Freya (24 page)

He stared at her for a moment. ‘You know, if it were anyone else I'd worry for them. But you – you're quite unafraid. I remember Robert saying as much the night we first met, at that party. “A real hard case” – that's what he called you.'

‘Did he?' The thought made her smile. Charlie handed her a gin, and they clinked glasses together.

‘Talk of the devil,' he said, and she followed his eyeline across the room to where Robert had just appeared. After what they'd been talking about Freya didn't relish the timing of this reunion: it would become apparent to Charlie that the girl Robert had been seeing behind Nancy's back was herself. Too late, he was waving him forward in invitation. But as Robert approached through the press of bodies she became aware of someone, a girl, trailing in his wake; she was young, with blondish-brown hair and a delicately featured face. Robert's half-embarrassed expression, and the girl's proprietary closeness to him, conveyed the way things stood a split second before Freya grasped the inconceivable truth of it for herself. She felt her whole body go into a sudden tremble.

‘We were just talking about you,' said Charlie, unaware of the awkwardness he had just initiated.

‘Really?' said Robert, not catching Freya's eye. It was impossible to go on without an introduction, and equally impossible that Robert would make one. Freya turned to the girl. ‘I don't think we've met …'

At that, Robert seemed to collect himself. ‘This is Cressida – my friends Charlie and Freya.'
Friends
, then. The girl gave a twitch of a smile and nestled a little closer against Robert, who had taken on the unnatural expression of someone who had deliberately turned his face from a traffic accident.

Freya said to the girl – Cressida – ‘Have you two known one another for long?'

‘Oh, no, just a few days.'

Robert, aiming for safer ground, said to Freya, ‘I gather you've been away.'

‘Yes,' she replied. ‘Just a few days, as a matter of fact.' The ironic echo could not be mistaken, though only Robert knew its meaning.

‘You missed schools, didn't you?' he said.

‘I was in Germany. I wrote to you. Did you not get my letter?'

Robert shook his head. ‘Why didn't you tell me you were going?'

She shrugged, and fixed him with a sceptical look. ‘Would it have made any difference?'

Charlie had picked up the tension crackling between them, but showed no sign of guessing its cause. ‘Freya's up before the beak first thing tomorrow morning.'

‘Which is why I hope you'll excuse me. I'm going to have an early night,' she said, swallowing the remainder of her gin. She was still trembling. She had to leave now or else risk having a fight. Her ‘goodnight' was cursory, and directed mainly at Charlie.

She was out of the building and onto the street, vituperative curses spilling mutely off her tongue. Of all the treacherous
fuckers
! After all the begging and cajoling he'd done, the bastard had just thrown her over. ‘Don't make me regret this,' she'd said to him that day, knowing that a showdown with Nancy would be unavoidable. This was how he repaid her. Oh, the cold-hearted, viperous fiend …

Behind her she heard footsteps, close behind her, and she kept going. If the fiend tried to stop her, if he
laid a finger
on her, she would punch him so hard she'd break his jaw. She tensed as the footsteps caught up with hers, and felt her fist closing in readiness. He was going to get the fright of his life – She half turned, and a man walked past her, hurrying on. He wasn't Robert; he wasn't anyone. She stopped, and felt her own agitated breathing. Her jaw was clenched, her heart drumming fast, but there was nothing and nobody to vent herself against. The trace of something uncompleted, of a scene unplayed, lingered in her body hours later. Robert had not come after her. She was alone on the street.

The morning was overcast, and a fine drizzle was already spotting the pavement. Freya, in a daze of preoccupation, walked along Merton Street. People were passing by her on either side, but she didn't look up. She had just been to see Leo Melvern at Corpus and was feeling rather winded from the interview. She had been told to apologise for her failure to attend schools, and though she had done so with due humility it was clear that Melvern meant to take her truancy as a personal affront. He did not invite her to sit down, and scowled in the manner of a petulant schoolboy as she confessed the deception she had played on Mrs Bedford. She had hardly got the story out before he launched himself into an indignant reproach of her behaviour, the like of which he had
never encountered
in his time as tutor – which must be all of about four minutes, Freya was minded to reply, but did not. He then widened his field of fire to include her character, which he deplored as arrogant, devious and unprincipled … She waited there, taking it, like a commuter standing calm on the edge of a platform while the express roars deafeningly past. When he had finished, his lip still curled, she said, in a neutral tone, ‘Will that be all?' He flinched at that, as if from a blow. He narrowed his gaze, disbelieving. ‘My God, you've got some nerve.' It was not admiringly spoken. She faced him, saying nothing, until he dismissed her.

She was halfway along Merton Street when she looked up from her brooding and saw Jean Markham about to pass her. She called out her name, and Jean, with a curious veiled look, checked her step.

‘Oh, it's you,' she said, unsmiling, and Freya only then realised that Jean had been intending to ignore her.

‘How are you?' she said, making an effort at friendliness.

‘Fine,' said Jean, flatly. ‘Not seen much of you this term. I gather you've been stepping out with that boy from Balliol – Robert.'

‘I was. Not any more.'

‘Oh. I supposed you were keen on him, I mean, after going behind Nancy's back –'

‘It wasn't quite like that.'

‘Wasn't it?' Jean couldn't keep the distaste out of her voice. ‘I'd call it a strange way to behave to a friend, and I'm pretty sure Nancy thought so, too.'

‘What did she say when you spoke to her?'

‘Nothing against you. She's too nice a girl to start mud-slinging – though I wouldn't have blamed her if she had.'

Freya had had enough of this. ‘Is there something wrong, Jean? I can't help feeling I've offended you.'

‘Really? I'm surprised you've noticed. You're so wrapped up in yourself it's as though other people don't
exist
. When we came up here the first thing you did was drop all of your school friends – you thought you were much too good for us, didn't you, knocking about with Nat Fane and that set.'

‘What are you talking about? I barely know them. As for dropping my school friends, I don't see how that's possible – apart from you I don't
have
any fucking friends from school. And to judge from the way you're behaving I'm not sure I can count on you any more.'

Jean was shaking her head. ‘I was your friend, until you decided to cut me off. Do you think I'm so stupid I didn't notice? No – you're too arrogant to care.' It was as though Jean had been listening in on her recent interview with Melvern and picked up where he'd left off.

‘I'm sorry you feel that way,' she said in a conciliatory voice. ‘I certainly didn't mean to cut you off.' She searched Jean's face for some relenting twitch of forgiveness or understanding. There was none. They stared at one another for a few moments longer before Freya gave a little shrug and said goodbye.

It confounded her to think she had offended Jean – stolid, impervious Jean with her loud voice and her barging confidence. But the contempt in her tone just then could not be doubted.
Had
she behaved badly? Freya had always thought of her own personality as something fierce and bright and unbending, perhaps ‘difficult' in some degree, but essentially benign. Now the repeated accusation pressed her towards some unglimpsed reality: she was arrogant. It was true she had avoided Jean when it suited her. But she had never thought it had been noticed.

Her step along the pavement – she had come to Magdalen Bridge – was tentative and chastened; she wasn't sure she could take another rebuke in such quick succession. And the difference now was that
this
would really hurt her. When Nancy answered the knock on her door Freya met her enquiring look with a mixture of inhibition and defiance.

‘I hope you're not going to send me away,' she blurted. Nancy, hearing this self-abasement, pulled back the door in invitation, and she entered. She said ‘Please' to the offer of tea, and not knowing where to stand or how to proceed she loitered around her bookcase. Its contents had become more interesting since the early days: the stiff parade of course textbooks had admitted intruders into their ranks, insolent orange-spined Penguins and contemporary novels that seemed to announce their owner's free-thinking seriousness. Nancy herself seemed changed, more assured in her movement and the way she dressed. She was growing into a woman.

As she handed Freya the tea Nancy said, ‘I thought I might see you at schools; then somebody said you weren't there.'

‘I was still in Germany, on my mad mission …'

‘So did you find her?'

Freya nodded. ‘She gave me an interview.'

Nancy's head jerked back in surprise. ‘That's wonderful. You must – You'll send it to the
Chronicle
?'

‘Once it's written, yes,' she said with a conceding little laugh, and put down her tea. ‘In the meantime it's become rather more urgent that they accept it, too.'

‘Why?'

‘I've burnt my boats, I'm afraid. I saw the college principal this morning and –' Freya kept her tone light, she couldn't bear to be self-pitying – ‘and they've sent me down.'

Nancy's face seemed to crumple in stages. She just managed to get out ‘Oh, Freya,
no
' before her voice broke and tears sprang to her eyes. She was so distraught that Freya instinctively put her arms around her, and whispered fragments of consolation in her ear. If she had ever required proof of Nancy's enduring tenderness, here it was.

As she felt the flood of distress start to clear, Freya said, ‘Shouldn't I be the one in tears?' She felt another convulsion in Nancy's shoulders that was somewhere between a sob and a laugh. She raised her smudged face to Freya's and said, ‘Can't you appeal against it – surely you've got someone there who'd defend you?'

Freya shook her head. ‘Bedders was kind. She said I'd shown enough promise to be given a second chance. But the others didn't think so – and once they'd handed down my sentence I realised I didn't really
want
a reprieve.'

Nancy turned her head away, swallowing hard. After a moment she said, ‘I can't bear the thought of my life without you in it.'

Stunned by this simple avowal, Freya said hesitantly, ‘Even after what I did? How I hurt you?'

‘Yes, you did hurt me. But you're still my dearest friend.' She said it almost as a matter of fact. Then her expression stiffened slightly. ‘I suppose you've told Robert.'

Freya's laugh was abrupt and unhappy. ‘You haven't heard, then? I saw him last night at a party. He was with someone else, a pretty girl called Cressida. So maybe I've got what I deserved.'

‘That's not what I think,' said Nancy.

‘I know. You're kind – altogether too kind.' She felt her own eyes reluctantly moisten. A tear rolled down her cheek and she impatiently brushed it away. ‘I don't know what I'd have done if you hadn't –'

‘He's not worth crying over, Freya.'

Freya shook her head. ‘It's not just Robert. I ran into Jean Markham this morning, someone else I seem to have mortally offended. The look she gave me … Honestly, Nance, I know I've behaved badly, but – I'm not
such
a bloody cow, am I?'

Nancy smiled, and took hold of her hand. ‘If I said something like that you'd tell me to stop being a ninny. Now drink this tea before it gets cold.'

Freya sank into an armchair, and drank the cooling tea. The light through Nancy's windows was pearly from the rain. As they looked at each other through tear-stung eyes she felt a kind of exhilarated sadness. She didn't care about being sent down – the shame of it didn't weigh a feather for her – but she feared what would happen now to her and Nancy. Oxford wasn't far from London, of course, they would only be a train journey away from one another. Only she knew that she had no staying power when it came to friendship; before Nancy she had made and shed friends as steadily as a tree its leaves. It had been her proud conviction that she was nobody's fool. But she had wondered, in moments of alarm, if she was nobody's friend, either. She looked around the room, at the hopeful little tokens of domesticity with which Nancy had furnished it – a vase with summer flowers, a new cushion, the devotional portrait of St Francis de Sales.

‘God, I've just remembered,' she said, rootling in her satchel. ‘Here, a memento from Nuremberg.' It was the picture of the saint she had picked up from the rubble of the church. She recounted to Nancy the story of how she had found it. The thing was creased and torn at one corner, yet its damage made it seem more precious.

‘You took it from a church?' Nancy said doubtfully.

‘Well, from a church that was bombed to ruins. It had been trampled on the floor, as I said – I'd hardly call it looting.'

Nancy frowned, and said, ‘I suppose it was more like rescuing it.'

‘Exactly,' said Freya, propping it on the mantelpiece next to St Francis. ‘There, now old Francis has a companion.'

She stared at them for a moment, lost in thought. In the end what you had was the present. It was all any living person had. The stories which accumulated about yourself and about others were the past, they were smoothed and refined in the telling, over and over. They became thinner, fainter, a shadow at your back as you pushed on. They would signify no more than the painted faces of saints. The present was where you had to live. The future called her on; it was free, but it was empty.