A Single Thread

by Tracy Chevalier

  “Look, St Catherine’s Hill! We’re almost there.” Gilda began to gather their things.

  For a brief moment Violet wondered what it would be like to stay on the train and go on to London, as she had once considered on a summer day just under two years ago. Would life be easier for her in the big, anonymous city? Perhaps. But in her heart she knew she would never move there, and the feeling passed.

  “Thank you for coming with me,” she said.

  “Of course!” Gilda cried. “We wouldn’t miss it, would we, Dorothy?”

  “Per angusta, ad augusta. Through difficulties to honours.”

  Violet and Gilda didn’t even exchange a glance. Violet had found that once you lived with someone, you got used to them spouting Latin. Doubtless she had her own quirks that quietly drove Dorothy crazy.

  Here was one quirk. She went over to the pram braked by the carriage door and peeked in. Iris was asleep and had been since they’d left the house. While it was a blessing for the other passengers, it meant she was likely to be awake and vocal later. No matter. Violet smiled down at the miracle of her daughter. For her she would put up with a great deal more than crying.

  Still, she braced herself for the walk from the station through town to the Cathedral. She had not been back to Winchester since her pregnancy had begun to show and she lost her job. The moment Mr Waterman called her into his office one crisp October day, she knew he had finally noticed that she was not simply gaining weight. She saved them both from an excruciating interview by sitting down and immediately stating, “I shall be having a baby in February. Would you prefer I left now or in January?”

  Mr Waterman’s eyes popped. “Miss Speedwell, I – I—”

  “Perhaps now is best,” she decided. Though saying so robbed her of two months’ more pay, she could not bear Mr Waterman’s red-faced sputtering for that long. She had already had to put up with sideways looks from many of the townswomen. Mrs Harvey, though, had been unexpectedly tolerant. It turned out she had a daughter who’d had a baby without being married, she confided to Violet. “Of course you can’t stay on once the baby arrives,” she added. “I don’t run that sort of house.”

  But the biggest surprise of the day she lost her job was Maureen, who had already guessed that she was pregnant. When Violet came back from her meeting with Mr Waterman and explained she would be leaving shortly, her office mate grunted and said, “I’m having my own meeting with him soon. I’m getting married.”

  “Married?” Violet tried not to sound shocked, but there had been no indication over the months that there was a man in Maureen’s life. This sudden announcement was far removed from the endless talk of engagements and rings and wedding receptions Mo and O had indulged in just a year and a half before. Maureen has grown up, she thought. “Who are you marrying?”

  “Keith, of course.” At Violet’s astonished expression she snorted. “Why look surprised? You introduced us, after all.”

  Violet was still getting her head around Keith Bain being referred to as Keith. He was a man who suited a surname. And he was marrying Maureen. Perhaps he would have a softening effect on her. “Gosh. Congratulations to you both.”

  “Thanks. Keith does make me laugh, and think. Oh, I can’t wait to see the look on Mr Waterman’s face when he discovers he’s losing both typists! You’ll come to the wedding, won’t you? Since you set us in each other’s sights. You ought to be there. If, that is –” she nodded at Violet’s belly – “that doesn’t get in the way.”

  “I hope so.”

  But she didn’t hope so. Arthur would be there, probably as best man, and she knew she must avoid him, as she had avoided the Cathedral and the Old Market Restaurant on Wednesday evenings and Sunday afternoons.

  Only once had she run into Arthur. She had been coming out of Church House when she saw him through a group of College choristers crossing the Inner Close in a noisy herd. He was leaning against one of the Cathedral’s flying buttresses, clearly watching for her. She stopped, and when the boys moved on, he spotted her, and the bump emerging from the folds of her coat. They stared at each other across the Close. More than anything, Violet wanted to step across the cobblestones separating them and into his arms. But she did not move, and he did not move, in that way confirming what they had decided before they even knew the circumstances. After a moment Violet gave him a little nod, and turned away as Arthur took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes.

  She did not go to the wedding. By the time Maureen and Keith Bain married in late December, she had moved back to Southampton and was able to cite weather and puffy ankles as excuses – though by then they would have guessed the true reason for her absence. They did not hold it against her. Indeed, the Bains became proper friends. They were supportive of Violet’s pregnancy and of Iris when she arrived – to the extent that Violet asked them to be godparents.

  As the train came to a halt, she gazed down at her daughter’s face – looking so much like Arthur that Violet was astonished anyone bothered to ask who the father was. Iris opened her eyes: deep-set, like two slivers of sapphire. “Right on time,” Violet murmured. She tucked a small white pillow with the initials AK embroidered in the corner under the covers; she had made it from Arthur’s handkerchief. “Welcome to Winchester, little one. Sic parvis magna. So great and so small.”

  Gilda and Dorothy did not appear to be nervous about walking through town. Once they were living in Southampton, settled together and with jobs keeping books and teaching, it seemed Winchester’s citizens were relieved not to have to consider the nature of their relationship. Out of sight, out of mind; it suited the town well. Walking down the High Street now, they looked like two friends, strolling and chatting on their way to a christening.

  Violet’s sin, however, was more obvious. As she pushed the pram towards the Buttercross, she could feel eyes on her, the way she had in Southampton for the last months of her pregnancy and the first months of Iris’ life. Her skin was thicker now, but it was still an ordeal she had to brace herself to get through. It helped having Gilda and Dorothy with her, no longer walking together but wordlessly setting her between them. Like guards accompanying me to a prison cell, Violet thought wryly, though she was grateful too.

  The best tonic was to keep her eyes on her daughter’s face. Iris was watching her equally intently, her blue eyes fierce with the serious business of staying alive; her complete dependence on her mother made Violet walk with a brisk step and a straight back. It was what had made her able to insist to her brother that she and Gilda and Dorothy should live in the Speedwell house in Southampton rather than sell it. Tom had been bewildered by the suggestion, as he had been by the news of her pregnancy. But Violet had cultivated a new firmness that her brother found hard to argue with. “I am going to have a family,” she said, “and I need a family house. Mother is not coming back to Southampton. Unless you need the money at the moment, why shouldn’t I live there?”

  Gilda and Dorothy supported Violet with their salaries. Since they did not have to pay rent, they just about managed, with Violet looking after them, the house, and Iris. It was an eye-opening arrangement, much discussed by the neighbours behind their backs, and more than once Violet had heard them referred to in hissed tones as the “house of sin”. While Tom and Evelyn managed to accept Gilda and Dorothy’s arrangement by pretending it was just a friendship, they could not ignore the sheer physical fact of Iris, and the absence of a wedding ring or a father. There was no way to hide that from their children. When they visited, they did not bring them, though they always had an excuse ready: illness, or tiredness, or a punishment for being naughty.

  Violet coped. From Dorothy she had learned: Suum cuique. To each her own. She fretted, however, for it seemed a temporary arrangement at best. Would she ever be able to work again? Would she have to ask for more from Tom, and pray he would be merciful? It was painful to imagine those conversations, but eventually she would have to talk to him about her and Iris’ future so that it
did not seem so precarious.

  As they crossed the Outer Close, her heart began to pound. Whatever the town thought of her, she cared more about the Cathedral’s response to her altered life. It had been a source of refuge for so many over the centuries, and had been to Violet while she lived in Winchester. She dreaded any change – the eyes following her, the tuts as she pushed Iris’ pram through the nave. Would this be the last time she visited?

  But there was Louisa Pesel waiting in the main doorway. It was she who had convinced Dean Selwyn to allow Iris’ christening to take place in the Cathedral. Violet wondered what she had said, and whether she’d had to bribe him with the promise of a special cushion in his name; but she suspected the Dean had simply found it impossible to argue with Miss Pesel.

  “Ah, there you are!” she cried, coming forward with a smile. “And where is our little star?” She poked her head into the pram the way people do who never deal with babies, and Iris gazed at her in alarm. Miss Pesel patted her cheek before straightening. “Remarkable blue eyes,” she declared. Violet wondered if she was busy making the connection between the baby and the father.

  If she did, she did not show it. Indeed, she had never commented at all about the father or Violet’s lack of a wedding ring, but had been as innocently welcoming of Iris as her niece Marjory had been to have a new baby cousin to attend to, the one time Tom and Evelyn had allowed them to visit.

  “You have chosen the most delightful name for her,” Miss Pesel continued. “As you know, irises are my second love after embroidery. Later in the year I’m moving to the White House in Colebrook Street – just a stone’s throw from here – and I’m already planning the iris garden. You must bring Iris to see her namesakes when they have taken in a year or two. Now, shall we?”

  She led them up the side aisle, past the Bishop of Edington’s chantry with its alabaster fylfots, and on towards the Fishermen’s Chapel. With Louisa Pesel as their escort, Violet felt more legitimate, and able to push Iris’ pram with confidence through the nave.

  Waiting for them in the chapel were the Bains, Maureen with a smile on her face rather than a frown. Then there was Mrs Harvey and, to her astonishment, Mabel Way, from the Cathedral Broderers. Mabel, who had shushed her two years before, just outside the Fishermen’s Chapel. She looked uncertain about being there, glancing around in fright; perhaps she had assumed more broderers would be coming besides Gilda and Dorothy and Miss Pesel. Mrs Biggins was not there, of course; although she could not ban Violet from the broderers’ meetings, she had made her feel so uncomfortable that she stopped going once she moved to Southampton – though she continued to work on the choir stall cushions until Iris arrived and her time for such things vanished.

  There must be a reason Mabel Way was here. So many people had unknown stories lurking: a husband gone, a surprise baby passed off as a brother or sister, a misplaced passion, a lost wife. Maybe one day Violet would hear Mabel’s. How to navigate through life carrying such things without them making you sad and bitter and judgemental – that was the challenge. She nodded now at Mabel to reassure her. Mabel responded with a tentative smile.

  Despite the surprise of unexpected guests and the excitement of the occasion, Violet felt a vague disappointment. She had hoped Arthur might be there, though he should not. She had made it clear, and so had he.

  She greeted her guests, but then Iris began to cry – a delayed reaction to Louisa Pesel’s sudden looming face, she suspected – and Violet had to tend to her daughter and so could not join in the conversations. Luckily it didn’t matter, for most knew one another or could be civil – though she did notice that both Mabel and Mrs Harvey took care to remain on the other side of the small chapel from Gilda and Dorothy. It couldn’t be helped – they might be open-minded enough to come to the christening of the child of an unwed mother, but could not countenance two women together. Violet herself had found it a puzzle at first and could understand their reluctance. But she had lived with Gilda and Dorothy for several months now and no longer questioned the relationship. They were like an old married couple to her. At least Maureen was speaking to them; she had become more generous since marrying Keith Bain.

  The vicar from a local village church arrived – a colourless man who was apparently the only vicar nearby willing to perform this baptism, primarily so that he would be able to say he had led a service at Winchester Cathedral. They began to take their places, Gilda and Keith Bain at Violet’s side as godparents. Iris was still crying, and Violet looked around, anxious, her teeth on edge from her daughter’s wails. Tom and Evelyn were not there; they were not coming.

  Then Evelyn bustled in, breathless and apologetic. “You’ll understand why we’re late in a moment,” she explained. When Tom appeared in the doorway with their mother on his arm, Violet almost cried out.

  Mrs Speedwell had refused to see Violet since moving to Horsham. Violet had written a few times and had no reply. Whenever she telephoned, Aunt Penelope was circumspect. “Oh, she’s sleeping, dear,” she would say. “Best not to disturb her.” Even then Violet could hear her mother making comments in the background. During one call, her aunt had whispered, “I’d leave it for now, dear. I’m sure she’ll come round, by and by. She always does.” How Tom had talked their mother into coming to the christening, Violet had no idea. But it was only when she saw her – Mrs Speedwell looking older and smaller and slower, her face grim – that Violet understood how much she had wanted her there. Becoming a mother herself had made her truly appreciate the bond between a parent and child. The thought of losing Iris made her shake with a visceral dread. Her mother had lost a son, and had to live beyond that dread. No wonder she had become so bitter.

  Violet handed Iris to Gilda, whose variety of pulled faces always quieted her, and walked over to her mother. “Thank you, Tom,” she murmured. Her brother nodded. Perhaps this was the start to his bringing the rest of the family back into her life as well.

  “Mother,” she said, and took Mrs Speedwell’s gloved hands in hers. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Her mother’s frown deepened and she snatched her hands back. “I am not feeling at all well,” she complained. “I should not have come. All of that travel for – this.” She looked around the small chapel with distaste. Perhaps Tom and Evelyn had lured her to the christening with the promise of it taking place in a grander part of the Cathedral. “What Geoffrey would make of this, I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “This was Father’s favourite chapel. That’s why I chose it.”

  “How delightful that you have come, Mrs Speedwell!” Louisa Pesel stepped up and held out her hand. “We have all been anticipating your arrival. I am Miss Pesel, head of the broderers here at the Cathedral. Your daughter has done some splendid work for us, as I’m sure you know.”

  Violet’s mother took in Louisa Pesel’s fur collar, her slightly dated hat, and her natural air of authority, and gave her a curt nod. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  She has found someone to make this gathering legitimate, Violet thought, hiding a smile.

  “The relationship a child has with its grandmother is such an important one, don’t you think?” Miss Pesel continued. “Mine taught me to embroider my first sampler. I owe her my life’s work, truly. Come and say hello to yours.”

  Mrs Speedwell allowed herself to be led over to Gilda, whom she regarded with some relief at seeing a familiar face. No one had dared to spell out to her the true nature of Gilda and Dorothy’s relationship; it had been tacitly decided that Violet’s news was shock enough.

  “Here’s Iris,” Gilda exclaimed, holding out the baby. “She’s stopped crying, just for you!”

  Mrs Speedwell regarded her granddaughter with a critical eye. “Is that Violet’s christening gown?”

  “Yes, Mother.” Violet stepped forward.

  “It’s far too big for her. But then, you were a large child. Fat as a Yorkshire pudding, you were.”

  Violet caught Keith Bain’s eye; he was
grinning at this improbable comparison, and winked at her. He had been tickled to be asked to be godfather to Iris.

  Iris was staring at her grandmother, her chin jutting. “She has Geoffrey’s eyes,” Mrs Speedwell remarked.

  Violet’s father’s eyes had been a faded pale blue, not Iris’ crystal glints, but Violet was not about to argue with her. “Do sit, Mother, and we’ll begin.”

  Iris did not appreciate the water on her face – not even holy water – and cried through most of the ceremony, only calming down afterwards when Violet took her to an empty chapel next door and fed her. When they were done and her daughter was lolling in her arms, sated, Violet was able to focus on her guests once more. They were mostly gathered round Mrs Speedwell, indulging her by listening to her tales of her new life in Horsham. Dorothy was on her own, inspecting Izaak Walton’s stained glass windows. Maureen was chatting to Mrs Harvey. Keith Bain had disappeared, perhaps to have a cigarette.

  “Violet, dear, you must come – we have something to show you.” Louisa Pesel was with Gilda, and beckoned to her. They led her out of the Fishermen’s Chapel, the others following, and up the stairs to the presbytery. There the chairs were set out with their kneelers, Violet’s chequered acorn caps somewhere amongst them.

  “Look!” Gilda waved a hand at the choir stalls to their left. Violet caught her breath. The last time she had been there months before there had been twenty cushions on the choir stall seats. Now ten long cushions had been made for the benches, dazzling in their colours. She went over to look. Each long bench cushion had two history medallions with elaborate surrounds in blue and yellow and green. There were depictions of Richard I and Henry VIII, of the Bishops Edington and Wykeham, of Charles I and the destruction of the Cathedral interior by Civil War soldiers. There was even a medallion depicting Izaak Walton. There were two dozen more still to make, but already it looked glorious.