Freya (16 page)

Their estrangement might have continued indefinitely had not Freya chosen to have a quick half at the Lamb & Flag one evening with Ginny. She was putting her coat on when the door of the saloon bar swung open and Robert walked in. He was on his own, and looked as taken aback by the coincidence of their meeting as she was. It was a quiet night in the pub, with few other patrons around, so they had no way of pretending not to have seen one another. There is also a charm about such happenstance, which seems to unite the chance-meeters as beneficiaries in the mysterious scheme of the universe: fate has fingered them, and to deny its spell would be churlish, and possibly ungrateful.

Ginny, who knew something of the imbroglio with Robert, shot Freya an uncertain look, to which she replied, ‘I'd better catch you up.'

Once Ginny had gone they had a drink together, and another argument. But this time they finished it in bed.

Freya got down to some serious work during the Easter vac, for fear of embarrassing herself at mods next term. (Dr Melvern had already been on the warpath about her lack of application.) Accordingly she thought it best to stay put at Somerville rather than risk being distracted either at home with her mother or in London at her father's. Perhaps Stephen had interpreted this as a snub, because the letter she'd received from him that morning was all conciliation and flattery – he thought her
Cherwell
profile of Nat Fane most entertaining (she had proudly sent him a clipping) even if her subject did sound ‘terribly full of himself'. He was sorry not to have managed a trip there yet, he wrote, though his favourite time to see Oxford was Trinity term anyway.

In fact (he continued), they should set a date soon, because he would have to plan it around a big commission that had just come his way.

Two weeks before the end of the vac Nancy returned to keep her company, and in the quiet studentless streets, with the town opening its face to spring, she had what she would remember in years to come as the most enchanted period of her Oxford life. They went walking arm in arm through the Botanical Gardens, had beer and sandwiches at the Trout along the river, took tea in the covered market and read aloud to each other in the evening as swallows wheeled and swooped outside the windows. They talked of Robert, but briefly and without consequence, as if they were spies reluctant to betray one another, hoarding their own supply of information. She knew that Nancy had exchanged letters with him – he was gadding around up north somewhere – but apparently they hadn't seen one another in the interim.

One evening the conversation turned to Alex, who had been on holiday with his mother in the Highlands. Freya had received a letter from him that morning stamped with a distant island postmark.

Nancy said, narrowing her eyes as if to conjure his image, ‘I like Alex, but he's ever so private about things. Whenever I mention something personal he just changes the subject. Has he ever talked to you about his father?'

‘A little bit. He walked out on them when Alex was small – never heard from him again. I think that's why he's close to his mother.'

‘And what about the mysterious girlfriend – anything in the letter?'

Freya made a downward twist to her mouth. ‘Not a thing. Most of it was just
Cherwell
gossip and what he's reading at the moment. Oh, that reminds me –' she leaned over to her bedside table and picked up his letter – ‘he quoted this tiny poem in it, by Catullus, clearly assuming I have Latin, which I don't. Can you make it out?'

She passed the page to Nancy, who recited it.

‘It's quite famous, I think. “I hate and I love. Why do I do that, perhaps you ask? I don't know, but I feel it, and I am tortured.”'

Freya stared at her for a puzzled moment. ‘What on earth does he mean by that?'

‘Well, it's a poetic conundrum, he's divided in his feeling –'

‘I don't mean Catullus, you nit – I mean, why has Alex quoted it?'

Nancy shrugged. ‘Maybe he loves his girlfriend and hates her, too. I suppose you'd have to ask him.'

‘Or maybe he loves and hates
me
,' suggested Freya, only half joking. Could she possibly have elicited such extremes of feeling in him? It seemed unlikely, but as Nancy said, he was so private you couldn't tell. She had tried to draw him out on a few occasions, and failed. In matters of the heart he was a clam.

Nancy, frowning at her, said, ‘Why would anyone hate you?'

She laughed and made a mock-simpering expression in reply. ‘You're terribly sweet, aren't you?'

But Nancy gave a little shake of her head, as if to say sweetness had nothing to do with it.

The old boy came in at a shuffle, supporting himself on a silver-knobbed walking stick. Stout and red-faced, he wore a checked tweed suit and an expression of disdainful amusement. A monocle glinted over his eye. Nat Fane, with whom this gentleman had just been sparring in a stage conversation (‘Whither a National Theatre?'), danced attendance on him in a mixed spirit of obsequiousness and impudence. Freya was among the guests at a private party in the Oxford Union bar. Fane, ushering the illustrious personage to the centre of the room, called for quiet.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have been blessed this evening. Our guest in the debating chamber is not only the most renowned drama critic of our day, he is a speaker whose coruscating personality has ornamented this evening with flashes of incomparable brilliance and erudition. He is, if I may –' he shot a sideways glance – ‘the monocle of all he surveys – Mr James Erskine.'

A thunder of clapping burst forth as the critic offered a bow and a smile which suggested that this outpouring of appreciation was simply his due.

As they watched Fane steering the old man around the room, performing introductions, Nancy turned to Freya. ‘Nat's like a dog with two tails, isn't he? I think he'd die of happiness if Mr Erskine only patted his head.'

Freya smiled. ‘Ah, it's not his
head
that interests him. Nat told me that in the taxi on the way from the station Erskine put his hand on his knee and said, “Dear boy, may I ask whether you're a votary of Greek love?”'

‘You mean – he's queer?' said Nancy in whispery, wide-eyed surprise. ‘I'd like to see the look on my father's face if he heard that. He's read Erskine's column in the
Chronicle
for years.'

‘Would he stop reading him once he knew?'

‘Oh, he'd stop reading the
Chronicle
!' said Nancy, and they both laughed. Alex, who was returning from the bar with drinks, asked them what was so funny.

‘Just talking of the “coruscating personality” over there,' replied Freya. ‘We were speculating on the shock it would be to his readers once they found out he was
not as other men
.'

‘A poof, is he?' said Alex, wrinkling his nose in disdain.

Now it was Freya's turn to be surprised: it was so unlike Alex to disparage anyone, let alone a whole ‘type'. When she looked at him some moments later his features had returned to their amiable ease, and all was well. She wondered again how she'd stopped herself making a dead set at him. A few days into the new term she had mentioned the Catullus poem he'd quoted in his letter, hoping to tease out the ambiguity of
odi et amo
, but he stonewalled her completely, claiming only that he had had the poet ‘on the brain'. She could almost believe him.

They were about to settle at a corner table, she and Nancy, when Nat approached, Erskine at his side, like an eager courtier leading on his bored monarch.

‘Jimmy, would you allow me?' he said, in his most purring tone. ‘Here are two young ladies who've been
longing
to meet you.'

Freya, whelmed in a cloud of cologne and smoke from Erskine's cigar, hadn't been ‘longing' at all, but for Nat's sake she decided to play the game and baste the old bird with a juicy compliment or two.

‘That was an extraordinary performance,' she said.

Jimmy fixed her with an odd look. ‘You know, they are the very same words I'd use when I had to go round to flatter some halfwit actor after a show. “Extraordinary” was large enough to appease his vanity and ambiguous enough to keep my self-respect. The other thing I used to say was “I don't know how you do it, my dear”. It sounded like a tribute but of course it hid a little dagger!'

‘Well, I can't
imagine
how you do it,' said Freya pertly.

His eye sharpened behind his monocle. ‘Ah. Very good.' He turned to Nat. ‘You could cut yourself on this one.'

‘Quite,' agreed Nat with a smirk. ‘She's already a star writer on
Cherwell
.'

‘That so? What d'you say your name was?'

‘Freya Wyley. And this is my friend Nancy – she's going to be a writer, too.'

Jimmy nodded like a man who had heard it before. Nancy was too shy to say anything, so Freya jumped in again. ‘Do you perhaps have some advice for young aspirants?'

‘Advice …' he said, clamping the cigar in his mouth and taking a draw. ‘The danger is in giving advice to people who only imagine themselves to have talent. You may be doing them a disservice.'

‘So how can you tell –'

Jimmy anticipated the question: ‘– if your talent is base metal or the real thing? Of course one never can, not absolutely. Doubt is intrinsic to the artist's calling. And the greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Only the talentless have perfect confidence.'

Now Nancy did find her voice. ‘Then … how did you become convinced you were a writer?'

‘Ha! You may well ask. I started out fancying myself an actor, until the company manager told me, firmly, that I wasn't good enough. Crushing at the time, but I afterwards found that I had something else – a voice. What I needed was an opportunity. I'd been writing theatre notices in my twenties, and decided to submit one on spec to the editor of the
Post
. He printed it, and kept on printing 'em – they got sackfuls of mail from people, some of it very disobliging. But they all read me. A few years later the
Chronicle
made a bid for my services, and off I went. Now –' Jimmy paused, gathering himself for the next flourish – ‘you may think “he was bloody lucky”, and I would agree, luck played its part. So let us imagine that the first editor who took me on was a dolt incapable of distinguishing between my prose and that of the butcher's boy, but gave me the job just because I was available. That would be luck. But when
another
paper's editor comes along offering more money and a bit of a fanfare, well, that's not luck any more. That's talent.'

‘But you've worked at it, too,' said Nat shrewdly.

‘Certainly I have. I'm not a genius,' he said, pausing for a moment in case someone cared to object. ‘Only Hazlitt and Shaw among theatre writers deserve that honorific. For the last thirty-seven years at the
Chronicle
I've worked ten hours a day, not counting the time I've spent attending the plays and reading the books for review. A writer must always be working at his craft, refining it. Flaubert said, “Prose is like hair – it shines with combing.” That is the way to succeed. But mark all the hundreds of ways one can fail – by being inattentive, lazy, slapdash, weak-willed. By not taking pains. By settling for the notion that “this'll do”. One could also mention the temptation –' here he turned pointedly to Nat – ‘to overegg the mixture. The boy Fane here can write, damnably well when it pleases him. His error, he won't mind my saying, is the old one of showing off. Use one or two quotations and you pique the reader's appetite; use one
hundred
and he'll reel away from the page sickened. And keep your punning in check, too. “Monocle of all he surveys” indeed! That's vulgar, I'm afraid, like cheap jewellery.'

Nat, far from being offended by these strictures, smiled and bowed and said, ‘I shall in all my best obey you, madam.'

Jimmy let loose a snort of laughter, and wiggled his empty glass. ‘Dry old do, this. Will someone please fetch me another brandy and soda?'

By now he had plumped down on a little sofa, where a knot of students had congregated around him. Once someone had hurried over with a bottle of cognac he proceeded to entertain the company with a daisy chain of theatrical and literary anecdotes that stinted nothing in name-dropping, rival-bashing and self-aggrandising. He had met nearly every British theatrical personage of note in the last forty years and could recall, apparently verbatim, whatever conversation he'd had with them: ‘As Gielgud once confided to me …' was a characteristic overture. Freya watched him hawkishly; like the rest of them she was mesmerised. Everything about Jimmy Erskine was prodigious: his conceit, his memory, his appetite for talk, his will to amuse. So too his ability to drink, though he was one of those boozers who put it away without being much affected beyond a reddening nose; the bottle of Martell which the youth had obligingly set before him was down to a quarter two hours later, and the old boy hadn't slurred a syllable.