A Single Thread

by Tracy Chevalier

  “Because there are rooms upstairs if you’re looking for a place to stay.”

  “No, thank you. I’ll go on a bit further today before stopping.”

  The publican brought over a tray with a pot of tea things and a plate of arrowroot biscuits. “There’s your tea and that’s your hot water.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ve got friends do rooms at Broughton. I could ring ahead for you.”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “A girl like you, walking alone. You need a place to stay. It’s no trouble for me to sort it out for you, love.”

  “Really, please don’t. I have a place to stay.”

  “Where?” The landlord was standing over her. The man at the bar lifted his pint and took a long drink. Violet couldn’t help staring at his profile.

  “Nether Wallop.” She had always been terrible at lying.

  “What, the Five Bells? Tell Bob I said hello, and I’ll see him at the cricket Wednesday evening.”

  Violet nodded.

  “Bit out of your way, Nether Wallop, isn’t it?”

  “I – I have friends there.”

  “Do you, now? Who, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  I do mind, Violet thought. I mind very much. He was displaying the kind of friendliness that verged on hostility, as if he thought he could catch her out in a lie. He would have protested that he was just doing his civic duty, keeping an eye on the comings and goings within the community. Violet wished he were actually helpful, that she could say to him, “Who is the man at the bar with the whiff of danger coming off him? I don’t trust him. Do you?”

  The pause during which she thought all of this was an awkward one, and a frown line appeared between the publican’s brows. “Arthur,” she said, to fill the gap. Then, realising she didn’t know his surname, she added, “The bellringer.” It was a bit much calling him a friend when she’d only met him once – though she did still carry his handkerchief in her handbag. Somehow she had not managed to get it back to him. She found it comforting to come across it when she was searching for a lipstick or a stray penny. It made her feel looked after.

  The publican guffawed. “Arthur the bellringer,” he repeated. “The very one. D’you know, I asked him once to explain it to me, what they do up there with their bells, and didn’t understand a word he said. ‘Why don’t you play us a tune we can sing along to, mate?’ I put it to him. I think I offended him.” He sounded proud of this.

  “Do you know, I might just take my tea outside,” Violet declared in as cheerful a tone as she could muster. “It’s such glorious weather.”

  For a moment the publican looked insulted, then hid it behind a professional smile. “Of course, love. I’ll carry the tray out for you.”

  Violet picked up her rucksack, cast a last glance at the man at the bar, then turned her back on him and held the door open for the publican with the tea tray.

  Outside she felt both better and worse. Better because the air was fresh and didn’t smell of cigarette smoke and fried fish, and she was less trapped. Worse because she no longer knew what the man at the bar was doing, or where he was.

  However, at least the publican mercifully left her alone once he’d set the tray down on a bench, going back inside to deal with his other customer. Perhaps they were talking about her. Violet poured her tea, nibbled on an arrowroot biscuit – her least favourite – and looked about. The John O’ Gaunt was on the edge of a small village – Horsebridge, she gathered from the map. There were only a handful of houses, but there was a train station. She could probably get a train to Southampton if she wanted, to take her away from the man and the publican and her walking holiday. Her mother was leaving for Hastings this afternoon; she might yet catch her, apologise profusely, and join her. For a moment Violet was tempted.

  Just then a young woman came past the pub, pushing a pram. Its hood was covered with white frilly cloth, its occupant asleep. The woman was gazing at the baby with unalloyed adoration. She looked up and took in Violet, her sturdy boots and dress, her map and rucksack, her tea, and smiled. Her face was still full of love for her baby, which overrode any curiosity she might have for this passerby. Violet smiled back.

  It was such a normal exchange that it calmed her. This is a place with women and babies, she thought, not just men lifting pints at eleven in the morning. She would drink her tea and head on to Nether Wallop. She studied her map. There were a few ways to walk the five miles to the village along footpaths, but she decided to take roads there. It would not be as immersive, but she did not want a repeat of the cornfield.

  She finished her tea and stood, hoisting up her rucksack so that she would be ready to walk away briskly after she paid.

  Inside the publican was behind the bar, polishing glasses. The other man was gone. His glass was gone too. Indeed, it was as if he had never been there. Violet tried not to look around or seem bothered, but her stomach knotted. Was he in the Gents’? Or gone out a back door to wait and follow her?

  Stop it, she scolded herself. There are people about and you’re safe. Don’t let a man like that intimidate you. Let him go off to find his lost cow. She was able to smile at the idea.

  “That’s better,” the publican declared. “First time you’ve smiled since you arrived.”

  Violet stopped smiling.

  The publican didn’t seem to notice. “A smile makes a girl look years younger,” he rattled on. “All those creams and potions and what-not advertised in the magazines – all nonsense. All you need’s a smile. That’ll be threepence, love.”

  Violet set the coin on the bar. “Thank you. Good day.”

  She turned and walked to the door without engaging in the chitchat expected at the end of an exchange, and heard the barman tut. “Some as don’t help themselves, no matter how friendly you are to them,” she heard him mutter just as the door swung shut behind her.

  The River Test was like a loosened braid of water, and along the road to Broughton Violet crossed strands of it several times. She stopped to gaze down at the bright, clear water running below her. It was prime fly-fishing territory, and men could be seen standing in the river, casting for fish.

  There was more traffic now. It was noon, and delivery vans passed, and men in motor cars looking as if they were heading somewhere important, and families out for a drive. An old couple wearing matching straw hats drove past with a honk and a wave. It felt safe, but also as if she were walking to get somewhere rather than out to enjoy being in the countryside. The land too was flatter and less picturesque. And her feet hurt.

  At Broughton she stopped alongside a tributary to the Test called Wallop Brook and took off her boots and socks to soak her feet in the icy water. Violet was hot now, and tired. She had walked twelve miles, and had two more to go. She ate the sandwiches she had made for herself and drank the last of the coffee. From now on she would have to buy her meals, and watch her pennies being depleted.

  She was still hungry afterwards, and gazed longingly at the pub she passed on the High Street, then at a teashop where a family was sitting out front in the sunshine, having cream teas and squash, the children flicking crumbs at each other. Violet did not stop at either. She could not afford constant treats.

  She didn’t recall any of this landscape from when she’d come walking here with her father and brothers. She couldn’t remember exactly where they’d gone apart from Nether Wallop. They could have walked down this road. For all she knew they had stopped at the John O’ Gaunt, maybe even been served by the same publican, a much younger man then. He would have been deferential to her father, teased her brothers a little, said nothing to her.

  Nether Wallop she did remember, and not just for its odd name. She passed a mill along the brook, turned a corner, and there was a vaguely familiar row of thatched cottages, distinctive for the thatch being very thick and hanging over the windows like eyebrows. Some of the houses were of white lime and dark beams, Tudor-like; others were of brick. They made a pretty s
ight, especially with their small front gardens full of roses and dahlias and daisies.

  As she walked down the empty street towards the pub, she felt the strangeness of recognising a place and yet not knowing it, of it having a similar tone, as if nothing had changed, yet everything had changed and aged, including Violet herself. George was dead; Laurence was dead; her father was dead. Violet was thirty-eight years old, not eleven. She was seeing Nether Wallop through eyes that had seen many other things in between. It felt peculiar and sad, and she wondered why she had come.

  But she had walked fourteen miles and was tired, and there was the Five Bells, and it too looked both familiar and strange. She went in and met the sort of landlord she preferred – the taciturn type. He handed her a key to her room above the pub and showed no curiosity. Violet went up, dropped her rucksack, kicked off her boots and was asleep in a minute.

  Chapter 10

  WHEN SHE WOKE VIOLET knew the light had broken, that the sun was no longer so insistent overhead, but more subtly aslant. Nearby a bell tolled five times. Her legs were stiff and sore from the long walk. She washed her face in the basin, then changed from her crumpled linen dress into a lighter floral tea dress in cream and green and brown, her beige cardigan, and low pumps that felt cloud-like after the heavy resistance of her boots. It was Violet’s plan to change into these clothes after each day of walking. It was like putting on one costume to walk and another to re-enter society.

  She could not yet face visiting the church, with its memories of George. Instead she turned and wandered up the lane, past the village shop and post office, the butcher, the smith, the village school – all shut – and out past the village green towards what the map had labelled Middle Wallop and Over Wallop. The names were the joyful fodder of comedians, doubtless the butt of many jokes, but Violet loved them.

  She reached a clump of houses set back from the road, with substantial front gardens rather than the earlier postage stamps. Peeking over high walls, she spied cottage borders full of hollyhocks and salvia, birches and lime trees and copper beeches. One garden had a large pear tree abundant with fruit. Violet stopped to admire it and saw by the front door of the cottage an older woman sitting on a bench, hatless, her eyes closed, face to the late afternoon sun. She wore a white dress, and her grey hair was longer than most women wore it these days, falling below her shoulders. An unopened magazine lay in her lap. Her whole demeanour reminded Violet of a pilgrim worshipping at a church, except that she appeared to be worshipping the sun.

  There was the sound of snipping in the garden, and when Violet looked around she saw Arthur the bellringer, deadheading roses in one of the borders. Arthur, her friend, she had called him at the John O’ Gaunt. This was why she had really come to Nether Wallop, she realised. Of course: she wanted to see him. She opened her mouth to speak, but Arthur must have sensed she was there, for he turned and looked at her. He did not seem surprised to see her, but she was also not sure he knew who she was. Nonetheless, she raised a hand in greeting, and he raised his hand back. The tiny glance he threw towards his wife told Violet a great deal. She was still sitting with her eyes closed, and Violet took a step back so that the pear tree blocked her from view. Arthur set down his secateurs and walked over to the front gate, not hurrying but not bringing attention to himself. He opened the gate and shut it behind him in one fluid movement, careful not to bang it. Then he walked up the road. Violet followed. When they were out of earshot she said, “I was just passing by and admired your pears.”

  Arthur stopped and looked back at the tree. “It’s a Williams. Producing well this year. A crop of two hundred and fifty pounds, I should think.” He had rolled up his sleeves for his gardening; his forearms were covered with white hairs.

  “I’m Miss Speedwell. Violet. Gilda introduced us, in front of the Cathedral.”

  “I know who you are, Miss Speedwell.”

  “I – I’m doing the walk between the cathedrals you mentioned. For my summer holidays.”

  He was looking at her shoes – pumps that would fall apart at the first sign of rough ground.

  “I have boots, back at my room,” she added.

  “Are you staying at the pub?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good food there. Especially the steak and kidney pie.”

  “That’s good – I’m hungry.” Having said it, Violet turned red. It seemed vulgar to acknowledge hunger.

  But Arthur just nodded. “Walking will do that. Have you been to the church yet?”

  “I’m going now. I was just having a look round the village first.”

  “Well, then, I’ll let you get on with that while I finish the roses.”

  Violet felt a twinge of disappointment that this was to be the extent of their interaction. But then he added, “I’m likely to be at the pub later. Do you play cribbage?”

  Violet nodded. She used to play cribbage with her father, and sometimes still with Tom.

  “Good. I’ll see you later, then.” He turned and went back to his gate, then smiled briefly at her before closing it behind him.

  Violet stood still and heard low voices: Arthur’s tenor and a light musical alto, the call and answer of a husband reassuring his wife that all was well. She wondered what he was saying but didn’t dare go nearer.

  As she walked back along the road towards the church, she thought about her instinctive step out of sight of Arthur’s wife, understanding that he would not introduce them but would keep them separate. Violet had rarely been in a position of appearing a threat to another woman; the feeling was a novelty that was not entirely pleasant, but there was something thrilling about it too – so thrilling that she stopped at a bench by Wallop Brook to have a cigarette and savour it.

  Pubs were generally not places women spent much time in. Never in the public bar side, of course, which was reserved for men and was dingier, darker, and focused on the serious business of drinking. Women could sit in the saloon side, usually with others, but there was always a sense of them being merely tolerated in what was a male preserve. A pub was not a soft place. The wood bar and beams and tables and chairs, the worn carpet, the sharp gleam of the taps and glasses – all gave off an unyielding hardness that was not encouraging to women. That was why Violet went to hotel bars to find her sherry men. In hotels there was a transience that made everyone vulnerable and softer. If hotel bars were like seldom-used but comfortable front parlours, pubs were more like the shed where a man kept his tools. Or so she had always thought when she went to pubs with her family, particularly on walks. Country pubs were easier, with more give to them, but you still saw few women, and none on their own.

  The Five Bells was different. Perhaps because she was staying in a room upstairs and so was expected to eat there, Violet felt her purpose in being in the pub was not questioned. When she walked in the publican waved her to a table in the corner and came over to take a drinks order. “A dry sherry and the steak and kidney pie,” she said. The barman showed no surprise at this unusual combination, though when he brought her drink she realised it did not go well with the pie, and asked for some water as well.

  As she sipped her sherry and waited for her meal, Violet looked around. The Five Bells had not changed much since she’d been there twenty-seven years before. There was a scattering of tables and chairs, horse brasses hanging along the beams, tankards on hooks behind the bar, and a large unlit fireplace with a fat Labrador lying in front of it, probably dreaming of winter blazes. She could remember George and Tom here – George trying bitter for the first time and spitting it out, unaccustomed to the taste, Violet and Tom and her father laughing at him, her father having it sweetened with lemonade into a shandy.

  It was a Saturday night and reasonably busy without being uncomfortably so. Anyone who wanted a seat would be able to find one, and there were a few couples sitting, some eating, some drinking. The women seemed to be drinking either port and lemon or lime and soda. Hers was the only sherry in the room. A scrum of men stood at the bar
, and there were sure to be more in the public bar. There were occasional curious glances her way, but not judging or unfriendly. So much of a pub’s atmosphere depended on the standard the publican set. If he treated Violet as if she belonged, so would his customers.

  She also felt at ease knowing she was meeting someone here. She was expected. And he was a local. Violet did not doubt that when Arthur walked in he would nod to everyone, and have a quiet word with a few. She would be accepted by all because he accepted her. She admitted to herself too that she was looking forward to the jolt of surprise some of those giving her sideways glances now would experience when they saw Arthur join her.

  She ate her steak and kidney pie and Arthur was right – it was delicious. The walking and the sunshine, as well as the accumulated months of a rationed diet of sardines and beans on toast, made her appetite enormous. When she finished the pie she hesitated only a moment before ordering jam roly-poly, though she knew it was depleting her budget for the trip. Day one and already she was spending too much. Violet sighed. It ground her down, this constant worry about every transaction and whether she could afford it. It was only a pudding! Why should she have to deny herself a pudding if she wanted one?

  When Arthur arrived he found her scraping every bit of roly-poly and custard from her bowl, and smiled. “I like to see a clean plate,” he said, taking the seat across from her and setting a cribbage board and a pack of cards between them. “It means you’ve enjoyed your food. How was the steak and kidney pie?”

  Violet sat back. “Excellent. Thank you for suggesting it.”

  Arthur eyed her sherry glass. “Another of those, or would you like a half of the mild? The local is brewed right down the road. Mr Trout makes it hoppy but not too bitter.”

  Violet chose the mild, pleased that he seemed to find nothing odd about her drinking it even when the other women in the Five Bells were not. Up at the bar he indeed knew everyone, and seemed to steer through any awkward comments about Violet’s presence with a steady hand.