Freya (63 page)

‘Mm. If it's a girl, “Ella” – after my grandmother. Stephen's mother.'

‘That's nice. And for a boy?'

‘Not sure. I hardly need tell you who's suggested “Nathaniel”. I think he meant it, too. I've considered “László” …'

‘
László
? Whatever for?'

‘He was someone my dad once knew. I was reminded when I saw his portrait at Jimmy Erskine's place a while ago. He was an awfully sweet little man.'

‘Well, it's unusual …'

On leaving the pub they decided to walk on, the sun still pasting the noble fawn stone of the walls. They headed east to the Parks, where a cricket match was under way. They stopped to watch for a few moments, soothed by the languid movement of young men in whites, though neither of them had a clue about the game. The small crowd, most of them in deckchairs, were now and then roused to applaud.

They sauntered around the pitch, where other spectators had also chosen to perambulate. It reminded Freya of a ritual she missed from Italy.

‘This is like a little
passeggiata
,' she said.

‘Shades of Florence,' smiled Nancy. ‘D'you ever hear from Kay?'

‘Yes, we still write –' She fell abruptly silent as a man and woman were passing: a face from the long-ago had surprised her. The man considered her momentarily before his gaze straightened and moved on. Nancy looked round to ask what was the matter.

‘Keep walking,' muttered Freya. ‘I've just seen someone, from way back.'

‘Who?'

But before Freya had time to answer they heard her name being called, and turned to find the man hurrying after them. He was short, neatly dressed, with a beard he hadn't had in earlier days. But the petulant set to his mouth hadn't changed.

‘It's Dr Melvern, isn't it?' she said.

‘Professor now,' he corrected her. He had left the woman to wait on her own. Melvern's adenoidal voice hadn't changed either, nor his marked resemblance to an elf. It transpired he was now at All Souls, and about to publish an anthology of twentieth-century British poetry. Freya, unable to resist, asked him, ‘Will any of your own poems be included?'

Melvern smiled thinly. ‘I thought it seemly to keep the roles of editor and poet separate.' There was a small hesitation as he switched the focus of attention. ‘I used to see your name in the newspapers. Are you still writing?'

‘Oh, most of the time,' Freya replied. ‘I was working abroad for a few years, then came back to London. I'm at the
Journal
.'

He was looking at her curiously. ‘I recall something you once said, at our very first meeting, in fact. I think we must have been talking about which novelists you admired, and you said that you didn't read much modern literature, because you'd prefer to write it. It struck me at the time.'

Freya laughed, despite herself. ‘What arrogance I must have had! I'm afraid my literary promise remains unfulfilled. But this is someone who does write – my friend Nancy Holdaway.'

Melvern's eyes widened in momentary surprise. ‘Ah. A name I know. I – I had assumed from reading your work that you'd be older.'

Nancy smiled, and shrugged. ‘I'm thirty-five, which seems quite old enough.'

‘You were fooled by the maturity of her writing,' Freya observed.

Melvern, whose frown implied a resistance to being fooled by anything, only said, ‘Well, well.' His professorial minimum had been discharged, and he seemed to have no small talk. Freya, who thought he might at least have remarked on her convex gut, gestured with her eyes to his loitering companion.

‘Your wife?'

He nodded. ‘Yes, we like to stroll about here on a weekend. The Parks make an agreeable prospect.'

This is hard work, she thought. ‘And she's also in academia?'

‘Yes. She teaches at Somerville.'

‘Ah, my old college,' she said, giving him an opportunity to introduce her. But Melvern was either deaf to the cue or else unwilling to extend the scope of their talk. It was strange, she thought, that he had bothered to hail her at all if he was so ill at ease in company. Or was he merely uninterested? He hadn't even asked her what she was doing in Oxford.

The silence threatened to continue until she said, ‘Well, it was nice to see you after all these years.'

He murmured a goodbye, but he didn't offer his hand.

They walked on, and once safely out of earshot Freya said, ‘God, that was strange. He wanted to talk and yet seemed to have nothing to say.'

‘Isn't that pretty typical of a don?' said Nancy. ‘Once they're outside the study or the lecture hall they always seem a bit … helpless.'

‘My failure to turn up at schools infuriated him – at our last meeting he really tore me off a strip, I remember. Said I was lazy and arrogant. Which wasn't wide of the mark, I suppose. Maybe that's why he wouldn't introduce the wife – fear of contamination.'

Nancy, with a glance back over her shoulder, said, ‘And yet, remarkably, he
has
a wife.'

‘To leave her just
standing
there, though.'

‘In my experience of marriage that's not so … unusual.'

Freya turned to her, incredulous. ‘You mean –'

‘No, no, I mean in my
observation
of marriage,' Nancy corrected herself quickly. ‘There's a certain type of man who doesn't like anything to divert attention from himself for a moment – which may include the inconvenient baggage of a spouse. They resent them, or feel embarrassed by them. You see that a fair bit among the people we know.'

Freya nodded, and wondered if Nancy had inadvertently let slip a secret of her own, for the attention-hogging egotist she had just described sounded to her very like Robert. Or was that the old antipathy warping her view? In the brief time she had witnessed Nancy with Robert at their party they seemed perfectly content with one another. Who knew? What went on behind the closed doors of a marriage was a mystery to those on the outside – perhaps to those on the inside, too.

The cottage, a twenty-minute drive from Oxford, surprised them. Neither of them had dared to hope it might be even half so picturesque. Its secluded position on the edge of a wood, with a view over the rolls and dips of the Chiltern Hills, made it feel a long way from London. A Tudor facade had been all but erased by a Georgian one of burnt-orange brick and flint. Gables swept low over leaded windows, the tiled roof described a pleasingly crooked line from front to back, and a weathervane stood at an enquiring angle to the cluster of chimneys.

Inside, the low-ceilinged rooms were either panelled like a hunting lodge or white-plastered with exposed oak beams. In the living room a grand fireplace looked benignly upon Persian rugs prostrated on the wooden floor. An affably rumpled sofa and armchairs crowded about a long treacle-dark coffee table loaded with magazines. At the back a creeper-walled garden ended in a little brook, beyond which could be seen a meadow, and sheep.

‘Golly!' breathed Nancy. ‘Who owns this place?'

‘Oh, some rich broker friend of my dad's. You can tell from the way the books have leather bindings. The rest of us make do with Penguins.'

In the kitchen stood another fireplace and a round dining table. Copper pans hung on hooks either side of the central worktop. Freya went about opening cupboards until she found what she wanted.

‘Here we are,' she said, reaching for a bottle of Tanqueray. ‘Ah, and Vermouth. They must have known we were coming.'

As she began to mix a jug of Martinis she felt a brief stomach cramp, not the first she'd had that week. At her last check-up the doctor had said this was normal; it was the uterus expanding to accommodate the baby. Or something. If only she could just pop the thing out and get on with her life.

‘Are you all right?' asked Nancy, looking up from the table where she'd been slicing a lemon.

‘Yeah. Just a cramp. Nothing to worry about.'

Because Nancy was interested, she explained what it felt like, being pregnant. For something so common it was the weirdest thing imaginable; walking (waddling) about with your stomach like a cauldron, inside which you sensed something brewing, stirring – becoming. After nearly thirty-eight years of living as one person it was alarming to be suddenly living as
two
.

‘And rather wonderful?' said Nancy encouragingly.

‘Mm, I suppose … But you're talking to the wrong person. Until a few weeks ago I wasn't going to have it at all. I hardly feel ready for it now.'

Nancy pulled a face. ‘You're going to be fine. And I bet the child will adore you.'

Freya gave an objecting laugh, though she felt secretly grateful to Nancy for these assurances.

Nancy said, in a changed tone, ‘You know you asked me about being a godparent –'

‘Oh no! You're having second thoughts –'

‘Of course not. I'm just – if there's a ceremony, it would be difficult, I mean with Robert. You might have to …'

‘I know,' Freya said, pouring another Martini from the jug. It had been on her mind, long before she had thought to ask her to be godmother. In the end she would have to compromise if she wanted Nancy back in her life. Impossible that she could like Robert; but she would find a way to tolerate him.

They returned to the subject over dinner. They'd bought glossy fillets of plaice and green beans in the covered market before leaving Oxford. Freya had found a bottle of white burgundy in the fridge and was topping up their glasses.

‘I'm sure we can rub along together, Robert and I. It shouldn't be so hard.'

Nancy, perhaps hearing the effort in her words, said, ‘He's always been good company, whatever else you may think of him.'

‘Yes, that's true,' Freya agreed. ‘Even when we argued he used to make me laugh. Cosway's Theory of Attraction, for instance.'

‘What's that?' said Nancy, who flinched before she smiled.

‘Did he never –?' Freya looked at her, and in the same instant wished she'd not mentioned it. ‘Oh, it was just a bit of nonsense.'

‘But what was it? Tell me.' She was still smiling, but Freya had a feeling she might not be once she heard it. Could she pretend to have forgotten? No. Nancy knew her too well.

‘First of all, this was eight years ago he told me, when he was in the middle of his divorce. He said attraction goes in three upward stages, beginning in the groin, then travels to the heart, and finally to the head, “the HQ”, where you eventually decide whether to stick or – twist.'

Nancy, having listened, nodded. ‘That sounds very like Robert.'

Freya, aware of seeming to undermine Robert behind his back, said in mitigation, ‘He insisted it was just a theory, I remember. We disagreed on the sequential nature of it. I thought the elements of attraction more likely worked in concert – the sexual and the romantic and the cerebral, all co-dependent on one another.'

‘That's because you're a woman,' said Nancy. ‘A man would see it as a series of doors to go through. But a woman – she'd see it as three parts of the same door.'

‘Exactly! With the knob in the middle,' Freya added, and they collapsed in laughter. On recovering herself she found Nancy gazing at her. She sensed the moment had broken a long-held barrier of reticence between them.

Nancy, chin resting on her cupped hands, began, ‘You know, I never really did understand …'

‘Understand what?'

‘Why you ever left. I know how furious you were with him, and with the
Envoy
. I could see why you'd quit
that
. But the country? It felt so … out of proportion.'

Freya paused before answering. Her tongue had been loosened by the Martinis. She had already got away with it once; Nancy's question was inviting her again. The confidential mood between them was so like it was in the old days. ‘I suppose – I don't know – the real reason was that I couldn't bear the fact you preferred him to me.'

Nancy, with a look of fond puzzlement, said, ‘But that doesn't make sense! It wasn't a matter of preferring one of you to the other. Robert was my boyfriend, and you were my
best
friend. Why would you make it a choice?'

She hadn't understood. She couldn't. And she never would, unless Freya chose to be direct with her. But how could she do so without the risk of scaring her off? At times she had wondered if Nancy had suspected – in a look, a glance – and then dismissed it. Impossible for her to guess something that Freya herself had barely come to understand after all these years. My God, she was sweating just to think about it.

‘Darling, you've gone awfully pale,' said Nancy, leaning forward across the dinner table.

‘Have I?' She was feeling a bit strange, come to think of it. ‘There wasn't anything wrong with that fish, was there?'

‘I don't think so. It tasted fine to me.' Nancy came round the table and held her hand gently on Freya's forehead. ‘Maybe you've had too much sun today.'

She nodded, and drank off the rest of her wine. The sun
had
been fierce, and with the car's hood down the whole time … ‘I think I might have an early night. Sleep it off.'

‘Good idea. I'll bring you a glass of water and an aspirin.'

But she didn't drop off for ages, despite the astonishing quiet outside her bedroom window. She heard the distant hooting of an owl, but nothing else – no cars, no traffic of any kind, pierced the velvety black night. She switched on her bedside light and read a few pages of her book, which calmed her for a while. It had been a long day: a good one …

Next thing she knew she was waking groggily from sleep, the bedside light still on. Nancy, in shadow, was lifting the splayed book off the pillow.

‘Must have dozed off,' she slurred. ‘What time is it?'

‘Just after midnight,' Nancy whispered, holding up the book to squint at. ‘
In a Summer Season
. Is it good?'