White Feathers

by Susan Lanigan

  ‘I—’

  ‘Did you know Gabriel wrote to tell me of your marriage? Apparently it was announced in The Times. I had been up for twenty-four hours on marching training and then kitchen duty in some miserable camp out in Hexham when I got that letter. Can you imagine what that did to me after everything else you put me through?’

  He was trembling violently, and Eva put a hand out to steady him, gripping his arm. He suffered it for just a moment before wrenching himself away from her. ‘I had just about walked off most of my rage and thought of communicating with you again, to see if we could talk about what had happened. I knew you were under duress … But you didn’t even wait! Did I mean so little to you that you could just waltz off and marry someone else? And so soon – permit me to refresh your memory on this point – after you humiliated me in public and sent me off to certain death?’

  ‘No, no. You meant a lot to me. Mean a lot.’

  ‘Words,’ Christopher retorted, shaking his head, ‘words, words. That’s how you seduced me in the first place, wasn’t it? Nice words and platitudes. Pity none of them meant a damn thing.’

  Eva stood immobile, the stone of guilt hard in her belly. This is what you have done.

  ‘But that’s what you’re like,’ he added, with a nasty smile. ‘You have one man in the grave and another in pieces. You’re worse than your stepsister; at least she doesn’t pretend to be nice. Oh, look!’ – Eva had raised her hand in anger – ‘You want to hit me? Go on then, why don’t you?’ Her arm froze. ‘You know I shan’t strike back.’

  She let her hand drop to her side. ‘I won’t hit you,’ she said quietly, trying to hide her hurt. She did not break eye contact, not for one moment. The wind made her eyes water – she blinked. She would not have him think she was crying, even though she felt close to it. Loose strands of hair beat her face.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what you do,’ he said finally, in disgust. ‘You’re a worthless excuse for a human being. I thought more of you, but that was my mistake.’ He turned away from her and stamped along the path, his shoulders hunched in a shield of hurt and anger.

  Eva let him go and remained standing, a rolling, freezing fog of misery dancing around her, enveloping her close, even though the sun was bright, the sky clear and the sound so good that she could hear the distant echo of guns across the Channel. He had not forgiven her. And she could hardly blame him. In not so many words, Sybil had let it be known that what she had done was unforgivable – and Sybil had no selfish interest in the matter. Why on earth should he exercise forbearance? She didn’t deserve it.

  She thought of going back into town, but no: even if he hated her, she could not bear to be away from him. That was the God’s honest truth of it. So she started to trudge after him, keeping him in sight, not caring whether she infuriated him or not by following him.

  He stopped dead several yards in front of her.

  He was coming back.

  She saw him squint as he faced the sun, striding towards her in a way that brought her back to those days at The Links, but without any of the cheerful nonchalance he had displayed then. Now he was as grim as a rock. ‘Give me that book,’ he said abruptly, holding out his hand.

  Eva clutched her bag close and shook her head.

  ‘For God’s sake, what earthly use do you have for it?’ he shouted. ‘Give it back!’

  ‘I’ll never give it back,’ Eva said, shaking so hard she was almost unable to keep her composure. ‘It was a gift, not a loan. I don’t want to lose the only thing I have to remember you by.’

  ‘Remember me?’ Christopher was white-faced. ‘For Christ’s sake, I’m not dead yet!’ He grabbed the bag and pulled it, and her, forward. Rummaging in it, his scarred hand pulled out the book in triumph. He raised it in the air, Eva frantically jumping up in an attempt to retrieve it from his grip. Then, with a creased, determined frown, he hurled it with all his might at the Solent.

  Eva ran forward, but his throw had been athletic enough to dispatch Poems in a grand, balletic arc right over the cliff, much to the interest of a few cormorants perched on the rocks, and down into the sea below.

  ‘You fucker!’ She ran at him.

  He grasped her arms. ‘Eva, calm down or we’ll both fall over.’

  ‘You’re telling me to calm down?’

  ‘Yes, I certainly am. Here, keep still.’ He tightened his hold on her. ‘I’ve never met a woman who used such language.’

  ‘I’ve never met a man,’ Eva cried, ‘who threw a perfectly good book of poems over a cliff just out of sheer cruelty.’

  ‘They are not perfectly good poems. I told you already. They’re trite and overcooked. I should never have given them to you. I don’t want you to remember me from them. Look at me, Eva: I’m alive, I’m real! Why can’t you remember this?’ He took her hand and put her fingertips on his cheek. ‘And this?’, putting her other hand to his lips and licking the tips of her fingers. ‘And these?’, placing both her hands on his eyes. ‘And this?’, taking her hands and running them through his hair. ‘And this?’, pulling her in to him, grasping her hair, bending down to her ear and kissing it, following with more kisses down the side of her neck, kisses that were more like bites.

  When he lifted his mouth to her ear once more, she heard his breathing, shallow and irregular. ‘Do you think, when I thought of you, I gave a damn about poems? I just wanted this – and this – oh God—’

  They fell into a long embrace, he kissing her wildly, pausing only to say her name, grabbing her hair, her shoulders, her waist, any part he could reach; she grasping his head and pulling it lower so she could kiss him ever more deeply, so she could feel from the vibration in his throat his sudden cry when she opened his lips with her tongue and met his. Oh, yes, it was sex, this thing between them, but it was more than that: it was hunger. She wanted to consume him, and he her. She wanted to forget everything she had done wrong; her desire was so white it would blank out everything. She wanted the impossible.

  ‘Eva,’ he said, over and over.

  But she whispered into his lapel, his chest, his cheek, all the places where he would not hear, ‘Forgive me, forgive me.’

  30

  That night, Eva dreamt she was once more on the Solent, this time by herself and in a canoe, the island to port and the mainland to starboard. The water was dazzling blue, the waves far smaller than they would have been in real life. The boat slipped easily along, always side-on, towards cliffs that never grew nearer. The air hummed with an air of peaceful, marine purpose.

  She was woken by the smell of kippers frying, opening her eyes to the lumpen surface of a trowelled ceiling. A steady beam of light shone through the window and onto the shape her body made under the counterpane, symmetrical at breasts, knees, feet. The smell of fish cooking made its way through the closed door so Eva did not delay getting up and dressed: it had been months since she had eaten kippers.

  In the dining room, a cheerful woman with a bandana knotted around her head told her that her porridge would be ready soon, kippers to follow. When the porridge arrived, it was really good, neither too lumpy nor dilute, heated through with milk and a touch of malt. Eva added a spoonful of honey and downed the lot in several mouthfuls. She was starving.

  Once or twice she let the hot food touch the cut on her lip, or she worried at it with her tongue. She was a little bruised, and scraped, and the Lord knew what else. Ah, here were the kippers at last, with fried chunks of potato and a slice of Stilton on the side.

  ‘Sorry for the delay, ma’am—’ but Eva was already wolfing them down. She was filleting her second kipper when the woman came back. Eva wondered happily how she had known that ‘more potatoes’ was going to be Eva’s next request, when she saw the envelope in her hand. The handwriting was huge and flowing, extending nearly to the edge. Eva did not recognise it. Then she saw it was postmarked from France and smiled wryly. She put down her knife and fork and wiped her oily fingers on the coarse hotel napkin before opening the envelo
pe.

  Before she had left on leave, Lucia had requested – no, demanded – that Eva provide news as soon as she had any. The letter contained one line: ‘Dear Eva – major or minor key? – LP.’

  Eva smiled and put the letter aside. She would reply to it after breakfast, and write to Sybil too, who had sent several letters since going up to the front, all breezy in tone (‘the poor fellow driving our pigeon van came to a bit of a sticky end, but we rallied and got the thing to the church on time’) and full of Roma, Roma, Roma. Eva’s last to her had been just before she was due to leave for the Isle of Wight. Sybil had responded warmly but hinted at a ‘bit of trouble on the home front’ of her own. Eva wondered if the trouble was to do with Clive.

  The letter to Lucia could be dispatched straightaway since it comprised one line: ‘Major, I think. – E.’ Back in her room, Eva licked the envelope and got it to stick, then ran her tongue over the cut on her lip once more. It was still a little sore. She splashed cold water on her face and patted it with a thin towel. In the mirror, a face older than her years looked back at her. Her chin was scraped raw from … well, the day before. Eva stroked it with her finger and scratched at the grazed skin. She had better leave that alone too. Then she licked her upper lip again. It was bleeding.

  Mind you, she had started it. In the middle of one of those crazy, tormented and tormenting kisses, she had managed to wrench Christopher’s shirt free of his braces and place her hand on his bare back, slithering it up between his shoulder blades, digging her fingernails into the flesh, squeezing the skin and clumping it in her hand. He had let out an unholy yell, followed by a half-suppressed swear word, before ordering her to get those claws away, thank you very much. She had tried to, but then he started pinching her, in very tender places. It hurt, and he wasn’t stopping. He wanted her to hurt him back, he was goading her into it – and so she did.

  Christopher had pushed her away and looked into her eyes, his own fathomless, lost. His cheeks were flushed, he was breathing heavily, and his sweat was pungent and hot. When she pulled him back into her arms, she could feel his shirt was damp, sticking to the small of his back. ‘Wildcat,’ he breathed, then, ‘You know exactly what you’re doing, don’t you?’

  Eva knew what he was implying, but didn’t care. ‘Oh? Should I stop, then?’ she said prettily.

  ‘Under no circumstances,’ he growled.

  And so they had started again, and then again, until, pressed against him, she could feel how excited he was – and she responded, making sounds she hadn’t ever made before. Then she arched towards him, until once more he pushed her away and, gasping, told her to stop. ‘Evie, I’m afraid I’ll—’ He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.

  After finally tearing loose from each other, unsatisfied, they walked back, hand in hand. A sexual haze had enveloped them both, stronger and more intoxicating than wine, making conversation as impossible as it was pointless.

  Eva dried herself and picked up her watch, which was lying on the bureau. Christopher might be up now. She wanted to see him as soon as possible. It was another bright day, so she decided to walk to Osborne House; it was only two miles if she took the ferry and much cheaper than a cab.

  Three-quarters of an hour later, she arrived at the end of the long avenue. As she walked towards the building, her attention was diverted by the spectacle, on a section of unencumbered lawn, of three rows of patients in plain pyjamas. They were following the gestures of a female instructor, aged about fifty, dressed in flowing green robes, her greying chestnut hair similarly flowing over her shoulders. She made deep, sweeping movements with her bangled arms, bending down and standing back up again in slow succession, her clothes billowing and ebbing in the slight breeze, all to the strains of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Pathétique sonata from a gramophone on a three-legged table.

  The men’s attempts to imitate her were somewhat comedic, but there was a pathos in their comedy, so Eva couldn’t laugh, not even to herself. She asked a passing patient, ‘Excuse me, what are those people doing?’

  He laughed shortly, through his nose. ‘Them? They’re doing eurhythmics, or so it’s called. Some theosophist thing, dancing the demons away. Hunnish nonsense, if you ask me. Barmy.’ He wiped his nose with his hand and walked off again.

  Barmy they might be, Eva thought, but she saw none of the twitching, blinking and shaking of the other nervous patients wandering the gardens and corridors. Perhaps they were able to dance away their demons for a time, and, if that were true, the ridiculous-looking woman deserved a Victoria Cross.

  Inside, the corridors were almost empty, bar the odd patient wandering around like a ghost. It took Eva a while to find any staff; as it happened, the first nurse she did see was the same one she had spoken to yesterday. She ushered Eva into a small room. Unlike yesterday, she was not smiling. ‘I was wondering if you’d come,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid your friend Christopher Shandlin isn’t very well today.’

  Eva drew back, a cold shawl of fear brushing her heart. ‘“Isn’t very well”? Why, what does that mean?’

  ‘He’ll be better by and by, or as better as someone like him can be. He’s sleeping now, poor fellow.’

  Eva sank into an armchair. Her legs felt wobbly. ‘He was fine yesterday when I left him.’

  ‘That’s as may be, but one moment these boys can seem fine, the next’ – she clicked her fingers – ‘they’re back in it again.’

  ‘Can I see him?’ Eva blurted out.

  The nurse shook her head. ‘That’s not a good idea. Look, Miss Downey, I must speak plain. Last night he took a bad turn. He woke up shouting, delirious. It took three orderlies to hold him down. Three. Madness can make a man very strong, Miss Downey. We’ve already had to electroshock him once.’

  Eva gasped, then tried to hide her horror. Doyle had told her what the shock treatments they gave to the soldiers were like. The stimulation of the brain caused the body to go into convulsions. ‘Strong stuff,’ he had said, clicking his tongue disapprovingly.

  ‘So,’ the nurse went on, ‘I’m telling you now, so you can be informed. The sooner you realise he’s too much to take on, the sooner you can leave, and his heart won’t break quite as badly.’ Here she sighed. ‘That’s what all the girls do. They don’t know what it is they’re dealing with, and when they do realise you don’t see them for dust. And we pick up the pieces.’

  Eva sprang to her feet, her cheeks hot. ‘I’m not going anywhere!’

  ‘They all say that,’ the nurse replied.

  ‘Listen … you … listen!’ Eva could not stay civil. ‘I don’t care if he’s mad. I love him, you see. I love him very much.’ She was almost in tears.

  ‘Yes, I do see.’ The nurse’s voice was gentler.

  ‘I love him,’ Eva repeated, for want of anything else to say, and because it was true.

  ‘Then come back tomorrow. Come back, and we’ll start again.’ A smile broke out over the nurse’s wintry face, catching the midday sun streaming through the open window, illuminating the down on her cheek. ‘I know one thing for sure: he cannot wait to see you.’

  A breeze flipped the pages of an open bible on a small mahogany tea table as the Pathétique crackled to a close and the clear call of the instructor declared the practice complete.

  On returning to the hotel, Eva sat in the deserted lounge and closed her eyes; her earlier tiredness had returned, and all she wanted to do was sleep for a thousand years, sleep and cry, if it were possible to do both at the same time. She was offended at the nurse’s suggestion that she would run out on Christopher, but, on the other hand, the little asides – ‘his heart won’t break quite as badly’ and ‘he cannot wait to see you’ – could not but give her a thrill of pride.

  At the same time, to think of his feelings laid bare like that, so exposed both in body and spirit, made something in her own heart crack a little. It was not right that he be brought to that. To her surprise, she craved a cigarette. Back when Sybil was puffi
ng away in the school dorms, Eva had thought it posturing, but she had begun to join the clumps of VADs hanging around outside the hospital huts, coils of smoke from their cigarettes dissipating in the summer air, as much for the communal moment as for any other reason.

  She went back into the town to buy herself a packet of Embassy No. 1 and a box of matches. Smoking the first of them as she walked back, she reflected that she had spent the last year in a state of busyness, and today there was nothing for her to do but think and fret and smoke some more. She returned to the hotel and treaded through the little garden to the entrance. She would go up to her room and spend the rest of the day moping—

  ‘Eva.’

  Christopher was leaning against the wall outside the front door, his arms folded, just like that day outside the Swedish church.

  He looked to be in a perfectly normal state, apart from his light-brown corduroy coat, which was far too big for him, and his shoes, which had thick blue laces. Institutional clothes, Eva guessed. His fingers were beating out some sort of rhythm on his arms, as if he were playing a piano exercise. But she knew him well enough not to be alarmed at that; it was simply not in his nature to be still for any length of time.

  ‘Christopher!’ she exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘What sort of damn fool question is that?’ he responded, with a smile.

  ‘They told me you were unwell. They said—’

  ‘I know what they said.’ He betrayed a hint of agitation, digging into a capacious pocket and extracting a cigarette of his own, his fingers trembling a little as he lit it. Then he pursed his thin lips around the filter and exhaled. The smoke floated for a while in the air. ‘I’m sorry,’ he added, before taking a second puff.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For dragging you into all this. I didn’t think I’d crack up again, not so soon. I think it was …’ He broke off. ‘Eva, what happened to me yesterday, when we were out walking, and I kissed you …’ He lowered his gaze to the ground. ‘I don’t know what came over me. I ceased to be human. I thought I knew passion, but that was madness … madness!’