“Don’t worry, Gabe,” he said with a bright hard smile. “I can see your problem. No, fine. Glad to do your ushering for you. It was a pretty dreadful speech anyway, I’m sure.”
♦
Felix gazed out of his bedroom window at the south lawn and the fishponds. He saw Cyril, the gardener, trudge across it from the orchard, a heavy bucket in his hand, on the way to feed the carp. As if to complement Felix’s mood the brilliant day had suddenly clouded over, as it can in an English summer, and had become cool. The fishponds, before a deep and placid blue, were now mouse-grey and crinkled by a breeze.
“Charis knows him too. She’d like Sammy to…” The words hummed in his head. He knew who to blame for his bitter disappointment. Damn Charis, he thought. Damn bloody Charis. During the walk back from the willow pool he had been brittle and gay, expressing all sorts of outlandish opinions on White Slavery, the Cailloux case in Paris, the assembly of the fleet at Spithead and had loudly announced his plans to take dance lessons in order to master the Tango and Maxixe. This was a Felix Gabriel knew well, and he had laughed and humoured him, apparently glad to see him back on iconoclastic form.
Once back in his room Felix had punched his pillow, sworn and impulsively ripped his best man’s speech into pieces. He was annoyed to find his eyes smarting with tears of frustration and hurt. He resolved to be steely and cynical at all costs. No one should guess how he felt let down and betrayed. Sammy Hinshelwood. Another wretched soldier, boisterous and hearty. How he detested the army!
He lay on his bed and smoked a cigarette, watching the blue braided fumes curl and disintegrate above his head. His trunks from school had arrived while he was away at Holland’s and they had not been unpacked, as he had requested.
Unlocking one, he took out some books and a cardboard cylinder. From this he removed a coloured poster. It was an offer from de Reske cigarettes, one of the brands he smoked. On receipt of six empty packets the poster was sent free of charge. It portrayed a young couple sitting at a table. A slim young man in evening dress leant forward, cupping his chin in one hand, his other behind him, languidly resting on the seat back, a smoking cigarette held between two fingers. He gazed dreamily into the eyes of an equally slim woman, who leant forward also, thereby causing her considerable bosom to press against the low-cut bodice of her silk gown.
What fascinated and stimulated Felix about this picture was the marked disproportion of the woman’s breasts to her elegant frail form, and the way she leant forward, provocatively offering them in their décolleté, as some kind of reward for her companion’s sophisticated taste in choosing to smoke de Reske.
Felix spread the picture on the hearth rug. He weighted one side with an ashtray and rubbed his groin area experimentally through his cotton trousers. Normally the visual and physical stimulus produced instantaneous results, but on this occasion it seemed merely a bored mechanical exercise. He picked up his ashtray, repackaged his advertisement and resumed his seat by the window, staring emptily at the lawn, the ponds and the fields beyond, now shadowed by the passage of evening breezes.
Later Hester, the upstairs housemaid, drew him a bath. He bathed and changed for dinner. The family, he knew, would be gathering in the inner hall in preparation for the evening meal, but he felt not the slightest inclination to join them. He sat down at his desk and took out some writing paper from a drawer. He scored out ‘Stackpole Manor’ on the letter head and wrote ‘Bleak House’ in its place. He would write to Holland, his friend and inspiration from school, the only person who could understand him, who could appreciate and share his mood.
My dear Holland, (he wrote)
My head aches and a drowsy numbness pains my neck. I am home again. This despicable house is like some vast malodorous carcass dropped in Kent, silvery with putrefaction and occupied by sleek pale complacent maggots, most of whom are wearing military uniforms. My family, God save me from my family. There is not one ‘soul’ among them. (I except, as always, brother and groom Gabriel — though he is not himself. On perusing a copy of my wedding speech he told me it was far too inflammatory and provocative for the intolerant and sensitive ears of my assembled relations. Platitudes, he said, all that we require are platitudes and homilies and perhaps one or two well-known jokes. I of course refused to alter a single word and have, as a result, been demoted from best man to chief usher. I am unrepentant.)
Shall you know the others? Cressida, my eldest sister, unmarried and rapidly stoutening, humourless and intolerably bossy, who now runs the household leaving my dear mother free to pursue her ‘enthusiasms’. As I write, the driveway is filled with motors of every type and description. Then Yseult, pale and simple minded. Shamelessly compliant and cowed by her grotesque husband, the booming Falstaffian Lt Col. Henry Hyams. They are accompanied by their egregious child, Charles, my nephew, currently depriving me of the use of my elegant dressing room. Next we have the twins; Albertine (quite nice, I admit, and cheerful) and Eustacia (horribly embittered) and their respective spouses. Albertine trapped the hon. Greville Verschoyle — another soldier, captain or major, or something. Eustacia contrived to snare, only last year, Lieutenant Nigel Bathe — with an ‘e’, mark you. The Nigel Bathes must be the most unpleasant couple I know. Soldiers, soldiers everywhere. One of the advantages, for daughters, of having a father who’s a major and spending their lives in garrison towns. Even dear Gabriel is a soldier. Revolting Charles will become one, I’m sure. Leaving only me and my two delightful but very noisy nieces (Hattie and Dora: why do they name them after scullery maids?) uncalled to the colours. I have saved the best ‘til last. I have talked of my father before, have I not? I have still to see him, though I have been here all day—
He was interrupted by the brassy crescendo of the first dinner gong. He put down his pen. He had described his family to Holland many times before, but the letter had been therapeutic. He felt quite restored.
He checked his reflection in the cheval-glass that stood in the corner of his room. His hair…Holland had abandoned hair cream and macassar so Felix had followed suit. They were growing their hair longer too. Prudence, however, dictated that tonight would not be a good time to draw his father’s attention to its length. He took a bottle from his trunk and poured some oil into his right palm, rubbed his hands together and smoothed them over his head. He combed his hair again, slicking it down close to his head. With his little finger he dislodged a congealed strand so that it fell across his forehead. He made a silent wager that his father would tell him to get his hair cut. He straightened his bow tie. The second gong sounded in the hall.
At the door of his bedroom he bumped into Charles, similarly attired in a dinner suit. Charles was a thin child with sad eyes and a weak chin. He had inherited none of his father’s potent geniality.
“Where on earth do you think you’re going?” Felix demanded, impeding Charles’s progress down the corridor.
“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.