A Single Thread

by Tracy Chevalier

  As was this. Violet had gone for walks on her own – on Southampton Common, along the seafront at Portsmouth or on the Isle of Wight, up St Catherine’s Hill outside of Winchester – but these were places where there were others about, and people waiting for her to return. She had never walked through fields alone. It had seemed possible when she was simply imagining it, but now that she had to do it, anxiety pushed up from her stomach to the back of her throat.

  It was the alternatives – two weeks in Hastings with her mother and aunt, or staying in Winchester, embroidering by the wireless in a stuffy room over pallid cups of tea accompanied by the budgies’ restless chirping – that made Violet set her jaw and walk away from the town.

  She headed west up a gradual hill on a road that passed between two substantial Victorian buildings: first the gaol with its five arms radiating out like points of a star from the centre, topped by a lantern tower; then the county hospital with its ornate brickwork. Walking past these two institutions felt like saying goodbye to the last outposts of civilisation, the places where one might end up if things went wrong. Then the houses fell away and a small road jogged to the right – a Roman road, according to the Ordnance Survey map – and led out into fields. Violet turned into that road and left behind the last of the houses.

  To her left was an orchard, its rows of trees heavy with green apples not yet ripe. There was nothing frightening there. To her right was a large golf course. Though it was hardly eight o’clock, already there were men out knocking balls about in their flat caps, vests and plus fours, their presence taming the surroundings.

  After a gentle curve the Roman road did as the Romans had intended and ran straight, fields rolling out on one side, woods on the other. A motor car passed her with a friendly toot of its horn, doubtless on its way to Farley Mount, as there was little else out here to drive to. Remaining on the road made Violet feel safer. While she was on a road, in plain sight of people, she could relax and allow herself to enjoy the sun on her arms, a pair of swifts cutting across the sky above her, a tractor puttering in the distance. It was quiet but not silent. She began to hum and think about the breakfast she had missed. She had packed elevenses; she would eat that soon, whatever the time.

  After an hour the road kinked left into a small gravel lane towards the monument. Violet followed it to where the motor car that had passed her was parked. Beyond it a path sloped up to a mound topped with the folly that was Farley Mount. It was a strange thing. Twenty-five feet high, with smooth white walls rising to a point and arched doors emerging from each of the four sides, it looked like a little Wesleyan chapel topped with an Egyptian pyramid.

  Violet could see a couple next to the folly at the top of the mound, with two children shouting and laughing as they scrambled up and down the steep slope. For a moment she thought she would bypass the monument, so that the family would not break the spell she was already under out here. But the pyramid seemed to pull like a force that could not be ignored, and Violet found herself striding to it.

  A large plaque on the monument reminded her of part of the conversation she’d had with Gilda and Arthur in front of the Cathedral: that Farley Mount had been built to commemorate a horse. An eighteenth-century owner out fox-hunting had fallen into a chalk pit with his horse. Both survived; the horse, renamed “Beware Chalk Pit”, won a race the following year, and its proud owner built the pyramid in its honour. Violet smiled. Her father and brothers would have loved such an absurd story. She wondered if they had ever been here.

  She climbed the mound and joined the couple. “Glorious day,” the man said.

  “Yes.” Violet gazed out over the rolls of land swelling before her, painted in myriad shades of green and yellow and brown, the sun and sky washing over it all. The English countryside was indeed glorious. But there was also a certain oppressiveness about it in August. The shimmering waves of heat just above the ground, the overbright sun, the stillness, the yellowed fields of wheat and hay and barley, the clumps of trees where the green had peaked and was now fading: it felt lush yet also on the turn. August was a month off the prime that was July, when the natural world was at its height. It brought with it a melancholy that would deepen in September. Violet preferred October, when the world dropped its leaves and became properly crisp and cold, accepting its fate and no longer trying to hold onto summer.

  The woman was giving her a sideways look. “On your own, are you?” She took her husband’s arm.

  “I am … meeting a friend.” Violet winced at her inability to say that she was alone. Why was it so shameful?

  The man looked around. “What, out here?” His grin was sly; he had decided she was meeting a man.

  “At Nether Wallop.” Although it was two miles out of the way of the route between Winchester and Salisbury, Violet had written to the Five Bells to book a room.

  “And you’re walking all the way there? Gosh,” the woman remarked, sounding more disapproving than impressed.

  Their children were standing in the chamber inside the folly, playing with the echo by shouting. There was an inviting bench nearby that would have been perfect for a breakfast with a view. But Violet wished the husband and wife a pleasant day and left Farley Mount. She would not eat with pity and suspicion accompanying her.

  She walked back down to the path, then couldn’t help it: she glanced back. The couple was still watching her. Though Violet was now ravenous, she would have to find a place farther away. She followed the footpath down a small hill, and at the bottom rejoined the Roman road she had left earlier. Now a path bounded by hedgerows, too rough and narrow for motor cars, it led her through a meadow, and there she dropped her rucksack and sat, grateful for a break out of sight of the family. Sheep were grazing in the far corner, but they ignored her.

  Before eating, Violet gulped water from a canteen that had been Tom’s during the War. It felt odd to use it, but he had offered and she knew she needed one. They had not discussed his experience of the War in any detail. It had been too raw at first, and then too late. Tom just wanted to move on with his life, in a way that Violet found difficult to do: enter a serious career, marry, start a family. Though she couldn’t begrudge him these things, she was envious. There was nothing obvious or straightforward in her own life – no clear path to follow.

  She got out a luxury she’d allowed herself, though it made the rucksack heavy: a Thermos full of coffee. Strong and pungent, it was exactly the jolt she needed after five miles of walking. Even the stale rolls with margarine and jam tasted delicious. Best of all, Violet allowed herself a celebratory square of fudge she’d made for the journey. The Speedwells had always brought fudge with them on their holiday walks, and she felt she’d earned it. It melted on her tongue, leaving a sugary puddle that reminded her of childhood.

  After she ate, she packed away the remains of her elevenses, then got out the Ordnance Survey map Mrs Harvey had lent her. The red and brown cover was illustrated with a print of a man in walking clothes, sitting on a hill and consulting his map, an idyllic English landscape spread before him of woods and fields, punctuated by an aqueduct in the middle distance and a church spire farther away. Violet studied the route: the way forward was along the course of the Roman road – mostly footpaths now – through fields. From where she sat she could already see the first field – a small one of corn.

  Fields made Violet nervous. If you met someone in a field, you wondered what he (for she only imagined a man, never a woman) was doing there alone. Of course he could be on a walking holiday as well, or getting from one place to another – from a farm to a shop, for instance – or walking to see an ailing friend, or looking for a lost cow. There were many reasons a man could be out on his own.

  Not so for women. Violet might be unmarried and seem to do things solo, but she was never really alone. There were her landlady and other lodgers in the house; she could sense their presence even behind her closed door. There were colleagues at work. Even when she visited the Cathedral on her own, the
re were always others there, and now she knew a few of the broderers by sight, and even vergers to nod to.

  A stile separated her from the field of corn. She stepped up and swung herself over it, then remained seated on the top rung, looking up the path lined on both sides with stalks of corn higher than her head.

  Come now, old girl, she thought, pull yourself together. What would Laurence do? She often invoked her late fiancé when she needed a shot of courage that coffee and fudge couldn’t supply. Laurence had not been full of obvious bravery, but he had gone to war and never complained about being there or what he witnessed, and that was a kind of English courage.

  She jumped off the stile and headed into the corn, stepping carefully along the narrow gap between rows. Corn stalks rustled at her shoulders, their fibrous emerald leaves scratching the sleeves of her jacket and dappling the sunlight. She looked behind her several times to make sure she was alone. The noise and the soft pressure of the leaves and the flickering light and shadows were disorientating. The field seemed endless. Had she been walking across it for minutes or hours?

  Then, up ahead, a rabbit appeared from the side and began to run along the row. Violet kept her eyes on its flashing white tail, until it was gone and she was in the sunlight at the edge of the field, hot and out of breath, by a hedgerow covered with brambles offering unripe blackberries. A kissing gate was hemmed in by the bushes, and Violet had to push through, getting scratched through the linen of her sleeves and drawing blood.

  The next field was of grass, and the next barley, their heavy beards tipping over, waiting to be cut. Here it was much less oppressive because she could see around her and ahead, where there were farm buildings. She came through the barley to the farm, the path skirting the right edge of the farmyard. No one was visible, but there was laundry hanging out in the sun, and rattling sounds from one of the barns. A horse stood in the field next to the path. He was cropping the grass, but lifted his head to watch her as she passed.

  Behind the farm Violet walked through a small scrubby wood, where an old tractor had been left to quietly fall apart, and an iron bed frame was rusting, as well as other scraps of metal she could not identify. She didn’t like the waste, and the untidy maleness of it, and hurried to get back out into the fields – one of cows, one of sheep. She crossed a road, then another field of barley, and then another road, before facing a big field of corn. Violet paused to study it, but only for a moment: with coffee and fudge coursing through her, she felt ready to tackle half a mile of corn. It would only take ten minutes, and then there was a road, and a bridle path through a small field to an inn. She could stop there.

  Violet noticed him only when she was well into the field, though it was hard to tell: as with the first field of corn, she was soon disorientated by the noise and dappled light. All she knew was that at some point she looked behind her and a man was there, about forty yards back. She couldn’t exactly say that he was following her, because she didn’t know if he was just using the same path, or if he was there because of her. Where had he come from? The farm with the rusting metal? Had he seen her from one of the barns and come out after her? Or was he looking for a lost cow, or visiting a sick friend, as Violet had suggested to herself that anyone might do? Both possibilities seemed ludicrous now that she was alone with him in an endless field of corn.

  She increased her pace while trying not to appear panicked. Stalks of corn edged and crossed the path and blocked a clear view ahead. She considered stopping and waiting for him to catch up with her, which would have the advantage of her being able to see his approach rather than keeping her back to him. Perhaps he would smile and nod and pass her with no incident. But even the brief glance at him told her he was not a smiler. He was not particularly big – just a little taller than Violet – had a sober, focused face, and he walked fast. There was an atmosphere about him of dark corners and rusting metal and an unshaved jaw. She wanted to look back again but didn’t dare. She sped up, no longer caring that he would know she was on the verge of flight. She thought she heard the corn rustling nearer. Then she spotted light at the end of the path, and ran.

  Bursting out of the corn, Violet scrambled over a stile into a road, then turned and ran along it without looking back. Only after a stitch jabbed in her side did she slow down and look around. He had not followed her out onto the road. She stopped and bent over, hands on her knees, panting, her eyes on the gap where he would appear from the field. When he still did not appear, she felt she had been right to run, for he must be hiding in the corn. Although she hadn’t got her breath back, Violet hurried along the road again, hoping a motor car might come by, or a tractor, or people out walking.

  She reached a small road to the right and turned into it, out of sight of the cornfield, then glanced at her map. This road would take her down to the inn that she’d been aiming for, a quarter of a mile away. She walked quickly along the lane, looking behind her every twenty paces, but the man did not reappear.

  She almost cried at the sight of the John O’ Gaunt Inn, a simple white building with a slate roof and black-trimmed windows, sited at a crossroads by the River Test. It was only just past eleven, and the pub might not yet have opened. But someone was bound to be about, and might even make her a cup of tea, or a sandwich that she could eat on one of the benches either side of the door. She wanted someone to take pity on her.

  Violet pushed at the door and was relieved to find it unlocked. A wave of stale smoke and grease hit her as she entered a room full of empty tables and chairs. To her right was the bar, where the publican was serving someone at the other end but nodded at her in welcome. She was already swinging her rucksack onto the carpeted floor by one of the tables when the customer standing at the bar turned and looked at her. It was the man from the cornfield.

  Violet froze and swallowed a gasp. If her rucksack hadn’t already touched the ground she might have grabbed it and run back outside. But she felt trapped: by the publican’s friendly overture; by her fear of showing her fear; by her concern that she had overreacted in front of an innocent man; by her desire not to be judged a silly girl on her own. So she did not leave, but stood, awkward and turning red, her heart thumping.

  The man did not smile or say hello; his silence was much more powerful. He had dark, steady eyes and brown hair longer than was the fashion. His cap was off, sitting next to the pint in front of him. His frame was wiry, his clothes ill-fitting, as if they were secondhand. He had rolled up his sleeves in the heat and Violet could see dense dark hairs on his forearms.

  How had he managed to get here before her? And even to have been served a pint? To calm herself, Violet tried to think, retracing her route and recalling the map she’d just looked at. After a moment she was able to work out that the roads she had taken to the inn followed two sides of a triangle. The man had probably cut across a field along the bridle path, taking the third side of the triangle and half the time as she had.

  While she’d been thinking this through, the publican had said something, and was looking expectant. “Pardon me, I was …” Violet didn’t finish; she couldn’t say what she was doing.

  The publican chuckled. “Just asking what I can get you, love. You must be knackered, carrying that on your own.” He nodded at the rucksack.

  The man from the cornfield studied his pint.

  “I’m fine,” Violet muttered. “I’ll have a pot of tea, please.”

  “Have a seat. I’ll bring it over.”

  Violet sat, trapped by her manners. The room felt very small.

  “What brings you this way, love?” The publican was busying himself behind the bar with a kettle.

  Violet grimaced, though she tried to hide it. Here was the nosy sort of landlord who would cloak his curiosity in overfriendliness. She would now face a barrage of questions she couldn’t escape from, and that she didn’t want to answer in front of the corn man with his beer.

  “I’m … walking.”

  “Where to?”

  Vio
let’s mind went blank. She should lie so that the man would not know where she was headed. But she couldn’t recall any of the towns north or south of here, and if she said she was going to Winchester, the man would know she was lying since he’d seen her come from that direction. “Salisbury,” she found herself saying, to fill the silence that would become suspicious if it went on for too long.

  “What, going between the cathedrals, are you?”

  Violet nodded, annoyed to hear that her route could be guessed at so easily.

  “We get a fair number of walkers doing that. The path runs just the other end of the road.” The publican nodded in a general direction. “Follows the old Roman road all the way to Old Sarum, just north of Salisbury. But you knew that, of course. Got your map, do you, love?”

  Violet waved her Ordnance Survey map.

  “And you know how to read it, do you?”

  Violet turned bright red. “My father taught me.”

  “Good on him. Good for a girl to know some skills. Now, you’re not walking all the way to Salisbury today, are you? It’s much too far to do in a day.”

  “I’m …” Don’t say Nether Wallop, Violet warned herself.