Opal Plumstead

by Jacqueline Wilson

There were more gasps and also laughter. Mrs Roberts was white too. She started to say something, but Morgan stepped forward, stopping her this time.

  ‘That’s a fair point,’ he said, loud and clear. ‘It’s a question I’ve been asking myself this week. You’re absolutely right. I can’t possibly swan off to Oxford and expect you to do the fighting for me. I shall enlist too.’

  Mrs Roberts tried to say something again, but she couldn’t make herself heard above the new cheer – for Morgan this time.

  It rang in my ears and set me reeling. He couldn’t really mean it, could he? Morgan hated the whole idea of fighting. He’d told me he’d be a pacifist. What was he doing, letting poor jealous Freddy goad him into fighting a war he didn’t want?

  Mrs Roberts saw that she had lost control of the crowd and waved her arm distractedly, dismissing us. Everyone trooped back to work, chattering excitedly. I watched Freddy being clapped on the back by many of the men. I felt terrible. If I’d held my tongue about Morgan, maybe he wouldn’t have spoken out.

  My stomach lurched and I had to push my way through the crowd, running for the ladies’ cloakroom. I was horribly ill, carrying on retching long after I had no food left inside me.

  When I eventually crept back to the design room, I heard shouting coming from Mrs Roberts’ study. I couldn’t hear what she and Morgan were saying, but they both sounded in a terrible passion.

  The girls in the design room were agog.

  ‘Hark at them! Going at it hammer and tongs. She’s nearly demented, and he’s lost his rag too. Fancy, I’ve never even heard her raise her voice before.’

  ‘She lives for that son of hers. She’d sooner fight herself than let him go.’

  ‘Fancy young Freddy speaking like that! I’d never have thought he had it in him.’

  ‘He’s a cheeky young limb.’

  ‘Yes, but he’s got a point. He clearly hit home.’

  ‘So even precious Mr Morgan is off to be a soldier now.’

  ‘Be quiet!’ I cried.

  They stopped their silly gossip and stared at me. Then we heard hurried footsteps along the corridor. The door of the design room burst open. Mrs Roberts stood there, looking wild. She’d opened the neck of her dress to breathe more easily but she was still panting. She had tears rolling down her cheeks.

  ‘Opal?’ she called hoarsely.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Roberts?’ I said, jumping up.

  ‘Come here.’

  I ran to her while all the design girls gaped. She took hold of my wrist and tugged me out into the corridor.

  ‘Please! You talk him out of it,’ she said. ‘I can’t, though I’ve tried and tried. Morgan might listen to you.’

  I saw just what it cost her to ask me. I felt a little glow of pride amidst my fear and sorrow and pity. I might be Opal Plumstead, the upstart protégée ordered not to have any further communication with her son, yet here she was, begging me to talk to him.

  ‘I’ll try,’ I said.

  We both ran along the corridor, past Mr Beeston’s office and out into the yard. Mitchell was waiting in the car outside the gate, but there was no sign of Morgan.

  ‘Where’s Mr Morgan?’ Mrs Roberts cried. ‘Didn’t you stop him?’

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. He said he didn’t want a lift. He’s gone towards the town on foot. You’ve just missed him.’

  ‘Then we must follow him. Quickly, get into the motor car, Opal.’

  I did as I was told and we set off in pursuit. As soon as we turned the corner we saw Morgan loping along the pavement.

  ‘Hurry, catch him up!’

  Mitchell pulled the car up beside Morgan. Mrs Roberts hurled herself out before he’d stopped. She staggered, nearly falling.

  ‘Mother!’ Morgan clutched at her, holding her upright.

  ‘Please, Morgan, get in the car. Opal’s here. She wants to talk to you. I’m begging you. We can’t brawl in the street. Please,’ she cried.

  ‘Oh, Mother,’ he said helplessly. He handed her back into the car, while she clutched his arm with both hands. ‘Very well, I’ll go home with you. But I’m not changing my mind.’ He looked at me. ‘Oh, Opal, you too,’ he said, seeing my expression.

  He went to sit in the front.

  ‘Are you wanting to enlist, sir?’ Mitchell asked him. ‘Quite right too. I’m going to do the same, though Mrs Mitchell’s done her best to talk me out of it.’

  ‘That will be enough, Mitchell. Drive us home,’ said Mrs Roberts.

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Don’t worry, I’ll stay until you get yourself a new chauffeur. I wouldn’t want to let you down. But, please note, I’m going. You understand, don’t you, Mr Morgan?’

  Mrs Roberts sank back, covering her face with her hands. She was so distraught I wondered if I should try to put my arm round her, but I didn’t quite dare. She sobbed into her lace handkerchief and I sat stiffly beside her, while Morgan and Mitchell exchanged banal patriotic clichés in the front of the car.

  Mrs Roberts was in such a state that Mrs Evans had to help her upstairs to her room.

  ‘You won’t go, Morgan, will you?’ she kept crying. ‘You won’t sneak away?’

  ‘I won’t go anywhere without telling you, Mother, I promise,’ he said.

  Then he turned to me. ‘Let’s go into the garden, Opal.’

  We went out of the French windows. It was like stepping into a different world. There was a heady smell of honeysuckle and roses. Morgan took my hand and we walked along the path between the great rhododendron bushes, the little stream trickling beside us. We said nothing at all until we reached the Japanese house right at the end. Morgan sat down. I sat beside him, but he pulled me gently until I was sitting on his lap.

  ‘Oh, Morgan,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry, Opal,’ he said, his arms around me. ‘I’ve written you dozens of letters this week and then torn them up. I’ve been so undecided.’

  ‘About us?’

  ‘About everything. It’s so awful. All I want is peace, and yet it’s war, war, war. Mother was in a terrible state when I got home on Monday. She was threatening, pleading, crying. I’ve never seen her like that before. She was hysterical, saying the most terrible things. She said I was all she had and now I was breaking her heart. She said so many things. She knows me so well. She knows exactly what to say to make me feel dreadful. I started to promise her anything just to make her stop.’

  ‘Promise to stop seeing me?’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t mean it. So then I went back on my word the next morning. Then we heard we were at war, and that changed everything again.’

  ‘You really want to be a soldier and fight?’

  ‘No! No, of course not. I meant everything I said in Hastings. I hate the very idea of war. It’s not just the principle. I suppose I’m a rotten coward at heart. It’s not just that I’m scared of dying. I’m scared of killing someone else, I’m scared of the squalor, the stench, the sheer misery of it all.’

  ‘Then don’t go! Please, please don’t go. For your mother’s sake – and for mine.’

  ‘But I can’t go on being a coward. I can’t let other men fight for me.’

  ‘Take no notice of that stupid boy who shouted at you. He was saying it to get at me. I told him that you and I were friends. He was just being spiteful, making trouble, because once upon a time he was sweet on me. Please believe me, Morgan.’

  ‘All right, I do believe you, but it doesn’t change the truth of what he said. I’ve been in this terrible dilemma for days, wondering what I should do. I don’t want to fight, but I’m already trained – all that wretched army cadet malarkey. I should know what I’m doing, much more than poor Freddy. Mother’s spent a fortune on my education and now says I’m throwing it in her face, but the thing public school teaches you above all else is that you must do your duty as a gentleman.’

  ‘Oh, that’s such pompous nonsense,’ I said. ‘You can’t truly believe that, Morgan.’

  ‘I don’t know what I believe any more. That
’s the trouble. I’m so weak and vacillating. I know what I want: I want to run away with you.’

  ‘And live in our fisherman’s hut.’

  ‘Yes, of course, that’s exactly what I want. If I were anyone else, maybe that’s what I’d do.’

  ‘Then let’s!’

  ‘Opal, we can’t possibly. You’re not old enough to marry me. You’re still practically a child. And what would your mother say?’

  ‘I don’t care what Mother says.’

  ‘I wish I could be as brave. I care dreadfully about my mother and her opinion, even though it’s not very manly to feel that way.’

  ‘Yes, but your mother is extraordinarily special. I used to love her a lot myself until she turned against me.’

  ‘She hasn’t exactly turned against you – she just can’t bear it if I’m attached to anyone else.’

  ‘Anyone socially inferior.’

  ‘Stop it! You’re the most superior girl I’ve ever met, in every single way. How I wish I was as honest and unafraid and implacable as you. And do you know something? I think that if you were a man you’d go and enlist.’

  ‘No I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t go to fight a war and leave my poor sweetheart demented with worry. This is meant to be our summer, Morgan. Every weekend. You promised. And then you’re going to Oxford. If it were me, I’d never give up a chance of going to Oxford.’

  ‘Oxford will still be there when I come back from the war.’

  ‘If you come back,’ I said. Then I clapped my hand over my mouth. ‘I didn’t mean that. Oh, why did I say it? Morgan, you can’t go, because I truly couldn’t bear it if you didn’t come back.’

  ‘How can I stay when half the factory hands are going? They won’t forget. When the war is over, when they’ve done fighting and I’ve graduated, how are we ever going to work together? They won’t have a shred of respect for me. They’ll think me a coward, and they’ll be right. They won’t listen to my orders. They’ll rebel.’

  ‘You can make them do what you say. You will be their boss. The power is all yours.’

  ‘My father was that kind of boss. He ruled by fear. If folk broke his petty little rules, he sacked them without a second thought. My mother has worked hard to change things, to make Fairy Glen a decent place to work. Everyone respects her for it. If I’m taking over, I want them to respect me.’

  ‘You will win them over.’

  ‘I’m not sure I could. You can win anyone over, though, I grant you that.’

  ‘Then let me win you over, Morgan. Please tell me you won’t enlist. If I mean anything to you, you’ll stay here,’ I said, putting my hands on either side of his face and gazing at him imploringly.

  ‘You already have my heart, Opal, but you cannot change my soul. I know deep within me that I have to go.’

  I knew it too, though I spent hours more trying to persuade him. That very afternoon he went and enlisted in the East Surrey Regiment.

  I HOPED THAT we’d still have more time together, but the very next week he went away to train to be an officer.

  I saw him the day before he left for France. He’d spent Saturday with his mother. I wasn’t invited to Fairy Glen to spend it with them. But on Sunday he came calling for me. He was wearing his army uniform and looked so different. I scarcely recognized him in all that stiff, ugly khaki. He had even lost his beautiful long wavy hair. It was now clipped very short and straight. It made his ears look strangely prominent and his neck very bare. As if in compensation, he’d grown a little moustache over his top lip.

  ‘Oh, Morgan,’ I said, touching it. ‘I’m not sure I like it.’

  ‘Neither do I, but I’ve grown it to try to look older. I shall be giving orders to men much older and more experienced than me. It won’t work if I look like a schoolboy.’

  ‘Oh, Morgan,’ I said again, at a loss for any other words.

  Mother insisted on inviting him in and made us sit in the chilly parlour. She brewed us a pot of tea in the best china, with a plate of fancy biscuits that neither of us ate. She sat with us, telling Morgan several times that he looked a fine figure of a man in his uniform. He thanked her each time and sat awkwardly in Father’s chair, fiddling with the shiny brass buttons on his jacket. It became harder and harder to think of anything to say.

  At last Morgan said, ‘Well, thank you so much for your hospitality, Mrs Plumstead. If you don’t mind, I should like to take Opal out to lunch.’

  ‘Certainly, certainly, though I’m sure I can do you a nice shepherd’s pie here if you care to wait a while.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you, but I don’t want to put you to any trouble. I think we’ll go out.’

  ‘As you wish, sir,’ said Mother, just like a servant.

  I went painfully red, but Morgan was impeccably polite. The contrast between our mothers was unbearable. I remained stiff and silent even when we were walking down the street. Morgan was very quiet too, striding out in his boots in a military fashion. Many people smiled and nodded to us. One old man even shuffled across the road to clap him on the back.

  ‘Well done, young sir,’ he said. ‘You’ll go and sort out those Germans. I wish to goodness I was young enough to join you.’

  It made us more self-conscious than ever. Morgan took me to the Royal Hotel. There were other soldiers in the dining room, some with sweethearts, some with their whole family. The management served a free drink to every table with a soldier at it. Most called for many more drinks. The atmosphere was frenetic, people laughing and talking too loudly, like actors trying to project their voices in a vast theatre.

  We ordered chicken again, but we were served much smaller portions. Food prices had doubled in less than a week, according to Mother. Somehow it didn’t taste the same, either. Neither of us had much appetite. We didn’t even bother with a pudding.

  ‘Mother ordered apple pancakes for me last night, and wept when I only ate half of one,’ said Morgan. ‘And then it escalated into a ridiculous row, because she said if I had no appetite, it meant I was dreading going, so why was I going? She said I was risking my life unnecessarily, simply because of pride. She has this new scheme for me. She wants me to move to Scotland and manage the farm there. She’s worked out that even if there is compulsory conscription and every man has to fight, I’d be exempt if I were producing food on the farm. What do you think, Opal?’ he asked, looking at me.

  ‘I think I agree with her,’ I said. ‘But it’s not going to make any difference, is it?’

  Morgan shook his head.

  ‘Then I won’t nag you further.’ I reached across the table and held his hand. He had a row of callouses on his palm.

  ‘Is this from handling guns?’

  ‘Digging, mostly. Learning how to dig a trench. I should be able to show my men how to make an excellent latrine,’ said Morgan.

  ‘Well, I dare say it will be a handy skill when the war is over. I don’t think our fisherman’s hut will have any plumbing, so maybe you’ll have to dig us a latrine in the sand,’ I said.

  Morgan held my hand tightly. ‘When Mother’s too old to work, I shall sell up Fairy Glen and with the proceeds I’ll buy us a palace with top-notch plumbing on the cliff top, and we’ll have the woods as our wild garden. Just once a year we’ll spend a night in our fisherman’s hut for old times’ sake.’

  This is how we coped the rest of that day. We wandered around the town again, making up an elaborate fantasy future. We wanted to be alone together, but everywhere was crowded. The park was full of soldiers and sweethearts. The only place we could find was the cemetery. The presence of all the people quietly mouldering underneath the earth made it terrifying now.

  We walked in and out of the gravestones, the marble angels poised on tiptoe all around us, wings spread.

  ‘You won’t die, will you, Morgan!’ I burst out.

  ‘I won’t die, not until I’m an old, old, old man,’ he said.

  ‘You promise me? You promise me you won’t get killed in this awful war? You wil
l come back safe and sound, not even wounded?’

  ‘I promise you,’ said Morgan, but when he pulled me close in an embrace, I could feel him trembling.

  ‘Have you ever broken a promise?’ I asked.

  ‘Never,’ he said, but I knew he was lying.

  ‘I don’t believe in ghosts, I never have, but if you did die, you would come back and haunt me, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll never lie still like my father under his hideous obelisk. I’ll roam free, flying above you like these angels, and I’ll be with you day and night,’ Morgan whispered.

  ‘That’s so beautiful. But promise again you will come back safe, even so.’

  ‘I promise promise promise,’ said Morgan, and then he kissed me.

  Don’t turn the page. Believe in happy endings. Chirp like little Billy, ‘Happy Days, happy days, happy days.’

  Morgan was killed by a sniper in 1915 when he was trying to drag one of his injured men back to safety. It was a pointless effort because that man later died of his injuries. It might even have been Freddy, because he died around that date, according to Edith. Ten men never returned to the factory to reclaim their jobs.

  I wasn’t told officially. I had no claim on Morgan, though he wrote to me as often as he could. He told me a little of the horrors he had to face, worse than either of us had ever imagined. He always finished each pencil-written letter with his love, and then he wrote in capitals: I’M KEEPING MY PROMISE.

  But he couldn’t. I didn’t have a telegram. I didn’t receive any of his possessions – his watch, his books, his pocket knife. They all went to Mrs Roberts as she was his next of kin.

  She had to tell me. She hadn’t come into the factory for weeks. She kept herself busy attending patriotic meetings to help the boys abroad, run by the suffragettes. Mrs Pankhurst had called a halt to demonstrating for the vote while we were at war.

  Then, one day, Mrs Roberts appeared, deathly white beneath the veil of her hat, dressed entirely in black. We all knew then, though she held a meeting in the canteen to make an official announcement. She did call me into her office ten minutes before, to tell me privately.