Last Telegram Page 8

  John backed away, palms up. “Steady on, old thing. I just meant keep on the right side of him, nothing more or less. But mark my words, he’ll ask you for a date within the week. I’d bet my hat on it.”

  • • •

  “It’s that charming Mr. Cameron on the blower. Wishes to speak to my beautiful daughter,” Father said, exchanging approving glances with Mother.

  “I’ll keep my hat, then,” John said, making triumphant nudge-nudge gestures as I went to the telephone, cheeks burning.

  The days till Saturday dragged slowly by. I was so excited at the prospect of my first proper date, I could barely sit still. I emptied my wardrobe and chest of drawers, trying on a dozen combinations of outfits, eventually settling on a tartan skirt and baby-blue cashmere twinset that felt both casual but also flatteringly feminine. My new silk stockings, fresh out of the pack, felt sleek and sexy. At last the evening arrived.

  As I sat in the cinema with Robbie’s arm around my shoulders, I realized with a little thrill of excitement that he bore more than a passing resemblance to the star of the film, James Stewart. Being in the company of this handsome man felt deliciously glamorous.

  Afterward, we went for a drink in the pub, and it was past eleven by the time we returned home. Robbie offered his hand and I climbed with as much elegance as I could muster out of the low-slung car. He wrapped an arm around my waist, and with his other hand turned my face to his and kissed me. At first it was demure, like before, but then I felt him push my lips apart with his tongue, exploring my mouth with it. I felt myself in the hands of a skilled operator, closed my eyes, and tried to lose myself in the moment.

  But the sensation wasn’t what I expected, not swoony, like in the movies. All I could think of was that he tasted of cigarettes and beer. I was glad when he stopped.

  “You dear sweet thing,” he said, stroking my hair. “We must do this again. We could have some serious fun together. Tell you what, I’ve got a friend who has a cottage in the Peaks. I could borrow a friend’s plane and fly you there for a weekend. What do you think?”

  “That sounds…cracking,” I stuttered. I could hardly concentrate as he kissed me good-bye, my head was in such a spin. Whatever did he mean? Was he really suggesting we should have a dirty weekend? That was a bit fast, even for James Stewart.

  • • •

  “You were back late last night. Have a nice time, dear?” Mother enquired as we cleared the breakfast dishes.

  “Lovely. The film was a laugh,” I mumbled. “James Stewart’s a great actor.”

  “Charming young man, isn’t he? Your father’s quite taken with him,” she said distractedly.

  Robbie was ideal boyfriend material. I was sure that I was falling in love. But how could I know for certain? What was I supposed to feel? Vera had been promised a weekend off soon, and I couldn’t wait to tell her everything.

  • • •

  A few days later, Mother, John, and I were eating supper informally at the kitchen table. Father had stayed over in London. Out of the window, I could see the mill in darkness, except for the lights of the new finishing plant casting bright stripes across the empty yard.

  John pushed the ham and potato salad around his plate.

  “Not hungry, dear?” Mother asked.

  “I’m fine,” he snapped.

  “Sorry it’s only a cold meal tonight, but I thought, with this weather.”

  “I said I’m fine.” Like the slam of a shuttle.

  Another silence, then he banged down his knife and fork. “It’s that ruddy vat in the finishing plant. I just can’t get the thermostat and timer to work properly. I’ve tried and tried. We’ve wasted God knows how much silk by overboiling it. Now it’s useless for parachutes and no one else is going to want it. We’ve spent thousands on this kit but unless we can get the silk right sharpish, we’ll never get the contracts to pay off the debt.”

  He sighed, rubbing his stubbly cheek. “I’ll just have to go back after supper and have another go.”

  “Do you have to? You look all done in,” Mother murmured.

  “Shall I come and help?” I said, surprising myself.

  “Why should you? You’ve done a day’s work already.”

  “It’s important to me too, you know, the future of the mill and all that.” He raised his eyebrows. I barely understood how it had happened, but my apprenticeship no longer felt like filling in time until something better came along. I was starting to care.

  “Come on then,” he said, pushing away his chair and getting up from the table. “A pair of fresh eyes won’t do any harm.”

  Unlike the weaving shed, with its oily smells and dark looms, the finishing plant was dazzling—brightly lit and newly whitewashed, with shiny stainless steel vats and tubes, steamy and clean-smelling like a laundry.

  Although I’d seen the machinery being installed, I hadn’t watched it working before. John showed me how the silk went through two large baths of boiling water to be degummed and rinsed, and how to lift the silk onto hooks called stenters that stretched it back to its previous width. After that, it was hung in a hot air cupboard to dry and run through yet more rollers to be pressed.

  “Looks simple, doesn’t it? But it’s not. The silk has to go over the rollers at exactly the right speeds, and at the same time the temperature in the vats has to be exact.”

  He wiped his brow. “And even supposing we get all that right, we have to make sure the silk goes through the drier at the right speed and temperature so that it’s just damp enough to be put through hot rollers to iron it—what we call calendering.”

  Stacked on a rack were rolls of the untreated white silk Stefan and I had woven. “I’ve had the vats heating and the thermostat says they’re at the right temperature, so shall we have another go? Help me up with this roll, would you?”

  “Hang on a sec,” I said. “Didn’t you say there was a problem with the thermostat?”

  He frowned. Why was I asking difficult questions when I knew nothing about it? “How am I supposed to know if we don’t try it first?”

  “Use a thermometer? Good old-fashioned kind?”

  “Where on earth can we get one of those at this time of night?”

  I had a moment of inspiration. “Mother’s jam thermometer, the brass one on the hook above the stove. I’ll run back and get it.”

  We lowered the thermometer into the vat on a piece of wire, and once the rolls were in place, John clicked a switch and the machinery started, pulling the silk through the first two vats. The steam ran in rivulets down our faces as we worked side by side, hooking the silk onto the stenters. John turned his attention to the control panel and checked the thermometer. I went outside to cool off.

  When I came back, he said, “You were right, you know. The thermostat said two hundred and twelve degrees and cut out the heater, but the thermometer was only at a hundred and eighty-nine. I’ve had to adjust the thermostat higher still to get the water to boiling point. Bloody thing’s obviously on the blink.” It was as though the machine had personally insulted him. Trying to conceal my smugness, I went to watch the silk emerge from the drier.

  “Shouldn’t this silk be rolling straight?” I called over the growl of the machinery. He left the control panel and came to look.

  “Oh blast, what the hell is wrong now?” he cursed, rushing to hit the off switch. The machinery sighed slightly as it came to a halt. “If I run the rollers slowly in reverse, can you pull out the wrinkles?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Mind your fingers.”

  “Will do, have a go.” As silk rewound, it became clear what had caused the problem. “I think this roller’s slightly offset,” I called. “That’s why the silk’s not rolling up straight.”

  He stopped the machine and came back. “By God, you’re right, Lily. Can’t bloody trust anyone.” He went to a tool box and pulled out a large spanner. “We’ll have to adjust the axle.”

  Finally we got started again, and when I
next looked, the clock on the wall read half-past nine. We’d been working for two hours, but I’d hardly noticed the time passing.

  “Now we have to test it,” he said. “Help me lift it over here. This thing’s a burst tester, which checks how much strain the silk can take before it breaks. And then we have to put it through the porosity tester. That’s the most important—it measures how quickly the air goes through the fabric.”

  I hadn’t noticed the two curious contraptions on the stainless steel tabletop. The smaller one looked rather like a sewing machine with a large dial attached to one side. John pulled out a few yards of material, laid it across the plate, and lowered the lever, trapping the silk snugly over the hole below. “Wind the handle, slowly.” As I turned the small wheel, the needle moved clockwise round its dial and the rubber expanded upward into a dome, stretching the cloth till there was a slight “whoof” as it broke.

  “Wundervoll,” he said, releasing the lever and inspecting the hole. “Weft and warp broke together at eighty point three. That’ll do nicely.” He wrote the result into a red-backed ledger.

  With its orange rubber tubes and multiple dials, the porosity tester looked more like something out of science fiction. John positioned the silk and lowered the lever, compressing round rubber seals onto the material from both sides. When he pushed the button, the machine hissed and sighed for a few seconds. He scrutinized the needle as it leaped and settled on the dial, then threw his hands up into the air in triumph. “Fourteen point four, the golden number. At last.” He did a little jig and gave me a hug.

  “Fourteen point four what?”

  “Cubic feet per second, that’s how fast the air is supposed to go through a square foot of fabric. It’s air permeability—the porosity index Robbie was going on about.”

  “It has to be that exact?”

  “Within a close range. We ought to repeat the test a couple of times to make sure it’s consistent. But we can do that tomorrow.”

  I was too excited to wait. “We’ll sleep better if we know it’s right. Do a couple more now. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

  The next two came within the right range and we decided to call it a day. Walking back across the yard to the darkened house, he said, “Thanks for your help tonight, Sis.”

  “I quite enjoyed it,” I said, glowing at the unexpected compliment.

  “That thermometer was a stroke of genius, and I can’t understand why no one spotted the wonky roller before.” He stopped. “Want a smoke before we go in?”

  We sat on the front step and lit up.

  “Whatever happened to your plans to go to London?” he asked. “Thought you couldn’t wait to get away from here?”

  “I’d like to sometime,” I said, wondering whether this was still true. “But working at the mill has turned out to be a lot more interesting than I imagined.”

  “I hear good things about you from Gwen,” he said.

  “She never says anything to me. What did she tell you?” I asked, quietly pleased.

  “She says you’ve learned fast and you’re a hard worker. Got an eye for detail,” he said, “just what you need in a weaver.”

  “That’s good to hear,” I said. “She goes on about how skilled Stefan is too, but she never tells him, so he’s always worrying whether she likes him. I wonder why she never praises anyone directly?”

  “Nature of the beast,” John laughed. “She’s a funny old stick.”

  We puffed in silence for a few moments.

  “I don’t want to be a weaver forever, but it’s quite important, what we are doing here, don’t you think?” I said.

  “We’re preparing for war,” he said gloomily. “War kills people.”

  “Our parachutes will save lives, at least,” I said, not wanting to deflate my cheerful mood.

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” he said oddly, stubbing out the cigarette under his heel with surprising ferocity. I wondered what was on his mind, but forgot all about it until later, when Vera told me.

  7

  The silk we love for its softness and beauty is also one of the strongest and toughest fibers in the world. It has a strength of around five grams per denier compared with three grams per denier for a drawn wire of soft steel. It has much more elasticity than cotton or flax, and its resistance to shearing or twisting forces is considerably greater than that of the new rayons and nylons.

  —The History of Silk by Harold Verner

  At last, Vera got a weekend off. She came home rarely these days.

  I missed my best friend, our gossip and silliness, our shared sense of the ridiculous. She could only talk on the public telephone in a noisy corridor of the nurses’ home, and at my end Father tended to hang around, muttering about the cost of the calls, so we couldn’t speak for long. All I’d gathered was that her matron was a tyrant, and the pressure of studying as well as working long shifts was beginning to tell.

  On Friday evening, she arrived at the front door, still in her nurse’s uniform, and pale with exhaustion.

  “Just on my way home from the station,” she said. “Caught the six o’clock from Liverpool Street.”

  I hugged her. “Are you here for the whole weekend?”

  She nodded. “Abso-bloody-lutely. I’m shattered,” she sighed.

  “Got anything special planned?”

  “Sleeping a lot. Catching up with the folks. Seeing you, of course. Can’t wait for a proper chinwag.”

  “I can’t wait either, it’s dull as dishwater around here,” I grimaced. “Have you got time for a snifter?”

  “I’d better get back to the folks soonish, but perhaps just a quick one.” She looked past me into the hall, in an odd sort of way. “Where’s John?”

  “In the finishing room as usual, I expect. Why?” She ignored the question.

  “Shall we go and sit by the tree?” she said. “I really need some fresh air after London.”

  “Take gee and tees with us?” I said.

  “Now you’re talking.”

  The old Bramley apple tree had always been our favorite spot for our gossips, a place for sharing secrets about school or crushes on boys, where we could not be overheard. The sun was low in the sky, gleaming pinkly through the row of rustling poplars at the end of the orchard. The grass was tall, the clover still humming with bees, collared doves cooed calmingly as they settled for the night.

  We sat on the wobbly wooden seat at the base of the tree, the ice in our glasses of gin and tonic tinkling cheerfully.

  “It’s so beautiful here, I never properly appreciated it before,” she sighed. “All the apple blossoms, and the candles on the horse chestnuts. You don’t know how much I’ve missed green fields.”

  “How’s nursing?” I said. “I want to hear everything.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said wearily.

  “You don’t sound so sure. Is everything all right?”

  “Yes,” she said more firmly. “It’s hard work. Great fun,” she tailed off and took a sip of her drink.

  “But?” I said. “Come on, Vera. Something’s happened. You can’t hide anything from me, I know you too well.”

  To my relief, she was smiling now. “I meant to save it for tomorrow. But I can’t keep it in any more. Promise you won’t be cross?”

  “For heaven’s sake, what’s this all about?”

  A pause, then she said quietly, “It’s John and me.”

  I didn’t get it. “What about John and you?”

  “We’re dating.”

  At first I didn’t understand. “What? John? You? I don’t believe it. You’re joking.” From the look on her face, I could see she wasn’t, and backtracked quickly. “Crikey…I mean…Oh, Vera.”

  “We’ve been out for drinks in London. Twice. The second time, he kissed me.”

  I forced a smile, but my stomach started to churn with a disagreeable mixture of emotions; faint disgust coupled with an overriding sensation of raw, almost painful, jealousy. It felt like a slap in the
face.

  Whatever did she see in him? I thought of the times we’d ganged up against him, to trick him or get him into trouble. And the time she cracked her head when he pushed her off the swing. I felt sure she’d never forgive him. But now they seemed to be ganging up against me. It felt as though John had stolen my best friend.

  She started to gabble, words pouring out as if the dam had burst. “I’ve fancied him for a while, since he got back last year. But I couldn’t really believe he was interested in me. When he invited me out, I thought he was just being kind. But we couldn’t stop talking, he’s so easygoing, and he makes me laugh. Next time we went to the cinema, he kissed me and said he hoped I felt the same as him. I think I might be in love.”

  As she rattled on, I swigged my drink to quell the queasy feeling in my stomach. Yet I could see her happiness glowing through the weary pallor, returning roses to her cheeks, highlighting dimples flattened by tiredness. Why should I be so upset? My brother might be irritating but he was a decent chap, honest, and he had good prospects. Not a bad catch, and Vera was my best friend. Surely I should be happy for them both?

  But there was something else in Vera’s face, a guarded look I couldn’t put my finger on. “Have you told anyone else about it?”

  “No one. He wants to keep it that way for the moment. Promise you won’t spill the beans?”

  “My best friend spoons my brother. How can I keep that a secret?”

  “If you don’t, I may just have to keel you,” she said in that stagey piratical accent we used when we acted out the story of Peter Pan on the island. “Walk zee plank. Beware zee crocodiles.”

  Laughing made me feel a little better. “When are you going to tell the world?”

  “Soon, I think. Probably. Depends on what happens…”

  “What do you mean, ‘what happens’? Are you planning to elope or something?” She sighed and put her face in her hands. “Vera?” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. “I thought you were happy.”

  “I am, of course,” she said, sitting up, “but it’s complicated.” She emptied her glass. “There’s something else I’ve got to tell you. I just can’t keep it to myself any longer.”