White Feathers

by Susan Lanigan

  For some perverse reason, he asked Ada Barton to read out the poem he had chosen, ‘In Memoriam A.H.H.’ It was sad and beautiful, mourning the loss of a friend … and Ada killed it stone dead. She read the verses in monotone while every now and then Mr Shandlin would interrupt to ask questions, the rest of the time balancing on the edge of his desk, grabbing onto the edge with his hands, his feet dangling. He did not look like the type to respond to inner grace, or even to know what it looked like.

  He tolerated Ada’s recital until she reached, ‘The sad mechanic exercise, / Like dull narcotics, numbing pain’, perhaps because the words came too close to the truth, finally cutting her off with a ‘Thank you, Miss Barton’, and Eva thought he would add, ‘you have delighted us long enough’, like Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. That was followed by a brief attempt to discuss last week’s reading of The Mayor of Casterbridge, an assay that met with obdurate silence. Eva had an opinion, or several, but was not going to speak up; she had learnt her lesson from the Edmund Spenser debacle.

  ‘All right,’ Mr Shandlin sighed, evidently giving up, ‘let’s discuss your task for next week. Keeping to our late-last-century novelists, is anyone here acquainted with the work of Count Tolstoy?’

  Eva started to put up her hand but stopped herself and put it down again. The rest of the class did not move.

  ‘Miss Downey?’

  ‘Er … no, sir,’ Eva lied. ‘I’ve never read anything by him.’

  ‘Quite.’ Mr Shandlin smiled and did not pursue the point. ‘For those of you not familiar with Tolstoy, which may or may not include Miss Downey, I would like you to read this’, and he handed out mimeographed sheets to the class. ‘It is a short story by the very gentleman himself, titled “What Men Live By”.’

  Sybil picked it up and looked at it, unimpressed. ‘What sort of question is that, Mr Shandlin?’

  ‘It’s not a question, Miss Destouches, it’s a moral. You can answer it nevertheless, in no fewer than a thousand words, for this time next week.’

  ‘Aw, Mr Shandlin.’

  ‘Sir, we’ve a heap to do.’

  ‘You seem to think I have no knowledge of your timetables,’ Mr Shandlin said drily. ‘I’m fully aware of how much you have to do, which is remarkably little.’

  A rumble of protest rose, which he quelled by raising his hand. ‘One more thing: when you squeeze a little time in between your incredibly busy schedules to write, tell me what you think. Be honest. Because it’s no fun for me to go home in the evenings and read the same predigested stuff fifteen times. So, original thought, I beg you. Please.’

  Rhona Lewis shot up her hand.

  ‘Sir, I should like to tell you what I think.’

  ‘Please go on, Miss Lewis,’ said Mr Shandlin, with a heavy sigh.

  ‘Sir, this class is English Literature. That’s what I was expecting when I read the prospectus. I don’t understand why foreign authors should be included. Surely you’ve made a mistake?’

  Eva nearly gasped aloud. Even for Rhona Lewis, that was rude. Mr Shandlin looked taken aback too, so much so that he did not respond immediately but put his forehead in his hands for a moment. ‘Because,’ he said at length, starting to pace up and down the room, ‘Because … should you find yourself, Miss Lewis, some time from now, in a large, well-appointed drawing room, wearing whatever elaborate, gaudy outfit best fits your purpose, and a landed Russian count crosses the floor, captivated by the sight of you, and you strike up a conversation, then in the train of that conversation you are asked, “What do you think of our great master Tolstoy?” and you look at him with sheep-like eyes and reply blankly, “I have never heard of him”, and he says, “What about Lermontov? Pushkin? Chekhov?” and you say, sweet as a doe, “I have never heard of any of them either”, and his face shuts down, he pleads his excuses and moves on to someone else, thereby ending with a stroke your hope of wearing furs in the snow, riding in a droshky and being presented to the Tsar, when that moment happens, Miss Lewis, you will not be able to turn around and blame this establishment, or my teaching. Does that answer satisfy you?’

  Another pause, as long as death. It was as if every girl in the room were holding her breath. Eva had to suppress the urge to laugh. Sybil winked at her.

  ‘Yes, Mr Shandlin,’ Rhona said at length, in a small voice.

  ‘Good. I’ll look forward to hearing your thoughts on the topic, Miss Lewis. One thousand words, remember.’

  The clang-clang-clang of the bell rippled down the narrow corridors and around every corner of the building. It was time to change class again.

  ‘Good golly,’ Sybil said afterwards, ‘that was some speech. I have to warn you. Don’t ever get old Shandy into a bad mood, Eva. He’ll chew you up and spit you out, just like he did right there.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry,’ Eva said. ‘He won’t know I exist. I plan to stay as invisible as possible from now on.’

  Tell me what you think, Mr Shandlin had said. Eva sat in the small, cold library, far away from everyone else, shawl around her shoulders and clasped at the front by a brooch, pen hovering over the blank page, pink-shaded kerosene lamp lit, ankles crossed and feet entangled with the legs of her chair.

  Since the beginning of term, she had written hundreds of words, thousands, but never once had she revealed what she thought about anything. Sybil was surely right; it was better that way. Mr Shandlin’s request was nothing more than a trap, like all the other ones strewn in her way over the years. If she did tell the truth, if she did open her heart, she knew one thing from experience: she would pay for it handsomely.

  The fracture in her arm had healed awkwardly. It was as though the limb held the memory of what had happened, even three years on. Writing got you into that mess, it reminded her, sending bolts of white pain through her arm to reinforce its message, and writing won’t get you out of it. Imelda had warned her not to write that article about the Census and their illicit night on Wimbledon Common. Eva had ignored her and had written ‘A Jolly Night Out Hiding from the Census Man’ for Lady Elizabeth Jenkins, and look what had happened. Even now she was having nightmares about it.

  She thought, Send him back the usual pieties and be done with it.

  But was she to be silent all her life? She supposed so, sighing and pulling down R. H. Benson’s book of religious essays to find a suitable quote so that she could write an unexceptionable piece, like all the ones she had written before. And put down her pen before she had even started. It just would not do. He had got to her.

  ‘Damn it,’ she said to the empty room. Then, to him, absent: ‘You asked me to do this. So don’t come shouting at me if you don’t like the consequences.’

  So, one thousand words of honest thought about what men live by. Never mind that she wasn’t even a man. Had that not occurred to Mr Shandlin when he had assigned the topic? Well, it would jolly well have occurred to him by the time she was finished! She pulled out a few foolscap sheets, abandoned the pen she was using and took up her favourite fountain pen, the one that made writing flow well but that got ink all over her fingers. Then, at the top of the first page, she wrote, ‘What Men Live By’ and sat for a while.

  Then she added: ‘Not by higher principles, that’s for sure.’

  And then she wrote. She wrote about Nietzsche, the Nihilists who lived for nothing, Disraeli’s reforms, Gladstone’s evangelising and, of course, Tolstoy, that embittered aristocrat who loved peasants in an abstract sense but hated his wife. She wrote sentences that were the length of paragraphs, with clauses unfurling like flags on a ship. She wrote without caring, hardly even stopping, her arm hurting at first, the pain hitting a high threshold and then miraculously abating even though she was cramping her wrist, she was writing so fast. And still she had only reached seven hundred and fifty words, by the reckoning of an inky finger counting down the lines. She was just about to cross out a sentence rejecting the existence of God when bells rang up and down the corridors, announcing supper.

  Sh
e washed her hands and wandered into the refectory, dazed and elsewhere and joined in the collective ‘For what we are about to receive’ and received it without complaint, regardless of taste or quality. She had no idea what the other girls were talking about, hardly knew they were there. She could not wait to get back to the library.

  After supper, looking over the essay, Eva decided to leave that last sentence just as it was. If it offended Mr Shandlin’s fine sensibilities, he would have to lump it; he, after all, had chosen the topic. But after that spirited comment, she felt herself grind once again to a full stop. She realised why very quickly: her next paragraph was going to refer to the act, to how a man and a woman consummated their marriage.

  Sybil was right: she really knew nothing. Thanks to some quick reading and Imelda’s explanations, she understood what her menstrual periods signified. But the rest of it all seemed so theoretical. Apart from a warm confusion Eva sometimes felt around her father’s friends, with their greatcoats and moustaches and oaky smell, or the boys in the Christian fellowship Imelda used to attend, she knew nothing of what happened between women and men. What could she write? And was it wise at all, to write about such things?

  Tell me what you think, he had said.

  And she had. There was no going back now.

  By the time the rest of the girls started their essays – a day before they were due – Eva’s was finished, drafted and edited. Seven hundred words too long, but it would have to do.

  After she had handed it in, she began to feel some delayed shock at what she had done. Her heart knocked about in her chest, and she was almost tempted to sprint down the corridor after Mr Shandlin’s retreating back and flag him down before it was too late. She wondered if on receipt of her essay he would complain to Miss Hedges about its content, and if the headmistress would expel her. Her mind went wild with melodramatic scenarios. But there was no point in worrying. Alea jacta est; the die was cast.

  Eva told Sybil about her misgivings, but Sybil was sanguine and did not seem to think there was any risk. Eva, however, remained agitated for the rest of the afternoon, much to Sybil’s annoyance. ‘You’re like an India-rubber ball today,’ she complained, as they finished prayers. ‘Bounce, bounce, bounce.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Eva said.

  ‘You’re so preoccupied you haven’t even noticed I’m upset.’ It was true; Sybil looked uncharacteristically distressed.

  Eva felt immediately guilty. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘My brother’s joined up.’ Sybil was grim.

  ‘In the Army?’

  Sybil nodded. ‘He’s going to the Officer Training Corps at the moment and hopes to be in the 3rd Royal Worcesters by summer.’

  ‘Hasn’t he always wanted to be a soldier?’

  Sybil shook her head. ‘Oh, not he. Bo wouldn’t fight a wet sheet on a clothes line. He’s only going because he thinks there’ll be trouble and it’s his duty to get involved. Oh, Evie, I’m terribly anxious.’

  Eva put her arm around Sybil’s shoulders. ‘Nobody’s fighting, though, Syb. You’re worrying too much about something that might never happen.’

  Sybil sighed. ‘You’re probably right. But it’s just so out of character for him. My mother is going out of her wits. She’s trying to get me to change his mind. As if he’d listen to me! This is all my fault. There was I, wittering on about fighting the Hun and our great Navy and the dreadnoughts … I wish to God I’d kept my silly mouth shut.’ She looked anguished.

  ‘It’ll be all right, Sybil,’ Eva soothed, at a loss for anything else to say.

  Sybil heaved herself to her feet. ‘You’re quite right. I’m worrying over nothing. I don’t know why, but I get the jitters thinking of all this war stuff. How about you, Evie? You’re not still worried about that silly essay, are you?’

  Eva said nothing. After Sybil’s confidences, she felt foolish.

  ‘Come on,’ Sybil said affectionately, ‘even if you have written the most frightful rubbish, Mr Shandlin isn’t going to tell on you. He likes you, as far as I can tell. Now why don’t we talk about something nice?’ And with the dexterity of a true aristocrat, she manoeuvred the conversation onto the botany walk they were due to take the following day. Eva was happy to follow her lead.

  5

  Mr Shandlin’s class was in the afternoon. Then Eva would know for better or worse. More than once during the morning she jabbed a needle into her left index finger while embroidering a peacock into a tapestry. She did not want to think about black and turquoise threads for the eyes of the tail. She just wanted to get the day over with.

  She arrived early for the afternoon class and made sure she was sitting down low in her seat. If she could have, she would have made herself invisible. Mr Shandlin arranged for the essays to be handed out first thing. ‘I think you will find,’ he announced to the class, ‘there are gaps in discursive thinking and writing skills that some of you might need to cover, but, overall, an adequate effort. Now, I believe we have some further work to do on Hardy, so can we resume at our last point where, if I recall correctly, Mr Henchard’s marital life is about to get somewhat complicated?’

  Eva ignored his instruction and instead turned the pages of her essay, her chest constricting with excitement and fear. She looked at the start, the margins, then at the end. Nothing. No comments, no circles in red ink, just a quick scribbling of the date at the end. She swallowed, tasting sulphur. All around her, others were turning pages. She could see red marks, spelling corrections, elaborate comments in the margins. But nothing on hers, even though she looked, and looked again.

  The disappointment was overwhelming. She wasn’t even scared any more, not now. Bitter tears of rage simmered in the corners of her eyes.

  ‘Miss Downey, could you open the book, please?’

  ‘But—’ Eva began.

  ‘Now, please, Miss Downey,’ Mr Shandlin said, looking even more bored than usual.

  Eva felt that rage would overpower her. This was not fair. For the second time in her life, she had taken a great risk. She had put everything into that essay and he had just – dismissed it. And her.

  She opened her book, flicking and rustling the pages. She considered ripping them out and throwing them in the air. That Mr Shandlin, he really didn’t care about any of his students. He was just doing it for the extra money; he thought they were all fools, rich, ignorant fillies. ‘Pearls before swine’ indeed! Well, she wasn’t a pig! Eva breathed noisily and furiously. To hell with him if he heard her. To hell with him, to hell with him, to hell with them all!

  How long that half hour seemed to last, how relentlessly the Mayor of Casterbridge headed for perdition while Eva sat and seethed. Finally, the bell once more. Thank God, now she could go. She would not show her feelings here, in front of that man.

  But as she jerked her chair backwards, a perceptible shadow fell over her desk. ‘Miss Downey.’

  ‘What?’ Eva, shocked, forgot her manners. Half standing, she stared up at Mr Shandlin, her heart beating wildly. She could barely make out Sybil in the background, eyes wide with alarm.

  ‘I was wondering if I could have a word with you before your next class.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. Yes, of course.’

  ‘This …’, picking up the pages from her desk and tapping them with his finger, ‘… your essay.’ For the first time she noticed his hands, the fingers short and rounded, the nails square, slightly bitten. His eyes, too, as he put the pages down; they were dark brown, but she had only seen them alert and occasionally furious. Now they were black as deep rock pools, in a face hollow and gaunt as fever. The noise of the departing girls faded, the clang-clang-clang of the bell too.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, more to fill the silence, since she was too nervous to speak further.

  ‘It’s the best-written piece I’ve read in a long time,’ he said abruptly, looking away from her at the fanlight above the classroom door.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Eva stammered. Don’t cry, don’t make a fo
ol of yourself.

  ‘You have a remarkable faculty of logic. I have never read anything like this from any of my students before.’

  ‘But you left no comment on it, sir,’ Eva said quietly.

  ‘No,’ Mr Shandlin said, ‘I did not.’

  ‘Yet you liked it.’

  ‘Exceedingly so.’

  ‘Why did you not write that on the sheet?’

  ‘Comment would be superfluous. When one has nothing to add, one should say nothing.’ He sounded almost angry. ‘I have little to teach you, I fear.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

  He took a piece of chalk from his gown pocket and twiddled it about in his hands. Eva noticed that in contrast to his languid behaviour, his hands were never still; there was a nervous energy about him.

  ‘You told me—’ she started, then stopped.

  ‘Do go on.’

  ‘You told us to say what we thought. So I decided I would do that.’ Eva had to swallow to stop her teeth chattering. But, to her surprise, he broke out into a wide smile that made his features, which tended to severity, look gentle.

  ‘You most certainly did not stint on honesty, Miss Downey. You told me what’s what, and no mistake.’

  ‘I was very worried. I know people always say “be honest”, but they don’t mean it. They don’t want to hear truthful opinions.’

  ‘No, I meant it – with all my heart.’ He was still smiling. Eva was beginning to feel uncomfortable at his gaze and relieved when he dropped it.

  ‘Do you write much, Miss Downey? Poetry, stories – any of that kind of thing?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ Eva lied. ‘A poem or two once, but they weren’t any good.’

  ‘That I find hard to believe,’ Mr Shandlin said. ‘A style such as yours does not spring fully formed from the waters like Aphrodite. In my experience it is nurtured through long practice. And emotional honesty.’

  ‘Well—’ Eva said, then stopped.

  ‘Well, what? Miss Downey, there is nothing more irritating than somebody who prefixes a sentence with “Well” then refuses to elaborate further. It is like a jagged tooth in one’s mouth.’