Liz Trenow - The Last Telegram

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.’