White Feather

White Feather

It’s oddly quiet. Only the ticking of the old clock offers the comfort of sound. Occasionally the wind will howl around the building and the rain will pound the windows with a ferocious temper as though desperate to get to the people inside, the people in this case being me and you.

Tick, tick, tick, tick….the passage of time constantly chiming away the lives of those in the world, like a constant reminder that once gone, time is gone forever.

Tick, another second gone.

Tick, and another one, and another and so it goes until eventually time stops for us all together.
And I got all of that from a ticking clock.

From where I sit the world is varying shades of grey. Outside is grey, inside is grey – if there are colours, they have little shine now. Life since that day has not been the same. Everything has been grey – no clarification, no easy black and whites. Nothing seems to matter now.
That day, I haven’t really let myself think about it. It’s amazing how one event can change everything, the way you look at things, the way things look at you. Life can become so complicated in the blink of an eye but can take a lifetime to understand. It hardly seems fair. Perhaps life would be more fun if it was the other way around. Well maybe just easier. But I suppose whoever’s running this thing has no time for ‘easy’. Things have to be difficult otherwise you won’t learn anything . . .  I think I would rather not learn anything and have an easy life . . . Life’s just full to the brim of those little challenges.
You’re probably thinking, ‘God, stop being philosophical and tell us what the hell happen on that day!’ All people have the tendency to want to know what’s not being said, but ever thought what’s not being said is not being said for a reason? Of course you have, that goes through everybody’s head a split second before that uncomfortable desire kicks in: the desire to be the ‘one who knows’. We are all the same. We all have the same thoughts. It’s just how we act on those thoughts that make us who we are.
Sorry, I guess I’m getting all philosophical again but I think I need to before I talk about that day. It’s like when you’re driving and you spot a stop sign just ahead of you. You can’t stop immediately; you put your foot down slowly, calmly, building yourself up for the second that you stop altogether. That day is my stop sign and I have to slow down before I can stop. So be patient ‘cos I’m getting there.

I used to have no fear, I was ideal for what they wanted, I would swagger around as though I owned the town but now the world seems so much more sinister and unwelcoming then it did back in the good old days. Even if I still had it in me I don’t know if I would want to own the town now. All I feel now as I walk down the street are eyes on my back, boring into me with an intensity that would knock out a heavyweight boxer. That’s why I’m here, in this small room with nothing but a ticking clock for company. I just can’t face outside anymore. Everything that used to fill me with a joy so profound that I felt as though I could burst into a thousand happy suns, now just serves to remind me of everything that is wrong with the world, and with me. I’m far too young to be filled with such cynicism but that’s just what happens I guess. So I sit here, hoping that maybe the outside world will come to me. But my small ray of sunlight doesn’t come here anymore. She stopped coming.
Since I came back she’s left, couldn’t stand the sight of me or maybe she just got tired of waiting. I can’t be what I once was but life just goes on regardless, with or without her and I told her as much. She didn’t deserve that though. She tried. I couldn’t. But I wish I had told her before that she’s everything, everything I have ever done was for her. I wish I had told her that. That day was what I’d been trained for, what I signed up for but who knew that I would end up there. Everyone was signing up, so I guess I should too, right? I had never really considered it until one day I was just sitting there on the tram, twiddling my thumbs, when this old lady came up to me. She looked me up and down like a was covered in horse dung and handed me something. Part of me knew that I didn’t want what she was trying to give me but I held out my hand anyway and took it, ramming it in my pocket before I had even unclenched my fist. She just continued to look at me (if looks could kill) as if I was the scum of the earth, without saying a word or even blinking. It was like I was back at school and being looked over by the Head Master just before he gave me the cane, I was forever getting in trouble at school. The tram stopped and without thinking I just jumped off. I couldn’t take that look anymore. Part of me was so unbearably angry that I had reacted like a coward when the only threat was this tiny old lady who probably just wanted my seat. And I would have if it hadn‘t been for that look. Never had I been made to feel so worthless. Nobody makes me feel like that. Nobody. Processing this in my head, I found myself wondering toward the river, as I always did when I needed to clear my head and calm down. I was heading towards our bench, mine and Fee’s. Sitting down I decided to look in my pocket. Taking it out carefully, I looked at it in horror. So that’s what she thought of me. Jesus, the war had only been going on for a month or two and already I was labelled like this! It would be over by Christmas anyway. At least that’s what they were all saying. That woman had no right, no right whatsoever. Ramming it back in my pocket, I went in search of my ray of sunshine.

Do you want to know something funny? This isn’t even that day, you know the one I was rambling on about earlier. This is my car still slowing down. Do you want me to get back into the story? It’s really not something that you, in your happy little world will want to hear about. I don’t have a happy ending up my sleeve, no neat little bows to tie the loose ends up with. Things just end up exactly how they started. You, sure you want me to go on?

Well, I found my sunshine but like all rays of brilliant sunshine, there is a cloud lurking to cover it up and destroy the picnic. Today the cloud was the thing in my pocket. Who knew that something so innocent looking could spark off a chain of events that could just twist, stretch and torture your soul as harshly as it has mine. Felicity looked at me, the cloud moving across her face. She did not need to say anything; I could read what was in her head through those clear blue eyes that swam in the tears that threatened to spill over the dam of her eyelids.

“You agree with that woman, don’t you?”

I couldn’t control it, the angry just bubbled away below the surface as she tried to explain. “Look, John’s gone, Bill’s gone, everyone’s gone. It’s just you left here. It’s not going to be over by Christmas and you know that. You can’t keep putting it off. This kind of thing’s just going to get worse and you know that too. I don’t want you to go but I don’t think that you have much of a choice. You know I don’t want you to go right? You understand that I want nothing more then for you to stay here, with me… For God sake, just say something!”
How could I? I just looked at her, with those earnest eyes of hers looking straight back at me. I put it back in my pocket.
“See you when this is all over, Fee,” I say as I turn to walk out the door. From the door I turn to look at her, in time to see the water breaking the dam. She didn’t deserve that either but that’s said only with hindsight, like most things.
So, I left her house and just walked. I couldn’t go back home, I couldn’t go back to Fee’s so I headed right up to the office and put my name on that sheet they held out in front of me, their eyes taking me in and sizing me up and then the smirk spread across their greasy little faces; “He’ll do, yes, he’ll do nicely”.
What happened between then and that day is the same for pretty much every name on that piece of paper. Trucks took us to and from places where little by little your soul left you ‘til you were moulded into the perfect soldier with no heart or remorse. Every muscle in your body hurt, everything hurt but that’s what they wanted. It’s what they needed. They needed you to feel the pain.

“Pain is weakness leaving the body. Get used to it boys.”

That’s what they shouted at you when you just couldn’t take it anymore, when you just fell over and couldn’t get back up. Well, couldn’t or wouldn’t out of choice and spite. That’s when they got nasty. Sometimes, despite the pain, it was better to just get up, avoid the wrath of the Lords. We had an enemy to fight, boys. Forget the ones at home. Soon we were shipped off like cattle being taken to the abattoir. All I remember of the night across the Channel was the railing, my own personal friend for my first time on a boat. How supportive that railing was! Never letting me fall into the dark, restless mass underneath even when I was leaning over him hurling my guts out. It didn’t take half as long as I thought it would. France was a distant country, no less than a days trip, I’d say. But then again, everything past your front doorstep is always going to be a distance away, specially when the furthest you’ve been away from home is to the sea ‘bout 50 miles down the road. France seemed like an eternity away. But there I was staring France right in the eyes, wondering what the hell I was doing there and there she was staring right back saying “Just wait ‘til you see what I’ve got in store for you.” And I looked at it with that horrible sinking feeling that something’s watching you, lying in wait. You know that feeling, the one that just pulls you down and the longer you feel it the more you just want to turn around, run and hide somewhere ‘til the darkness stops coming after you and your stomach returns to normal? Well, I had been experiencing that since that day on the tram. It had been clouding my every thought, my every action and I couldn’t shake it.
We docked in some harbour with the rest of the war looming over us like an impenetrable mountain that you couldn’t just go round, you had to go through it but that was near impossible ‘cos it’s a goddamn mountain. The nearer we got to the Front the closer we got to being stuck next to this mountain with The Enemy hot on our heels and the sheer cliff face in front with no way up and out of the sticky spot we had got ourselves into. We were then herded into our lines and away we marched. The people who weren’t singing and clapping and enjoying the prospect of this grand adventure that we found ourselves on were thinking “God, these people are just marching us to our deaths, aren’t they?” and you want to know the sad part? They were right. Maybe a quarter of those men I was marching with made the trip back. A quarter, if that!

We had been at the Front for ‘bout four months when the rumours started. The grouping in the corner to discuss the ‘big offensive’ that was going to drive those huns back to were they came from. Everyone was holding there breath, some with excitement, most with dread. We had been in the reserve trench for most of the four months but just ‘cos we weren’t right there doesn’t mean we couldn’t hear it. Those flares going up in the middle of the night, trying to find the enemy stupid enough to try and cross ‘No Man’s Land’ and the guns that made it sound like the whole bloody world was exploding right below your feet, and the gas. With the right wind, the gas carried right over to us and snuck round every corner searching out a gap to flow into. The look on those guys faces when the gas finds them or catches them unawares. They know what’ll happen to them, they know there’s nothing any of us can do except strap you to a table to stop you from running out and ending your own agony. If you wanted that all you had to do was run in between the trenches. One of those snipers would get you, maybe even your own. In this kind of war, it’s hard to tell which side anyone’s on. We all have the same crazed look on our faces. But the war was catching up with us and we would have to stand up and fight it.
The rumours were confirmed by The Lord himself. He actually came down from his high horse to tell us that he was sending us all over the top in twelve hours, while he would be enjoying his Sunday roast a good 50 miles behind our trench. I just looked at him with a look of sheer disgust, I couldn’t help it. He looked around all of us in turn, catching each of our eyes but not mine. He tried to meet my gaze but he couldn’t, he knew what we’d lose. I knew he knew and he saw that in my eyes and that frightened him. He left us to “prepare” for tomorrow. I just followed him with my eyes, not moving a muscle, he slowed then turned back to face me. He caught my eyes then and this time I was the one who had to break away. His eyes looked exactly like Fee’s the day I left her, filled with tears and remorse. We were all going to die, he knew that, it wasn’t his decision, he was just following orders and he was sorry. I let him leave knowing that the guilt would eat him alive for the rest of his life.. The younger men, boys really, some no more then fifteen, spent the night cleaning and re-cleaning their guns and talking about how those ‘huns’ won’t know what hit ‘em. The older ones spent the night writing home or gazing at pictures of their sweethearts. Me, I sat in the mud and listened to the rats knocking over the cans in No Man’s Land and felt the cold, dripping wet slip in between my shoulder blades, my feet slipping further in to the mud then was comfortable and just letting my mind go numb, completely numb. Perhaps I could survive on instinct. I didn’t want to believe that this could be my last night on earth; the last time I felt rain on my face, the last time I saw the stars in all their glittering glory, the last time I felt the tug of regret pull my heart. I didn’t like how I was going to leave this world. I didn’t want to spend my last night sitting in the mud wishing that I had done everything differently. But I suppose a life without regrets is no life at all, but in all my twenty-one years I never realised I could have made so many mistakes to regret. Mistakes I wouldn’t have the time to put right. I was about to lose my life in a huge brown sea that stretched on forever.
For many, the night was too quick. Most shared the feeling that that night was our last so they wanted it to last. For me, the night was too long. Why wait for the inevitable? The quicker it came, the quicker the whole thing would be over.
The order came and we readied ourselves. Men laughed and joked, men hugged and shed silent tears, I stood patiently beside the others who didn’t join in the hysteria that came before the ‘Ready, steady GO!’ One of them, Private Luke Williams, I had signed up with, trained with and was now going to die with was on my right, dead pan and determined. You could see it in his eyes that he was ready for this. He was as good as they come and wanted this. He never said much but he was always there. When I was getting all philosophical (I was always like this you see, the war can’t change everything) he would just sit and laugh at my silly imaginings or he would listen and nod his head ‘cos he knew what I meant. The first day of training, I fell over on the wet grass and just couldn’t move, everything hurt, my muscles felt like red irons in my legs. Looking up I saw Luke, with the same look in his eyes as he had standing at the Front, looking out over that wide expanse of land, standing over me with his hand out. Something about him told me that I couldn’t give up, that I had to get up. I took his outstretched hand, I got up and continued running. Since then we’d been running together. Standing there looking out, he turned his head to look at me and said:
“There’s never going to be a good time to die, just a good reason and you know what, Ed? I don’t think this war is that good reason and I don’t want to die for nothing.”
“Me neither, Luke. Me neither.”
With that he turned his head again and I saw that determination slip from his eyes. He was no more ready than I was and that scared me, more then going over the top did.
Gunfire, shells, bombs, machine-gun fire, screaming: the sounds of war. The sounds we were accosted with, pretty much the second we clambered over the mud wall and out into No Man’s Land. Ground, dirt, barbed wire and body parts flew in all directions making it hard to even see The Enemy let alone attack. Luke and I ran side by side, dodging explosions and flying objects as best we could, slipping and tripping in the mud, the thick ooze below our feet threatening to swallow us whole. The sound of machine-guns ringing in our ears, like hysterical laughter. I saw it all, bodies being kept upright only by the steady pulsing force of the guns that ripped them to shreds, the people writhing in agony as the mud’s paws groped at them, pulling them under. People I had known died around me, one by one, mowed down like blades of grass. But Luke and I kept running. Sound and sight became one big overwhelming blur that raged around us. Sounds became indistinguishable, it was like running through a dream. No, a nightmare. Until that one shot brought me back to reality. Luke fell, knees buckling under him, then a second shot. This one I felt. I felt the vibration as the bullet hit my shoulder bone. I felt the blood pour out of the gaping hole the bullet created, mixing with the sweat to paste my clothes to my body. I fell to the ground, the world returning to the blur around me, then this unstoppable screaming started. A high pitched wail echoed in my ears. It took me a while to realise this hysterical cry was my own pain. Turning to my right I saw Luke, his eyes fixed on my face. I had forgotten him. I crawled over to him, ignoring the sharp knife point of pain that stabbed around my wound. He was fading away, everything about him was dimming. Frantically I tried to stop the steady gush of blood coming from the poppy sized hole in his chest but it wouldn’t stop. His crimson life flowing from him like the final rays of sunlight before the giant eye closes for the night. Kneeling in a mixture of his blood, my blood and mud, I sat there trying to keep him alive. The war raged on around us but none of it was clear, just a distorted image of the truth. The colours smudged into one mass of grey around us. I couldn’t tell you how long I sat there with my hand on his heart, talking rubbish just to keep him from passing out. After a while, I felt a hand reach out to pull mine away. I met Luke’s eyes and he just shook his head.
“It’s ok, Ed.” I let my hand slip away as I watched his eyes slowly close. That was it. He was gone like that. No family gathering around his bed-side to say their final goodbyes, no priest to help him confess his sins before he passed from this world to the next; just me, holding his heart. I felt the blood pulsing under my hand, I felt that pulse slow. Sometimes, I still feel it. Sitting in my room, I feel his heart beat slipping through my fingers. I sat and watched my best friend die, knowing there was nothing I could do.
He looked more at peace than I had ever seen him. His steely eyes closed to the horrors around him. I sat there, my tears creating streams down my face through the dirt and the blood. A shell went off somewhere ahead of me. I knew I had to react but I couldn’t move. How could I leave him there? I just couldn’t. Shouting was coming from all directions but I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, hear what they were saying. Then an explosion hit my eardrums, hard.
When I woke up, I was here. Well, most of me was here. My left arm was buried along with Luke. One side of my face scarred beyond recognition, the other side was still me. But I looked older than I remembered. The explosion had been almost directly beside me, knocking me out on impact, taking parts of me with it and scarring the rest with shrapnel pieces. I’m not a pretty sight, I know that. But it’s not an infectious disease I have. The stares I can take, the physical avoidance is harder to cope with. Though I don’t blame her for not wanting me anymore, I don’t want me anymore but I can’t hide from myself. She can forget me but I can’t. That day made me who I am today. We both have to learn to deal with that I think. Maybe one day she’ll come back and I can wait for that day, but the thing of it is, I can live through it if she doesn’t come back. I can live through a lot of things as it turns out.

But can you do me a favour? If you see her, will you tell her, just tell her everything. I can’t do it, you see, I’ve tried. But for some reason, the dazzling light of my sunshine leaves me unable to. I wish that I could, it would be better coming from me but maybe now she will understand. And I really need her to understand. I don’t need her but that doesn’t really change anything. I still want my sun back. After so long under the clouds, some sun would be nice.

Do you remember what I said at the start of this story, about the old lady? I kept what she gave, you know. During training, at the front, even as I sat next to Luke, watching him die, I had it with me. I’m not a coward. People can see that now by my missing limb, my scarred face and the white feather I wear alongside my medal. That white feather is my explanation for everything that’s happened.

And I wear it with pride.