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
