Freya (57 page)

‘Nice of you.'

‘He said something quite interesting, actually. We'd been talking about luxury – you know he was a great collector and bon viveur in his day. He must be the only man in London who still wears spats! Well, I asked him what he thought the greatest luxury of all was, expecting him to name some car, or vintage wine, or what have you. D'you know what he said?'

Nancy shook her head.

‘“Time.” He said the greatest fallacy of all is that you can buy time – but you can't. “It is ineffable and ungraspable,”' she said, slipping into an imitation of the Erskine drawl, ‘“and yet, most mysterious of all, it is free. And those who spend it properly are the richest people of all.”'

Nancy smiled and nodded slowly. ‘He's absolutely right. The luxury of time. To think of how much we waste just in –'

Their eyes met, and held. She had made the remark innocently, but its pertinence was too close for them to ignore. The interval of years had suddenly obtruded itself and silenced them – not time wasted, but time they had chosen to live absent from each other. It was not something they could easily talk their way around.

After some moments Nancy said, ‘Have you seen him yet?'

Freya nodded. ‘He was friendly, and I'm afraid I didn't answer him in kind. I still find it difficult, I'm sorry –'

‘You don't have to apologise,' Nancy said, frowning. ‘I realise I should have been – I don't know –'

The sentence hung there, unresolved. Freya waited, and then said, ‘I'm glad I ran into him, though, at the Corsair. We might have gone another eight years without talking if I hadn't.'

‘Oh, to think!' said Nancy, averting her gaze.

Freya, touched by this exclamation of fright, hurried on. ‘There's another thing. Actually, two things. I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your new book. I think it's your best. And to thank you for what you wrote – I mean, for the dedication.'

‘As I said in my letter, I put it there in the hope you'd find it one day.'

‘Well, it was nice. No – I mean, it was lovely. Nat was rather envious. He's never had one, so I had to promise that if I ever wrote a book I'd dedicate it to him.'

Nancy threw her head back and laughed. It gave a glimpse of the inside of her mouth, of her neat white teeth, and Freya realised that this, even this, was something she had missed about her. She thought again of the years that had intervened, years that suddenly, in front of Nancy, seemed a delusion – a wilful spurning that had hurt no one more than herself.

She took a sip of her drink, and when she looked up Nancy was gazing at her. She said, without warning, ‘D'you mind if I ask you something? Are you pregnant?'

The surprise of this direct hit must have registered on her face, because it bounced right back onto Nancy's. For a second Freya thought of denying it, but couldn't gather the strength. ‘How did you – is it obvious?'

Nancy seemed almost stricken by her own surmise. ‘No, no – though the moment I saw you I did wonder, perhaps …'

Freya stared at her. ‘It was a mistake. I'm not in touch with –' How could she begin to explain? It would make her sound so feckless. But Nancy was a step ahead of her.

‘You're not going to keep it, are you?' Her voice was low, and the shock of it was that she said it not as a question but a prediction.

‘Are you a fucking
witch
or something?' Nancy had drawn out her secret just by studying her face. It was uncanny.

‘Oh God, Freya,' she said, grasping her hands. ‘I'm sorry. How far along are you?'

She looked round at the other guests to check that nobody was earwigging. ‘Twenty-one weeks, thereabouts,' she said in an undertone. ‘I'm getting – I have an “appointment” for this Monday.'

Nancy's brow was creased with concern. She seemed to be taking the news almost personally. ‘Do you need – would you like me to come with you?'

Freya, touched, felt she mustn't give way, not here. She had arrived at the house only an hour before with her defences up, bristling, and yet Nancy had just hurdled them, first with an astonishing leap of intuition, and then by the simple tenderness of her tone. She covered her hesitation with a brave little laugh. ‘Thanks, but I'll manage.'

Any further discussion of the matter was firmly checked by the interruption of Robert, in company with Bruce Haddon, thus doubling Freya's inclination to make herself scarce. But, perhaps eager to batten on the goodwill his wife had been re-establishing with their guest, Robert had planted himself before her in such a way that blocked escape. He introduced Haddon, who gave Freya a nod before saying, without charm, ‘We've already met.'

‘So, now you're back, Freya, can we hope to see you more often?' Robert, emboldened by his political success of yesterday, seemed to be trusting in its extension to the social sphere today.

For Nancy's sake she decided to keep a civil tongue. ‘I don't know. It looks like you're going to be the busy one – your secretary was just telling us about the big push for the next election.'

‘Well, we always have time for friends, don't we?' he said, looking to Nancy, who, arms folded, returned a supportive smile. ‘We should have a dinner for you, a sort of welcome home. Bruce here seems to know the manager of every posh restaurant in London.'

Haddon gave a twitch of a smile. ‘At your service.'

Freya, goaded by mischief, said, ‘Maybe we could all meet up again at the Corsair, with Chrissie.'

Nancy tucked in her chin, puzzled. ‘Chrissie Effingham? Do you know her?'

Freya shook her head. ‘Not well. We've met a couple of times.' She glanced at Robert, who seemed rather put out by the conversation's turn: her instinct had been right, though she couldn't tell why.

Bruce, staring at her, said, ‘I heard you two'd met the other week. She just took off in the car one morning without telling me.'

‘Does she have to tell you? – I mean, is it in her contract?'

Haddon didn't rise to the bait. He spread his hands outward in a gesture of reasonableness. ‘She's my client. I worry about her.' He drew in Robert and Nancy with his gaze. ‘She's a twenty-year-old girl, and a bit naive. She'd think nothing about talking to a hack off the record. It's my business to protect her against personal intrusion.'

Freya shrugged. ‘I'd be surprised if Chrissie thinks of me as an intruder – if she bothers to think of me at all. And she's twenty-one, by the way.'

Nancy started to ask something about Chrissie, but Haddon cut her off. He was still buzzing with curiosity about Freya's unscheduled meeting with his ‘client'.

‘So you and Chrissie – what did you talk about?'

Freya gave an objecting half-laugh. ‘I really
don't
think that's in the contract. But since you ask, we chatted about knitting, about Bromley, about her dog – a Jack Russell, is it?'

Haddon nodded, listening intently. ‘Is that all?' he said bluntly. Now he was annoying her. His tone was at once officious and condescending. She had been polite, and he was addressing her as if she were some two-bit gossip columnist.

Without adjusting her tone she said, ‘Actually, we talked mostly about the size of your cock. Quite small, we imagined.'

Haddon stared at her for a disbelieving moment. Nancy snorted a laugh behind her hand, while Robert shook his head in the manner of a schoolteacher who's had enough of the disruptive kid on the back row. ‘Freya …' He sounded wearily reproachful. But Haddon looked as though he had swallowed a wasp.

‘You think you're so smart, don't you?' he said, his mouth in an ugly sneer.

‘In your company I feel like a bloody genius,' Freya replied. They stood toe-to-toe, like duellists.

‘I knew your type the moment I saw you with that jumped-up poof Fane. You people make me sick –'

‘Bruce, really,' said Robert in a low calming voice.

‘
You people
?!' Freya echoed, turning to Nancy. ‘He doesn't like Nat because Nat called him a cretin, though I'm not sure he knew what it meant –'

‘You fucking bitch, how about I give you a –'

‘All right, that's enough,' said Robert, placing his hand on Haddon's shoulder and pushing him away. Other guests were looking round, alerted by their raised voices. But Haddon still wasn't done; narrowing his eyes he almost hissed at her: ‘I'm gonna make sure you never talk to Chrissie again. That's a promise.'

Nancy stepped across Freya's eyeline, perhaps to prevent her firing a parting shot and inflaming the mood further. But Freya, her blood up, felt constrained by the circumstances: this was not how a reunion with her friend ought to go. She wasn't going to apologise, all the same. Nancy had pulled a face, widening her eyes in humorous complicity.

‘Would you like to meet some other people?' she said, lightly steering her back into the house.

Freya smiled at her tact. Robert (she noticed) had guided Bruce Haddon to the far edge of the lawn, his head bobbing as he poured conciliatory words in his guest's offended ear. She wondered why he, a Shadow Cabinet minister, should be so eager to appease such a man. Or did Haddon command more respect than she assumed? Inside, Nancy introduced her to one of their neighbours, a waveringly tall, bespectacled man who turned out to be a critic and essayist of some note – in fact, as Freya admitted, Jimmy Erskine had talked about him
en passant
the previous week. The man twinkled at the mention, and they proceeded to chat about ‘the old boy'. Freya thought how pleased Jimmy would be to know that his name in London drawing rooms had not been wholly forgotten. They were joined a few minutes later by Barry Rusk, his antennae twitching from the ‘unpleasantness' in the garden. He gave a sideways wag of his head.

‘What was that all about?'

She dismissed it with a snort. ‘Nothing. Chrissie Effingham's manager, being an arsehole.'

When Barry pressed her for his name, he raised his eyebrows on hearing. ‘I've heard about him. He's got some form.'

‘Has he?'

Freya's interest was piqued, but the essayist neighbour chose that moment to shunt this promising line of gossip into a siding: instead he wanted to know about Chrissie Effingham, wasn't she the girl in the bread advert? – and was she
terribly
famous …? Barry began a patient account of her to the man, while Freya silently cursed this dozy diversion into a subject he should already have known about. She waited for a pause to wrest the talk back to Haddon's ‘form', but agonisingly the thread was being pulled further away by the two men. She glanced at her watch, and saw that it was later than she'd thought. Excusing herself, she did a once-around the party in search of Nancy before turning into the hall, where she saw her at the foot of the stairs.

‘I'd better be going,' she said. ‘But before I do, will you show me where you write?'

Nancy smiled. ‘Of course. Come on.' And they started up the staircase. The Morris wallpaper of the hallway changed as they reached the first landing into a buttery yellow with pale green fleur-de-lys. The patterned runner on the stair looked affably worn. On the second floor Freya peeked into the bedrooms – for a moment she wondered if the small one belonged to a child, except she'd heard that they didn't have children.

‘Does someone else live here?'

Nancy nodded. ‘Our lodger, Marian. She's a student at King's. We like having her around, and it's a bit of extra money.'

Her study was the back room at the top of the house. It was narrow but orderly, with a strangely expectant air, as if the desk and the typewriter and the telephone were obediently awaiting their owner's return. An oak swivel chair with a buttoned leather back was the only pompous touch (‘Robert bought me that,' said Nancy). The sash window looked onto the backs of houses, clustered and clotted against the encroaching dark. Bookcases had been fitted on either side of the desk, and as she gazed on the serried volumes – the ones Nancy had read earnestly at school and Oxford, mixed in with the wild multiplication of paperbacks devoured in London – they seemed to her like rings of grain in a tree, marking the years. And there, placed at eye level, was another tender relic, the devotional portrait of Francis de Sales, patron saint of writers. Freya picked it up for a closer look.

‘He's done you proud.' They both laughed.

Nancy moved around her, leaning her weight back on the edge of the desk. They faced each other in the diminishing light.

‘I wondered about when you might come back –
if
you might. It seemed quite possible that you never would.'

Freya nodded faintly, and looked out again at the curving backs of the houses beyond, moved by the everyday wonder of bricks and chimneys and gutters and windows that furnished a shelter – a home.

After a moment she said, ‘D'you ever think about Great James Street?'

‘Oh, often,' Nancy replied. ‘Remember how cold it was? It's the only time I've ever had chilblains.'

‘Yes, I have an image of us sitting on the sofa, muffled in our winter coats and eating fish and chips. And –' She was about to mention her getting into bed with Nancy on those freezing mornings, but it felt too sudden and intimate a reminiscence for her to bring up: they were still, at some level, strangers. Nancy had waited for a moment, and then pushed herself off the desk with purpose. From a run of uniform spines she plucked out a copy of
The Hours and Times
.

‘I know you've read it but I want to sign one for you,' she said. ‘I would have sent you it if I'd known where you lived.'

She switched on her table lamp and cracked open the book to the title page. Freya, watching as Nancy uncapped her fountain pen, was in two minds about what she was going to say next; she had a question, and knew there was a strong chance that she might not like the answer. It would be wiser to let it lie. But curiosity trumped wisdom every time.