Freya (7 page)

‘Why, yes. Miles is my surname. Olive's my first name.'

‘Then would you mind if I called you Olive? I've been in the Wrens for three years and I'm fed up with addressing people by surname.'

Olive blinked uncertainly. ‘As you please, Miss –?'

‘Freya. So you'll be cleaning our rooms? Ginny's next door, and still asleep by the look of it.'

‘I would have made tea, but I couldn't see any … cups.'

Freya conceded that she would have to go out and buy a few things, crockery included. She decided to get started and threw on her coat, calling goodbye to Olive on her way out. Oxford was in sunshine, though the air was gripped by a bracing autumnal cold. Trees were waving farewell to their green and gold leaves. On the Woodstock Road cavalcades of students on bicycles flowed by, gowns flapping like crows' wings. At the junction of Broad Street she stopped to let a drayhorse clop past. The serenity and steadiness of the town bemused her; after London and Plymouth it was odd to be on streets that bore no trace of bomb damage.

She browsed in a bookshop opposite Trinity, eventually hunting down second-hand copies of Empson's
Seven Types of Ambiguity
and C. S. Lewis's
The Allegory of Love
. Her tutor had recommended both of them in a brusque letter anticipating her arrival at college. She strolled on. Turl Street she loved immediately for its high-walled, compact civility, the facades of Exeter and Jesus and Lincoln each seeming to nod to the other in acknowledgement of their likeness while maintaining their aloofness. Round the corner she entered a market, a stone-paved maze with a roof of glass and sawdust on the floor. The smell of a butcher's stall bloomed sour in her nostrils. At a grocer's she spent a week's worth of coupons on a tiny packet of coffee and a twist of sugar. At a hosier's a few doors along she dawdled before the window display, gazing covetously at a pair of cream silk pyjamas. Their price was equivalent to the funds she had to make last the whole term.

She had retraced her steps up the Turl and back along Broad Street when an instinct prompted her to stop at Balliol. Its demeanour felt monastic, rarefied. She found herself mooching about the lodge and reading the noticeboard, as if in search of a message that personally concerned her. One notice announced the revival of a sonnet-writing competition, all entries to be admitted by the last Thursday of Michaelmas. A solemn concession – ‘Enjambement
will
be permitted between the eighth and ninth lines' – made her snort with suppressed laughter.

The arched walkway led out into a long garden quad around which young men in gowns and dark suits were sauntering. She was pretty certain about the number of the staircase. It had the sentry-eyed, forbidding look of a medieval tower, but she felt under no obligation to keep out. Ascending, she heard a low, discreet patter of male voices behind oak doors, that hum of intellectual life that had filled these rooms from time immemorial, its sound as even and concentrated as bees in a hive. Or perhaps it wasn't intellectual. For all she knew they may have been talking about girls or the cost of laundry or next week's football.

She was staring from the window of an upper landing when the door to her right opened and a naked, steaming youth walked out. The towel with which he was absently drying his hair had obscured his vision for the moment, allowing her a flash of his long white torso, and the flat shield of muscle across his abdomen; the bath he had lately emerged from had shrunk his cock to a pinkish mushroom. His cheeks were steamed pinkish too, and became pinker once his eyes flicked up to meet hers.

‘God! What the hell –!' He brought his towel down smartly to cover his nether quarters.

‘Oh, sorry,' said Freya, sounding very far from it.

‘What are you – this is a men's college, you know.' Flustered, he was wrapping the towel around his waist, conscious of the eyeful she had already had.

‘I know that. I'm just visiting.'

He shook his head furiously. ‘Well, these are
not
visiting hours.' Having made the towel secure he had put his hands on his hips, in a posture that aimed for landowner-to-trespasser outrage.

Freya, scornful of pomposity, left a pause before she said, ‘Actually, I'm here because this was my dad's college – and this, I believe, was his staircase.'

The youth seemed to wilt before her matter-of-fact explanation. It is not within the command of many men to assert their dignity with only a towel for cover. In the brief stand-off between them she took a moment to consider him. He was lean and tall (though no taller than her); the face was soft-jawed and handsome, if undistinguished, and a great swatch of dark, almost black hair fell across his forehead. Unable to scare off the intruder, he had dropped his gaze, perhaps pondering his next move.

‘When was he, um, here? Your father …' It was weak, but civil at least.

‘Just after the First War. He read History. I don't think he enjoyed it much, but he did say I should look up his old rooms.'

‘I see.' Something in his eyes had brightened as he looked at her. He had come alive to the situation. It was after all not a common occurrence to find an attractive girl waiting on the other side of your bathroom door. ‘Well, if you care to wait while I put some clothes on, I could show you around the place.'

‘Oh, there's no need, thanks –'

‘No, no, it'd be my pleasure. Just wait there.'

He bounded up the stairs, calling over his shoulder that he would be ‘down in a sec'. She watched his white naked back disappear from view and smiled to herself. What an introduction. She was still at the window as he returned. The dark tweed jacket and grey trousers had been hurriedly thrown on. He had brushed his hair into a parting, though his face was still ruddy from the bath.

‘That was quick,' she said, giving him the once-over.

‘Oh, I don't hang around,' he said with a smirk. He was trying to be suave after his blustering start. ‘I'm Robert, by the way – Robert Cosway.' He offered his hand, which she took.

‘Freya Wyley,' she said, with a little tilt of her head.

‘Right, let us go then, you and I!'

As they walked in step onto the quad she felt the full curiosity of his gaze on her. It was as though he had accidentally trapped an exotic bird which it now pleased him to parade in public.

‘So you're reading English, then?' she asked him.

‘Why do you say that?'

‘Because you just quoted “Prufrock”.'

He frowned in arch demur. ‘Just because I can quote poetry doesn't mean I'm studying English. I've got some range, you know.'

‘So what are you reading?'

He smirked again. ‘Why don't you try to guess?'

Because I hardly care one way or the other, she thought. ‘That's the hall over there, I suppose?'

He followed her glance. ‘Ah – yes. Mm. And through here –' He walked her through a cloister and pulled open a door. ‘We have, as you see, the library.'

They looked about it for a few moments, and Freya began to suspect something. She decided to put it to the test.

‘And where's the junior common room?'

He stared at her for a moment. ‘I can show you.' They proceeded around a curved gravel path and through another archway, emerging into a flagged enclosure. A heavy iron-studded door stood open, and he hesitated for a moment before stepping within. ‘Oh, sorry, this seems to be a fellows' staircase.'

She nodded pleasantly. ‘I take it you're not reading Geography either.'

He laughed, looking around in distraction. ‘Erm …' He was no better a guide to the place than she was.

‘You're a freshman, aren't you? Why didn't you say?'

He looked embarrassed. ‘Sorry. I only arrived here yesterday.' Humbled, he seemed much more likeable.

‘Well, that makes two of us. I'm at Somerville.' She cast a glance around the brooding ashlar walls. ‘It's all very High Victorian here, isn't it?'

‘I know. You half expect Ruskin or Walter Pater to be lurking around the next corner. Perhaps I should ask someone …'

He made enquiry from a passing student, and they presently found their way there. Robert got them each a cup of tea from the buttery. It transpired he was studying PPE, having been a scholarship boy at Manchester Grammar School. He was the only child of parents who doted on him – ‘They're quite elderly,' he said, as though to justify their devotion. He asked about her own schooling, and she explained how she had deferred her place to join the Wrens. His eyes widened in astonishment as she briefly recounted her time in the Operations Room at Plymouth.

‘Must have been tough work.'

‘Yes, it was. But we had wonderful times, too. Lots to eat and drink, sports, silly games. And the dashing officers, of course.'

‘Of
course
,' he echoed, in a drawl. ‘I suppose Oxford will seem rather sedate in comparison.'

She shrugged. ‘It's certainly a change. But I have a few friends here …'

His gaze sharpened. ‘Female friends?'

She laughed at his eager expression. ‘Yes – actual women.'

‘It's a mighty disadvantage of this place, I tell you, the chronic lack of bir— women. So far I've seen nothing but vicars' wives or bluestockings in inch-thick specs.' He abruptly checked himself with a glance. ‘Present company excepted, I mean. But really it's too bad. Someone told me men outnumber women here six to one.'

‘Mm,' said Freya. ‘That seems to me a very promising ratio. I should be able to have my pick.'

Robert stared gloomily into the distance. ‘Fine for you. I left school with high hopes I would –' Again he checked himself. ‘I suppose the best thing for it would be to throw a party. D'you think you could rustle up a posse of girls?'

This was asked with a note of yearning she felt unable to tease. ‘I'll see what I can do.' She glanced at her watch. ‘Better be off. I have a meeting with my tutor at twelve.'

‘I'll walk you to the lodge – if can find it.'

She smiled, and wondered; he had quickly picked up on her preference for self-deprecation over pomposity. He wasn't bad-looking in a boyish sort of way. If he could learn to dress he would be quite presentable. They ambled back towards the lodge, passing under an ancient archway. ‘That's very pretty,' she said, looking up, and added, ‘“An arch as sweet as the drip of syrup from a spoon” …'

‘Who's that?' he said with a suspicious look.

‘Jessica Vaux. From one of her essays.'

‘The woman who had the son by Henry Burnham?' He had named a famous man of letters from the early part of the century.

She looked at him crossly. ‘That's
one
thing she did. She also happens to be a first-rate writer, a critic, a historian and a political commentator.'

‘Oh, right –'

‘And, to quote my Penguin copy, is a “shrewd and eloquent judge of human nature” – which probably came in handy when Burnham hurried back to his wife and left her to raise the child alone.'

‘Yes, I'm sure,' he said, nodding and frowning.

‘I recommend her book about the Weimar Republic,
Funeral Rag
. It's a classic.'

They had reached the lodge, where they rehearsed a short
pas de deux
of farewell. Robert's expression had grown anxious.

‘I had so much more I wanted to discuss,' he said, rubbing the side of his head. ‘How should I get in touch with you?'

‘You can write to me at Somerville – Freya.'

‘Yes, Freya Wyley. I shan't forget that name.'

‘Well, thank you for the tea, and the tour.' She walked off, then turned to give him a quick wave goodbye. ‘Watch out for those bluestockings.'

Three weeks into term and still there was no sign of Nancy. In the first few days, whenever there came a knock on her door, Freya was convinced it would be her. But though visitors kept calling at a steady rate, she was never among them. At first she was baffled, for Nancy's letters over the summer had contained nothing but avowals of friendship and interest; she seemed almost to be counting the days to Oxford and their reunion. Then there was the manuscript of the novel, dispatched with a letter of imploring sincerity.

She now saw that her delay in responding might be interpreted as indifference. She had assumed that Nancy would call on her at the earliest opportunity. But would it not have been more gracious on her part to pay the first call? She knew Nancy to have a good deal of natural modesty; however eager she may have sounded in correspondence, she was probably not the type to thrust herself forward in person. Nor could Freya absolve herself of the vanity that derived from a perceived superiority. Nancy's puppyish willingness to defer to her as the senior partner in the friendship had allowed her to stay aloof.

After a lecture one morning she had joined the murmuring shuffle out of the hall when a voice, pitched at an unmistakable volume, called her name. She turned to find Jean Markham striding up alongside her.

‘I thought I might run into you at some point,' she said, and Freya realised with a quick stab of guilt that she had failed to reply to her note from the first day. ‘How do you like it at Somerville?'

‘Fine, fine. I've been meaning to call on you –'

‘Yes, I wondered,
Is she avoiding me?
You've been very elusive, starting with that debacle on VE Day.'

Freya laughed lightly, though she detected in Jean's tone a reproach that was not altogether humorous. It was true that she had not kept their friendship in good repair, though all she admitted was that most of the summer had been passed at her mother's house in Sussex.

Since they were not far from her rooms she invited Jean up for tea. On the way the latter informed her of various Paulinas she kept up with around Oxford – a regular clique, it seemed – but Freya managed to change the subject when an evening reunion was proposed. Having never been popular at school, she had no desire to dredge up associations that felt almost meaningless. On entering her rooms Jean looked about like a bird, beak pecking at the ground. She paused as her eye encountered Freya's portrait on the mantelpiece. Ginny had propped it there two weeks ago while its permanent position was still being decided. The angle of Jean's neck as she contemplated it implied something less than approval, but all she said was, ‘From your father?'