by Liz Trenow
“I’m fine, honestly.” If only she would go back to bed and let me get on with clearing up.
“Except at night?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice. The sympathy in those pale green eyes was weakening my armor.
“Come on, let’s clear up the glass and pour ourselves another one,” she said firmly. She went to the kitchen and came back carrying a cloth and a dustpan and brush, as I stood in the hall, unable to move.
In those few moments, Gwen had understood what had been happening to me, even before I dared admit it to myself. And she realized that ticking me off would only induce more self-denial. How did she manage to be so strong, so intuitive, so generous? She had become the warp to my weft. How had I been so absorbed in my own woes that I’d utterly failed to appreciate this before now?
It was this realization, rather than my own misery, which finally undermined me. Abandoning any attempt to hold back the tears now, I leaned against the wall, my knees crumpled, and I slid, sniveling, down to the floor. I was wiping my nose on the sleeve of my nightdress when Gwen pulled me up and led me into the moonlit drawing room, sat me on the sofa, took a handkerchief from her pajama pocket, and put a fresh tumbler of whiskey in my hand. She wrapped a blanket around my knees, tucking me in like a child.
“So, talk to me,” she said.
“There’s nothing to say.”
“Tell me how much you loved him.”
And so I started, often incoherent, weeping with wretchedness or roaring with rage. How he was my life. No one would ever replace him. About my misery, and my nightmares. “I just want to die too,” I moaned, finally running out of words and tears.
Gwen leaned back and stretched. “You are not going to die, Lily,” she said firmly. “You will get by somehow. Life goes on. It always does. But now we both need some sleep.”
I nodded, sniffing.
“And you’re putting off going back to bed?”
I nodded again.
“Would it help if I stayed with you tonight?” I must have looked disconcerted. She squeezed my hand. “Just that, stupid. Nothing more.”
That night, I slept better than at any time in the past weeks. Each time I woke, Gwen’s solid, reassuring presence and gentle breathing soothed me back to sleep again.
I had long since stopped reading the “killed in action” columns, but the deaths must have been announced in the newspaper, because around that time came a flurry of condolence letters—from cousins and aunts, employees at the mill, some of his former Pioneer pals. Michael, now back in the country, telephoned and promised to visit when petrol rationing allowed. All this I found comforting, even heartwarming. But when the envelope arrived with Robbie’s handwriting on the front, my heart sank and I put it aside for opening later.
When I finally plucked up the courage to read it I realized that I need not have worried after all.
Dearest Lily,
We may have had our differences in the past, but please believe me when I say how sincerely sorry I was to hear about the death of your husband Stephen. I am sure he was an extremely brave man and this must be a terrible blow.
I know just a little of what you must be suffering: I too have family members and friends who will never return, and it is hard to imagine the world continuing without them. My only consolation is that their deaths have been in a good cause, what we fervently hope is the defeat of evil. I firmly believe it is now the bounden duty of all of us remaining to appreciate what we have, enjoy every day, and work hard to fulfil the promise of the better world that they died for.
I hope to be in Westbury before long and if so, may I call in to offer my condolences in person?
Affectionately yours,
Robbie
I had to read the signature twice to confirm that its author really was Robbie Cameron. The letter was certainly pompous, but the sentiment was surprisingly sympathetic, considering how malicious he’d been about Stefan in the past. Where was the arrogant Robbie I’d first met nearly five years ago? The bully who had threatened me and pushed me into such a disastrous decision? War had changed us all; had it perhaps softened him, made him more compassionate and sensitive? It certainly sounded so, and though I was still suspicious, a part of me rather hoped that he might prove to be a reformed man.
Vera got special leave to come home and see me. We sat on the drawing room sofa for hours as I talked about Stefan, the same words pouring out once more, like the tears, the unstoppable, painful stream. She wept with me, and then took me for a gentle walk around the garden and the orchard, to clear our heads, she said, till it was time for supper.
I had no appetite, hadn’t eaten properly for days, but felt obliged to retain some kind of normality by turning up for meals, even though sitting through them was purgatory. This time was no different. The four of us sat in the dining room—with all its memories of Father and the boys—while Mother served the meal she had summoned from our still scarce rations.
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.
Th
at 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.
21
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, Mis
s 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.”