Last Telegram (26 page)

Gwen served turnip wine and Vera chatted with Mother about rationing, lavishing compliments about the wonderful culinary results she seemed to achieve with so little, as I pushed morsels guiltily around my plate. Then a long, tense silence fell over the four of us. There really was nothing more to say.

“I must show you my latest letter from John,” Vera said.

“Oh yes, please,” Mother responded eagerly. “I haven't heard anything for a few weeks. What does he say?”

“He's been moved to some other camp, Stalag Luft V. He doesn't say why, but reading between the lines, he's not that pleased about it.”

“‘Not pleased'?” Mother chipped in quickly. “He's all right, isn't he?”

“There are whole sentences blacked out by the censor in his last couple of letters, so I wondered if he'd been caught trying to send out information? Perhaps moving him was some kind of punishment.”

“Have others been moved too?” Mother's voice was spiky with worry.

“No, I think it's just him, and that's part of the problem, why he's unhappy,” Vera said.

“Poor boy, that's terrible.” Mother went on, “I know how important it is for those boys to have their friends, people they can trust.”

Gwen started to chip in, and as the conversation continued, I could feel myself becoming itchy and irritated. Such petty inanities, such minor, miserable little details. Rehearsed over and over again. The compression started to build behind my eyes until it felt as though my head would explode. Why couldn't they talk about something else, something important, for once? John was my brother, and I was worried about him too, but he was alive, for heaven's sake, and relatively safe. While thousands of others were getting themselves killed.

“Oh, I do hope he is safe, Vera, what do you think?” Mother was wittering on. “Shall we ask the Red Cross to check for us?”

I tried to suppress it, but my anger started rising like a red surge that I couldn't control. For heaven's sake, I thought, John sleeps in a bed every night with blankets and food and a roof over his head. He will come home to us, when it's all over. Unlike Stefan and the others, their bodies scattered in the dirt, discarded like so many pieces of rubbish.

Vera had just started to reply when the dam in my head burst open. “Oh, for Christ's sake,” I barked. “Can't you just stop talking about John for once?”

The three of them looked up, their faces shocked as if seeing me for the first time, forks frozen halfway to their mouths.

“It's John this, John that. All the ruddy time. The way you three are going on, anyone would think there was nobody else in the world, nothing else more interesting or important to talk about.”

“Oh, my dear, I am so sorry,” Mother said. “It must be dreadful for you.”

There was a moment's silence. I glared around the table, daring someone to speak. Then I'd give them both barrels, I thought.

“But John's your brother, Lily, and he's my fiancé,” Vera started.

That was it.

“Yes, and your bloody fiancé is safe and sound, and he will come back to you,” I roared, watching with satisfaction as the blood drained from her face. “While Stefan—my husband, Stefan, remember him? He's never coming back. Never. Never.”

I threw down my knife and fork with a clatter onto the plate, pushed back my chair, and stood up. Mother stood up too.

“No, don't mind about me,” I said. “You just stay and enjoy your meal, have your little chats about John. I'm going to bed.”

I slammed the door and didn't care how childish it was.

A little later, Gwen came, knocking quietly on my door.

“Go away,” I shouted. But she didn't. She came into my room and said nothing. I held myself stiff, my back to her as she lifted the covers and climbed into my bed. I stayed unmoving, miserable and unyielding, angry with myself for breaking down and being so horrid to my friends and family, to the people who loved and supported me.

But as her warmth started to envelop me, the desire to be held in the arms of another human being became irresistible. I turned around and she pulled me close as the tears came, wracking my body once more. Finally we slept, curled like nestled spoons, her breath on the back of my neck, her hand gently stroking my hair, my shoulder, enveloped in the smell of her talcum powder and the regular rhythm of her breath, slowly in-out, in-out.

The next night she did the same, and each night after that. I loved the comforting solidity of her presence, the strength in her arms, the way she listened, in silence, and then said just the right things. Before sleeping, we would whisper like schoolgirls sharing secrets, and I even learned to giggle again. I began to look forward to night times. There was nothing more to it, I told myself, just the consolation of being close.

In its natural state,
Bombyx
mori
will turn into a moth after about three weeks inside its pupa, and will exude a substance that dissolves the gummy sericin so that it can push its way out of the cocoon. For commercial silk production, however, it is a sad fact that the moth must be killed before it emerges, so that a continuous filament of silk can be recovered undamaged.

—
The
History
of
Silk
by Harold Verner

Normal life, of a sort, slowly resumed. We had no choice. After our great hopes for D-Day, the fighting in Europe was still relentless. At home, bombs—the worst kind yet—were still falling, and there were fire watches to be manned, ration queues to be endured. But there were small glimmers of hope: our boys were starting to win battles, most of the time, and the blackout had been lifted.

Orders from the Ministry of Supply for parachute silk had been steadily decreasing to the point that it was hard to justify keeping two shifts going at the mill. I began to worry whether we might have to lay people off or have enough business to carry us through to peacetime. And after the war, then what? The business world would have changed completely, we would need to find new markets and customers, but who would have the money, or even the desire, to buy luxury items at a time like this? It was hard to imagine, but I began to wonder whether the long and venerable history of the mill might end with me.

At home, the three of us—Mother, Gwen, and me—fell into a predictable routine. It was easier to cope that way and I came to resent any change, or any visitors, which might threaten to disrupt the pattern of our days. I tolerated their determined cheerfulness when we were together and was grateful when they allowed me to be alone with my sadness. A world of women, that's what we had become at home, and largely at the mill too, except for the men who were too old or too ill to go to the front line. A comforting, comfortable world of women, loving, supportive, and unthreatening.

Gwen and I became inseparable, at work and at home. I couldn't imagine life without her. She read my thoughts and understood my moods, always knew what to say, or what not to say. She taught me how to laugh again and how to drink moderately without getting drunk.

“Five years of war,” she said, raising her glass as we sat on the terrace in the golden light of that late September evening. “Doesn't it feel like a lifetime?”

A long gap in John's letters caused us to fear the Germans might avenge their defeats by punishing our PoWs. Mother's response was to throw herself even more frantically into Red Cross efforts, and she was out at yet another fundraiser in Westbury Town Hall.

“I can't even remember what it felt like to be at peace,” I said, taking a long gulp of the cold, sharp drink from my pint glass. We'd opened a flagon of homemade apple wine that seemed to have turned into exceptionally potent, explosively fizzy cider.

“Oh, I remember you,” Gwen said, the freckles merging sweetly across her nose and forehead as she squinted into the low sun. “That first day at the mill. Fresh-faced little thing. All legs and arms, forever flicking your new hairstyle. Didn't think you'd stick it for more than a day or two.”

“I only saw it as a stopgap. Couldn't figure out what else to do,” I said, embarrassed at the memory of my youthful naivety. “Apart from nursing or teaching, there didn't seem to be much choice.”

“Proved you wrong, didn't we? You've done so well.”

“Thanks largely to you,” I said, putting my hand into hers.

She squeezed it back. “Now look at us,” she started, and then stopped mid-sentence, listening. “What the hell's that?”

“Motorbike? The Morgan? Robbie?”

“Too loud,” she said.

We listened for a few seconds more.

The noise stopped suddenly and in that moment we both realized what it was. “Oh hell, Doodlebug,” I shouted, throwing down my glass and standing up, grabbing her hand, and starting to run toward the house. “Into the cellar, quick.”

We ran through the conservatory, wrenched open the door, and tumbled down the cellar stairs, falling into a heap at the bottom, just as the blast shook the foundations of the house. We held our breath as that horribly familiar symphony of glass and shrapnel, like triangles and timpani, seemed to fall all around. Like the tube station in London, that last night with Stefan, I thought. But the cellar was still intact. The door at the top of the stairs had slammed shut, but it was still on its hinges.

“Bloody hell, that was close,” I said. “You all right?”

I felt Gwen's body shaking and thought she was laughing with relief. But then she sat up, and in the half dark of the cellar, I caught the glint of tears on her cheeks.

“Gwen? We're okay. We're safe.” I pulled out a grubby handkerchief and offered it to her.

“For a moment, I thought that was it,” she said in a cracked voice, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose. “I might have lost you.”

“We might both have been lost, you ninny,” I said, laughing with relief. “But we're both still here.”

She turned and hugged me again, tighter than ever this time, and whispered into my hair, “I couldn't bear to lose you, Lily. I do love you, you know.”

“You're the best friend I've ever had,” I said, kissing her cheek.

There were voices from the top of the stairs. “Mrs. Grace, Miss Lily, are you there?”

“Come on, we've got to find out what's happened,” I said, pulling myself out of her arms. We stood up, dusted ourselves down, and climbed the stairs on shaky legs. As we emerged into the eerily bright evening sunshine, crunching through the broken glass now covering the conservatory floor, we saw Bert with a couple of other men at the door, all looking shocked and disheveled.

“Thank goodness you're okay, Miss Lily,” he said. He was panting slightly and I could smell the beer on his breath. They must have run here from the pub up the road.

“We're both all right,” I said. “We managed to get into the cellar in time, and Mother's out at the Town Hall.” I turned to look at the house. It seemed to have escaped major damage. “Where did the bomb land? Is anyone hurt?”

“No one hurt that I know of,” Bert said grimly. “But you need to come and see where it landed, Miss Lily.”

The kitchen garden was untouched, but when we emerged into the yard, it became shockingly obvious how close the V1 had landed. Through clouds of dust, we could see clearly that where the finishing room used to be was now just a crater, surrounded by broken rubble. The walls, roof, and every scrap of equipment and rolls of silk in the finishing room had been dismembered and scattered around the yard as if they'd been through a giant threshing machine.

“Bloody hell. Must have been a direct hit.” I felt curiously unshocked, but as we walked down the yard, my knees went to jelly and I started to sway.

“Steady there,” Gwen said, putting her arm around my waist. I took deep breaths, trying to comprehend what had happened. Such devastation, just yards from where Gwen and I had been sheltering. Another very close call. A hat trick, after that fateful day at Cheapside and the raid the night before Stefan left. I'd lived through all three.

“Could someone fetch Mother from the Town Hall?” I said. “She'll be desperate to know we're safe.”

“Shall I go?” Gwen said.

“No, I need you here please,” I said. “Someone else?”

Bert kicked at the remains of a broken vat. “Don't look like there's much to salvage there, Miss Lily,” he muttered gloomily.

“Are you sure no one was in the building?” Gwen said.

He nodded. “Not in the mill, neither,” he said. “Afternoon shift clocked off two hours ago.”

The mill seemed to be relatively intact, but shards of glass hung like buntings of glittering diamonds on the crisscross tape in every one of the windows. Bert pulled out a set of keys and unlocked the door. As we walked cautiously through each section, the extent of the damage became horribly clear: flying glass had been hurled like a million knives, slicing through every piece of woven cloth, pirns, and hanks of yarn in the weaving, warping, and throwing sheds.

“Sod's law, isn't it,” Gwen said, as we looked across the weaving shed from the steps, trying to comprehend the extent of the destruction. “If the blackout blinds had still been in place, they'd have caught most of this.”

“It'll take months to sort out,” I said, feeling very close to tears.

Gwen nodded. We both understood what a mammoth task was ahead, even after the windows were repaired, to restock with raw, throw, wind, rewarp, and get the looms weaving again.

News traveled quickly. Within a few minutes, dozens of people—neighbors, workers, and their families—appeared, and a major clear-up began. Every broom and dustpan was deployed for sweeping, every pair of protective gloves issued to people removing broken glass from the windows, every pirn bin emptied to become makeshift dustbins, every available hammer employed fitting temporary boards at the windows to make the building safe. In the middle of all this activity, Mother arrived, with tears of relief in her eyes as she found us. “What can I do to help, girls?”

“Cups of tea for the troops?” I said.

“Wilco. Coming right up,” she replied, and headed off to the canteen.

Long after darkness had fallen, I called all the helpers together.

“A thousand thanks for everything you've done tonight, you have all been wonderful,” I said. “Tomorrow's Sunday, and we all deserve a day of rest. On Monday, the hard work starts again. Good night, and God bless you all.”

“Let's call it a day too shall we, Gwen? Mother's gone back to get supper.”

As we started back to the house, she said quietly, “You were incredible this evening, Lily. You reminded me so much of Harold. They looked at you with such respect.”

“That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me in a long time,” I said, giving her a hug. “We make such a good pair, you and I. I could never have done these things without you.” Gwen kissed me tenderly on the cheek and we went indoors.

• • •

I hadn't heard from Vera for weeks and then, one evening, there was a telephone call from her mother.

“Please come when you can, dear,” she said. “She's home for a few days and says she wants to see you.”

Why hadn't Vera telephoned me herself? When I pressed her mother for more, she just said, “She's just got herself in a bit of a pickle. Nervous exhaustion, they call it. I'll let Vera tell you more herself, dear.”

“Shall I come now?” I said, feeling a little nervous. I wasn't entirely sure whether Vera had really forgiven me after my outburst about John. Had I somehow contributed to her stress?

“As soon as you can,” she said.

Vera was sitting up in bed, her face even more pale than usual. As I walked in, she said, “Oh, Lily, I'm so glad you've come.” The childhood bedroom seemed hardly changed from the times we'd spent many giggly nights there together. Magazine pictures of horses and film stars still battled for space on the flowery wallpaper.

“What's all this about nervous exhaustion?” I said, sitting down on the bed, taking her hand. It was trembling.

“It's nothing. I just need a few good nights' sleep.”

“Have you been on night shifts?”

She shook her head. “It's the V2s. Every bloody night, and you can't hear them coming. It's almost worse than the Blitz.” She started shaking with great sobs that made me feel helpless. “Oh God, Lily, when is it going to end?”

“They're running scared, we just have to carry on for a few more months.” I tried to sound reassuring but wasn't even convincing myself.

“I can't go on,” she wailed. “Every bed is full, and if they don't die, we just have to do our best to patch them up and send them out again. Firemen, police, ambulance drivers, factory workers. Just ordinary people trying to make the best of it. Most of them won't ever really recover. They're burned, or we've had to cut bits off to save their lives. Or their lungs are shot from inhaling smoke. The children are the worst. Whatever did they do to deserve this? But every day we have to put on a brave face and pretend it will all be hunky-dory. What else can we do?”

She pressed her head into the pillow, thin shoulders juddering. I stroked her hair, trying to calm her.

A little later, when her mother had brought tea, I said, “I'm so sorry, Vera, I hope I didn't make things worse, having that little paddy with you and Mother over dinner.”

“Don't be silly,” she said, smiling for the first time. “That's long forgotten. We all knew why you were upset, but it's difficult to know what to do for the best.”

A few days later, she had recovered sufficiently to come for tea at The Chestnuts. “Don't worry,” I told her when she arrived, “Mother's bursting to tell you about the latest parcel she's getting ready for John. You can talk all you like about him, I really don't mind any more. I'll go and help Gwen get the tea ready.”

As I walked Vera home later, she said, quite out of the blue, “What's going on, Lily?”

“What do you mean, ‘what's going on'? With whom?”

“Between you and Gwen.”

“Sorry, I don't know what you mean,” I lied, my stomach knotting.

“The way she looks at you, when you're talking. The way she smiles at you. She worships you. You can't have missed it. There is something going on.”

“There's nothing going on,” I repeated, too sharply. I knew exactly what she was talking about: Gwen's easy intimacy, the pecks on the cheek, the touch on my arm, the hand on my knee. As we'd brought the tea into the drawing room, Gwen had put her hand around my waist.

“Lily?” Vera paused. “You're not?”