Freya (47 page)

The dining room was at a steady roar with Friday lunchers, packing in early for the weekend. Stephen and Diana, looking nervous with excitement, rose to greet her at the table. It was a delayed reunion; they had been on holiday in Scotland when she got back a fortnight ago. She embraced them both.

‘What on earth have you done to your lovely hair?' cried Stephen, running a hand over Freya's boyish crop.

‘I like it,' said Diana, with quick diplomacy. ‘Very Continental –
ooh la la
!'

The delight in their gaze was mingled with an unabashed curiosity. Her return to the country had been as abrupt and unexpected as her disappearance into exile. Apart from the occasional Christmas, she had hardly been back in the eight years since; once, when her mother was ill in hospital with pneumonia, she had stayed for a week, no more. It had been almost a point of honour with her.

In the weeks following her thirtieth birthday she had decided to up sticks. She gave the landlord at Great James Street his month's notice and moved into Stephen's flat in Chelsea while she readied herself for departure. She would go to Fiesole. Kay was more than happy to have her as a house guest at the Villa Colombini. An international newspaper, based in Rome, offered her a reporter's job, and for a year she commuted from Florence. She and Kay became good friends, and remained so even when she left Fiesole and got an apartment in Trastevere, near to the paper's offices. At first she had thought of her Italian adventure as lasting no more than a few months, a sojourn that would allow her to take stock before she moved back to London. But the more she thought about it the less appeal her old life held. She wasn't one to pine for absent friends. She had always known when to leave – a city, a job, a man, a country. Or so she told herself.

‘Why Islington, though?' Diana was asking.

‘The rent's cheap,' replied Freya, ‘and Canonbury Square's nice, in a shabby sort of way. I like places where you see a bit of life. In Trastevere they live in the open – they even hang their washing out on the street.'

‘Heavens! At least we've got launderettes.'

‘We're jolly glad to have you back, anyway,' said Stephen. ‘I imagine your mother is, too.'

Freya nodded. ‘I went down to Finden last weekend. There appears to be a new man on the scene –
Gerald
.'

‘That so?' he said, leaning forward. ‘Did she introduce you?'

‘We had lunch at the Cow. Very sporty, wears a cravat. He's been teaching her to play golf.'

‘Good Lord, she must be keen. The times I used to beg Cora to play tennis.'

They had just started on their food when a ripple of interest disturbed the atmosphere. She looked round, inquisitive like the rest, and watched a young woman in a short sweater dress tottering across the room towards a crowded corner table. She was a brunette, no more than twenty-one, full-lipped and doe-eyed, with a large high bust almost comically disproportionate to her delicate frame; one false step would perhaps topple her over. The girl's dark fringed hair made Freya mournful for the recent surrender of her own.

‘Who's the popsy?'

Diana stared at her. ‘Chrissie Effingham. You know, the girl in that bread advert. The new face of Revlon?'

Freya's expression remained a blank, and Diana stifled a laugh.

‘Gosh, you really
have
been away. She's everywhere!'

Stephen was still squinting across the room. ‘The lady certainly carries all before her.'

Diana rolled her eyes heavenwards. ‘You can stop staring now, darling. Anyway, they all want to be her friend, as you see. She was a waitress when they discovered her. What was the line –?'

‘“The face that launched a thousand tips,”' Stephen supplied.

‘Hmm. Supposedly has all sorts of boyfriends. She's going out with that actor, Roger Tarrant, or maybe he's the previous –'

‘I remember him,' said Freya. ‘We met once at Nat Fane's house. Very good-looking, and very stupid.'

Stephen gave her a scrutinising look. ‘Do you keep up with him – Nat, I mean?' The rumour around her parting from Joss was that she and Nat had been having a long affair.

‘I've had a few letters from him – funny ones – over the years. We haven't seen much of one another, though he's been nice to me since I came back. He's lent me a car.'

Diana, seizing an opportunity to fish, said, ‘And what of the chap you were seeing in Rome – Dani? Wasn't he –?'

‘Italian?' she said, deliberately obtuse. ‘Yes. We had a thing for a while. But it never got very serious.' She had put it off long enough, and did a little fishing of her own. ‘I wonder what Nancy's up to these days …'

Stephen's expression was doubtful. ‘I imagine, being an MP's wife, she's bored to sobs.'

‘Yes, but she has her own career, too,' said Freya, loyal in spite of her own objections. ‘She's not
just
a wife.'

Diana nodded. ‘Quite, darling. She's got a new one out, I think. The last one I read of hers I couldn't make head nor tail of.' There was a little pause before she added, ‘Will you be seeing her?'

‘I shouldn't think so,' she replied in a casual tone. ‘I don't even know if she's still in London. I imagine them to be living somewhere like … Berkshire.'

Stephen was shaking his head. ‘It amazes me you've never bothered to find out. Honestly, why don't the two of you just –?'

‘Stephen,' said Diana, warning him off the tender subject.

She couldn't blame him. Even now it seemed unreal that she and Nancy hadn't spoken to each other in all this time. In their last days at Great James Street they had kept up a front of pursed politeness as boxes were being piled in the hallway and removals vans idled outside. They hadn't argued again, by tacit agreement. The farewell scene Freya was envisaging – the fit culmination to their friendship – had dissolved on returning late from work one night to find the hall empty and Nancy gone. She had left a note with her new address and telephone number, which Freya took to be an apology rather than an invitation to stay in touch. The abruptness of it winded her. Her first instinct was to damn the note as cowardly. Later – years later – she considered it in a more forgiving light: Nancy had left like that because it was too painful any other way.

Five years ago a letter had arrived at her apartment, forwarded by her mother. It had enclosed an invitation from Mr and Mrs Joseph Holdaway to the wedding of their daughter Nancy … She had agonised for a few days as to whether she should go, and finally decided against it. The ghost at the feast. She hadn't sent a formal reply but, in lieu of a wedding present, she had bought a porcelain statue of St Francis de Sales and dispatched it care of Nancy's publisher. She had never heard back.

They were on to pudding, and the sight of Stephen patiently breaking off a dark wedge of treacle tart with his fork reminded her of something.

‘I was driving alone the Euston Road on my way here – d'you know, I'd quite forgotten they were pulling down the Arch.'

Diana made a grimace. ‘Don't start him on that. He spends more time at protests with the Victorian Society than he does at the studio.'

Stephen shook his head sadly. ‘I can't bear even to pass by the place. We tried to stop them, God knows. I thought Betjeman might have a nervous breakdown. I suppose it looks – awful?'

Freya nodded in silent sympathy.

‘He used some very blunt language of Macmillan the other day,' said Diana, trying to lighten the mood. ‘I told him – that's worthy of Freya.'

‘He's beyond contempt,' muttered Stephen. ‘If we can't get a Tory prime minister to defend a beautiful old thing like that there's no hope for us.' He said the Coal Exchange in the City would be the next to go.

The model and her entourage had risen from their table in the corner and were ambling, with much self-consciousness, through the room. As they came by, Freya looked up and happened to catch the eye of the girl, Chrissie, whose smile at her seemed at once to offer friendliness and a shy hope for its return. Disarmed, Freya was halfway towards smiling back, but the girl was already being hustled out of the place by her handlers, lest another speck of her stardust be squandered on a roomful of nobodies. The air seemed to decompress on their exit, and the curtain of conversation descended once more.

‘My God,' Freya said, ‘she looks like she's still in sixth form.'

‘Young people are all the rage nowadays,' remarked Diana. ‘No one else gets noticed – not if you're over thirty.'

Freya snorted a laugh. ‘That's cheering.'

‘Don't worry – with that hair you could pass for twenty-eight, easy.'

Oh God, the haircut. She had forgotten about it, and picked up a spoon to examine her reflection. Her face ballooned in its convexity, bulbous and idiotic; she laid it down with a wince. Nobody ever looked smart in the back of a spoon.

Outside the early-spring afternoon was nudging on, the air tainted with the mingled aroma of frying onions, petrol and drains. They walked up to where she'd parked the car. Stephen whistled on seeing it.

‘Good grief. You didn't say it was a Morgan.' He caressed the green coachwork tenderly, as if it were a racehorse. ‘What's his
other
car?'

‘Dunno. I think he has a few.'

‘Don't get a prang, for heaven's sake. This thing's worth a fortune.'

Diana, who'd gone round the front, had found a slip of paper jammed under the windscreen wiper. With a dubious look she unfolded it.

‘Oh dear. Parking ticket.'

‘What's that?' said Freya, taking it.

‘It's a fine, darling, from a traffic warden. You're not allowed to park here, didn't you know?'

Freya stared at the small print. ‘Two pounds?! That's ridiculous. And what's a traffic warden?'

Stephen laughed. ‘Welcome home. There he is – that chap in the uniform up the road. They're all over the place now.'

I really am out of step, thought Freya; tower blocks, parking restrictions, ‘personalities' the age of school-leavers. Returning from exile would require a period of adjustment. At least no one had stopped to laugh or point in horror at her haircut.

‘Next time,' said Stephen, nodding at the Morgan, ‘walk a witch's circle around it once you've parked.'

‘What on earth's that?' she asked.

‘Just a spell. My friend Terry told me about it – you walk a circle and create a sort of force field, warding off evil spirits. And parking tickets.'

Freya looked to Diana, who shrugged her incomprehension. ‘He's getting very superstitious in his old age.'

But Stephen only tapped his nose, as if he'd just dropped a word to the wise.

Once they had said goodbye Freya decided to walk up to Heal's to get a few things for the flat. Buses growled in convoy up Tottenham Court Road, and unfamiliar shopfronts glittered, pleading for attention. Ever since she'd got back to London she found herself glancing at the faces of passers-by, wondering if the next one would be Nancy, however unlikely the odds. She had claimed at lunch not to know whether Nancy was still in London. In fact she'd read a profile in a newspaper that mentioned a house somewhere near Regent's Park. She imagined what would happen if they encountered one another right now, on this pavement.

But perhaps Nancy wouldn't recognise her, with her new short hair, and the hooped sweater and Capri pants she was wearing. What if she walked right past her? The possibility dismayed her, and put an edge on her own vigilance: one of them had to be on the lookout. In Heal's she wandered through a bright daydream of domesticity, dazzled by the huge table lamps and gleaming clocks and jazzy rugs. She had the impression people were more prosperous. Instead of old ladies in frumpy hats and coats, young couples strolled about as if they had all the money and leisure in the world. ‘May I help you, madam?' a salesgirl asked her, and Freya realised she must have looked lost. She quickly bought some wine glasses and left.

Walking back down Charing Cross Road she stopped at Foyles. She had got out of the habit of buying new books while in Rome; she would borrow from Kay, whose library was a trove of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century literature, much of it cased in forgotten old editions. Their pages were thin as onion-skin and mottled with age. Freya had gorged on Eliot, the Brontës and Henry James, the occasional Trollope, and latterly a good deal of Somerset Maugham, who was about as modern as Kay's taste allowed. In Foyles she raked her gaze along the new fiction hardbacks, their titles and authors unknown to her. Another world that had moved on. But at last her eye snagged on one she did recognise, and she took it down from the shelf:
The Hours and Times
, by Nancy Holdaway. It sported a sash over a plain dust jacket, announcing it as one of the season's recommended reads. Her fourth novel, according to the flyleaf, anatomised ‘with great delicacy and authority a quartet of friends as they come to terms with grief, temptation and mortality'. She was disappointed to find no author photograph on the back flap.

It was late afternoon by the time she got back to Canonbury Square. She ascended the stone steps to the raised pavement and let herself in, inhaling the hall's smell of camphor, nicotine and worn carpets. Her flat occupied the top two floors, with a view onto the little railed garden dividing the square. Cars made sluggish circuits around the perimeter. She had looked at a nicer place on Guilford Street in Bloomsbury, her old stamping ground, but it seemed too close to Great James Street. She couldn't go back, however much she'd have liked to.

The flat didn't feel properly her own yet. None of her pictures on the wall, no rugs or quilts to lend a bit of homeliness. Boxes, still sealed, crouched in the back bedroom. The kitchen, with an oven and wall clock that had served the previous tenants, had the mannered look of a stage set. In the hall she had propped up her tall cheval mirror, its glass spattered with black spots. It had been a present from Joss, and gone everywhere with her, silent witness to so much. She remembered once, towards the end with Joss, he had caught her staring distractedly at herself and said, ‘Are you all right?' It felt like the hundredth time he had uttered the words, and she snapped.
Stop asking me that – it's like a question you torment me with – if I wasn't all right I'd say so
. Joss had reared back, startled. She knew what he was really asking her:
Am I all right?
He wanted her reassurance, the vital thing you crave from the person you love. She couldn't give him any.