A Single Thread

by Tracy Chevalier

  “May,” he said when she asked over chops at the Old Market Restaurant, where they had begun meeting every week for supper after her broderers’ meetings and before his ringing. He did not take her hand or call her “love” but he did not need to. There was something comforting about sitting formally together in the restaurant, linen napkins in laps, discussing the menu, the services he was to ring for, the embroidery she was working on, her mother’s imminent move to Horsham (“A fine set of eight bells at St Mary’s,” Arthur commented), the seedlings he was growing in his greenhouse and would soon plant out. We are like an old married couple, she thought, but without the married part. The thought did not bother her.

  He was fattening her up with the dinners at the Old Market, he said. A year and a half of living on fish paste and cress sandwiches and Marmite had made her scrawny rather than simply slim. Violet was grateful but worried whether he could afford it on his pension. However, though she felt guilty, she could not limit herself to soup and a main, but always had a pudding as well – stodgy ones such as apple Charlotte or bread and butter pudding, with custard. “Stick to your ribs,” Arthur said, nodding in approval. She could feel her hips begin to fill out her skirt, her collarbones soften under a layer of fat, her belly round out.

  During the month she waited, she busied herself. She reorganised the typing she and Maureen did so that they played to their strengths – Violet doing reports with long chunks of text, Maureen on fiddly forms that required careful spacing – and made their output efficient enough that Mr Waterman stopped complaining he might have to hire another typist or move their work to the typing pool in Southampton.

  Maureen and her bank clerk had recently broken up, and Violet introduced her to Keith Bain. They went to the pictures one night and never mentioned each other again.

  The broderers were working hard on another batch of cushions to be blessed at a Presentation of Embroideries service in May, adding nine to those already there. One Wednesday when Louisa Pesel assigned her more borders, she asked specifically to sew fylfots. Miss Pesel removed her spectacles and regarded Violet as they stood together by the cupboard in the room in Church House, the buzz of broderers working and chatting all around them, Mabel Way hovering nearby, ready to record the work Violet was assigned. “I am content with Edington’s fylfots on the Arthur cushion,” Miss Pesel began. “However, perhaps we have made our point. There are many other interesting patterns one could use.”

  “I want to,” Violet countered. “This time I will know what I am making – what it means. I want to rebel meaningfully, not unconsciously.”

  Louisa Pesel smiled. “It is important for you to rebel, is it?”

  “Yes.” Ever since Arthur spoke of Hitler in the Fishermen’s Chapel, Violet had been widening her world by paying closer attention, reading about him and the Nazi Party in the papers, listening to analysis on the wireless, discussing the news with Arthur at the Old Market. She was not sure Hitler would last as a leader of Germany – many thought he was a fanatic who was having his moment and would fade away, to be replaced by a different attempt to solve Germany’s economic woes. If that was the case, fylfots on cushions could go back to being the benign ancient symbol they had always been.

  “All right,” Louisa Pesel conceded. “There is a cushion that still needs a border. I have been holding off on designing one, as it is an important cushion that I expect many will look at. It will sit on the wide chair across from the King Arthur cushion, and the same border on each will link them further.”

  “The Tree of Life?” Violet guessed – the unfinished cushion Gilda had shown her when she first began with the broderers.

  Louisa Pesel nodded. “Indeed. Symbolically the fylfots would work well there. But you’ll have to make the borders quickly to be in time for the service.” She reached into the cupboard for the box that read Models and rummaged about until she found the narrow band of canvas with the fylfots interspersed between the four-petal flowers. Violet had used the model when sewing the King Arthur border. Miss Pesel handed it to her. “Go and rebel, Miss Speedwell.”

  Afterwards Violet sat with Gilda and Dorothy to work. Though they didn’t normally appear together at the meetings, Dorothy was up from Southampton to bring one of the finished Waterman cushions for Louisa Pesel to inspect, and stayed to sew. Violet didn’t know how much the other broderers knew about their arrangement. Gilda was her usual lively self, telling stories to those nearby while Dorothy sat silent with her half-smile. Those around them laughed and made comments and didn’t throw odd glances their way. That crisis seemed to have passed, as long as the couple didn’t display affection in front of them.

  Violet had to wait until after the meeting, when she and Gilda and Dorothy had a cup of tea together at Awdry’s, to ask about their plans. “How is Mother?” she enquired first.

  “Mrs Speedwell has gone to Horsham to inspect her living arrangements,” Dorothy replied. “I put her on the train, and your aunt is meeting her off it.”

  “Thank you for suggesting the move to her. I – we are all grateful.”

  Dorothy shrugged. “It is the logical solution. Mrs Speedwell just needed to be led to it and make it her own choice.”

  “While she’s away Evelyn and Dorothy and I are going through the house, sorting,” Gilda interjected.

  “Shouldn’t I be helping?”

  “It’s much easier when you’re not emotionally involved. Gosh, Violet – apart from the telephone and the electricity, your mother’s house is frozen in about the year 1894!”

  “The year I was born.”

  “It will take some doing to get it unstuck,” Dorothy said, “but we’ll manage. Aut viam in veniam aut faciam. Hannibal: I will either find a way or make one.”

  “Does Mother know what you’re doing?”

  “Yes, and she doesn’t seem to mind,” Gilda declared. “Oh, she complains, but then doesn’t follow through. Dorothy handles her without any trouble. She’s had more trouble with pupils than with Mrs Speedwell.” She gazed admiringly at her friend.

  “And have you found lodgings yet in Southampton?”

  Gilda and Dorothy glanced at each other. “We’re going to live in your mother’s house, just until it’s sold. They think a house sells better when someone’s living in it. People have no imagination and find empty rooms off-putting. After that – well, we’ll find something. I have a lead on a job, at any rate. I’ll be moving soon. Violet, what’s wrong?”

  For tears were stinging Violet’s eyes at the understanding that the one real friend she had made in Winchester was moving away. She cleared her throat and tried to laugh. “It’s just that I moved from Southampton and now you’re moving there.”

  Gilda leaned forward over her cup of tea. “Oh, don’t you worry, I’ll still come back to Winchester. For one thing, I have to keep an eye on awful Olive, don’t I, to make sure she’s not running the business into the ground! And then there are the broderers, of course. Didn’t Miss Pesel say we have another three years’ worth of work? I won’t be able to come to meetings every week once I get a job, but I’ll manage. And you’ll come down and see us, won’t you?” Though she grabbed Violet’s hand, her face was shining at Dorothy.

  “Of course I’ll come,” Violet answered stoutly. “After all, I am a Southampton girl and you need someone to show you round.”

  At last over supper one Wednesday Arthur asked Violet to meet him at half past seven on Sunday morning by the Thetcher grave, with her bicycle. “I know it’s early, but it needs to be,” he said apologetically. “At any rate the weather should be fine for cycling.”

  Violet knew not to ask for more details, contenting herself with the surprise of it. It was only while waiting for him on the soft May morning, the sun lighting up the short Cathedral tower but the rest still in shadow, that she realised he was cycling all the way from Nether Wallop so early in the day. When he arrived and they had formally shaken hands, almost like strangers, and she asked, “Where are we go
ing?” and he replied, “Nether Wallop” – then she understood the strength of his character. For he had cycled fourteen miles to fetch her and bring her back to where he had started.

  They took the road that led northwest out of Winchester towards Stockbridge. Because it was early there was little traffic, and Violet could get back her bicycle legs after not riding for eighteen months. She wobbled a bit on the hill out of town, but once on the flat road she cycled more confidently, following Arthur’s straight back and steady pace. She suspected he was going much more slowly than he usually did. Eventually he moved over and slowed down so that she caught up and they could ride side by side through the gleaming countryside. The sun had been up for a couple of hours and burned the dew away. It would be warm later but for now it was crisp and fresh and the sky blue-white.

  The fields rolled alongside and away from them like waves. Some were newly ploughed and dark with disturbed soil. In others shoots were turning the land fuzzy. It was much fresher and greener out here than it had been in August when she’d walked to Salisbury. Then the land had been the older woman, wise to the world and a little weary. Now it was the May ingénue, young and new and open to what lay before her. Which month am I? Violet wondered. May no longer, not yet August. I am July, she thought, surprised. I am in my prime, and ready.

  “Will we get to Nether Wallop in time for the bells?” she asked Arthur, for she had worked out that much – though not her place in it.

  “Should do,” he replied, though he sped up slightly. “We’ll stop for a breather before Stockbridge. Now, how are the broderers? Did you have anything blessed in the special service last week?”

  “Another alms bag, and the border for one of the finished cushions.”

  “What pattern was it?”

  Violet hesitated. “Fylfots.”

  Arthur’s front wheel wobbled.

  “It was my knowing act of rebellion,” she added, “against the Nazis and all those who support them. As Miss Pesel explained.”

  “Indeed.” After a moment Arthur added, “Are you planning to fill the choir stalls with fylfots, then?”

  “No, just this one. The cushion has the Tree of Life on it, and it seemed appropriate. But two such cushions are enough, Miss Pesel and I have decided – though she did say she reserves the right to stitch another border of them herself sometime if she is feeling particularly angry. She rather hopes she won’t have to.”

  They reached Nether Wallop just before nine, Violet slightly out of breath from the exertion, and wondering what the other ringers would make of her presence.

  “Now, I must go in to set up,” Arthur explained as they stopped up the lane from the church and dismounted from their bicycles. “I suggest you go and listen outside. Then towards the end, at about a quarter to, come into the church and sit on the right towards the back.”

  Violet nodded, sweating from the ride, confused and disappointed. She’d had a fantasy about ringing the bells, though she knew that was ridiculous. Keith Bain had told her he’d spent a month just learning how to pull the rope: the two-stroke motion was more complicated than it looked. But it seemed Arthur had brought her here just to listen.

  He disappeared into the church, and Violet headed for the bench where she had sat nine months before to listen to the bells. Passing the pyramid that dominated the graveyard, she paused and placed a hand on its smooth surface, which had been warmed by the sun. Her brother had tried to climb it almost twenty-eight years ago. He had been dead for seventeen years, and Laurence for sixteen. Perhaps at long last the sting was gone from this knowledge. She was still alive, and glad of it. Her mother too: Mrs Speedwell had turned a corner as well, though it was not the same corner as Violet’s, for a mother’s never could be. As she moved on and sat on the bench, the five bells began their short descending scale, and Violet closed her eyes and turned her face to the sun.

  At a quarter to ten she got up and walked back through the graveyard to the church entrance: nervous now, uncertain what was to happen. Was he going to introduce her to his wife? Would they sit like ducks in a row through the service, stared at by the village? Or were they leaving on their bicycles once he had finished ringing? To do what?

  The church was cool and dim inside and, apart from the bellringers, empty. The women had arranged their flowers and dusted the pews and swept the floor and set out the prayer books; the vicar had readied his papers at the pulpit.

  The bellringers were mid-method, pulling smoothly and watching one another with the kind of focused attention Violet had never seen anywhere else. She slipped into a pew out of their sightlines so as not to distract, then sat and listened, picking out the pattern by following the top bell as it moved through the others. It was easier to discern what was happening with fewer bells, and she was able to hear each move into its original place until the last one clicked in and they were playing the descending scale.

  “Stand,” the caller said, and four bells fell silent, only the tenor continuing, faster now, its urgent call to the village that the service would soon begin. The other ringers filed out, Violet keeping very still so they would not notice her.

  When the door shut behind them she heard Arthur call, “Violet, come.” She hurried over to the base of the tower, where four ropes dangled and Arthur pulled rhythmically on the tenor bell, down to his waist, then up almost on his tiptoes. “Do you see that curtain?” He nodded to a faded orange velvet curtain that hung in the corner by the entrance to the bells. “Pull it across. Then the congregation won’t be distracted by us.”

  No, Violet thought. Then they won’t see me. But she did as he asked, pulling it to shield them from the nave just as the door opened and the tall patrician man in the wool suit who had spoken to her in August entered. She was not sure if he had seen her or not.

  She went over to Arthur. “All right,” he said. “I am going to teach you how to handle the rope.” He pulled his rope and let it go high up between his hands, then stopped it. The silence was startling. Violet could hear people on the other side of the curtain – the church was beginning to fill.

  “Stand across from me,” Arthur continued in a low voice. They stood facing each other, the rope hanging between them. “I am going to have you pull the sally while I pull the end of the rope. Grasp the sally with both hands at a height above your head – that’s it. Then you will pull down until your hands are at your waist, then let go as it comes up. I’ll control it with the tail end of the rope, and once the sally comes down again, grab it as it starts to come up, and then pull down once it’s above your head. All right?”

  “I—”

  “We’ve no time. Just follow me, and trust me. Grab the sally and pull down to your waist.” Arthur nodded at the striped part. Violet took a deep breath, took hold of the sally with both hands, and pulled. For a moment nothing happened, though she could feel the weight of the bell through the rope. It was not as heavy as she had expected, and she pulled far too hard. “Let go!” Arthur hissed. She quickly let go, and as the sally headed towards the ceiling, he added, “Don’t watch the rope. Look at me.” He pulled the rope’s tail so the sally came back down. “Now grab as it comes up and above your head. Now pull again. Keep watching me.”

  She pulled, and again he had to remind her to let go, and not to watch the rope. It was a curious up-and-down sensation that required complete concentration to get the rhythm right. At first she could not control the rope; it bounced about rather than running smoothly up and down. A few times Arthur had to grab the sally to set it straight. After a couple of minutes she managed to coordinate her movements and get a steady rhythm going, finding it easier if she kept her eyes fixed on Arthur and did not think about anything else. He was standing close to her, pulling and watching her as she was him. It was an intent gaze, focusing on the rope and the bell and each other. It was a little like being on a seesaw with someone, carefully balanced as long as each paid attention to what the other was doing, as well as to the seesaw. For a short while she fe
lt completely in step with Arthur and the rope and the bell.

  She was so intent on what was happening with the rope that it took a few minutes for her to become aware of the sound of the bell above them, making its singular music. Only then did she understand in the most visceral way that pulling the rope was creating this sound. “Calling all sinners,” she murmured, and smiled at Arthur.

  He returned her smile. “Yes, I think we’ve called them far and wide. You stop pulling, and I’ll bring the bell down now.”

  She did not want to stop. But she could sense the congregation behind the curtain, and knew that this brief and profound connection between her and Arthur and the bell could not be prolonged. She pulled the sally one last time, then let go. Arthur extended his arms as the rope tail climbed to its highest point, pulled down more gently, checking the rope and taking up a coil as he brought the bell in, in ever quicker time, until it went silent. They looked at each other. “Thank you,” she said, and he nodded.

  He glanced at his watch, and went over to the wall to unhook a long metal cord from a nail. There was a grinding sound, then the bell began to be struck by an automatic mechanism, ten dead chimes. “A little late, but never mind,” he said. He unhooked a rope with a grappling hook on the end and lowered it, and Violet helped him loop the ends of the ropes onto it. When all were looped he pulled up the rope to raise the hook, creating a simple version of the rope chandelier she had seen at the Cathedral bell tower.

  Behind them the congregation began to sing the first hymn. “Best to go out now,” Arthur said. “I’ll follow in a minute or two and meet you by the bicycles.”

  Violet nodded, but hesitated. She had a vision of the congregation turned and facing their way, staring at her as she was exposed. We have done nothing wrong, she told herself, though it did not feel as if they had done nothing as they rang, so close and concentrated together on the rope and the bell and each other.