1982 - An Ice-Cream War (8 page)

“To dinner, Uncle Felix.”

“Dinner? Children don’t eat dinner now.”

“Oh but Grandmama said tonight we could. All of us together. Seeing as it’s the wedding tomorrow.”

Felix raised his eyebrows. “Hattie and Dora too?”

“Yes.”

This was intolerable. “Good God! All right, you go on down.” Charles left in a rush. Felix lit a cigarette, allowing Charles time to get downstairs well before it was time to make his entrance.

The inner hall was the most comfortable room in the house. It was large and high-ceilinged and more frequently used than any other. The walls were panelled in light oak and cretonne-covered armchairs and sofas were grouped in front of a sizeable fireplace with inglenooks. The floor was parquetine and scattered with Indian rugs. It was set to one side of the house, wedged in, as it were, between the original building and the new additions. A leaded window looked out onto the drive and the kitchen extensions.

Most of the Cobb family were present when Felix entered, one hand in a pocket, the other holding his cigarette nonchalantly at waist height. Dora and Hattie sat in one corner wearing frilly lace dresses and accompanied by their governess. They were very quiet and well-behaved. In a large group by the fireplace sat his mother, Yseult and Albertine. Ranged before the chimney-piece were the men: Gabriel, Sammy Hinshelwood, Greville Verschoyle and Lt Col. Hyams, the last of whom was laughing very loudly, one hand clamped on the shoulder of his miserable son who stood at his side, head bowed as if expecting a blow. Scanning the room Felix noted the absence of Cressida—who was presumably supervising the serving of dinner—the Nigel Bathes and his father.

His mother was the first to notice his arrival.

“Felix, darling,” she said, rising to her feet. “Come and sit down. You must be tired after your swim.” She advanced to take his arm, as if he were some kind of invalid or partially blind. “Should you be smoking?” She added as an afterthought.

“Felix,” Albertine cried. “Smoking. Do you mind?”

“It’s all right, Mother,” he said, gently releasing his elbow from her grip. “I’ll stand with the men.” He hoped the irony in his tone was evident: he was going to assert his personality tonight come what may. He greeted those members of his family whom he had not yet seen and politely answered a few questions about leaving school and going to Oxford.

“Felix,” Henry Hyams called. “Sherry? Can he have a sherry, Mrs Cobb, now he’s old enough to smoke? Ha-wha-wha!”

Felix helped himself to a sherry from one of the crystal decanters that stood on a table near the window, trying to ignore his brother-in-law’s imbecile hilarity. There was gin, brandy, whisky and a soda siphon, but he thought he’d better not go too far too quickly. He rejoined the group by the fire.

“Sorry to have deposed you as best man, Felix,” Sammy Hinshelwood said. He was a fair-looking young man with a small moustache and a receding hairline. He held one hand behind his back as if standing at ease on a parade ground.

Felix sipped his sherry. “Don’t worry about it.” he said, darting a glance at Gabriel, who was talking to Henry Hyams. “I was only first reserve anyway. Good that you could get on leave.”

“Yes,” Hinshelwood said. “It was short notice, but I’m glad I’m around to see Gabbers getting spliced at last.”

“Sorry. Gabbers?” Felix said disingenuously.

“Gabbers. Old Gabbers over there. Your bro. Cap’n Cobb, no less.”

“Oh,
Gabbers
. Yes.” Felix turned to his mother. “Any sign of the Nigel Bathes, Mother?”

“Yes, darling. They arrived half an hour ago. They’re getting changed.”

“Pity,” Felix said under his breath. He could happily have done without the Bathes. Eustacia, though Albertine’s twin, did not possess even her modicum of prettiness and was a surly moody person at the best of tunes. Nigel Bathe, her husband, complemented her sourness with an endless stream of grievances and alleged injustices which he claimed the world at large was always visiting on him. Wrongly totalled mess bills, unfair allocations of duty, uncongenial postings and the like. The list was endless. It took very little time for the Bathes to depress the tone and atmosphere of any gathering.

Felix drained his sherry and was about to get a refill when Henry Hyams attracted his attention by loudly calling his name and raising his hand as if he were trying to halt a stream of traffic. Henry Hyams was a large portly man who filled his dinner suit to capacity. The fat on his neck bulged over his stiff collar and he looked hot and trussed up. He had very small pale blue eyes, a waxed moustache and his thinning hair was brushed forward over his forehead and stuck there in a curl with hair oil.

“Yes, Henry?” Felix said patiently, modulating his voice in respectful falling tones.

“Oxford, Felix, Oxford.”

“Yes, Henry?” Felix repeated, this time on a rising note.

“What’s it all about, man? What’s it all about? Not entering the church are you? Mmphwaw!” He gave a snorting bark of laughter.

“Certainly not,” Felix answered promptly.

“Felix is going up to read, um,
modern
history,” his mother interrupted. “That is right, dear, isn’t it? I was so pleased to hear it was modern.”

“
Modem history!
” came an outraged bellow from the doorway. “I’ll give you modern history!”

Everyone whirled round in alarm. It was Major Cobb.

Felix was always surprised that his family were by and large reasonably tall when he saw his father. Major Cobb was a small man who had once been powerfully built. Some evidence of those early endowments was still visible, but since leaving the army he had grown dangerously fat. Tonight, Felix thought, he looked like a tiny, black and white, angry box. He was wearing—inexplicably—black knickerbockers and white silk stockings, buckled shoes, a tail coat, dickie and stiff wing collar with a white bow tie. Across his left breast jingled a row of medals. He looked like a diminutive ambassador about to present his credentials at the court of Saint James’s. He was almost completely bald, but, against the fashion of the time, retained colour of old piano keys, as if he were just recovering from an illness or about to be seriously afflicted by one. He had heavy bags below his eyes and his upper lids were plump wattles. The swagged folds of flesh left only thin slits for him to peer through. A thoroughly unpleasant looking man, all in all, Felix thought. He prayed earnestly that his own old age wouldn’t leave him similarly disadvantaged.

He stamped into the centre of the room flourishing a rolled up newspaper and hurled it into the fire. This gesture would have had more symbolic force if the fire had been lit. As it was it just rebounded from the fire back and struck the gaping Charles just below the knee.

“That damned villain, Carson!” the major said. “He ought to be boiled in oil!”

“Hamish!” Mrs Cobb shrieked. “Calm yourself! The children are here.”

“Modern…
wretched
history. I don’t know. Where will it end?” He glanced wildly round the room as if noting its occupants for the first time. “Home Rule, syndicalism, militants, suffragettes. I
spit on them all!
” he seethed.

Felix turned away. He’d seen these displays too often to be fearful or even impressed. Little Charles, to whom the last remarks had been addressed, looked as if he had just been sentenced to Sir Edward Carson’s fate.

“No point in getting steamed up, Hamish,” Henry Hyams said jovially. “Seven-day wonder stuff, don’t you know.”

The major was led to a chair and seated, a whisky and soda placed in his trembling hand. Felix sidled up to Gabriel as the major began to heap more iniquities on the home rule question.

“Why is he dressed like that?” Felix whispered. “Is he going mad or what?”

“I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “I think it’s something to do with the wedding.”

“But he wasn’t like this at Eustacia’s. Mind you, that’s understandable. Oh. Talk of the devil.”

Eustacia and Nigel Bathe had come in, unnoticed in the wake of the major’s tirade, and were still standing in the doorway being offended. Eustacia was very dark, with Felix’s colouring, even down to the hint of a moustache, but her face lacked all animation, as if permanently slumped in disgruntlement. Two deep lines were scored from the edge of her nostrils to the corners of her mouth.

“Why, Mother,” she plaintively rebuked. “We’ve been standing here five minutes while you all row and fling newspapers.”

Mrs Cobb rose to her feet for a third time. “How pretty you look, Eustacia,” she said serenely, in a dreamy, far-away voice. “Isn’t that lovely. Crêpe de chine?” She fingered the sleeve of Eustacia’s blouse.

“Nigel!” shouted Henry Hyams diplomatically. “Sirrah. Come ye hither and meet Sammy Hinshelwood.”

Nigel Bathe, a pale blond soft-edged man, joined the group by the fire. Felix peered at him. Yes, he had thought so, Nigel Bathe
had
grown a moustache, a thin, almost white thing that in a certain light was invisible.

“Everybody here at last,” sighed Mrs Cobb as if transported with joy.

“Except Charis,” Gabriel added.

“Ah yes. Except Charis.”

“Poor Charis,” Greville Verschoyle laughed. “I wonder what Aunt Mary’s having for dinner?” Then remembering that Aunt Mary wasn’t his aunt and catching Albertine’s reproving look, said, “Sorry…erm. I mean shame she couldn’t be with us, what? Eh, Gabriel? Charis, that is…”

“Good evening, Father,” Felix said to the major who was staring at the soda bubbles rising in his whisky glass. He looked round as if he were being addressed by a total stranger.

“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.