Last Telegram Read online

  I perched uneasily on the desk. From his leather armchair by the window, Father took a deep breath that was nearly, but not quite, a sigh.

  “Mother and I have been having a chat,” he started, meaning he’d decided something and had told her what he thought. My mind raced. This was ominous; whatever could it be? What had I done wrong recently?

  “I won’t beat around the bush, my darling. You’ve read the reports and now, with what John told us this afternoon…”

  “About the pogrom?” The word was like a lump in my mouth.

  He ran a hand distractedly through his thinning hair, pushing it over the balding patch at the back. “Look, I know this will be disappointing, but you heard what he told us.”

  I held my breath, dreading what he was about to say.

  “In the circumstances, Mother and I think it would be unwise for you to go to Geneva this September.”

  A pulse started to thump painfully in my temple. “Unwise? What do you mean? I’m not Jewish. Surely this pogrom thing won’t make any difference to me?” He held my gaze, his expression fixed. He’d made up his mind. “It isn’t fair,” I heard myself whining. “You didn’t stop John going.”

  “That was a year ago. Things have changed, my love.”

  “The Nazis aren’t in Switzerland.”

  He shook his head. “Not yet, perhaps. But Hitler is an ambitious man. We have absolutely no idea where he will go next.”

  “But Chamberlain…?” I was floundering, clinging to flotsam I knew wouldn’t float.

  “He’s doing his best, poor man.” Father shook his head sadly. “He believes in peace, and so do I. No one wants another war. But it’s not looking too good.”

  I couldn’t comprehend what was happening. In the space of two minutes, my future life, as far as I could see it, had slipped away, and I was powerless to stop it. “But I have to go. I’ve been planning it for months.”

  “You don’t need to make any quick decisions. We’ll let Geneva know you won’t be going in September, but other than that, you can take your time.” Father’s voice was still calm and reasonable. I felt anything but.

  “I don’t want to take my time. I want to go now,” I whined, like a petulant child. “Besides, what would I do instead?”

  He felt in his pocket for his tobacco pouch and favorite briar pipe. With infuriating precision, he packed the pipe, deftly lit a match, held it to the bowl, and puffed. After a moment he took it from his mouth and looked up, his face alight with certainty. “How about a cooking course? Always comes in handy.”

  I stared at him, a hot swell of anger erupting inside my head. “You really don’t understand, do you?” I registered his disapproving frown but the words spilled out anyway. “Because I’m a girl you think my only ambition is to be a perfect little wife, cooking my husband wonderful meals and putting his slippers out every evening.”

  “Watch your tone, Lily,” he warned.

  To avoid meeting his eyes, I started to pace the Persian rug by the desk. “Times have changed, Father. I’m just as intelligent as any man, and I’m not going to let my brain go soggy learning to be a wonderful cook or a perfect seamstress. I don’t want to be a wife either, not yet anyway. I want to do something with my life.”

  “And so you shall, Lily. We will find something for you. But not in Geneva, or anywhere else in Europe for that matter,” he said firmly. “And now I think we should finish this discussion. It’s time for bed.”

  I nearly slammed the study door behind me but thought better of it at the last minute and pulled it carefully closed. In my bedroom, I cursed Father, Chamberlain, and Hitler, in that order. I loved my room, with its pretty damask curtains and matching bedcover, but these treasured things now seemed to mock me, trapping me here in Westbury. After a while, I caught sight of myself in the mirror and realized how wretched I looked. Self-pity would get me nowhere, and certainly not into a more interesting life. I needed to get away from home, perhaps to London, to be near Vera. But what could I do? I was qualified for nothing.

  I remembered Aunt Phoebe. She was a rather distant figure, a maiden aunt who lived in London with a lady companion, worked in an office somewhere, drove an Austin Seven all over Europe, and cared little for what anyone else thought about her unconventional way of life. Perhaps I could train as a secretary, like her? Earn enough to rent a little flat? The idea started to seem quite attractive. It wasn’t as romantic as Geneva, but at least I would get away and meet some interesting people.

  Now all I had to do was convince Father that this was a reasonable plan.

  At breakfast next day, I crossed my fingers behind my back and announced, “I’ve decided to get a job in London. Vera and I are going to share a bedsit.” I hadn’t asked her yet, but I was sure she would say yes.

  “Lovely, dear.” Mother was distracted, serving breakfast eggs and bacon from the hotplate.

  “Sounds fun,” John said, emptying most of the contents of the coffee jug into the giant cup he’d bought in France. “Vera’s a good laugh. What are you going to do?”

  “Leave some coffee for me,” I said. “I could do anything, but preferably something in an office. I’ll need to get some experience first. I thought perhaps I could spend a few weeks helping Beryl at Cheapside?” Beryl managed Verners’ London office. “What do you think, Father?”

  “Well, now,” he said, carefully folding his newspaper and placing it beside his knife and fork. “Another Verner in the firm? There’s an idea.” He took the plate from Mother and started to butter his toast, neatly, right to the edges. “A very good idea. But you’d have to work your way up like everyone else.”

  “What do you mean, ‘work my way up’?” Was he deliberately misinterpreting what I’d said?

  “You’d have to start like John did, as a weaver,” he said, moving his fried egg onto the toast.

  “That’s not what I meant. I want secretarial experience, in an office. Not weaving,” I said sharply. “I don’t need to know how to weave the stuff to type letters about it. Does Beryl have to weave?”

  He gave me a fierce look, and the room went quiet. Mother slipped out, muttering about more toast, and John studied the pattern on the tablecloth. Father put down his knife and fork with a small sigh, resigned to sacrificing his hot breakfast for the greater cause of instructing his willful daughter.

  “Let me explain, my dearest Lily, the basic principles of working life. Beryl came to us as a highly experienced administrator, and you have no skills or experience. You know very well that I do not provide sinecures for my family, and I will not give you a job just because you are a Verner. As I said, you need to learn the business from the bottom up to demonstrate that you are not just playing at it.”

  He took a deep breath and then continued. “But I’ll make you an offer. Prove yourself here at Westbury, and if, after six months, you are still determined to go to London and take up office work, I will pay for you to go to secretarial college. If that is what you really want. Otherwise, it’s a cookery course. Take it or leave it.”

  3

  Weaving is the process of passing a “weft” thread, normally in a shuttle, through “warp” threads wound parallel to each other on a “beam” of the total width of the cloth being woven. The structure of the weave is varied by raising or lowering selected warp threads each time the weft is passed through.

  —The History of Silk by Harold Verner

  I never intended to become a silk weaver, but Herr Hitler and my father had left me with little choice.

  Of course, I was already familiar with the mill, from living next door, carrying messages for Mother, or visiting to ask Father a favor. It held no romance for me—it was just a building full of noisy machinery, dusty paperwork, and hard-edged commerce. The idea of spending six months there felt like a life sentence.

  Then, as now, the original Old Mill could be seen clearly across the factory yard from the kitchen window of The Chestnuts: two symmetrical stories of Victorian red brick;
a wide, low-pitched slate roof; green painted double front doors at the center; two double sash windows on either side and three above. These days it’s just a small part of the complex my son runs with impressive efficiency.

  Behind Old Mill stretches an acre of modern weaving sheds where the Rapier looms clash and clatter, producing cloth at a rate we could never have imagined in my day. Even now, in the heat of summer, when the doors are opened to allow a cooling breeze, I hear the distant looms like the low drone of bees. It reassures me that all is well.

  The ebb and flow of work at the mill had always been part of our family life. In those days, employees arrived and departed on foot or by bicycle for two shifts every weekday, except for a fortnight’s closure at Christmas and the annual summer break. It’s the same now, except they come by car and motorbike. Families have worked there for generations, ever since my great-great-grandfather moved the business out of London, away from its Spitalfields roots. In East Anglia, they found water to power their mills and skilled weavers who had been made redundant by the dying wool trade.

  Even today the weavers’ faces seem familiar, though I no longer know them by name. I recognize family traits—heavy brows, cleft chins, tight curls, broad shoulders, unusual height or slightness—that have been handed down from father to son, from mother to daughter. They are loyal types, these weaving families, proud of their skills and the beauty of the fabrics they produce.

  Then, as now, vans pulled into the yard several times a week to deliver bales of raw yarn and take away rolls of woven fabric. When not required at the London office, my father walked to work through the kitchen garden gate and across the yard and came home for the cooked lunch that Mother had spent much of the morning preparing. She rarely stepped foot in the mill. Her place was in the home, she said, and that’s how she liked it.

  • • •

  When I arrived at breakfast that first day, John looked me up and down and said smugly, “You’d better change that skirt, Sis. You’re better off in slacks for bending over looms. And you’ll regret those heels after you’ve been on your feet for nine hours.”

  “While you sit on your backside pushing papers around,” I grumbled, scowling at his smart new suit and striped tie. It was bad enough that I had to start as a lowly apprentice weaver, but John had recently been promoted to the office, which made it worse.

  I’d never envied what was in store for him: a lifelong commitment to the responsibility of running a silk mill in a rural town. As the eighth generation of male Verners, it was unthinkable that he would do anything other than follow Father into the business and take over as managing director when he retired. John was following the natural order of things.

  “I bet you’ll get the old battle-ax,” he said, crunching loudly on his toast.

  “Language, and manners please, John,” Mother muttered mildly.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “Gwen Collins. Assistant weaving floor manager. Does most of the training. Terrifying woman.”

  “Thanks for the encouragement.”

  “Don’t listen to your brother. You’ll get on splendidly,” Mother said encouragingly. “You never know, you might even enjoy it.”

  I was unconvinced. Setting off across the yard, the short trip I had seen my father, and more recently John, take every morning, I felt depressed: this was far from the glamorous life I’d planned. But why were butterflies causing mayhem in my stomach—was I afraid of being ridiculed as the gaffer’s daughter, I wondered, of letting him down? Or scared that I might not be able to learn fast enough, that people might laugh behind my back? Oh, get a grip, Lily, I muttered to myself. This is a means to an end, remember? Besides, you haven’t let anything beat you yet, and you’re not about to start now.

  I took a deep breath, went through the big green double doors into the mill, and climbed the long wooden stairs to Father’s office.

  My first impressions of Gwen Collins were certainly not favorable. She wasn’t exactly old—in her late twenties I judged—but otherwise John’s description seemed pretty accurate. An unprepossessing woman, dumpy and shorter than me, in a shapeless brown smock and trousers with men’s turn-ups, she had concealed her hair beneath an unflattering flowery scarf wrapped and knotted like a turban. There was something rather manly about her—a disregard for how others saw her, perhaps. Her expression was serious, even severe. But something softened it, gave her an air of vulnerability. Then I realized what it was: I had never seen anyone with so many freckles. They covered her face, merging into blobs that almost concealed the pale, nearly translucent skin beneath. She’d made no effort to hide them with makeup. Even her eyelids were speckled.

  I returned the forceful handshake with what I hoped was a friendly smile. “Pleased to meet you, Gwen. Father tells me you’re going to teach me all you know. He says you’re a mine of information.”

  “Mr. Harold is very kind; the regard is mutual,” she replied without returning the smile and without even a glance at Father. Pale green eyes regarded me with unsettling intensity beneath her almost invisibly blond eyelashes.

  After an awkward pause, she said briskly, “Right, we’ll make a start in the packing hall, so you can learn about what we produce, then we’ll go round the mill to see how we weave it.” With no further pleasantries, she turned and led the way, striding down the corridor so purposefully I had to trot to keep up.

  The packing hall was—still is today—a large room running the length of the first floor of Old Mill. Sun poured in through six tall windows along the southern wall, and the room was almost oppressively warm, with that dry, sweet smell of raw silk that would soon become part of my very being. Along the opposite wall were deep wooden racks stacked from floor to ceiling with bolts of cloth.

  In the center, two workers stood at wide tables edged with shiny bronze yard-rules, expertly measuring, cutting, and rolling or folding bundles of material and wrapping them with sturdy brown paper and string. On the window side, four others sat at tilted tables like architects’ drawing boards, covered with cloth stretched between two rolls, one at the top and another at the bottom.

  “These are pickers,” Gwen said, introducing me as “Miss Lily, Mr. Harold’s daughter.” As we shook hands, they lowered their eyes deferentially, probably cursing the fact that they would have to watch their language with another Verner hanging around.

  “Just call me Lily, please,” I stuttered. “It’s my first day, and I’ve got a lot to learn.” Naïvely, I imagined they might in time consider me one of them.

  “They check the silk and mark each fault with a short red thread tied into the selvedge. That’s the edge of the fabric,” Gwen said, pointing at the end of the roll. “For every fault, we supply an extra half yard—it’s our reputation for quality.” I nodded frequently, trying to appear more enthusiastic than I felt. “Now, how much do you know about silk?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid,” I admitted, embarrassed. Surely a Verner should have silk in the blood?

  I caught the first hint of a smile. “I’ll take that as a challenge, then.”

  Gwen turned to a shelf and lifted a heavy roll onto the table, steadied an end with one hand, and, in a single deft movement, grasped the loose end of the material and pulled out a cascade that unravelled like liquid gold.

  “Wow,” I said, genuinely dazzled.

  She crumpled a bundle between her hands, lowering her ear to it. “Listen.”

  I bent my head, and she scrunched it again. It sounded like a footstep on dry snow or cotton wool tearing.

  “That’s called scroop, a good test for real silk when it’s been dyed in the yarn.”

  As I crumpled it, the vibration ran through my hands, up my arms, and into my ears, making me shiver.

  She rolled up the gold with practiced ease and pulled out a bolt of vivid scarlet, deep purple, and green stripes, spread it across the table with that same skilled movement, then expertly folded a diagonal section into a necktie shape and held it beneath her
chin. “Tie materials are mostly rep stripes and Jacquard designs,” she said, “woven to order for clubs and societies. Men so love their status symbols, don’t they?”

  Again, I saw that puzzling crimp at the corner of her eyes. “Jacquard?”

  “Type of loom. Clever bit of kit for weaving patterns, brought here by your Huguenot ancestors. You’ll see them when we go down to the weaving shed.”

  She unravelled a third roll. This one had a navy background with a delicate gold fleur-de-lis pattern. She pulled a small brass object from her pocket, carefully unfolding it into a tiny magnifying glass hinged onto two plates, one of which had a square hole. She placed this on the silk and gestured for me to put my eye to the glass.

  The motif was so enlarged that hair-like individual silk threads, almost invisible to the naked eye, looked like strands of wool so thick that I could measure them against the ruler markings along the inner square of the lower plate. “I had no idea,” I murmured, fascinated by the miniature world under the glass. “There’s so much more to it than I ever imagined.” As I looked up, the glint of satisfaction that passed across Gwen’s face reminded me of my Latin teacher when I’d finally managed to get those wretched declensions right.

  She moved along the racking and pulled out a fat roll. “This one’s spun silk,” she said, unravelling the cloth and draping it over my hands. It was heavy, the texture of matte satin, the color of clotted cream, and wonderfully sensuous. It felt deliciously soft and warm, like being stroked with eiderdown, and almost without thinking I lifted it to my cheek. Then I caught that knowing smile again, felt self-conscious, and handed it back rather too hastily. Gwen’s manner was unnerving: most of the time she was coolly professional and businesslike, but sometimes her responses were disconcertingly intimate, as though she could read my thoughts.

  She looked up at the clock. “It’s nearly coffee-break. Just time for the pièce de résistance.”

  At first, I thought the taffeta was aquamarine. But when its shimmering threads caught the light, the color shifted to an intense royal blue. It was like a mirage, there one moment and gone the next. “Beautiful, isn’t it? It’s shot silk. A blue weft shot through a green warp.” She held up a length, iridescent as a butterfly wing, into a shaft of sunlight. I almost gasped.