William Boyd - An Ice-Cream War

Felix took a cigarette from his cigarette case, and was about to light it when a car — a Humberette — pulled in to the station yard, the klaxon giving a strangled hoot of welcome. When Felix saw who was driving all the accumulating tensions and irritations of the day cleared themselves. It was Gabriel, his brother. Gabriel stepped out of the car and gave a salute, clicking his heels together ostentatiously. He was wearing a Norfolk jacket, a shirt with a cravat and grey flannel trousers.

“Your excellency,” Gabriel said. “Your motor is waiting.”

“Gabe,” Felix said. “You’re here.”

“Looks like it, old fellow. Can’t miss your own wedding, you know.” He strode forward, his hand out, smiling. He was tall and broad-shouldered. His pale brown hair was cut short and parted neatly in the middle. His face was square, as if his jaw muscles were permanently clenched, and his features were even and pleasant. He looked strong and a bit simple. Gabriel was the only member of his family to whom Felix gave his love uncritically and unreservedly. He was twenty-seven and a captain in his father’s old regiment, the Duke of Connaught’s Own West Kents, currently stationed in India, from where he’d just returned. Felix shook his hand, squeezing hard.

They got into the Humberette, Gabriel driving.

“Ready?” he said. “Off we go.”

They turned right out of the station yard and drove off up the main road from Ashurst to Sevenoaks.

“How’s the army?” Felix asked, raising his voice above the noise of the puttering engine. “Boring?”

“How’s school?” Gabriel riposted, not rising to the bait.

“Over, thank God. And now,” Felix paused, stretching luxuriously, “Oxford.”

Gabriel glanced at him. “When did you clear that with Father?”

“Oh he doesn’t bother about me, Gabe. He gave me up as a bad job years ago. Mother told me he didn’t mind.”

“Lucky old you. But that shirt won’t be popular, I can promise you.”

Felix took out his cigarette case. “Want one?” he offered.

“No thanks, old chap, not while I’m driving.”

Felix lit his and blew smoke at the passing countryside. The bulging hedgerows were bright with flowers, but the leaves on the trees and bushes looked tired and dull. So far, the summer of 1914 had been a good one. The cornfields were bleached and ready for harvest; some fields already contained their line of reapers, scythes swishing rhythmically as they made their slow but steady advance into the ranks of corn.

They turned off the main road and the hedges rose to overshadow the lane. Driving through shade after the sun made Felix shiver.

“It’s all so predictable, isn’t it?” he said.

“What?”

“Summer. You know: hot sun, corn, birds singing. All that rot.”

Gabriel looked at him, smiling. “Honestly, Felix, sometimes I just can’t make you out at all.”

Felix shrugged. “Never mind.” He paused. “Looking forward to tomorrow?”

Gabriel stiffened slightly, then relaxed. “Of course, you idiot. After all, it was me who asked her to get married, not anyone else. She — that is, Charis — is looking forward to meeting you.” He smiled again. “Can’t think why. I’ve told her all about you. Right clever Dick, my little brother is, I said. Hey !”

Felix punched Gabriel lightly in the shoulder causing the car to swerve.

“Watch out, Gabe,” Felix said mock-seriously. “‘Bride-groom and best man in automobile accident.’”

“Talking about best man,” Gabriel said, “remind me to have a word later on today.”

“Words of advice from big brother?”

“Something like that.”

They drove on another mile before they reached a gate set in a long stone wall. They drove through it and up an avenue of elms towards the medium-sized country house which was Stackpole Manor.

“Home sweet home,” Felix said.

The elms gave way to high rhododendrons. In front of the house was a gravelled square and a lawn on which two little girls in pale pink lacy dresses scampered, being chased by a small yapping terrier. Three cars were parked in front of the main door.

“Good Lord!” said Felix. “Don’t tell me Mother’s started a taxi service.”

“Just the family,” Gabriel said. “Gathering of the clans. Nearly everyone’s here.”

“Oh no,” Felix groaned, then, as the two little girls ran up: “Let me guess, these are Albertine’s. What are their names, Gabriel? I can’t remember.”

“My God, Felix, you can certainly spout rubbish.”

“Hello, Felix,” said one of the little girls shyly.

“ Uncle Felix, please, Dora. But hello anyway, Dora. And hello to you, Harriet,” he said in deep, suitably avuncular tones. “If that’s your beastly dog will you please stop it barking like that.”

Felix stood on the gravel and looked up at the manor house. It was a strange building. The front of the house, which faced to the north, was a classical three-storey Georgian brick façade with a neat pillared portico around the front door and regular rows of sash windows precisely descending in size as they moved higher. However, Felix’s uncle Gerald, the previous occupant, had added what was in effect an entirely new and larger building to the back, obliterating the austere southern façade with an edifice of modern design. This forced Siamese pairing was, to Felix’s eyes, an act of desecration. Now the landscaped south lawns were confronted by a cluttered and inelegant jumble of styles. On the ground floor were three reception rooms sharing a long stone terrace. The ground floor walls were of red brick but the two above them were faced with hanging tiles, reminiscent of grossly enlarged fish scales. The large bay window of the downstairs drawing room was carried up through the next two floors to form a squat turret. Other bay windows rising from the new dining room and library were half-timbered, the windows filled with leaded lights. Felix’s father, Major Cobb, had made his mark on the unhappy building by enlarging the servants’ wing to the east — new kitchen, scullery and pantry, wash house and coal cellar. And at the western extremity Mrs Cobb, not to be outdone, had appended a neo-gothic conservatory and loggia.

Gabriel stood at the door with Felix’s bags watching him with amused tolerance.

“Come on, Felix,” he said. “You’ve only been up to London for ten days. It’s scarcely the return of the prodigal.”

“Well that’s what it feels like,” Felix said. “Even when I’ve only been away for a night. What possesses them to live in the place?”

He didn’t need an answer; he knew why. Stackpole Manor had been bought by his late uncle, Gerald Cobb, who had astutely invested the meagre Cobb inheritance in the electro-plating industry. With the money he’d made he had bought Stackpole Manor, built on his new half, and had settled down with his wife, Mary, to raise a family. No offspring had been forthcoming, however, and the deficiency or whoever was responsible for it had never come to light. In 1896 Gerald Cobb drowned in a sailing accident. His widow left the Manor and took her childless grief and increasingly unbalanced mental state to another house the family owned some ten miles away. The Manor, the home farm and the electro-plating works in Wolverhampton passed to Gerald’s younger brother, Hamish, a major in the Duke of Connaught’s Own West Kent regiment. Major Cobb resigned his commission and established himself in the Manor forthwith. And as if to taunt brother Gerald’s shade, the major and his wife promptly conceived and produced a child, Felix, some ten years after they had assumed their large family to be complete. Felix had been born and brought up in Stackpole Manor, yet he, of all the Cobb children (there were four others, girls, apart from Gabriel and himself) was the least attracted to the place, the most reluctant to call it home.