To tell the truth, Sybil, I am worried about Grace. She is getting more aggressive about Christopher, because he will not enlist. It sounds like a horrible thing to say, but privately sometimes I wish he would, if just to take attention away from us. I am ashamed of even thinking of it. It’s just … he has a stronger character than I do, but it is beginning to get to him nonetheless, and it creates an atmosphere between us. But he has never been one to swim with the current.
So that is my news. I hope you are getting on all right and that the rumble across the Channel isn’t keeping you awake, or fearful.
God bless us all,
Your friend,
Eva
Eva was finding out that as far as her family were concerned, ‘walking out’ with Christopher Shandlin was a very different matter from walking out with David Wentworth Hopkins. No matter what she wished to do, objection after objection was raised, mostly from Catherine but with Roy and Grace chiming in. Who were his people? What about the other fellow? And why wasn’t he in uniform? After she got back from that afternoon in Southwark Park, her heart afire and spirit singing, she had been sent to her room and told in no uncertain terms that she would never be allowed to see Christopher again. On hearing this, Imelda had come down from her sickbed in high dudgeon, staggered into Roy’s study in her nightgown and without knocking, and said in her faint voice that Mr Shandlin was a good man and that he should at least be given a chance. Roy was so stunned – and reminded of her late mother – that he relented.
But if Catherine had been wrong-footed on the previous occasion, she was taking no chances now. Every time Eva and Christopher met, on his precious free days, they would now be accompanied by Mrs Michael Stewart, which meant that neither could bring up anything personal or intimate, a situation they both silently endured. Agatha, to Eva’s horror and guilt, had been dismissed without notice. It was clear that nothing and nobody could stop Catherine running riot. Her hatred for Eva was like a lightning rod down which a tremendous built-up electrical charge travelled.
Eva did find out why Christopher had not yet enlisted. It took a while, partly because she feared offending him by asking, and partly because they were never left alone. In late October he decided that he and Eva would have a proper afternoon tea in the Criterion. ‘I bet that Hopkins fellow would have taken you there,’ he said when she queried the expense.
She found herself and Christopher flanking either side of Mrs Stewart on a long, chintz banquette in one of the fanciest restaurants in London. The ceiling was gold-patterned, mosaics on the walls and at one end a huge fireplace with turquoise inlays and an oval mirror stood guard over it all. Mrs Stewart appeared unimpressed. ‘I’ve heard this place is full of inverts,’ she declared.
A snatch of wan, late autumn light shot through one of the windows as Eva looked around for the inverts, wherever they might be, but she only saw people eating scones and chocolate tortes and smelt the heavenly aroma of thick, dark chocolate being poured out of a jug.
‘Inverts and conchies,’ Mrs Stewart added with malice.
‘That will do!’ Eva snapped. How dared she! Christopher did not respond to her taunt, just sat hunched and sullen, cracking his knuckles. Later, when Mrs Stewart had eaten nearly all the cakes he’d paid for and waddled off to find a ‘convenience’, Eva interlaced her fingers in his. ‘I’m sorry for what she said earlier, darling. That was uncalled for.’
Christopher sighed and rubbed his forehead with his free hand. ‘It’s not just her,’ he said, ‘I get looks wherever I go. I’m going to have to stop working at The Links. All those girls, wondering why I’m not in uniform. The notices. The endless hectoring. “Be certain that your so-called reason is not a selfish excuse.”’ He recited Kitchener’s quote with distaste. ‘I’m under siege.’
‘What is your reason, Christopher?’ Eva asked. ‘I respect it whatever it is,’ she added hastily. ‘It’s just that giving up work – if it’s come to that—’
He rummaged in his satchel, then put a page of a letter in Eva’s hand, covered with writing on both sides. ‘Here. I always meant to show you this, but there was never a good moment. It’s my last letter from Francis. He wrote it on the 23rd, so he was dead before it got to me.’
Eva read:
… and then I reached Orange River camp and could not believe what I saw. When our troops burned out the farms and killed all the livestock, on Kitchener’s orders, they also rounded up the women and children and took them here. This is not a camp for prisoners of war, Kit. This is a place designed for the express extermination of human life.
White and black, young and old, they are all kept here in tents in the midst of the rain and floods. The meat that serves for their ration is rotten with maggots and the coffee powder mixed with wood shavings. Children are on half rations, which means they cannot live. Babies are given no milk, and they die. The stench of death is everywhere. I have to admit that when I first saw – and smelt – the horror, I had to go to one side to be sick.
On a stretcher beside me a woman lay dying. Beside her the mere skeleton of a baby breathing its last from hunger. The mosquito and its malaria are everywhere. I am weeping as I write this, and you know I am not one to be overemotional. They are already spreading lies back at home, saying that our men are looking after the Boer women and their servants ‘at the expense of many valuable lives and much money’.
There is a woman called Miss Hobhouse who has agreed to bring this back home for me and post it at Southampton, because they’ve censored everything going in and out since October. They are all frightened of Kitchener, and he was the one who thought up the whole thing. Kit, I beg you, wherever life takes you, promise me that you will have nothing to do with that man. He is incapable of the normal stirrings of the human heart, either in intimacy or compassion. Is this what it now means to be British?
‘My God,’ Eva breathed, passing Christopher back his letter.
‘Now do you see?’ His voice was unsteady.
‘Yes.’
‘If you’re going to hitch your wagon to mine,’ he said, ‘you’re going to have to understand what this means to me.’
‘You have kept your promise,’ Eva said gently, ‘even if he never knew it.’
Christopher made no answer but a small noise, and turned his head. For a moment they sat in silence until Mrs Stewart returned and she let his fingers go.
Eva knew that Grace disapproved of Christopher’s being out of uniform. She forbore to mention it but looked often enough at him in a sideways, twitchy way for her odium to be clear. Even so, just the day after their afternoon tea at the Criterion, when the knock on her bedroom door came and her stepsister’s pale, stern face appeared around the door, Eva was unprepared for the cold, contained way Grace said, ‘Come down, please. There’s something I have to say to you.’
Eva followed her into the parlour, where Grace quietly shut the door. A bucket by the window smelling of borax and pearl ash compound betrayed the recent presence of the new maid, Agatha’s luckless replacement. Presumably she had been about to clean the room when Grace commandeered it.
‘As you know, Dr Fellowes and I have grown close in recent months. He has been most kind to me in the wake of poor Alec’s death.’
Good for you, Eva thought sourly, you certainly haven’t wasted any time.
‘We are to marry in December: it is necessary to make it soon as he has just signed up for the Royal Army Medical Corps.’ Something in her tone put Eva on high alert. Grace was not telling her this for nothing. ‘You are aware that I agreed to sacrifice half my dowry to contribute towards Imelda’s care in Switzerland. I am willing to give that portion, without reservation or resentment, to save your sister’s life.’ Your sister. The lines of battle were drawn. ‘Eva, it is time for you to do your part.’
‘My part?’
‘I’m not paying for Imelda unless you give up that man.’ The disdain in Grace’s voice was like rough brick. ‘You know, it’s odd,’ she continued. �
��I really admired you. You played the game so well. You got into one of the most exclusive finishing schools in the country. That showed real initiative. But only you, Eva, could go and ruin it all by going off with one of the staff. I was so disappointed in you! And all this time since you’ve taken up with him, have I said a word?’ Her voice veered out of control, loud and harsh. ‘I watched you waltz around with that fellow and marvelled at how you let him paw you when he doesn’t have a sou to his name, and not a jot of common decency or manners. No,’ seeing Eva raise her hand, ‘don’t demean yourself by arguing. Just think on this. Isn’t it a bit much to expect me to foot the bill for your sister’s treatment when you don’t pay a penny and dance attendance on that fool?’
Eva felt something in her tighten like the string of a bow. ‘You know well that my dowry is tiny because your mother made sure yours was large.’
Grace coloured. ‘And? Is that my fault? Did I personally go and steal all your money? Part of my offer is to make the situation more equitable.’
‘Equitable, until it suits you to change your mind. I see,’ Eva said with disgust.
The red in Grace’s cheeks shrank to two angry points just below her eyes. ‘Don’t try and turn the tables. You’re the one in the wrong here. You’ve brought him into our house. Have you any sense of decorum, Eva? Do you know how upset Father is, and everyone? Did it occur to you that Agatha lost her job because of your behaviour? I don’t like saying this any more than you like hearing it, but I am not going to give over my dowry while you are waltzing around London with a coward.’
‘He is not a coward. Not that it’s any of your business, but he is a thousand times above you, he—’
‘I’ll tell you what he is.’ Grace put her face up close to Eva’s. ‘He’s a man who won’t fight. You can say whatever you like, but in life a man gets only a few chances to prove himself. Here’s his chance, right now. And he’s failing. He’s failing his country and his king, but never mind that, Eva, he’s failing you. It’s what a man does that matters, Eva. And he’s doing nothing.’ She hit her palm with her fist. ‘Have you any idea how I wish I could serve my country? I’d gladly fight in his place, I swear to God. I’d get a rifle or a machine gun or whatever they wanted, and I would pound every Boche within a ten-mile radius to death. I’d do it! I’d disembowel them and watch them die with my own eyes!’ She sat down, slightly winded by her own vehemence.
She really means it, Eva thought in wonder. ‘So … what, Grace? What are you trying to tell me? If I don’t give Christopher up, you’ll withhold money from Imelda? Is that it? I’m sure you’d love to stick a feather on him while you’re at it!’
A slow smile made its way across Grace’s features, like a snake winding through the bushes. ‘Me? Oh, no. I’m not going to give him a white feather. You are.’
On the Sunday of that week, Imelda had a bad episode. Eva wanted to call their father but she gestured ‘no’, and so instead Eva rocked and rocked her until her breathing eased and she could swallow some more mixture. She thought that after such an ordeal Imelda would want to sleep, but she remained awake and distressed. ‘Oh, Eva, I thought it would be easy. I thought I was ready.’
‘Ready? What do you mean?’
‘For death,’ Imelda said. ‘So many men die at the front every day. I wonder how it happens for them. A wound, maybe just a small one, that got infected. Somebody on night duty who forgot to be careful, lit a cigarette and was hit by a sniper. Or was blown up. Or got a bullet in the stomach. Every day it happens to our men. So I thought if they go through it, maybe it won’t be that bad. I mean, I won’t be alone. That was what I was thinking.’
‘Imelda!’ Eva cried out in horror.
‘But I was wrong.’ Imelda’s hand tightened around Eva’s wrist. ‘Eva, I can’t face it. I’m not ready.’ She began to cry weakly, too exhausted to put much power into it. ‘Please, Eva. Help me. I’m not ready to die. I want to live. I can live.’
‘I know, darling,’ Eva whispered. ‘I know.’ She embraced her sister and let herself be enveloped by the warm, familiar smell of Pears soap on her neck and the raw, animal odour of the lanolin she took care to apply to her skin every day. Those smells reminded her of her mother too. When it came to living, everyone was selfish, Imelda being no exception. ‘You shall go to Switzerland, and you shall live. I promise you, Meldi.’
The moon came out from behind the clouds. Eva noticed it for the first time among the street lamps. It shone onto Imelda’s cheek as she turned her gaze to her sister. Her gaze was as luminous as that moon, full of trust and hope. And with it turned towards her, Eva felt as if someone had closed a door and turned a key in the lock.
‘Why the secrecy?’ Christopher said, concerned. ‘Why did you ask to meet me here? I had a fair sprint to make it after class.’
They were in the buffet beside the waiting room in London Bridge station. Eva had managed to dig into a long-stashed pocket-money collection and send a telegram to Christopher at his home in Kent. She had been so distraught that she had just run out of the house and down to the nearest post office. ‘Monday Nov 2nd, 5.30pm, London Bridge station, sub rosa STOP.’ The Latin phrase meant she would be unaccompanied. It was part of their code.
‘I – I …’ Seeing him there nearly undid her.
‘Come on, Eva, what is it?’
Grace’s words were a stone in her throat. She swallowed and swallowed but they would not go away.
‘Eva.’ He caught her gently on the chin. ‘Come on, it can’t be that bad, surely?’
‘Grace says that if you don’t enlist I’m to present you with a white feather,’ she blurted out.
He took his hand away and drew back. ‘Well, you can just tell her to go away, can’t you? No,’ seeing Eva’s face, ‘no, you can’t, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?’
Eva explained Grace’s terms. When she reached the part where Grace said that Imelda would not get the funds if she did not comply, Christopher reacted with a start, his seat juddering back with a creak. ‘I beg your pardon. Continue.’
‘There isn’t much more. That’s it.’
‘It takes quite some ingenuity to be that wicked.’
Eva slid her fingers together and put her hands on the table like a steeple. ‘Wicked it may be, but I have to make a choice. She is determined.’
‘Choice?’ he said incredulously. ‘How can that be a choice? It’s like dodging Scylla by throwing oneself into Charybdis! That is not a decision any human being should be forced to make. Come away with me now.’ He grabbed her hands again. ‘Bring Imelda. I’m not entirely friendless, you know, there are people whose help I can draw on. I can get us out of here.’
Eva’s heart leapt. If she could! But then she remembered. ‘I can’t. Imelda needs that treatment. I have to wait until she is safely in Switzerland.’
‘Switzerland? I hate to remind you, but—’ He jerked his head at another recruitment poster for the Public Schools Battalions that hung lopsided on the wall.
‘It’s safe enough, if she goes through Italy. It’s all arranged. I don’t want to do anything until she has arrived there and I know she is all right.’
‘I understand. It would not be right for you to break a promise to your sister because I kept a promise to my brother.’ He dropped her hands. ‘I’ll tell you what you should do. Tell them we’ve broken up. I won’t write to you or see you for, let’s say, a month – and then see if you can write and tell me how the land lies.’
Eva bit her lip and said nothing. The waiters were starting to lay places for the evening service. People hustled in from the matinees. She thought how delicate love was, as thin as tulle or crêpe paper in a fierce gale. She had lost her mother, and now she might lose Christopher too.
Something in the agony of that moment made them reach for one another at the same time, each clutching on to the other as if drowning. His hands grasped the fabric of her coat, while he buried his face in her shoulder, leaving nothing v
isible but a shock of greying dark hair. She murmured into his ear that she loved him, and he responded in kind, with a flow of endearments and sweet names, too low for anyone else to hear but her.
The woman at the tea counter, pouring out cups for workmen, did not chide them. She could see from the poor girl’s face that her sweetheart was going off to war and would soon have to don his uniform. It was heartbreaking, so it was, so many young girls saying goodbye to their sweethearts, never to see them again.
17
The Bad Saunau clinic was situated in Leysin, a small village in the Swiss Alps. War would make the journey circuitous: Imelda would have to cross the Channel and make her way through France, then northward through the Italian Alps, with one ferry crossing and heaven knows how many train changes before finally taking the cog railway up to Leysin. There was no guarantee Italy would stay out of the war: they had to be quick. Grace had instructed her banker to authorise the transfer to come through the following week.
Eva worried that, in spite of what they had agreed, Christopher would begin to forget her. No little notes, no tender gestures – nothing. She ached for him not only with her heart but sometimes with her body too. She dreamt that he came to her at night and lay beside her, skin to skin, as he had once described to her he would love to do. She would wake from these dreams in a fever, unable to get back to sleep.
Grace had become kinder. Separating from Christopher had caused Eva pain, and Grace saw that. Now that she had won, there was no more talk of giving him a white feather. ‘You look like you’ve been punished enough,’ she said. Eva gritted her teeth. All she had to do was keep her own counsel until Imelda was safely off to Switzerland.
On one of their walks together, which Eva felt unable to get out of, Grace slipped her arm through Eva’s and wound her gloved fingers around Eva’s upper arm. It was a shame that Eva had let Mr Hopkins slip through her fingers, she said, but there were plenty of other men out there, even now with the war on, and all she had to do was use her education to procure one. There was no mention of Christopher Shandlin.
White Feathers Page 15
