by William Boyd
Felix crossed the road to a coffee stall and joined the queue of customers. He looked at his watch. Five past one. The public houses had been shut for half an hour. Standing in front of the coffee stall were a mixed bunch of soldiers, navvies and cabmen. There were two tarts with the soldiers and all of them seemed the worse for drink. Clearly he wasn’t in the city’s most salubrious district. Felix handed over his penny ha’penny and received his mug of steaming coffee. He warmed his hands around it and moved a little way off to the side.
“Hot potato, sir?” came a voice. Parked beside the coffee-stall was a costermonger’s barrow carrying a glowing brazier. Felix bought a hot potato, suddenly ravenously hungry, remembering also that he’d deposited his supper in the cloakroom basin at the Golden Calf. He wolfed down one potato, then bought another which he ate more slowly, salting it liberally with the potato man’s salt shaker. He began to feel slightly less disgusted with himself, enjoying the sensation of being out so late in London’s dark streets. He felt alone, pleasantly sad, but secure and, somehow, terribly wise.
“Where are we?” he asked the potato-man.
“Just off Bloomsbury Square, guv,” the man said.
Felix saw a woman in the queue looking him up and down. She wore a loose green coat and a tatty fox fur around her neck. A large picture hat with brown artificial roses stuck in it cast a shadow over her features. She left her place in the queue and wandered over. Felix stared at her.
“Hello, darling,” she said flirtatiously. “I can tell you’re a naughty boy.”
Why not? Felix suddenly thought. Why on earth not?
Felix followed the woman’s broad hips up a dark flight of stairs. A hot burning feeling—not unlike acute indigestion—filled his throat and chest in anticipation of the transaction that was about to take place. His bravado overrode any sense of reluctance that had attempted to interpose itself in the course of their brief walk from the coffee stall to this gloomy Bloomsbury tenement.
The woman opened a door off a landing and went into a small bed-sittingroom. A gas lamp on the wall was turned down low. Felix’s nervous glance took in a single unmade cast iron bed, a table with a jug and ewer on it, a small fire place. In front of the fire was an orange box over which was laid a pair of trousers.
“Get the spuds?” came a voice from the bed.
Felix jumped with alarm. A man sat up in the bed. The woman said nothing.
“Oh,” the man said. “I see. Right you are, then.”
“Is it—,” Felix began.
“He’ll be gone in a minute,” said the woman. Felix wondered if she was referring to him or her partner. He stood close to the wall while the man, who had been sleeping in a collarless shirt and combinations, pulled on his trousers. Felix stood motionless, watching the man lace up his boots. He looked like a waiter, Felix thought. The man unhooked his coat from the back of the door and put a faded bowler hat on his head.
“Enjoy yourself,” he said as he went out of the door.
Felix looked at the rumpled bed. The woman removed her hat. Her face was heavily powdered, her dull hair secured in a loose bun.
“What do you want?” she said.
“What? Oh. Just, em, ordinary sort of—”
“That’ll be two pound,” she said. “Put your clothes on that box.”
Felix struggled to breathe. He handed over two notes. It left him with a handful of change. Holland had told him that a pound was the most he’d have to pay, but somehow he didn’t feel like haggling. Anyway, he told himself in compensation, it wasn’t the sort of thing you could fix a price on.
The woman went to a wardrobe that stood in a corner and opened it. She put the money inside and started taking off her clothes. Felix felt his entire body begin to tremble and shake. It felt as if his lungs had been filled with scalding steam. He turned away and began numbly to undress, laying his clothes deliberately on the orange box. He undressed down to his long sleeved woollen vest and knee-length drawers. He wondered if he should take off all his clothes. As a compromise he removed his vest. Should he ask her name?
“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 sq
uelching 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.
She looked up and caught his eye.
“Did you cut yourself ?” she asked.
He touched his cold sore. “It’s not a cut,” he said. “It’s that cold sore. You know, I’ve had if for months. Can’t seem to get it to go away.”
She got to her feet. “You stay here,” she said. “I’ve got just the thing for it upstairs. TCP. You’ll see, it’ll be gone in no time.”
She left. Felix heard her footsteps above his head. He sipped his tea and stared into the fire. A notion had come into his head, unbidden and nasty. Don’t think that sort of thing, he commanded himself, but the order had no effect. Remember Gabriel, he said again. “Gabriel,” he repeated the name out loud, as if it were some kind of shibboleth. A few coals collapsed on the fire.
Chapter 11
17 june 1915,
Nanda, German East Africa
“Thank you,” the Englishman said, as Liesl von Bishop handed him his crutches. He smiled at her. He had a broad face. Square, as if his jaw muscles were overdeveloped.
“Danke schön,” he repeated.
“Excellent, Mr Cobb,” cried Dr Deppe. “An accent of first class quality!”
Liesl suppressed the usual stab of irritation. Deppe was so smug about his English. Who did he think he was? She was married to someone who was half-English, after all. She had even visited the country. Deppe thought he was so wonderful.
Liesl watched the English officer totter to his feet. His arms and shoulders began to shake with the effort of keeping himself upright. Liesl and Deppe ran to his side and eased him back onto the bed again.
“Gosh,” he said. “Still a bit rocky.”
“It’s not astonishing,” Liesl said. “You are very weak, yet.” The Englishman was surprised to hear her speaking English.
“Frau von Bishop is a linguist too,” Deppe said patronizingly, as he propped the crutches beside the bed. “A good effort,” he said. “Little by little, that’s how we do it. Tomorrow, one step. The next day, two. And so on.”
Liesl moved to the window. Life had been tolerable until Deppe had arrived from Tanga with his wounded and the sick Englishman. A double amputee, a man with one lung, and this one with the bayonet wounds. Remarkable recoveries, Deppe had said. He was keeping notes on them for some article he planned to write in a medical Journal after the war. Liesl saw him now, sitting hunched over a book in the corner of the big ward, scribbling away. She sighed, pulling the damp sweaty material of her makeshift nurse’s uniform away from her body.
Outside the window her view consisted of a wide compound of stamped earth that sloped down to a fenced-off stockade containing a jumble of wooden and grass huts that was Nanda’s prisoner-of-war camp. There were about eighty English and South African prisoners there who had been captured in the numerous small engagements that had made up the war in East Africa since the great victory at Tanga. Not that she knew much about it. When Erich came to her on his rare leaves he would tell her how things were going, but she only paid scant attention. To be honest she didn’t care, now that she was denied the comfort of living in her own home. She was waiting only for it to finish.
She had been moved from the farm at Moshi soon after war had been declared: too close to the fighting, they had said. She had stayed in Dar for two months and out of sheer boredom had offered her nursing services to the large hospital there. But she had been sent further south to Nanda where a new hospital had been established for more seriously wounded men whose convalescence would be lengthy and who were unlikely to return to the fighting. Erich had encouraged the move. He didn’t like her living alone in Dar, and besides, he said, Nanda was safer. The British were sure to bombard Dar before long
, he claimed. Nanda was far in the south, a smaller hospital, generally more tranquil.
In that respect Erich had been right. Liesl had found herself in effective charge of the hospital until Deppe arrived. The building had once been an agricultural research station and was situated at one end of the small town. Liesl had a wood and tin bungalow to herself—and Erich, whenever he came on leave.
The prisoner-of-war camp had been set up shortly after her arrival and there was a small garrison of troops based there to guard it. The rest of the population was made up of the wives and families of the rubber planters whose extensive plantations surrounded the town.
To Liesl’s surprise she had found herself quite happy to take up her nursing duties once again. She was even secretly grateful to the war for making this possible. When she returned from Europe in 1914 the first few weeks had been among the worst of her life. Every morning on waking, she was instantly overcome by a mood of poisonous irritation that made her days a misery. Nothing satisfied her, nothing pleased her. She detested the country, the malevolent climate, the demands of the farm. She took out her unhappiness on Erich.
She couldn’t say she was exactly happy now, but at least she wasn’t miserable any more. That is, until the wretched man Deppe had arrived with his text book cases, turning everything upside down, altering tried and tested routines and rotas, busying about like some officious little bureaucrat…
She picked at the wooden sill, prising away a splinter.
“Excuse me. Entschuldigung.”
She turned round. It was the soldier, Cobb, calling from his bed.
“Wasser. Kann ich, um, Wasser haben. Bitte.”
She brought him a glass. “I speak English, you know,” she said. “You don’t have to speak German.”
She remembered when this Cobb had arrived. The journey from Tanga had almost been too much for him: Deppe’s precious case history almost prematurely closed. He had a fever which lasted a week. She remembered sponging his body with damp cloths. He was very thin, his body unreally pale. There were knotted purple weals on his white belly and the huge gash in his thigh, still with its stitches in. Deppe said the dressings on the thigh wound had to be changed every twenty-four hours. More work for everybody. His double amputee as well, both legs gone almost at the hip. Deppe congratulated himself for keeping these people alive. At least Cobb was entire, even though he would always walk with a bad limp. She took the glass for him.