‘Flying make you hungry?’ John said casually, as if this kind of arrival at breakfast happened every day in our family.
‘Ravenous.’ Robbie shook clouds of pepper over his plate. ‘I’ve been up since six.’ We chatted for a while about last night, what fun it had been, and then he turned to John and said, almost offhand, ‘Lovely day for a spin, old man. Care to join me? She can take a co-pilot and a passenger. Perhaps Lily would like to come too?’
‘That’d be cracking,’ John said, his face lighting up.
I panicked. ‘Not for me, thank you. I haven’t got anything warm to wear. Anyway, don’t you think we should be getting home, John?’
‘I’d really like to go,’ he said. ‘Come on, sis. You’re always moaning about life being boring. Have a bit of fun. When are you going to get a chance like this again?’
‘I’ll lend you my jacket, and a headscarf and gloves,’ Miranda chipped in.
‘See?’ said Robbie triumphantly. ‘No excuses now, Missy Lily.’ It was pointless resisting. I swallowed my nerves, finished my coffee and went with Miranda to get togged up.
My terror as we took off was soon replaced with the enchantment of seeing a familiar landscape from an entirely new perspective. We flew southwards along the coast and then turned inland, following the river towards Westbury. From the air the town looked so small and insignificant, like a toy village. We buzzed low over the mill and The Chestnuts, but there was no sign of life. I imagined Father reading his newspaper by the drawing room fire, grumbling about irresponsible pilots interrupting the peace on his holiday.
Just a few days later John got a telephone call from Robbie, inviting himself to a meeting.
‘He insists Lily must be there too,’ he said, with a big wink in Father’s direction. ‘I couldn’t possibly imagine why.’
‘It’s because he knows I understand about silk,’ I snapped, but a bit of me hoped he was right. Since New Year’s Eve I’d thought about nothing but Robbie Cameron, his confidence and perfect manners, the casual skill with which he manoeuvred that little plane, the strong arms lifting me down from its wing after we had landed, and how my legs had turned to jelly afterwards. In my head, I’d run through the events of that evening a hundred times, hoping it really was the start of something new, so the prospect of seeing him again was exciting and a little nerve-racking. Would he still like me, or was that just a one-night thing, I wondered?
Robbie arrived looking formal and business-like, in an expensive-looking pinstriped suit and public school tie. He shook hands with John and me and then, as we waited for Father in the visitor’s room at the mill, examined the framed certificates and photographs hanging on the walls. I saw his gaze linger on one of Father at Buckingham Palace proudly showing the King a piece of Verners silk woven for the coronation, and he made appreciative remarks as I showed him the leather-bound sample books containing every design Verners had woven in the past one hundred and fifty years.
When Father came in I watched him sizing up Robbie as they shook hands. ‘Welcome to Verners, Mr Cameron,’ he said, ‘I’ve ordered coffee. Let’s sit down and you can tell us why you are here.’
‘Well, sir,’ Robbie started, ‘in a nutshell, I need a supplier of reliable quality parachute silk. I’m a parachute designer and manufacturer and I want to expand my company.’
‘We don’t weave parachute silk, as you probably know,’ Father said cautiously, reminding me of the way he played whist and bridge. Even with us children, he would keep his cards close to his chest, his face giving nothing away.
‘But we could do, Father,’ John said. ‘Let’s not count anything out. But I want to know more. Why parachuting? I can see why flying is fun, but why would anyone want to jump out of a plane?’
‘It’s the thrill of it,’ Robbie said. ‘Nothing like it. I trained as a pilot, as you know, so I had to learn how to use a parachute. But when I took up parachute jumping as a hobby it soon became obvious that the ’chutes needed to be redesigned to make them safer. Last year I met an American who had created some new designs along exactly the same lines as I’d envisaged, and he was already testing them. So we set up a company together to manufacture them. So far we haven’t had any major orders, but we’re working on it.’
‘If it’s just a hobby activity what makes you think there’s going to be much call for them?’ John asked.
‘It won’t just be a hobby, if we go to war,’ Robbie said, suddenly serious. ‘At the moment there’s one major competitor producing parachutes for the Air Ministry, and though they say that’s enough for their current requirements, they seem to be blind to what the Russians and Germans are up to.’
‘And what are they up to, precisely?’ Father asked.
‘Testing parachutes for dropping ground troops and equipment into battle zones. Last year the Russians dropped twelve hundred men, a hundred and fifty machine guns and other armoury, and assembled them all within ten minutes. It was even reported in Flight magazine, so the government can’t claim they don’t know what’s happening. But they don’t seem to be taking any notice.’
‘While they’re talking there’s still hope,’ Father said. ‘No one wants another war.’
‘I totally agree, sir, but anyone who thinks we can avoid it is in cloud cuckoo land,’ Robbie said, grimly. ‘My uncle’s just returned from Germany. He saw Nazi paratroops on exercise, and read a newspaper article by one of their generals about their plans for an airborne invasion of England.’
The atmosphere in the little room seemed to have become oppressive, reminding me of the day John arrived home with his talk of pogroms. I busied myself refilling the coffee cups. I hated people talking about war. It terrified me and I prayed it would never happen.
‘We’ll have to agree to disagree on this,’ Father said, pulling out his pipe and lighting it, as we waited for his next move. And then he said, ‘But in the meantime, Mr Cameron, how can Verners be of help to you?’
‘We need to be ready to go into immediate parachute production when the demand comes, and believe me, it will,’ Robbie said. ‘If I were in your position, Mr Verner, I’d be starting test weaves of parachute silk and investing in finishing machinery. So you could do the whole job on the spot.’
Father puffed on his pipe, his expression noncommittal.
‘It’s worth considering, Father,’ John said. ‘There won’t be much demand for silk ties and facings if we do go to war.’
Father nodded thoughtfully. ‘But it’s an expensive investment. We would have to be certain there’s really a demand before jumping into anything like that. We’d be putting all our chips on the chance of war.’
‘I take your point, sir,’ Robbie said, ‘but the thing is, with parachute silk you have to get everything right. The quality of the yarn, the weave and the finishing. They’re all critical to create the right porosity. Otherwise the parachutes are worse than useless. What we need is a company like yours, with a reputation for quality,’ he gestured at the photographs on the wall, ‘and generations of experience, who can get it right, from the start.’
You wily devil, I thought, you know exactly how to flatter my father into agreeing: heritage, quality, reputation. You’re saying all the right things. But then he paused for a moment, and said those words that more than sixty years later still fill my heart with dread. ‘Get it right and you save lives, sir. Get it wrong and you’ve got dead pilots.’
After that there wasn’t much more discussion. Father agreed to consider his proposal, and John offered to take Robbie on