1982 - An Ice-Cream War (32 page)

“The flesh is weak,” she said to herself, in partial expiation. As if to prove her point she slipped off her night dress and stood naked in the cold room for an instant. She felt her body break out in goosepimples. Glancing down she saw her nipples redden and pucker.

“Brrrr!” she exclaimed and jumped into the still warm bed.

Felix came back.

“Nobody stirring,” he said. He saw her night dress on the bedpost and his smile broadened.

“Have I kept you waiting’ long?” he asked facetiously, as he took off his dressing-gown and pyjama jacket. “Ooh, it’s cold,” he said and hurried in beside her. They huddled close to each other.

“I should resist you,” Charis said, half-seriously. “But I’m so weak.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” he said, making a joke of it. “I’m irresistible.” She thought his smile was a little forced. They tried never to talk about Gabriel. She had no real notion of how Felix felt, if he felt as she did or not. By a kind of unspoken agreement they had arrived at a position where they didn’t mention his name if they could help it. It was safer. On the few occasions when some reference was made Charis found the feelings of shame and guilt burnt through her, her mind filled with images of their last days together. She would tremble with the effort of self-control; it seemed almost impossible to breathe. Felix showed nothing as far as she could see; he just became silent for a while. Was he wresting with his feelings? Or just respecting hers? She felt she desperately needed to know sometimes, but she didn’t dare ask for fear of what might be unleashed, of what would be for ever spoiled.

As she lay now in his arms she knew, though, that sometime soon they
had
to talk about Gabriel. They had to. It seemed to her they only got by because their meetings were so infrequent. When they were together for any length of time the spectre of Gabriel inevitably intruded on them, like Banquo’s ghost.

“Charis?”

“Oh sorry, Felix.”

“You’re not falling asleep on me, are you?” He kissed her neck. She ran her hand down the back of his head, her fingers seeking the top bump of his vertebrae.

“Just dreaming,” she said. She felt his hand on her breast above her heart, taking the nipple between thumb and forefinger.

“Dreaming of your demon lover,” he said.

“Thinking about last summer,” she lied.

“Oh. The ponds.”

Charis reached down and took his cock in her hand, holding it lightly, as if weighing it. It was very soft, like that, surprisingly so, she thought. She squeezed it gently, feeling it slowly thicken and firm, filling out her fist. Felix rolled on top of her. Her hand went back to his shoulders searching for a small mole, rubbery, slightly raised above the surface of his skin, a familiar map reference on his body, like the small scar on his thigh, the baby softness of his underarms.

In the summer of 1915, during fine evenings, Charis often left her cottage and went to a stone seat by the middle fishpond which was obscured from the big house by a large clump of Portuguese laurel and rhododendron.

It was a little classical arbour which had been constructed by Felix’s mother. There was a sizeable piece of broken fluted column set in a border and beside the marble bench was a bust of the Emperor Vitellius on a slim octagonal plinth.

As the evening cooled the water the big carp would come up from the dark and weedy bottom of the pool and nose at flies, or cruise slowly to and fro. Charis began to take some bread crumbs with her to feed them and soon, she fancied, they came to expect her arrival, the first crumbs thrown bringing a dozen or more fish up from the depths.

One evening Felix joined her; he had seen her from his room, he said. They had become more friendly since their meeting after her party when, unaccountably, he’d turned up at her front door in his dripping evening dress. The distrust and caution on his part that had seemed to lie between them disappeared, and consequently, when Felix was at Stackpole, life there became noticeably more enjoyable. The bizarre gloom that emanated constantly from the major had been added to by the return of Nigel Bathe from Mesopotamia. During a bomb-throwing instruction course he’d been attending, a bomb had exploded in his hands and both arms had been amputated at the elbow. He came with Eustacia to convalesce at Stackpole. The air of lugubrious tragedy that permeated the house became almost palpable. Felix’s return from Oxford for the summer vacation brought welcome relief.

The evening meetings by the fishpond began naturally and easily to extend themselves, weather permitting. Some days Charis found him there before her, waiting. He told her about his life in Oxford, how boring it was, and his friend Holland. They argued about pacifism, Charis attacking Felix’s anti-war stance out of a sense of loyalty to Gabriel rather than through any firm conviction of her own. The presence of Nigel Bathe and news of disasters at the Dardanelles and Suvla Bay made her arguments harder to establish, but she persisted, and in talking this way with Felix came to understand something of his hatred for the soldiers in his family, the powerful need he felt to be different from his father and brothers-in-law. But what about Gabriel, she would ask, playing her trump card. Ah, Gabriel was different, the exception that proved the rule. But slowly Gabriel’s name came up less and less frequently. Sometimes they simply sat and looked at the cruising fish, not talking for minutes at a time.

One evening it was unnaturally hot. A dull static heat that seemed to promise thunderstorms a day or so ahead. Clouds of midges dithered above the pool. There was no breeze and the air was clinging and felt over-used, as if, Felix said, it was composed of exhalations only. All the people of the world breathing out at once. Charis wore an old straw hat in which she’d stuck cornflowers and poppies. She took it off and fanned her face, looping damp tendrils of hair back behind her ears. She glanced at Felix but he was staring fixedly at the pond, tapping out a rhythm on his knee. Confident he wasn’t looking at her Charis pulled forward the V of her blouse and fanned air down her sticky front, shutting her eyes and throwing her head back. When she opened her eyes Felix was looking at her. She blushed.

“Phew,” she said. “It’s so hot. Beastly hot. Do you think it’s as hot as this in Africa?”

“Charis,” Felix said, with visible effort and a strained formality, “I have to say. I can’t…” and to her utter astonishment he lurched forward, put his arms around her and tried to kiss her. For a moment she did nothing, stunned, perplexed and amazed to feel the pressure of his hand on her shoulders and his lips squashed against hers. She pushed him away.

“Felix,” she cried. “
Really!
” She picked up her hat which she had dropped. To her vague discomfort she didn’t feel outraged or disgusted as she had with Sammy Hinshelwood.

Felix then seemed to curl up inside himself on the seat. He covered his face with his hands, then snatched them away and stared up at the hazy evening sky.

“I’m so sorry,” he said fiercely. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know it’s disgraceful. Please forgive me. I couldn’t help myself.”

“Well,” she said. “Well,” noticing that her cheeks were now hot and her heart was thumping noisily in her chest, “let’s forget it. All about it. Too much sun,” she laughed with too much gaiety. “Too much in the sun. Driving you mad.” She threw some bread into the pond and there was swirl and burble of water as the carp fought for the pieces.

“Look at those fish,” she said a little wildly. “Wouldn’t it be lovely to be a fish today, all cool and wet at the bottom of the pond? Swimming around without a care in the world.”

Charis opened her eyes and looked at the electric light fixture in the ceiling. Felix still lay on top of her, his weight pressing her spread-eagled body down into the soft mattress. The whole of the lower half of her torso seemed to be humming still, a feeling of delicious sensitivity at the base of her spine. She heard Felix’s breathing slowing down. He gave a small groan. Nine times now. With Gabriel it had really only happened twice. But nothing like this. She clenched her fists.

The embarrassment of that first lunge passed away in a day or so. Felix returned, she thought, to his normal self, friendly and amusing. But all the changes had been wrought in her. Try as she might she couldn’t re-consign him to his old role of companion and welcome distraction. Feelings had been unleashed, emotions aired: she found these facts impossible to ignore. In a subtle way everything had changed. The past became different too. All through the summer, she now realized, he had been looking at her in ways she was innocent of: seeing her not, as she thought, as sister-in-law or new friend, but as someone desirable. She started reliving the months of their friendship, going back to that dawn visit in late March, running through her innocuous memories for signs and clues that would explain his amazing outburst. Felix, of all people. How extraordinary! Felix harbouring these thoughts about me through all these months…

She was—she had to be honest—pleased in a way, and vaguely flattered. And, suddenly aware, she became conscious of the effect her presence and appearance had on him: covert glances, inexplicable tensions and strange expressions on his face she would have missed before. It was nothing serious, she told herself. Very young men like Felix often indulged in these ‘crashes’. It was amusing, something to smile about privately and tolerate, not condemn or proscribe.

But then, another evening at the fishpond, he seized her hand and pressed his lips to her palm. An absurd romantic gesture that she supposed he must have seen in a play or some musical revue.

“Felix,” she rebuked jokingly, pulling her hand away. “Some-one might see. Now stop it.”

It was the wrong thing to have said, she realized later, in the wrong tone of voice. His adoration now moved into a new phase. From being something private and inconceivable it became now an enjoyable secret that they shared and acknowledged. Their flirtation was something that they could both allude to and that she could tease him about.

On another day she suggested a walk and a picnic.

“Ah,” Felix said. “But I might not be able to control myself.”

“You shall only come if you promise to behave.”

“I swear, I swear.”

The fact that it all took place beneath the innocent eyes of the Cobb family made the summer weeks tinglingly illicit. There was nothing that anyone could find remotely improper about brother and sister-in-law finding some harmless pleasure in each other’s company, and for the first time since Gabriel had gone away she found that life at Stackpole held something for her.

Then late one evening Felix came round to the cottage with some old blankets which he said his mother had asked him to deliver. Charis offered him a cup of cocoa and they sat and chatted in the small parlour for an hour. When Felix took his leave it was in the tones of mock-medieval romance which he sometimes employed to ridicule his infatuation but which also allowed him to air it.

“I must to horse,” he said, striking a dramatic pose. “Farewell, sweet maiden.”

“Fare thee well, gentle knight,” Charis laughed, dropping a curtsey. She showed him to the door. It was nearly dark. Felix melodramatically folded up his jacket collar.

“Egad, the night is wondrous wild,” he said. “When shall we two meet again?”

“Ah me,” Charis said, clasping her hands on her heart and expiring against the door jamb. “Luncheon tomorrow?”

They both laughed at the bathos. But then suddenly Felix was kissing her again and reflexively Charis had her arms round his neck for an instant before she came to her senses and struggled herself free.

“Felix,” she said seriously. “You must stop. You mustn’t do that.”

He looked very unhappy. “I know,” he said. “I should. But it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Somehow, because it’s Gabriel, it seems to make it all right.” He looked at her. “Does that make any sense?”

It didn’t, but she ignored him. “But you must stop. Don’t you see, you have to. You’ve got to.”

He went away but came back later after eleven ‘to apologize’. Charis had been in a state of real agitation after he’d left, angry with herself for not censuring him more and for not having checked this state of affairs before. Felix started to kiss her again and her attempts at resistance only seemed to make his ardour more intense. Nothing she said had any effect. It was easier, she found, to give in. He left after midnight. He half-heartedly beseeched her to let him stay, but she bundled him out of the door.

Charis watched Felix knot his tie. He was whistling to himself, ‘Lily of Laguna’, she recognized.

“A happy man,” she said, hunching the blankets over her shoulder. He caught her eye in the glass.

“Of course,” he said. “You too?”

“Of course.”

“Want breakfast?” he asked. “They’ll be serving by now.”

“No. I’ll just have a pot of tea.”

“Sent up?”

“No, I’ll be down soon.”

After that first night Charis suffered some remorse. But she still couldn’t understand how it had all come about. The facts were irrefutable: she and Felix were having a love affair.

Everything would be all right, she told herself, if it could be maintained at this level of kissing and hand-holding. She knew that many women—respectable married women like herself—indulged in this sort of thing. It was no more than a flirtation, a pastime, nothing serious. If only Gabriel, she told herself in moments of irritation or when her conscience bothered her unduly, had acted more like a husband. If only she’d had more of a married life before the war claimed him then she was sure she would never have yielded. It was hardly her fault, after all, What could anyone expect; married for a week, then a year of separation. And who knew how long that would last? It was like giving a child a bag of sweets, watching her open the bag and then snatching it away. She couldn’t be blamed for wondering what they would have tasted like.

Her casuistry satisfied her temporarily. She put Gabriel out of her mind while she and Felix stole moments for kisses and caresses and enjoyed the complicity of being lovers while the world signed its approbation and happily surveyed them in its ignorance.