Last Telegram Read online

  “They’ve got lists for everything these days: ten steps to success, twenty ways to turn your life around, that kind of rubbish,” I grumble.

  “She’s really respected, honestly. Wish I could remember her name. We learned it in psychology. You should think about it. Perhaps you’ve reached the angry stage?”

  She goes to make the tea, leaving me wondering. Why would I be angry? Our generation never even considered how we grieved, though heaven knows we did enough of it. Perhaps there was too much to mourn. We just got on with it. Don’t complain, make the best of a bad lot, keep on smiling. That’s how we won the war, or so they told us.

  Emily comes back with the tea tray. Along with knowing everything else, she seems to have discovered where I hide the biscuits.

  “No school today?”

  “Time off before exams. I’m supposed to be studying,” she says airily. “What are you up to?”

  “Packing. Sorting out stuff for the charity shop.”

  “Can I help?”

  “There’s nothing I’d like more.”

  After tea we go upstairs to the spare room, where I’ve made a tentative start at turning out cupboards and wardrobes that have been untouched for years. Inside one of these mothball-scented mausoleums we find three of my suits hanging like empty carapaces. Why have I kept them for so long? Ridiculous to imagine that one day I might again wear a classic pencil skirt or a fitted jacket. It’s been decades since I wore them, but they still carry the imprint of my business self: skirts shiny-seated from office chairs, jacket elbows worn from resting on the table, chin in hand, through many a meeting.

  “Now that’s what you call power dressing,” Emily says, pulling on a jacket and admiring herself in the long mirror on the inside of the door. “Look at those shoulder pads, and such tiny waists. You must have been a looker, Gran. Can I keep this one? Big shoulders are so cool.”

  “Of course, my darling. I thought they went out in the eighties.”

  “Back in again,” she says, moving the piles of clothes and black bin liners and sitting down on the bed, patting the empty space beside her. “You really enjoyed your job, didn’t you?”

  “I suppose so,” I say, joining her. “I never really thought about it before. We were too busy just getting on with it. But I suppose I did enjoy it.” I hear myself paraphrasing what someone said to me long ago: “It’s a kind of alchemy, you know. Like turning dull metal into gold. But better, because silk has such beautiful patterns and colors.”

  “That’s rather poetic,” she says. “Dad never talks about it like that.”

  “Neither did your grandfather,” I say. “Men are never any good at showing their emotions. Besides, even with something as wonderful as silk, you tend to take it for granted when you work with it every day.”

  “Didn’t you ever get bored?”

  I think for a moment. “No, I don’t believe I ever did.”

  “You didn’t seem especially happy when I asked you about parachute silk the other day.”

  I wish the words would not grip my heart so painfully. “It’s only because I don’t like the idea of you jumping out of a plane, dearest girl,” I say, trying to soothe myself as much as her.

  “I’ll be fine, Gran,” she says breezily. “You mustn’t worry. We’re doing other stuff to raise money too. If you find anything I could put in for our online auction when you’re turning out your cupboards, that would be amazing.”

  “Anything you like,” I say. She turns back to the wardrobe and seems to be rummaging on the floor.

  “What’s this, Gran?” comes her muffled voice.

  “I don’t know what you’ve found,” I say.

  As she pulls out the brown leather briefcase my heart does a flip, which feels more like a double cartwheel. It’s battered and worn, but the embossed initials are still clear on the lid. Of course I knew it was there, but for the past sixty years it has been hidden in the darkest recesses of the wardrobe—and of my mind. Even though I haven’t cast eyes on it for decades, those familiar twin aches of sorrow and guilt start to throb in my bones.

  “What’s in it, Gran?” she asks, impatiently fiddling with the catches. “It seems to be jammed.”

  It’s locked, I now recall with relief, and the key is safely in my desk. Those old brass catches are sturdy enough to withstand even Emily’s determined tugging. “It’s just old papers, probably rubbish,” I mutter, dazed by this unexpected discovery. I know every detail of what the case contains, of course, a package of memories so intense and so painful that I never want to confront them again. But I cannot bring myself to throw it away.

  Perhaps I will retrieve it when she is gone and get rid of it once and for all, I think. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. “Pop it back in the wardrobe, darling. I’ll have a look later,” I say, as calmly as I can muster. “Shall we have some lunch?”

  • • •

  After this little shock, my enthusiasm for packing goes into a steep decline. I need to pop to the shop for more milk, but it’s just started raining, so I am hunting in the cupboard under the stairs for my summer raincoat when something catches my eye: an old wooden tennis racket, still in its press, with a rusty wing nut at each corner. The catgut strings are baggy, the leather-wrapped handle frayed and graying with mold.

  I pull it out of the cupboard, slip off the press, and take a few tentative swings. The balance is still good. And then, without warning, I find myself back in that heat wave day in 1938—July, it must have been. Vera and I had played a desultory game of tennis—no shoes, just bare feet on the grass court. The only balls we could find were moth-eaten, and before long we had hit all of them over the chain-link fence into the long grass of the orchard. Tiptoeing carefully for fear of treading on the bees that were busily foraging in the flowering clover, we found two. The third was nowhere to be seen.

  “Give up,” Vera sighed, flopping face down on the court, careless of grass stains, her tanned arms and legs splayed like a swimmer, her red-painted fingernails shouting freedom from school. I laid down beside her and breathed out slowly, allowing my thoughts to wander. The sun on my cheek became the touch of a warm hand, the gentle breeze in my hair his breath as he whispered that he loved me.

  “Penny for them?” Vera said, after a bit.

  “The usual. You know. Now shut up and let me get back to him.”

  Vera had been my closest friend ever since I forgave her for pulling my pigtails at nursery school. In other words, for most of my life. By our teens, we were an odd couple; I’d grown a good six inches taller than her, but despite doing all kinds of exercises my breasts refused to grow, while Vera was shaping up nicely, blooming into the hourglass figure of a Hollywood starlet.

  I was no beauty, nor was I exactly plain, but I longed to look more feminine and made several embarrassing attempts to fix a permanent wave into my thick brown hair. Even today the smell of perm lotion leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, reminding me of the frizzy messes that were the catastrophic result of my bathroom experiments. So I’d opted instead for a new chin-length bob that made me feel tremendously bold and modern, while Vera bleached her hair a daring platinum blond and shaped it into a Hollywood wave. Together we spent hours in front of the mirror practicing our makeup, and Vera developed clever ways to emphasize her dimples and Clara Bow lips. She generously declared that she’d positively die for my cheekbones and long eyelashes.

  In all other ways, we were very alike—laughed at the same things, hankered after the same boys, loved the same music, felt strongly about the same injustices. We were both eighteen, just out of school, and aching to fall in love.

  “Do I hear you sighing in the arms of your lover?”

  “Mais oui, un très sexy Frenchman.”

  “You daft thing. Been reading too much True Romance.”

  More silence, punctuated by the low comforting chug of a tractor on the road and cows on the water meadows calling for their calves. School seemed like another country. A mild anxiety about
imminent exam results was the only blip in a future that otherwise stretched enticingly ahead. Then Vera said, “What do you think’s really going to happen?”

  “What do you mean? I’m going to Geneva to learn French with the most handsome man on earth, and you’re going to empty bed pans at Barts. That’s what we planned, isn’t it?”

  She ignored the dig. “I mean with the Germans. Hitler invading Austria and all that.”

  “They’re sorting it out, aren’t they?” I said, watching wisps of cloud almost imperceptibly changing their shapes in the deepest of blue skies. That very morning at the breakfast table, my father had sighed over The Times and muttered, “Chamberlain had better get his skates on. Last thing we need is another ruddy war.” But here in the sunshine, I refused to imagine anything other than my perfect life.

  “I flipping well hope so,” Vera said.

  The branch-line train to Braintree whistled in the distance, and the bruised smell of mown grass hung heavily in the air. It seemed impossible that armies of one country were marching into another, taking it over by force. And not so far away: Austria was just the other side of Switzerland. People we knew went on walking holidays there. My brother went skiing there just last winter and sent us a postcard of improbably pointed mountains covered in snow.

  The sun started to cool, slipping behind the poplars and casting long stripes of shade across the meadow. We got up and started looking again for the lost ball.

  “We’d better get home,” I said, suddenly remembering. “Mother said John might be on the boat train this afternoon.”

  “Why didn’t you say? He’s been away months.”

  “Nearly a year. I’ve missed him.”

  “I thought you hated him,” she giggled, walking backward in front of me. “I certainly did. I’ve still got the scar from when he pushed me off the swing accidentally-on-purpose,” she said, pointing to her forehead.

  “Teasing his little sister and her best friend was all part of the game.” The truth was that like most siblings John and I had spent our childhood tussling for parental attention, but to me he was always a golden boy: tall like a tennis ace, with a fashionable flick of dark blond hair at his forehead. Not intellectual, but an all-arounder: good at sports, musical like my mother, and annoyingly confident of his attractiveness to girls. And yes, I had missed him while he’d been away studying in Switzerland.

  • • •

  Vera and I were helping to set the tea in the drawing room when the bell rang. I dashed to the front door.

  “Hello, Sis,” John boomed, his voice deeper than I remembered. Then, to my surprise, he wrapped his arms around me and gave me a powerful hug. He wouldn’t have done that before, I thought. He stood back, looking me up and down. “Golly, you’ve grown. Any moment now you’ll be tall as me.”

  “You’ve got taller too,” I said. “I’ll never catch up.”

  He laughed. “You’d better not. Like the haircut.” Reeling from the unexpected compliment, surely the first I’d ever received from my brother, I saw his face go blank for a second and realized Vera was on the step behind me.

  “Vera?” he said tentatively. She nodded, running fingers through her curls in a gesture I mistook for shyness. He recovered quickly. “My goodness, you’ve grown up too,” he said, shaking her hand. She smiled demurely, looking up at him through her eyelashes. I’d seen that look before, but never directed at my brother. It felt uncomfortable.

  “How did the exams go, you two?”

  I winced at the unwanted memory. “Don’t ask. Truth will out in a couple of weeks’ time.”

  Mother appeared behind us and threw her arms round him with a joyful yelp. “My dearest boy. Thank heavens you are home safely. Come in, come in.”

  He took a deep breath as he came through the door into the hallway. “Mmm. Home sweet home. Never thought I’d miss it so much. What’s that wonderful smell?”

  “I’ve baked your favorite lemon cake in your honor. You’re just in time for tea,” Mother said. “You’ll stay too, Vera?”

  “Have you ever known me to turn down a slice of your cake, Mrs. Verner?” she said.

  Mother served tea, and as we talked, I noticed how John had changed, how he had gained a new air of worldliness. Vera had certainly spotted it too. She smiled at him more than really necessary and giggled at the feeblest of his jokes.

  “Why are you back so soon?” Father asked. “I hope you completed your course?”

  “Don’t worry, I finished all my exams,” John said cheerfully. “Honestly. I’ve learned such a lot at the Silkschüle, Pa. Can’t wait to get stuck in at the mill.”

  Father smiled indulgently, his face turning to a frown as John slurped his tea—his manners had slipped in his year away from home.

  Then he said, “What about your certificates?”

  “They’ll send them. I didn’t fail or get kicked out, if that’s what you are thinking. I was a star pupil, they said.”

  “I still don’t understand, John,” Father persisted. “The course wasn’t due to finish till the end of the month.” John shook his head, his mouth full of cake. “So why did you leave early?”

  “More tea, anyone?” Mother asked, to fill the silence. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

  As she started to get up, John mumbled, almost to himself, “To be honest, I wanted to get home.”

  “That’s nothing to be ashamed of, dear,” she said. “We all get homesick sometimes.”

  “That’s not it,” he said in a somber voice. “You don’t understand what it was like. Things are happening over there. It’s not comfortable, ’specially in Austria.”

  “Things?” I said, with an involuntary shiver. “What things?”

  “Spit it out, lad,” Father said gruffly. “What’s this all about?”

  John put down his cup and plate and sat back in his chair, glancing out the window toward the water meadows at that Constable view. Mother stopped, still holding the pot, and we all waited.

  “It’s like this,” he started, choosing his words with care. “We’d been to Austria a few times—you know, we went skiing there. Did you get my postcard?”

  Mother nodded. “It’s on the mantelpiece,” she said, “pride of place.”

  “It was fine that time. But then, a few weeks ago, we went back to Vienna to visit a loom factory. Fischers. The owner’s son, a chap called Franz, showed us around.”

  “I remember Herr Fischer, Franz’s father. We bought looms from him once. A good man,” Father said. “How are they doing?”

  “It sounded as though business was a bit difficult. As he was showing us round, Franz dropped a few hints, and when we got outside away from the others, I asked him directly what was happening. At first he shook his head and refused to say anything, but then he whispered to me that they’d been forced to sell the factory.”

  “Forced?” I asked. “Surely it’s their choice?”

  “They don’t have any choice,” John said. “The Nazis have passed a new law that makes it illegal for Jewish people to own businesses.”

  “That’s outrageous,” Father spluttered.

  “His parents think that if they keep their heads down it will all go away,” John said as I struggled to imagine how all of this could possibly be happening in Vienna, where they trained white horses to dance and played Strauss waltzes on New Year’s Eve.

  “Is there any way we can help them, do you think?” Mother said sweetly. Her first concern was always to support anyone in trouble.

  “I’m not sure. Franz says it feels unstoppable. It’s pretty frightening. They don’t know where the Nazis might go next,” John said solemnly. “It’s not just in business, you know. I saw yellow stars painted on homes and shops. Windows broken. Even people being jeered at in the street.” He turned to the window again with a faraway look, as if he could barely imagine what he’d seen. “They’re calling it a pogrom,” he almost whispered. I’d never heard the word before, but it sounded menacing, making the air thi
ck and hard to breathe.

  Mother broke the silence. “This is such gloomy talk,” she said brightly. “I want to celebrate my son’s return, not get depressed about what’s happening in Europe. More cake, anyone?”

  Later, Vera and I walked down the road to her home. She lived just a mile away, and we usually kept each other company to the halfway point. “What do you think?” I asked when we were safely out of the house.

  “Hasn’t he changed? Grown up. Quite a looker these days.”

  “Not about John,” I snapped irritably. “I saw you fluttering your eyelashes, you little flirt. Lay off my brother.”

  “Okay, okay. Don’t lose your rag.”

  “I meant, about what he said.”

  “Oh, that,” she said. “It sounds grim.”

  “Worse than grim for the Jews,” I said. “I’m not sure what a pogrom is exactly, but it sounds horrid.”

  “Well, there’s not much we can do from here. Let’s hope your father’s right about Chamberlain sorting it out.”

  “But what if he doesn’t?”

  She didn’t reply at once, but we both knew what the answer was.

  “Doesn’t bear thinking about,” she said.

  • • •

  When I got back, Father leaned out of his study door.

  “Lily? A moment?”

  It was a small room with a window facing out onto the mill yard, lined with books and heavy with the fusty fragrance of pipe tobacco. It was the warmest place in the house, and in winter, a coal fire burned constantly in the small grate. This was his sanctuary; the heavy paneled door was normally closed, and even my mother knocked before entering.

  It was one of my guilty pleasures to sneak in and look at his books when he wasn’t there—The Silk Weavers of Spitalfields, Sericulture in Japan, The Huguenots, So Spins the Silkworm, and the history of a tape and label manufacturer innocently titled A Reputation in Ribbons that always made me giggle. Most intriguing of all, inside a plain box file were dozens of foolscap sheets filled with neat handwriting and written on the front page in confident capitals: A HISTORY OF SILK, by HAROLD VERNER. I longed to ask whether he ever planned to publish it but didn’t dare admit knowing of its existence.