William Boyd - An Ice-Cream War

“Will you smoke?” he asked. A waiter approached with matches and lit their cigarettes. Felix gazed at Amory and ordered one half of his mouth to turn up in an intimate smile.

“This has been a marvellous evening,” he said, lowering his voice.

“Can you see who Pav is dancing with?” Amory snorted thin smoke streams from her nostrils.

Felix leant forward, supporting his chin with one hand, allowing the other — with his cigarette — to rest on the chair back behind him, exactly like the man in the de Reske poster, he calculated.

“You have a charming…ah, pied a tem ,” he said.

“What?” Amory’s cigarette was tapped sharply. Ash fell obediently into the marble ashtray.

“ Pied a… your flat. It’s charming.” Felix allowed smoke to coil and wreath from his mouth.

No reply. Her fingernails marshalled breadcrumbs on the pink damask table cloth.

“I’ve been looking forward to this evening for a long time.” Felix’s hand left his chin and disappeared beneath the table.

“Honestly! Where can that man have gone to?”

Felix glanced down at the slim length of tulle-clad thigh inches away from his own. He felt a sudden breathless — almost insupportable — excitement take hold of him. His hand descended on Amory’s knee.

“Oh Amory,” he said, more feebly than he’d intended.

“Oh for God ’s sake!” She got to her feet with tired exasperation. “You silly, boring little boy!”

♦

When he got outside into the street the first thing Felix did was actually punch himself in the face. He made a fist and struck himself a blow in the face, such was his self-loathing and bitter frustration. It wasn’t particularly hard, but it caused him surprising pain.

“Bloody hell!” he swore. He followed this up with some of Cyril’s richer vocabulary. He felt disgusted with himself. He looked down at his clenched and trembling fist and was surprised to see one white knuckle spotted with blood. Exploring fingers soon established that his cold sore was now scabless. He laughed scornfully, but silently into the night sky. That effectively removed any chance of rejoining the party. He dabbed at his weeping sore with his handkerchief, printing it with red polka-dots, as he wandered miserably off down the dark street.

Amory had stalked away from the table, presumably in search of Pav. Felix had remained immobile, head hanging, for a few seconds, his hand resting forlornly on Amory’s abandoned seat until the faint sensation of warmth that rose from her imprint in the recently vacated cushion died away. Felix tried to get his burning cheeks and the funfair of emotions that jangled in his body under control. This partially achieved, his one thought had been to flee, and without further deliberation he strode out of the night club, pausing only to collect his things from the cloakroom.

Now as he walked down the road he sardonically vilified himself, his puny lovemaking, his grossly inflated sense of his own worth. He called himself an ignorant schoolboy, a naïve conceited fool, a scrofulous impostor. How could he hope to attract anyone with this huge scab perched on his bottom lip? He walked on unheedingly, going through the night’s scenes again with punitive disregard for his badly damaged self-esteem. His self-laceration halted, however, when he looked about him and realized he was lost. Where was he? How long had he been aimlessly walking? He turned a corner. Fitzrovia? Bloomsbury? Night workers were hosing the streets down. Other gangs of men shovelled the dirt and horse shit into glutinous, yard-wide mud pies.

Felix crossed the road to a coffee stall and joined the queue of customers. He looked at his watch. Five past one. The public houses had been shut for half an hour. Standing in front of the coffee stall were a mixed bunch of soldiers, navvies and cabmen. There were two tarts with the soldiers and all of them seemed the worse for drink. Clearly he wasn’t in the city’s most salubrious district. Felix handed over his penny ha’penny and received his mug of steaming coffee. He warmed his hands around it and moved a little way off to the side.

“Hot potato, sir?” came a voice. Parked beside the coffee-stall was a costermonger’s barrow carrying a glowing brazier. Felix bought a hot potato, suddenly ravenously hungry, remembering also that he’d deposited his supper in the cloakroom basin at the Golden Calf. He wolfed down one potato, then bought another which he ate more slowly, salting it liberally with the potato man’s salt shaker. He began to feel slightly less disgusted with himself, enjoying the sensation of being out so late in London’s dark streets. He felt alone, pleasantly sad, but secure and, somehow, terribly wise.

“Where are we?” he asked the potato-man.

“Just off Bloomsbury Square, guv,” the man said.

Felix saw a woman in the queue looking him up and down. She wore a loose green coat and a tatty fox fur around her neck. A large picture hat with brown artificial roses stuck in it cast a shadow over her features. She left her place in the queue and wandered over. Felix stared at her.

“Hello, darling,” she said flirtatiously. “I can tell you’re a naughty boy.”

Why not? Felix suddenly thought. Why on earth not?

♦

Felix followed the woman’s broad hips up a dark flight of stairs. A hot burning feeling — not unlike acute indigestion — filled his throat and chest in anticipation of the transaction that was about to take place. His bravado overrode any sense of reluctance that had attempted to interpose itself in the course of their brief walk from the coffee stall to this gloomy Bloomsbury tenement.

The woman opened a door off a landing and went into a small bed-sittingroom. A gas lamp on the wall was turned down low. Felix’s nervous glance took in a single unmade cast iron bed, a table with a jug and ewer on it, a small fire place. In front of the fire was an orange box over which was laid a pair of trousers.

“Get the spuds?” came a voice from the bed.

Felix jumped with alarm. A man sat up in the bed. The woman said nothing.

“Oh,” the man said. “I see. Right you are, then.”

“Is it—,” Felix began.

“He’ll be gone in a minute,” said the woman. Felix wondered if she was referring to him or her partner. He stood close to the wall while the man, who had been sleeping in a collarless shirt and combinations, pulled on his trousers. Felix stood motionless, watching the man lace up his boots. He looked like a waiter, Felix thought. The man unhooked his coat from the back of the door and put a faded bowler hat on his head.

“Enjoy yourself,” he said as he went out of the door.

Felix looked at the rumpled bed. The woman removed her hat. Her face was heavily powdered, her dull hair secured in a loose bun.

“What do you want?” she said.

“What? Oh. Just, em, ordinary sort of—”

“That’ll be two pound,” she said. “Put your clothes on that box.”

Felix struggled to breathe. He handed over two notes. It left him with a handful of change. Holland had told him that a pound was the most he’d have to pay, but somehow he didn’t feel like haggling. Anyway, he told himself in compensation, it wasn’t the sort of thing you could fix a price on.

The woman went to a wardrobe that stood in a corner and opened it. She put the money inside and started taking off her clothes. Felix felt his entire body begin to tremble and shake. It felt as if his lungs had been filled with scalding steam. He turned away and began numbly to undress, laying his clothes deliberately on the orange box. He undressed down to his long sleeved woollen vest and knee-length drawers. He wondered if he should take off all his clothes. As a compromise he removed his vest. Should he ask her name?