The Last Telegram

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.