saturdays at her house meant all the world to me, especially now that my own home was so starkly miserable, with Mother sunk in her own bitter gloom. One Saturday Mrs Roberts seemed particularly animated, and more elaborately dressed than usual in a pearl-grey two-piece, a pale sage-green blouse, with a purple iris pinned to her jacket and a long string of white pearls around her neck. I wondered if Mrs Pankhurst were out of prison again. Maybe Mrs Roberts had invited her for lunch, but although Mrs Pankhurst had indeed been released, suffering from heart pain, she was being nursed by friends elsewhere.

  There were several leading members of the WSPU speaking at our meeting, but Mrs Roberts didn’t linger to talk with them afterwards.

  ‘Come along, Opal,’ she said. ‘We mustn’t be late for lunch. I have a gentleman visitor.’

  She said it with an unusually coquettish air. I was very surprised. Mrs Roberts rarely spoke of her husband, but when she did, it was generally an obliquely disparaging remark. I’d gathered that she did not care for the way he used to run Fairy Glen. She did not sound as if she cared for him, either. I’d assumed she was one of the new kind of independent ladies who had little time for men, like most of her sister suffragettes. Like myself, in fact.

  But now, as we drove home, she was all of a jitter, checking her face in her hand mirror, tutting over an escaped lock of hair, barely talking to me. Whoever this gentleman was, she clearly thought the world of him. I was already certain I would dislike him.

  She practically ran into her house. ‘Darling, I’m back!’ she called, the moment we were inside the front door.

  Darling?

  I usually liked to linger in the hall for a minute or so, admiring the paintings, but now I hurried after her into the drawing room to see how she’d embrace this ‘darling’.

  I saw a tall fair-haired young man lounging in a chair, a book on his knee. He was only a few years older than me! He stood up, smiling.

  ‘Hello, Mother.’

  Oh my goodness, what a fool I was. This was Morgan, Mrs Roberts’ only son, obviously home from school for the Easter holidays. I was so used to seeing the portrait of him above the mantelpiece that I’d thought of him as a little curly-haired boy, not a grown man.

  Mrs Roberts gave him a fond kiss on the cheek. They had different colouring. She had smooth dark hair and he was still fair, his hair less curly now, and falling in loose waves. His eyes were a surprisingly deep brown, with long lashes that made them look very large and intense. He was paler than his mother, the rosiness of his boyhood completely gone, yet in spite of all the differences, when they stood together they were clearly mother and son. They had the same willowy grace, the same ease of movement, the same elegance of stance and dress. Morgan’s clothes certainly weren’t school uniform. He wore a blue cable-patterned jersey, wine cord trousers and tan polished boots. An odd combination, yet somehow perfect on him.

  I was suddenly horribly aware of my own pathetic home-spun appearance. I was wearing the elephant, more wrinkly than ever, the white blouse, which was also creased as I hadn’t bothered to iron it properly, and my hair was scraped into its schoolgirl plait because I couldn’t find enough hairpins that
morning to keep it up tidily.

  ‘Here’s Opal, my little protégée from the factory,’ said Mrs Roberts. ‘Opal, this is Morgan, my son.’

  I expected him to nod cursorily in my direction, but he smiled, reached out and shook my hand.

  ‘Opal – plain-talking, fiery Opal, who fights her fellow workers, has taken over the entire design department and is now a mini-suffragette? I practically begged Mother to bring you home. You’ve clearly made a big impact on everyone.’

  He was teasing me, of course, but in the most delightful way. I felt myself growing so hot my glasses started to steam up. His handshake was cool. I prayed that my own hand wasn’t clammy. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I had to clench my toes to stop myself shuffling from foot to foot. I didn’t know whether to sit or stay standing. They were both staring at me expectantly, waiting for me to say something amusing or interesting, and yet for once I was totally at a loss.

  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.