The Last Telegram. Liz Trenow

finished our rounds and parted at the front door she touched me lightly on the shoulder, elusive as ever. ‘Enjoy your weekend.’

      Once the boys had moved into the cottage, we invited them to join us for lunch at The Chestnuts every Sunday.

      ‘Help them learn proper manners. They’ll turn into savages in no time, living on their own,’ Father said. ‘We need to civilise them.’ Mother enjoyed sharing her pleasure in English cooking, and it was usually a roast with all the trimmings that they appeared to relish.

      Though homesickness still showed in their faces, Kurt and Walter were like other teenage boys – gawky, clumsy, fascinated by football and motorbikes. They struggled with English table etiquette, muddling their cutlery, slurping their drinks, leaning elbows on the table. At first, Father was lenient but after a few weeks he’d bark stern reminders: ‘No talking with your mouth full.’ They were slow to learn, and more than once he had to threaten them, ‘If you don’t take those elbows off the table at once, there will be no more lunch for you.’ Walter giggled and Kurt – always the rebellious one – grimaced, but their hungry stomachs forced them into reluctant compliance.

      Stefan needed no such prompting. His manners were already sophisticated and what he didn’t already know of English etiquette he quickly picked up by watching. Now that he had abandoned the old leather jacket and black trousers for the cords, jumpers and jacket John had bought him, he looked almost like an English boy, apart from the hairstyle he insisted on keeping unfashionably long. But he was unlike any other boy I knew.

      What I had mistaken for shyness, I slowly began to realise, was actually a confident stillness. While the others always needed to be active, Stefan seemed content to observe the world around him quietly, with an expression of mild curiosity and, I sensed, amusement simmering just below the surface. Little escapes those eyes, I thought, with a slight shiver.

      That Sunday, Stefan handed back my copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles with one of his rare smiles.

      ‘I enjoy very much, Miss Lily,’ he said, his dark eyes sparkling. ‘I would like to be a perfect English gentleman like your Sherlock Holmes.’ He raised an imaginary bowler hat, pretended to twirl an umbrella and bowed deeply, making me laugh out loud. Stefan the clown was a side of his character he hadn’t revealed till now.

      In just two months his English improved so much I’d abandoned my intention to speak German. I was astonished by how quickly he learned; he could already read in another language. This was the second Conan Doyle book I’d lent him, and every time he visited he devoured Father’s copy of The Times, urgently looking for news from Europe.

      Over lunch, we encouraged them to talk about home. Of course, we got only the edited versions. Stefan told us about his parents, both schoolteachers in Hamburg, and his younger twin sisters. He hoped they would come to England once they’d saved or borrowed the money for permissions and transport. Kurt and Walter spoke longingly of the Bavarian hills and the family farm. The English countryside is so flat, they complained. As conversation flowed, I reflected with satisfaction that the boys were starting to feel more secure.

      It was our usual custom to follow lunch with a walk on the water meadows, but that day it was pouring. ‘Not a good day for a walk,’ Father said, looking out of the drawing room window, ‘it’s raining cats and dogs.’

      ‘Cats and dogs?’ Walter said, frowning. ‘Why do you say cats and dogs?’ he asked, after we’d told him what it meant. We had no idea. Some English phrases were so hard to explain.

      After coffee, Father suggested a game of cards. But I had a better idea.

      ‘What about a song, Mother?’ I said, pointing to the baby grand. It was rarely played these days, and generally served as a shelf for photographs and ornaments.

      ‘I couldn’t,’ she said, blushing and nervously smoothing her skirt, ‘haven’t played for years.’ She’d had a classical training and, though never a professional performer, she’d given piano lessons and played in local amateur concerts before marriage and children got in the way. When times at the mill had been hard and there was no extra cash for servants, her music had been sacrificed to housework and cooking.

      ‘Come on, you can do it,’ I said, going over to the piano stool and rifling through the piles of sheet music stored under its padded lid. I found what I was looking for; a score, now dog-eared and falling apart at the seams, Music Hall Favourites.

      ‘Here we are,’ I said. I moved the knick-knacks from the piano, propped it open, lifted out the music shelf, took her elbow and led her to the piano stool. ‘Now all you have to do is play.’

      ‘It’s been so long.’ She shook her head. ‘My fingers won’t know what to do.’

      It was Stefan who finally persuaded her. He was sitting on the arm of the sofa, leaning forward, watching intently. ‘Please, Mrs Verner. Please play for us,’ he said. ‘We like very much to hear the piano.’

      As she started, everyone began to listen. Watching her fingers move over the keys with growing confidence, I remembered how she used to sit me on her knee as she played. With a child’s selfishness it seemed then that her music was just for me. Now, hearing her again after so long, I realised what a sacrifice she had made, giving up her music to meet the demands of the family.

      She stopped to look through the battered old score. ‘Here’s a good one. My Old Man Said Follow the Van.’ As she started into the familiar tune, John and I got up and stood beside her, reading the words over her shoulder. After a couple of verses the boys came to join us, starting to hum along and sing the chorus with us.

      When we sang the words ‘dillied and dallied, dallied and dillied’, they started to giggle. ‘What is “dilly dally”, please?’ Walter asked. I struggled to find a polite explanation.

      ‘It means they spent a lot of time hanging around drinking, or talking, or …’

      John interrupted, saying something in German, and they guffawed like schoolboys. Next time we repeated the chorus they made cheeky kissing noises and Father frowned in gentle reproach.

      After three more numbers Mother declared she’d reached the end of her repertoire and went to make tea. As the others drifted back to the warmth of the fire, Stefan stayed by piano, apparently lost in his own thoughts. Then he seemed to settle something in his mind and looked at me briefly with a slight smile before pulling out the stool and sitting down, tentatively spreading his hands over the keys. Something tugged in my heart as I noticed for the first time the perfect pink ovals of his nails at the end of each long, elegant finger.

      He played a few scales and then, haltingly, started to pick out a tune I recognized as the opening bars of the Moonlight Sonata. Muttering at his mistakes and pausing to remember each following phrase, Stefan stumbled on, but his arpeggios sounded more like a doleful trudge than the calm moonlit landscape Beethoven had intended.

      After a few minutes, he took his hands from the piano and sighed, lowering his head. The untrimmed wisps of dark hair curled down his neck and over his collar, and I felt a surge of sadness for this strange boy, so far from home.

      ‘Play us the jazz,’ Kurt said.

      Stefan looked up at me.

      ‘This is okay for you?’ he asked. ‘You like the jazz?’

      ‘Very much,’ I said, smiling encouragement.

      Stefan turned back to the keyboard, took a deep breath, and launched into an exuberant ragtime piece. The solemn struggle with Beethoven was transformed into the joyful freedom of jazz. The fingers on Stefan’s right hand moved so fast they became a blur as the left hand stretched into successions of complex chord sequences.

      Everyone in the room started to move; heads nodding, feet tapping, even Father’s knee was jiggling. The rhythm was irresistible.

      ‘Remember those Swing steps, Lily?’ John leapt up and took my hand as we clumsily tried to approximate the dance we’d learned on New Year’s Eve.