A Single Thread

by Tracy Chevalier

  “It is better inside,” she wanted to say. “It is spectacular inside.” But Violet was not in the habit of saying what she thought to strangers. Besides, they would find out soon enough.

  The green Outer Close spread out around the Cathedral, crisscrossed by two paths lined with lime trees. Everywhere visitors and workers were taking advantage of the sunshine to sit on handkerchiefs or newspapers on the grass and eat sandwiches. A few old graves and tombs dotted the Close, and were given a respectful berth by the picnickers – apart from Gilda, who marched up to one about fifty yards from the Cathedral entrance, under a large yew tree, and dropped down beside it. “Thetcher,” she announced.

  Violet studied the waist-high white gravestone. “‘Thomas Thetcher’,” she read aloud, “‘who died of a violent Fever contracted by drinking Small Beer when hot the 12th of May 1764’. Gosh.”

  Here sleeps in peace a Hampshire Grenadier,

  Who caught his death by drinking cold small Beer.

  Soldiers be wise from his untimely fall

  And when ye’re hot drink Strong or none at all.

  Gilda was able to recite the words from memory rather than looking at the gravestone. “Forget the Cathedral,” she added. “This is the true Winchester landmark.” She patted it fondly, as if it were the family cat, then opened a wax paper packet and laid it out between them. “Share?”

  “Oh. All right.” Violet reluctantly pulled out her offering from her handbag. Gilda’s sandwiches contained thick slices of ham and were spread generously with butter rather than the slick of cheap margarine and the meagre layer of fish paste Violet had used for her own.

  But Gilda didn’t seem to notice. “I always find sandwiches others have made much more interesting,” she declared, popping a triangle of fish paste sandwich in her mouth. “Like being made a cup of coffee – it always tastes better when someone’s made it for you, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose.”

  “So, how did you get on with your stitches? Miss Pesel is a brilliant teacher, isn’t she? She makes you want to do well.”

  “She is very good. I’m not sure that I am, though.” Violet bit into the ham. It was sweet and delicately smoked, and so delicious she almost cried. The only time she ate well was on the rare occasion she had Sunday lunch at Tom’s, when Evelyn cooked a vigorous roast. At home her mother seemed to relish burning the joint, serving too few potatoes and making watery custard, as a continuing punishment for Violet abandoning her. The succulent, abundant ham made her realise: she was starving.

  “Oh, I was terrible at the start!” Gilda interrupted Violet’s reverie over the ham. She seemed gleeful about her shortcomings. “I thought I’d be stuck on borders and hanking wool forever. But eventually the stitches become second nature and you can relax as you work. I’ve noticed that if I’m tense, my embroidery becomes tense too. And we can’t have a tense cushion in the Cathedral choir, can we? Those choristers need well-made cushions to sit on!”

  Violet couldn’t help it – she reached for another ham sandwich, though it went against the usual etiquette of sharing where one alternated for an even distribution. Again Gilda did not seem bothered, but proceeded to quiz Violet on her family, her life in Southampton, and what brought her to Winchester.

  “My father died two years ago and it became harder to live with my mother,” Violet replied to the last.

  “Is your mum awful?”

  “She is, rather. She never really recovered from my brother’s death during the War.” There, she had said it.

  Gilda nodded. “Joe came through the War all right, but then we lost Mum to the Spanish ’flu right after he got back. He said he went all the way through the War without crying once, but to get back and lose Mum – that was too much.”

  “Did you lose … anyone else?”

  Gilda shook her head, and looked around, as if shrugging off the attention. No fiancé, then, Violet thought.

  “Arthur!” Gilda jumped up and waved at two men pushing bicycles along the tree-lined path towards the Cathedral entrance. Both had their right trouser legs tucked into their socks to keep them from getting caught in the chains. One was the man with the white hair and moustache Violet had seen at the Cathedral during the broderers’ service. At the sound of Gilda’s voice he stopped, then wheeled his bicycle over to them, followed by a younger, shorter man. Violet scrambled to her feet.

  “Hello, Gilda.” The man raised his hat at Gilda, then nodded at Violet. His eyes were bright chips of blue, his gaze warm and direct. She felt herself flush red, though she was not sure why: he was much older than she, and – she automatically glanced – he wore a wedding ring.

  “Are we going to hear you soon?” Gilda demanded.

  “Not this afternoon. We’re just meeting with the verger to go over the summer schedule. Beyond the normal, there are a few weddings, and the royal birthdays, of course. This is Keith Bain, often our tenor. I’m not sure if you’ve met – he’s lived in Winchester for two years.”

  The younger man, small and wiry, with ginger hair and a carpet of freckles, nodded at them.

  “This is Violet Speedwell. She’s just joined the Cathedral Broderers, haven’t you, Vi?”

  Violet flinched. No one had called her Vi since Laurence died; her family had instinctively understood that his nickname for her was now off-limits. She tried to cover her discomfort by holding out her hand, but as Arthur shook it she suspected he was filing away in his mind: Don’t call her Vi.

  He smiled at her. “Your name – that was very clever of your parents.”

  “Clever how?” Gilda wanted to know.

  “Speedwell is the common name for veronica, a kind of purple flower. And they named her Violet.”

  “It was my father’s idea,” Violet explained. “My brothers have – had – have more traditional names.” She did not name them – she did not want to say George’s name aloud.

  “Good thing they didn’t name you Veronica!” Gilda laughed. “Veronica Veronica.”

  “I see you’ve chosen Thetcher to sit by.” Arthur nodded at the gravestone.

  “I’d never seen it before,” Violet admitted.

  “Ah, then you must not be from Winchester.”

  “No. Southampton. I moved here seven months ago.”

  “I thought not. I would have known you otherwise.” His tone was neutral but somehow the words were not. Violet’s cheeks grew warm again.

  “Arthur and I went to the same church for a long time,” Gilda explained. “I played with his daughter at Sunday school. She’s in Australia now, and Arthur’s moved to the country. To Nether Wallop, the most beautiful village in England, and with the funniest name.”

  Even as Arthur was correcting her – “Technically our cottage is in Middle Wallop” – Violet was remembering a visit to Nether Wallop with her father and brothers when she was a girl. “I have been there,” she said. “The Douce pyramid.”

  Keith Bain and Gilda looked puzzled, but Arthur nodded. “Indeed.” He turned to the others. “In the churchyard at Nether Wallop there is a pyramid on the grave of Francis Douce. Apparently the family liked pyramids, as other relatives had them built as well, such as at Farley Mount.” He smiled again at Violet, and she silently thanked her father for plotting the route of their short walking holiday so that they passed through Nether Wallop. She would have been eleven, Tom seven, and George thirteen. Mrs Speedwell had not come with them, which made the holiday more relaxed and put them all in good moods as they’d taken the train to Salisbury and a cart up to Stonehenge, then began walking through woods and skirting newly planted fields of wheat. At Nether Wallop they stayed at the Five Bells, and went to look at the church, where George had got a leg-up from their father so he could grab the stone flame that topped the pyramid tombstone, and declared himself the King of Egypt. If any of them had been told that day that eleven years later he and hundreds of thousands of other British men would be dead, they would not have believed it.

  To her m
ortification, sudden tears pricked Violet’s eyes, spilling over before she could hide them. She rarely cried over the loss of George and Laurence. Mrs Speedwell had always been the town crier of the family loss, leaving little room for Violet or Tom or their father to voice their own feelings. When Laurence died a year after George, Mrs Speedwell not once expressed sorrow or tried to comfort Violet, but managed to make it into a competition, reminding anyone who would listen that a mother’s loss of her son was the worst loss there was, the implication being that this trumped a girl losing her fiancé. Violet did not want to play that game, and stifled any tears.

  Arthur was holding out a handkerchief with quiet understanding. Even almost fourteen years after the War’s end, no one was surprised by sudden tears.

  “Thank you.” Violet wiped her eyes. “I’m terribly sorry.” Arthur and Keith nodded, and Gilda patted her arm just the right amount. Then they carried on, because that was what you did.

  “I haven’t been to Farley Mount in years,” Gilda remarked. “We used to go all the time on a Sunday afternoon.”

  “What’s Farley Mount, then?” Keith Bain spoke for the first time. To Violet’s surprise, he had a Scottish accent.

  Gilda and Arthur chuckled. “Beware Chalk Pit!” Gilda cried.

  “Unlikely as it sounds, Beware Chalk Pit is a horse’s name,” Arthur explained. “A relative of the Douces built a pyramid on top of a hill a few miles from Winchester, in honour of his horse who had won a race. Before the race the horse had fallen into a chalk pit, hence the name.”

  “Maybe I’ll walk out to it,” Keith Bain said. “I’ve only been up St Catherine’s Hill. Want to see more of the countryside. Where is it?”

  “About five miles west of here. If you fancy a longer walk, you can go straight across the fields to Salisbury. That’s twenty-six miles. I call it the Cathedral Walk. You can stay the night at mine in the Wallops en route if you like.”

  “I may well do that.”

  “We’d best get on to see the verger.” Arthur turned to Violet. “Very good to meet you, Miss Speedwell.”

  “And you.” Violet watched him wheel his bicycle towards the side of the Cathedral. His brief attention had steadied her, like a hand reaching out to still a rocking chair that has been knocked.

  Only after he’d gone did she realise she was still clutching his handkerchief. The initials AK had been embroidered in an uneven blue chain stitch in one corner. She could run after him, or give it to Gilda to give to him. Instead she waited until her new friend wasn’t looking, then tucked it in her handbag.

  “Are they in a choir of some sort?” she asked when the handkerchief was out of sight.

  “Not at all,” Gilda replied, folding the waxed paper from the sandwiches. “What made you think that?”

  “He mentioned being a tenor.”

  “No, no, they’re bellringers! For the Cathedral. Now, shall we have a coffee? Then I’m going to find a telephone and tell your office you’ve taken ill – fainted on the Outer Close!”

  On their return, Violet found that her privileged position as Miss Pesel’s new pupil had been usurped. Several other broderers were crowded around her; indeed, two who saw Violet enter pushed closer, as if to defend their positions and their teacher.

  “Which stitches was she going to teach you?” Gilda asked, frowning at the scrum.

  Violet picked up the model. “This one … Rice, I think. And eyelets.”

  “I can teach you those. Miss Pesel always likes us to teach others, says the best way to set in your mind what you’ve learned is to explain it to someone else.”

  Both stitches were fiddly but not hard to learn. Then, before she went to consult Miss Pesel about her own work, Gilda suggested Violet make a sampler of the six stitches she had mastered, to show to the teacher at the end of the day.

  It was calmer now, more settled. A dozen women – some from the morning, others new – worked around the big table, with Miss Pesel and Mrs Biggins fielding questions and making suggestions. Violet focused on her sampler, concentrating on getting each stitch uniform, the tension consistent. After a time she found she could work and also listen to the conversations around her. Mostly the embroiderers talked about their children and grandchildren, their neighbours, their gardens, the meals they made, the holidays they might take. All listened politely; none really cared. They were simply waiting their turn to speak. And, as was usual in these situations, the married women spoke more than the spinsters, assuming a natural authority and higher place in the hierarchy of women that no one questioned. Only Gilda spoke up from time to time, and was tolerated because she was entertaining, and knew everyone – though some glanced at each other behind her back. Most were of a certain class, and Violet guessed that they looked down on a family who ran a garage and serviced their motor cars. She herself had become less judgemental, however, for she had discovered that when you were a single woman living on your own on a small salary, background meant little. Gilda might be from a different class, but with her family backing her she could afford to eat much better sandwiches than Violet.

  What would happen, she wondered, if I changed the subject and asked the room who they think will form the new German government now that the current Chancellor has resigned? Would anyone here have an opinion? She was not sure she herself had one, but the room was beginning to feel a little airless with its insularity. Perhaps she just needed to get to know the women better.

  Mrs Biggins clapped twice. “All right, ladies, that’s enough for today. Leave your place as tidy as it was when you arrived. We don’t want bits of wool left behind. Mrs Way will sign out the materials to you.”

  The others began lining up by Miss Pesel, who inspected their work before they left. Violet watched, suddenly shy about showing her sampler. She did not want to be told to unpick it again, or to be put on record-keeping alongside Mabel Way. Finally, however, she joined the queue behind Gilda and listened as she and Miss Pesel discussed the difference between upright and oblique Gobelin stitches. Then Louisa Pesel held out her hand for Violet’s piece. “You have come along nicely,” she declared, running a finger over the stitches. “Do be careful on the long-armed cross to pull the long stitch tight; otherwise it puffs out, as it does here. But not too disgraceful – no need to unpick since it’s a sampler, and the mistake will serve to remind you.” She handed it back. “For next Wednesday, teach someone else the stitches and come back to show me what they’ve done. You can pick up some canvas and wool and a needle on your way out.”

  Violet gaped. “Who shall I—” But Miss Pesel had already turned to the next woman.

  Gilda was grinning again. “Told you so!”

  Chapter 6

  VIOLET HAD NO IDEA whom to teach the stitches to. Her mother would never agree, Evelyn had too much to do, and Marjory was probably too young to master anything as complicated as the rice stitch. For a moment she wondered about her landlady, but Mrs Harvey did not seem the type to sit down with a needle. She might be able to convince one of her fellow lodgers, but wasn’t sure she wanted to. Violet had been careful to maintain her distance from Miss Frederick, an English teacher at a local girls’ school, and Miss Lancaster, who worked as a clerk at Winchester Crown Court. There was a certain kind of misery that hung about them, a wistfulness she hated to think clung to her as well. To become friends with them would only make that feeling more pronounced. Still, when several days had passed and she had still not found someone to teach, she realised she would have to break her ban and ask Miss Frederick. She pondered this one morning as she sat typing, two days before the next embroidery class. Her office mates had not yet arrived: they were rarely on time.

  Mo sloped in as Violet was midway through her second contract, adding fire insurance to an existing policy on a house in Andover. Mo was never as loud and confident when Olive was not with her. Now she seemed even more downcast: head low, she muttered a hello into her collar and did not look up. Her dress mirrored her mood, puddle-brown, with a sh
apeless skirt and too much fabric hanging at the chest. Violet nodded hello, and after finishing the contract offered to make tea.

  “Yes, please,” Mo answered in a small voice, and sighed. The sigh was the opening, her way of indicating that she was ready to be quizzed about what was wrong.

  First Violet went to the kitchen and made a pot of tea, then brought it back to the office with a plate of Garibaldi biscuits – no one’s favourite, but that was all there was. “Right,” she said, placing a cup of tea in front of Mo and handing her the sugar bowl. “What is it?” She sat back in her own chair, hands on her cup to warm them, for it was one of those rainy June days that felt like early spring rather than summer. A cardigan day – she alternated between beige and tan. Today she wore tan; though she couldn’t afford new, she’d recently refreshed it by changing the buttons to a mother-of-pearl set she’d found in a secondhand shop.

  Mo heaped several spoonfuls of sugar into her tea and frowned at the rectangular Garibaldis with their currants that looked like squashed flies. Violet did not press her. They had all day.

  “O’s handing in her notice,” she said at last. “Effective immediately. Her mother is ringing Mr Waterman this morning.” She picked up a biscuit and took a vicious bite.

  “I see.” This was not what Violet had been expecting. She’d assumed that Mo was moping because of something the bank clerk boyfriend had said or done, and that Olive was out on an errand for the long-off wedding – meeting with a vicar, finding a printer for the invitations, looking at dress fabric – using it as an excuse for a leisurely day out. Violet had expected there to be months, years of this nonsense before the big day itself. Only then would Olive leave; women always left work once they married, but not usually before.