1982 - An Ice-Cream War

by William Boyd

  “Got the case, Carrie old girl. Let’s get some sleep, shall we? Honeymoon starts tomorrow,” was all he said and turned away from her, pulling the sheets over his shoulder. He was asleep within minutes, or so his even breathing seemed to indicate, Charis lay awake for a while longer, savouring-the unfamiliar experience of sharing her bed with a man. She thought vaguely about the morning and her ‘initiation into womanhood’. Aunt Bedelia had solemnly and ambiguously informed her about Gabriel’s nuptial duties. Gabriel was right, she reassured herself again, it was too important an event, too sensitive to risk while they were both tired and a bit irritable.

  But in the morning Gabriel was up before her, standing on the balcony outside the bedroom.

  “Wake up, Mrs Cobb,” he said with his familiar wide grin when he saw her sitting up in bed. “Far too nice a day for sleepyheads.”

  He seemed in a very good mood and did not disturb her when she put on her clothes in the dressing room. She selected a v-necked blouse from the once-missing valise and reflected that, after all, he had been correct to spend half the night searching for it: it would have spoilt things not to have all her clothes with her on her first full day as Mrs Gabriel Cobb.

  On their way down to the dining room, on the landing outside their rooms, Gabriel put his arms round her shoulders and gave her a kiss. His good humour was infectious and dispelled any lingering doubts she had about the events—or rather the lack of them—of the preceding night.

  During breakfast they laughed and joked about the other guests in the hotel, trying to guess their identities. “A German Hebrew financier,” Gabriel said of one. “A millionaire from Dakota,” Charis suggested. ‘A pork-packer with his front-row tottie’, ‘two boudoir boys’. The Angleterre was, they both agreed, rather a ‘smart’ hotel, even if most of the fashionable crowd went to the Roches Noires across the street.

  Later, they sat for a while on the hotel’s terrace. Gabriel read a copy of The Times that was two days old.

  “It seems funny,” he said. “To think we weren’t married then.” He reached over and squeezed her hand. “It seems as if we’ve been married for ages.”

  Charis wasn’t sure what he meant—she hardly felt married at all—but he said it so warmly that it seemed like the deepest compliment. Her eyes prickled with tears for a moment, so intense was her feeling of love for him. Dear, good Gabriel! She lowered her head to flick through the magazine she was holding. She heard Gabriel reading something out to her from The Times. She caught something about ‘Austria’ and ‘Russia’, but she wasn’t really paying attention.

  A patch of sun inched across the terrace. She watched its slow progress towards her feet, happy for a while to be idle and still with her husband. She felt an unfamiliar pride in her new status and for a few minutes luxuriated in her contentment. But soon the sunbeam was warming her feet and she began to sense an irritation at Gabriel’s stolid absorption with the newspaper. He would have lots of time to read later, why did he have to take up so much of the first morning of their honeymoon? She saw him take out a cigarette from his cigarette case without his eyes leaving the page. He patted his pockets absent-mindedly for matches, eventually locating a box, and lit his cigarette.

  Charis swallowed. The taste of breakfast coffee still in her mouth. How she longed for a cigarette! But Gabriel had told her more than once that he disapproved of her smoking. Ridiculous, silly old Gabriel. It was that family of his. He could be stuffy sometimes. Gabriel looked up.

  “Everything fine, darling?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she said. “Is the paper so terribly interesting?”

  “It is, actually,” Gabriel said, not detecting the implied complaint. “Didn’t have a chance to catch up with the news, what with the wedding and all.” He frowned. “Serious business.” He looked back at the front page again.

  “Shall we bathe?” Charis suggested, prompted by the sun on her ankles.

  “Mmm,” Gabriel said, still reading. “If you like.”

  “I’ll go and get my costie.”

  “Darling.” Gabriel jokingly rebuked her slang.

  In the hotel room Charis smoked a cigarette out of a feeling of mild rebellion. She packed her swimming costume in a cotton draw-string bag. As she walked back down the stairs she chided herself for her irritation. It was Gabriel’s honey-moon too, she reasoned, and if it made him happy to linger over a newspaper after breakfast then he should do exactly as he pleased.

  Now, as they walked along the promenade, Charis linked her arm through his and felt the cosy feelings of love—and self-congratulation at her own good fortune—return. He stood so tall above her; his shoulders as high as her head. They passed another couple from the hotel and Gabriel tipped his boater.

  The beaches and the promenade were thronged with people, even though it was Sunday. If anything the crowds seemed better dressed in honour of the Sabbath. The promenade, her Baedeker said, “has been pithily described as the ‘Summer Boulevard of Paris’.” It was one reason why she had chosen Trouville for her honeymoon.

  “Shall we go across to Deauville?” Gabriel said. “They say the beach is quieter there.”

  “Oh no,” Charis said. “Baedeker says the beach is distinctly inferior. That’s why everyone’s here. Besides it’s such a long way,” she said. “And I’m roasting.”

  “As you require, Mrs Cobb,” Gabriel said with mock deference, and led her down the steps onto the beach. They walked carefully across duckboards to the Hotel d’Angleterre’s striped changing tents.

  “See you dans la mer,” Gabriel said as he turned towards those reserved for men.

  Inside the tent it was dark and very warm and at first Charis could see nothing.

  “Bonjour, Madame,” came a surprisingly loud and hoarse shout from one corner. Charis looked round in some alarm. The speaker was a very small old woman in black who was struggling to get out of a sagging wicker chair flanked by a mound of fresh towels and swimming costumes. With operatic gestures she ushered Charis into a canvas cubicle. She helped Charis undress, hanging up her clothes with great care and much fastidious smoothing of creases.

  “Maillot?” she yelled, as Charis slipped her camisole top over her head.

  “What? Oh…sorry,” Charis said, self-consciously covering her breasts with her arms. “Non,” she said, pointing towards the draw-string bag. “J’ai…dans le sac… ”

  The old woman shuffled out and Charis quickly pulled on her costume—knee-length knickerbockers, flouncy tunic and bathing hat, in red piped with yellow. Outside she blinked at the brightness of the sun and the sand. Down here on the beach it was much noisier than it seemed to be from the esplanade. There were shouts from beach vendors, bathers and children playing, and the regular soft crash of waves on the beach. People sat in deckchairs reading. A game of cricket was in progress a few yards away. A man in a rubber bathing cap and a huge towelling beach robe flapped up the sand towards the men’s tent. “Splendid!” he shouted at her as he stumbled past.

  Charis couldn’t see Gabriel anywhere, so she assumed he must already be in the water. She picked her way, gingerly at first, and then with more confidence, down towards the breakers. The sand was loose, deep and warm on the upper reaches of the beach. Charis was glad she hadn’t worn her bathing shoes, she liked the feel of the sand beneath her bare soles.

  At the water’s edge stood a group of men in uniform black swimming costumes. They were very sunburnt and their hair and bodies were sleeked with water.

  “Guide baigneur, Madame?” one of them asked as she approached. “Soixante centimes.”

  “No thanks…Non,” she said. The waves didn’t look too big and besides she didn’t need these men to support her in the water now she had her husband, wherever he might be.

  “There you are,” Gabriel called, wading laboriously out of the surf. “Come on in, the water’s lovely.”

  He walked up the beach to join her, shaking his head and wiping the water from his arms. Beside the b
odies of the guides baigneurs Gabriel’s arms and shoulders looked very white and pink. She saw drops of water glistening in the wiry curls of chest hair that were visible above his costume top. The dark wool of his costume was shining and heavy from the water, sticking closely to his body. Charis didn’t dare let her eyes wander lower than his chest.

  “Oh yes,” Gabriel said, admiring her bathing costume. “Very ultra-modern. Come on, let’s get it wet.”

  He seized her hand and pulled her protesting down the beach. They ran into the waves, Charis gasping with shock as the water splashed on her warm skin, letting out a half-stifled shriek as the first sizeable wave thumped into her midriff, rocking her back on her heels.

  “Gabriel!” she cried, catching hold of him for support. She felt his hands grip her waist. Beneath her palms the skin on his shoulders felt cool and fine.

  “Steady, old girl,” he shouted, his square face smiling happily into her own, settling her on her feet. “You’re on your own now,” he said, then he turned and plunged into the throat of an incoming breaker.

  That night as she dressed for dinner, Charis thought about the perfection of the day. The swim, luncheon, a visit to Deauville racecourse to see the horses training, tea at the Eden-Casino, then back to the hotel and a delicious bath. It had been marvellous fun, Gabriel joking and laughing, giving her surreptitious kisses and hugs whenever they found themselves unobserved, calling her ‘old Mrs Cobb’.

  She checked her reflection in a looking glass. Her hair was up, an ivory satin band around her head, her hair brushed low across her brow. She took a tiny spot of rouge on the tip of her little finger and rubbed it into her lips. She was wearing a new dress for the first time, part of her trousseau, an ankle-length dress in black velvet with silver beadwork on the bodice and sleeves. She walked out into the main room of their suite. Gabriel stood there in his evening suit, smoking a cigarette.

  “Good Lord,” he said. “My, you look a swell, Mrs Cobb. Ain’t I the lucky chap.”

  Charis smiled, a little automatically, she realized. She half-wished Gabriel didn’t feel he had to keep up this relentless joking and gaiety. It wasn’t necessary, they didn’t always have to be laughing and playing about. But Gabriel would persist. Now he clicked his heels and offered his arm as if he were a Prussian officer.

  “Shall we see what’s for grub?” he said.

  People looked round as they walked into the dining room. It was busy but not full up. August was the most popular month in Trouville, coinciding with the race meeting. It was Paris-by-the-sea then, she had read.

  During the meal Gabriel ordered champagne which, she noticed, he drank considerably more of than her. Indeed, his mood grew steadily more subdued as the meal progressed; he spent a lot of time gazing around the room as if unwilling to catch her eye. Charis understood. She felt the same sensations in her chest: a kind of breathlessness, as if foreshadowing the onset of a panic. To calm them both down she started talking about the times they had had when they first met in India.

  Charis had been born there. Her father was a railway engineer. Her mother had died of some fever or other when Charis was very young, so young that she retained no memory of her whatsoever. Charis had been promptly sent back to England to stay with a family who took care of ‘Indian children’. From there she had gone to Bristol to live with her Aunt Bedelia (her father’s sister) and attend the small private school for girls she ran. However much she had loved Aunt Bedelia she had been ‘bored blue’ by life in Bristol, and consequently at the age of eighteen went out to India to live with her father. For a year her father was based in Bombay, which she had thrived on, with its exotic cosmopolitan life—its yacht club and taxi-cabs, natives in European clothes, its box-wallahs and millionaire merchants.

  But then he was posted up the line to a small garrison town and, if anything, Charis was bored even bluer than she had been in Bristol. Like it or not, she became one of the Railway People—no matter how elevated her father’s position as chief engineer—and therefore distinct from Canal People, Army People or Government People. It was true that senior Europeans in the four groups happily intermingled at tennis parties, sales-of-work, polo matches and regimental sports days, but Charis soon grew aware that try to ignore or overcome it as she might, she carried the categorization with her wherever she went.

  The only time she felt she left it behind was when the European population moved up from the garrison town on the plains to the popular hill station of Mahar Tal. There were no Railway People in Mahar Tal as the railway stopped at the foot of the hills. Charis stayed with a friend, Eleanor, the daughter of a District Commissioner, and attained, by association, Government People status.

  It was during her second summer at Mahar Tal that she met Gabriel. He had been seconded from his regiment to be a ‘bear leader’ to the son of a local rajah. This involved teaching the young boy how to ride, how to play cricket, tennis and badminton and generally inculcate all the social airs and graces of an English gentleman.

  Charis met Gabriel at an ‘At Home’ given by one of the senior officials’ wives. Some tennis was played, tea and lemonade were drunk. The hill garden in which the ‘At Home’ took place was devoid of turf but full of English flowers and surrounded by oak and pine trees. Gabriel had been quite a ‘catch’. Since then Eleanor and she had never been quite such close friends.

  Charis shook herself out of her reverie and looked across the table at him. Gabriel was cutting up a peach with meticulous surgical care, his head bowed over his plate. In India everything had possessed a wonderful dreamlike quality. Somehow, back in England it proved hard to sustain. Perhaps it was meeting Gabriel’s curious family: all those sisters and brothers-in-law, his batty Aunt Mary and his eccentric mother, the very peculiar little major, and Felix, ‘clever’ Felix, of whom Gabriel spoke most fondly, but who had seemed to her, if she were honest, an odious little prig.

  No, she told herself, don’t criticize. Not tonight, of all nights. It was an ordinary family, just like most people’s. Only Gabriel’s perfection showed them up rather.

  Gabriel looked up at this point and caught her smiling at him. He smiled back, a little uneasily, she thought.

  “Fancy the Casino, Carrie?” he asked, pouring the remains of the champagne bottle into his glass. “Shall we see if we can make our fortune?”

  The Casino! she thought. What on earth was he talking about? “I don’t think so, Gabriel,” she said. “Perhaps tomorrow night.”

  “Fine,” he said, “fine,” and drained his glass.

  They went into the hotel lounge where Gabriel ordered brandy and a cigar. When he finished these he suggested a walk, but Charis again demurred. He had another brandy before they went upstairs to their room. Once there, Charis found Gabriel’s lack of composure beginning to affect her too. As she sat before her dressing table in the dressing room her hands shook slightly as she removed the pins from her hair.

  In the bedroom Gabriel cleared his throat loudly and said he was going down the corridor to the bathroom. Charis wondered for a moment why he wouldn’t use the one attached to their small suite but realized that this was a kind of ruse to give her a moment or two of privacy.

  She felt a pulse beating in her temple and a tightening of her throat. She pulled a nightdress over her underclothes, without putting her arms through the sleeves, and removed her corset and knickers beneath it, as she had done all her life. It was curious, Charis suddenly thought, but she had never seen her naked body in a mirror. She put her underclothes away and climbed into bed, lying on the left hand side. That was where she had lain last night: she didn’t know if Gabriel had any preference.

  In two minutes Gabriel returned.

  “D’you know, I think the water’s better down there,” he said artlessly and ducked into the dressing room. Charis lay stiffly in the double bed. Dear Gabriel, she said to herself, as if it were a prayer, dear Gabriel, how I love you. Suddenly she reached over and extinguished the light by the bed. Then she
realized that the central ceiling light was still burning. Did she have time to switch it out before Gabriel came back into the room? Would he switch it out? Ought she to remind him to do so? She slid out of bed and scampered to the door.

  “Everything all right, Came?” Gabriel said.

  She whirled round. He stood in the doorway of the small dressing room. He wore pyjamas with a blue and green stripe. For some reason she noticed he was wearing slippers.

  She gave a shrill nervous laugh. “I thought I should lock the door.” Her hand moved towards the key. There was a cardboard sign hanging from the doorknob. ‘Priez de ne pas déranger, S VP’, it said. They should really hang that outside too, she thought in a moment of rationality. But no, she couldn’t, not with Gabriel watching. But the light? What about the light? She turned the key in the lock and looked round again. She caught Gabriel edging noiselessly sideways towards the bed with little shuffling steps.

  “Hah,” he said nonsensically, his hands foolishly trying to slide into non-existent pockets in his pyjama trousers.

  “Yes.” She marched briskly, more briskly than she intended, across the carpet and round to her side of the bed.

  Gabriel wandered back to the door where he turned off the light.

  “Yes,” she heard him say in the sudden darkness. “Mmmm.”

  Charis got into bed for the second time. As she slid her legs down between the sheets the hem of her nightdress rode up above her knees. As she checked her automatic move to pull it down she experienced a mild thrill of illicit pleasure. She lay back on the pillow and put her arms by her side. Her heart was beating quickly, but not wildly, she thought. That was good. The room was dark. The chambermaid had closed the shutters but left the windows open for coolness. She waited. Where was Gabriel?