Freya (3 page)

Freya sighed, and craned her gaze to Nancy's face. ‘God, you're absolutely whizzed, aren't you?' She took the syphon from her and directed a squirt into both glasses. She held hers aloft. ‘We should have a toast. How about – to starting afresh?'

Nancy, smiling at the echo of her own words, clinked glasses. Then she leaned back into the sofa, her eyes hooded and shrinking. Watching her, Freya wondered if she might need a little pick-me-up. Flipping through a stack of records, she pulled one out of its sleeve, and winding up the old gramophone, she dropped the needle. It crackled for a moment on the scratchy shellac, then quietly began.

Nancy moved her shoulders in time to the music's swaying rhythm, but after a minute or so Freya saw her eyelids start to droop. This wouldn't do at all. At the end of the song she got up and said, ‘Are you ready for another dance?'

‘I think so,' Nancy replied, her voice seeming to run down, out of fuel.

‘Right then. I'll be back in a sec.' She hurried to her room and rummaged in her handbag for the little bottle. She tipped out a couple of tablets and swigged them down with the whisky, then shook out a couple more and returned to the studio room. Nancy had fallen into a sideways slumber.

She gave her a little shake, and handed her the tablets. ‘Here, take these.'

Nancy squinted blearily. ‘What are they?'

‘The late show,' said Freya, holding out a glass for the purpose. ‘Their technical name is Benzedrine. We used them a lot on night shifts.'

Nancy obediently swallowed them down. Freya, pierced by a little shiver of excitement, sat down at the piano and started to play. It was the same tune they had just been listening to, but she had upped the tempo to a jaunty waltz. The notes melted off her hands. That was the wonderful thing about Benzedrine, it gave you such focus and clarity – her fingers purled over the keys without her even having to think about what went where. The song was at the command of her touch …
Now
she was having fun!

Her persuasive contralto caressed the words. A shadow had joined her at the piano, and she was singing it, too. They ran through the song once more, with Nancy playing a pert counterpoint at the top end of the scale. On finishing they collapsed in laughter; then Freya had them try it once again, singing alternate lines, and finishing on a note of extravagant harmony.

Nancy, restored to girlish animation, said in a wondering voice, ‘Those pills really are –'

‘I know,' said Freya, feeling the cold, speedy glow of the drug take hold, routing the party-pooper, fatigue. ‘You can go for hours without even getting drunk. Now, shall we dance?'

They moved the tall easel and the paraffin heater from the centre of the room, clearing a space on the worn-out Turkey carpet, and Freya put on a Benny Goodman record she thought might suit the mood. Then, with the same straight-backed posture she'd adopted at the piano, she lifted her arms and led Nancy into the steps of a waltz. Her body through the thin cotton of her dress felt heated, febrile, willing. It was odd, she thought, to be holding close a girl who a few hours ago was a perfect stranger to her. And odder still was how they could fit together, her angular self-possession against Nancy's wide-hipped gawkiness; yet there was somehow a current of intuitive ease between them, it wasn't just the disinhibiting effects of the Benzedrine, though of course that helped.

The little ormolu clock on the mantelpiece chimed eleven. Freya had been so lost in the dance that she hadn't noticed Nancy's green eyes glittering with tears. She reared back in alarm. But it became apparent to her that she wasn't just crying, she was laughing, too. She had dropped her head almost to Freya's shoulder.

‘Are you all right?'

Nancy nodded, her face now averted and downcast, and they continued to sway to the music. She couldn't tell if Nancy was concentrating on her steps or recovering from her minor hysterics. When she lifted her face again, the eyelashes were still wet with tears; but her voice was composed, and thoughtful.

‘I want to remember this for the rest of my life,' she said, looking dreamily over Freya's shoulder.

‘Well, it's that sort of night –'

‘No, no, I don't mean because of the war. I mean this, here, now.'

‘The Night They Danced in Tite Street.'

Again she nodded, and Freya slipped over to the gramophone to wind it up. The music returned in a soft fog of brass and strings. She presented her arms to Nancy in an exaggerated display of courtliness.

‘Shall I lead?'

Freya awoke with a start, having slipped off the edge of a dream that had turned suddenly and vividly erotic. She felt annoyed with her failure to cling on. Outside her bedroom door she had heard footsteps in a soft shuffle of hesitation; there followed a tap, and the door creaked open in apology.

‘Morning,' said Stephen, her father.

Freya didn't raise her head from the pillow. ‘What time is it?' Her voice came out a gravelled croak.

‘Quarter past eleven. There seems to have been drinking on the premises last night.'

She only groaned in response, hearing his quiet half-laugh.

‘Who's Sleeping Beauty, by the way – on the couch?'

She had to think a moment before she understood. ‘Oh. Nancy, a girl I met in town yesterday.'

She still hadn't deigned to look up. It was important to let him know – without their having an actual argument about it – that she was aggrieved by his absence the previous night. His tone of voice suggested he already did know. ‘Cup of tea?'

‘Mmnh.'

Stephen disappeared off to the kitchen. Slowly she elbowed herself into a semi-upright position; her head felt as heavy as a bowling ball on the slender pivot of her neck. She winced on seeing a half-smoked cigar parked in an ashtray at her bedside: so that explained the revolting burnt
brown
taste that filled her mouth. Yeeuch. She'd forgotten their ‘hilarious' idea of lighting up a couple of Stephen's Havanas as they finished off the whisky last night; also her impersonation of Churchill that had made them laugh. She wasn't laughing now.

Well, they'd had a jolly time, all right. Nancy had shown herself very game, as dance partner, accompanying pianist, drinking companion. They'd really gone to town on the Scotch … and the Benzedrine had worked its miracle of wakefulness again. Better get up and check on her. En route she stopped at the bathroom and almost took fright at the face she saw in the mirror; her eyes were heavy-lidded and swollen with a fatigue she hadn't witnessed on herself since the air-raid days. She splashed on some water, feeling depressed. Her mood wasn't lifted on seeing Nancy's recumbent form on the couch,
her
face rather saintlike in its quietude; annoyingly, the facetious epithet Stephen had just used to describe her contained more accuracy than humour. She sat down and gave the girl a little shake. Even the way she emerged from sleep, eyes ungluing like a child's, had an innocence about it.

Nancy looked around. She appeared for a moment unable to comprehend her surroundings. Her confusion turned to a look of round-eyed horror as the door opened and Stephen walked in bearing a tray of tea. With a sudden panicked ‘Oh' she pulled up the bed sheet to cover her bare arms. Freya, suppressing an urge to snigger, said, ‘It's all right, it's only my dad.'

The deep blush of Nancy's cheeks suggested it was anything but all right. Wrapping the sheet around herself like a shroud, she slid off the couch and hurried out, mumbling a scarcely audible ‘Excuse me'. Stephen set down the tray and pulled a grimace of mock alarm.

‘I was only bringing in the tea,' he whispered.

Freya answered with a sardonic smirk. ‘I don't think she's used to seeing a strange man first thing in the morning …' She poured a cup from the teapot and ambled after her guest to the bathroom. Answering her knock Nancy cracked the door a sliver before admitting her. She was wearing a slip, a robust-looking brassiere beneath it, and a very unhappy expression.

‘What's the matter?' asked Freya.

Nancy returned an incredulous look. ‘I've just been caught half naked on your father's sofa, that's what! My clothes are –' she gave a hopeless wave – ‘I've no idea where. And the state they're in … I spilt all that beer down my dress, my stockings are filthy –'

Freya had not recently encountered such fastidiousness. ‘There's no need to fret. I've got spare clothes with me, you can borrow whatever you need.'

Nancy looked doubtful. ‘Really?'

‘Of course. In the Wrens we were always in and out of each other's rooms borrowing this or that – it's just like boarding school.'

‘I've never been to boarding school,' Nancy said forlornly.

‘Well, don't be a ninny. I can't promise you
haute couture
but I'm sure I can fix you up with something.' A glance told her that she might struggle for a dress – Nancy's figure had curves where she had none – but they could improvise. ‘Why don't you run a bath and I'll get started? Here's some tea, by the way.'

She tripped back to her bedroom and threw open her suitcase, plucking out several likely items – a blouse, a thin woollen cardigan, a green skirt and a pair of stockings. She added, in a spirit of mischief, a pair of wide-legged slacks, as an alternative to the skirt. She gathered them into a pile and carried the lot through to Nancy. Water was thundering from the taps in the background. When she returned to the living room Stephen was reading
The Times
on the rumpled couch, a cigarette on the go. He looked up enquiringly. ‘How's the startled nymph?'

‘In a stew of mortification,' she replied, flopping onto the chair opposite and fishing out a cigarette from Stephen's slim silver case. ‘She's practically still a schoolgirl – you have to make allowances.'

Stephen lifted his chin, as though about to reply, then stopped himself. His look by degrees turned fond. ‘You enjoyed yourself, then, yesterday?'

She tipped her head to one side, considering. ‘Everything but the cigar.' She looked at him and said, ‘What did you do?'

‘Oh … Joan Dallington had a little party at Bury Street, mostly people from the gallery. She's planning a show of war paintings – did I tell you? Home-front stuff. Asked me if I'd contribute a few things.'

‘The Blitz pictures?'

‘Yes, those. Plus the army portraits. And I dare say the Churchill picture, if they can get it back from the MoD.'

‘That's thrilling,' Freya said with a slow smile. Though he would never admit it, she knew her father was secretly quite proud of this last. The rumour went that the sitter had admired it, too. With this little upswing of friendliness between them she sensed it would be a moment to clear the air. ‘I felt rather miserable when I got back on Monday night and found the place empty. Mum said she might be up, and wasn't – but I really thought
you
would be –'

‘I'm sorry, darling,' he said, in a chastened tone. ‘If you'd telephoned to say you were coming up …'

‘Why weren't you here?'

Stephen raised his eyebrows, as though to say it was none of her business, but he too seemed to catch the conciliatory mood. ‘I was out, as I said. I sometimes stay at the club, you know.'

She stared at him hard for a few moments, and then nodded, acquiescent. She wanted to ask how things stood between him and her mother, but she knew that this would entail a much longer conversation, and the possibility of raised voices. For the present, with a guest in earshot, a truce held, and they would strive to maintain the illusion of family accord.

She yawned, and took a sip of tea. How strange to contemplate such leisure! She had thought of her life as a line divided into two parts, with September 1939 as the caesura. There was ‘before the war', and then everything that followed. But what about
after
the war? To wake up and know that you were not due at the Operations Room at 0800 hours, that you would not be doing another week of night shifts, that the CO would no longer be shooting sour looks in your direction. Impossible to take it in at once. She recalled now a conversation with Nancy from last night, when they were briefly serious, about the people close to them who had died, mere drops in an inconceivably vast ocean of loss and grieving. And what she wanted to know was: why had they survived when so many others had not? How had they come by such stupendous luck?

The bathroom door had opened, and they heard tentative steps padding across the hall. Stephen, ever the gentleman, rose from the sofa at Nancy's entrance and introduced himself.

‘It's not the most comfortable couch, I'm afraid,' he said with a rueful chuckle.

‘Oh, no, it was perfectly fine,' said Nancy, still not quite catching his eye. ‘I really ought to have gone back to my digs –'

‘No you ought
not
,' said Freya, and turned to her father. ‘It was two in the morning and we were absolutely whizzed.'

Nancy had, to Freya's surprise, chosen to wear the slacks, and looked quite fetching in them. The blouse was a tight fit across her chest. Her face, without make-up, had a fresh and vulnerable openness. Freya found herself staring at those wide green eyes, which prompted the girl to ask, uncertainly, ‘Is something the matter?'

‘No, no. Those trousers – they suit you.'

Stephen said, ‘So, how did you meet?'