William Boyd - An Ice-Cream War

By such methods she had managed to get through the day. She had gone for a walk up the river and stood and gazed at the slowly flowing water for a long time. In the evening she had prepared a meal as usual, set it out, and eaten it down heartily. Half an hour later she found she was hungry again. She had banked up the fire and sat in front of it on a low stool, hugging her knees to her, watching the dance of the flames and the collapse of the coals in a benign mesmerized trance.

Shortly after midnight Felix tapped on the window. She fixed a smile on her face and let him in. They kissed.

“Is everything all right, Charis?” he asked. “I missed you at luncheon.”

“I went for a walk. I’m fine. I lost track of the time.”

Satisfied, Felix launched into details of his latest plan. Oxford was so terrible that he and Holland couldn’t face the prospect of another year there. Holland felt that it was perfectly acceptable for them to volunteer as ambulance drivers, as long as they were posted to France together.

“I say, Charis, are you listening?”

“Sorry. I was dreaming. You were saying?”

“I might be going to France as an ambulance driver. At the end of the summer.”

“Oh.”

“What do you think? Don’t you mind?”

“I shall miss you.” The deeper truth that this statement contained caused tears to brim on her eyelids. Felix was touched and put his arm around her.

“Don’t worry about me Carrie,” he said. “I shall be miles from the front.”

Their embrace led to a kiss and thence to a partial undressing and an uncomfortable union on the small sofa. They had become more adept and assured in making the necessary manoeuvres. Charis saw this confidence make itself daily more evident in Felix. He was twenty now; he seemed finally to be leaving the last traces of his boyishness behind.

He didn’t stay for long. Shortly after one o’clock he started yawning and said he’d better get off to bed. Charis saw him to the door, remembering to switch off the light in the hall so he wouldn’t be seen leaving. His complete obliviousness to everything she was suffering was, paradoxically, her greatest support. If he had sensed anything badly amiss, if he had questioned and probed, she doubted if she could have sustained the minimal poise and control she possessed. As it was it required very little effort on her part to convince him that everything was normal.

“See you tomorrow,” he said, kissed her on the nose and was gone.

Charis sat for an hour running through her plan in her mind. She couldn’t avoid causing grief and pain, she knew. But it would be nothing to the consequences that would fall on all their heads if the truth came out.

Eventually she sat down at the writing desk and wrote briefly to Felix.

My darling Felix,

I have been thinking things over and have decided to go away. Under the circumstances it seems the only possible thing to do. Any sort of compromise would be intolerable. I have written to Gabriel and told him everything.

It seemed a bit terse and ambiguous, but that gave her a vague satisfaction. She thought of adding some phrase like ‘I am sorry’ or ‘Don’t have any regrets’, but decided against it, signing only her name.

She sealed the letter in an envelope and addressed it. She felt determined and businesslike, she gladly noted, not morose or self-pitying. She was going to get rid of all her doubts and dilemmas, shames and disappointments, all the pains and grief that stood ranked in the future waiting for her. An interminable hellish gauntlet that she would no longer have to run. Her skilful evasion seemed suddenly profoundly satisfying. The choice she made now was, she thought, as bold and intelligent as any stoical decision to endure.

She picked up Felix’s letter and put on her heaviest tweed coat. It was a golfing coat with an attached cape and big buttoned skirt that came down to her ankles. She put her hand on the doorknob, she had everything she needed.

Outside it was a dark cool night, cloud-free, with the stars shining up above. She walked briskly up the drive to the big house. It was just cold enough for her breath to condense for a second or two. She slipped Felix’s letter into the letter box in the front door. A faint wind moved through the rhododendrons, causing the thick shiny leaves to clatter drily. She took a deep breath. All the worries and fears were dwindling into insubstantiality as swiftly as her condensed breath was hurried away by the breeze. It seemed to her that she faced only an avenue of bright tomorrows. She turned on her heel and set off down the path she had chosen.

“Job,” cried Major Cobb. “Chapter twenty-eight, verse twelve.”

“Oh dear, no,” breathed Mrs Cobb, standing beside Felix. “Not again.” She pressed her fingers into her cheeks as if her teeth were aching. “Not again.”

Felix stared at the map of Africa, then squinted slightly so that the reds and greens went hazy and elided. The holiday before he had deliberately missed family prayers one morning, thinking he was old enough to absent himself without having to ask permission. His father had gone, in Felix’s opinion, raving mad. He had exploded with wrath at the breakfast table when Felix eventually appeared, accusing him of being a worthless atheist, a snivelling coward, a disgrace to the family name and, moreover, exhibiting a callous disregard of his brother’s noble sacrifice. It was the last insult that had stirred his conscience and so now he thought it worth it — for the quiet life that everyone was after — to comply with his father’s whims.

“But where shall wisdom be found?” the major intoned. “And where is the place of understanding?” His fat features had slackened, the puffy cheeks sagged, the double chins now bristly dewlaps which were never properly shaved. But he was as obsessive as ever, and Felix could see him shaking slightly as he loudly repeated the words of the daily lesson.

“Where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living.” He prodded the open bible in front of him with a stubby forefinger. “Neither is it found. In. The land. Of. The living.”

His mother stopped Felix, with a gentle pressure on his arm, as he was filing out of the library to go to breakfast.

“Darling,” Mrs Cobb said, a worried look on her face. “I’m a little concerned about your father.”

“I’m not surprised,” Felix said. “Shouldn’t he be in hospital?”

“ Really! Felix. He’s just so upset.”

“We’re all upset, Mother. That doesn’t mean we have to behave like…”—he indicated the map—“Like that .”

“Oh dear,” Mrs Cobb said, taking her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment. “Oh dear. What is happening with this dreadful war? It’s most unfair.”

Felix went into the dining room. His father was sitting at the end of the table reading a newspaper. Beside him was Cressida, trying to ignore his constant mutters and exclamations. Felix’s empty place was next to hers. Opposite them sat Eustacia and Nigel Bathe. Nigel Bathe wore a tweed jacket, the two empty sleeves of which were pinned up just below his elbows. Beside him Eustacia cut up a plate of bacon and eggs, loaded up a forkful and popped it in his mouth.

“Morning,” Felix said. “Nigel, Eustacia, Cressida…Father.”

Felix felt as he always did these mornings a surge of pity for Nigel Bathe, whom he’d never liked. Nigel still grumbled and complained as of old — about the size of his disability pension, the inefficacy of the artificial limbs he was learning to use — but Felix didn’t grudge him it now. The rest of the family seemed quite accustomed to his presence at meals, his being spoon-fed by Eustacia, but Felix found it a most unsettling start to each day.