William Boyd - An Ice-Cream War

“Gas up or off,” the woman said.

Felix turned round. This was the first naked woman he’d seen. She stood by the gas tap, one arm raised. Small flat breasts with curious bulbous nipples, a plump, creased stomach and heavy buttocks and thighs, a thick triangular bush of dull brown hair. His astonished gaze fixed on the hair. He’d known of its existence, of course, but he’d never given it much thought, it had never really played a part in his fantasies. There was so much. She had more than him. A great turfy clump.

“Up,” Felix said. The woman climbed into the bed, pulling the blankets up to her chin. Felix joined her. His knee bumped her thigh.

“Sorry,” he said, wondering what to do. He felt paralysed with ignorance.

Her face was unpleasant, with puffy cheeks and a thick nose. Tense with apprehension he bent his head to kiss her on the lips.

“None of that,” she said harshly.

“Sorry,” Felix said again.

He brought his hand up to her shoulder and quickly ran it down the length of her body until it touched the extraordinary crinkly brown hair. It was wiry, not as soft as his.

“Just a minute,” she said. “What you got on yer mouth? Ain’t diseased or anything, is yer?”

Felix recoiled suddenly, his movements pulling the blankets away from her body.

“Sorry,” he said for the third time, as she snatched them back. He had to stop apologizing, he told himself.

“No,” he said. “It’s just a cold sore. You know. A cold sore.”

“Oh…yes,” she said dubiously. The hissing gas lamp illuminated the wrinkled sheets and set greasy highlights in her hair. Felix thought uncomfortably about the nameless man who had been occupying the bed minutes before.

Urging himself on, Felix lay down and hunched his body up against the woman. She shifted her weight and he found himself lying on top of her, her legs spread wide. He could feel the prickling furze of her hair against his belly. For some reason itches sprang up all over his body in response. There was a faintly damp moist feel to the woman’s skin, and various smells, not unpleasant, but unsettlingly alien, assaulted his nostrils. He wished vainly he were down in the street eating a third potato.

He felt the woman’s hands tugging at the fly buttons on his drawers. His cock, he realized, was wholly inert.

“Gawd, bloody hell,” the woman muttered. She pushed him off and thrust her hand into his drawers. He felt a surge of prim outrage at the touch of a strange hand.

She grabbed his cock in her fist. “Get you hard,” she said and began to pump it vigorously up and down. Felix looked up at the ceiling, feeling his stubborn anatomy at once respond to such forceful stimulation. The woman was still muttering to herself. Felix shut his eyes. It was better, he found, if he couldn’t see anything.

“Ach, you dirty little bugger!” she swore. She sat up, holding her sticky hand out distastefully, as if she’d just been clearing a blocked drain. “All over the bloody blankets. Go on. That’s yer lot. Go on, fuck off out of it!”

Felix crawled out of the bed and crouched over to his warm clothes. He put them on quickly, shutting his ears to the insults that were coming his way. He fumbled with his stiff collar, his fingers mysteriously transformed into stubby strengthless growths. A collar stud dropped to the ground and rolled away somewhere. He thrust his collar and bow tie into a pocket and tied his scarf around his neck. He hauled himself into his overcoat, flinging a last glance at the woman who was rubbing at the blankets with a cloth.

“Can you tell me how I get to Charing Cross from here?” he asked in a high, hoarse voice.

“Fuck off, you dirty little squirter,” she said vengefully. “Clear off out of it.”

♦

A fine wet mist hung over the Kent countryside. A uniform grey dawn light emphasized the absolute stillness of everything. It seemed to Felix that he was the only moving object in the landscape. The only sound was the squelching his sodden shoes made as he trudged up the lane towards Stackpole Manor. It had been a mistake to cut across the fields. The dew was so thick he might as well have been wading through water. An early morning mail train had taken him to Ashurst Station but the price of the ticket had used up the last of his money. There had been nothing for it but to walk home.

He opened the main gate at the bottom of the drive and closed it behind him quietly. He didn’t want to wake anyone in the lodge. They would be naturally surprised to see him out and about at this time of the morning in evening dress. He sloshed up the drive. He couldn’t really understand why he’d come back to Stackpole. A vague attempt to flee the scène of his mortifications, to put the maximum possible distance between himself and London. He still had his clothes at the Holland house, he realized. He’d have to send for them or else go back. Go back? Never , he thought, never. What would Holland think of him now? Would Amory tell the company about his appalling behaviour? Would they all laugh and condescend? “You silly, boring little boy!” He groaned out loud. He could hear her voice in his ears now. And then the tart…At least nobody but himself knew about the tart. What a disastrous night: disaster on a truly epic scale. This realization caused his soggy pace to slow. He stopped. He passed a shaking hand over his eyes. He sank down on his haunches and rapped his forehead with his knuckles. He knew why he had come back to Stackpole. There was nobody in London whom he could turn to. At least here they knew nothing of his shame.

He got to his feet again. He saw the turning that led down to Gabriel and Charis’s cottage, and, for no particular reason, went down it. To his surprise he saw a light shining from a downstairs window in the cottage. He went up and looked in. Charis sat on a low footstool in front of a newly lit fire. She was wearing a long navy blue dress and her hair was down. She held a steaming cup of something in her hand.

Felix rapped on the window pane. Charis turned round so sharply she almost fell from her stool. Then she recognized him and looked up in relief, a hand over her heart. She got up and moved out of his vision to open the front door.

“Felix! Gracious. I practically died of shock. What on earth are you doing? Come in, come in.”

Felix went in to the small sitting room and warmed his hands in front of the fire.

“I’ve just walked from the station,” he said.

“Oh. London not all you expected?” she asked sympathetically.

“You could put it that way.”

“Have some tea,” she said. “You look miserable.”

“If you don’t mind I’ll take off my shoes. They’re sopping.”

“Go ahead.” She went to fetch another cup and saucer.

“How was your party?” he asked. “I wish I’d stayed.”

“It was all right,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep. Which is why I’m still dressed, if you’re wondering. I went for a walk.”

“Who was there?”

“The Hyams. Some people from around and about. And Sammy Hinshelwood.”

“Oh? How was Sammy?”

Charis handed him a cup of tea. “That’s why I couldn’t sleep. Sammy was…How shall I put it? I think the kindest way would be ‘over-gallant’.”

“Good Lord,” Felix said, genuinely shocked as he understood the implication. “Sammy Hinshelwood? I mean, he was Gabriel’s best man!”

“He had a bit too much to drink. I think he just meant to be comforting. Anyway, no harm done. He apologized. Said he was fearfully sorry.”

Felix shook his head in outraged mystification. He looked at his bare toes. They were very white from the wetness, the nails yellow, as he imagined a dead person’s would be. Sammy Hinshelwood…who would have thought? Charis sat on the edge of the sofa. Felix glanced at her. She was wearing a shoulderless, very dark blue full-length gown. She looked as if she had been dipped in ink up to her armpits so sharp was the contrast between her white skin and the blue. Her long hair fell almost to her waist. This informality suddenly seemed overpoweringly intimate. He could see little creases at her armpit where her skin bulged slightly over the reinforced top of the dress. She had a string of jet and amber beads around her neck. He tried to imagine her naked body. He imagined it firm and smooth, hairless like a girl’s or a statue’s. Nothing like the one he’d seen a few hours previously.