“Morning, sir,” said Sproat again, smiling broadly. His servility was his most effective goad. He was a thin, balding man with wispy gingery hair. He had very large teeth, like a horse’s, with prodigious gaps. These were now on display between parted lips. From some reason the sight of Sproat’s teeth each morning removed Felix’s appetite for breakfast. He looked out of the sitter window at the sodden college quad. He saw a dressing-gowned figure holding an umbrella dash across from a stairway entrance towards the college lavatories.
“Morning,” Felix said. “Morning Algy,” he added automatically. Algy was crouched in front of the recently made-up fire, holding a sheet of newspaper over the chimney in an attempt to get the fire to take. He was reputed to be Sproat’s son, a spindly taciturn lad of about twelve years old with a permanent cold. He never spoke in Felix’s hearing, and Felix suspected that Algy had sent him to Coventry. The boy had only uttered one question in Felix’s two terms. One morning he’d said, in Sproat’s absence, “Woi in’t you fightig, zur?” and received a cuff about the ears for his insolence. On the chimney-piece Felix had a small vase, pointedly displaying the five white feathers the good ladies of Oxford had seen fit to present him with over the weeks. Holland had only been handed two and professed himself extremely jealous.
Sproat, however, had no such qualms about conversing. “Doesn’t seem much better this morning, sir,” he said.
Felix glanced out of the window. “Typical March weather,” he said.
“Oh no. I wasn’t talking about the weather, sir. I was meaning your sore, sir.”
Felix’s hand leapt up to the corner of his mouth. He winced. He had a large cold sore on his bottom lip, about the size of a sixpence. It had started off on the bottom left hand corner of his lower lip. An itch, then a blister, then a crop of blisters that soon spread onto the skin below. These had burst, crusted and formed a scab which never seemed to heal. He’d had it for over two months. It had sprang up within days of the news of Gabriel’s capture. No matter how dutifully he applied lotions and ointments and resisted the urge to pick at it, it refused to disappear.
“Seems to ‘ve had some kind of suppurations in the night,” Sproat observed, rising on his toes and leaning forward to get a closer look. “Some sort of transparent oozings, I would say.”
“Would you, Sproat,” Felix said, and went immediately back to his bedder to confirm this diagnosis in his looking glass. Sproat was right. Felix now recalled that he’d spent a troubled, restless night after drinking a great deal of whisky punch in Holland’s rooms.
The dark crust had broken and now gleamed with fissures of fresh blood. The furze of bristles that surrounded it — Felix had to be careful while shaving — made it seem even more of a disfigurement.
“I’ve got a friend who swears by this lotion, sir,” Sproat called through the door. “Says he could get it for me cheap, like. Round about two shillings for a small bot—”
“No thank you, Sproat,” Felix interrupted firmly. The man had persistently cheated him since the day Felix had arrived in Oxford — hence their enmity, though it was now fuelled by every potential disagreement. Sproat had sold him a commoner’s cap and gown, ‘new’ curtains, fire irons, a dozen sporting prints and a kettle within ten minutes of showing a nervous Felix up to his rooms, and all at vastly inflated prices. Furthermore, he claimed to be on especially good terms with certain Oxford tradesmen who would grant Felix a discount if he did all his ordering through Sproat. Felix bought a thousand cigarettes, a case of claret and one of hock, tea, jam, tobacco and half a dozen pipes before he’d grown wise. The ensuing row, bitter accusations and wounded protestations of innocence had soured things irreparably. Felix’s Fabian leanings would not allow him to prosecute Sproat any further but he counted it sufficient punishment to let Sproat — a devout Tory — know that in future he would be supplying himself from the new co-operative stores in the High Street. Sproat, though, had ardently sustained the feud and derived great satisfaction from any discomforts that came Felix’s way — gatings, JCR fines, poor academic performance and the like. The cold sore had been like a gift from the Gods.
“No thank you, Sproat,” Felix repeated as he walked back into the sitter, a false smile on his face. The fire was now lit and burning and a large brown kettle had been placed on the hob to boil up water for his bath and his tea pot. Felix lifted the tin cover from the plate that contained his breakfast and saw two gelid, rapidly cooling poached eggs on a piece of toast.
Sproat removed a copy of the Oxford Magazine from his jacket pocket. Felix pinched the bridge of his nose. Here was another Sproat torment: the ‘butcher’s bill’, as Holland termed it. Pointed reproach directed at Felix in the guise of pious reminiscence.
“Bad weeks, sir,” Sproat said, opening his magazine. “Harold Albert Talbot. Exhibitioner of the college. Nice chap. Quick, thoughtful sort of person. Died of wounds at a place called Neuve Chapelle.” Sproat shook his head sadly. There was nothing Felix could do: to interrupt the college roll of honour would be playing into Sproat’s hands, the ultimate sacrilege. He nodded in commiseration.
Sproat read on. “Noel Muschamp. Dear dear dear. Died in an accident at the aviation school. Fine man, fine man. Staircase six. Lord, here’s another. Thomas Percy Gruby. Rowed in the First Eight in 1904 if I’m not mistaken. Got a fourth in Literae Humaniores…”
Sproat continued. Felix sat and listened and felt the depression settle securely on him. Sproat closed his magazine.
“Well, sir,” he said, not bothering to conceal the note of triumph in his voice. “if that’ll be all?” He left.
Felix opened his coffee jar and found it empty, so contented himself with a pot of tea. He looked distastefully at the two inches of water in the tin hip bath and decided to forgo the dubious pleasures of a wash this morning. He stood at the window with his cup of tea and looked down on the deserted quad. In a normal term of a normal year it would have been full of bustling figures on their way to lectures or off to breakfasts with friends, but owing to the war the college was now half-empty, and even those numbers had been supplemented by men from other colleges which were being used as temporary barracks for various army units of yeomanry and territorials.
Felix sat down in front of his staring poached eggs and blinded one with an aggressive stab of his knife. The wound in the congealed yolk reminded him of his cold sore and he felt the familiar sensations of what he now termed his Oxford mood descend on him.
Oxford had been a terrible disappointment. It wasn’t so much Oxford’s fault, though, as the war’s. By the beginning of the first term two thousand undergraduates had volunteered for service. Felix and Holland — both turned down at the OTC recruiting office: Felix for his weak eyes, Holland for chronic myopia and a bronchitic chest — had arrived to find a university filled only with the very young, old or infirm. Life went on, lectures were taken, exams were sat, but there was no trace of the spirit they expected to find. It was made worse at the turn of the year when a black-out was imposed and all the bells in the clock towers were silenced after dark. Only a few dim red lights glowed at important junctions. If Holland hadn’t been there Felix was sure that he would have re-volunteered out of a sense of sheer self-pity and disillusionment.