Last Telegram (28 page)

“Oh no,” I gasped as the realization hit me like a punch in the stomach, “not the parachutes.”

“Mrs. Holmes?” Peter Newman peered at me, concerned now. “Are you okay?”

I took a breath, forced my eyes open. The room was a blur. “Yes, sorry, do go on.” I held myself tight, still gripping the edge of the table, as he started again.

“Not much more to tell, I'm afraid. Before I leave I wanted to say…” He faltered, and I tried to twist my lips into an encouraging smile. “I heard so much about you from Steve, and I'm pleased we've met after all this time, but sorry it had to be in these circumstances.” He paused, started again. “I'm not just saying this, but truly Steve was one of the finest men I've ever known.”

I did not say the words that were shaping themselves in my head like a demonic chant: it was me. This fine man, your friend, my husband, and those other fine men died because of me. It was all my fault.

Instead, I heard myself politely thanking him for coming, then shook his hand and saw him out.

In many cultures, silk is used to wrap bodies before burial, as a mark of respect for the deceased. However, among Jewish people it is forbidden to bury the dead in silk shrouds or clothes embroidered with gold, as this is considered to be an expression of haughtiness and the destruction of useful property.

—
The
History
of
Silk
by Harold Verner

I watched Peter Newman walking away across the yard and through the gate, strong and alive in spite of his terrible injury. The world that had receded into insignificance in that little room was now bursting with sound and color all around me, but I was utterly paralyzed, unable to think of anything except the words he'd so casually let slip:
the
'chutes themselves
.

In the very spot where I now stood, outside the front door of the mill that evening in March two long years ago, I'd said “yes.” That potent, fatal lie that allowed faulty silk to go through. Faulty silk makes faulty parachutes. Faulty parachutes cost lives. A single syllable, my word alone, probably caused the deaths of four men. What if, instead, I'd said a simple “no”? A sweet and honorable truth, told with the courage to stand up to Robbie's bullying, admitting that the silk wasn't ready? Stefan and the others might still be alive. My boy would have come home to me, held me in his arms, grown old with me.

Instead he was rotting in a hidden grave, deep in foreign soil. Why had I been so weak, so unable to just tell the truth? And then, even worse, why had I been so deceptive, concealing my lie, and never telling a soul?

Now I knew the true meaning of retribution, I thought, as memories of those Old Testament illustrations in our family Bible came swimming into my head. The screaming souls drawn irretrievably downward into a pit of flames. The pain of guilt and not knowing felt like a thousand knives in my head. This truly was hellfire, and no less than I deserved.

It would be better to be dead than to live with this abyss of unanswerable questions. For a few mad moments, I considered the options for killing myself. Lying on the railway line waiting for a train, or weighing my pockets with stones and falling into the river? Or perhaps jumping into one of those deep steaming cauldrons in the dye room? I could almost feel the scream of scalding flesh, the dark boiling liquid blistering my eyes. In fact, I welcomed the idea. Nothing could be worse than this agony of shame.

But it wasn't only my fault, that silk. The raw was poor quality; Bert was incompetent. And Gwen, where had she been at that critical moment? Not in the finishing room supervising Bert, as I'd specifically asked. No, she was elsewhere in the mill, sorting out some “emergency.” She'd taken her eye off the ball. The blame was partly hers. She helped to kill Stefan.

The tea break klaxon sounded above my head, interrupting these crazy, nightmarish thoughts. I turned and went inside, surprised to find my limbs still functioning, and climbed the stairs to the office. I heard myself saying, “Terrible headache.” No need to mime the pain. “Going home. Any problems, ask Gwen.” The secretaries nodded sympathetically. Clearly I looked the part too.

There was only one thing in my mind now: anesthesia. I slipped across the yard, crept into the house, grabbed a full bottle of whiskey from its hiding place in the cellar, and ran up the stairs to my bedroom, ignoring Mother's call, “Lily, is that you?”

I wedged a chair against the door and drew the curtains, hoping the darkness would help to bury my despair. The shame was excruciating, my anger burned like a fire, and all I could think about was stopping the agony. I sat on the bed and started gulping straight from the bottle, retching as the fierce liquid seared my throat. After a while, the pain began to recede. I became fascinated by the way the pattern on the curtains was swirling around. My thoughts retreated, and my eyelids began to close.

Much later, I woke to hear Gwen knocking, trying the door handle. The chair didn't budge, I noticed with grim satisfaction. “Lily, are you in there? Let me in, won't you?”

“Don' wan' see anyone,” I shouted, my head throbbing horribly with the effort.

She tried the door again. “What's the matter, love? Please let me in.”

My head was spinning and I felt sick, furious to be woken and reminded of my wretchedness. “Not your bloody love,” I heard myself screeching. “Go away.”

There was a silence. She'd gone, but I knew she wouldn't give up that easily. I must have passed out again, because I woke to hear something heavy being applied to the door. With a horrible crunch of broken chair, the door swung open and there she was, outlined against the light, holding what looked like a crowbar.

“For God's sake, Lily, why did you block the door?”

“Go 'way,” I groaned. “Don't want anyone.”

I could see by her shadow in the doorway that she was hesitating. But she said again, “No, Lily. What's going on? You've got to tell me.”

Her kindly persistence seemed to act as a catalyst, like Jekyll's potion or the rising full moon for a werewolf. The fetid mixture of sadness and guilt, anger and intoxication turned me into some kind of deranged, enraged animal. Rationality slunk into the shadows.

“Tell you wha's going on,” I slurred, launching myself off the bed and trying to stand up, swaying like a sailor newly onshore. Holding onto the chest of drawers and attempting to square my shoulders, I heard a stream of crazy language coming out of my mouth. It was my voice, but I had no idea where the words were coming from, and neither the will nor the power to stop them. Relinquishing responsibility felt deliciously sweet.

“The silk, parachute silk. Bert buggered up when Mrs. So Ruddy Important was oh so busy somewhere else. Tha's what killed Stefan. Three others besides. Fucking faulty parachute silk.” I enunciated these last four words clearly and the alliteration felt good, so I said them again. “Fucking faulty parachute silk.”

She closed the door behind her. “Stop shouting, you'll wake Grace,” she said quietly. “You're drunk.”

“Very perspi-spict-atious of you.”

“Sit down,” she said more forcefully now. “I'll get you a coffee.”

“No,” I shouted, swaying dangerously, “Don' want bloody coffee. Don' want anything. Go away.”

“I haven't a clue what you're talking about. Calm down and try to explain what you mean.” Even through my booze-blurred senses, I could tell she was losing patience.

“Tell you wha' I mean,” I said, peering at her in the dimness, struggling to stay upright. My tongue felt too big for my mouth. “A man came today. Friend of Stefan. Said they all jumped out of a plane. Over France. Fucking faulty parachute didn' work.”

The silence was so profound for a moment I thought I'd gone deaf. Then she moved toward me.

“Oh, my darling Lily. Why didn't you come and tell me?”

I held up my hands to ward her off, almost losing my balance. “Don' bloody darling me,” I snarled. “Don' come near me, you, you…” Drunk as I was, I managed to stifle the word, but she knew what I'd been about to say and backed away, her face luminous in the darkened room.

“But the parachute might not have worked for lots of reasons. How can you say it's anyone's fault?”

“Telling you now!” I heard my shout reverberate in the room.

“What faulty silk, anyway?” she said, quietly persevering. “We didn't sell any faulty silk.” She paused, and then her face contorted with the shock of comprehension. “For Chrissake, Lily, not those rolls, that afternoon?” she hissed.

“When you were s'posed to be there, Gwen. Making sure.”

“But I
told
you
those two rolls were faulty. You didn't let Robbie take them, did you?” She was bellowing now, her eyes glittering in the gleam slipping through the gap in the curtains.

“He wanted twenny rolls. We promised twenny.” It came out as a snarl.

“You
didn't tell
him?” Her voice thin and incredulous, “You didn't say anything?”

“Course I didn' bloody tell him. He'd've closed us down.”

Some vague sense of reason in my addled mind suggested the argument was deeply flawed, and confused me. My anger was starting to dissipate and I felt numb and deeply weary. I wanted to close my eyes for ever.

“Jus' go away. Wanna sleep.”

Before I'd even registered that she'd left the room, I became aware that the door was closed and the room had fallen dark again. I was still standing, holding onto the chest of drawers. I crawled back to bed and fell into dreamless unconsciousness.

Early next morning, I woke with a fearsome headache and raging thirst, and went downstairs for water. The events of the previous day were like a horrible nightmare. I couldn't believe they'd happened.

But when I went into the kitchen, there was a letter propped against an empty milk bottle, with my name on it. I sat down, and with my head throbbing and eyes swimming, read:

Lily.

For the past few hours I have been walking, trying to make sense of what you seem to be accusing me of. I am so sorry about what you have learned about the way Stefan died. He was very dear to me too. I don't know exactly what his friend told you, but with all the millions of parachutes being produced, it seems against all odds that this accident could have been caused by Verners silk.

I have no idea why you allowed Robbie to take those rolls, but you seem to suggest it was my fault. For any part I played in this, I am deeply sorry.

I have gone to Mother's for a few days.

Gwen

• • •

She came back a week later, and I tried my hardest to make amends, but it was never the same. We still functioned, of course, went to work each day, ran the business, dealt with staff and customers. But I felt empty and devoid of emotion, as if my soul had been stolen. Once or twice she tried to talk to me, to console me. Each time I brushed her off. Mother sensed that things were wrong and questioned me a few times, but I refused to discuss anything. I barely knew how to explain it to myself.

The only sensation I felt with any certainty was guilt. It gnawed at me like a canker; guilt that pride had caused me to lie so disastrously, guilt that my lie had possibly caused the death of my husband, guilt that I had accused my closest friend of being somehow complicit in my own terrible, unforgiveable error.

I couldn't bring myself to read Stefan's farewell letter, or even to look inside the canvas bag of his “effects.” They stayed where I had thrown them, in the corner of my room, until one day I couldn't bear to look at them anymore. I gathered them up and stuffed them, unopened, into his old suitcase alongside the zippered writing case containing his photos and other family mementoes. A few days later, in a fit of anguish and guilt, I wrenched off my wedding band and his mother's engagement ring and put them into the red felt drawstring bag. This went into the suitcase too, along with the Hay Camp note, and the bundle of his letters and the wedding photographs I had so painstakingly pasted into an album. I locked the suitcase and pushed it to the back of the wardrobe in the spare room, so that nothing was left to remind me of my complicity in the death of the man I had loved so much.

As the weeks went by and deepened into a callously cold winter, my guilt congealed like the ice on the flooded water meadows. I became miserably, implacably angry with myself and with the world. The only remedy was to grin and bear it, to soldier on, get over it. The war went wearily on, as many thousands more perished with each tiny victory.

We kept the home fires flickering, a little feverishly. Oh, we tried, Gwen and me. For a while, we pretended that everything was back to normal. But as her bitterness turned into sorrow, I felt worse for hurting her all over again. Slowly, it became clear to both of us that there was nothing she could do to alleviate my wretchedness, and she seemed to build a self-protective barrier against my more unpredictable moods. We learned just to coexist. We were friendly enough, but the trust had evaporated and we communicated only at the most superficial level.

• • •

At last spring came and news that Hitler was dead, and everyone felt sure that the Germans would now cave in. Within days we learned that a peace agreement was about to be signed, and our hopes lifted even further. On the morning of Tuesday, May 8, it was announced that Churchill would address the nation on the radio at three o'clock. More than a hundred workers, many of them wearing red, white, and blue, gathered in the works canteen with their husbands, wives, and families to listen. The atmosphere was strangely muted; people greeted each other with respectful handshakes and there was an expectant hush in the room, as if they could hardly believe that this moment was really about to arrive.

But as soon as the words “unconditional surrender” came over the airwaves, their cheers raised the roof. People were laughing and weeping all at once, kissing anyone close by, while others shushed them, eager to hear the rest of the speech. The hubbub hushed as Churchill continued, paying tribute to the men and women who had laid down their lives for victory and those who had “fought valiantly” on land, sea, and in the air, and erupted again with whoops of joy as he ended: “We must now devote all our strength and resources to the completion of our task, both at home and abroad. Advance Britannia.”

“Three cheers for Mr. Churchill,” someone shouted.

“And the Royal Family,” another added, and as everyone hurrahed and cheered, Gwen nudged my arm, and whispered, “Your turn, Lily.” My head went into a spin. I had been so busy enjoying myself that I'd forgotten that people would expect me to make a speech. I certainly hadn't prepared anything.

What would Father say, I wondered, as I stepped up onto a chair, just as he had done that day he'd tried to scotch the sabotage rumors. Looking out over the crowd and waiting for the clapping to stop, the answer came: there was no need to emulate my father anymore. All I had to do was simply be myself.