Last Telegram by Liz Trenow

together. Tell you what, I’ve got a friend who has a cottage in the Peaks. I could borrow a friend’s plane and fly you there for a weekend. What do you think?”
    â€œThat sounds…cracking,” I stuttered. I could hardly concentrate as he kissed me good-bye, my head was in such a spin. Whatever did he mean? Was he really suggesting we should have a dirty weekend? That was a bit fast, even for James Stewart.
    â€¢ • •
    â€œYou were back late last night. Have a nice time, dear?” Mother enquired as we cleared the breakfast dishes.
    â€œLovely. The film was a laugh,” I mumbled. “James Stewart’s a great actor.”
    â€œCharming young man, isn’t he? Your father’s quite taken with him,” she said distractedly.
    Robbie was ideal boyfriend material. I was sure that I was falling in love. But how could I know for certain? What was I supposed to feel? Vera had been promised a weekend off soon, and I couldn’t wait to tell her everything.
    â€¢ • •
    A few days later, Mother, John, and I were eating supper informally at the kitchen table. Father had stayed over in London. Out of the window, I could see the mill in darkness, except for the lights of the new finishing plant casting bright stripes across the empty yard.
    John pushed the ham and potato salad around his plate.
    â€œNot hungry, dear?” Mother asked.
    â€œI’m fine,” he snapped.
    â€œSorry it’s only a cold meal tonight, but I thought, with this weather.”
    â€œI said I’m fine.” Like the slam of a shuttle.
    Another silence, then he banged down his knife and fork. “It’s that ruddy vat in the finishing plant. I just can’t get the thermostat and timer to work properly. I’ve tried and tried. We’ve wasted God knows how much silk by overboiling it. Now it’s useless for parachutes and no one else is going to want it. We’ve spent thousands on this kit but unless we can get the silk right sharpish, we’ll never get the contracts to pay off the debt.”
    He sighed, rubbing his stubbly cheek. “I’ll just have to go back after supper and have another go.”
    â€œDo you have to? You look all done in,” Mother murmured.
    â€œShall I come and help?” I said, surprising myself.
    â€œWhy should you? You’ve done a day’s work already.”
    â€œIt’s important to me too, you know, the future of the mill and all that.” He raised his eyebrows. I barely understood how it had happened, but my apprenticeship no longer felt like filling in time until something better came along. I was starting to care.
    â€œCome on then,” he said, pushing away his chair and getting up from the table. “A pair of fresh eyes won’t do any harm.”
    Unlike the weaving shed, with its oily smells and dark looms, the finishing plant was dazzling—brightly lit and newly whitewashed, with shiny stainless steel vats and tubes, steamy and clean-smelling like a laundry.
    Although I’d seen the machinery being installed, I hadn’t watched it working before. John showed me how the silk went through two large baths of boiling water to be degummed and rinsed, and how to lift the silk onto hooks called stenters that stretched it back to its previous width. After that, it was hung in a hot air cupboard to dry and run through yet more rollers to be pressed.
    â€œLooks simple, doesn’t it? But it’s not. The silk has to go over the rollers at exactly the right speeds, and at the same time the temperature in the vats has to be exact.”
    He wiped his brow. “And even supposing we get all that right, we have to make sure the silk goes through the drier at the right speed and temperature so that it’s just damp enough to be put through hot rollers to iron it—what we call calendering.”
    Stacked on a rack were rolls of the untreated white silk Stefan and I had woven.