Liz Trenow - The Last Telegram

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.

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.’