A Single Thread

by Tracy Chevalier

Women always studied other women, and did so far more critically than men ever did. Men didn’t notice the run in their stocking, the lipstick on their teeth, the dated, outgrown haircut, the skirt that pulled unflatteringly across the hips, the paste earrings that were a touch too gaudy.

She was seeing Nether Wallop through eyes that had seen many other things in between. It felt peculiar and sad, and she wondered why she had come.

swastikas were four-petal flowers exactly like those she had embroidered on the cushion border. They were even divided into squares by ridges of alabaster. Miss Pesel had copied exactly that pattern on the border. Violet wanted to laugh aloud, and that was what Arthur did: not a full-bellied laugh, but more than a chuckle. It was a sound of surprise, of bemusement, of concession. “Those are fylfots,” Louisa Pesel declared. “Fourteenth-century swastikas, if you like. And you’ll notice they are turning clockwise, long before any Nazi designer chose to make them so.”

It is not the Nazi Party that gets to decide for me what interpretation to place on the fylfot. I call upon the long history of the symbol; that is what is important to me. I hope that once people see the fylfots, they will think of them every time they sit in the choir stalls, and connect them to the Cathedral and to the Bishop of Edington rather than to German fascists. The Edington sculptor used the symbol in all innocence. I have used it as an act of subversion. A single thread can make quite a difference.”