by William Boyd
“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.
Felix rolled his eyes in dismay, then looked down the table to his mother, who sat between Gabriel and Nigel Bathe.
“What assassination is this you’re talking about, dear?” his mother said. “Everyone seems to be getting assassinated these days. I can never remember who’s who. Is it that Rasputin fellow you mean?”
“No. The Archduke Ferdinand,” Nigel Bathe explained. “Heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire. In Sarajevo.” He was losing patience, Mrs Cobb’s face was still blank. “Three weeks ago, Serbia.”
“Oh yes,” Mrs Cobb said uncertainly. “Did I read about that somewhere, Gabriel?”
“Last week’s Illustrated London, Mother. There were pictures. Sarajevo, Mother. Everyone’s been talking about it.”
“These names, these places! Where on earth can they be?”
“And his wife too,” Nigel Bathe added grimly. “Revolvers.” He levelled two fingers at Mrs Cobb. “Bang! Shot dead by socialists. Just like that. Bang! Bang!”
Mrs Cobb flinched as the shots were fired. “Oh dear.” She seemed suddenly quite distraught.
Felix sat back and rubbed his eyes. Disembodied sentences filled his ears. He felt something like panic course suddenly through his body.
“…Did you go to Henley this year, Albertine?…”
“…You can’t trust Johnny Sepoy any more. Not since the mutiny…”
“…I hope you don’t mind me asking but what age were you when you got your captaincy?…”
“…We want reasonable progress, but not unreasonable change…”
“…It cost me seventeen guineas…”
“…Henry, would you be a dear and carve? Hamish seems busy…”
Felix opened his eyes and stared at the light fixture that hung above the dining table, an ugly wooden chandelier with six light bulbs, suspended on a kind of weighted pulley so that it could be raised and lowered. Empty candelabra stood in the middle of the table. He heard a thud, which gave him a start. All the silver rattled and one of the candelabra swayed and toppled over.
“Intolerable!” exclaimed the major, silencing all conversations. “Quite disgraceful!”
Felix looked distastefully at his father’s sagging face. “What is it, Hamish?” Mrs Cobb asked with concern.
“Albertine tells me that now they’re allowing women to boxing matches. Can you credit it?”
Conversation resumed at once when it was realized nothing significant was happening. Albertine looked a little chastened at the venom her innocent, observation had unleashed, as the major detailed the punishments he’d impose on any daughter of his who ever so much as tried to purchase a ticket.
Felix couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Aren’t you making a terrible fuss about nothing, Father?” he said in his most languid voice. “You’ll let a woman nurse soldiers on a battlefield. Why not watch a boxing match for heaven’s sake?”
“That,” said the major, sitting bolt upright in his chair, “has got absolutely nothing to do with it. Nursing is a duty, a vocation. This is mere titillation. Pleasure seeking.”
“Surely you are not going to deny the fair sex some innocent pleasure?” Felix said.
“Innocent?” the major gasped. He seemed genuinely shocked. “How dare you!”
He banged the table again with his fist and this time all the lights went out. Eustacia gave a little scream at the sudden gloom the room was plun
ged into. A greyish evening light filtered in through the south windows; everyone looked sick or old. Hattie—or was it Dora?—started to cry.
“For God’s sake, Agatha,” the major bellowed down the table at his wife. “This is all your fault. What was wrong with the gas, that’s what I want to know?”
“Don’t panic,” called Henry Hyams, still clutching the carving knife and fork. “Women and children first!” He started roaring with laughter, which only incensed the major further.
“Ring the damned bell,” shouted the major. “The bell. Get a servant in here, for God’s sake.” He jumped to his feet and followed his own advice, striding to the bell push set in the wall and, jamming his finger down on the button as if it were a detonator, held it there.
“Father,” Felix said, getting up. “I’ll go. The generator will have broken down, that’s all. By the way,” he said casually as he left the room, “you’re wasting your time. It’s an electric bell.” He quickly pulled the door shut behind him as he heard his father’s wrath erupt again.
He looked about him: the entire house was in darkness. He could hear a babble of voices from the kitchen. He walked down the passageway and through the swing doors.
“Hello, May,” he said to the cook. “Generator gone, I suppose. Cyril about?”
May was a thin elderly woman with a sourer expression than Eustacia’s, which effectively contradicted any vernal notions summoned up by her name. She jerked her thumb at the back door beyond which lay the coal store and wash house.
“He’m out back, Mister Felix. Shouldn’t take him a minute. ‘S always stopping these days.”
Felix stepped outside. The cool gloom of a cloudy summer night caused him to shiver. He walked quietly down to the wash house, part of which had been given over to the new electric light plant. Cyril, the gardener and handy man, was bent over the machine, peering at it with the aid of a torch. Felix paused at the door and listened to him muttering.
“Fuckin buggerin no good bit a bloody lump a scrap metal. Most shittin buggerin useless fuckin heap of shite I’ve—”
“Evening Cyril.”
“Chroist! Ooh God. It’s you, Felix. Whew, gave me a bloody fright though. Jesus. How are you?”
Holland had told Felix it was a worthwhile exercise to get on friendly terms with someone from the working classes. Felix had chosen Cyril.
“Very well,” he said. “Machine packed in?”
“Forgot to put the bloody Benzol in, didn’t I?” Cyril rubbed his hands on his waistcoat. He was a big lumpy young man. Clean shaven with an unlined, almost Chinese look to his face. His hair was black and wiry and combed straight back which gave an odd streamlined bullet shape to his head.
“Like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in it, pouring Benzol in that machine,” Cyril averred. “Here, I’d better get it going. Won’t be a tick.”
He unscrewed the top from a can of Benzol, placed a funnel in the generator’s fuel tank and poured the fuel in with a tinny gurgling sound. The smell of Benzol filled the cool room. Felix smiled to himself. Although it had started as an exercise to improve his conception of true socialist thinking, he found he liked Cyril a lot and enjoyed his candid, foul-mouthed company. Cyril told him anything he wanted to know.
Felix wandered over to the line of huge basins and picked-up an oily pamphlet that lay on the draining board. It was an instruction manual for the small motor that charged the battery the lights were run from. Holding it to the faint light coming in a window, he flicked through the pages.
“Cyril,” he said, chuckling to himself. “It says here that ‘an unskilled servant can do the work without any knowledge of electricity’. What’s going wrong?”
Cyril swore again. “I knows all about beggin’ electrics. I just don’t know how many people are going to be puttin’ up at the house do I? I sees it all lit up like some kind of…of a palace down the drive. Christ, I says, Cyril boy, if you don’t get some soddin’ Benzol in that motor them batteries’re going to be flatter than a stepmother’s kiss. And look what bloody happens just as I’m topping her up.” He jerked the lanyard on the motor and with a clatter the engine started up again.
“Bastard,” Cyril addressed the shuddering unit. The lights flickered and went on. He turned to Felix.
“How are you then, Felix? Looking forward to this wedding, then, are you?”
“Well, I suppose so. I haven’t met my future sister-in-law yet. She’s not long back from India. Cigarette?”
“Thanks. Don’t mind if I do.” Cyril wiped his hands on his trouser seat before accepting one. He looked at it. “Turkish?”
“Egyptian.” Felix lit both their cigarettes.
“Not bad,” Cyril exhaled. “Think I’ll stick to Woodbine all the same…Nah, I met her.” He adjusted his stance, widening his feet and easing his shoulders. “Day they came to chuck us out of the cottage. Mr Gabriel, Mrs Cobb and Miss…Whatsername.”
“Miss Lavery,” Felix over-articulated. “Miss. Charis. Lavery.”
“Charis, eh? Funny name. No, but, she seemed nice enough, though. Very pleasant. Sort of apologizing. I suppose she were a bit embarrassed seein’ as it were our house, like. Nice little cottage that was. Mind you, there are good things about living in the village. The pub, for starters.”
“Yes.”
Cyril ground his cigarette out with a toe of his heavy hobnailed boots, then picked the butt up and flicked it out of the door.
“I better get back home,” he said. “Or the wife’ll be thinking I’m stopping off for ale.” He put on his jacket, which had been draped over one of the basins. He wore a badly cut suit of thick coarse wool, almost like a blanket or felt. He took a wide flat cap out of his pocket and put it on.
“See you in church then, Felix,” he said, winking. “Cheer-ho.”
“What’s she like?” Felix said. “I mean, what does she look like?”
“Who? Miss Lavery?”
“Yes, I was just wondering.”
“Ooh. Small. Dark hair. Looks like a little girl beside Mister Gabriel. Spoke very kindly.”
“Well. I shall see for myself tomorrow.”
“Yep. That’s right.” Cyril removed a speck of tobacco from his tongue. He smacked his lips. “Don’t half leave a rum taste, those ciggies of yours, Felix. Where did you say they come from? Africa was it?”
“Sort of,” Felix said, lost in thought. “Yes. Africa.”
Chapter 5
25 July 1914,
Stackpole, Kent, England
Felix took his place in the pew and rested his top hat on his knees. The last of the guests were seated and the assembled congregation in Stackpole church awaited the arrival of the bride.
Felix had performed his duties as usher—assisted by Charles—with a fixed polite smile on his face. The congregation was small, composed largely of family, local acquaintances and dignitaries, and on the bride’s side, a solitary aunt from Bristol, a small, plump, cheerful-looking person. Charis was being given away by an old friend of the Cobb family, Dr Venables.
Ever since breakfast Felix had felt he was going to be sick. And once again saliva flowed into his mouth and he had to make a severe effort to prevent his stomach from heaving. He looked down towards the altar and saw Gabriel’s broad back, resplendent in his red and blue dress uniform. He watched him lean sideways and whisper to Sammy Hinshelwood. Felix felt bitter pangs of resentment. He should be sitting there beside Gabriel, on this day of all days, not showing people to their seats like some major-domo. He turned round and looked back towards the church door. Charles had been deputed to stay there and keep watch for the arrival of the bride. Felix saw the two rows of servants from the Manor crammed into the pews at the back of the church. They had been occupying their seats now for almost an hour, having been obliged to arrive well before the guests turned up. Cyril caught his eye and allowed a look of malicious piety to cross his features as he sat beside his thin, hard-faced wife.
Charles scurried self-co
nsciously down the aisle and whispered that the carriage had just rounded the corner up the road. Felix could hear the faint clop of horses’ hooves outside. He nodded to the organist who immediately struck up ‘Here Comes the Bride’ and the congregation rose to its feet. Two minutes later she entered, on the arm of Dr Venables.
Felix peered closely at his future sister-in-law but her face was shrouded in a veil. She was wearing a simple dress with a short train, clutched tenaciously by Hattie and Dora. Dr Venables, tall, pale, his oiled hair gleaming, towered above the bride who, beside him, appeared diminutive and girlish. As she passed Felix, he smelt a faint odour of rose water and saw her hands distinctly trembling as she gripped a bunch of lily-of-the-valley. He heard, he thought, the rattle of the stamens in the tiny waxy bells.
Gabriel stood at the head of the aisle, badly suppressing a broad grin of welcome and relief, splendid in his short red jacket and navy blue trousers.
Felix felt his nausea return. The church seemed suddenly filled with the ancient smells of dust and stone, mingled with the scent of flowers and rose water. He clutched the back of the pew in front of him and stared at his whitening knuckles. He did not raise his eyes again until the vicar invited them all to be seated.
In front of the church door the photographers busily packed away their bulky equipment. Felix stood and watched them. The bride and groom had been carried off in the landaulette to the Manor where a reception was taking place. Most of the other motor cars, traps, carriages and pony carts had left also.
“Are you walking back, Felix?” came a voice.
Felix looked round, it was Dr Venables.
“Yes.” Felix said.
The doctor joined him. “Fascinating contraptions,” he said, indicating the heavy cameras being placed in their velvet-lined boxes. “To think that this day has been captured forever. Preserved on light-sensitive paper through the action of silver oxide. Is that right? I don’t pretend to know how it functions.”
“I think you’re right,” Felix said glumly, vaguely remembering the dreadful embarrassments of the group photograph. His mother almost swooning from tension; the major refusing to smile; Gabriel and Charis’s happiness almost palpable, like being in a warm, fuggy room. He realized now that they had been sharing a joy in each other’s company which he found almost intolerable to witness. He had been close to Gabriel—closer than to any other person—but what he saw happening between Gabriel and Charis was an intimacy of a higher order, and one he was convinced, in his tight frozen heart, that he was unlikely ever to experience.