LIZ TRENOW
The Last Telegram

Copyright

AVON

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Liz Trenow 2012

Liz Trenow asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007480821

Ebook Edition © September 2012 ISBN: 9780007480838

Version: 2018-07-17

In memory of my father, Peter Walters (1919–2011), under whose directorship the mill produced many thousands of yards of wartime parachute silk. All of it perfect.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Book Club Q&A for The Last Telegram, by Liz Trenow

About the Author

Also by Liz Trenow

About the Publisher

Chapter One

The history of silk owes much to the fairer sex. The Chinese Empress Hsi Ling is credited with its first discovery, in 2640 BC. It is said that a cocoon fell from the mulberry tree, under which she was sitting, into her cup of tea. As she sought to remove the cocoon its sticky threads started to unravel and cling to her fingers. Upon examining the thread more closely she immediately saw its potential and dedicated her life thereafter to the cultivation of the silkworm and production of silk for weaving and embroidery.

From The History of Silk , by Harold Verner

Perhaps because death leaves so little to say, funeral guests seem to take refuge in platitudes. ‘He had a good innings … Splendid send-off … Very moving service … Such beautiful flowers … You are so wonderfully brave, Lily.’

It’s not bravery: my squared shoulders, head held high, that careful expression of modesty and gratitude. Not bravery, just determination to survive today and, as soon as possible, get on with what remains of my life. The body in the expensive coffin, lined with Verners’ silk and decorated with lilies, and now deep in the ground, is not the man I’ve loved and shared my life with for the past fifty-five years.

It is not the man who helped to put me back together after the shattering events of the war, who held my hand and steadied my heart with his wise counsel, the man who took me as his own and became a loving father and grandfather. The joy of our lives together helped us both to bury the terrors of the past. No, that person disappeared months ago, when the illness took its final hold. His death was a blessed release and I have already done my grieving. Or at least, that’s what I keep telling myself.

After the service the house fills with people wanting to ‘pay their final respects’. But I long for them to go, and eventually they drift away, leaving behind the detritus of a remembered life along with the half-drunk glasses, the discarded morsels of food.

Around me, my son and his family are washing up, vacuuming, emptying the bins. In the harsh kitchen light I notice a shimmer of grey in Simon’s hair (the rest of it is dark, like his father’s) and realise with a jolt that he must be well into middle age. His wife Louise, once so slight, is rather rounder than before. No wonder, after two babies. They deserve to live in this house, I think, to have more room for their growing family. But today is not the right time to talk about moving.

I go to sit in the drawing room as they have bidden me, and watch for the first time the slide show that they have created for the guests at the wake. I am mesmerised as the TV screen flicks through familiar photographs, charting his life from sepia babyhood through monochrome middle years and into a technicolour old age, each image occupying the screen for just a few brief seconds before blurring into the next.

At first I turn away, finding it annoying, even insulting. What a travesty, I think, a long, loving life bottled into a slide show. But as the carousel goes back to the beginning and the photographs start to repeat themselves, my relief that he is gone and will suffer no more is replaced, for the first time since his death, by a dawning realisation of my own loss.

It’s no wonder I loved him so; such a good looking man, active and energetic. A man of unlimited selflessness, of many smiles and little guile. Who loved every part of me, infinitely. What a lucky woman. I find myself smiling back, with tears in my eyes.

My granddaughter brings a pot of tea. At seventeen, Emily is the oldest of her generation of Verners, a clever, sensitive girl growing up faster than I can bear. I see in her so much of myself at that age: not exactly pretty in the conventional way – her nose is slightly too long – but striking, with smooth cheeks and a creamy complexion that flushes at the slightest hint of discomfiture. Her hair, the colour of black coffee, grows thick and straight, and her dark inquisitive eyes shimmer with mischief or chill with disapproval. She has that determined Verner jawline that says, ‘don’t mess with me’. She’s tall and lanky, all arms and legs, rarely out of the patched jeans and charity-shop jumpers which seem to be all the rage with her generation these days. Unsophisticated but self-confident, exhaustingly energetic – and always fun. Had my own daughter lived, I sometimes think, she would have been like Emily.

At this afternoon’s wake the streak of crimson she’s emblazoned into the flick of her fringe was like an exotic bird darting among the dark suits and dresses. Soon she will fly, as they all do, these independent young women. But for the moment she indulges me with her company and conversation, and I cherish every moment.

She hands me a cup of weak tea with no milk, just how I like it, and then plonks herself down on the footstool next to me. We watch the slide show together for a few moments and she says, ‘I miss Grandpa, you know. Such an amazing man. He was so full of ideas and enthusiasm – I loved the way he supported everything we did, even the crazy things.’ She’s right, I think to myself. I was a lucky woman.

‘He always used to ask me about stuff,’ she goes on. ‘He was always interested in what I was doing with myself. Not many grownups do that. A great listener.’

As usual my smart girl goes straight to the heart of it. It’s something I’m probably guilty of, not listening enough. ‘You can talk to me, now that he’s gone.’ I say, a bit too quickly. ‘Tell me what’s new.’

‘You really want to know?’

‘Yes, I really do,’ I say. Her legs, in heart-patterned black tights, seem to stretch for yards beyond her miniskirt and my heart swells with love for her, the way she gives me her undivided attention for these moments of proper talking time.

‘Have I told you I’m going to India?’ she says.

‘My goodness, how wonderful,’ I say. ‘How long for?’

‘Only a month,’ she says airily.

I’m achingly envious of her youth, her energy, her freedom. I wanted to travel too, at her age, but war got in the way. My thoughts start to wander until I remember my commitment to listening. ‘What are you going to do there?’

‘We’re going to an orphanage. In December, with a group from college. To dig the foundations for a cowshed,’ she says triumphantly. I’m puzzled, and distracted by the idea of elegant Emily wielding a shovel in the heat, her slender hands calloused and dirty, hair dulled by dust.

‘Why does an orphanage need a cowshed?’

‘So they can give the children fresh milk. It doesn’t get delivered to the doorstep like yours does, Gran,’ she says, reprovingly. ‘We’re raising money to buy the cows.’

‘How much do you need?’

‘About two thousand. Didn’t I tell you? I’m doing a sponsored parachute jump.’ The thought of my precious Emily hanging from a parachute harness makes me feel giddy, as if capsized by some great gust of wind. ‘Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe,’ she says. ‘It’s with a professional jump company, all above board. I’ll show you.’

She returns with her handbag – an impractical affair covered in sequins – extracts a brochure and gives it to me. I pretend to read it, but the photographs of cheerful children preparing for their jumps seem to mock me and make me even more fearful. She takes the leaflet back. ‘You should know all about parachutes, Gran. You used to make them, Dad said.’

‘Well,’ I start tentatively, ‘weaving parachute silk was our contribution to the war effort. It kept us going when lots of other mills closed.’ I can picture the weaving shed as if from above, each loom with its wide white spread, shuttles clacking back and forth, the rolls of woven silk growing almost imperceptibly thicker with each turn of the weighted cloth beam.

‘But why did they use silk?’

‘It’s strong and light, packs into a small bag and unwraps quickly because it’s so slippery.’ My voice is steadying now and I can hear that old edge of pride. Silk seems still to be threaded through my veins. Even now I can smell its musty, nutty aroma, see the lustrous intensity of its colours – emerald, aquamarine, gold, crimson, purple – and recite the exotic names like a mantra: brigandine, bombazine, brocatelle, douppion, organzine, pongee, schappe.

She studies the leaflet again, peering through the long fringe that flops into her eyes. ‘It says here the parachutes we’re going to use are of high quality one-point-nine ounce, ripstop nylon. Why didn’t they use nylon in those days? Wouldn’t it have been cheaper?’

‘They hadn’t really invented nylon by then, not good enough for parachutes. You have to get it just right for parachutes,’ I say and then, with a shiver, those pitiless words slip into my head after all these years. Get it wrong and you’ve got dead pilots.

She rubs my arm gently with her fingertips to smooth down the little hairs, looking at me anxiously. ‘Are you cold, Gran?’

‘No, my lovely, it’s just the memories.’ I send up a silent prayer that she will never know the dreary fear of war, when all normal life is suspended, the impossible becomes ordinary, when every decision seems to be a matter of life or death, when goodbyes are often for good.

It tends to take the shine off you.

A little later Emily’s brother appears and loiters in his adolescent way, then comes and sits by me and holds my hand, in silence. I am touched to the core. Then her father comes in, looking weary. His filial duties complete, he hovers solicitously. ‘Is there any more we can do, Mum?’ I shake my head and mumble my gratitude for the nth time today.

‘We’ll probably be off in a few minutes. Sure you’ll be all right?’ he says. ‘We can stay a little longer if you like.’

Finally they are persuaded to go. Though I love their company I long for peace, to stop being the brave widow, release my rictus smile. I make a fresh pot of tea, and there on the kitchen table is the leaflet Emily has left, presumably to prompt my sponsorship. I hide it under the newspaper and pour the tea, but my trembling hands cause a minor storm in the teacup. I decant the tea into a mug and carry it with two hands to my favourite chair.

In the drawing room, I am relieved to find that the slide show has been turned off, the TV screen returned to its innocuous blackness. From the wide bay window looking westwards across the water meadows is an expanse of greenery and sky which always helps me to think more clearly.

The house is a fine, double-bayed Edwardian villa, built of mellow Suffolk bricks that look grey in the rain, but in sunlight take on the colour of golden honey. Not grand, just comfortable and well-proportioned, reflecting how my parents saw themselves, their place in the world. They built it on a piece of spare land next to the silk mill during a particularly prosperous period just after the Great War. ‘It’s silk umbrellas, satin facings and black mourning crepe we have to thank for this place,’ my father, always the merchant, would cheerfully and unselfconsciously inform visitors.

Stained-glass door panels throw kaleidoscope patterns of light into generous hallways, and the drawing room is sufficiently spacious to accommodate Mother’s baby grand as well as three chintz sofas clustered companionably around a handsome marble fireplace.

To the mill side of the house, when I was a child, was a walled kitchen garden, lush with aromatic fruit bushes and deep green salads. On the other side, an ancient orchard provided an autumn abundance of apples and pears, so much treasured during the long years of rationing, and a grass tennis court in which worm casts ensured such an unpredictable bounce of the ball that our games could never be too competitive. The parade of horse chestnut trees along its lower edge still bloom each May with ostentatious candelabra of flowers.

At the back of the house is the conservatory, restored after the doodlebug disaster but now much in need of repair. From the terrace, brick steps lead to a lawn that rolls out towards the water meadows. Through these meadows, yellow with cowslips in spring and buttercups in summer, meanders the river, lined with gnarled willows that appeared to my childhood eyes like processions of crook-backed witches. It is Constable country.

‘Will you look at this view?’ my mother would exclaim, stopping on the landing with a basket of laundry, resting it on the generous windowsill and stretching her back. ‘People pay hundreds of guineas for paintings of this, but we see it from our windows every day. Never forget, little Lily, how lucky you are to live here.’

No, Mother, I have never forgotten.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath.

The room smells of old whisky and wood smoke and reverberates with long-ago conversations. Family secrets lurk in the skirting boards. This is where I grew up. I’ve never lived anywhere else, and after nearly eighty years it will be a wrench to leave. The place is full of memories, of my childhood, of him, of loving and losing.

As I walk ever more falteringly through the hallways, echoes of my life – mundane and strange, joyful and dreadful – are like shadows, always there, following my footsteps. Now that he is gone, I am determined to make a new start. No more guilt and heart-searching. No more ‘what-ifs’. I need to make the most of the few more years that may be granted to me.

Chapter Two

China maintained its monopoly of silk production for around 3,000 years. The secret was eventually released, it is said, by a Chinese princess. Given unhappily in marriage to an Indian prince, she was so distressed at the thought of forgoing her silken clothing that she hid some silkworm eggs in her headdress before travelling to India for the wedding ceremony. In this way they were secretly exported to her new country.

From The History of Silk, by Harold Verner

It’s a week since the funeral and everyone remarks on how well I’m doing, but in the past couple of days I’ve been unaccountably out of sorts. Passing the hall mirror I catch a glimpse of a gaunt old woman, rather shorter than me, with sunken eyes and straggly grey hair, dressed in baggy beige. That can’t be me, surely? Have I shrunk so much?

Of course I miss him, another human presence in the house; though the truth is that it’s been hard the last few years, what with the care he needed and the worry I lived through. Now I can get on with the task in hand: sorting out this house, and my life.

Emily comes round after school. I’m usually delighted to see her and keep a special tin of her favourite biscuits for such occasions. But today I’d rather not see anyone.

‘What’s up, Gran? You don’t usually refuse tea.’

‘I don’t know. I’m just grumpy, for some reason.’

‘What about?’

‘I haven’t a clue, perhaps just with the world.’

She looks at me too wisely for her years. ‘I know what this is about, Gran.’

‘It’s a crotchety old woman having a bad day.’

‘No, silly. It’s part of the grieving process. It’s quite natural.’

‘What do you mean, the grieving process? You grieve, you get over it,’ I snap. Why do young people today think they know it all?

She’s unfazed by my irritation. ‘The five stages of mourning. Now what were they?’ She twists a stub of hair in her fingers and ponders for a moment. ‘Some psychologist with a double-barrelled name described them. Okay, here we go. Are you paying attention? The five stages of grieving are,’ she ticks them off on her long fingers, ‘denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance – something like that.’

‘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 AS 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?’

‘Revision week,’ 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 Gwen’s analogy, ‘It’s a kind of alchemy, you know. Like turning dull metal into gold. But better because silk has such beautiful patterns and colours.’

‘That’s rather poetic,’ Emily 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 greying with mould.

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 mis-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, neither 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 blonde and shaped it into a Hollywood wave. Together we spent hours in front of the mirror practising our make-up, and Vera developed clever ways to emphasise 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 France. 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 backwards 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-rounder, 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 round 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 realised 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 favourite lemon cake in your honour. You’re just in time for tea,’ Mother said. ‘You’ll stay too, Vera?’

‘Have you ever known me 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 sombre 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 is all about?’

John put down his cup and plate, and sat back in his chair, glancing out of the window towards 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 round.’

‘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 which 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 thick 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 panelled 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 entitled 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.

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 favourite 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 cookery 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 realised 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 the 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 wilful 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.’

Chapter Three

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.

From 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 favour. 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 storeys of Victorian red brick, a wide low-pitched slate roof, green painted double front doors at the centre, 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 here 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 declining wool trade.

Even today the weavers’ faces seem familiar, though I no longer know them by name. I recognise 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 came in to 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, noticing 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-axe,’ 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 and 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 favourable. 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 overall 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 realised what it was: I had never seen anyone with so many freckles. They covered her face, merging into blobs which almost concealed the pale, nearly translucent skin beneath. She’d made no effort to hide them with make-up. 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 blonde 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 centre, 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 practised 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 our looms 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-lys 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 matt satin, the colour 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 business-like, 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 colour 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.

As I took a piece of cloth and angled it to watch the colours change, I could feel Gwen’s pale eyes interrogating my response. And in that moment I realised I’d never before properly appreciated silk, its brilliant, lustrous colours, the range of weaves and patterns. Father and John never talked about it this way.

That morning Gwen showed me how to use all my senses; not just seeing the colours and feeling its weave, but holding it up to the light, smelling it, folding to see how it loses or holds a crease, identifying the distinctive rustles and squeaks of each type of material, examining its weave under a magnifier, enjoying its variety. I was already hooked, like a trout on a fly-line, but I didn’t know it yet. Only later did I come to understand how Gwen simply allowed the silk to seduce me.

The canteen, a large sunny room at the top of Old Mill that smelled not unpleasantly of cabbage and cigarette smoke, seemed to be the heart of the mill. A team of cheerful ladies provided morning coffee, hot midday meals and afternoon teas with homemade cakes and biscuits. Men and women sat at separate tables talking about football and politics, families and friendships. Weavers and warpers kept together, as did throwsters. Loom engineers – called tacklers – were a strong male clan in their oily overalls. The dyers, their aprons stained in many colours, another. But a shared camaraderie crossed divides of gender and trade; old hands teased the newcomers, and if they responded with good humour they became part of the gang.

Gwen wasn’t part of any gang, and seemed immune from canteen banter. We sat down at an empty table and she pulled off her turban, running her fingers through the ginger curls that corkscrewed round her head. Without her working woman’s armour she seemed more approachable.

‘Why haven’t we met before, Gwen? Were you brought up in Westbury?’

She shook her head, stirring three teaspoons of sugar into chocolate-brown tea.

‘How long have you lived here?’

‘Six years. Six happy years, mostly,’ she said, that rare smile lighting her face and giving me permission to ask more.

‘Whatever made you want to become a weaver?’ I said.

‘I started out wanting to be an artist. Went to art school. One thing led to another …’

I was intrigued. I’d never met anyone who had been to art school and, from what I’d heard, they were full of bohemians. But Gwen didn’t seem the type. ‘Golly. Art school? In London?’

‘It’s a long story,’ she said, stacking her teacup and plate. ‘Another time, perhaps.’

‘So what brought you to Verners?’ I persevered.

‘Your father, Lily.’ She paused, looked away, out of the canteen window towards the cricket willow plantation on the other side of the railway line. ‘He’s a very generous man. I owe him a lot.’ I felt a prickle of shame for not having appreciated him much. He was my Father, strict but usually kindly, rather remote when he was wrapped up in work. I’d never considered how others might regard him.

The squawk of the klaxon signalled the end of break-time. Over the loud scraping of utility chairs – the stackable sort of metal piping with slung canvas seats and backs – Gwen shouted, ‘Time to learn about the heart of the business, Miss Lily.’

After the peace of the packing hall, the weaving shed was a shock. As the door opened the noise was like running into a wall. Rows of grey-green looms stretched into the distance, great beasts, each in their own pool of light, a mass of complex oily iron in perpetual noisy motion – lifting, falling, sliding, striking, knocking, crashing, vibrating. How could anyone possibly work in this hellish metallic chaos?

The weavers seemed oblivious, moving unhurriedly between their looms, pausing to watch the material slowly emerge from the incessant motion of the shuttle beam, or stooping over a stilled machine. I quickly realised that they were skilled lip-readers and could hold long conversations in spite of the noise. But much of the time their eyes were focused intently on the cloth.

That first evening, John mocked me for falling asleep on the sofa and had to wake me for supper. As I prepared for bed I wondered what I would have been doing in Geneva. Getting dressed for a party, perhaps, or having hot chocolate and pastries in a café? For the moment I was too tired for regrets. Ears ringing, eyes burning, legs aching, my head full of new information, I wondered how I would get up and do the same again tomorrow.

The following day I was relieved to discover that we were spending it in the relative peace of the winding mill. Here, the silk skeins shimmered and danced as they rotated on their spindles releasing threads to be doubled, twisted and wound onto bobbins, and from bobbins onto pirns that would go into the shuttles. I learned the difference between the warp – the lengthways threads held taut between two rollers at either side of the loom – and the weft, the cross-threads woven into the warp from the shuttle.

Gwen no longer seemed so formidable. I was quickly learning to respect her skill and deftness, and her encyclopaedic knowledge of silk in all aspects of its complex manufacture. But she was still an enigma. Why would an educated woman like her choose to come and live in Westbury, to work in a mill?

I would find out soon enough.

Chapter Four

Another outstanding property of silk is its resilience, which can be demonstrated by crushing a silk handkerchief in one hand and a cotton handkerchief in the other. When released, the silk version will spring or jump upwards, the cotton one will stay crushed for some time. It is this property, along with its strength, toughness, elasticity and resistance to fire and mildew that makes silk so valuable for the manufacture of parachutes.

From The History of Silk, by Harold Verner

Long afterwards, John liked to embarrass me by claiming, sometimes publicly, that eight generations of weaving history had been rescued by his little sister’s sex appeal.

It’s true that Verners survived the catastrophe of war because of our contracts to weave parachute silk. While other mills folded or were converted into armament or uniform factories, we made it through, and came out the other side. But the invitation that arrived for John just a few months after I started work at the mill was really the start of it all. ‘It’s from my old school chum,’ he said, ripping open the heavy bond envelope with its impressively embossed crest. He proudly placed the gilt-edged card next to the carriage clock on the mantelpiece in the drawing room.

Mr John Verner and partner. New Year’s Eve, 1938. Black tie. Dinner and dancing 8 p.m., carriages 2 a.m. Overnight accommodation if desired, it read. Underneath was scrawled: Do come, Johnnie. Would be good to see you again. Marcus.

‘His ma and pa have a pile near the coast,’ he said. ‘They’re faded gentry but still not short of a bob or two. Should be a good bash.’ I was green with envy, of course. Vera’s latest bulletins from London had left me feeling very sorry for myself. She had discovered the ‘local’ next to the nurses’ home, met lots of dishy doctors and went to the flicks at least once a week. Even with Christmas coming up, my social calendar was blank, and I was bored stiff.

So I didn’t hesitate a single second when John said, a couple of days later, ‘Want to come with me to that New Year’s Eve bash, schwester? Dig out the old glad rags,’ he went on, ‘we both deserve a break.’ But I had no glad rags, at least nothing remotely passable for a sophisticated do. In the code language of formal invitations, ‘black tie’ meant women should wear ball gowns. Where would I find one of those in Westbury? And even if I could, how could I possibly afford it?

Then I remembered the blue-green shot silk that had so thrilled me on my first day at the mill, and asked Father if I could have a few yards as a Christmas present. I pored over fashion magazines, trying to imagine what style would make the most of my beanpole figure. It had to be modern, but formal enough to pass muster in ‘black tie’ company. At last I found the perfect pattern; the dress had a halterneck bodice that flowed into a wide full-length skirt to emphasise my waistline, and a bolero jacket for warmth.

In the days after Christmas Mother and I slaved over her old treadle sewing machine, and I endured countless pin-prickled fittings to get the dress just right. Now it was finished, and I barely recognised the elegant young woman looking back from the long mirror in my room. The cut of the gown and the shimmering silk made my figure, usually obscured in slacks and baggy jumpers at the factory, positively curvy.

My experiments with lipstick and mascara seemed to highlight interesting new features in a face I’d always considered plain. Even my straight brown bob seemed more sophisticated when I tucked the hair behind my ears to show off Mother’s emerald drop-earrings. We had fashioned a little clutch bag from scraps of leftover silk, and my old white satin court shoes – with low heels, I didn’t want to tower over any potential partner – had been tinted green by the dye works, to match the colour of the warp.

You’ll do, I thought, observing myself sideways, sticking out my chest and practising a coy, leading-lady smile. You might even get asked for a dance or two.

As we drove up the mile-long drive through acres of parkland and caught sight of the manor, my excitement gave way to apprehension. It was a red-brick Victorian gothic mansion with stone-arched windows, ornate chimneys and little turrets topping each corner of the building. Today I’d call it grandiose but at the time I was awestruck. The driveway was stuffed with smart motors: Jaguars, MG sports and Bentleys. John parked our modest Morris well out of view.

We were welcomed into a cavernous oak-panelled hallway by a real butler who led us upstairs to our rooms, carrying my case while I held the dress on its hanger before me like a shield. I feared I would never retrace our route as we trod endless gloomy corridors, taking frequent turns past dozens of identical doors.

My bedroom, when we finally reached it, seemed the size of a ballroom. It had once been very grand, I could see, but now the chintz curtains and bed coverlet were faded, and a miserly coal fire in a small grate made little impact on the overall chilliness. As I waited several minutes for a small stream of tepid water to emerge from the tap at the sink, I imagined the miles of piping it had to pass through to reach this distant room.

Shivering, I pulled on the dress and peered into the foxed glass of the mirror to apply my make-up, cursing as I dropped blobs of mascara onto my cheek. In the dim light of a single bulb hung from high in the ceiling I couldn’t be sure whether I’d managed to scrub it off properly.

But it was ten past eight and I couldn’t postpone the moment any longer. Tottering nervously through the maze of corridors, I lost my way several times. Eventually I found the top of the stairs and, having managed to negotiate these without tripping, followed the roar of voices to the drawing room. There, about forty people were knocking back champagne and talking at the tops of their voices, as if they had known each other for years.

I looked around urgently for John but he was nowhere to be seen. Instead, I found myself near a tall man holding court to three young women who waved their long cigarette holders ostentatiously and giggled a lot. With some alarm I noticed that the man was wearing what I at first took for a skirt but then realised was a Scottish kilt. I hugged myself into the corner against the wall, trying not to stare, and was greatly relieved when the gong sounded for dinner. Then, to my dismay, I noticed that the man in the skirt was smiling in my direction. The three girls glared as he walked over and offered his hand.

‘Robert Cameron, pleased to meet you. Would you do me the pleasure of accompanying me to dinner?’

‘Lily Verner, good evening.’ I said, as I returned the handshake and noted his startlingly blue eyes.

‘May I just say, Miss Verner, that dress is a stunner. Extraordinary colours. Silk, isn’t it?’ He took my arm and steered me firmly in the direction of the dining room. As we walked I stole a closer look; a kind of furry purse affair hung from his waist that I later learned was called a sporran. The kilt ended at the knees, and below that were hairy legs clad only in white socks, a small dagger stuffed into the top of one of them. It felt uncomfortably intimate being so close to those bare legs, and I barely dared imagine what he might or might not be wearing beneath those swinging pleats.

By the precision of his courtesies I guessed Mr Cameron had once been in the forces but wasn’t any more, not with those raffish sideburns. Slightly receding hair and deep smile lines suggested he was in his late twenties, and the high colour at his cheekbones and the small bulge above his crimson cummerbund seemed to evidence a life already well led.

‘And where have they been hiding you, Miss Lily Verner?’ he asked, helping me to be seated and then sitting himself beside me. I faltered, wishing I’d thought about this beforehand, planned what I would say. In this elevated company I could hardly admit I was an apprentice silk weaver.

‘Oh, I’ve been around,’ I answered airily, trying to sound sophisticated.

‘Then tell me where you found this beautiful gown,’ he persisted.

I tried to think of a posh London shop where they might sell ball gowns, but my mind went blank. Out of the blue, I decided to be completely honest. What did it matter, I’d never see any of these people again.

‘From our family’s silk mill,’ I said, ‘Verners, in Westbury. My father’s the managing director.’

I’d anticipated a blank look, or at least a swift change of subject, but to my great surprise Mr Cameron leapt to his feet, clipped his heels in a military manner, bowed deeply, picked up my hand and kissed it.

‘My goodness. Silk? How splendid. You look like a wee angel, but now here’s proof you’ve been sent from heaven, Lily Verner.’ Forty diners in the process of taking their places peered curiously at us between the silver candelabra, as I blushed to the tips of my ears. A few seats away on the opposite side, John raised his eyebrows: Are you all right with that man?

Mr Cameron sat down again. ‘You could be the answer to my prayers. Let’s get some wine and you can tell me all about it.’

‘There’s not such a great deal to tell,’ I said, overwhelmed by his display of enthusiasm. I wasn’t used to such effusive compliments.

‘Rubbish,’ he said robustly. ‘I want to know everything, from start to finish. And you absolutely must call me Robbie.’

He clicked his fingers at a waiter and barked an order for wine, then listened with great attention as, between sips of nondescript soup, I told him about the mill, the silk, where it came from, how we wove it, the trade we supplied. Feeling bolder by the minute, I even admitted that I worked there, adding quickly, ‘Just as a stopgap of course.’

‘How charming,’ he said, his face close to mine as he poured me another glass of wine, ‘a beautiful girl like you, working in a silk mill. That’s a new one on me.’

‘But now you must tell me about you,’ I said, feeling uncomfortable, ‘and why you are so interested in silk.’

As we washed down the main course of rubbery grey meat with liberal quantities of red wine, he explained that he had been born in Scotland – hence his entitlement to wearing a kilt – but had lived in England most of his life, was a cousin of our host, Johnnie’s school friend Marcus, and had been a guards officer until quite recently. But now he was dedicating his life – and, I guessed, a private fortune – to his two great passions: flying, and parachute jumping. A glamorous girl I’d noticed earwigging from the other side of the table chimed in, ‘Parachute jumping? Isn’t that rather dangerous?’

‘Of course, it used to be,’ he said, becoming more expansive with the added attention. ‘Those Montgolfiers and their French buddies back in the last century did a lot of experimenting with dogs. They didn’t always survive.’

‘Ooh, poor little poochies,’ she simpered, ‘that’s awfully mean.’

Most of the guests at our end of the table were now listening to the conversation. ‘Isn’t a parachute dangerous if you jump out of a moving plane? Wouldn’t it get tangled in the wings or the prop?’ asked a military-looking chap opposite.

‘Total myth, old man,’ said Robbie, ‘invented by the Air Ministry. They were dead scared that fliers might jump and dump expensive chunks of ironware before it was absolutely necessary. But they’ve finally accepted that parachutes save lives, if they’re the right kind.’

‘Is there a wrong kind?’ I found myself genuinely curious.

‘Lord, yes. Parachutes that collapse in the middle, that get pushed in by wind, lines that tangle, packs that don’t unfurl quickly enough. The design is critical.’ He paused and took a long sip of wine, carefully wiping his lips with the napkin. His audience was waiting. ‘But the most important thing is the silk. It has to be just right. Not too thick, not too thin, not too porous, not too impervious.’ Then he turned to me and lowered his voice, ‘Which is why, Miss Verner, I would like to have a serious conversation about silk with your father and brother – and you too of course – at some point very soon.’

‘We’d be delighted,’ I said, glowing in his attentiveness and flattered to be included, ‘but if I am to call you Robbie, you must stop calling me Miss Verner. Call me Lily, please.’

‘So, lovely Lily,’ he said, refilling my glass, ‘have you ever flown in a plane?’

‘Er … no,’ I stuttered nervously, ‘I’m not sure it’s my sort of thing.’

‘Would you like to give it a try? We could go for a spin.’

‘Perhaps, but can I finish my dinner first?’

He laughed generously, and as dessert was served I became vaguely aware of music coming from a distant room. ‘Can you hear the band, Miss Lily Verner? I’ll wager you’re a good dancer. Hope you like Swing.’

I smiled and said nothing, to conceal my ignorance.

‘Watch out for that one, Sis. Looks like a bit of a rogue and too old for you, anyway,’ John whispered as we left the dining room. But I didn’t care. The wine made me daring and confident, and I was determined to enjoy myself.

After a couple of rather sedate waltzes, Robbie went over and spoke to the bandleader. With broad smiles on their faces, the musicians switched pace and started to play a very fast jazzy number. He pulled me out onto the floor and started to dance like a wild thing, kicking his legs so high I barely dared look in case the skirt flew up too. He gestured to me to do the same, swinging me from side to side and twirling me around. It was exhilarating, dancing so freely, to such irresistible rhythms.

‘It’s the Lindy Hop,’ he shouted over the music. ‘Just come over from America. Named after Charlie Lindbergh. Fun, eh?’

I’d never heard of the man but it certainly was fun, if rather absurd, dancing like this in our formal gowns and dinner jackets, in a country house ballroom with its bright merciless light glittering from chandeliers and mirrors. It was impossible to keep still, and we Lindy Hopped right through until midnight, when the band reverted to Scottish tradition and we welcomed in the New Year with ‘Auld Lang Syne’.

After champagne toasts to ‘a peaceful 1939’, Robbie proved equally accomplished at quicksteps and foxtrots, guiding me firmly across the floor and spinning me round at every opportunity. It felt so safe in his arms, and it was so easy to be graceful, that I was disappointed when the band stopped and the dancers started to drift away.

Robbie escorted me to the foot of the stairs with his arm fitted snugly around my waist.

‘Goodnight, Miss Lily Verner.’ He put a finger to my chin, tipped my face upwards and pinned his lips to mine. My first kiss. I’d expected it to be more exciting, but it just felt a bit awkward, and after a polite pause I pulled away.

‘I’ve had a lovely evening, but I must go to bed now,’ I gabbled.

He was unabashed. ‘You’ve already made it very special, you sweet thing. Sleep tight. See you in the morning.’ He kissed my nose this time, and patted my backside as I turned to run up the stairs. As I climbed into my chilly bed, churning with champagne and confusion, I wondered if I might be falling in love.

Next day we were eating breakfast in proper country-house style – bacon, eggs, kedgeree and kippers served on ornate silver hotplates casually arrayed on the antique sideboard – when we heard the sound of an aircraft flying low over the house.

A small bi-plane came into view, circling twice, each time lower than before, and John said, ‘Crikey. Look Lily, he’s coming in.’

Sure enough, to our astonishment the plane flew even lower and then landed bumpily on the parkland between the trees, scattering the peacefully grazing flocks of deer.

‘It’s just Robbie showing off again,’ said Miranda, our host’s sister, to whom we’d been introduced the night before. Sure enough, as the plane drew to a halt, we saw his leather-clad figure emerging from the cockpit, jumping down and starting to lope towards the house. Before long he was helping himself to a hearty plateful of kedgeree and joining us at the table.

‘Flying make you hungry?’ John said casually, as if this kind of arrival at breakfast happened every day in our family.

‘Ravenous.’ Robbie shook clouds of pepper over his plate. ‘I’ve been up since six.’ We chatted for a while about last night, what fun it had been, and then he turned to John and said, almost offhand, ‘Lovely day for a spin, old man. Care to join me? She can take a co-pilot and a passenger. Perhaps Lily would like to come too?’

‘That’d be cracking,’ John said, his face lighting up.

I panicked. ‘Not for me, thank you. I haven’t got anything warm to wear. Anyway, don’t you think we should be getting home, John?’

‘I’d really like to go,’ he said. ‘Come on, sis. You’re always moaning about life being boring. Have a bit of fun. When are you going to get a chance like this again?’

‘I’ll lend you my jacket, and a headscarf and gloves,’ Miranda chipped in.

‘See?’ said Robbie triumphantly. ‘No excuses now, Missy Lily.’ It was pointless resisting. I swallowed my nerves, finished my coffee and went with Miranda to get togged up.

My terror as we took off was soon replaced with the enchantment of seeing a familiar landscape from an entirely new perspective. We flew southwards along the coast and then turned inland, following the river towards Westbury. From the air the town looked so small and insignificant, like a toy village. We buzzed low over the mill and The Chestnuts, but there was no sign of life. I imagined Father reading his newspaper by the drawing room fire, grumbling about irresponsible pilots interrupting the peace on his holiday.

Just a few days later John got a telephone call from Robbie, inviting himself to a meeting.

‘He insists Lily must be there too,’ he said, with a big wink in Father’s direction. ‘I couldn’t possibly imagine why.’

‘It’s because he knows I understand about silk,’ I snapped, but a bit of me hoped he was right. Since New Year’s Eve I’d thought about nothing but Robbie Cameron, his confidence and perfect manners, the casual skill with which he manoeuvred that little plane, the strong arms lifting me down from its wing after we had landed, and how my legs had turned to jelly afterwards. In my head, I’d run through the events of that evening a hundred times, hoping it really was the start of something new, so the prospect of seeing him again was exciting and a little nerve-racking. Would he still like me, or was that just a one-night thing, I wondered?

Robbie arrived looking formal and business-like, in an expensive-looking pinstriped suit and public school tie. He shook hands with John and me and then, as we waited for Father in the visitor’s room at the mill, examined the framed certificates and photographs hanging on the walls. I saw his gaze linger on one of Father at Buckingham Palace proudly showing the King a piece of Verners silk woven for the coronation, and he made appreciative remarks as I showed him the leather-bound sample books containing every design Verners had woven in the past one hundred and fifty years.

When Father came in I watched him sizing up Robbie as they shook hands. ‘Welcome to Verners, Mr Cameron,’ he said, ‘I’ve ordered coffee. Let’s sit down and you can tell us why you are here.’

‘Well, sir,’ Robbie started, ‘in a nutshell, I need a supplier of reliable quality parachute silk. I’m a parachute designer and manufacturer and I want to expand my company.’

‘We don’t weave parachute silk, as you probably know,’ Father said cautiously, reminding me of the way he played whist and bridge. Even with us children, he would keep his cards close to his chest, his face giving nothing away.

‘But we could do, Father,’ John said. ‘Let’s not count anything out. But I want to know more. Why parachuting? I can see why flying is fun, but why would anyone want to jump out of a plane?’

‘It’s the thrill of it,’ Robbie said. ‘Nothing like it. I trained as a pilot, as you know, so I had to learn how to use a parachute. But when I took up parachute jumping as a hobby it soon became obvious that the ’chutes needed to be redesigned to make them safer. Last year I met an American who had created some new designs along exactly the same lines as I’d envisaged, and he was already testing them. So we set up a company together to manufacture them. So far we haven’t had any major orders, but we’re working on it.’

‘If it’s just a hobby activity what makes you think there’s going to be much call for them?’ John asked.

‘It won’t just be a hobby, if we go to war,’ Robbie said, suddenly serious. ‘At the moment there’s one major competitor producing parachutes for the Air Ministry, and though they say that’s enough for their current requirements, they seem to be blind to what the Russians and Germans are up to.’

‘And what are they up to, precisely?’ Father asked.

‘Testing parachutes for dropping ground troops and equipment into battle zones. Last year the Russians dropped twelve hundred men, a hundred and fifty machine guns and other armoury, and assembled them all within ten minutes. It was even reported in Flight magazine, so the government can’t claim they don’t know what’s happening. But they don’t seem to be taking any notice.’

‘While they’re talking there’s still hope,’ Father said. ‘No one wants another war.’

‘I totally agree, sir, but anyone who thinks we can avoid it is in cloud cuckoo land,’ Robbie said, grimly. ‘My uncle’s just returned from Germany. He saw Nazi paratroops on exercise, and read a newspaper article by one of their generals about their plans for an airborne invasion of England.’

The atmosphere in the little room seemed to have become oppressive, reminding me of the day John arrived home with his talk of pogroms. I busied myself refilling the coffee cups. I hated people talking about war. It terrified me and I prayed it would never happen.

‘We’ll have to agree to disagree on this,’ Father said, pulling out his pipe and lighting it, as we waited for his next move. And then he said, ‘But in the meantime, Mr Cameron, how can Verners be of help to you?’

‘We need to be ready to go into immediate parachute production when the demand comes, and believe me, it will,’ Robbie said. ‘If I were in your position, Mr Verner, I’d be starting test weaves of parachute silk and investing in finishing machinery. So you could do the whole job on the spot.’

Father puffed on his pipe, his expression noncommittal.

‘It’s worth considering, Father,’ John said. ‘There won’t be much demand for silk ties and facings if we do go to war.’

Father nodded thoughtfully. ‘But it’s an expensive investment. We would have to be certain there’s really a demand before jumping into anything like that. We’d be putting all our chips on the chance of war.’

‘I take your point, sir,’ Robbie said, ‘but the thing is, with parachute silk you have to get everything right. The quality of the yarn, the weave and the finishing. They’re all critical to create the right porosity. Otherwise the parachutes are worse than useless. What we need is a company like yours, with a reputation for quality,’ he gestured at the photographs on the wall, ‘and generations of experience, who can get it right, from the start.’

You wily devil, I thought, you know exactly how to flatter my father into agreeing: heritage, quality, reputation. You’re saying all the right things. But then he paused for a moment, and said those words that more than sixty years later still fill my heart with dread. ‘Get it right and you save lives, sir. Get it wrong and you’ve got dead pilots.’

After that there wasn’t much more discussion. Father agreed to consider his proposal, and John offered to take Robbie on a tour of the mill. I began to fear he might leave without even a moment’s reference to New Year’s Eve, but as he shook my hand to say goodbye, he pressed it warmly for a fraction longer than usual. ‘It’s been such a pleasure,’ he said, his voice lowering to an intimate whisper. ‘I will see you again very soon, Lily Verner, that’s a promise.’

The intense blue gaze and colluding wink left me blushing and enchanted, all over again.

Chapter Five

The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 resulted in a mass migration of French Protestants, known as Huguenots, which has parallels throughout the twentieth century. This change in the law stripped non-Catholics of their civil and religious rights, resulting in the flight of around 250,000 skilled and wealthy refugees. Many were silk weavers of great talent who settled in England and particularly in Spitalfields, East London.

From The History of Silk, by Harold Verner

After four months my limbs were growing more used to the physicality of weaving: the day-long standing and walking between looms, bending over the woven material to check for faults, crouching under the warp to find lost threads, heaving boxes of pirns to refill the shuttle. But at the end of each shift my legs still felt heavy as loom weights, my eyes stung from their constant scrutiny of the fine Jacquard designs and my eardrums were bruised by the constant noise.

It had been a bitter cold February and the news was depressing. Hitler was war-mongering, claiming that Jewish bankers were responsible for leading Europe into a conflict that would result in the annihilation of their race. As we waited for John to return home from a meeting in London one evening, the logs in the fire crackled so alarmingly in the hearth that Father put the fireguard in place. ‘More spit than heat, these willow logs,’ he grumbled, sitting back down in his favourite armchair. ‘Like that maniac Hitler.’

I didn’t want to think about Hitler; my mind was focused on dinner – the delicious smell of baked potatoes was making my stomach rumble. But at long last John arrived with a metallic tang of wintry air as he headed for the fire. His suit was crumpled, a shirt button missing. Mother followed him into the room. ‘Supper’s ready, my dears,’ she said.

‘Can I have a moment to warm up, Ma?’ John said. ‘It was bloody cold on that train tonight. Got held up for ages just outside London.’ He stood on the hearthrug with his back to the blaze, robustly rubbing his buttocks.

‘Did you hear the news?’ Father said.

‘No,’ John said, ‘what is it this time?’ Father summarised the bulletin.

‘More excuses for his pogroms, and all of us powerless to stop it,’ I said.

‘Actually, I think I’ve found a way we can do something, just a small thing, to help,’ John said, his face brightening.

‘Go on then, spill it,’ I said, impatiently.

‘While the train was held up I got chatting to some chaps in my carriage,’ John started. ‘They were talking about Jewish children coming into England. Apparently there’s been an agreement with the Germans. The Jews in Germany are allowed to send anyone eighteen or under out of the country, for a price, and only if they’ve got a sponsor.’

He began to pace restlessly in front of the fire. ‘Things are getting really desperate,’ he went on. ‘They’re being hounded. Not just closing businesses, but even synagogues too. Being sent off to work camps. Children being banned from their schools. It’s no wonder the parents are trying to send them to safety.’

‘So where are these children going to?’ I asked.

‘The trains are travelling to Holland and the children are being put onto boats to Harwich.’

‘What happens when they get here?’

‘Some of them have sponsor families who come to collect them. But the problem is,’ John stopped pacing now and looked carefully at Father and Mother in turn, ‘some of them have been let down by their sponsors and haven’t got anywhere to go. They’re stuck in a holiday camp somewhere in Essex.’

A vision of children, unwanted and in a foreign land, chased away my hunger. John’s voice was firm now. ‘I’d like to do something. What do you think?’

‘Sherry, anyone?’ Father said. He never liked to be rushed into decisions. No one responded but he walked slowly to the sideboard all the same, and poured four glasses from the decanter, arranged them neatly on a silver tray and handed them round.

‘I’ll come to the point,’ John said, taking his glass and emptying it with a single gulp. ‘We’ve got a big house and we can afford it. Why don’t we take some of them in?’

Father returned the tray to the sideboard and set it down carefully before turning back to us. ‘Just how do you think this is going to work?’ he said in that low, reasonable tone he adopted when he needed more time to consider. ‘The three of us are at the mill all day. We can’t expect your mother to take on a bunch of children at the drop of a hat.’

‘We can’t ignore it, either,’ John said, squaring his shoulders. ‘I can’t, anyway.’

As the alcohol travelled soothingly down my throat and warmed my stomach I wrestled with contradictory emotions. The last thing I wanted was a house full of noisy children, but it didn’t feel right just to do nothing. ‘How old did you say they are?’ I asked.

‘Five to seventeen,’ John said.

An idea popped into my head. ‘Then couldn’t we take some older ones?’

‘Go on,’ John sat down on the sofa next to me.

‘Find them somewhere nearby where they can live independently but keep an eye on them and help them?’ I was struggling to form a plan. ‘What about that cottage down the road? The one to let?’

‘Aren’t you getting carried away, Lily?’ Father said, still in his reasonable voice. ‘There are just a few things you perhaps haven’t considered. Who would look after them? What would they do? What would they live on?’

I refused to be deterred. ‘Why can’t we give them jobs at the factory? Weavers start straight from school, at fifteen.’ John nodded vigorously in support but Father finally cracked.

‘You’re in fantasy land, both of you,’ he boomed, getting to his feet. ‘Of course it’s tough for the Jews, but in case hadn’t noticed, business here is tough, too. We can’t just create new jobs from nowhere. There’s the cost of extra wages, and not just that, you have to consider our own staff. We can support the Jews in other ways, contribute financially if necessary, but we can’t just take on a bunch of untrained boys at the mill. So you can stop trying to persuade me.’

He turned to Mother. ‘Is dinner ready, dear?’

John scowled and we both stayed quiet. The conversation was closed, for the moment, but we could bring Father round, I knew, given time. He just needed to believe he was in control, so we just had to find a more subtle approach.

Two days later I ambushed him in his study. ‘Can I have a word?’

‘Come in,’ he said, looking up from his newspaper.

Above the fireplace hung the Verner family tree, gilt-framed and written in ornamental script on yellowing parchment. I knew it almost by heart. At the very top was the founder of the family firm: Joseph Verner, silk weaver (1662–1740) b. Spittle Fields, m. Mary (1684). ‘You know how proud we Verners are to be descended from Huguenots?’ I said.

He frowned, puzzled at my sudden interest. ‘Go on?’

‘They were immigrants, weren’t they? Fleeing from persecution by the Catholics?’

The frown smoothed into an indulgent smile. ‘This is about those Jewish children, isn’t it, my darling? I knew you wouldn’t let it go.’

I smiled back, pushing home my advantage. ‘So, what do you think?’

‘You’re right about the Verners,’ he said, ‘but that was then. It was different.’

‘How different?’ I was determined not to let him argue me out of it.

‘The Huguenots were craftsmen, weavers and throwsters. England needed their skills. There was a good economic reason for letting them into our country.’

‘But if we hadn’t given them refuge, what would have happened to them? They’d have been killed like all the rest. Where would our family be now?’

‘Look, Lily, I understand what you are saying. I still believe we can stop this trouble if we can only persuade the Germans to topple that madman. Then these children can go back to their families. Best place for them.’

‘Of course you’re right,’ I conceded. ‘But what happens to them in the meantime? Can you imagine what it must be like to be stuck in that holiday camp?’

He filled his pipe and puffed it into life. Finally he said, ‘Leave it with me. I’ll have another think. Perhaps I’ll talk to Jim and Gwen and ask them to take soundings with the staff.’

‘Thank you.’ I hugged him, savouring his soothing smell of Old Virginia and hair oil.

‘No guarantees, mind,’ he said, turning back to his desk. ‘Now run along and help your mother with supper. I’ve got work to do.’

The plan worked, just as I’d hoped. Over Sunday lunch Father announced with some triumph, as if it had been his very own idea, that the mill manager Jim Williams had agreed to take on three new apprentices as weavers, warpers or throwsters, depending on their skills.

John’s forkful of food halted halfway to his mouth. ‘How did this happen?’ he mouthed across the table. ‘Tell you later,’ I mouthed back, smiling smugly.

‘But we can’t collect them yet,’ Father was saying. ‘I have to be up in town all next week.’

John had put his knife and fork down now. ‘We could go instead,’ he said, ‘Lily and me can sort it out.’

‘Please, Father,’ I pleaded. ‘I can’t bear to think of those children waiting. They might even be sent back to Germany.’

He pondered for a few seconds and then said, ‘I’ll check with Jim. See if he wants to go, or if he’s happy to delegate the job to you two.’ Across the table, John was giving me a surreptitious thumbs-up. ‘It’s boys we want, remember,’ Father said firmly. ‘No more than three. Strong lads who’ll really knuckle down to it.’

It was a dismal day as we drove in the rusty works van to the holiday camp. Clouds hung like damp sheets over the flat Essex fields and when we reached the coast, the marshy land dissolved into the North Sea in shades of sullen grey.

The road looked familiar. Surely this wasn’t the same place I’d been as a child, on holiday with a friend’s family? As we came closer the memories started to flood back. The holiday had been a disaster. I was horribly homesick, and to make things worse I was terrified of the flame-haired clown in a harlequin suit who had patrolled between the chalets each morning after breakfast, summoning us to the morning’s entertainments. He reminded me of the Pied Piper illustration in my book of fairy tales and I was convinced that the children who followed him would never come back. So I refused to go with the clown, feigning all kinds of exotic ailments, and spent the rest of the holiday in my bunk bed, feeling humiliated and miserable.

‘You’re very quiet, Sis, what’s on your mind?’ John said. When I told him he laughed.

‘Not too many clowns there these days, I don’t suppose,’ he said.

At the entrance, the words were still legible under peeling paint: Welcome to Sunnyside Holiday Camp. The gate was guarded, and spirals of barbed wire coiled along the top of the fence. We were ushered through and directed up a concrete driveway towards a group of buildings in the distance.

As we came closer we could see a gang of older boys kicking a football around on a patch of worn grass, and other children huddled against a chill wind on benches outside one of the pastel-painted chalets. Their faces were solemn and pale, like rows of white moons, turning to watch our van.

Pinned to each child’s coat was a label. ‘Like little parcels,’ I said. John nodded, grim-faced.

We stopped and climbed out and the boys left their football game and ran over, crowding round us, firing questions in their strange guttural tongue. They stopped in surprise when John started speaking in fluent German, and when he’d finished they began chattering even more excitedly than before.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said to me. ‘They’re only asking who we are and why we are here. They want to know where we’re from and if we can help. What they mostly seem to want to know is if we can take them to Piccadilly Circus,’ he laughed. ‘They’re desperate for a bit of the high life, and who can blame them?’

At last an adult appeared, pushing his way through the gaggle. He was short, prematurely balding and scruffily dressed in workmen’s jeans and a thick jacket, so different from the crisply intimidating holiday camp staff of my childhood memory. I warmed to him immediately.

‘You must be John and Lily Verner? Welcome to Sunnyside. Name’s a bit ironic on a day like today, don’t you think? I’m Leo Samuels. They call me duty manager, though that’s just a posh title for chief muggins.’ He beamed as we shook hands. ‘Now, what can we do for you, or rather, what can you do for us? Come into the office and let’s keep warm while we talk.’ To the boys he said, ‘Geduldig Sein, be patient.’ As we walked he apologised for the way they had pestered us. ‘You understand, they’ve been through terrible times, and being out here in the wilds of Essex isn’t helping. They need to get settled as soon as possible.’

One of the larger chalets at the end of a row had a hastily-painted sign: Kindertransport All Enquiries. Up two steps, a wooden balcony led through glazed double doors into a small living area next to a kitchenette, with what must have been bedrooms on either side. Leo gestured to a table covered in a chaos of papers and dirty mugs, and went to fill the kettle. ‘Do sit down. Tea or coffee? How do you take it?’

He chattered cheerfully as he rinsed out three mugs in a cluttered basin, waiting for the kettle to boil. ‘Sorry for the mess, but we’re on a shoestring here,’ he said, pushing aside untidy piles of papers and boxes on the table to make space for the tray.

‘We’re all volunteers and it’s a bit hand-to-mouth, to say the least. Of course we’re dead lucky they’ve let us have this place for free. You probably know that the boss is Jewish, that always helps. Otherwise we’re totally dependent on charity and right now people have other things on their minds than helping a bunch of German children.’

He sighed. ‘We’re doing what we can for the poor little blighters. Most have sponsors, but this lot have been let down for one reason or another. So not only have they been through some terrible things and been sent away by their parents, but when they get here no one wants them. It’s ruddy awful, if you’ll excuse my French, Miss Verner.’

I cradled my cold fingers round the hot mug, struggling to imagine what it must feel like for these children, being so doubly rejected. No words, even coarse words, could come close to describing it.

‘I was in Austria last year,’ John said, ‘and I saw what was happening.’

Leo shook his head sadly. ‘It’s so much worse, now.’

‘I was afraid it would be,’ John said. ‘So when we heard about your work we had to do something.’

‘It is very good of you,’ Leo said simply, and took a sip of his coffee. ‘So, how do you think you can you help us?’

‘Our family runs a silk mill, in Westbury. Do you know it? About thirty miles from here,’ John started.

‘Silk, eh? How interesting,’ Leo said, listening intently.

‘We’d like to take on three new apprentices,’ John went on. ‘And we wondered if you had some older boys, sixteen, seventeen maybe. Preferably bright lads, who’d be capable of learning a skilled trade.’

‘They’ve got to be mature and sensible types too,’ I added. ‘They’ll be living in a rented house and will have to learn to look after themselves.’

Leo sat back, scratching the sparse hairs on his head. ‘This is music to my ears, you know. Most people want younger ones, especially girls. They think the little ’uns are less trouble, though I’m not sure they’re right. The older boys get overlooked and it’s usually hard to place them.’

He thought for a moment and then said, ‘Okay. I’ve got three in mind. First there’s Stefan. He’s obviously older than most of them. Between you and me I think he’s over eighteen, the official limit. But his papers say he’s seventeen and who are we to challenge it? He’s obviously been through quite enough already without us interfering, poor lad. Don’t know much about his background but he’s clearly very bright.’

‘Sounds just right,’ I said.

Leo went on, ‘Stefan’s friendly with a couple of brothers, Kurt and Walter. Also nice lads. Kurt’s seventeen but Walter’s only fifteen. Is that too young?’

‘Depends on the boy,’ John said doubtfully. ‘How mature he is.’

‘Hard to tell, to be honest with you,’ Leo said. ‘But we obviously can’t separate them and it’s been almost impossible to find a double placement. Walter’s just a little lad, but I reckon he’d soon shape up, especially with his brother Kurt looking after him. He’s a pretty mature, level-headed boy. Why don’t you meet them, see what you think?’

How could we refuse?

‘Good,’ said Leo, getting up. ‘I’ll get those three in here, explain what you’re offering and we can see if they like the idea.’ Halfway out of the door he turned back. ‘All the lads are keen to see the bright lights of London, so you may have persuade them Westbury’s a good option. Not too far to the city by train, is it?’

As they came into the chalet I recognised the three boys as part of the football gang, but they were much more subdued than before. Leo introduced them: ‘Stefan, Kurt, Walter, dies ist John Verner und seine schwester Lily.’ They shook hands politely, barely meeting our eyes. They seemed so different from English boys. Was it just the language barrier, or the way they looked – the pallor of their faces, the unfashionable haircuts, underfed frames and curious cut of their clothing? I found it impossible to fathom what was going on inside their heads.

As John started to talk they exchanged glances, their faces becoming more animated, even excited. When he finished, the boys started talking between themselves, words falling over each other, interrupting each other, all at once.

Stefan certainly seemed older than seventeen. He was skinny and taller than the others, dressed in a scruffy brown leather jacket and black trousers. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days and a dark shadow grew thickly on his slim face. His voice was more baritone than tenor and deep-set eyes peered out warily through his floppy fringe of untidy hair.

Kurt and Walter were very alike; in their tweed trousers, hand-knitted jumpers and woollen waistcoats they reminded me of the farm boys who came into Westbury on market days. Wiry kinks of mousy hair sprouted from their heads but their boyish cheeks showed little hint of growth. Kurt was chatty and confident, and Walter tended to repeat what his big brother said. Both of them appeared to defer to Stefan as their leader, turning to him if John or Leo said something they didn’t understand.

Trying to gauge their personalities as they talked, I wondered how these boys would cope with the robust camaraderie among the men at the mill.

‘They’re all pretty keen,’ John said, eventually turning to me. ‘They’re especially excited by the idea of earning their own money, and sharing a house.’ He laughed. ‘Though goodness knows whether they can cook and clean for themselves. What do you think?’

‘We can worry about the housekeeping thing later. But can they learn quickly enough to be useful at the mill?’ I said, recalling Father’s strict instructions.

‘Heaven knows.’ John shrugged his shoulders. ‘Only time will tell, I suppose.’

‘If they’re all good friends, perhaps they will support each other?’

He nodded, but his expression was still doubtful.

‘One thing’s clear. We can’t leave them here,’ I said, suddenly flooded with certainty, more convinced that this was the right decision than at any other time in my life. I wanted these boys to feel safe and be loved. I could not contemplate leaving them here.

‘Let’s go for it,’ we both said at the same time, and then laughed at ourselves.

This time the handshakes were stronger and their smiles much more confident. There was formal paperwork to complete and signatures to be written and witnessed, then they collected their pitifully small suitcases before finally saying goodbye to Leo, promising to keep in touch and piling into the van. As we drove away they waved to their friends, then fell silent.

They must be glad to leave this grim place, I thought, but it is their last link with home. They’ve suffered terribly and now they have no option but to follow the Pied Piper – two strangers in a battered old van – into an unknown future.

Over the next few days the German boys stayed at The Chestnuts and we spent time getting to know them. The fear started to leave their faces, their frames seemed to fill out and they gained confidence, trying out English phrases as we struggled to get our tongues around their strange German words.

We traipsed around Westbury finding kitchen equipment, bedding, rugs and curtains to make their cottage more homely. On the day they moved in, Mother and I pinned labels to everything around the house and led the boys through each room, saying the words. She made cartoon sketches of every item on their shopping list, and they took turns to ask the grocer and greengrocer for their purchases, laughing at each other’s attempts, and gradually beginning to relax.

John took them to the tailors, buying each of them a couple of pairs of off-the-shelf trousers for smart and casual, a couple of shirts, fashionable Fair Isle jumpers and navy blazers for weekends. On Saturday they went with him to watch a local football match. Kurt and Walter were keen to play, and he promised to find a team for them.

But now it was time for them to earn their keep. John and Jim Williams took them on a tour of the mill, then talked to them individually about the jobs we had planned for them. Walter and Kurt – still inseparable – would start as packers. Stefan was keen to be a weaver and Gwen agreed to take him as her new apprentice. It was a compliment, she told me, though it was barely recognisable as such. ‘I reckon you can just about manage two looms on your own now, Lily,’ was all she said. ‘So I can concentrate on helping Stefan’.

I couldn’t help smiling, watching them together on that first day. They made a curious pair – Gwen, short and dumpy, doing her best to communicate through hand gestures over the noise of the looms, or standing on tiptoe to shout into his ear; Stefan bending like a weeping willow over the loom, his fringe flopping in his eyes. She mimicked the way he constantly brushed the hair back from his forehead, offered him her flowery headscarf and made him laugh. His eyes followed her face intently, struggling to lip-read in a foreign language.

‘That boy’s a fast learner,’ she said at the end of that first week. We were doing the Friday evening loom checks together, covering woven cloth and warps with dust sheets, ensuring that shuttle arms were securely docked, winding up loose threads and tucking away spare spools, turning off the power at each machine. Making everything safe for the weekend.

‘He’s got real aptitude,’ she added. I could hear the warmth in her voice and even as I knew she was right – he already understood the elegant mechanics of the loom, how to balance the weights and tensions, and was deftly locating and retying lost warp threads – I felt a pinch of envy. She’d never praised me like that, not to my face at least.

‘You’d better watch out. He’ll soon be teaching you,’ I laughed, trying to conceal my annoyance.

‘I look forward to it. He’s a very polite, charming young man. Deeper than the other two. Has an artistic touch. What do you think?’

‘You’d know better than me,’ I said, niggled she’d found something else to admire. ‘With that art school background you said you’d tell me about.’

‘You should come for tea some time, then maybe I will.’

‘So you keep promising,’ I said. I’d dropped so many hints over the past weeks, with no response, that I was starting to wonder why she was so reluctant. Did she just not like me enough to invite me into her personal life? Or was there something else, something she didn’t want to reveal? Gwen was such an enigma.

As we finished our rounds and parted at the front door she touched me lightly on the shoulder, elusive as ever. ‘Enjoy your weekend.’

Once the boys had moved into the cottage, we invited them to join us for lunch at The Chestnuts every Sunday.

‘Help them learn proper manners. They’ll turn into savages in no time, living on their own,’ Father said. ‘We need to civilise them.’ Mother enjoyed sharing her pleasure in English cooking, and it was usually a roast with all the trimmings that they appeared to relish.

Though homesickness still showed in their faces, Kurt and Walter were like other teenage boys – gawky, clumsy, fascinated by football and motorbikes. They struggled with English table etiquette, muddling their cutlery, slurping their drinks, leaning elbows on the table. At first, Father was lenient but after a few weeks he’d bark stern reminders: ‘No talking with your mouth full.’ They were slow to learn, and more than once he had to threaten them, ‘If you don’t take those elbows off the table at once, there will be no more lunch for you.’ Walter giggled and Kurt – always the rebellious one – grimaced, but their hungry stomachs forced them into reluctant compliance.

Stefan needed no such prompting. His manners were already sophisticated and what he didn’t already know of English etiquette he quickly picked up by watching. Now that he had abandoned the old leather jacket and black trousers for the cords, jumpers and jacket John had bought him, he looked almost like an English boy, apart from the hairstyle he insisted on keeping unfashionably long. But he was unlike any other boy I knew.

What I had mistaken for shyness, I slowly began to realise, was actually a confident stillness. While the others always needed to be active, Stefan seemed content to observe the world around him quietly, with an expression of mild curiosity and, I sensed, amusement simmering just below the surface. Little escapes those eyes, I thought, with a slight shiver.

That Sunday, Stefan handed back my copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles with one of his rare smiles.

‘I enjoy very much, Miss Lily,’ he said, his dark eyes sparkling. ‘I would like to be a perfect English gentleman like your Sherlock Holmes.’ He raised an imaginary bowler hat, pretended to twirl an umbrella and bowed deeply, making me laugh out loud. Stefan the clown was a side of his character he hadn’t revealed till now.

In just two months his English improved so much I’d abandoned my intention to speak German. I was astonished by how quickly he learned; he could already read in another language. This was the second Conan Doyle book I’d lent him, and every time he visited he devoured Father’s copy of The Times, urgently looking for news from Europe.

Over lunch, we encouraged them to talk about home. Of course, we got only the edited versions. Stefan told us about his parents, both schoolteachers in Hamburg, and his younger twin sisters. He hoped they would come to England once they’d saved or borrowed the money for permissions and transport. Kurt and Walter spoke longingly of the Bavarian hills and the family farm. The English countryside is so flat, they complained. As conversation flowed, I reflected with satisfaction that the boys were starting to feel more secure.

It was our usual custom to follow lunch with a walk on the water meadows, but that day it was pouring. ‘Not a good day for a walk,’ Father said, looking out of the drawing room window, ‘it’s raining cats and dogs.’

‘Cats and dogs?’ Walter said, frowning. ‘Why do you say cats and dogs?’ he asked, after we’d told him what it meant. We had no idea. Some English phrases were so hard to explain.

After coffee, Father suggested a game of cards. But I had a better idea.

‘What about a song, Mother?’ I said, pointing to the baby grand. It was rarely played these days, and generally served as a shelf for photographs and ornaments.

‘I couldn’t,’ she said, blushing and nervously smoothing her skirt, ‘haven’t played for years.’ She’d had a classical training and, though never a professional performer, she’d given piano lessons and played in local amateur concerts before marriage and children got in the way. When times at the mill had been hard and there was no extra cash for servants, her music had been sacrificed to housework and cooking.

‘Come on, you can do it,’ I said, going over to the piano stool and rifling through the piles of sheet music stored under its padded lid. I found what I was looking for; a score, now dog-eared and falling apart at the seams, Music Hall Favourites.

‘Here we are,’ I said. I moved the knick-knacks from the piano, propped it open, lifted out the music shelf, took her elbow and led her to the piano stool. ‘Now all you have to do is play.’

‘It’s been so long.’ She shook her head. ‘My fingers won’t know what to do.’

It was Stefan who finally persuaded her. He was sitting on the arm of the sofa, leaning forward, watching intently. ‘Please, Mrs Verner. Please play for us,’ he said. ‘We like very much to hear the piano.’

As she started, everyone began to listen. Watching her fingers move over the keys with growing confidence, I remembered how she used to sit me on her knee as she played. With a child’s selfishness it seemed then that her music was just for me. Now, hearing her again after so long, I realised what a sacrifice she had made, giving up her music to meet the demands of the family.

She stopped to look through the battered old score. ‘Here’s a good one. My Old Man Said Follow the Van.’ As she started into the familiar tune, John and I got up and stood beside her, reading the words over her shoulder. After a couple of verses the boys came to join us, starting to hum along and sing the chorus with us.

When we sang the words ‘dillied and dallied, dallied and dillied’, they started to giggle. ‘What is “dilly dally”, please?’ Walter asked. I struggled to find a polite explanation.

‘It means they spent a lot of time hanging around drinking, or talking, or …’

John interrupted, saying something in German, and they guffawed like schoolboys. Next time we repeated the chorus they made cheeky kissing noises and Father frowned in gentle reproach.

After three more numbers Mother declared she’d reached the end of her repertoire and went to make tea. As the others drifted back to the warmth of the fire, Stefan stayed by piano, apparently lost in his own thoughts. Then he seemed to settle something in his mind and looked at me briefly with a slight smile before pulling out the stool and sitting down, tentatively spreading his hands over the keys. Something tugged in my heart as I noticed for the first time the perfect pink ovals of his nails at the end of each long, elegant finger.

He played a few scales and then, haltingly, started to pick out a tune I recognized as the opening bars of the Moonlight Sonata. Muttering at his mistakes and pausing to remember each following phrase, Stefan stumbled on, but his arpeggios sounded more like a doleful trudge than the calm moonlit landscape Beethoven had intended.

After a few minutes, he took his hands from the piano and sighed, lowering his head. The untrimmed wisps of dark hair curled down his neck and over his collar, and I felt a surge of sadness for this strange boy, so far from home.

‘Play us the jazz,’ Kurt said.

Stefan looked up at me.

‘This is okay for you?’ he asked. ‘You like the jazz?’

‘Very much,’ I said, smiling encouragement.

Stefan turned back to the keyboard, took a deep breath, and launched into an exuberant ragtime piece. The solemn struggle with Beethoven was transformed into the joyful freedom of jazz. The fingers on Stefan’s right hand moved so fast they became a blur as the left hand stretched into successions of complex chord sequences.

Everyone in the room started to move; heads nodding, feet tapping, even Father’s knee was jiggling. The rhythm was irresistible.

‘Remember those Swing steps, Lily?’ John leapt up and took my hand as we clumsily tried to approximate the dance we’d learned on New Year’s Eve. Kurt and Walter watched for a moment and then came to join us, doing their own wild version, waving arms and legs around without any regard for the rhythm.

From the piano, Stefan shouted, ‘Swingjugend, swing. Swing heil!’ Kurt and Walter raised their arms in mock-Nazi salutes and repeated ‘Swing heil! Swing heil!’

Mother’s eyebrows raised in alarm.

‘What that all about?’ I shouted to Kurt.

‘American jazz. Banned by the Nazis,’ Kurt shouted back.

‘Why is it banned?’

He shrugged. ‘Stefan plays it for – what do you say?’

Stefan stopped playing and swivelled round. In the sudden stillness his voice was firm and clear, ‘We play it because it is not allowed.’

‘Who’s we, Stefan?’ John asked.

‘Swingjugend.’

‘Until they were arrested,’ Kurt said, almost under his breath.

‘“Arrested”?’ I repeated, failing for a moment to understand the full import of the word.

Stefan glowered at him. ‘They just gave us a beating. As a warning.’

It was such a shocking image none of us knew what to say next. My mind whirled, trying to understand. How could the police – or was it soldiers? – be so violent against young boys, just for playing music? The sense of menace seemed to seep into the room like a poison.

Mother spoke carefully, ‘Are you saying that the police beat you and put you in prison, Stefan?’

Stefan nodded. ‘The SS,’ he said. ‘But we were not in prison for long. It was just a warning.’ He paused and then went on, ‘That is why I had to leave Germany.’

‘You poor boy,’ she murmured. ‘No wonder …’

‘Were you all members … of this group?’ I stuttered.

‘Only Stefan,’ Kurt said. ‘We do not know about it till he tell us.’

‘There is no Jugend where we live,’ Walter added.

‘Perhaps we make our own group, here in Westbury?’ Kurt smiled, and the tension in the room started to settle. ‘Can he play some more?’

Stefan looked at Father, who nodded.

This time we listened quietly. It didn’t seem right to dance. Trying to make sense of what the boys had told us, I began to understand why this music was so important for Stefan. The baby grand had never known such spirited, emphatic playing. It was an act of protest and defiance, seeming to drive the menace out of the room.

After a few minutes he stopped, and we all applauded and cheered. As Stefan straightened up from a mock-formal bow, I saw for the first time his face fully illuminated with happiness.

Chapter Six

Finishing is the final procedure in the long and complex process of transforming the silkworm’s gossamer into a perfect piece of woven silk. Dependent on the type of fabric required, finishing can include dyeing, boiling, tentering, drying and pressing in a variety of ways to achieve an extraordinary range of characteristics: firmness, fullness, dullness, lustre, softness or draping quality. For certain technical applications, such as parachute silk, finishing is critical in determining the final porosity of the fabric.

From The History of Silk, by Harold Verner

I was sitting in a deckchair in the garden on that warm May evening, refreshing my tired feet in a bucket of cool water, a gin and tonic in my hand and reading the latest edition of True Romance while horned stag beetles bumbled around me in the dusk. I should have been content, but I wasn’t. I was desperate for some romance of my own. Though fabled for having one pub for every thousand residents, Westbury offered few opportunities for meeting people, and John seemed to spend more and more time in London.

Robbie’s intimately whispered promise to ‘see you very soon’ rang hollowly in my ears. He hadn’t been in touch for three long months, not since the meeting at the mill. I’d stopped trying to be first to the telephone each time it rang, and had given up rushing to meet the postman. I was lonely and my social life was at a standstill.

So when I heard the raunchy toot-ti-toot of a car horn I didn’t waste any time putting my shoes on, and sprinted round to the front of the house barefoot. John was already waiting on the front step.

‘Nice motor,’ I said, as a low-slung dark blue sports car drew up.

‘It’s a Morgan, spelled M-O-N-E-Y,’ he whispered back.

The car scrunched to a halt on the gravel. Robbie looked just like a Hollywood leading man in his fur-lined flying jacket and a white scarf of what appeared to be parachute silk. His long absence was instantly forgiven. He pulled off his leather pilot’s helmet, pushed himself up and swung his legs over the door.

‘My new baby. What do you think?’ He seemed extremely pleased with himself.

‘Beautiful,’ we chorused.

He pumped John’s hand, ‘How are you, old man? Long time no see.’

He lifted my fingers and kissed them with mock formality, eyes flirting, then looked down at my bare feet. My toes felt suddenly vulnerable.

‘Hello Lily. Love the red nail polish, terribly erotic – I mean exotic.’ He grinned with easy familiarity. ‘How’s tricks, one and all?’

‘Not bad, not bad,’ said John. ‘Like the Morgan.’

‘Little beauty, isn’t she? Fancy a spin? There’s room for both of you, if Lily doesn’t mind sitting sideways in the back.’

The smell of Castrol on the warm evening air promised adventure. As Robbie shimmied the car through the twisty lanes, each bend brought a new aroma; a greenstick bonfire, hay drying in the field, pungent piggeries, water mint, wild garlic and the sweeter notes of bluebells and cow parsley.

We pulled up at the pub and while Robbie went inside to get the drinks John and I sat on a bench by the river, watching an anxious mother duck shepherding her ducklings and listening to the calls of coots settling in the reed beds.

‘I wonder why he’s popped up just now?’ John said. ‘We’re still waiting for him to sign that parachute silk contract, you know? It’s been a while.’

‘Are you going to ask him?’

‘Watch and learn, Sis,’ he said, tapping the side of his nose.

Robbie arrived with the drinks, and for a while we made small talk. ‘Been doing much flying lately?’ John asked.

‘She is no more,’ Robbie said, pulling a sorrowful face. ‘Had a bit of a prang.’

‘Golly. You crashed it?’

‘I’d been out for a spin – lovely evening, bit like this. I was just coming into land when out of nowhere comes this ruddy great removal van toddling along the edge of the field,’ he said smoothly. ‘Managed to avoid it but the wheels clipped a hedge and next thing I knew we were doing a somersault. Fine in the air, that kind of thing, but not so clever at ground level. Ended up with her nose half buried in a ploughed field and me hanging upside down in the straps.’

He demonstrated leaning out of his seat, chest parallel to the ground, arms gripping an imaginary joystick, mock terror on his face, making us laugh. It seemed like a bit of a lark. We expected a jokey punch line.

‘What did you do?’ John asked.

‘I felt this wet in my hair. It was petrol, dripping out of the tank onto the engine block. So my mind got made up sharpish. I jumped for it and ran away across the field. There was a ruddy great whoomph and the whole thing went up. Guy Fawkes would have been proud. That was the end of the plane, though. Miss her terribly.’ He jerked his thumb towards the Morgan glistening in the twilight, engine ticking as it cooled. ‘But the insurance paid for that little beauty.’

The story shocked me, much more than I’d expected. What if Robbie really had gone up in flames? I could imagine what John was thinking: we could have lost the contract, too.

Robbie took a swig of his pint. ‘C’est la vie. Anyway, what’s been happening in Westbury? How’s business?’

‘Not bad, not bad, considering,’ John said.

‘Tough times for us all,’ Robbie said. ‘The harder old Chamberlain bargains for peace, the harder we seem to be working for war, don’t you find?’

He offered us cigarettes from a slim monogrammed case and then, as he lit them for us with his gold Dunhill, added quite casually, ‘By the way, how’s the finishing going? The parachute contract’s yours, you know, just as soon as you’re ready to meet the specifications.’

John didn’t miss a beat. ‘The finishing plant’s in and we’re confident it’ll be up and running in a week or so.’ I sipped my shandy and smiled to myself at his bullishness. The truth, I knew, was less impressive.

For weeks now, John and Father had been preoccupied with installing the new equipment. By moving machinery around they had managed to clear a section of the winding mill to create a self-contained room next to the boiler house with its own double doors leading directly into the yard, convenient for the plumbing, drainage and hot water needed for the new plant. The equipment arrived from Switzerland on a lorry so long it had difficulty in negotiating the driveway. Each heavy section had to be lifted and rollered into the new finishing room before the machinery could be assembled. A team of engineers worked several days to construct it and link up the plumbing and wiring.

‘You’re very quiet, Lily,’ Robbie said, turning to me. ‘I gather you’re in charge of weaving the stuff? How’s that going?’

‘It’s going fine.’ I caught John’s eye. Just watch me play the game too. ‘It’s a plain taffeta in twelve momme habotai, and to be honest it’s a doddle compared with some of the other things we have to weave. We should be able to get you some samples any day now, just as soon as the plant’s up and running.’

Robbie nodded as if he knew what I was talking about and John suppressed a smile. I surprised myself, too; it was a heady feeling, being an expert. Not what men usually expected of women, I thought, smugly.

What I said wasn’t far from the truth. Weaving parachute silk was straightforward: thread of equal weight for both warp and weft, with no patterns or colour changes. Twist and tensions were clearly defined. The yarn we used was still ‘in the gum’ – the sticky sericin the caterpillar exudes to make its cocoon – which made it easier to handle. It would be ‘de-gummed’ by boiling the woven cloth as part of the finishing process.

Gwen had put me in charge of two looms weaving test runs with Stefan, so that he could take over two of his own once the contracts came in. As she predicted, he was already a good weaver and I found myself looking forward to working beside him each day. At first it was exciting to be developing a new material, but it was vital to be vigilant against broken threads, and these were tricky to detect against the blinding whiteness of the material. After hours of watching yards of plain white cloth emerging from the shuttle beam our eyes burned and we begged Gwen to let us weave stripes or Jacquard designs to relieve the boredom. But she was immovable. ‘It’s important work, has to be right. And you two are our experts now.’

After Robbie dropped us home John said, ‘Very impressive, schwester, the way you talked that up. You’re turning into a right little businesswoman.’

‘Thanks for the compliment,’ I said, feeling quietly proud of myself, flattered that he’d noticed.

‘Of course, it helps that he’s pretty sweet on you. Better keep it that way, we’re going to depend on him in the next little while.’

‘He’s not sweet on me, you’re just imagining it,’ I snapped. ‘Besides, just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I have to simper at any chap with a chequebook.’

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 which 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 realised 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.

Afterwards 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 goodbye, 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 over-boiling 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 de-gummed and rinsed, and how to lift the silk onto hooks called stenters which 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 checking the thermometer. I went outside to cool off.

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