Last Telegram Read online

  I was nervous about the meeting, but summer had arrived, and in spite of terrible news from Russia and the Far East, the bombings on London had almost ceased and I couldn’t help feeling cheerful. That morning in my bedroom mirror, I’d seen a businesswoman, young but determined in her navy blue jacket and skirt, with a newly pressed white blouse—all bought with my saved-up clothing coupons. Makeup almost concealed the scar on my jaw, and I’d grown my hair longer to cover it.

  I took out Father’s Silk Association tie pin and fixed it to my lapel. He would be proud of me, I thought. We were producing everything the Ministry of Supply wanted us to, playing our small part in saving airmen’s lives. In the past six months, I had grown in confidence, learned so much.

  Now I was about to test myself again.

  “How do I look?”

  Gwen leaned forward and plucked a loose thread of silk from my sleeve that I must have picked up from brushing past a loom. “Very smart, Miss Verner. You’ll wow those stuffy old businessmen.” She sniffed the air. “You smell nice too. Chanel No. 5?”

  “Stole a dab of Mother’s. Will you be all right with her today?” Six months on from Father’s death, Mother still rarely left her room. In my darker moments, I wondered if she would ever fully recover.

  “We’ll be fine,” Gwen said. “Make sure you’re back for supper. We’ve got meat pie tonight, as a special treat. Make a change from carrots and turnips. And don’t forget the new series of It’s That Man Again on the radio. I’ll have another go at getting Grace to come downstairs and listen with us. Tommy Handley will cheer us all up. He’s such a funny guy.”

  “You’re a real pal,” I told Gwen. “If I survive the stuffy old businessmen, I’ll deserve a drink too. Let’s crack open a bottle of Frank’s cider, shall we?”

  “Sounds good. Now off you go and don’t worry about us,” Gwen said, with a brush of her lips on my cheek.

  I hadn’t been to London since the accident, so it was a difficult moment, arriving at Liverpool Street Station. I had to steel myself to get out of the train and walk along the platform, trying not to think about that day. Father and I had given each other the courage to carry on. Now I had to do it on my own.

  The devastation in the streets was still horribly evident, but the piles of rubble had been pushed aside to clear the roads, filling the gaps where buildings used to be. I was grateful to find the buses running and managed to get a seat on the top deck.

  As we came to the West End, the sun came out. The plane trees were in leaf and hundreds of people were out enjoying the parks: men working on newly dug allotments, families playing, soldiers with their girls, and office workers sunning themselves on the lunch break. Silver barrage balloons glinted in the sunlight like giant abstract sculptures. It gave me hope, seeing that London could go on living and people could go on enjoying themselves in spite of the bombs and the great losses.

  The Ministry of Supply was based in Shell Mex House on the north bank of the Thames. Even with sandbags stacked at the entrance and crisscross tape on every window, to my country mouse eyes it looked more like an Art Deco palace than an office building. A soldier on guard smiled appreciatively at me. I smiled back, showed my business card, and he let me inside.

  In the entrance hall, enormous columns of multicolored marble stretched upward to support the intricately decorated plaster ceiling. Hanging from its center was a huge chandelier, larger even than the one at the Manor, with a thousand crystals that shimmered spangles of light into the whole space, including the highly polished buttons on the doorman’s uniform. He directed me up the sweeping staircase. The brass banister was so beautifully polished, I avoided using it for fear of leaving fingerprints, and I tried not to gawp too obviously at the portraits of pompous men rising up along the stairway in their ostentatious gilt frames.

  The top of the stairs led into an empty rectangular room the size of half a tennis court, carpeted in an expanse of deep claret patterned with yellow cockleshells. Dusty sunshine streamed through five tall windows opposite, and I wandered over to look out across Embankment to the river, flowing so calmly, so unaware of the utter disruption of war.

  The curtains were Jacquard-woven with a delicate shell motif and I’d just started to examine the design when a voice barked across the room, “We need tea and coffee please, Miss. Pronto.” I looked up to see a balding gentleman in an over-tight three-piece suit gesturing toward the long table on the other side of the room, set with green utility china cups and saucers on a white tablecloth.

  Caught off guard, I stuttered, “I’m sorry. I really don’t know where it’s got to.”

  “Well go and find out, they’ll be arriving soon,” he commanded imperiously. Without waiting for an answer, he turned and went through another doorway.

  I was about to follow him to clear up the misunderstanding when a lady with a trolley arrived and started to set out the tea. She was followed shortly by a number of large, confident men, all greeting each other in self-important voices.

  As they gathered around the tea table, I could see they were grouping themselves into clans. The businessmen, even in their expensive pinstriped suits, appeared positively dowdy beside RAF officers with their flocks of epaulette wings, and even these were outshone by the galaxies of stars glittering on the Army men’s khaki.

  I straightened my skirt and walked as casually as possible across the wide stretch of carpet, poured a cup of gray coffee, moved toward the pinstripers, and insinuated myself into a gap in their circle. They were so engaged in animated conversation most of them hardly seemed to notice me, but a younger man with a brightly striped tie smiled sweetly.

  “Hello,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve met before?”

  “I’m Lily Verner.” I said, returning the smile. “Verner and Sons.”

  “Ah Verners,” he said, a little distractedly. “I think we supply you with yarn. Michael Merrison. How do you do.” His hand was large and warm.

  The others peered at me, mumbled hellos, shook my hand in turn, and, after an awkward pause, resumed their discussion.

  “Don’t know about you lot, but conscription’s causing us all kinds of problems,” said one. “All I’ve got left is women and old boys.”

  “Bloody difficult to find good people these days,” another agreed.

  The conversation continued in this vein. I couldn’t let the implied criticism of women workers go unchallenged.

  “Actually, I find it’s a good combination,” I found myself saying, hardly believing this authoritative voice was coming from me. “The old boys have plenty of experience and women make excellent weavers, quick to learn and very dextrous, don’t you think?”

  They stopped and looked at each other, apparently disconcerted by my intervention, wondering how to react. The younger man was grinning again, and he had just started to say something when a loud voice summoned us into the meeting room and the group broke up.

  The Army and Air Force chaps moved first, filing confidently into what appeared to be their usual seats along either side of a long, oval mahogany table with a dazzling sheen. The businessmen courteously stood aside for me, and as I entered the room, I could see five khaki uniforms seating themselves on the far side, and on the nearside, six gray-blue uniforms taking their chairs. By the time I could see past the crowd of large backs, the only place untaken was next to the stout man who had shouted at me earlier.

  “I thought Marilyn was clerking?” he said, peering at me with a puzzled expression as I sat down.

  “My name is Lily Verner, how do you do,” I replied, with what I hoped was a forgiving smile. At that moment, he was distracted by something behind me, and I twisted around to see a young woman standing beside my chair, her notebook in hand. With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I realized that she was Marilyn, the clerk, and I was sitting in her seat.

  The room fell silent and every face turned toward me. I could see, at the other end of the table, the young businessman collecting an extra chair and pl
acing it next to his.

  “Miss Verner, would you like to sit here?” he called.

  I walked the length of the room, cheeks burning, and sat down murmuring my gratitude. He slid a piece of paper toward me and I studied it carefully. It read: Agenda. Minutes of previous meeting. Item 1: Parachute Silk Supplies. Item 2: Insulation Silk Supplies. Any Other Business. Date of Next Meeting.

  The stout person turned out to be the chairman, Sir George Markham, head of the silk section of the Ministry of Supply. He called the meeting to order and introduced himself, though no one else was invited to do so. Perhaps they all knew each other already. After my faux pas with the seating, I was not about to pipe up.

  People were distributing more pieces of paper titled Minutes of the Meeting, 29th November 1939. I took a copy and passed the others on.

  The name at the top, among the list of attendees, was like a slap in the face: Mr. Harold Verner. I was so busy being nervous that I’d completely forgotten he would have been here, the last time this meeting was held. Father had sat in this same room, probably with the same people in their same seats, less than a month before he died. And not just then, but many times before.

  I could almost feel his solid presence, see him at this table, sitting with back straight, his face fully engaged with the proceedings, his voice calm and reasonable, making sure his points were always fully understood. Which chair had he sat on? What contributions had he made? Who were his allies, or even his friends? It should be you here today, Father, not me, I thought, but you will never sit here again. The sadness was dizzying, threatening to overwhelm me.

  There was a hand on my shoulder, and I heard the nice young man’s voice asking “Miss Verner, are you all right?”

  I nodded and took a few deep breaths. Tell me what to do, I asked Father silently, how shall I react to these people, in these surroundings that are so familiar to you? But there was no reply.

  “Agenda Item One,” the chairman announced firmly. “Raw silk supplies. You all know the problem, and the minister wants it sorted, sharpish. Put plainly, if we’re going to win this war, we need more parachutes, and we’re perilously short of raw silk. Japan is siding with the Axis powers and controls trade routes to China. It goes without saying that European silk is unobtainable. Over to you, gentlemen.”

  Within moments, the two sides were sniping at each other across the table.

  “Why can’t you use cotton like our paratroopers—or are your fliers too grand for that?”

  The Air Force returned fire. “You try fitting one of those bulky cotton jobs into the cockpit of a fighter plane, old man, you’d soon see why.”

  “Gentlemen, please,” the chairman said wearily. “We have a mutual enemy to fight, remember?”

  One of the business types raised his hand like a schoolchild. It struck me as a silly gesture for a grown man, and I thought of Vera. She’d have been sitting here, shoulders shaking, trying to stifle her giggles.

  “Yes, Johnson?” asked the chairman.

  “How are those R&D men getting on with nylon?”

  “They’re working hard on it, but they can’t get the strength-to-bulk ratios right,” said the chairman. “We’re pushing them hard, and hope to have a result soon.”

  An RAF man sniped again, “Our chaps won’t accept nylon ’chutes, even if you get the other things sorted. Anywhere near fire and it melts like candle wax. You feel what it’s like to have a load of molten nylon running down your back and you’ll realize why they’re not keen.” His troops muttered support and the khaki side held their fire.

  “I can see it’s not going to be an easy one, but we can defer our decision until we’ve got the R&D results, if you’re all agreed,” the chairman said, and there were nods around the table as they moved on to the next item on the agenda: insulation silk.

  The room was airless and smelled of undisturbed dust. Through the windows, past the military haircuts, I watched the plane trees glittering green and silver in the sunshine, and for a moment, lost the thread of the discussion. Turning my gaze back into the room, I caught the young man looking at me again, his eyes so dark blue they seemed almost violet. A nice face, honest and dependable, I thought, failing to notice that the chairman was addressing me.

  “Miss Verner, are you with us?”

  I nodded, blushing again.

  “I assume you are here because your father has another engagement? Do you have anything to contribute to this debate on his behalf?”

  I cleared my throat. “I am sorry to tell you that my father passed away in December.” Everyone’s eyes turned toward me. “So I am attending this meeting as acting managing director of Verner and Sons.”

  Since no one responded, I took a deep breath and forced myself to carry on. “However, I am pleased to report that Verners is weaving more than three thousand yards of parachute silk every week, all of which has been accepted by your ministry as being of correct weight and porosity.” I could hear Father’s voice now, leading my words. “We have also experimented, on behalf of the ministry, with cotton-silk mix using fine cotton for the warp, which is currently under testing.”

  The chairman nodded encouragement, Marilyn was scribbling busily in her notebook, and suddenly everyone was paying attention. I could sense the young man beside me, urging me on.

  “I am new to this committee,” I said, growing in confidence now. Father’s voice had disappeared; I was speaking for myself. Perhaps Gwen was right; they might be more likely to listen to a woman. “But I hope to be able to contribute fully and will do whatever I can to support the sourcing of additional raw silk stocks or the development of new fibers.”

  “Thank you, Miss Verner, for that helpful contribution. And please accept the condolences of myself and the committee for the sad loss of your father. He was a stalwart member of this committee.” There was a new warmth in the chairman’s voice and mutterings of “hear, hear” around the table.

  When the meeting finally ended, we filed back downstairs into the lobby, and as I headed straight for the door, longing for fresh air, the young businessman caught up with me.

  “I am so sorry to hear about Mr. Verner. I only met him once but he seemed very knowledgeable, and a real gentleman,” he said. “Please let me introduce myself properly. I am Michael Merrison, of Merrisons silk merchants. We deserve a cup of tea after all that. There’s a Lyons nearby, would you care to join me? They may even have something other than carrot cake—what a treat that would be.”

  Over tea and Battenberg cake (a treat indeed) in the crowded, noisy Corner House, he told me about his family business, which sourced silk yarn from around the world. The company was based in Macclesfield, the center of the weaving industry. His northern vowels sounded mildly exotic.

  “Do you supply Verners?”

  “Of course. Since way back.”

  “No wonder your name’s familiar.”

  We clicked at once, Michael and I, though at the time I thought little of it. He was self-assured without being arrogant, funny without being silly. Not handsome, but good-looking, with his brown curly hair and eyes that seemed never far from a smile. And he had perfect manners.

  I felt a sense of kindred; his family and mine had known each other and worked together, perhaps for generations.

  “Do you enjoy working for the family business?” I asked.

  “Frankly, it was the last thing I imagined myself doing. I was going to be an explorer and find the source of the Nile.”

  “Dr. Merrison, I presume?” People at neighboring tables turned and smiled at his generous guffaw.

  “When Father finally persuaded me to hang up my pith helmet and join the yarn trade, I discovered it was surprisingly interesting. We all consider what we grow up with to be much more mundane than it really is.”

  “It was like that for me. I was going to travel the world and learn languages till the war came along. Then I fell in love with silk.”

  “Well, there’s a silver lining,” he said. “Oth
erwise we might not have met.” The flirtatious smile reminded me of Stefan’s, made me ache for him. I must be careful not to lead Michael on, I thought. But I would like him to be a friend.

  “Is yours a reserved occupation too?”

  “It is, but I joined up anyway, after Dunkirk.”

  “What happened? Were you injured?”

  He nodded, his mouth full of cake. “But it shames me to say I never saw active service. Hurt my back during training, and they couldn’t fix it, so they paid me off.”

  “Why’s that so shameful?”

  “They were such a great bunch. Now they’re in North Africa in the heat and the sand, dying by the dozen, while I’m just swanning around in my pinstripes. It’s hard to bear.”

  “Hardly swanning. I’d have thought that making sure we have enough supplies of silk is pretty critical.”

  “It’s certainly a struggle at the moment, what with the Japanese blockade.” He paused, then leaned over the table and lowered his voice. “Can I trust you with a secret, Lily?”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s so exciting I can hardly keep it to myself. This morning, before the committee, I went to a meeting with Sir George’s people in the ministry. We’d submitted a proposal for sourcing silk in the Middle East—in Syria and the Lebanon—and they’ve agreed to it. My father went a few years ago and he knows some people. They’ve asked me to go and get things moving, just as soon as it can be arranged.”

  “My goodness. How exciting.”

  “The hill farmers there have grown silkworms for centuries, but only for local use. They’re not commercial. That’s going to be my job. Get them producing more cocoons and set up filatures to reel it.”

  “How on earth will you get there? You can’t fly over France, or the Med. Or North Africa, surely.”

  “It’s going to be tricky.” He tapped the side of his nose. “They’re working it out for me. There’s talk of a flying boat up the Nile to Cairo.”

  “Wow, you might find the source after all. When do you go?”

  “Soon, I think. They’re also organizing me a crash course in Arabic.” The violet-blue eyes beamed. “Sounds terrific, doesn’t it?”