William Boyd - An Ice-Cream War

“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 rule 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.