White Feathers

by Susan Lanigan

  ‘I had a son,’ Lucia said, her voice choked. ‘And they took him. Just a few weeks ago.’

  ‘Oh, Lucia!’ Eva said in gentle horror, taking her arm.

  ‘I tried to hold on to him, but I couldn’t.’

  In fits and starts, occasionally overcome by grief, she told her story. Mackenzie had finally made his move. Lucia had discovered her pregnancy when she could no longer hold a long phrase in her singing practice – ‘By then, everyone else had noticed, but I was naive!’ Mackenzie’s mother was crashingly ambitious for her son, and, as Lucia put it, ‘She already had a plan for him, and a quadroon child was not part of that plan. Nor a mulatta mother! Zugzwang!’ Powerful connections meant that Lucia found herself shipped to a large mother-and-baby home in Morpethswade in Glasgow, where she was kept until the baby was born.

  ‘I nurtured a hope that if the child had dark skin the Americans who buy the children for adoption would not take him. You know, they have great race prejudice in America. But barely three days after he was born, those nuns, those vultures, they came for him. I had him at my breast … I clung onto him as long as I could … I begged them, I screamed at them, please, but they said “no, no, no”.’

  She was there, right in that moment, Eva saw. Her mouth was open, tears streaming down her cheeks, an agony so raw imprinted on her face that Eva could hardly bear to look. She maintained the lightest of touches on Lucia’s arm, enough to remind her that she was in the present, no more.

  Finally Lucia collected herself with a strangled sob. ‘I called him Dominic. It means “belonging to God”. It was after this priest I met at the home. Heaven only knows what he’s called now.’

  ‘And this priest – did he help you?’

  ‘Oh, he fell in love with me. But he was nyaamps when I needed him.’

  Eva could not help grinning. This refrain of Lucia’s was becoming somewhat familiar.

  ‘That is why I looked for you. I thought … I am alone here, you know, now Dominic is gone. I look different from everyone else. I feel different too. You have heard me sing: I am a natural soprano, I could sing in an opera! But on my own? Na, all the doors are shut. Let me be plain, Eva, I need someone to hold them open for me. Otherwise, I might never see Dominic again.’

  ‘I can hardly open them myself, Lucia. But I will try for you.’

  Something in the air between them, a hard, nervy tension, had dissipated. The sun had wound its way around to the west and was getting in their eyes. Lucia adjusted the brim of her hat; Eva had none, so she just squinted.

  ‘At least he is alive,’ she said. ‘If you have nothing else, you have that. He is alive and cared for.’

  Lucia turned to her, her hat brushing Eva’s hair. ‘Yes … I heard.’

  Eva shrugged. ‘It’s a common enough tale.’ If she said that often enough, she might believe it.

  Lucia shook her head, frowning. ‘Sybil told me to be gentle with you because you’d lost your Christopher man, but she said it was because he was sent back when he shouldn’t have been.’

  ‘What difference does that make?’

  ‘It make a whole deal of difference. Eva, what happened to him was improper.’ She put her hands on Eva’s shoulders. ‘I know injustice. I know it does not go away like normal sadness. It eats and eats at you, until it consumes your spirit whole.’

  Eva began to shake. This is what she had feared, the return of all those feelings. The anguish was as acute now as it had been last November. Time had put no rust on the iron, only sharpened the blade. Only the promise of suicide had lulled the horror for a while.

  ‘But be not afraid,’ Lucia added, seeing her upset. ‘Because God is always there, and He watches over us all. In His name justice will be done. That I am sure of.’

  Eva couldn’t believe her ears. After a half an hour of talking nothing but good common sense, Lucia was reciting this sort of claptrap. She laughed, and her laughter had a trace of scorn.

  ‘After all you have been through, Lucia, how can you insult your own intelligence, let alone mine?’ At the hurt look on Lucia’s face, she felt a brief, hot flash of regret, but carried on. ‘If God were truly all-loving, He would have stopped those women taking Dominic away from you. And He wouldn’t have stopped the propellers on the Britannic when our boat was heading for them. I would have been cut to bits, and I’d never have known what it felt like to have lost Christopher. He was already dead for several days by then, and I need never have known.’

  Lucia kept walking. ‘You know,’ she said, in an almost dreamy tone, ‘we say in Jamaica that after a man dies, his spirit, which we call his duppy, wanders the earth for nine days. When my father died, we left his study just the way it used to be, and on the ninth night we laid food out on the desk: jerked pork, kedgeree, chicken, sweetened coffee and a bottle of Jamaican rum. They say the duppy eats a proper meal for the last time and then goes to the grave, and we put a cross on the door to make sure it never comes back.’

  Now in front of them rose the Belle Tout Lighthouse. The wind was light and fresh with spring. In spite of Eva’s turmoil, it felt refreshing.

  ‘He stopped those propellers for you, you know.’

  ‘What?’ Eva said.

  ‘That was him. Your Christopher. His duppy saved you.’

  ‘Lucia, that’s … that’s nonsense.’

  ‘It is not nonsense!’ Lucia cried, impassioned. ‘Cu yu, what else could it be? Only gone a few days, he was not at rest! I am telling you, Eva, it’s his doing. He wants you to live, star. He wants you to go to Summerplace and study with the bluestockings.’

  ‘Stop it, Lucia,’ Eva said, near tears. ‘That’s cruel. Superstition, that’s all.’

  Lucia put her hands on Eva’s shoulders again. Her voice was very tender.

  ‘He was there, and he saved you. I know it.’

  Eva tried to protest again, but something in her heart came loose, like one domino knocking over a row. Lucia’s face was suddenly a warm, brown blur. She was aware of falling forward, of being supported, as she wept, tumultuous sobs that seemed to tear her body apart. ‘I miss him. Oh, God, I miss him so much. It’s not fair.’

  ‘I know,’ Lucia murmured. ‘I know, sweetheart.’ Then, into Eva’s ear, ‘He loves you. He loves you. He’s here.’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ Eva wiped her eyes with her fingers, ‘and he shouldn’t be. It’s my fault he’s dead.’ Lucia raised her eyebrows in query but said nothing. There would be time, they both knew it, now that Eva had been talked back from the edge.

  They turned from the lighthouse and walked back to the bicycle, which had fallen over, much to Lucia’s irritation. She expended several patois swearwords righting it. Then they returned to Eastbourne along the wide cliff path. Eva was still crying, quietly now, but openly. Lucia was singing melodies here and there, wheeling the bike, pacing her walk by her breath.

  They repaired to the station teashop to wait for the five o’clock train to London. Eva, by now composed, procured tea and plum heavies from the bored proprietress, while Lucia tactfully and quietly bought the ticket for the return journey which Eva had failed to purchase that morning.

  ‘Eva,’ she said at length, ‘forgive me if I’m prying, but … Hey, am I allowed to do this?’ She was dipping her cake into her tea.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Eva said, ‘except that it will all fall into the tea. You need to use a biscuit.’

  ‘Cha, whichever, it’s all the same to me. My tea will be a little sweeter, that’s all. Anyway. You said something earlier – that it was your fault he’s dead. What did you mean by that?’

  Eva put her teacup down but didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she raised her eyes to meet Lucia’s. ‘It was my fault.’

  The train pulled out of Eastbourne. The compartments were on the landward side, and the setting sun made Lucia look like a gold-bronze statue. She was deep in thought. Eva, meanwhile, was waiting for her to respond to what she had told her. There was no hurry. She had nowhere specia
l to go.

  Finally Lucia spoke. ‘I have a lot of difficulty running this through my mind.’ Eva nodded. ‘But I do have some thoughts.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Lucia took off her hat and leaned forward, her chin in her hand. ‘This Gabriel Hunter man, he’s mighty angry. Drag your name through the mud, eh? Can’t wait till the war finish, nuh, he must rewrite history now? Well, you can do three things. One, jump off a cliff. That you are not going to do. No.’ She shook her head emphatically. ‘Two, let him do like he threaten. Stand by while he tells the world you’re responsible for killing your Christopher. And make sure everyone forgets about the man who sent him to Salonika. Always blame the woman, not the system. Three? You fight.’ She took Eva’s hand in hers. ‘There is nothing you can do for Christopher any more. He’s gone. But you can tell your truth and sing the song straight, not crooked. So, Eva, which will it be?’

  The sun vanished as the train roared into a tunnel. Cold air streamed in the open pane. Lucia reached up and shut it with a smart thud. For several minutes, Eva sat mute. Every sound, every sensation was amplified in that dark space. When she spoke, her voice was low and firm. ‘I’ll fight. Yes.’

  The train left the tunnel and steamed into the Sussex countryside, lit up by a shaft of brilliant light as it continued its journey back to London.

  Acknowledgements

  The Pico group, who saw snippets of a very rough draft and kept cheering me on; Helena Mulkerns; Conor Kostick; the Irish Writers’ Centre and Novel Fair 2013; June Caldwell; Arlene Hunt; Mary Conroy and Orlaith Mannion – we found the name at last! – Myrhad Lanigan for the gift of Adam Hochschild’s To End All Wars; my late grandparents, Brian and Nora Boyle, for their belief.

  My wonderful agent Svetlana Pironko; Michael O’Brien and The O’Brien Press for taking a chance on me; Emma Byrne for a stylish and evocative cover. A very special mention goes to Liz Hudson, who went above and beyond the call of duty in her commitment to editing this book.

  Writing this novel meant much reading: I particularly acknowledge among the many works consulted: Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth; William Moore’s The Thin Yellow Line, which dealt exhaustively with the subject of military ‘cowardice’ in the First World War; and Zora Neale Hurston’s wonderful Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica.

  My thanks also to Nina Panagopoulou and Athena Andreadis for queries about Greek language and culture; Keith Graham for architectural tips; Tony Wade, historian and leader of Back-Roads Touring; the Imperial War Museum; the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Monaghan; the Palazzo Rinaldi residence in Basilicata, Italy.

  Finally, to Jonathan O’Neill, whose support and encouragement made this possible – my thanks, with all my heart.

  About the Author

  Susan Lanigan was born in the Irish Midlands and now lives by the sea near Dublin. Thrice shortlisted for the Hennessy New Irish Writer Award, she has had short fiction published both nationally and internationally. White Feathers is her first novel.

  Copyright

  The eBook edition first published 2014 by The O’Brien Press Ltd

  12 Terenure Road East, Rathgar, Dublin 6, Ireland

  Tel: +353 1 4923333 Fax: +353 1 4922777

  Email: books@obrien.ie Website: www.obrien.ie

  First published 2014

  eBook ISBN: 978–1–84717–704–9

  Text © Susan Lanigan 2014

  Editing, typesetting, layout and design © The O’Brien Press 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or in any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  The O’Brien Press receives financial assistance from

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