understand, do you?’ I registered his disapproving frown but the words spilled out anyway. ‘Because I’m a girl you think my only ambition is to be a perfect little wife, cooking my husband wonderful meals and putting his slippers out every evening.’
‘Watch your tone, Lily,’ he warned.
To avoid meeting his eyes I started to pace the Persian rug by the desk. ‘Times have changed, Father. I’m just as intelligent as any man and I’m not going to let my brain go soggy learning to be a wonderful cook or a perfect seamstress. I don’t want to be a wife either, not yet anyway. I want to do something with my life.’
‘And so you shall, Lily. We will find something for you. But not in Geneva, or anywhere else in Europe for that matter,’ he said firmly. ‘And now I think we should finish this discussion. It’s time for bed.’
I nearly slammed the study door behind me, but thought better of it at the last minute and pulled it carefully closed. In my bedroom I cursed Father, Chamberlain and Hitler, in that order. I loved my room, with its pretty damask curtains and matching bedcover, but these treasured things now seemed to mock me, trapping me here in Westbury. After a while I caught sight of myself in the mirror and realised how wretched I looked. Self-pity would get me nowhere, and certainly not into a more interesting life. I needed to get away from home, perhaps to London, to be near Vera. But what could I do? I was qualified for nothing.
I remembered Aunt Phoebe. She was a rather distant figure, a maiden aunt who lived in London with a lady companion, worked in an office somewhere, drove an Austin Seven all over Europe and cared little for what anyone else thought about her unconventional way of life. Perhaps I could train as a secretary, like her? Earn enough to rent a little flat? The idea started to seem quite attractive. It wasn’t as romantic as Geneva, but at least I would get away and meet some interesting people.
Now all I had to do was convince Father that this was a reasonable plan.
At breakfast the next day I crossed my fingers behind my back and announced, ‘I’ve decided to get a job in London. Vera and I are going to share a bedsit.’ I hadn’t asked her yet, but I was sure she would say yes.
‘Lovely, dear.’ Mother was distracted, serving breakfast eggs and bacon from the hotplate.
‘Sounds fun,’ John said, emptying most of the contents of the coffee jug into the giant cup he’d bought in France. ‘Vera’s a good laugh. What are you going to do?’
‘Leave some coffee for me,’ I said. ‘I could do anything, but preferably something in an office. I’ll need to get some experience first. I thought perhaps I could spend a few weeks helping Beryl at Cheapside?’ Beryl managed Verners’ London office. ‘What do you think, Father?’
‘Well now,’ he said, carefully folding his newspaper and placing it beside his knife and fork. ‘Another Verner in the firm? There’s an idea.’ He took the plate from Mother and started to butter his toast, neatly, right to the edges. ‘A very good idea. But you’d have to work your way up like everyone else.’
‘What do you mean, “work my way up”?’ Was he deliberately misinterpreting what I’d said?
‘You’d have to start like John did, as a weaver,’ he said, moving his fried egg onto the toast.
‘That’s not what I meant. I want secretarial experience, in an office. Not weaving,’ I said, sharply. ‘I don’t need to know how to weave the stuff to type letters about it. Does Beryl have to weave?’
He gave me a fierce look and the room went quiet. Mother slipped out, muttering about more toast, and John studied the pattern on the tablecloth. Father put down his knife and fork with a small sigh, resigned to sacrificing his hot breakfast for the greater cause of instructing his wilful daughter.
‘Let me explain, my dearest Lily, the basic principles of working life. Beryl came to us as a highly experienced administrator and you have no skills or experience. You know very well that I do not provide sinecures for my family and I will not give you a job just because you are a Verner. As I said, you need to learn the business from the bottom up to demonstrate that you are not just playing at it.’
He took a deep breath and then continued, ‘But I’ll make you an offer. Prove yourself here at Westbury and if, after six months, you are still determined to go to London and take up office work, I will pay for you to go to secretarial college. If that is what you really want. Otherwise, it’s a cookery course. Take it or leave it.’
Weaving is the process of passing a ‘weft’ thread, normally in a shuttle, through ‘warp’ threads wound parallel to each other on a ‘beam’ of the total width of the cloth being woven. The structure of the weave is varied by raising or lowering selected warp threads each time the weft is passed through.
From The History of Silk, by Harold Verner
I never intended to become a silk weaver, but Herr Hitler and my Father had left me with little choice.
Of course I was already familiar with the mill, from living next door, carrying messages for Mother, or visiting to ask Father a favour. It held no romance for me – it was just a building full of noisy machinery, dusty paperwork and hard-edged commerce. The idea of spending six months there felt like a life sentence.
Then, as now, the original Old Mill could be seen clearly across the factory yard from the kitchen window of The Chestnuts: two symmetrical storeys of Victorian red brick, a wide low-pitched slate roof, green painted double front doors at the centre, two double sash windows on either side and three above. These days it’s just a small part of the complex my son runs with impressive efficiency.
Behind Old Mill stretches an acre of modern weaving sheds where the Rapier looms clash and clatter, producing cloth at a rate we could never have imagined in my day. Even now, in the heat of summer, when the doors are opened to allow a cooling breeze, I hear the distant looms like the low drone of bees. It reassures me that all is well.
The ebb and flow of work at the mill had always been part of our family life. In those days employees arrived and departed on foot or by bicycle for two shifts every weekday, except for a fortnight’s closure at Christmas and the annual summer break. It’s the same now, except they come by car and motorbike. Families have worked here for generations, ever since my great-great-grandfather moved the business out of London, away from its Spitalfields roots. In East Anglia they found water to power their mills and skilled weavers who had been made redundant by the declining wool trade.
Even today the weavers’ faces seem familiar, though I no longer know them by name. I recognise family traits – heavy brows, cleft chins, tight curls, broad shoulders, unusual height or slightness – that have been handed down from father to son, from mother to daughter. They are loyal types, these weaving families, proud of their skills and the beauty of the fabrics they produce.
Then, as now, vans pulled into the yard several times a week to deliver bales of raw yarn and take away rolls of woven fabric. When not required at the London office, my father walked to work through the kitchen garden gate and across the yard, and came home for the cooked lunch that Mother had spent much of the morning preparing. She rarely stepped foot in the mill. Her place was in the home, she said, and that’s how she liked it.
When
