1982 - An Ice-Cream War (28 page)

Pav made a sudden movement, a grab at Felix’s face and he flinched reflexively, his wine splashing over his sleeve, taking the hair with it.

Pav’s extended fingers were inches from Felix’s eyes, and the man was scrutinizing him intently. He turned his hand to and fro, as if he were unscrewing the lid from a large jar.

“You hef a spendid sroat,” he said in his heavily accented mid-European voice. “I am liking to draw it.”

Felix shot a glance at Holland, but he was staring at other people in the room.

“Oh,” Felix said, embarrassed. “Yes. Thank you very much.”

“Look, there’s Enid,” Holland said. “Come and meet her, Felix.”

Felix forced himself to be attentive. He had been speaking to Enid for the last half hour. He could safely say that the fabled
morphineuse
was one of the most boring people he’d ever met. Holland said she was twenty-eight but she looked at least a decade older. She was a small, broad woman with a great shelf of bosom and wild straw-dry black hair. She wore a jarring futurist dress and was draped with beads and jewels. Her face was haggard and her eyes were ringed with purple. Felix switched his attention back to the monologue.

“…He’s got mumps, believe it or not.Yes, he’s got mumps. Terrible mumps. And he had a horrible discharging from one ear.
Horrible
. Eugh! One side of his face was all swollen from the mumps…”

Felix looked distractedly about the room. Where had Holland and Amory got to? The guitar player had quite a sing-song going—‘My Little Grey Home in the West’—and consequently only a near shout ensured that one’s half of the conversation was heard. Some of the guests actually had sketch books out and were drawing each other. Perhaps Pav would like to attempt his throat this evening, Felix thought scornfully. But these were artists, he reminded himself; they weren’t burdened with his self-consciousness.

“I must get some more wine,” he shouted at Enid, and swiftly weaved his way through the packed room to the table. There was no Chianti left so he moved on to the punch. He stood by one of the now opened windows and breathed in the night air. He leant against the wall and ran his fingers between his neck and his stiff collar. As far as he could make out only he and Holland were wearing evening dress.

Beside him was the door into the bedroom. Some people were standing just inside it having a heated discussion. The singers were now giving a full throated rendition of ‘Give Me Your Smile’ and it was some time before Felix realized that the two speakers were Amory and Holland and that they were talking about him.

“…he’s
not
coming to the Calf,” he heard Amory insist.

“He
has
to,” Holland asserted plaintively. “I told him he could.”

“Well you jolly well should have told
me first
. I’ve got a table for sixteen. Where’s he going to sit, for Heaven’s sake?”

“He can squeeze in,” Holland said. “I can’t tell him to go away.”

“Oh God! You and your wretched friends!”

Felix told himself he’d misheard the last remark. He launched himself off the wall and made straight for the punch bowl. The final chorus of ‘Give Me Your Smile’ was in full swing. Under such noisy conditions it wasn’t surprising that your ears would play tricks on you, he reasoned. Anyway, he thought, as he drained a glass of punch, hostesses always panicked about seating arrangements, numbers and that sort of thing.

By the time they arrived at the Golden Calf, as he’d heard the night club referred to, Felix was—he recognized—fairly seriously drunk. Unsteadily he handed over his coat, scarf and gloves in the tiny vestibule. He aimed himself at, and cautiously descended, three or four steps and looked about him. The dark cellar was filled with round tables at which people were eating late suppers. Waiters weaved to and fro with trays of food, ice buckets and bottles. At one end was a small dance floor in front of a low stage on which sat an immaculately turned-out nigger band. The ceiling was supported by huge white wooden caryatids carved in the shape of hawks, cats and serpents, with details—a tongue, a beak, eyes or scales—picked out in scarlet. The clientele, though it contained many uniformed men, seemed raffishly elegant and lively. The atmosphere, to Felix’s befuddled mind, oozed licence and vice.

Amory was greeted by a cadaverous-looking woman in a black fur coat, loosened to reveal pale shoulders and décolleté. The group was led through the cluttered tables to a pink alcove, a
cabinet particulier
, in which was set a large round table. Felix had been staring fascinatedly at the orchestra—he’d never seen so many negroes grouped together before—and was the last to arrive. No place had been set for him and he stood smiling foolishly while one waiter fetched an extra chair and another set a new place between Enid and a young man in khaki uniform whom Felix had not met. He sat down. Amory and Pav were across the wide table from him. His arrival had caused everyone to be squeezed uncomfortably together.

“Hello,” said Enid, her plump arm squashed against his side. “I don’t think we’ve met. What do you think of this coon music? I
adore
it.”

Felix looked wistfully across the table at Amory. Hairy Pav was whispering in her ear and she laughed at whatever it was he was saying, throwing her head back and exposing her long throat. Now
there
was a splendid throat. He’d give anything to cover it in kisses, Felix thought, the pain of his impotence suddenly spearing through his chest. He shut his eyes and immediately his head began to spin. He opened them and seized the glass of Moselle that he had just been poured, as if it were some crucial hand-hold. Waiters were arriving with food. Felix realized that he was by now dangerously drunk. A plate of prawn sandwiches was deposited in front of him. The faint fishy smell wafting up made his stomach heave. He plugged his mouth with his napkin, leapt to his feet and raced to the cloakroom.

Felix offered up a silent prayer to the inventor of the tango, as he and Amory glided jerkily about the dance floor. His hand was pressed into the small of her back. From time to time the movements of the dance obliged him to lean up against her or roll his pelvic area across hers. He thanked God also for providing him with the foresight to learn the hideously complicated steps the summer before.

Amory was slightly taller than him and looked fixedly over his right shoulder as they danced. Every now and then a soft collision or clumsily executed turn would cause their eyes to meet and she would flash him an automatic smile. Felix’s spine was humming like a tuning fork with ecstatic love and adoration, but it was clear to him that Amory wasn’t enjoying herself as much as he was.

They bumped into Holland and Enid.

“Feeling better?” Holland called.

“Fine,” Felix answered airily, hoping no trace of his vomit lingered on his breath. In fact he did feel better. Infinitely more so. He wondered if Holland knew how stupid he appeared with his ridiculous little beaver. He looked like a bargee, dancing with that ludicrous woman. This novel sense of superiority elated him and he whirled Amory around with more gusto, exerting extra pressure with his hand on her back, bringing his face entrancingly close to hers.

“Shall we sit down?” Amory said into his ear, the warm breeze of her words causing that side of this body to erupt in goose pimples. He allowed his fingers to touch her elbow as he ‘guided’ her to the table, which was deserted, all the other guests being fully employed on the dance floor.

The pink lamp cast a glowing rubescent light, softening Amory’s hard features, which had reminded him forcibly—he now banished the uncharitable thought from his mind—of one of the more predatory caryatids supporting the cueing. They sat down beside each other. Felix poured out two glasses of wine. He had long ago exceeded his limit but the zenith of confidence to which the alcohol had driven him made this prudent observation seem laughably unimportant. He took out his cigarette case. It was electro-plated nickel-silver, one of the more useful product of the family enterprise in Wolverhampton.

“Will you smoke?” he asked. A waiter approached with matches and lit their cigarettes. Felix gazed at Amory and ordered one half of his mouth to turn up in an intimate smile.

“This has been a marvellous evening,” he said, lowering his voice.

“Can you see who Pav is dancing with?” Amory snorted thin smoke streams from her nostrils.

Felix leant forward, supporting his chin with one hand, allowing the other—with his cigarette—to rest on the chair back behind him, exactly like the man in the de Reske poster, he calculated.

“You have a charming…ah,
pied a tem
,” he said.

“What?” Amory’s cigarette was tapped sharply. Ash fell obediently into the marble ashtray.

“
Pied a…
your flat. It’s charming.” Felix allowed smoke to coil and wreath from his mouth.

No reply. Her fingernails marshalled breadcrumbs on the pink damask table cloth.

“I’ve been looking forward to this evening for a long time.” Felix’s hand left his chin and disappeared beneath the table.

“Honestly! Where can that man have gone to?”

Felix glanced down at the slim length of tulle-clad thigh inches away from his own. He felt a sudden breathless—almost insupportable—excitement take hold of him. His hand descended on Amory’s knee.

“Oh Amory,” he said, more feebly than he’d intended.

“Oh for
God’s
sake!” She got to her feet with tired exasperation. “You silly, boring little boy!”

When he got outside into the street the first thing Felix did was actually punch himself in the face. He made a fist and struck himself a blow in the face, such was his self-loathing and bitter frustration. It wasn’t particularly hard, but it caused him surprising pain.

“Bloody hell!” he swore. He followed this up with some of Cyril’s richer vocabulary. He felt disgusted with himself. He looked down at his clenched and trembling fist and was surprised to see one white knuckle spotted with blood. Exploring fingers soon established that his cold sore was now scabless. He laughed scornfully, but silently into the night sky. That effectively removed any chance of rejoining the party. He dabbed at his weeping sore with his handkerchief, printing it with red polka-dots, as he wandered miserably off down the dark street.

Amory had stalked away from the table, presumably in search of Pav. Felix had remained immobile, head hanging, for a few seconds, his hand resting forlornly on Amory’s abandoned seat until the faint sensation of warmth that rose from her imprint in the recently vacated cushion died away. Felix tried to get his burning cheeks and the funfair of emotions that jangled in his body under control. This partially achieved, his one thought had been to flee, and without further deliberation he strode out of the night club, pausing only to collect his things from the cloakroom.

Now as he walked down the road he sardonically vilified himself, his puny lovemaking, his grossly inflated sense of his own worth. He called himself an ignorant schoolboy, a naïve conceited fool, a scrofulous impostor. How could he hope to attract anyone with this huge scab perched on his bottom lip? He walked on unheedingly, going through the night’s scenes again with punitive disregard for his badly damaged self-esteem. His self-laceration halted, however, when he looked about him and realized he was lost. Where was he? How long had he been aimlessly walking? He turned a corner. Fitzrovia? Bloomsbury? Night workers were hosing the streets down. Other gangs of men shovelled the dirt and horse shit into glutinous, yard-wide mud pies.

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.