White Feathers

by Susan Lanigan

  She looked at him a moment. He meant well, she could see that. ‘Yes, please do.’

  ‘Oh, I’m glad,’ he said, smiling, ‘it would be a rotten shame not to see you again, when I’ve so many more poems to show you!’

  4 August 1914

  ‘“It was officially stated at the Foreign Office last night that Great Britain declared war against Germany at 7.00 pm. The British Ambassador in Berlin has been handed his passport. War was Germany’s reply to our request that she should respect the neutrality of Belgium, whose territories we were bound in honour and by treaty obligations to maintain inviolate.”’ Roy Downey finished reading his Daily Mirror and put the paper down, smacking his lips. ‘There you are, then. Battle stations.’

  Catherine clattered her fork on her plate in excitement. ‘If we’re at war, does that mean Ireland too?’

  Grace rolled her eyes. ‘Mother, for God’s sake, that’s why it’s called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.’ She poked at her mutton and gravy. ‘I don’t fancy the rest of this. It doesn’t feel right to just sit here eating when there’s a war on.’ She pushed her plate away and vanished into the cool sanctuary of the hall and, presumably, the telephone, to talk to Captain Alec Featherstone.

  After luncheon, and in the days that followed, Catherine railed at the servants: they were too giddy to concentrate on anything. All the usual routines were going west as fast as the Germans were going south – and Eva was not sorry. Sometimes she would sit out on the steps, eating a piece of bread and a hunk of good cheddar; passers-by hooted or waved, or both. War and hot weather had everyone excited. Overnight, every wall, shop, public bar and train station in London had a Notice for General Mobilisation tacked onto it. Feelings in the street ran high. One of Grace’s friends suggested going over to the German Embassy, where people were throwing stones and rotten eggs at the windows, but Catherine had the sense, for once, to veto that plan.

  Everything was up in the air – well, everything except David Wentworth Hopkins, who still faithfully called on Eva every second Monday, as reliable as the tramp and thud of each metric foot of his rhyming stanzas. He too was full of the excitement of war, even going so far as to start reciting ‘Horatius’, but his memory of Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome didn’t stretch much further than eight lines so Eva was spared the rest.

  A few days after war was declared, Captain Featherstone, called away to serve with the British Expeditionary Force, arrived at the house to say goodbye. Grace fawned over him even more than usual, in a manner that made Eva wince, putting her arms around his neck and calling him ‘my Old Contemptible’. To Eva, Featherstone seemed too stupid to fight a war of any description, but Grace kept keen track of his progress. She bought a map of Europe, framed it at her own expense and hung it in the parlour. Since it had no glass, she could stick pins into the various points of the developing front. She had a special icon for Captain Featherstone – a little man on a horse – which moved as she read news of his regiment or received his letters. He was not a great letter-writer, he declared apologetically in one of them.

  She also managed to find a hanky with the music to ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ embroidered on it, which she endeavoured to pull out at every opportunity. ‘Snot easy, fighting on the western front,’ Imelda had commented. Eva had turned around to ensure she had heard Imelda correctly, but her sister sat there, sedate and demure, as if she hadn’t said a word.

  Captain Featherstone was dead before the month was out, hit by artillery fire while defending Le Cateau; neither his bayonet nor his horse proved adequate when faced with the German war machine. But the deepest cut for Grace was not his untimely death, it was that she did not hear of it until early September, after the memorial service had been held and another woman listed in the paper as Featherstone’s fiancée. His infrequent letter-writing now had a prosaic and humiliating explanation. Grace’s response was to fling herself ever deeper into martial fervour. As a coping measure, it worked: the glow soon returned to her cheeks and the light to her eye, especially when Imelda’s health worsened and a house call from Dr Fellowes was required once more.

  Eva was not unsympathetic. It was a rotten thing to love a man, then to lose him, then to realise he was not yours to lose. She still felt a certain rawness when she thought about Mr Shandlin, though that pain was beginning to heal. However, her sympathy for Grace was tempered by her suspicion that she had never loved Alec Featherstone quite as much as she had his rank. Eva said as much to her one day when Grace was in the middle of one of her sermons about it being Every Man’s Duty to something something something and Eva had had enough of hearing it.

  ‘At least he’s done his part! What about your Hopkins fellow?’ Grace snapped in reply. ‘I’m warning you, Eva, you’d better hope he signs up. Do you know there’s been a town crier down in Chatham ringing a bell and telling all the men to watch their step because the women are about? We’ll put manners on them if they don’t do their bit.’

  ‘You needn’t bother,’ Eva said wearily, ‘he enlisted about five minutes after they put up the posters. I think he’d have camped overnight at the recruiting station if it weren’t open.’

  ‘Good,’ Grace said. ‘Now all he has to do is propose to you and you’ll be altogether respectable.’

  David, still awaiting his orders, called on the first Monday of September, as per his usual schedule. However, on this occasion, he went to see Eva’s father in his study before Eva was told of his arrival. When Father left and she was eventually allowed in to the parlour, David was standing in the middle of the room, hands on his hips. ‘Eva dear,’ he said, smiling, ‘please sit down.’

  I will and all, she thought to herself, considering it’s my house. But she did as she was told. The air was close, and the pomatum she had put in her hair smelt strong and sweet. She regretted having used so much; it was stinking out the room. That and David’s Everlast … Imelda wouldn’t be able to go in there for half an hour afterwards, poor lamb.

  David was direct. War made his objective urgent; he had obtained her father’s permission, and now sought hers, for her hand in marriage. He rushed over the word ‘marriage’ as if it were a faintly embarrassing blot on an otherwise impeccable business communication.

  ‘David—’ she interrupted him.

  ‘Yes, Eva?’

  ‘Will you touch me?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ He flinched, offended.

  ‘Come here beside me. Take my hand again.’

  ‘You ask that of me? You doubt that I am sincere?’

  ‘Of course not, David. I just need you to take my hand. Is that not a reasonable request?’

  David sat beside her and did as she had instructed. He held her hand very gravely and solemnly, as if it were made of cut glass and he was to weigh it.

  ‘David,’ Eva said, ‘why do you want to marry me?’

  He cleared his throat and stared at her. ‘What a question! Well, because … because you have interesting opinions. A husband needs that in a wife, as well as the …’ He turned scarlet. ‘I mean simply to say that you seem to have an enquiring and intelligent nature, without being overly immodest.’

  For want of anything else to say, Eva thanked him.

  ‘And you like my poetry,’ he added, with a bashful expression. ‘Others … have been less understanding.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Eva hoped she looked composed.

  ‘And now all that is missing is your consent.’ He pressed Eva’s hand slightly. ‘A formality, but not insignificant.’

  ‘David,’ Eva said, ‘I have some hopes of further study. I have reason to hope that marriage will provide me with the space and time to devote to my books.’

  He sat up straight at that, looking every inch the frowning prep-school officer-in-training. ‘What sort of study?’

  ‘I have been encouraged to enrol for a scholarship to Somerville College in Oxford – the women’s college. I need to learn the rudiments of Greek. I started a few weeks a
go.’

  ‘Oxford? Greek?’ He dropped her hand, outraged. ‘Do you mean to turn into a bluestocking?’

  ‘David,’ Eva took his hand again. ‘I cannot marry someone who does not support my interests.’

  His hairless upper lip trembled. ‘You will be busy with our home, with our children! Read for pleasure, by all means, but more than that … I could not allow it.’

  Eva could only wonder at his presumption. ‘I would not have your support?’

  ‘Of course you would have my support. But only for activities appropriate for a wife.’

  ‘Then I must refuse. I am sorry.’

  David looked at her with incredulity. ‘You’re refusing me?’ He held her gaze so long that Eva began to doubt herself. Was she being silly? Holding on to the advice of somebody who had not even bothered to write to her, who had caused her so much pain? What did she know about these matters anyway? She had never been held by a man, not in any way that mattered.

  The hum of the city continued outside; in the distance Eva could hear a tram bell ringing. David rose and looked down at her. He did not seem cross at all; his manner was quite amiable. ‘Eva, I shall give you some time to reconsider and come back on Friday to hear your answer. Let’s say twelve-thirty?’ He patted her shoulder and smiled down at her in a brotherly fashion. Then he left before she could think of a reply.

  Roy Downey banged the study table with the flat of his hand, exclaiming with surprised rage at the pain. ‘What do you mean, you said “no”? You’ve been encouraging him all this time, haven’t you?’

  ‘It didn’t feel right,’ was all Eva could manage.

  This only maddened him more. ‘It didn’t feel right? What sort of nonsense is this? What on earth does marriage have to do with “feeling right”?’

  ‘You marry people because you love them,’ Eva said, in a small voice, ‘just as you loved my mother when you married her.’

  A flash of pain crossed Roy’s saturnine features at the mention of Angela. He paused before continuing, rubbing the back of his neck with his fingers. ‘Yes, I loved her once, that’s true. But Eva, we cannot support you for ever. This folly with the school, and now turning down this boy, and for what? Look at Imelda. Her world is reduced, yet she is content.’

  Eva laughed bitterly. ‘You think Imelda content? She is desperately unhappy, Father.’

  ‘Well, she has the good manners to hide it!’ he spat out. ‘Do you know, I am still getting letters from that fellow from Limerick? Here, look.’ He shuffled through one of the many piles of correspondence from Kildare and Birr and Borris-in-Ossory to show her. ‘Catherine won’t stop encouraging him. I have been able to hold her off, but if you keep throwing up half decent offers from good English boys …’ He sighed so heavily that several yellow telegrams on top of his correspondence drifted off the pile. ‘I can’t risk upsetting Mother.’

  ‘You could always just allow her to get upset regardless.’

  He looked her straight in the eye, his face small, yellow, cold. ‘But I don’t want to,’ he said softly. ‘D’you hear me? I don’t want to.’

  There was a room in Eva’s heart which had a blind on the window. For a moment, when they had spoken of Angela, that window opened, the blind cord gently tapping the glass. But now it shut down with a swift rattle.

  ‘Mr Hopkins reassured me that he would offer his suit again. That was most generous of him. You will accept him,’ Roy concluded, moving things around on his desk, ‘and there will be no further discussion about it. Now, you may go. Send Grace in to me. I rather prefer her company at present.’

  8 September 1914

  My dearest Sybil,

  I hope you and your mother are bearing up well and that Bo is getting on all right. Will he be sent off soon, do you think?

  I thought you should know that before too long I expect to be engaged to David Wentworth Hopkins. I refused him at first but Papa wouldn’t hear of my doing so a second time. I do not believe myself ‘in love’ as the Socratic philosophers would have it, but, to be honest, Sybil, for what or whom am I holding out? Things could be much worse: if I do not marry soon, Catherine may yet push Mr Cronin on me just to get me out of the house.

  David comes again on Friday afternoon to press his case. Please pray for me, to any God you please.

  Your friend,

  Eva Downey

  14

  On the Friday morning, Grace invited Eva to come shopping with her and Catherine. ‘You might need some nice clothes. For the afternoon.’ Her dismissive tone made Eva bristle, but she was right. War or no war, Eva needed a new skirt; her blue poplin was frayed about the edges from overuse. Eva did not question why Grace would extend such an uncommon kindness. Indeed, she did not start to get suspicious until they were well past the point where the cab should have turned off for Oxford Street and the shops. They continued west for a good ten minutes after that before Eva exclaimed, ‘I say, Grace, where are we going?’

  ‘Acton.’

  ‘To buy dresses?’

  ‘We’re not going to buy a dress,’ Grace replied calmly. ‘I’m bringing you here to show you something. Because of that rotten thing you said about me loving Alec’s rank more than him. I let it go at the time, but really, you should have been horsewhipped for that remark.’

  Eva’s heart sank. She should have known something was up. Clever Imelda, to have cried off. They got out at Acton Town Hall, Catherine charging ahead. To Eva, reluctantly following Grace inside, the place, with its worn wooden floor and long plywood dais, its faint miasma of dust and paint, had an appearance of a parish bake sale. But then she saw the women, and the feathers.

  The women came from all classes, the feathers from a variety of birds: pigeon, cockerel, ostrich. Along the edge of the dais, brushing the floor, a banner read ‘Order of the White Feather’ – and there, in mid-speech, old, dumpy, squinting and with a weak chin, stood the famous authoress Mrs Humphry Ward herself.

  ‘She’s just started,’ hissed Catherine.

  ‘… and Admiral Fitzgerald,’ Mrs Ward declared – she rolled the word ‘Admiral’ as if it were a particularly pleasant petit four she had just popped into her mouth – ‘has entrusted me to bring to you, my sisters, the message of solidarity we women must show the men who defend us at our hour of most need.’

  A woman sitting in the front row fanned herself vigorously; the hall was too warm, and there was a fetor in the air from too many clothes and a lack of washing. Eva was sure she could detect the smell of menstrual blood. She felt dizzy and wondered if she could stay standing.

  ‘Our new order, the Order of the White Feather,’ Mrs Ward continued, ‘has proved very successful over the past few weeks. Why, just last Tuesday, outside the Opera House, our friends the suffragettes …’ – some of the audience grew restive – ‘Wait! I have not finished. Those ladies stopped a good hundred fellows out of uniform and presented them with a white feather each, so they would know exactly what their womenfolk thought of them.’ The tumult turned to cheering, and a wan-looking girl in a crocheted shawl had to call the females to order before Mrs Ward could resume. ‘Our aim is to be watchful of our men and to make sure that none shirk that most sacred of duties. As mothers, sisters, daughters, we must offer their blood as Christ offered His to save mankind!’ Her voice rose to a shriek. ‘The foul Hun has perpetrated the wickedest of deeds upon our sisters in Belgium, taking away their lives, their very chastity!’

  Eva felt a headache coming on. Never mind other women’s periods, her own was due. She hoped it wouldn’t arrive early. There was quite enough blood in this hall already.

  Mrs Ward concluded: ‘I would ask each woman here to seek out every man of fighting age who is not in uniform and to present him with a feather. If the men of our empire will not save women from the Hun’s depredations of their own free will, then they shall be shamed into it! They shall be shamed!’

  The audience stamped, clapped and cheered. Catherine, in particular, forgot herself entirely,
roaring like a fishwife, a vein throbbing in her neck, her small eyes glazing over. Women shouted ‘Death to the Hun!’ and ‘God save the King!’ as Mrs Ward stood there and lapped it up, her eyes glittering. The assistants distributed the feathers. Grace took two fistfuls. One of the girls with the trays stopped beside Eva. ‘Here, take one.’

  Eva recognised the girl with a start. ‘Don’t I know you?’

  She looked at Eva with cool, contained surprise. ‘I don’t think so, no.’

  ‘But I do!’ Eva said, ‘I met you in Trafalgar Square, three years ago. You were campaigning for votes for women. You inspired me to go to the Census Night party in Wimbledon Common. I heard you speak.’

  The girl shrugged. ‘Oh, that.’

  Eva couldn’t believe it. ‘Why are you giving women white feathers? What happened to giving them the vote?’

  ‘Did you not know?’ the girl said sharply. ‘Mrs Pankhurst organised for a whole lot of us to be here.’

  ‘Eva!’ Grace hissed. ‘Are you refusing to take a feather?’

  Eva took a few feathers from the tray and slipped them in her pocket. She felt sick.

  ‘Don’t hide them away,’ the girl said, eyes shining now, ‘bear them in your hands for all to see, so they know your mission.’

  Eva gingerly took the feathers out again, holding them at some distance.

  ‘Forget the other business,’ the girl said. ‘We are at war now.’

  The meeting broke up. Eva did not keep her feathers, throwing them on the ground when they were crossing the road back to the Tube station. Grace still had hers, and a man out of uniform was coming their way. Eva watched as Grace speeded up. ‘For God’s sake,’ Eva pleaded with her, ‘he’s forty if he’s a day.’