White Feathers

by Susan Lanigan

  It had all come out by chance. After one phone call too many, Grace had stormed down to the old house in Wellclose Square to have it out with her mother. She had burst in and told her: no more, she would not be constantly pestered in her own house, she was a married woman now, and it wasn’t fair.

  And all the time, a small smile played about her mother’s face, flickering like a hell-flame. She was only waiting for a pause in the conversation to say it at last: ‘Grace, Roy Downey is your real father.’

  Grace had frozen to the spot.

  His marriage to Angela had been over in all but name for a long time, Catherine said; he never went to visit his wife of a night, but it was not unknown for him to visit her during the day when Angela was out paying calls. Angela Culleton as was, that dumpy article of a piano teacher, whom she had to address as ‘Ma’am’! But she made sure that Roy would have something to remember his loyal servant by. ‘That was you, Grace,’ Catherine had said, with a craven smile. ‘The apple of me eye, you were.’

  By now Grace’s gut was surging, but she knew she would stay to hear the end.

  Roy played false, Catherine said. There was nothing between him and Angela, he said, nothing true or meaningful, but then Mrs Downey began to be sick in the mornings, and soon the news was announced that she was expecting. It was just a one-off, a terrible mistake, Roy told her, time and time again. Did Grace have any idea, Catherine asked, how it felt to have the mistress of the house patting her belly while her belly swelled too, with the same seed from the same man, while she had to keep going with her sham of a marriage to that drunk Nelius Connolly, till he had the decency to die when Grace was two? What it was like to see the evidence of Roy’s infidelity right there in front of her?

  Grace stopped her. ‘He was married to her. Not you. You were the one he was being unfaithful with.’

  But her mother refused to hear a word. On and on she went about the shame of his infidelity, the constant humiliating presence of his infidelity, his infidelity this, his infidelity that, until Grace broke in, her voice like the edge of a knife: ‘You are speaking of Eva, and I am now to understand that she is my blood sister.’

  By the look on her face, it was clear that Catherine knew she had made a mistake. ‘And Roy … Roy is my father.’ Now Grace was shaking. He too had known. Grace rushed to the bathroom and vomited in the sink. In the doorway, Catherine’s anxious shadow hovered, just as it had that day when Grace had flung Eva against the wall and cried, ‘Him or Imelda?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell the truth,’ she whimpered. ‘I wasn’t going to let them look at ye and think ye were a bastard. He was good to me, Roy. There was no question who was your father, but, d’you see, I could never tell. And then that Eva was born, and she wanted all of yer daddy, and I had to make sure you had your bite of the cherry. I wasn’t going to let her take away everything you deserved, just because you were born the wrong side of the bed. I fought for you, Grace.’

  Grace stood up and wiped her mouth, running the tap until the repulsive mess began to spiral down the sink. Only then did she reply: ‘No, Mother, you didn’t. You lied to me – and you used me. You’re obsessed with Eva, always have been, because she’s living proof that my father was with Angela too. It must have been hell for you, seeing her every day, a constant reminder of his wife.’

  Catherine’s eyes filled with easy tears, but Grace was not finished. ‘He was doing the two of you, the wife and the servant. That’s why you kept punishing her, wasn’t it? Pretending to give a damn for me.’ Then, a sudden realisation: ‘And it’s why you insisted Eva marry that awful man Cronin? Pure spite. God,’ Grace declared, ‘you are vulgar, vulgar, vulgar. You make me sick.’

  Those were the last words she ever addressed to her mother. The minute she got home to Shoreditch she had the maid run her a bath and scrubbed herself nearly raw. She was unable to stop crying. It took hours for her to pull herself together enough to write to Eva. She hardly expected a response, and she didn’t get one. Eva had one power over her, the power of withholding, and God did she use it.

  But now the time to tell Eva had arrived. Grace pushed the pram with renewed determination, preparing to cross the road.

  And then she saw a figure at one of the windows.

  No question but it was her, clear as day. Not looking down, but away. Grace remembered something Herbert had said to her: that the first time he met Eva, when he’d driven away from the house, he had seen her figure in the window, just as Grace did now. ‘Like a mannequin,’ he’d said. ‘Too fat for a mannequin,’ Grace had replied, but now, when she saw the still figure, she knew what Herbert meant. It was not like seeing a living person: there was nothing in that face, nothing at all. It frightened Grace, that blank look.

  ‘There’s nothing I can say to you, is there?’ she whispered sadly.

  Spots of rain began to fall on the pram cover. Grace shuddered and pulled her coat around her again. It was madness to think she could reach Eva. And, more than that: it wasn’t fair. What were you hoping to get out of this? Grace admonished herself, forgiveness? Because there was no way in hell Eva would ever forgive her for pushing her to pin the white feather on that Shandlin fellow. Probably, Grace thought, because Eva has never forgiven herself.

  No more of that. Grace would not delay; she would continue on her way to Paddington Station for the train to Holyhead, where she and the baby would stay overnight before travelling to Kingstown in the morning. The journey had been a long time coming: letters had been flying back and forth while Herbert had been in his consulting rooms. Since her mother’s revelation – no, further back, since she had become disaffected with the life of a doctor’s wife in East London and had read about the Easter Rising in the papers, she had thought more and more about the roots she had so long disowned and had come to the conclusion that her race had been the victim of massive injustice.

  She would spend that Christmas and all Christmases thereafter in Ireland. She was taking up membership of Cumann na mBan, the women’s wing of the Irish Volunteers, having been given a letter of introduction from Mrs Charlotte Despard, with whom she had entered into a friendly correspondence. The sister of General John French, who had led the Old Contemptibles into battle in 1914, Charlotte had gone very far the other way, turning Fenian and supporting the workers during the Dublin Lockout. She was also a raving suffragette. Eva would have approved.

  Grace Fellowes had no more time to lose worrying about the past, because Grace Fellowes was no more. She had a new mission and a new name: Gráinne Ní Dhomhnaigh. From now on she would serve neither King nor Kaiser, but Ireland.

  *

  Eva had the flat in Cumberland Place almost to herself, apart from a housekeeper who came in three times a week. During those solitary days, she could not set her mind to anything. She was gripped by a profound listlessness. Day after day she would wander the rooms like a ghost and then stand at a window, looking out at Hyde Park, watching the figures on the path below: matchstick men and women, some with prams, some selling flowers, some singing Christmas carols. Faceless, all of them. There were days she stood like that for hours at a time. She tried to write another letter to Christopher’s mother – she had received no reply to her first, posted when she had disembarked at Southampton – but tore up each effort. She did not know what to say. So many dead now: Christopher, Imelda, even David Wentworth Hopkins while a prisoner of the Turks at Kut-al-Amara, poor child.

  Soon Sybil will be back, she thought.

  But then Gabriel Hunter called, and Sybil was not there. Eva had to face him alone.

  He stood at one end of the room, Eva at the other. She had not seen him since that day in the field hospital. He had survived his injuries, and was still beautiful, with his winter coat and summer blazer, his berry-red lips and Myrurgia cologne, the tobacco-scented traces of which filled the room.

  He wasted no time. ‘You have caused enough hurt, enough damage for a million lifetimes. You gave him a death sentence.’

 
; ‘Mr Hunter,’ Eva said falteringly, ‘please—’

  ‘I won’t please,’ he said angrily, ‘to suit you. Why should I, after what you’ve done? You were the ruin of him, and I warned him. I warned him!’ He spoke with real anguish, and when Eva looked up, she saw he was close to tears.

  ‘We both loved him,’ she said, feeling a brief flare of compassion for the angry man opposite her. But from the way he coloured and glared at her, she realised that she had made a bad move.

  ‘Your “love”, as you call it, was a mere fiction,’ he said coldly. ‘You took a classroom crush and made it into much more than it really was.’

  ‘That isn’t true. We were lovers.’

  He looked at her with disgust. ‘Typical woman, all manners and artifice on the surface, but underneath you are all little alley cats. You are lying, Miss Downey, and I can assure you that nobody of consequence believes for one moment that what you had with Christopher amounts to a hill of beans. He didn’t love you, and he didn’t respect you.’

  ‘He did! You said so yourself, remember? And he proposed to me,’ Eva countered.

  ‘Really?’ Hunter was smiling now. ‘I don’t remember saying anything of the sort. And I don’t see any ring.’

  ‘He didn’t … he couldn’t …’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve read my recent in Blackwood’s? Of course you haven’t. Women like you only read the requisite minimum to seduce men. I have a poem, part of one. It’s called “The Dove”, and I imagine it will be quite famous in time. It’s dedicated to him. I am the one who will write about him, and celebrate him. Christopher won’t be forgotten, I’ll make sure of that. And I’ll name you, you bitch. I’ll drag you through the mud for what you did.’

  ‘I may have hurt him, but I loved him!’

  ‘I don’t think someone like you could know the meaning of the word.’

  Eva hadn’t intended to show him Christopher’s acrostic, which she had on the table, but his manner was so maddening she could not stop herself. She unfolded it and pointed to the words. Hunter smiled nastily and whipped the letter out of her hand, tore it down the middle and threw both parts in the fire, which had been dying peaceably in the grate but now flared to life.

  ‘That’s not Christopher,’ he said calmly. ‘It’s just some fancy of yours. Now I’ve put it where it belongs.’

  It was then Eva quite forgot herself, and Hunter won, for she flew at him, scratching at his cheeks, growling and baring her teeth. He restrained her with disdainful ease. Eva wrested her arm free of him and pushed him into the hall. ‘Get out!’ she shouted. ‘Get out of this house, before I throw you out!’

  ‘It isn’t even your house,’ he shouted through the door, as she attempted to push it to. Then he wedged his foot in the crack. ‘I’ll tell you one last thing. I spoke to Lilian Shandlin. We’re great friends, she and I, I’ve often been to her home. I enlightened her about what you did to her son, about that white feather. And do you know what she said, dear Eva? She said, “God is unjust if that girl dies a quiet death.”’

  So that’s why Mrs Shandlin had not replied to Eva’s letter. Hunter had got there first. ‘If you don’t believe me, you can ask her yourself. Though I wouldn’t advise it.’

  Eva shook her head. ‘I believe you,’ she said dully. But he had already gone, the door shutting behind him with a curt click.

  Sybil arrived in five minutes later, with Wilson in tow. ‘That bastard,’ she exclaimed, all suitcases and damask-rose perfume. ‘I knew he’d come from here. I saw the revolting smile on his face as he crossed the road. Oh, Eva, no, please don’t cry, try not to, darling.’ But she might as well have told the wind not to blow, or the rain not to fall, or the war not to keep on raging. Eva wept in Sybil’s arms, wept and howled. She called the name of the man who could never answer.

  Sybil swore she’d have that Hunter’s guts for garters if she ever saw him again. ‘McCrum is his uncle, you know, on his mother’s side. So if anyone’s to blame for what’s happened, it’s his people.’

  Eva did not hear her; all she could think of were Lilian Shandlin’s words. They rang in her ears as she sank to the floor, and nothing, nothing, could cancel them out.

  36

  May 1917

  How strange, Eva thought, that she should return to Eastbourne of all places to see things through. To take the same train as on that autumn day in 1913, to get off at the same station. Then to hire a bicycle and cycle to The Links, for one last bittersweet look back.

  But the debutantes were gone, and there was no sign of Miss Hedges. The whole place had been requisitioned as a unit for wounded officers. The patch of laurels where Christopher and she said the first of many goodbyes had been cut down, and the lawn now stretched out without interruption as far as the netball court. The lines on the court were blurred and scuffed, and the net hung limply. When a figure in white came across the lawn, Eva did not wait to be asked what she was doing there but mounted the bike and sailed off once more.

  She cycled the few miles back into Eastbourne then went right through the town, skirts flying, ankles on display to all, heading west along the South Downs to Beachy Head. An hour after she left The Links, almost at the headland, she abandoned the bicycle, flinging it into the grass near a stile, its pedals spinning uselessly.

  The sun was high in the sky, and the long grass on the clifftops brushed her ankles as she walked. Spring was late with a vengeance, and the fields were dotted with forget-me-nots, buttercups and loosestrife. Spontaneously, she raised her arms to the sky. She felt more light-hearted than she had in months.

  Nearer the cliff edge, the ground was covered in scree and chalk. Eva looked down at the beach five hundred feet below. From such a height, she could barely see the rocks. It was easy to imagine that they were skulls, washed back from the marshes of Flanders and the fields of Picardy and dumped at the bottom of the English cliffs.

  In a moment now it would be time. Time to put all her energy into the run. You can’t do these things more than once, and you have to do them properly. She remembered how hard Christopher had thrown that little book; it must have taken all his strength …

  Then, along the stretch of the cliffs, she heard the ting-ting-ting of a bicycle bell and what sounded like someone shouting.

  Oh, for God’s sake, day trippers. Just what she needed. The closer the figure got – it was a lone woman – the more familiar she looked. Eva realised that it was the same bike she had dumped at the stile, and by the time she realised that the woman had stolen it – she laughed at the absurdity of her outrage – the stranger was one no longer but had resolved into the form of Lucia Percival.

  ‘Cha, I am very sweaty after that sprint,’ she exclaimed, dismounting and putting the bike on its stand. ‘Whew! You were just about to run for that cliff, weren’t you? I could see it in your shoulders. I thought I was too late.’

  Lucia was not lying. The armpits of her calico dress were stained, and sweat was running down her forehead and neck. She clung onto the bicycle. She was not looking that well herself, wan and haggard, out of breath from exertion. Her chest rose and fell, and she put her hand on it. ‘I wanted to see you. I needed someone to talk to. Your friend Sybil just said that you’d gone to Beachy Head. She was in a rush out the door. Well, she was not worried, but she doesn’t know about suicide, and I do. So I went after you. No sign of you on the train. Thought I’d missed you.’

  ‘That was very good of you,’ Eva said, trying not to sound cold, ‘but there was no need.’

  ‘People like her don’t understand,’ Lucia continued, as if Eva had not spoken, ‘that some of us feel at the outer, higher ranges of life. Everything is brighter and crueller. We feel the full experience; most people, only half. How can you even listen to Wagner, for example, let alone sing him, if you are not born that way? I knew here,’ she thumped her chest, ‘that you were not out for a pleasant walk. A mi fi tell yu, just a few weeks ago they pulled me out of the river Clyde after I had tried the very
same thing and nearly succeeded.’

  ‘Lucia!’ Eva said, with genuine surprise.

  ‘I was in sad, sad straits – I will tell you presently what it was all about – and had made up my mind to be swept away out of reach of human cruelty for ever. So I went down to a certain spot and walked straight into the water. It was so rank and cold. I had to keep telling myself I was about to die and that the water quality was not that important.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘The strange thing was how aware I was of the beauty even in that filthy place. Glasgow was clothed in fog, but as the water lapped around my chin I saw the lights of a ship emerging. It was like a painting. Then I lost my footing; before I knew it, I had been carried out to a place beyond my depth. My hair was all loose and spread across the water as I sank. My clothes were helping me sink too. Then water poured into my mouth, and I could barely keep above the surface long enough to breathe before I was under again. I felt fear, but from a long way away, you understand? I was beyond everything. It was neither good nor bad. It just was. I was drowning, then, you see, good and proper.’

  Eva became aware that Lucia was walking her further away from the cliff edge, slowly, bit by bit.

  ‘But you didn’t drown.’

  Lucia shrugged. ‘Oh, I got rescued. Some captain from a tugboat pulled me out and told me not to be such a damned fool. I puked river water all over his shoes, and then he propositioned me. I had to turn him down.’

  ‘I see,’ Eva said, laughing in spite of herself. Then, ‘Why did you try to drown yourself?’

  ‘Keep walking with me, and I’ll tell you.’

  Eva let Lucia steer her safely inland. It was only now, as the magnitude of what Lucia had guided her away from dawned on her that she began to feel a bit dizzy and tight around the chest. The light-hearted detachment that had buoyed her over the past few days was beginning to fade. She hoped Lucia would keep talking. She was not ready to face her own demons yet.