An Ice-Cream War

by William Boyd

  “Never mind, never mind.” Gabriel clawed his hair into shape with stiff fingers. He looked at Felix.

  “Felix, you know I wanted to talk to you about this best man business?”

  “Don’t worry, Gabriel. I’ve been working on my speech for days. Very funny, have everyone in stitches. Nothing improper, mind you.”

  “Oh.” Gabriel looked pained.

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Well, you know I asked you to be best man because I thought that Sammy—Sammy Hinshelwood, in my battalion—wouldn’t be on leave…”

  “Yes. I don’t quite see.”

  “Well, he is. On leave. He told me last week. He telegraphed.”

  Felix felt his face tighten.

  “Well, old chap, I’ve known Sammy for ages, and that was the original plan and—”

  “You’ve known me for ages too.” Felix somehow managed a laugh.

  “I would have told you earlier but it’s all been so hectic. Sammy’s down here now staying at the pub in the village. Charis knows him too. She’d like Sammy to…We had the rehearsal last night and everything. I said you wouldn’t mind. But look, old fellow, I’d like you to be chief usher, if you would. Be an awfully big help.”

  Felix pulled on his drawers and tugged his shirt over his head. He relaxed his facial muscles for the instant his face was covered, then clenched his teeth and shut his eyes. Stupid rotting wedding, he thought, as his head pushed through the collar. I don’t care.

  “Don’t worry, Gabe,” he said with a bright hard smile. “I can see your problem. No, fine. Glad to do your ushering for you. It was a pretty dreadful speech anyway, I’m sure.”

  Felix gazed out of his bedroom window at the south lawn and the fishponds. He saw Cyril, the gardener, trudge across it from the orchard, a heavy bucket in his hand, on the way to feed the carp. As if to complement Felix’s mood the brilliant day had suddenly clouded over, as it can in an English summer, and had become cool. The fishponds, before a deep and placid blue, were now mouse-grey and crinkled by a breeze.

  “Charis knows him too. She’d like Sammy to…” The words hummed in his head. He knew who to blame for his bitter disappointment. Damn Charis, he thought. Damn bloody Charis. During the walk back from the willow pool he had been brittle and gay, expressing all sorts of outlandish opinions on White Slavery, the Cailloux case in Paris, the assembly of the fleet at Spithead and had loudly announced his plans to take dance lessons in order to master the Tango and Maxixe. This was a Felix Gabriel knew well, and he had laughed and humoured him, apparently glad to see him back on iconoclastic form.

  Once back in his room Felix had punched his pillow, sworn and impulsively ripped his best man’s speech into pieces. He was annoyed to find his eyes smarting with tears of frustration and hurt. He resolved to be steely and cynical at all costs. No one should guess how he felt let down and betrayed. Sammy Hinshelwood. Another wretched soldier, boisterous and hearty. How he detested the army!

  He lay on his bed and smoked a cigarette, watching the blue braided fumes curl and disintegrate above his head. His trunks from school had arrived while he was away at Holland’s and they had not been unpacked, as he had requested.

  Unlocking one, he took out some books and a cardboard cylinder. From this he removed a coloured poster. It was an offer from de Reske cigarettes, one of the brands he smoked. On receipt of six empty packets the poster was sent free of charge. It portrayed a young couple sitting at a table. A slim young man in evening dress leant forward, cupping his chin in one hand, his other behind him, languidly resting on the seat back, a smoking cigarette held between two fingers. He gazed dreamily into the eyes of an equally slim woman, who leant forward also, thereby causing her considerable bosom to press against the low-cut bodice of her silk gown.

  What fascinated and stimulated Felix about this picture was the marked disproportion of the woman’s breasts to her elegant frail form, and the way she leant forward, provocatively offering them in their décolleté, as some kind of reward for her companion’s sophisticated taste in choosing to smoke de Reske.

  Felix spread the picture on the hearth rug. He weighted one side with an ashtray and rubbed his groin area experimentally through his cotton trousers. Normally the visual and physical stimulus produced instantaneous results, but on this occasion it seemed merely a bored mechanical exercise. He picked up his ashtray, repackaged his advertisement and resumed his seat by the window, staring emptily at the lawn, the ponds and the fields beyond, now shadowed by the passage of evening breezes.

  Later Hester, the upstairs housemaid, drew him a bath. He bathed and changed for dinner. The family, he knew, would be gathering in the inner hall in preparation for the evening meal, but he felt not the slightest inclination to join them. He sat down at his desk and took out some writing paper from a drawer. He scored out ‘Stackpole Manor’ on the letter head and wrote ‘Bleak House’ in its place. He would write to Holland, his friend and inspiration from school, the only person who could understand him, who could appreciate and share his mood.

  My dear Holland, (he wrote)

  My head aches and a drowsy numbness pains my neck. I am home again. This despicable house is like some vast malodorous carcass dropped in Kent, silvery with putrefaction and occupied by sleek pale complacent maggots, most of whom are wearing military uniforms. My family, God save me from my family. There is not one ‘soul’ among them. (I except, as always, brother and groom Gabriel—though he is not himself. On perusing a copy of my wedding speech he told me it was far too inflammatory and provocative for the intolerant and sensitive ears of my assembled relations. Platitudes, he said, all that we require are platitudes and homilies and perhaps one or two well-known jokes. I of course refused to alter a single word and have, as a result, been demoted from best man to chief usher. I am unrepentant.)

  Shall you know the others? Cressida, my eldest sister, unmarried and rapidly stoutening, humourless and intolerably bossy, who now runs the household leaving my dear mother free to pursue her ‘enthusiasms’. As I write, the driveway is filled with motors of every type and description. Then Yseult, pale and simple minded. Shamelessly compliant and cowed by her grotesque husband, the booming Falstaffian Lt Col. Henry Hyams. They are accompanied by their egregious child, Charles, my nephew, currently depriving me of the use of my elegant dressing room. Next we have the twins; Albertine (quite nice, I admit, and cheerful) and Eustacia (horribly embittered) and their respective spouses. Albertine trapped the hon. Greville Verschoyle—another soldier, captain or major, or something. Eustacia contrived to snare, only last year, Lieutenant Nigel Bathe—with an ‘e’, mark you. The Nigel Bathes must be the most unpleasant couple I know. Soldiers, soldiers everywhere. One of the advantages, for daughters, of having a father who’s a major and spending their lives in garrison towns. Even dear Gabriel is a soldier. Revolting Charles will become one, I’m sure. Leaving only me and my two delightful but very noisy nieces (Hattie and Dora: why do they name them after scullery maids?) uncalled to the colours. I have saved the best ‘til last. I have talked of my father before, have I not? I have still to see him, though I have been here all day—

  He was interrupted by the brassy crescendo of the first dinner gong. He put down his pen. He had described his family to Holland many times before, but the letter had been therapeutic. He felt quite restored.

  He checked his reflection in the cheval-glass that stood in the corner of his room. His hair…Holland had abandoned hair cream and macassar so Felix had followed suit. They were growing their hair longer too. Prudence, however, dictated that tonight would not be a good time to draw his father’s attention to its length. He took a bottle from his trunk and poured some oil into his right palm, rubbed his hands together and smoothed them over his head. He combed his hair again, slicking it down close to his head. With his little finger he dislodged a congealed strand so that it fell across his forehead. He made a silent wager that his father would tell him to get his hair cut. He straightene
d his bow tie. The second gong sounded in the hall.

  At the door of his bedroom he bumped into Charles, similarly attired in a dinner suit. Charles was a thin child with sad eyes and a weak chin. He had inherited none of his father’s potent geniality.

  “Where on earth do you think you’re going?” Felix demanded, impeding Charles’s progress down the corridor.

  “To dinner, Uncle Felix.”

  “Dinner? Children don’t eat dinner now.”

  “Oh but Grandmama said tonight we could. All of us together. Seeing as it’s the wedding tomorrow.”

  Felix raised his eyebrows. “Hattie and Dora too?”

  “Yes.”

  This was intolerable. “Good God! All right, you go on down.” Charles left in a rush. Felix lit a cigarette, allowing Charles time to get downstairs well before it was time to make his entrance.

  The inner hall was the most comfortable room in the house. It was large and high-ceilinged and more frequently used than any other. The walls were panelled in light oak and cretonne-covered armchairs and sofas were grouped in front of a sizeable fireplace with inglenooks. The floor was parquetine and scattered with Indian rugs. It was set to one side of the house, wedged in, as it were, between the original building and the new additions. A leaded window looked out onto the drive and the kitchen extensions.

  Most of the Cobb family were present when Felix entered, one hand in a pocket, the other holding his cigarette nonchalantly at waist height. Dora and Hattie sat in one corner wearing frilly lace dresses and accompanied by their governess. They were very quiet and well-behaved. In a large group by the fireplace sat his mother, Yseult and Albertine. Ranged before the chimney-piece were the men: Gabriel, Sammy Hinshelwood, Greville Verschoyle and Lt Col. Hyams, the last of whom was laughing very loudly, one hand clamped on the shoulder of his miserable son who stood at his side, head bowed as if expecting a blow. Scanning the room Felix noted the absence of Cressida—who was presumably supervising the serving of dinner—the Nigel Bathes and his father.

  His mother was the first to notice his arrival.

  “Felix, darling,” she said, rising to her feet. “Come and sit down. You must be tired after your swim.” She advanced to take his arm, as if he were some kind of invalid or partially blind. “Should you be smoking?” She added as an afterthought.

  “Felix,” Albertine cried. “Smoking. Do you mind?”

  “It’s all right, Mother,” he said, gently releasing his elbow from her grip. “I’ll stand with the men.” He hoped the irony in his tone was evident: he was going to assert his personality tonight come what may. He greeted those members of his family whom he had not yet seen and politely answered a few questions about leaving school and going to Oxford.

  “Felix,” Henry Hyams called. “Sherry? Can he have a sherry, Mrs Cobb, now he’s old enough to smoke? Ha-wha-wha!”

  Felix helped himself to a sherry from one of the crystal decanters that stood on a table near the window, trying to ignore his brother-in-law’s imbecile hilarity. There was gin, brandy, whisky and a soda siphon, but he thought he’d better not go too far too quickly. He rejoined the group by the fire.

  “Sorry to have deposed you as best man, Felix,” Sammy Hinshelwood said. He was a fair-looking young man with a small moustache and a receding hairline. He held one hand behind his back as if standing at ease on a parade ground.

  Felix sipped his sherry. “Don’t worry about it.” he said, darting a glance at Gabriel, who was talking to Henry Hyams. “I was only first reserve anyway. Good that you could get on leave.”

  “Yes,” Hinshelwood said. “It was short notice, but I’m glad I’m around to see Gabbers getting spliced at last.”

  “Sorry. Gabbers?” Felix said disingenuously.

  “Gabbers. Old Gabbers over there. Your bro. Cap’n Cobb, no less.”

  “Oh, Gabbers. Yes.” Felix turned to his mother. “Any sign of the Nigel Bathes, Mother?”

  “Yes, darling. They arrived half an hour ago. They’re getting changed.”

  “Pity,” Felix said under his breath. He could happily have done without the Bathes. Eustacia, though Albertine’s twin, did not possess even her modicum of prettiness and was a surly moody person at the best of tunes. Nigel Bathe, her husband, complemented her sourness with an endless stream of grievances and alleged injustices which he claimed the world at large was always visiting on him. Wrongly totalled mess bills, unfair allocations of duty, uncongenial postings and the like. The list was endless. It took very little time for the Bathes to depress the tone and atmosphere of any gathering.

  Felix drained his sherry and was about to get a refill when Henry Hyams attracted his attention by loudly calling his name and raising his hand as if he were trying to halt a stream of traffic. Henry Hyams was a large portly man who filled his dinner suit to capacity. The fat on his neck bulged over his stiff collar and he looked hot and trussed up. He had very small pale blue eyes, a waxed moustache and his thinning hair was brushed forward over his forehead and stuck there in a curl with hair oil.

  “Yes, Henry?” Felix said patiently, modulating his voice in respectful falling tones.

  “Oxford, Felix, Oxford.”

  “Yes, Henry?” Felix repeated, this time on a rising note.

  “What’s it all about, man? What’s it all about? Not entering the church are you? Mmphwaw!” He gave a snorting bark of laughter.

  “Certainly not,” Felix answered promptly.

  “Felix is going up to read, um, modern history,” his mother interrupted. “That is right, dear, isn’t it? I was so pleased to hear it was modern.”

  “Modem history!” came an outraged bellow from the doorway. “I’ll give you modern history!”

  Everyone whirled round in alarm. It was Major Cobb.

  Felix was always surprised that his family were by and large reasonably tall when he saw his father. Major Cobb was a small man who had once been powerfully built. Some evidence of those early endowments was still visible, but since leaving the army he had grown dangerously fat. Tonight, Felix thought, he looked like a tiny, black and white, angry box. He was wearing—inexplicably—black knickerbockers and white silk stockings, buckled shoes, a tail coat, dickie and stiff wing collar with a white bow tie. Across his left breast jingled a row of medals. He looked like a diminutive ambassador about to present his credentials at the court of Saint James’s. He was almost completely bald, but, against the fashion of the time, retained colour of old piano keys, as if he were just recovering from an illness or about to be seriously afflicted by one. He had heavy bags below his eyes and his upper lids were plump wattles. The swagged folds of flesh left only thin slits for him to peer through. A thoroughly unpleasant looking man, all in all, Felix thought. He prayed earnestly that his own old age wouldn’t leave him similarly disadvantaged.

  He stamped into the centre of the room flourishing a rolled up newspaper and hurled it into the fire. This gesture would have had more symbolic force if the fire had been lit. As it was it just rebounded from the fire back and struck the gaping Charles just below the knee.

  “That damned villain, Carson!” the major said. “He ought to be boiled in oil!”

  “Hamish!” Mrs Cobb shrieked. “Calm yourself! The children are here.”

  “Modern…wretched history. I don’t know. Where will it end?” He glanced wildly round the room as if noting its occupants for the first time. “Home Rule, syndicalism, militants, suffragettes. I spit on them all!” he seethed.

  Felix turned away. He’d seen these displays too often to be fearful or even impressed. Little Charles, to whom the last remarks had been addressed, looked as if he had just been sentenced to Sir Edward Carson’s fate.

  “No point in getting steamed up, Hamish,” Henry Hyams said jovially. “Seven-day wonder stuff, don’t you know.”

  The major was led to a chair and seated, a whisky and soda placed in his trembling hand. Felix sidled up to Gabriel as the major began to heap more iniquities on the home rul
e question.

  “Why is he dressed like that?” Felix whispered. “Is he going mad or what?”

  “I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “I think it’s something to do with the wedding.”

  “But he wasn’t like this at Eustacia’s. Mind you, that’s understandable. Oh. Talk of the devil.”

  Eustacia and Nigel Bathe had come in, unnoticed in the wake of the major’s tirade, and were still standing in the doorway being offended. Eustacia was very dark, with Felix’s colouring, even down to the hint of a moustache, but her face lacked all animation, as if permanently slumped in disgruntlement. Two deep lines were scored from the edge of her nostrils to the corners of her mouth.

  “Why, Mother,” she plaintively rebuked. “We’ve been standing here five minutes while you all row and fling newspapers.”

  Mrs Cobb rose to her feet for a third time. “How pretty you look, Eustacia,” she said serenely, in a dreamy, far-away voice. “Isn’t that lovely. Crêpe de chine?” She fingered the sleeve of Eustacia’s blouse.

  “Nigel!” shouted Henry Hyams diplomatically. “Sirrah. Come ye hither and meet Sammy Hinshelwood.”

  Nigel Bathe, a pale blond soft-edged man, joined the group by the fire. Felix peered at him. Yes, he had thought so, Nigel Bathe had grown a moustache, a thin, almost white thing that in a certain light was invisible.

  “Everybody here at last,” sighed Mrs Cobb as if transported with joy.

  “Except Charis,” Gabriel added.

  “Ah yes. Except Charis.”

  “Poor Charis,” Greville Verschoyle laughed. “I wonder what Aunt Mary’s having for dinner?” Then remembering that Aunt Mary wasn’t his aunt and catching Albertine’s reproving look, said, “Sorry…erm. I mean shame she couldn’t be with us, what? Eh, Gabriel? Charis, that is…”

  “Good evening, Father,” Felix said to the major who was staring at the soda bubbles rising in his whisky glass. He looked round as if he were being addressed by a total stranger.

  “Wha…? Eh? You’re meant to be in London.”