by William Boyd
Then had come the news of Gabriel’s capture. First a telegram with black borders saying he was missing in action. This had thrown the entire household into total hysteria, Cressida told him later. Happily, it was swiftly followed by a cancelling telegram. A state of ignorance persisted for a further ten days before the news came that Gabriel had been taken prisoner. Henry Hyams, through his connections at the War Office, managed to ascertain that Gabriel was in fact in a German hospital. During the Christmas vacation a letter arrived from one Major Bilderbeck GSO II (Intelligence), informing them in minute and immaculate handwriting that Gabriel had been severely bayonetted in the abdomen and would have to spend many months under intense medical care if he was to pull through. There was something about the tone of the letter that convinced everyone at Stackpole that it contained nothing but the truth: no hopes raised, none dashed. At least they knew Gabriel was alive (just) and where he was. But for some reason, discovering the details of Gabriel’s plight had an adverse effect on the major. His shock at what he thought was the death of his son was transformed by the news of his wounds into a bleak despair rather than relief. Life in the house became well-nigh intolerable. Many sullen and poisonous looks were directed at Felix as if he were somehow responsible for Gabriel’s dreadful plight. As a result Felix had chosen voluntarily to return to Oxford a week before the start of term where he’d paced the damp January streets in a mood of some depression himself. One morning he numbly accepted two white feathers from a group of stern old ladies in the High without even a glance. He found himself standing some ten minutes later in the Botanic Gardens looking moodily at the swollen brown river, the white feathers still clutched in his hand as if he were posing for some late Victorian painting entitled ‘A Coward’s Remorse’. An old gardener had woken him from his dream when he edged up and reassuringly said, “Don’t you go minding them daft women, sir.”
Holland’s return had boosted his spirits but by then the cold sore had fastened its mysterious but implacable grip upon his face. However, this term Holland seemed less preoccupied with Oxford life as his London one had acquired a new dimension in the shape of a ‘mistress’. She was, according to Holland, an artist’s model, a morphineuse in addition, and someone who made his life hell. She didn’t give a damn for polite society, Holland said, and he was writing some excellent poetry.
With a sigh Felix pushed away his untouched poached eggs. Nothing in his life was going as planned; all his hopes of the past summer had proved vain and ephemeral. University was boring and lifeless. Gabriel was at death’s door in an enemy hospital, the girl he loved didn’t care for him, he was heavily in debt, he had no interest in his studies, he had failed his exams, his family regarded him as a subversive malingerer and his face was disfigured by a loathsome suppurating ulcer.
Dwelling on these misfortunes in turn, Felix slowly got dressed. He had a tutorial at ten with Jock Illiffe, his tutor, an ancient and decrepit don whose rooms were unbearably overheated and stank of cat. There were two of these creatures, fat and fluffy, who had scattered their hairs over every seat and cushion in the room. One week, as an experiment, Felix read to the dozing Illiffe, and the cat that warmed his lap, the same essay he’d declaimed the week before. As on the prior occasion, when Felix had finished reading, Illiffe had opened his eyes, leant back and said, “Well, yes, that seems pretty much to be the ticket.”
Felix still had half a translation to do for the morning’s tutorial but decided there and then that he was going to cut it. Illiffe only realized he was due to take a tutorial if the tutee actually went to the trouble of presenting himself. It was the sole blessing that the war had conferred, Felix admitted: the college had become very slack. It was not difficult to ignore the innumerable petty regulations that cluttered up and interfered with one’s life.
What should he do then? There was a leccer—he corrected himself—lecture in All Souls. Holland deplored Oxford slang. He had ridiculed Felix one day when he’d inadvertently talked about going to a debate in the Ugger, as the Union was commonly known. But the lecture was as unappealing as Illiffe’s tutorial. He could read a novel in the Junior Common Room? Very dull. He’d been doing that all term anyway. What about a walk? Up the Banbury Road to Marston. There was a barmaid there in a pub that had caught his and Holland’s eye the other week. But no, it was still raining. Perhaps he could go and stare at the nurses who were billeted in Merton? Perhaps he should pack up his gear? Term ended the day after tomorrow. This thought depressed him even further. Reading between the lines of his mother’s regular letters, it seemed that his father was taking Gabriel’s capture very hard indeed. God alone knew what kind of Easter vac. he would have.
He belted his overcoat and stood undecided at his door. He walked slowly down the staircase. On the first landing a voice called out. “Hey, Cobb. Hang on a tic. Want a word.” Felix waited outside the room from where the summons had issued. It belonged to a man called Cave-Bruce-Cave, who had joined up immediately war was declared and had his left hand blown off within hours of arriving in France. Reluctantly he’d returned to Oxford to complete his degree. Gave, as he was known for convenience’s sake, was a large fresh-faced man who with limited resources did his utmost to preserve the atmosphere of mindless ragging and frivolous high jinks that had thrived in Oxford’s pre-war days. His missing hand had been replaced by a crude wooden one, and his favourite trick was to set fire to it in restaurants.
“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 ow
n 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?”
Holland put on his overcoat, selected a walking stick, and they set off. Back to the High Street, along Commarket and into the broad but lopsided avenue of St Giles—young plane trees on the left, fully grown elms on the right. As if to compensate, the plane tree side was balanced with row upon row of parked army lorries.
Holland took off his glasses. He was almost blind without them but hoped that by displaying no obvious infirmity he might attract accusations of cowardice from passersby. This did occasionally happen and gave Holland an unrivalled opportunity for a violent exchange of views. Felix, on his own, often went to the other extreme, wearing his glasses all the time, sometimes slipping a pebble in a shoe to promote a bad limp. When he passed through London he often wore a black eye-patch, to place his non-combatant status above question, or else a silk mourning band on his sleeve, another useful way of avoiding embarrassing remarks. Holland, of course, remained ignorant of these ploys.
“Cave-Bruce-Cave is organizing a rat hunt in the quad this afternoon,” Felix said. “He invited me to join in.”
Holland laughed. “He’s priceless that man. He’ll be debagging you next or ragging your rooms. Shall we have him round for tea?”
“Let’s not,” Felix said. “I don’t think I’m up to Cave today.”
They walked on up the Banbury road. The horse chestnuts showed some tiny green buds but it still could have been the middle of winter. There were few people out on the road so Holland put his glasses back on.
“Thank God for the vac.,” Holland said. “I can’t wait to get back to London.” This gave rise to talk about Enid, Holland’s morphineuse. Holland was worried in case she was having an affair with the artist she was currently posing for. “In the nude,” Holland added. “You can see it would be difficult to fight off any advances.”
“Doesn’t she mind?” Felix asked. “About, you know, taking her clothes off in front of a complete stranger?” Felix found it impossible to imagine how an artist could simply stand there calmly drawing or painting while a naked woman posed six or eight feet away.
“She gets paid for it, Felix,” Holland reproached him. “It’s her job.”
“I know. But I still can’t see…”
“My dear Felix.” Holland laughed a little patronizingly. “Not everyone is as frustrated as you.”
“Are you sure about that?” Felix replied sharply. Then he grinned. “No, perhaps not.”
“It’s a point, though,” Holland frowned. “It’s almost the done thing for an artist to have an affair with his model. Oh yes,” he said. “Talking about artists, I got a note from Amory this morning.” He drew out a crumpled letter from his pocket.
“Yes, she’s having an exhibition at her art school and she’s giving a little party, at her flat and then on to a club. Why don’t you come along? Twenty-ninth of March. Come and stay. You’ve been bellyaching about your dreadful family. Come up to the bright lights—or rather, come up to the blackout.”
Felix found it hard to imagine better news. It was remarkable how quickly the future could change. “Thank you, Philip,” he said, his voice thick with gratitude. “I
’d love to. In fact, it’ll be wonderful. The twenty-ninth? Are you sure?”
“Of course. You can meet Enid.”
A thought crossed Felix’s mind, a glowing coal of a thought.
“Did, um, Amory, actually, you know, ask you to, to invite me? In particular, I mean?”
“What? Oh no. No, she wrote to ask me, in fact. But don’t worry. I’m sure she won’t object if I bring a friend—she has met you before, after all, hasn’t she?”
Chapter 9
18 March 1915,
Stackpole Manor, Kent
Felix took off his eye-patch and stepped out onto the platform at Ashurst Station, blinking furiously in the weak early after-noon sun. His compartment had contained two lieutenants and a major all the way down from Charing Cross and he’d had no opportunity to remove his disguise. He had also buried his head in a book to forestall any embarrassing questions (where and how was he injured?) and the effort of reading with one eye unaided by spectacles had given him a dull headache. He had heard, nonetheless, a lot of talk about a victory at Neuve Chapelle and yet again felt annoying stabs of guilt, until he assuaged them with some of Holland’s arguments which had been directed at Cave-Bruce-Cave.
“But surely,” Gave had once said, “we’re fighting for our freedom?”
“Wrong, my dear Gave,” Holland had said. “We are fighting for our golf and our weekends. We went to war to prevent an Austrian and German pacification of Serbia, that’s all. The French allied themselves with Russia because they were terrified there would be a revolution and Russia would default on all the money they owe to France. Now we’re fighting to keep a tyrannical czar on his throne. Now you tell me. Are those causes worth dying for?”
Holland’s logic seemed incontrovertible. Even Gave had gone off troubled and perplexed. Felix ran through the arguments again as he waited for his right eye to adjust to the unaccustomed light. He called a porter over.