Freya (50 page)

‘What are you working on at present?' he asked, after a pause.

‘Oh, a piece about the new cult craze for youth. I'm chasing a possible interview with Chrissie Effingham. The model?'

‘Yes, I know who she is. That would be a good story. I'll make sure nobody takes it off you.'

Freya realised he was trying to be conciliatory, and forced herself to say ‘Thank you'. But she didn't feel grateful, she felt indignant about being undervalued.

She was on her way out of his office when Brock said, casually, ‘So you worked with Robert Cosway?'

She nodded. ‘Briefly. We knew one another from university.'

‘I met him the other night for the first time. Very bright fellow. My wife and I were introduced and found him charming …' He continued in this vein for a while, expressing his admiration of Cosway's stance on immigration and his timely attack upon the racialist right. When Freya said nothing he looked at her searchingly. ‘Do you, um, have a view on him?'

Freya considered for a moment. ‘I do, as a matter of fact. But given what you think of women who swear you'd probably rather I kept it to myself.'

She gave him a cursory nod and left the room without another word.

She crossed Canonbury Square in a mid-morning lull, the pavement damp from the night's rain. From somewhere not very distant came the echoing clank and grind of building work. The doctor's surgery on St Paul's Road was an early-Victorian terrace of shabby grey stucco. She was fed up with feeling tired for no reason and had telephoned for an appointment. She had told herself there was no reason; yet her heart was beating thickly, as if her body were trying to communicate some urgent message that her mind continued to block.

In the waiting room the air was solid with some cloying, tarry medication. A couple of old men, blank-faced and flat-capped, sat in stoical silence. They looked scraped dry of hope, and even of expectation. A young mother in the corner dandled a child whose burbling monologue poured out indecipherably. While she waited Freya leafed through a copy of
Punch
and marvelled at its consistently feeble cartoons. She supposed they put the magazine in doctors' waiting rooms to make whatever happened when you were in the next room comparatively amusing. When her name was called by the receptionist she felt embarrassed for a moment that she had got the nod ahead of the two old boys. But if they thought her a queue-jumper they gave no sign of resentment.

The GP was a fiftyish bespectacled man with an aquiline nose, large bony hands and an unsmiling demeanour. He wore a dark three-piece suit and a raffish paisley tie which she imagined had been bought for him by his wife. He was writing on a pad with a fountain pen and didn't look up as he invited her to take a seat. He continued scratching away for a minute or more, until she was almost moved to lean over and peek at whatever was occupying him.

Finally he faced her and introduced himself as Dr Maybury. He took down her details in an uninterested manner and then leaned back in his chair.

‘And what seems to be the problem?'

She started to explain her tiredness, glancing at him now and then, though his impassive expression didn't change.

‘How are you sleeping?' he asked after a pause.

‘Not well. Some mornings I lie in bed wondering if I've actually been asleep at all. By late afternoon I'm yawning.'

‘Might it be to do with your change of circumstances?'

‘Possibly. From my bedroom I can hear the traffic on Upper Street; it sometimes keeps me awake. But then my apartment in Rome was quite noisy, too …'

‘Do you eat properly? You look somewhat underweight.'

‘I've always been quite skinny – it runs in the family. I just eat when I'm hungry, like most people.'

‘That isn't a tenable generalisation,' he said, deadpan. ‘Do you drink? Smoke?'

‘Both.'

He nodded. ‘Have you noticed any discomfort of late? Stomach pains, constipation, feelings of nausea?'

She considered for a moment. ‘I've had slight stomach cramps now and then. Nothing very painful.'

He asked her to lie on the raised couch. ‘May I …?' He felt her stomach, and then examined her eyes, pulling down the lower lids. ‘I wonder if you're anaemic. That can often cause tiredness.' He glanced at his notes. ‘You're … thirty-seven. Do you have regular periods?'

Sitting up on the couch, she shook her head. ‘Fairly irregular. It's always been that way. I suppose my last was … two or three months ago.'

‘Do you have –' he began, and seemed to reverse from the question he intended to ask. ‘Have you considered the possibility that you may be pregnant?'

She gave a half-laugh. ‘I did – for a couple of seconds. But I'm absolutely certain that I'm not.'

‘I see. So you've not had sexual relations in some time?'

She frowned at him humorously. ‘I didn't say that. I had a relationship, off and on, for a few months. It ended last year. But we had sex quite regularly.'

She waited for an answering note of disapproval, but Maybury's voice remained level, unhurried. He wanted to know if she had taken ‘precautions', and she nodded. In her head she was making some quick calculations as to timing; she had never kept a diary, so she couldn't be accurate beyond a doubt.

It seemed that he had been calculating, too. ‘So … as best you can remember, you've menstruated since the last time you had …'

‘Yes. Which is why it's impossible that I should be pregnant.'

He stared at her briefly, his expression ambiguous, unsettling. She got down off the couch. He held out her coat, meaning to help her into it, but she took it instead and folded it across her arm.

‘I'm going to send you for a blood test. You may have a touch of anaemia. I'd also like to check for pregnancy –'

‘What?'

‘The chances are negligible, but one has to make sure. You understand. My secretary will arrange an appointment for you at the hospital – it's just up the Holloway Road.'

She felt a prickle of irritation. ‘Is that really necessary? Couldn't you just give me a prescription for sleeping pills?'

‘Miss Wyley, I hope you're not presuming to tell me my job.'

‘No, but let me tell you about mine. It involves long demanding hours –'

‘I'm sure you're very busy. In the meantime, try to get some proper rest, and eat healthily. I know you journalists all like to booze, but you might think about cutting down. That would be one way of improving your chances of a good night's sleep.'

Freya lifted her chin in seeming compliance, while privately dismissing his advice as a waste of time. She had lived through a war, through rationing: proof enough of her hardiness. She was nearly out of the door when he handed her a small plastic bottle.

‘What's this?'

‘For a urine sample – they'll need one at the hospital.'

‘Like they haven't got enough piss there already,' she almost said, but didn't.

She took her visitor's pass from the man at the gate and parked the car. It was her first sight of Television Centre, its gigantic cellular crescent of brick and glass part spacecraft docking station, part Soviet mental hospital. In the foyer she was directed upwards to the recording studio and wafted along an interminable curving corridor. She spotted a couple of bright young dolly birds heading somewhere and on an instinct followed them. Blatting through swing doors they led her into the stuffy, cavernous semi-hush of the studio, its floor a sea of tangled cords and leads, its ceiling clogged with a gantry of dazzling spotlights. She picked her way past camera operators and technicians towards the wings, where a seated figure, pale and languid, was watching her.

‘Darling!' called Nat, his neck encircled by a white ruff of tissue paper while a girl attended to his make-up. She hadn't seen him wearing so much slap since Oxford. He sent the girl off with a nod, and invited Freya to take a high stool opposite his own perch. ‘Welcome to the pleasure dome,' he said drily. ‘What do you think of this place?'

She made a comic grimace. ‘It's rather … Orwellish, isn't it?'

Nat sniggered. ‘Yes, we'll be serving Victory gin after the show. In the meantime let's have some tea.' He sang out his request to a passing minion, whose obedient ‘Straight away, Mr Fane' made Freya smile. She raked her gaze around the place.

‘Isn't there an audience?'

‘Not for this. Though there's the court of Effingham – wherever Chrissie goes, they go.' Her eyes followed his to a little knot of gabbling youths, the girls in tight miniskirts and thigh boots, their hair teased into tottering beehives, and a couple of older, floppy-fringed men in suits and ties. She was wondering where their queen was when a fawn-like figure emerged from the shadows. Chrissie, freshly primped from make-up, had the self-conscious, pigeon-toed gait of a tutored novice. With the exception of her chest, she was vanishingly slight, her bony frame accentuated by the long-sleeved Mary Quant dress that finished just above her knee. It was a look Freya had been noticing since her return, the waif whose legacy of malnutrition during the ration-book years was skinny limbs and plaintive saucer eyes. She quietly remarked on it to Nat.

‘Then it was worth starving for,' he replied. ‘That look's making her a fortune.' His face became abruptly animated as the subject of their whispers approached.

‘Hullo, Nat,' she said. Nat took her extended hand and planted a reverential kiss on it.

‘Chrissie, you ravishing creature! Ready for your close-up? Let me introduce you to one of my dearest friends, Freya Wyley.'

‘Hullo, Freya,' she said with reflexive politeness and the shy smile Freya remembered from the restaurant. ‘I do love your hair.'

‘Thanks,' she said.

‘I've thought of having mine short, actually.' She brushed her dark fringe from her eyes. The girl's voice hadn't been trained as rigorously as her walk; her south London roots poked from under the thin crust of RP.

‘Not likely, sweetheart,' interposed one of the suited men, stroking her long hair with proprietary entitlement. He was staring now at Nat and Freya. ‘Bruce Haddon. I'm Chrissie's manager.'

They shook hands, and Haddon began to reel off his ‘ideas' about the way he wanted the interview to proceed. He was cocksure, fussy, emphatic, and not half as clever as he imagined. He was still talking when Nat, who had listened with the half-amused, half-mystified smile of someone watching a monkey juggling golf balls, cut him short.

‘
Thank you
, Bruce,' he said, hopping off his stool. ‘I shall bear most, if not all, of that in mind. Now let's have Miss Effingham in the chair, and we'll pop a microphone on to catch that silvery voice of hers.'

Nat placed his hand lightly at Freya's back, steering her towards the TV monitor at the side.

‘You might prefer to watch my performance – or rather
our
performance – on this,' he said, and with a quick backward glance he lowered his voice. ‘Remarkable, isn't it, that such an imbecile gets to run the girl's life? And those others – the moustachioed griffin is her accountant; that tubby lady, with the smaller moustache, is the agent; the woman next to
her
a legal assistant. All battening on young Christine in the hope they'll ride her coat-tails to payday.'

Across the floor one of the clipboarders was signalling for him. He turned to Freya with a lazy grin. ‘Showtime!'

The recording was a prickly affair. Chrissie, bemused and sometimes baffled by Nat's line of questioning, kept shifting her large brown eyes sideways as if to appeal for help from ‘offstage'. The director of the programme would step forward to remind her to keep her eyeline on the interviewer, and a minute later she would forget. Then Bruce Haddon decided to wade in, complaining that the questions were too windy. (‘Do we need all the long words – who the hell knows what “cynosure” means?'). When Haddon interrupted a third time, Nat lost his temper and rounded on him: ‘D'you know the meaning of “cretin”, or is that word too long for you as well?' The director was eventually forced to separate them, though not before Nat had laid down instructions regarding Haddon and the rest of the court: ‘If they move,
kill
them.'

Watching from the sidelines Freya thoroughly enjoyed the contretemps, though she felt for Chrissie, tongue-tied and blinking under the lights. There followed more argument about who was to stay while they did audio pickups for the broadcast. Nat insisted that they all cleared off and left Chrissie in his charge; the court finally made their exit, but Haddon refused to budge. He watched morosely as Nat and Chrissie re-recorded a few exchanges, both of them more at ease without the distraction of an audience.

By the time they were finished it was nearly eight o'clock. An arrangement had been made to meet up at the Corsair. Nat said that he would join them later, and with a surreptitious wink suggested that Freya drove Chrissie to Mayfair. Haddon, still impersonating a limpet, escorted them to the BBC car park. Upon seeing the Morgan he was momentarily dumbfounded.

‘What a smashin' motor!' said Chrissie, wide-eyed.

‘Oh. A two-seater –' said Haddon.

‘Sorry about that,' shrugged Freya, realising Nat's craftiness.

‘I'll call a taxi for us, Chrissie,' he said.

Freya said, ‘I can drive her.' Haddon started to object, but Chrissie decided to put her foot down.

‘Bruce, I want to go with Freya. You get a taxi and we'll see you there.'

Haddon looked put out, and Freya, relishing the moment, said, ‘Don't worry, I'll look after her.'

He stared at them for a moment. ‘Ask for my name at the door,' he said and stalked off.

It was a fine spring evening, the retreating light still pearly. Freya said, ‘Shall I put the hood down?' Chrissie smiled and clapped her hands like a child off to a birthday party. The late rays of the sun bounced off the glossy amber walnut of the car's dashboard.