William Boyd - An Ice-Cream War

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

“Dinner is served,” Cressida called from the door. “Goodness, so many people.”

The major leapt to his feet. “Dinner at last,” he cried and marched off through his family at full speed into the dining room. Felix watched him go. What a horrible little man, he thought. He hadn’t seen his father for three months. He shook his head and put his sherry glass down on the chimney piece, watching his family organize themselves into the dining room. Cressida, Miss Stroud the governess, the two little girls, Albertine and Greville, the Nigel Bathes, small Charles advancing before Henry Hyams and Yseult, Mrs Cobb and Gabriel and finally Sammy Hinshelwood who stood at the door and said, “After you, Felix.”

Felix walked down the passageway towards the dining room. He went through the door and to his astonishment found his right arm firmly gripped at the elbow. It was his father.

“Got you, young fella-me-lad! Not so fast.” The major wheeled him round to one side to join a sheepish group made up of Charles and a nervous and fearful Hattie and Dora.

“What’s going on, Father?” Felix demanded, with an uneasy chuckle. He looked back over his shoulder and saw his mother nervously wringing her hands as the rest of the family milled round the table finding their places to Cressida’s instructions.

“Now,” the major said, in a hectoring schoolteacher’s voice. “Children don’t sit down to a meal without their hands being clean, do they? Let’s see ‘em!”

Charles and the little girls obediently displayed their spotless palms. Felix couldn’t quite believe what was happening.

“Just one moment, Father,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets and feeling his cheeks begin to burn as he grew aware of the rest of the family silently watching.

“Come on,” the major snapped. “One and all.”

“Father,” Felix persisted with forced patience, conscious of rage setting up a tremor in his voice. “I am not one of the children. I am not prepared to go through with this.”

“Hands, hands,” crowed the major. “I know you schoolboys. Dirty little beggars.”

Suddenly he snatched at Felix’s wrists, dragging his hands from his pockets.

“Hah!” he yelped. “See! Ink! Ink! Dirty little inky hands! I knew it.”

“Hamish,” Mrs Cobb trilled. “May we have grace please.”

Felix looked into his father’s eyes. Watery slits in a moist sallow face. They appeared perfectly sane to him. The major spun round and clapped his hands.

“Right, places everyone. Are we all ready?”

♦

Felix sat between Miss Stroud and Eustacia. The gleaming walnut dining table was fully extended to accommodate the family. The hatred and anger were just beginning to subside. He put down his soup spoon, leaving half his consommé: the scène with his father had ruined his appetite. He glanced up and down the table. Fifteen of us, he thought. How ghastly. The noise was deafening: seven or eight different conversations seemed to be going on at once to the clatter of silver on china as the last dregs of soup were cleared up.

Felix looked at Gabriel, who was sitting beside his mother. It wasn’t the same any more, now that he was getting married to this Charis, he thought bitterly. He wondered what she was like. He turned to Eustacia, who was dabbing at her downy upper lip with a napkin.

“Have you met Charis, Eustacia?”

“Me?” Eustacia loaded the small word with as much irony as it could take. “Goodness me, no. Oh no no no no. We weren’t invited. Just the Hyams and the Verschoyles. Leeds, it appears, is too far away to come for a house party. We did ask Gabriel to come up and stay, but it seems it wasn’t convenient at the time.” Eustacia prattled on, listing further slights, real or imaginary. Felix experienced a sense of boredom so intense it could have been a Pentecostal visitation. Serving maids cleared away the soup plates and the fish course was brought in. He declined. Snatches of conversation rose out of the hubbub.

“But don’t you see,” Henry Hyams said patiently. “We’d hardly send our fleet to the opening of the Kiel canal if we thought the thing was a danger to European peace. If you ask me it makes sense.”

“We’re just as bad in their eyes,” Sammy Hinshelwood butted in. “Just as bad. I know this German chappie who’s convinced our King wants war because once, in his youth, in Paris — for various, um, undisclosed purposes — the King wanted to borrow some money off the Kaiser, and the Kaiser refused. Quite right too, if I may say so.”

“Sammy, really ,” Albertine said.

“And they think the King’s had it in for the Kaiser ever since,” Sammy Hinshelwood concluded triumphantly.

Felix rolled his eyes in dismay, then looked down the table to his mother, who sat between Gabriel and Nigel Bathe.

“What assassination is this you’re talking about, dear?” his mother said. “Everyone seems to be getting assassinated these days. I can never remember who’s who. Is it that Rasputin fellow you mean?”

“No. The Archduke Ferdinand,” Nigel Bathe explained. “Heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire. In Sarajevo.” He was losing patience, Mrs Cobb’s face was still blank. “Three weeks ago, Serbia.”

“Oh yes,” Mrs Cobb said uncertainly. “Did I read about that somewhere, Gabriel?”

“Last week’s Illustrated London , Mother. There were pictures. Sarajevo, Mother. Everyone’s been talking about it.”

“These names, these places! Where on earth can they be?”

“And his wife too,” Nigel Bathe added grimly. “Revolvers.” He levelled two fingers at Mrs Cobb. “Bang! Shot dead by socialists. Just like that. Bang! Bang!”

Mrs Cobb flinched as the shots were fired. “Oh dear.” She seemed suddenly quite distraught.

Felix sat back and rubbed his eyes. Disembodied sentences filled his ears. He felt something like panic course suddenly through his body.

“…Did you go to Henley this year, Albertine?…”

“…You can’t trust Johnny Sepoy any more. Not since the mutiny…”

“…I hope you don’t mind me asking but what age were you when you got your captaincy?…”

“…We want reasonable progress, but not unreasonable change…”

“…It cost me seventeen guineas…”

“…Henry, would you be a dear and carve? Hamish seems busy…”

Felix opened his eyes and stared at the light fixture that hung above the dining table, an ugly wooden chandelier with six light bulbs, suspended on a kind of weighted pulley so that it could be raised and lowered. Empty candelabra stood in the middle of the table. He heard a thud, which gave him a start. All the silver rattled and one of the candelabra swayed and toppled over.

“Intolerable!” exclaimed the major, silencing all conversations. “Quite disgraceful!”

Felix looked distastefully at his father’s sagging face. “What is it, Hamish?” Mrs Cobb asked with concern.

“Albertine tells me that now they’re allowing women to boxing matches. Can you credit it?”

Conversation resumed at once when it was realized nothing significant was happening. Albertine looked a little chastened at the venom her innocent, observation had unleashed, as the major detailed the punishments he’d impose on any daughter of his who ever so much as tried to purchase a ticket.

Felix couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Aren’t you making a terrible fuss about nothing, Father?” he said in his most languid voice. “You’ll let a woman nurse soldiers on a battlefield. Why not watch a boxing match for heaven’s sake?”

“That,” said the major, sitting bolt upright in his chair, “has got absolutely nothing to do with it. Nursing is a duty, a vocation. This is mere titillation. Pleasure seeking.”