Читать книгу A Single Thread - Tracy Chevalier - Страница 9

THOUGH ANNOYED BY MRS Biggins’ interference, as well as her mixed messages – Come on Wednesday but you won’t be much use to us – Violet found herself looking forward to the broderers’ meeting. Her brother had been pestering her ever since she moved to Winchester to join some groups – ramblers, historical societies, benevolent church funds, anything that would bring her into contact with potential friends and suitors. Now she could genuinely answer that she was doing just that – although suitors were rather unlikely at an embroidery group.

On Wednesday morning it felt odd to sleep in on a working day, to dawdle over breakfast and not have to join the queue to wash. Violet sat in her tea-coloured dressing gown, lit a cigarette and listened to the house empty of its inhabitants – the other lodgers to their various employments, her landlady to the shops. Eventually she got dressed, aware that the broderers would note her choice of clothes, her hair, her makeup. After some thought she donned a simple chiffon dress in pale green with yellow flowers, and her beige cardigan in case the embroidery room was chilly.

Church House was one of a row of houses in the Inner Close, to the south of the Cathedral. Violet had walked past the buildings before but had never considered what might be going on inside. She felt a little sick as she approached the entrance, a feeling similar to that on her first day of work at the Winchester office – the war in her gut between craving the new and clinging to the comfort of the familiar. The door had a bell to one side with a small handwritten sign that read, Ring the bell. That impertinent sign almost made Violet turn around and hurry away. But hurry away to what – an empty room? Window shopping with no money in her purse? The office, where they wouldn’t even notice she’d not been there?

She rang the bell. After a moment a girl answered, looked her up and down, and before Violet could say a word, commanded, “Up the stairs, right and all the way down the passage to the last room.”

How does she know? Violet thought, and suddenly wished she had worn something different – though what, exactly, she wasn’t sure. She found the room and forced herself to enter boldly, like plunging into the cold sea rather than hesitating on the shore. She was not late – as she walked down the corridor Violet had heard the Cathedral bells sounding the half hour – but the dozen chairs around the long table were almost full. Some women were already bent over pieces of canvas, glancing at patterns and needling coloured wool in and out of the tiny holes. Others were murmuring over embroidered work they held, presumably discussing a technique or comparing results.

No one looked up as she came in. Violet wondered if she had got the time wrong, if they had started at ten or nine-thirty. No, she was sure Mrs Biggins had said ten-thirty. These must be the keen ones. The feeling in the room was one of quiet purpose, tinged with a drop of self-satisfaction, which would be denied if anyone accused them of such a thing.

Even if she hadn’t recognised her from the broderers’ service, Violet immediately guessed who Mrs Biggins must be from her demeanour, so similar to her telephone manner. She wore a high-necked blouse and hair piled and puffed on top of her head, her style being stranded somewhere around 1910. She was not walking about to peer over each embroiderer’s shoulder at her work. Instead she sat at one end of the table, where the Chairman of the Board would be during meetings, and let workers come to her, placing their bit of stitching before her like an offering. There she scrutinised and pronounced. As Violet watched, she flattened three embroiderers in rapid succession. “No, no, no, you have only used two shades of blue in this corner. You must know Miss Pesel’s first principle of background work – three shades must be used throughout, to give texture and shading. You shall have to unpick your work and redo it.”

“See now, here you have pulled too hard, so that the stitches are too tight and the tension uneven. That will not do at all – you will have to unpick that section.”

“Have you mixed two stitches here? Is that cross-stitch and long-armed cross alternated? Oh my dear, no! Miss Pesel is encouraging us to become more adventurous with the stitches we use, but never on God’s green earth should you alternate those two. Start again!”

Each woman nodded and said, “Yes, ma’am, I’ll rework it,” or some similar response, then scuttled away like dogs scolded for stealing bones from the dinner table. Back at their seats, they frowned and muttered to their neighbours.

“Where is your work?” Mrs Biggins demanded as Violet approached.

“I’ve not done any yet. This is my first time. We spoke on the telephone.”

“Miss Speedwell, is it? No embroidery experience at all? All right, let’s get you started. You can work with Mrs Way. Mabel!” she called. “Here’s Miss Speedwell to help you sort the cupboard.”

A thin woman in a grey dress with hair to match stepped back from a large cupboard in the corner. It was the usher who had tried to keep Violet from the broderers’ service at the Cathedral. She started when she recognised the newcomer. “It’s not looking too bad, Mrs Biggins,” she insisted. “I don’t really need the help.”

“Nonsense. A tidy cupboard sets up the whole endeavour and helps us to work better.”

Violet took a deep breath. She had no choice but to stand up for herself, as she had with her mother when she moved to Winchester, and as she had with Mabel Way a few weeks before. Else there was no point being here.

“I was hoping to learn embroidery, not tidying.” She spoke in a low voice, but it seemed everyone heard, for the room went quiet.

Mrs Biggins sat up straight, as if to rearrange the rod up her back. “Miss Speedwell, I know you are keen to make your unique contribution to the Cathedral with your very own kneeler. But this is a cooperative operation, and in the spirit of cooperation, we all have tasks to perform here, many of which do not involve embroidering but are nonetheless essential to our endeavour. Now, you go over to the cupboard and help Mabel make it the tidiest cupboard in Winchester. Only then will we teach you to thread a needle.”

Violet turned red during this public dressing-down. If this was to be what embroidering for Winchester Cathedral was like – sorting cupboards and being condescended to – perhaps she should walk out and abandon the idea of a kneeler with her initials on it. She could leave the Cathedral Broderers in their room in Church House and go for a walk instead, along the river through the water meadows, admiring the harebells and poppies and campanula on the verges. Or watch the Winchester College boys playing cricket on their grounds. Or she could go home and reach for the bottle of cheap sherry she tried not to resort to too often. Or go to the Royal Hotel and have her sherry there, though she could not afford it, waiting for a man to sit down across from her and pay for another.

She did not have to do any of that, for at that moment the smiling woman who had been in the front bench at the Presentation of Embroideries service walked in. Immediately the tension in the room eased. Violet had never known one person to have such a marked effect on an atmosphere. She was a short woman in her early sixties, with spectacles and a soft double chin, her grey hair drawn back in a low, loose bun. Her wide mouth maintained a slight smile that reassured rather than judged. “Ladies, I am delighted to see you here,” was all she said, and yet somehow it was enough. As is often the case, a leader comfortable with her authority does not need to be strident, but can afford to be generous. It felt like being visited by the nicest, strictest mother possible.

The women who had been scolded went about unpicking their work with renewed energy, and others crowded around, calling, “Miss Pesel, may I have a word? Miss Pesel, I would be grateful if you could check my eyelets – I cannot get them to lie flat. Miss Pesel, have I mixed the yellows as you wanted? Miss Pesel …” They were like schoolgirls eager to please a favourite teacher. Even Mrs Biggins softened.

Eventually, Violet thought, she will get to me. In the meantime, helping Mabel Way with a messy cupboard suddenly did not seem so bad. She did not want Miss Pesel to find her idle. Even as Violet joined her by the enormous wardrobe set against the back wall, Mabel’s permanent frown lessened slightly, as if a rubber had been taken to the lines on her brow. “Perhaps it might help me to see what there is in here,” Violet suggested, “until I can begin learning to embroider.”

Mabel Way nodded, her eyes on Miss Pesel as she made her way around the room, like a bride at a wedding greeting her guests. “I have some work I want to show her. Why don’t you continue to separate the hanks of blue wool into piles, making sure they’ve not got mixed up? Look, I’ve made a start, light to dark.” She gestured at the wool sitting on the wide windowsill next to the wardrobe, then hurried off.

Violet gazed at the hanks. She had not handled wool since she was a girl and went through a phase of learning from her grandmother to knit and crochet. She had made her mother a bed jacket Mrs Speedwell never even tried on, and her father a muddy yellow-green scarf that he loyally wore to work for two weeks while her mother daily complained that he would be made fun of for humouring his daughter. When the scarf mysteriously disappeared, Mrs Speedwell denied all knowledge.

Mabel Way had removed the blues from the reds and yellows and oranges and browns, and it seemed to Violet that there were only two shades – light and dark blue – and they were already sorted. She was not sure what more she could do with them, and peered into the cupboard to see if there was anything else she might tidy – though organisation was not her forte. Her brothers had always kept their clothes and toys and books in better order than she. George had arranged his books in alphabetical order, Tom by colour and size. Violet’s ended up jumbled together, books she loved and despised side by side, books she hadn’t read next to those she had. Her clothes were similar: she brushed her dresses and skirts and hung them with care, yet somehow they became wrinkled and disordered. Her hair too would not stay in its waves, but went flat too easily. It hadn’t mattered so much at home, but now that she was trying to be independent, she noticed these small failures.

The embroiderers’ cupboard was a thing of beauty, if you liked your beauty labelled and tidy. It had been fitted out with numerous shelves, each with handwritten labels glued on: Kneelers; Choir Stall Seat Cushions; Choir Long Bench Cushions. There were boxes of various sizes, separating the coloured wools from one another, and stacks of designs. There were several boxes of Models, and rolls of Canvas made of hemp (Single-Weave or Double-Weave). If she studied the cupboard for half an hour, Violet would understand how the broderers’ project was set up. Perhaps that was why Mrs Biggins had assigned her to it.

The cupboard reminded her of the lessons on stationery at the secretarial college she had gone to a year or two after the War, when she’d finally accepted marriage was no longer a given and she needed to do something with her time other than be a companion to her mother. Mostly the girls were taught typing and shorthand, but there had also been a few sessions on organising stationery cupboards, with rules to learn such as always putting the heaviest, bulkiest things on the lower shelves, or using box lids to sort and keep pen nibs and rubber bands and paperclips in. Violet had thought it all beneath her dignity, yet she failed her first exam in stationery organisation. She chuckled now, remembering.

“You’re here! After the broderers’ service I wondered if you might come along to a meeting.” Gilda Hill had arrived, and hurried over to her. She wore a floral red and white dress with a V-neck that mirrored her triangular face. Her slash of bright red lipstick made Violet aware of her own chewed lips.

“Hello.” Violet felt almost shy as she held out her hand. “I’m Violet Speedwell.”

Gilda pumped her hand. “Gilda Hill, remember? We’ll have such fun together. Now, don’t tell me Biggins has put you on cupboard duty! And with Mabel, I expect. Is she having you sort wool? It’s best if you hold it in the natural light. That’s why Mabel was sorting it on the sill. Didn’t she say? Honestly, she’s hopeless! And her embroidery! I shouldn’t point fingers, as mine’s nothing special. Let’s just say there’s a reason Mabel gets assigned to the cupboard so often. Did she or Mrs Biggins explain the blues? No? You’d best have a look at what I’m working on; then you’ll understand better.” From a bag at her feet she pulled out a rectangular frame with canvas stretched across it. “I’m making a kneeler for the presbytery. Nothing fancy – not like the choir cushions.”

“What different things are being made?” Violet interjected, already exhausted by her new friend’s patter.

“Biggins didn’t tell you? Of course not – she’ll never tell you anything so practical, she’ll just assume you know it. The first thing we began working on was the kneelers for the chairs near the altar in the presbytery, like this.” Gilda patted the embroidered rectangle. “There are to be hundreds of them eventually. These are all variations on a theme – a sort of mediaeval-style knot in the centre, circular, with flowers or geometrical shapes in them, set on a background patterned in blue with crosshatching or zigzags. Miss Pesel says we are always to use at least three shades of blue for the background, to give it texture. Those are the blues you’re sorting – four there, so when making a kneeler you choose three of the four. Then there are borders, made up of red or brown and cream or yellow squares or rectangles, and the corners have little motifs. They’re not too difficult to make, and there’s a surprising amount of variety in stitch and tone, so that they feel individual but are harmonious when all together. Miss Pesel is a genius designer.”

Violet nodded, wondering if she would get to meet the genius.

“Then there are two types of cushions – stall seat cushions, which are smaller ones for the seats along the back of the choir; and bench cushions, which will be much longer. The bench cushions and some of the seat cushions will have a series of medallions in the centres that Miss Sybil Blunt is designing. She is a friend of Miss Pesel’s – she just does the designs, so you won’t see her much at these meetings. The medallions are to be scenes from English history, with a Winchester twist. So there will be kings who have ruled here or are buried here or have connections here, like Alfred and Canute and Richard the Lionheart, and one of King Arthur. And there will be famous Winchester bishops like Wykeham and Beaufort and Wodeloke.”

“Are there any women?”

“Wives. Emma and Mary Tudor. In terms of embroidery style, the history medallions will be a mix of large stitches and petit-point using finer wool and silk, and which require more skill. Only the more experienced broderers will work on them. The rest of us will fill in the backgrounds and borders. Miss Pesel has done the top of one of the history cushions to show us what we’ll be aiming to make. Would you like to see it?”

Violet nodded.

“Biggins will have stored it in the cupboard in the hall, I expect. You go back to your sorting and I’ll fetch it.” She pulled out two hanks of blue from the bundle. “Here’s your third and fourth blues.”

Violet stared. “They look the same to me.”

Gilda laughed. “Once you’ve worked with them for months you become intimate with each shade.” She winked as she hurried away.

Violet studied the wool, straining to distinguish between the different tones of blue. She closed her eyes for a moment, and thought about a drawing class she had taken several years before in Southampton. She had gone with a friend, who married the next year and disappeared into that life, keen not to be reminded by Violet of her previous surplus status. As they scraped their pencils over rough drawing paper, their teacher – a genial man who’d lost an arm in the War (“Not the drawing arm, mind – thank God for His small mercies”) – told them to be like soldiers and close the mind while opening the eyes.

It had made Violet wonder if Laurence had done that – followed orders and stopped thinking on the battlefield. There was no information about how he died, no account from his commanding officer or fellow soldiers, no small details (“He made the men smile with his imitations of the Kaiser”) or strong adjectives or adverbs (“Lieutenant Furniss fought bravely alongside his comrades and played a major role in defending the territory gained”). Perhaps the officer had written too many of those letters that day and had run dry of uplifting phrases and superlatives. Or maybe no one had seen what happened to Laurence Furniss: he was one of hundreds of British soldiers who died at Passchendaele on the 1st of August 1917. Presumably he had done nothing out of the ordinary; dying that day wasn’t special. Although no one said, Violet heard afterwards about the terrible mud there, and wondered if he had simply got stuck in it and become an easy target.

One evening at the drawing class the regular teacher was absent and a woman took his place for the evening. Her style was very different: while she set up the usual still-lifes of fruit and bottles and glasses, she had them draw quickly, then move around the room to another easel and draw quickly again, and again, then go back to their original easel and spend an hour on the drawing. Violet was not sure what she was meant to learn – that things looked different from different angles, she supposed. It made her want to go outside and smoke.

The new teacher prowled behind them, stopping to peer at their drawings and make comments – few of them complimentary. Violet tried to block the sound of her voice, retreating deep inside her thoughts. She heard her name being called from a distance, but only when a hand was waved in front of her barely-begun drawing did she listen.

“Miss Speedwell, what are you thinking of?”

“My brother,” she replied, surprised into honesty. George had had some words attached: “noble effort”, “stalwart in the face of enemy fire”, “died bravely defending the most sacred values of this country”. She could repeat these phrases because her mother had done so often over the years, sucking every drop of comfort from them until they were dry and meaningless as sticks.

“Stop thinking about him,” the teacher commanded. “He is not here.” She gestured at the still-life. “You should be thinking of nothing more than where the highlight is on the apple, or how to achieve the glassiness of the bottle. Your entire focus should be on what you are looking at – let the rest drain away. It will make for a better drawing – and it will be a relief to you too, to remain in the moment, not to dwell.” With these last words she gave Violet permission to set George and Laurence aside for the evening. She made her best drawing that night, and never felt the need to go back again.

Now, with the blue wools to sort, she tried to bring back that feeling of extraneous thoughts draining away to leave her vision clear. It was remarkable how much was knocking about inside her brain: curiosity about what Gilda was going to show her; anxiety that she would not be able to wield a needle well enough to embroider anything for the Cathedral; rage at Mrs Biggins for taking such satisfaction in belittling the workers; shyness at trying to find a place amongst all of these women who already knew what they were doing; concern that no one would even notice she was missing from work that morning; calculation about what she could have for supper that didn’t involve sardines, beans, or sprats, as she was so sick of them. There were probably more thoughts in there, but Violet cleared out most of her mind, looked at the wool again, and immediately recognised that one of the blues had a tinge of green in it, making it sea-like and murky, like her eyes, which she had always wished were a cleaner blue – like the light blue hank she picked out and dropped into its box. Light blue, mid-royal with a hint of grey, green-blue, and dark blue. Within a couple of minutes she’d sorted them, so that when Gilda came back, she had finished.

“Here we are,” Gilda said, setting down a rectangular piece of canvas embroidery about thirteen by thirty inches. In the central medallion were small, careful petit-point stitches done in subtle shades of brown and cream, depicting a tree, with two blue and tan peacocks standing in its branches, pecking at bunches of dangling grapes while a goat and a deer grazed below. The peacock feathers were intricately rendered, and the grapes expertly shaded with just a few dots of colour. Surrounding the medallion was bolder, cruder embroidery in a complicated pattern of bold stitches that created blue Celtic knots and red flowers on a background of yellow.

“This is exquisite,” Violet declared, tracing the peacock with a finger. “So beautifully done I can’t imagine anyone will actually sit on it when it’s in use.”

There was a laugh – not Gilda’s high tinkle, but lower and mellifluous. Violet looked up and found herself staring into two deep brown pools. Louisa Pesel’s gaze was direct and focused, despite the clamour in the room and Mrs Biggins hovering at her elbow. She looked at Violet as if she were the only person here who mattered.

“What part of Winchester history is this?” Violet asked. “I’ve not lived here long, and this is unfamiliar.”

“You must look further afield, to the Bible.”

“The Tree of Life?” Violet guessed. Like everyone else here, already she wanted to please Miss Pesel.

The older woman beamed. “Yes. The other historic medallions will be directly connected to Winchester, but I thought the first might be more universal. Luckily Dean Selwyn agreed with me, though I only told him after the medallion was half-done.” She chuckled. “This one and another will be for the vergers’ seats on either side of the central aisle when you enter the choir. They are just that bit longer than the rest, because the seats are wider. Perhaps vergers are wider than the rest of us!”

“Miss Pesel, this is Miss Speedwell, our newest recruit,” Mrs Biggins interjected. “Though it is rather late in the day for her to start.”

“It is never too late,” Miss Pesel rejoined. “We have hundreds of cushions and kneelers to make. We shall be stitching for years, and need to put every possible hand to the pump. I see Mrs Biggins has got you sorting wool. That’s all well and good, but if you are to start embroidering over the summer break, you must learn your stitches now. I shall teach you myself. Come and sit.” She led the way to two spaces that had miraculously opened up at the table without her having to ask. “Miss Hill, would you kindly fetch a square of canvas and a model for Miss Speedwell? No need for a frame just yet.”

Gilda grinned at Violet as she hurried away, her eyes disappearing into slits, her teeth bright and horsey.

“Now, Miss Speedwell, have you ever done any embroidery?” Miss Pesel tilted her head like a bird. “No cross-stitch at school?”

“I don’t—” Violet stopped. She could feel a dim memory emerging, of a limp bit of cloth gone grey with handling, scattered with crosses that made up a primitive house, a garland of flowers, the alphabet, and a verse. “‘Lord, give me wisdom to direct my ways …’” she murmured.

“‘… I beg not riches, nor yet length of days’,” Miss Pesel finished. “Quite an old-fashioned sampler. Very popular. Who taught you?”

“My mother. She still misses Queen Victoria.”

Miss Pesel laughed.

“My sampler was not very good,” Violet added.

“Well, we shall have to teach you better. We’ll start with the main stitches we use for the kneelers and cushions: cross, long-armed cross, tent, rice, upright Gobelin, and eyelets. Though we are adding as we go, for variety. I am determined that we avoid the domestic look of a woodland scene in green and yellow and brown cross-stitch on a chair seat.”

Violet smiled: Miss Pesel had accurately described the dining room chairs in use in Mrs Speedwell’s house.

Gilda returned with a square of brown canvas and a similar piece with several different patches of stitching done in blue and yellow.

“Italian hemp,” Miss Pesel explained as she handed the square to Violet. “And this is a tapestry needle, with a big eye and a blunt end.” She held it out, along with a strand of mid-blue wool. “Let’s see you thread it … Good, you remember that. This morning I’ll teach you tent, Gobelin, cross, and long-armed cross.” She tapped at each stitch on the model. “This afternoon, rice and eyelets. If all goes well you may have finished your own model of stitches by the end of the day!”

Violet opened her mouth to protest that she’d only taken the morning off from work, but then thought the better of it. Who would even notice or care that she was gone? O and Mo? Mr Waterman? She could make up her work easily enough. And if Mr Waterman complained, she could get Mrs Biggins to scare him.

“Now, some rules,” Miss Pesel continued. “Never use a sharp needle as it will fray the canvas; only a blunt one. Don’t leave knots, they will come undone or make a bump; tie one, stitch over it, then cut the knot – I’ll show you. Make your stitches close – you are covering every bit of the canvas, so that it is entirely filled in and none of the canvas weave shows. Any gaps between stitches will make the cushion or kneeler weak and it will not last. These cushions and kneelers will be used every day – sometimes two or three times a day – for at least a hundred years, we hope. That is many thousands of times they will be sat on or knelt on. They must be robust to withstand such use for that long.

“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.