Freya (2 page)

‘Well, this is a nice to-do,' said Freya with an amused half-snort. ‘Looks like Jean has given us the slip.'

‘Surely she didn't mean to?' Nancy asked, earnest dismay in her expression. Freya merely shook her head; it was beneath her to explain that she was joking. Just then a huge roar went up, and the crowds were sucked towards the middle of Whitehall like iron filings to a magnet. The bells, which had been pealing for hours, had stopped, and the air grew shrill with whistles and cheers. The ambling movement of bodies quickened into urgency. Ahead of them they heard a cry go up: ‘It's him – he's coming outside!'

Freya turned to Nancy, whose forlorn air made her feel of a sudden responsible. ‘Come on,' she said, briskly putting her arm through the girl's. ‘Whatever else happens, we mustn't miss this.'

And they plunged forward, still holding on to one another.

Later they bought ginger beer at a stall and found themselves a bench in the Embankment Gardens. They had given up on finding Jean and the others. Nancy gazed out to the river, her free hand shielding her eyes against the sun. Freya, her whole body damp with sweat, peeled off her serge tunic. She had lost her hat in the crush to catch sight of Churchill.

‘Well, that's one for the diary,' she said, blowing a stray tendril of hair from her face.

Nancy nodded, then glanced at Freya. ‘Do you keep a diary?'

‘No.'

After a pause she said, ‘I'm awfully sorry about – well, being landed with me.'

‘Ha. It could be that
you've
been landed with
me
.'

Nancy shook her head. ‘Oh no, Jean told me what an amazing friend you were.'

‘Is that so?'

‘Yes, really! You don't believe me?
Amazing
was the word she used.'

Freya returned an archly humorous look. ‘That's not the word I'm disputing. It was the “friend” part.'

‘Oh …' The girl seemed at a loss again. ‘Sorry, I thought you were friends – from school –'

‘Yes, we have that in common. Oh, I've known Jean for years, and I like her well enough – we've even corresponded a bit. But I'd say that we're friendly with each other, rather than being actual friends.'

Nancy gave an anxious frown. ‘I'm not sure I understand the difference.'

Freya leaned back. ‘Well, I needn't have singled out Jean. I tend to keep a distance from people. At school I was
not
a popular girl.'

‘But in the Wrens,' Nancy said, with a bright glance at Freya's uniform, ‘I imagined there'd be such camaraderie, the friends you'd –'

‘I didn't join the navy to make friends. I joined because there was a war on.' That sounded rather off, she thought, and softened. ‘I had pals, of course. One or two of them I may keep up with.'

She had joined the service (she explained) aged eighteen, and did a year's apprenticeship in Greenwich, then another year to qualify as a plotting officer. At Plymouth, where she was posted, they put her in charge of a watch that received information from coastal radar stations. She and her Wren ratings would do fifteen-hour shifts, reporting the position of shipping traffic as it appeared on their screens. By the summer of 1944 she was in the Operations Room recreating a panorama of the entire sea war in the North Atlantic.

‘Crikey,' said Nancy. ‘What a responsibility.'

‘I know. And the wonderful thing was – I was good at it. Whenever there was a captain visiting, or an admiral, I could give an assessment of the situation at any time. I mean, you always knew it was bloody dangerous –' She broke off and looked round at Nancy, whose round-eyed solemnity made her chuckle. ‘Perhaps I should save my war stories for another day. We're meant to be celebrating, aren't we?'

‘Yes! What should we do?'

Freya stood up and put her hands on her hips in a businesslike way. ‘Hmm. My own inclination would be to find a pub somewhere and get blind roaring stinko.'

Nancy met this proposal with a smile as wide and artless as a flag waving in the breeze. ‘Stinko it is!'

They decided – or rather, Freya decided – to walk along the river towards Victoria, where she knew a couple of likely places. On the way they passed strolling hordes of people in paper hats, singing, laughing, cheering; the mood of the afternoon, less giddy than in Whitehall, had held its holiday brightness. Freya, with an occasional sidelong glance, mused on the moment, two odd girls making a pair. It wasn't how she had envisaged the day. And yet she wondered if this chance encounter mightn't after all be a blessing.

Nancy seemed a decent sort. And she had such an interesting face … Apparently she had come down to London a few weeks ago to start work at a publisher's. She'd got digs at a boarding house off the Tottenham Court Road. It wasn't very nice, but she would only be there for the summer in any event. She was going up to St Hilda's in the autumn, to study English.

‘That's funny,' said Freya. ‘I've got a place at Somerville.'

‘Oh! I thought you were –'

‘Too old?' she said with a smirk, and Nancy blushed on cue. ‘I'm twenty, as a matter of fact. I applied three years ago, and they deferred the place when I joined the Wrens.'

Nancy gave a disbelieving little shake of her head. ‘Oh, what marvellous luck! I won't know a soul there but you.'

‘Actually, I still haven't decided whether to go or not.'

‘But why would you turn down a place at Oxford?'

‘After the Wrens I wonder if studying for a degree seems a bit – trivial.'

Nancy looked rather crestfallen at that, so she didn't say anything more.

As they turned away from the river towards Victoria, the streets looked gaunt and tired. There were so few cars; petrol rationing had seen to that. Bomb damage had left huge dusty gaps everywhere, and scaffolding patched the faces of buildings like screens around a fragile patient. In spite of the festival atmosphere the city felt shabby, haunted, makeshift. You couldn't imagine it ever returning to the place it once had been. Freya began to wonder if the pub she was leading them to would still be there, in any sort of repair. A cafe she used to frequent in Soho had taken a direct hit one night; she had felt it almost as a personal affront when she turned into the street and found it gone.

She felt her body tense as they turned the corner into Buckingham Palace Road, and then relax as the old Victorian pub with its fussy finials and spires sprang into view. On entering they found the place in a roar; Freya had a sense that every pub in London today would be the same. People stood three-deep at the main bar, and drinks were being passed over heads by a rowdy clientele. Off to the side a piano was accompanying a ragged chorus of voices singing ‘Roll Out the Barrel.' The sawdust on the floor was damp with spilled beer.

‘What'll you have?' Freya asked Nancy, once they had jostled their way to the bar.

‘Erm … a lemonade?'

‘You won't get stinko on that.'

As Nancy dithered, Freya signalled to the barman. ‘Two pale ales, please.'

They took their drinks and found a place to stand by a window of rippled glass. Freya swallowed a mouthful and looked around; it seemed that no matter what time you stepped into a pub you always had a lot of catching up to do with everyone else. People were tipping back the drink with a steady practised air, as if they'd somehow made it their occupation. The singers had done with ‘Roll Out the Barrel' and started on ‘Tipperary.' She fished out a packet of Player's Weights and offered it to Nancy who, after a moment's hesitation, took one. They lit up, and Freya watched as the girl took an awkward sip of her cigarette and puffed, without inhaling.

‘You've not smoked before, have you?'

Nancy grimaced. ‘Is it obvious?'

‘You're not exactly Dietrich,' she said drily. ‘Relax your fingers, like this. Don't bunch your hand. There – that's better.'

‘If my parents could see me now …,' Nancy said with a giggle.

Freya felt it was high time she asked. ‘What
is
that accent of yours?'

‘Oh, well, Yorkshire, I suppose. Harrogate – but not the smart side.'

Freya, unaware that Harrogate had any sort of ‘side', let alone a smart one, gave her an appraising look. There was barely two years separating them, yet it might as well have been ten. The war had done that: she had started in the Wrens as a girl, and come out of it a woman. Nancy, in contrast, with her ingenuous gaze and gawky demeanour, was practically a child still. Not her fault, but there it was.

A little knot of drinkers next to them were engaged in an agitated dispute. Freya had overheard one of them say, ‘Churchill's done a grand job of work for a man his age,' to which someone raised a dissenting voice – he was sick to death of Churchill, ‘a self-satisfied windbag,' he said, who ought to stand down and let a younger man take the country into peace. This view, a bold one in the circumstances, was greeted with outraged cries of ‘Shame' and ‘Sit down, yer fool.' The argument gained in stridency and heatedness; alcohol, of course, was paraffin poured on the bonfire. Freya, wanting to keep a shine on the day, drained her glass and leaned her head towards Nancy's ear. ‘Let's get out of here before they start a brawl.'

Outside the early-evening temperature had cooled a little. The roads were still swarming with people carrying flags, and someone was playing ‘Rule Britannia' on a toy trumpet. On a quieter street they found another pub, and drank more pale ale. Nancy, becoming expansive, said, ‘D'you know, when I heard someone say that the war was over last Friday, I couldn't quite believe it. I'd been out with some friends and hadn't heard the announcement, so when I got back to my digs later on – the landlady must have been away – I crept into the parlour and turned on the wireless for the midnight news, still wondering. Then I heard the announcer saying, “Tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. the war in Europe will be over …” I just stood there in the dark, stunned. I listened right through, until they played the national anthem. And the next thing I knew tears were pouring down my face. I couldn't stop! It was like – I don't know – like the world had been given a second chance, and we could start afresh.'

Freya was staring at her. She didn't quite sound like a girl any more. ‘Did you really think that?'

Nancy paused. ‘I didn't think it, exactly – I felt it. It was a sort of spasm of hopefulness, wonderful and frightening at once, like the way your stomach gives a jump when you're in a car that's going too fast! I had the most exhilarating sensation of something coming to life. Nothing could stop us.' But then she did stop, and seemed to become aware of Freya listening to her, and laughed. ‘You probably think that sounds rather silly.'

‘No, I don't,' said Freya, touched by Nancy's plain-spoken optimism, and obscurely envious of it. It occurred to her that not everyone had seen the newsreels from Belsen, the stark pictures of hundreds of emaciated corpses piled high, and the lines of blank, hollow-eyed survivors, near-corpses themselves, staring out at the camera. You couldn't tell if they were men or women. She had watched the films in a cinema on Regent Street, benumbed, listening to the moans and the sobbing of people around her. She hadn't turned away from the screen, just because other people had. For some reason she found herself hoping that Nancy hadn't seen them – not yet.

They had another couple, and then Freya became suddenly excited at the thought of a pub in Chelsea she'd been to with her father, and hauled Nancy off into the street again. When they got there the place was heaving and had sold out of everything but gin; so they drank that, large ones, and then a little band started up, and a couple of soldiers who had been giving them the eye asked for a dance. At 9 p.m. the wireless went on for the King's speech; at the end of it the whole room rose to its feet and sang ‘God Save the King', and they joined in, almost shouting the words. They danced again, but stayed close to one another, and when Nancy's partner began to get too familiar Freya stepped in and detached her. Nancy by now looked rather limp, and her eyes had slowed in their blink. Another gin and she'd be under the table.

‘Come on,' she said, steering through the sweaty tumult, her hand in the small of her back. Outside night had fallen, and they marvelled for a moment at the street lamps, lit for the first time in years. There would be no more sirens, no more blackouts, no more hurrying footsteps in the dark. The cool air was clearing Freya's head, yet she didn't want the evening to end.

‘We could go back to my dad's place – what d'you say?'

Nancy, swaying a little, murmured her assent.

On arriving at Tite Street Freya half hoped that the lights would be on, but there was still nobody about. The mixed smell of white spirit, paint and varnish hung like a presence in the room. She decided on a whim to take down the blackouts from the tall windows. Nancy, surveying the casual disarray of canvases and oils, seemed to be in a daze.

‘I'll get us something to drink,' Freya said.

Nancy followed her into the kitchen, trying to dissimulate the fact that she was tipsy.

‘We've got gin, some sherry – ah, and whisky. Go and sit down, I'll bring in some glasses.'

Nancy hovered for a moment, like a bee at a window, before backing out of the doorway. Freya put the bottle of Dewar's and a heavy soda syphon on a tray, and followed her into the main room. Nancy was staring at a huge dark portrait above the fireplace.

‘Your father – isn't he awfully famous?'

Freya shrugged. ‘He's pretty well known. Stephen Wyley. Here –' She poured her three fingers of whisky. ‘You might want to put some water in it.'

Nancy, handling the syphon as if it were a fire extinguisher, pressed the tap, and unleashed an exuberant flood all over the tray. ‘Sorry, sorry …'