William Boyd - An Ice-Cream War

“Yes, Cave,” Felix said.

“Look what I’ve got,” Cave said. On his table was a wire cage containing what looked like half a dozen rats squirming and cheeping.

“Rats,” Felix said. “So what?”

“Rat hunt, Cobby. Bit of fun for the end of term. Let ‘em loose in the quad and hunt them down with hockey sticks. I’ve got some of the chaps from the OTC coming over. Fancy a bash?”

“No thanks,” Felix said. “I’m busy.”

“Oh. Where are you off to?”

“Going to see Holland,” Felix improvised.

“Great stuff. Can I come along too?”

“No,” Felix said. Holland liked to use Cave as butt and victim of his jokes. Cave seemed to enjoy being teased by him. “See you later.”

He stepped out of the college doorway and wandered down to Broad Street. The rain had stopped but it was a cold raw day. At the cab stand in the middle of the Broad the cab horses stood with heads bowed and manes dripping. The small wooden stand was covered in posters. “IF YOU CANNOT JOIN THE ARMY TRY AND GET A RECRUIT”

Felix felt a guilty unease which he knew Holland would scold at. He agreed with Holland’s views on the war, he just didn’t have his single-minded conviction about them. In the past he had found that a strong belief in something had proved no impediment to a sudden recantation if and when it proved more convenient. It wasn’t his fault that the army was being so fussy. He only had a slight astigmatism in one eye that manifested itself whenever he was tired or read for more than ten minutes without the aid of his glasses. Hardly a major disability, but it was enough to disqualify him. He had done his duty but he still felt his family’s suspicion: his father’s hatred — it wasn’t too strong a word — and the doubt of his brothers-in-law.

He turned morosely away and walked back up the Turl. The earth that was regularly strewn over Oxford’s paved streets had, over the last few sodden days, turned into a fluid mud that spattered up the back of his trouser legs as he walked. He turned left into Brasenose Lane and thrust his hands deep into his pockets as he moved down the narrow alleyway between Brasenose and Exeter colleges. At the bottom lay Radcliffe Square, the squat bulk of the Camera guarded by its high spiked iron railings. Felix crossed the square and came to the High. By now the street was busy with horse-drawn drays and carts serving the shops. The gutters ran with frothy brown water, the road was covered in two inches of mud. Felix picked his way carefully across it and went down another alley to the rear gate of Christ Church, to which college Holland had been recently moved since his own had been occupied by officer cadets. As it was, half of Christ Church had been given over to a battalion of Oxford yeomanry. Felix passed through the gate and into Peckwater quad. Like almost all of Oxford’s buildings the stone was now black and scrofulous with crumbling decay. The steady rain and the dark clouds heightened the impression: the colleges looked as if they were suffering from some particularly unpleasant wasting disease. Felix looked up to the top windows. The light was on in Holland’s room. Uniformed soldiers seemed to be everywhere.

Felix knocked and walked in to Holland’s rooms. They had been stripped of all decoration, a new purity and austerity which Holland thought better suited his character. The wooden panelling on the walls had been painted white, on the floor was a plain grey carpet and the settee and armchairs were covered in black cretonne. At the window overlooking the quad stood a baby grand piano on which was set a bowl of narcissi — the room’s sole decorative touch — on the point of coming into bloom. Here Holland sat picking out a tune from the score propped in front of him. He waved Felix to a chair.

Since coming up to Oxford Holland had grown a small Van Dyck beard and exchanged his gold-rimmed, almond-shaped spectacles for a pair of the fashionable new tortoiseshell ones. This had the effect — deliberately sought for — of removing his air of boyish absentmindedness and replacing it with a strong sense of a formidable, uncompromising intellect.

Felix watched him struggling with the score. Holland was, without doubt, the most remarkable person he’d met. Felix reminded himself of this fact regularly, as Holland’s edicts and advice had such a heavy and usually infelicitous influence on his own life; there had to be a good reason, he thought, why he so persistently got himself into trouble by following them.

“On the table,” Holland called, not looking up from his music. “What do you think?”

Felix went to the table and glanced through the pile of papers which were scattered there. He looked at the title-page: “After Strindberg: whither the English stage?” It was evidently for The Mask , a quarterly magazine on the theatre to which Holland had recently begun contributing: another accomplishment which Felix envied him for. He pretended to read the article, but he didn’t feel like concentrating on Strindberg this morning.

“Jolly good,” he said.

Holland’s sway over Felix had been established in their final year at school, and Felix had accepted it with the zeal of a disciple acknowledging the messiah. It gave him a vital focus and expression for his own half-thought rebellious instincts and discontents, but he had come to realize, even while they were at school together, that he did not want to emulate Holland. In fact he had no great desire to be like Holland at all. What he really envied about his friend was his home life, its almost unbelievable difference to his own: the social circles Holland’s family moved in, the exciting freedoms and opportunities which didn’t have to be secretly fought for but which were rather served up to him on a plate, almost as if they were his birthright, and not seen, as they were chez Cobb, as depraved and seditious habits.

Holland’s father was an illustrator, a corpulent and lazy man whose talents were sought by magazines like Naslis, The Strand, Pall Mall and Vanity Fair . They lived in Hampstead in a large untidy house which was always full of the most interesting people, old and young, of very ‘advanced’ views, mainly belonging to the literary and artistic worlds.

There was another reason why Felix allowed himself to be dominated by Holland: his sister Amory. Felix was in love with Amory, passionately in love. As far as he knew, he was the only person who was aware of this fact. Not even Amory, he was sure, guessed at the ardour she had prompted. She was twenty years old, an art student. She had a thin face and a slim, bony body. But it wasn’t so much her appearance that attracted Felix as her opinions: she was very modern. She shared a small flat with a girlfriend, she smoked, she drank alcohol (Felix had seen her do both — under the eyes of her parents!), there seemed to be a distinct possibility that Amory would be modern enough to take a lover. Sex no longer existed in some vague, unrealizable, dream-like state. Amory was the first girl he’d met, the first he could claim to know, with whom it became a potentiality, something tantalizingly feasible.

Holland crashed a discord on the piano. “Damn Dohnanyi,” he said and closed the lid. “Did the militarists bother you, Felix?”

“No,” Felix said. “I think they’re used to me by now. I’m not interrupting am I, Philip?”

Holland had decreed that on entering university they should abandon the public school habit of addressing each other by their surnames. However, ‘Philip’ still sounded uneasy on Felix’s tongue.

“I was bored rigid,” he said. “I cut Jock’s tutorial, couldn’t stand the thought. I wondered if you felt like a walk.”

“Why not,” Holland said. “Marston? Shall we oblige the wench with our presence at luncheon?”