what appeared to be parachute silk. His long absence was instantly forgiven. He pulled off his leather pilot’s helmet, pushed himself up and swung his legs over the door.
‘My new baby. What do you think?’ He seemed extremely pleased with himself.
‘Beautiful,’ we chorused.
He pumped John’s hand, ‘How are you, old man? Long time no see.’
He lifted my fingers and kissed them with mock formality, eyes flirting, then looked down at my bare feet. My toes felt suddenly vulnerable.
‘Hello Lily. Love the red nail polish, terribly erotic – I mean exotic.’ He grinned with easy familiarity. ‘How’s tricks, one and all?’
‘Not bad, not bad,’ said John. ‘Like the Morgan.’
‘Little beauty, isn’t she? Fancy a spin? There’s room for both of you, if Lily doesn’t mind sitting sideways in the back.’
The smell of Castrol on the warm evening air promised adventure. As Robbie shimmied the car through the twisty lanes, each bend brought a new aroma; a greenstick bonfire, hay drying in the field, pungent piggeries, water mint, wild garlic and the sweeter notes of bluebells and cow parsley.
We pulled up at the pub and while Robbie went inside to get the drinks John and I sat on a bench by the river, watching an anxious mother duck shepherding her ducklings and listening to the calls of coots settling in the reed beds.
‘I wonder why he’s popped up just now?’ John said. ‘We’re still waiting for him to sign that parachute silk contract, you know? It’s been a while.’
‘Are you going to ask him?’
‘Watch and learn, Sis,’ he said, tapping the side of his nose.
Robbie arrived with the drinks, and for a while we made small talk. ‘Been doing much flying lately?’ John asked.
‘She is no more,’ Robbie said, pulling a sorrowful face. ‘Had a bit of a prang.’
‘Golly. You crashed it?’
‘I’d been out for a spin – lovely evening, bit like this. I was just coming into land when out of nowhere comes this ruddy great removal van toddling along the edge of the field,’ he said smoothly. ‘Managed to avoid it but the wheels clipped a hedge and next thing I knew we were doing a somersault. Fine in the air, that kind of thing, but not so clever at ground level. Ended up with her nose half buried in a ploughed field and me hanging upside down in the straps.’
He demonstrated leaning out of his seat, chest parallel to the ground, arms gripping an imaginary joystick, mock terror on his face, making us laugh. It seemed like a bit of a lark. We expected a jokey punch line.
‘What did you do?’ John asked.
‘I felt this wet in my hair. It was petrol, dripping out of the tank onto the engine block. So my mind got made up sharpish. I jumped for it and ran away across the field. There was a ruddy great whoomph and the whole thing went up. Guy Fawkes would have been proud. That was the end of the plane, though. Miss her terribly.’ He jerked his thumb towards the Morgan glistening in the twilight, engine ticking as it cooled. ‘But the insurance paid for that little beauty.’
The story shocked me, much more than I’d expected. What if Robbie really had gone up in flames? I could imagine what John was thinking: we could have lost the contract, too.
Robbie took a swig of his pint. ‘C’est la vie. Anyway, what’s been happening in Westbury? How’s business?’
‘Not bad, not bad, considering,’ John said.
‘Tough times for us all,’ Robbie said. ‘The harder old Chamberlain bargains for peace, the harder we seem to be working for war, don’t you find?’
He offered us cigarettes from a slim monogrammed case and then, as he lit them for us with his gold Dunhill, added quite casually, ‘By the way, how’s the finishing going? The parachute contract’s yours, you know, just as soon as you’re ready to meet the specifications.’
John didn’t miss a beat. ‘The finishing plant’s in and we’re confident it’ll be up and running in a week or so.’ I sipped my shandy and smiled to myself at his bullishness. The truth, I knew, was less impressive.
For weeks now, John and Father had been preoccupied with installing the new equipment. By moving machinery around they had managed to clear a section of the winding mill to create a self-contained room next to the boiler house with its own double doors leading directly into the yard, convenient for the plumbing, drainage and hot water needed for the new plant. The equipment arrived from Switzerland on a lorry so long it had difficulty in negotiating the driveway. Each heavy section had to be lifted and rollered into the new finishing room before the machinery could be assembled. A team of engineers worked several days to construct it and link up the plumbing and wiring.
‘You’re very quiet, Lily,’ Robbie said, turning to me. ‘I gather you’re in charge of weaving the stuff? How’s that going?’
‘It’s going fine.’ I caught John’s eye. Just watch me play the game too. ‘It’s a plain taffeta in twelve momme habotai, and to be honest it’s a doddle compared with some of the other things we have to weave. We should be able to get you some samples any day now, just as soon as the plant’s up and running.’
Robbie nodded as if he knew what I was talking about and John suppressed a smile. I surprised myself, too; it was a heady feeling, being an expert. Not what men usually expected of women, I thought, smugly.
What I said wasn’t far from the truth. Weaving parachute silk was straightforward: thread of equal weight for both warp and weft, with no patterns or colour changes. Twist and tensions were clearly defined. The yarn we used was still ‘in the gum’ – the sticky sericin the caterpillar exudes to make its cocoon – which made it easier to handle. It would be ‘de-gummed’ by boiling the woven cloth as part of the finishing process.
Gwen had put me in charge of two looms weaving test runs with Stefan, so that he could take over two of his own once the contracts came in. As she predicted, he was already a good weaver and I found myself looking forward to working beside him each day. At first it was exciting to be developing a new material, but it was vital to be vigilant against broken threads, and these were tricky to detect against the blinding whiteness of the material. After hours of watching yards of plain white cloth emerging from the shuttle beam our eyes burned and we begged Gwen to let us weave stripes or Jacquard designs to relieve the boredom. But she was immovable. ‘It’s important work, has to be right. And you two are our experts now.’
After Robbie dropped us home John said, ‘Very impressive, schwester, the way you talked that up. You’re turning into a right little businesswoman.’
‘Thanks for the compliment,’ I said, feeling quietly proud of myself, flattered that he’d noticed.
‘Of course, it helps that he’s pretty sweet on you. Better keep it that way, we’re going to depend on him in the next little while.’
‘He’s not sweet on me, you’re just imagining it,’ I snapped. ‘Besides, just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I have to simper at any chap with a chequebook.’
John
