Tracy Chevalier - A Single Thread

“Finally, don’t forget the back of the canvas. You want the reverse to look almost as neat as the front. You will make mistakes that you can correct back there, and no one will be the wiser. But if it’s a dismal tangle at the back, it can affect the front; for instance, you may catch loose threads with your needle and pull them through. A neat back means you’ve worked a neat front.”

Violet recalled the back of her childhood sampler, tangled with wool, the front a field of irregular crosses, her mother’s despair.

“Think of your work rather like the services at the Cathedral,” Louisa Pesel added. “You always see an orderly show of pageantry out in the presbytery or the choir, with the processions and the prayers and hymns and the sermon all beautifully choreographed, mostly thanks to the vergers who run it all, and keep things tidy and organised in the offices away from the public eye as well, so that the public show is smooth and seamless.”

Violet nodded.

“All right, let’s start with the tent stitch, which you will be using a great deal.” Miss Pesel tapped a patch of yellow stitches beading up and down the model. “It is strong, especially done on the diagonal, and fills gaps beautifully.”

Violet wrestled with handling the unfamiliar needle and wool and canvas. Miss Pesel was patient, but Violet was clumsy and uncertain, and panicked whenever she got to the end of a row and had to start back up the other way.

“One stitch on the diagonal, then two squares down,” Miss Pesel repeated several times. “Now going back up the row it’s one diagonal and two across. Vertical going down the row, horizontal going up. That’s right!” She clapped. “You’ve got it.”

Violet felt stupidly proud.

Miss Pesel left her to practise several rows of tent while she went to help others. The backlog of broderers impatient to see her was a pressure Miss Pesel did not seem to feel, and no one dared to complain to her, but they frowned at Violet over the teacher’s shoulder.

She checked back after twenty minutes. “Very good,” she said, studying Violet’s rows. “You have learned where the needle must go. Now unpick it all and start again.”

“What? Why?” Violet bleated. She’d thought she was doing well.

“The tension in each stitch must be the same or it will look uneven and unsightly. Don’t despair, Miss Speedwell,” she added, taking in Violet’s rueful expression. “I can guarantee that every woman in this room has done her share of unpicking. No one manages it straight off. Now, let’s sort out what you’re doing at the ends of the rows. Then I’ll teach you upright Gobelin. That’s rather like tent but more straightforward.”

It was more straightforward and easy to master, so that before lunch Miss Pesel was also able to show her cross-stitch and long-armed cross. “I’m pleased with your progress,” she declared as she handed back Violet’s canvas. “This afternoon we’ll go over rice and eyelets, and then you’ll be ready. We start again at half past two.”

Violet found herself lapping up the praise like a child.

AS THE BRODERERS GATHERED together their bits and pieces to go to lunch – some leaving for good, others going out to eat with the intention to return – Violet wondered for a moment what to do. She should go back to the office and ask Mr Waterman if she could take the afternoon off as well. Then Gilda was at her elbow. “Shall we eat on the Outer Close?” she suggested, as if they had been friends for years. “There’s a yew tree by Thetcher I like to sit under when it’s warm. Lets you see the comings and goings of the Cathedral, which is no end of entertainment.”

“Thetcher?”

“You don’t know? You’re in for a treat!” Gilda took her arm and began to lead her out. Violet was tempted to pull away: there was something in Gilda’s thin face, her prominent teeth, and the fine wrinkles around her eyes that telegraphed … not desperation, exactly, but an overpowering insistence.

“I’m meant to be back at work this afternoon,” she said as they descended the stairs. “I hadn’t realised I would be expected for the whole day. Mrs Biggins only mentioned the morning.”

Gilda grimaced. “Old Biggins probably didn’t want you for the day. Honestly, she acts as if a new volunteer is a burden God has placed at her feet, when actually we’re desperate for more broderers. Silly woman should be thanking you! Luckily you have Miss Pesel’s blessing. Anyway, couldn’t you take the afternoon off? Is your supervisor understanding? Where do you work?”

“Southern Counties Insurance.”

Gilda stopped in the middle of the Inner Close, the Cathedral looming behind her. A group of young scholars from Winchester College in their gowns and boaters parted in streams around them, clattering across the cobblestones on their way back to classes. “I suppose you know Olive Sanders,” she said, looking as if she had bitten into an anticipated apple and found it mushy.

“Yes, we’re both typists. We share an office.”

“Poor you! Oh, sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.” Gilda didn’t look sorry. “But really,” she added as they began walking again, “I can’t imagine being in a confined space with her. How do you cope?”

Violet thought of all the silly conversations she’d overheard between O and Mo, the shrieks, the braying laughter over nothing, the casual condescension, the over-sweet perfume, the half-filled teacups with cigarette butts floating in them. “It’s not for much longer.”

“No, because she’s marrying my brother! So the problem of Olive gets transferred to me . Do you know she had the gall to suggest she take over my job? I do the books and the appointments for my brother’s garage,” Gilda explained, guiding them through a passageway of arches made by the Cathedral’s flying buttresses that led from the Inner to the Outer Close and spat them out in front of the main entrance. “She knows nothing about numbers or motor cars! I put an end to that idea.” A seam of doubt running through her tone made Violet suspect that this was not the case, and feel for her. A spinster’s uncertainty, she thought. It is always there, underlining everything we do.

She glanced up at the Cathedral. Its exterior was always a surprise. Violet had visited several times since childhood, and knew what to expect, but each time she willed it to be spectacular and was once again disappointed. When she thought of a cathedral in the abstract, it always made a big, bold, dramatic entrance. Everything would be tall: the entrance, the body of the building, and especially the tower or spire. It would shout its presence, and its physical essence would not let anyone forget that it was there for the purpose of worship. Nearby Salisbury Cathedral did so with its impressive spire, the tallest in Britain; so did Chichester, which she had seen when visiting her grandparents. On holiday she had admired the handsome square towers of Canterbury Cathedral, and of Lincoln, which dominated and conquered that city as a cathedral should.

In reality Winchester Cathedral squatted like a grey toad in a forgettable green off the High Street. Given that the town had been the central base of power for many kings, the Cathedral was surprisingly easy to miss; Violet often had to direct tourists to it, even when it was just ahead of them. “Oh,” they would say. “Oh.” Where is the tower? she knew they were thinking. For the Cathedral had only a stubby one; it looked like a dog with its tail cut short, or as if the project had run out of funds before they could build higher. It seemed more like an oversized church than a grand cathedral.

“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.