Freya (19 page)

‘Oh, no, this isn't for
Cherwell
. I'm going to try for the
Chronicle
– Erskine said he'd help me place it.'

Nancy stopped, puzzled. ‘And what does Alex think about that?'

‘I don't know. I haven't told him.'

‘Ah.' Something knowing in Nancy's intonation of this syllable put Freya on guard. She glanced curiously at her friend.

‘You think I should tell him?'

Nancy shrugged, and resumed walking. ‘Alex gave you your first chance as a writer. He might be rather hurt to find out you're aiming for Fleet Street.'

‘I don't see why. I think I've repaid his faith in me. This story's much too big for a student newspaper in any case.' Nancy only nodded, and Freya felt some of the shine being knocked off her excitement. Was it so wrong to have ambition? She added, a little resentfully, ‘Well, if you think I should consult my conscience –'

Nancy, with a little snort of sarcasm, said, ‘That would make for lively hearing.'

‘What d'you mean?' said Freya, feeling her heart go bump down the stairs. No reply was offered. ‘Nance, I'm not sure what –'

‘I know all about it,' said Nancy with a catch in her throat. ‘Jean Markham told me, in case you're wondering. Spotted you both in a pub. Of all the men you could have had – why
him
? You always spoke so slightingly about Robert, I sometimes imagined it was your way of diverting suspicion. But then I thought, Freya's not like that, she's my friend – she wouldn't sneak behind my back –'

‘And I wouldn't, I swear, it just happened. The whole thing took me by surprise – before I even had a chance to consider your feelings we were just … in it,' she finished weakly. She dared a sideways glance at Nancy, expecting tearful distress, but her eyes were dry; all she could read in them was wounded pride. Nancy was standing close to the wall, distractedly poking a loose bit of brickwork with her shoe. When she next spoke there was more wonder than indignation in her tone:

‘You said something, a while ago, about Robert being untrustworthy as a romantic prospect. You were probably right. But it never occurred to me that you were the same. You're the one who's always judged others by their honesty – it was one of the first things that impressed me about you. It was almost frightening, that complete unforgiving certainty you had. But this … How can I ever believe you again?'

Freya, stung by the question, had to defend herself. ‘But you don't want me to be honest! Look at what happened with your novel. When I dared to give you an honest view you took offence. Now, when I withhold something for fear of your being hurt, you tell me I'm not honest enough. You can't have it both ways.'

Nancy shook her head, eyes half closed in disgust. ‘That's balls. It's one thing to hold back your opinion of a book – who cares, it's just an opinion – but it's quite another to conceal a
fact
, in this case the fact of your hopping into bed with a man you knew I was crazy about. You demand honesty of other people, but for some reason you think you can pick and choose when it's demanded of you. The truth is – you're a hypocrite. A wretched hypocrite.'

A colour had risen to her cheek as she spoke, and for a moment she looked shocked by her own vehemence. Freya, outflanked, belatedly snatched up a shield of injured rationality. ‘If I'd told you about it, what then? How would it have helped to know that he was in love with me and not you? I didn't ruin anything between you and Robert – all I did –'

‘I know what you did. You allowed me to keep hoping, when you knew there was no hope. You made a fool out of me.' Nancy gave an unhappy laugh. ‘I thought the one thing I could depend on, whatever else might happen, was your being a friend. But it looks like I've been deluding myself about that too.'

Freya, aghast, took a step towards her. ‘Nance, please – please don't say things like that. If there'd been a way not to hurt you –'

‘There's always a way. You choose to hurt or you don't. Just be honest with yourself, Freya.'

Nancy held her gaze for a moment, and started to walk away. Freya watched her back retreating along Holywell Street, head down, and with a heavy, almost swooning air of remorse she turned in the opposite direction. Well, she had known it would be bloody, once it came out, but
that
had exceeded her gloomiest imagining. She had underestimated Nancy once before, when she had criticised her novel. That was a chastening moment. But this was something far more serious, because it touched on the integrity of her character. Nancy's appraisal had been very thorough: she was untrustworthy, she was sneaking, she was a wretched hypocrite.
Be honest with yourself
… She huffed in annoyance as she wheeled her bicycle back towards college. No one had ever spoken like that to her before. Or was it that she'd never really listened? Her habitual response to criticism was one of airy indifference, since it usually came from people not qualified to give it.

She was aware of owing something to Nancy. She had understood Freya instinctively, knew how to accommodate her moods, shared her enthusiasms, forgave her occasional brusqueness. They were real friends –
best
friends! Now she wondered if they'd both got it wrong: perhaps theirs was not a friendship so much as an infatuation between leader and acolyte. Something had broken between them. But completely – irrevocably?

Back at Somerville she stood irresolute in the lodge. By an unfortunate coincidence this was also the day she had been girding herself for a flagrant violation of honesty – a stupendous whopper indeed – but one that couldn't be avoided if she was to pull off her plan. She'd realised that in applying for a week out of college it would be simple naivety to disclose the actual reason, so a fiction would have to be concocted in its place. The standard she had run up the pole for honesty was beginning to look pretty ragged.

It was the appointed hour. At her knock a voice invited her to enter, and there was Mrs Bedford, cosy and bespectacled at her hearth in a manner that made Freya think of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle.

‘Miss Wyley, welcome. Come and sit here,' she said, gesturing at the sofa by the fireplace. ‘I don't usually light a fire in May, but today has been unseasonably cold.'

It was maddening that Bedders created such a force field of amiability. If she had been a scold or a nag it would have felt very much easier to perpetrate a deception upon her. That her tutor had been friendly and encouraging gave a painful tweak to the guilt amassing within. Once they were settled with their tea Bedders enquired as to how she was getting along with Leo Melvern at Corpus, whether his tutorials on Chaucer were much to her liking. Freya wondered if Melvern had made an official complaint about her essay work, but since Bedders made no reference to it she assumed he hadn't.

‘And all else is well? How's the boxing?'

‘It's rather fallen by the wayside,' replied Freya. ‘Women aren't admitted to the university boxing club.'

‘Then I dare say the men have had a narrow escape – I'm sure you would have given them what for.'

Freya smiled, and in the little pause that followed she modulated her tone towards the confidential. ‘I have something to ask you. Um, my mother is about to have an operation – I gather it's quite serious. She's coming out of hospital next week and will need a good deal of rest and recuperation. Someone will have to attend on her, which is difficult, since she lives in a remote part of Sussex. Naturally I feel the responsibility is mine, so I'd like your permission to take the week off.'

Mrs Bedford frowned her concern. ‘I'm very sorry to hear it.' She hesitated a moment before continuing. ‘Forgive me, I understood that your father is still …'

‘Yes, he is,' said Freya, drawing her features into a grave expression, ‘but my parents are – separated. He's abroad at the moment, working. I have a younger brother at Cambridge. Other than that there's no immediate family who can help. We're quite close, my mother and I, and she'll appreciate my being with her.'

‘Of course, of course,' the tutor replied. ‘It is perfectly natural that you should be at her side, and I'd be very willing to give you leave for the week. My only concern is that it's so very near your examinations. What if your mother's convalescence requires a longer commitment of your time?'

‘Oh, she has a good friend coming down from London the following week. It's only because she was unavailable next week that I'd like to volunteer to help. As for the exams, my mother's place will be quite conducive to study – it's very quiet, so I should be able to work without interruption –'

‘Apart from tending to your mother.'

‘Yes – apart from that.'

Bedders went to her desk and arranged the necessary paperwork, reminiscing the while upon similar missions of mercy she used to undertake for her ailing father, the unavoidable nature of filial responsibility and the often disobliging behaviour of the patient. Eventually a college exeat was in Freya's hands, and another obstacle had been dislodged. She had been surprised, in the end, by how fluently she could lie: that whole business about the friend relieving her after a week had been made up on the spot.

‘I'll inform Dr Melvern of your absence,' said Bedders as she held open her door. She gave Freya's arm a maternal pat. ‘Such a troubling time … Perhaps you could write to let me know if there's anything you need.'

Oh, just a couple of airsickness tablets and a map of Nuremberg, Freya thought – that should see me right.

The ground below loomed up towards the plane, at first the same relentless flat fields, russet-topped villages and placid grey rivers winding on, and on. A forest would break up the monotony and then vanish. The next time she glanced out of the tiny window they were directly over an ashen necropolis, a wilderness of ruins from which it seemed no phoenix should ever rise. The plane banked abruptly, as though it had just glimpsed the devastation for itself and made an instinctive lurch away. Freya flinched too: had she just seen all that was left of Nuremberg?

Ten minutes later they had landed on a strip flanked by a dreary cluster of grey and green outbuildings, not so much an airfield as a makeshift shanty town where planes were received and unloaded and turned around like so many pack mules. The place was swarming with military personnel, most of them American, all in a frenzy of toing and froing and none taking the smallest notice of the new arrivals. Freya, in uniform and carrying a small suitcase, felt herself to be invisible amid the vast, hurrying scrummage. She wanted something to drink, but the only sign of commercial activity was a long desk from which a quartermaster was selling American cigarettes. Freya asked for a packet of Chesterfields.

‘Only sell 'em by the carton, ma'am,' the man drawled.

‘I don't have any German marks,' she said.

‘Be no good to me if ya did. Got sterling?'

She bought two cartons, and asked him where she might find transport; but he only shrugged. After another brusque exchange with a passing mechanic she found herself on a little concourse at the edge of the airfield. The noonday sun was turning up the heat, and she felt sweat prickling beneath her serge tunic. Two GIs, bareheaded, were lounging next to a dusty jeep, one of them wiping the back of his neck with a handkerchief. Both were drinking from a jerrycan. She approached them and put her suitcase down.

‘May I please have some of your water?'

They stopped talking and turned blank bovine gazes upon her. The senior of the two looked at the jerrycan he'd been drinking from, and put it aside. From the back of the vehicle he lifted an identical one out, unscrewed the lid and handed it to her. She thanked him and took long gulping draughts, too eagerly; the water spurted down her chin and onto her front. Finished, she swiped her wrist across her mouth and handed the can back, suppressing a small belch. She asked them if they knew a place called the Schloss Vogelsong. Yup, they did, it was a huge old villa about three clicks away – the press had taken it over.

‘Is there a bus or something I can get there?'

The pair exchanged a swift look that Freya read as
Is she kidding?
The one who had given her the water muttered something to his pal, who nodded and pushed himself off the bonnet where he'd been leaning. They performed a laconic little ritual of parting.

‘I can drive you,' the water-giver said, turning back to Freya.

‘That's awfully kind,' she said quickly, which he answered with a soundless chuckle and threw her suitcase onto the back seat of the jeep. Without a word he opened the passenger door for her to climb in. Replacing his helmet he got in and drummed a little tattoo with his fingers on the wheel. Then, as if remembering the civilities of another time, he extended his hand. His name was Richard Caplan, a first lieutenant who'd been stationed at Nuremberg since the Allied forces had taken the city in the final month of the war.

‘I've just seen it from the plane,' said Freya. ‘There didn't seem to be much of it left.'

Caplan nodded slowly. ‘We bombed that place and then some. January '45. I guess three-quarters of the city got wiped right there.' Even after that, he added, the fighting had been street by street, and at times house by house.

They were driving through flat countryside, all but deserted. An occasional convoy rumbled past them. When he took his helmet off again Freya made a sidelong study of him; she was fascinated by the bullet-shaped outline of his head, the scalp shaved so close he wore merely the rumour of a haircut. His ears seemed tiny against the slabbed skull. The tendons in his neck stood out, and his jaw worked a piece of gum with stoical indifference. Yet when he turned out of profile his face, far from brutish, contained almost a schoolboy delicacy, with a ridge of freckles across his nose and a dimple at his chin. He asked her questions – where she was from, what she was doing in Germany – and listened carefully to her answers, though offered no comment of his own. She had an idea that in civilian life he had been well mannered.