over looms. And you’ll regret those heels after you’ve been on your feet for nine hours.’
‘While you sit on your backside pushing papers around,’ I grumbled, noticing his smart new suit and striped tie. It was bad enough that I had to start as a lowly apprentice weaver, but John had recently been promoted to the office, which made it worse.
I’d never envied what was in store for him: a lifelong commitment to the responsibility of running a silk mill in a rural town. As the eighth generation of male Verners it was unthinkable that he would do anything other than follow Father into the business, and take over as managing director when he retired. John was following the natural order of things.
‘I bet you’ll get the old battle-axe,’ he said, crunching loudly on his toast.
‘Language, and manners, please, John,’ Mother muttered mildly.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked.
‘Gwen Collins. Assistant weaving floor manager. Does most of the training. Terrifying woman.’
‘Thanks for the encouragement.’
‘Don’t listen to your brother, you’ll get on splendidly,’ Mother said encouragingly. ‘You never know, you might even enjoy it.’
I was unconvinced. Setting off across the yard, the short trip I had seen my father and, more recently, John, take every morning, I felt depressed: this was far from the glamorous life I’d planned. But why were butterflies causing mayhem in my stomach – was I afraid of being ridiculed as the gaffer’s daughter, I wondered, of letting him down? Or scared that I might not be able to learn fast enough, that people might laugh behind my back? Oh, get a grip Lily, I muttered to myself. This is a means to an end, remember? Besides, you haven’t let anything beat you yet and you’re not about to start now.
I took a deep breath and went through the big green double doors into the mill, and climbed the long wooden stairs to Father’s office.
My first impressions of Gwen Collins were certainly not favourable. She wasn’t exactly old – in her late twenties I judged – but otherwise John’s description seemed pretty accurate. An unprepossessing woman, dumpy and shorter than me, in a shapeless brown overall and trousers with men’s turn-ups, she had concealed her hair beneath an unflattering flowery scarf wrapped and knotted like a turban. There was something rather manly about her – a disregard for how others saw her, perhaps. Her expression was serious, even severe. But something softened it, gave her an air of vulnerability. Then I realised what it was: I had never seen anyone with so many freckles. They covered her face, merging into blobs which almost concealed the pale, nearly translucent skin beneath. She’d made no effort to hide them with make-up. Even her eyelids were speckled.
I returned the forceful handshake with what I hoped was a friendly smile. ‘Pleased to meet you, Gwen. Father tells me you’re going to teach me all you know. He says you’re a mine of information.’
‘Mr Harold is very kind, the regard is mutual,’ she replied without returning the smile, and without even a glance at Father. Pale green eyes regarded me with unsettling intensity beneath her almost invisibly blonde eyelashes.
After an awkward pause she said briskly, ‘Right, we’ll make a start in the packing hall, so you can learn about what we produce, then we’ll go round the mill to see how we weave it.’ With no further pleasantries, she turned and led the way, striding down the corridor so purposefully I had to trot to keep up.
The packing hall was – still is today – a large room running the length of the first floor of Old Mill. Sun poured in through six tall windows along the southern wall, and the room was almost oppressively warm with that dry, sweet smell of raw silk that would soon become part of my very being. Along the opposite wall were deep wooden racks stacked from floor to ceiling with bolts of cloth.
In the centre, two workers stood at wide tables edged with shiny bronze yard-rules, expertly measuring, cutting, and rolling or folding bundles of material and wrapping them with sturdy brown paper and string. On the window side four others sat at tilted tables like architects’ drawing boards, covered with cloth stretched between two rolls, one at the top and another at the bottom.
‘These are pickers,’ Gwen said, introducing me as ‘Miss Lily, Mr Harold’s daughter’. As we shook hands they lowered their eyes deferentially, probably cursing the fact that they would have to watch their language with another Verner hanging around.
‘Just call me Lily, please,’ I stuttered. ‘It’s my first day and I’ve got a lot to learn.’ Naïvely, I imagined they might in time consider me one of them.
‘They check the silk and mark each fault with a short red thread tied into the selvedge, that’s the edge of the fabric,’ Gwen said, pointing at the end of the roll. ‘For every fault we supply an extra half yard – it’s our reputation for quality.’ I nodded frequently, trying to appear more enthusiastic than I felt. ‘Now, how much do you know about silk?’
‘Not much, I’m afraid,’ I admitted, embarrassed. Surely a Verner should have silk in the blood?
I caught the first hint of a smile. ‘I’ll take that as a challenge, then.’
Gwen turned to a shelf and lifted a heavy roll onto the table, steadied an end with one hand and, in a single deft movement, grasped the loose end of the material and pulled out a cascade that unravelled like liquid gold.
‘Wow,’ I said, genuinely dazzled. She crumpled a bundle between her hands, lowering her ear to it. ‘Listen.’ I bent my head and she scrunched it again. It sounded like a footstep on dry snow, or cotton wool tearing. ‘That’s called scroop, a good test for real silk when it’s been dyed in the yarn.’ As I crumpled it the vibration ran through my hands, up my arms and into my ears, making me shiver.
She rolled up the gold with practised ease and pulled out a bolt of vivid scarlet, deep purple and green stripes, spread it across the table with that same skilled movement, then expertly folded a diagonal section into a necktie shape and held it beneath her chin. ‘Tie materials are mostly rep stripes and Jacquard designs,’ she said, ‘woven to order for clubs and societies. Men so love their status symbols, don’t they?’ Again, I saw that puzzling crimp at the corner of her eyes.
‘Jacquard?’
‘Type of loom. Clever bit of kit for weaving patterns, brought here by your Huguenot ancestors. You’ll see our looms when we go down to the weaving shed.’
She unravelled a third roll. This one had a navy background with a delicate gold fleur-de-lys pattern. She pulled a small brass object from her pocket, carefully unfolding it into a tiny magnifying glass hinged onto two plates, one of which had a square hole. She placed this on the silk and gestured for me to put my eye to the glass.
The motif was so enlarged that hair-like individual silk threads, almost invisible to the naked eye, looked like strands of wool so thick that I could measure them against the ruler markings along the inner square of the lower plate. ‘I had no idea,’ I murmured, fascinated by the miniature world under the glass. ‘There’s so much more to it than I ever imagined.’ As I looked up, the glint of satisfaction that passed across Gwen’s face reminded me of my Latin teacher when I’d finally managed to get those wretched declensions right.
She moved along the racking and pulled out a fat roll. ‘This one’s spun silk,’ she said, unravelling the cloth and draping it over my hands. It was heavy, the texture of matt satin, the colour of clotted
