Freya

by Anthony Quinn

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Anthony Quinn

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  I: At Swim, Two Girls

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  II: The Public Image

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  III: That Girl

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  London, May 1945. Freya Wyley, twenty, meets Nancy Holdaway, eighteen, amid the wild celebrations of VE Day, the prelude to a devoted and competitive friendship that will endure on and off for the next two decades. Freya, wilful, ambitious, outspoken, pursues a career in newspapers which the chauvinism of Fleet Street and her own impatience conspire to thwart, while Nancy, gentler, less self-confident, struggles to get her first novel published. Both friends become entangled at university with Robert Cosway, a charismatic young man whose own ambition will have a momentous bearing on their lives.

  Flitting from war-haunted Oxford to the bright new shallows of the 1960s, Freya plots the unpredictable course of a woman’s life and loves against a backdrop of Soho pornographers, theatrical peacocks, willowy models, priapic painters, homophobic blackmailers, political careerists.

  Beneath the relentless thrum of changing times and a city being reshaped, we glimpse the eternal: the battles fought by women in pursuit of independence, the intimate mysteries of the human heart, and the search for love. Stretching from the Nuremberg war trials to the advent of the TV celebrity, from innocence abroad to bitter experience at home, Freya presents the portrait of an extraordinary woman taking arms against a sea of political and personal tumult.

  About the Author

  Anthony Quinn was born in Liverpool in 1964. From 1998 to 2014 he was the film critic of the Independent. He is the author of four very successful novels: The Rescue Man, which won the 2009 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, Half of the Human Race, The Streets, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Walter Scott Prize, and Curtain Call, which was chosen for Waterstones and Mail on Sunday Book Clubs.

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  The Rescue Man

  Half of the Human Race

  The Streets

  Curtain Call

  For Laura Quinn

  Who is so safe as we? Where none can do

  Treason to us, except one of us two.

  John Donne

  I

  At Swim, Two Girls

  1

  The bus, snailing up Whitehall, had nearly come to a standstill in the crowd. On its side someone had chalked HITLER MISSED THIS BUS, which had got them swarming onto the road, cheering. They walked alongside it as proudly as marchers with a carnival float. Passengers had pressed their faces to the windows, waving, tickled to be at the centre of this exultation.

  Freya had seen the bus about half an hour before, but had decided to walk; and here she was outside Swan & Edgar, on time to meet her friends. It was warm for early May. She stood in the wide doorway watching the mass of bodies swirl and eddy in front of her. She had never seen a crowd in quite this mood before, not even when she was a girl at the Coronation in 1937. Among the women, who seemed to move along in huge flocks, she detected something excitable – no, more like hysterical, as if every single one of them were just getting married. Was that why the men looked so dazed?

  On and on they came, the girls in their summer dresses, as gaily coloured as the plumage of exotic birds. A gaggle had just passed her in a great wave of perfume and laughter. They had been waiting for this day like a prisoner who has heard a rumour of his release yet still dares not believe it, so often has the hope been dashed. From the high windows above, streamers were pouring down, and Union Jacks fluttered over balcony railings. Freya hadn’t yet immersed herself in the euphoria. Of course she was relieved, like everyone else, and had caught the train up from Plymouth the night before in the expectation of a jubilant welcome from her parents: our brave girl, back at last! That pleasurable sense of return had lasted until the moment she let herself into her father’s place in Tite Street and found – she felt it as a shock – nobody home.

  The previous weekend she had telephoned her mother to persuade her up to town for the day. She came infrequently, having sold the family house in the summer of ’39 and retreated to a village in Sussex. Her husband’s responsibilities as an ARP warden obliged him to be in London more often than in the country. By degrees the studio in Chelsea became his home. War had given them a kind of permission to pursue their own lives, though neither had taken the formal step of asking for a separation. Freya still believed it was in her power to engineer a rapprochement, and had announced her intention to come up for VE Day in the hope that this would at least put them in the same room. But her mother must have got cold feet, and there was no telling where her father had got to.

  At Swan & Edgar she examined her reflection against the dark polished glass of the door. Bothersome though it was today, the uniform lent her a certain dash. She was leggy, like her mother, statuesque and somewhat flat-chested. Her eyebrows, darker than her mid-brown hair, framed a face notable for its hollow cheeks. Her gaze projected something more challenging than was intended; she was a little short-sighted. The set of her mouth was wilful. Now, with the babble of the crowd gathering at her back, she peered more intently into the glass, as if she might read an intimation of the future there. What in the world was to become of them now that –

  ‘Freya!’ The voice cut through the air. It was Jean Markham, also in uniform, with girls whose faces she’d last seen at school two years ago, Sophia and Betty and Maud and Catherine P. and Catherine S. The sternest girl in her year, Jean wore her smile like an unfamiliar lipstick.

  ‘Jean –’

  ‘My, don’t you look smart!’ cried Jean in her parade-ground tone. Amid the flurry of kisses and hugs Freya glanced at the stranger among them, a russet-haired girl who held back rather awkwardly from the rest. She was tall, as tall as Freya, pale-skinned yet luminous, and somewhat ill at ease; Freya’s impression was of an ungainly swan. Jean, all briskness, introduced her as Nancy Holdaway.

  ‘Not seen her in ages and she telephoned me out of the blue this morning!’ There was the faintest touch of annoyance in her tone to suggest that surprise telephone calls were gauche and unwelcome. Freya stared at the girl for a moment before extending her hand.

  ‘Hullo,’ she said, feeling the girl’s slim palm.

  ‘How d’you do?’ Nancy replied, blushing. Freya, who never blushed, always felt a little superior to people who did.

  Catherine P. said that they should start to make for Downing Street, because Churchill was going to address the nation at three. As they pushed their way into the crowds moving south, Freya half listened as Jean recounted episodes from her last two years as a Waaf, first in Inverness, later in Norfolk. She had heard some of it before in the occasional letter Jean had written, though the details
had been left vague on account of censorship – you could take gossip only so far during wartime. In any case, the other girls weren’t that interested in the Waaf, they were much more eager for news of her boyfriends. Jean had been quite busy on that front, and told stories about men chasing her, pestering her, boring her and (occasionally) catching her. Her candour provoked giggles and squeals of mirth, which made Freya wonder if the others were still virgins.

  By the time they reached Trafalgar Square the noise and the press of bodies was overwhelming. The heat of the day and the frenzy of the mood were taking a toll. At the foot of Regent Street they had watched a team of St John’s Ambulance men shoulder their way out of a scrum; they were carrying a woman with blood pouring from her head. ‘Only fainted,’ someone called out. A bottleneck had formed at the turn to Whitehall, and Jean, raising her voice to group-leader volume, said they should stay close.

  Freya looked back at Nancy, who was bringing up the rear. Jean, noticing this, leaned towards Freya’s ear and said, with a conspiratorial sniff, ‘School-leaver.’

  ‘How do you know her?’

  ‘Oh, friend of the family. My father worked with her father, years back when we lived up north. She wrote to tell me she was in London, and I forgot all about it until – oh goodness!’

  Her exclamation was prompted by a boisterous conga line of revellers cutting right across their path and causing little waves of panicked jostling. It was moving with a headlong, high-spirited abandon, indifferent to the normal rules of pedestrian behaviour; some people were dodging out of the way, others were joining in. Freya still had her back turned when, without warning, a meaty arm grabbed her around the waist and pulled her into the wild to-and-fro of the swaying line. Caught unawares, she lost her bearings for a moment, jounced along by the arms of the unseen man behind her. As she steadied herself to the forced rhythm and caught her breath, she glanced over her shoulder, intending to give her waylayer a polite smile of withdrawal, just to prove she wasn’t a spoilsport. His red face, sweaty and bleared with drink, indicated that such civility was unnecessary. She dragged herself from out of his grasp and ducked back into the crowd.

  She looked around at the roiling masses, loud, oblivious. The others were nowhere to be seen. She rejoined the heave towards Whitehall, her head bobbing from side to side as she tried to pick out Jean’s blue-grey uniform in the throng; once or twice she thought she spotted her in the distance, then realised her mistake. (Short-sightedness didn’t help.) Drat! She sensed the high promise of the day threatening to unravel. Jean had taken charge of entertainments and Freya had fallen into line with her bossy shepherding. A little stab of disappointment provoked her to call out Jean’s name, once, twice. A few people looked around, blank-faced. There was no answering voice.

  Squinting into the distance again she caught a flash of russet hair that seemed familiar. Wasn’t that Nancy, the girl who’d been tagging along? She felt her steps quicken as she threaded her way through the tumult. Drawing nearer, Freya started to doubt her powers of recognition, for the girl, as far as she could tell, was on her own. And her wide-stepping, mannish walk didn’t seem to fit with the callow schoolgirl whom Jean had introduced. She hesitated a moment, considering the potential scene of embarrassment.

  ‘Hullo there?’ she said, touching the girl’s shoulder.

  She turned round. ‘Oh! Freya … isn’t it?’ Nancy’s face lit up in a show of relief: she might have been her only friend in the world.

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘I don’t know! One minute I was right behind them, the next –’ She gave a hopeless shrug of appeal. Up close Freya now noticed Nancy’s extraordinary tiger eyes, an intense olive green with very dark irises. Her skin was dewy, and flushed. As the crowds flowed by on either side an uncertainty vibrated in the space between them. Cast adrift, they clung to each other like shipwrecked mariners.

  ‘Well, this is a nice to-do,’ said Freya with an amused half-snort. ‘Looks like Jean has given us the slip.’

  ‘Surely she didn’t mean to?’ Nancy asked, earnest dismay in her expression. Freya merely shook her head; it was beneath her to explain that she was joking. Just then a huge roar went up, and the crowds were sucked towards the middle of Whitehall like iron filings to a magnet. The bells, which had been pealing for hours, had stopped, and the air grew shrill with whistles and cheers. The ambling movement of bodies quickened into urgency. Ahead of them they heard a cry go up: ‘It’s him – he’s coming outside!’

  Freya turned to Nancy, whose forlorn air made her feel of a sudden responsible. ‘Come on,’ she said, briskly putting her arm through the girl’s. ‘Whatever else happens, we mustn’t miss this.’

  And they plunged forward, still holding on to one another.

  Later they bought ginger beer at a stall and found themselves a bench in the Embankment Gardens. They had given up on finding Jean and the others. Nancy gazed out to the river, her free hand shielding her eyes against the sun. Freya, her whole body damp with sweat, peeled off her serge tunic. She had lost her hat in the crush to catch sight of Churchill.

  ‘Well, that’s one for the diary,’ she said, blowing a stray tendril of hair from her face.

  Nancy nodded, then glanced at Freya. ‘Do you keep a diary?’

  ‘No.’

  After a pause she said, ‘I’m awfully sorry about – well, being landed with me.’

  ‘Ha. It could be that you’ve been landed with me.’

  Nancy shook her head. ‘Oh no, Jean told me what an amazing friend you were.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yes, really! You don’t believe me? Amazing was the word she used.’

  Freya returned an archly humorous look. ‘That’s not the word I’m disputing. It was the “friend” part.’

  ‘Oh …’ The girl seemed at a loss again. ‘Sorry, I thought you were friends – from school –’

  ‘Yes, we have that in common. Oh, I’ve known Jean for years, and I like her well enough – we’ve even corresponded a bit. But I’d say that we’re friendly with each other, rather than being actual friends.’

  Nancy gave an anxious frown. ‘I’m not sure I understand the difference.’

  Freya leaned back. ‘Well, I needn’t have singled out Jean. I tend to keep a distance from people. At school I was not a popular girl.’

  ‘But in the Wrens,’ Nancy said, with a bright glance at Freya’s uniform, ‘I imagined there’d be such camaraderie, the friends you’d –’

  ‘I didn’t join the navy to make friends. I joined because there was a war on.’ That sounded rather off, she thought, and softened. ‘I had pals, of course. One or two of them I may keep up with.’

  She had joined the service (she explained) aged eighteen, and did a year’s apprenticeship in Greenwich, then another year to qualify as a plotting officer. At Plymouth, where she was posted, they put her in charge of a watch that received information from coastal radar stations. She and her Wren ratings would do fifteen-hour shifts, reporting the position of shipping traffic as it appeared on their screens. By the summer of 1944 she was in the Operations Room recreating a panorama of the entire sea war in the North Atlantic.

  ‘Crikey,’ said Nancy. ‘What a responsibility.’

  ‘I know. And the wonderful thing was – I was good at it. Whenever there was a captain visiting, or an admiral, I could give an assessment of the situation at any time. I mean, you always knew it was bloody dangerous –’ She broke off and looked round at Nancy, whose round-eyed solemnity made her chuckle. ‘Perhaps I should save my war stories for another day. We’re meant to be celebrating, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yes! What should we do?’

  Freya stood up and put her hands on her hips in a businesslike way. ‘Hmm. My own inclination would be to find a pub somewhere and get blind roaring stinko.’

  Nancy met this proposal with a smile as wide and artless as a flag waving in the breeze. ‘Stinko it is!’

  They decided – or rather, Freya decided
– to walk along the river towards Victoria, where she knew a couple of likely places. On the way they passed strolling hordes of people in paper hats, singing, laughing, cheering; the mood of the afternoon, less giddy than in Whitehall, had held its holiday brightness. Freya, with an occasional sidelong glance, mused on the moment, two odd girls making a pair. It wasn’t how she had envisaged the day. And yet she wondered if this chance encounter mightn’t after all be a blessing.

  Nancy seemed a decent sort. And she had such an interesting face … Apparently she had come down to London a few weeks ago to start work at a publisher’s. She’d got digs at a boarding house off the Tottenham Court Road. It wasn’t very nice, but she would only be there for the summer in any event. She was going up to St Hilda’s in the autumn, to study English.

  ‘That’s funny,’ said Freya. ‘I’ve got a place at Somerville.’

  ‘Oh! I thought you were –’

  ‘Too old?’ she said with a smirk, and Nancy blushed on cue. ‘I’m twenty, as a matter of fact. I applied three years ago, and they deferred the place when I joined the Wrens.’

  Nancy gave a disbelieving little shake of her head. ‘Oh, what marvellous luck! I won’t know a soul there but you.’

  ‘Actually, I still haven’t decided whether to go or not.’

  ‘But why would you turn down a place at Oxford?’

  ‘After the Wrens I wonder if studying for a degree seems a bit – trivial.’

  Nancy looked rather crestfallen at that, so she didn’t say anything more.

  As they turned away from the river towards Victoria, the streets looked gaunt and tired. There were so few cars; petrol rationing had seen to that. Bomb damage had left huge dusty gaps everywhere, and scaffolding patched the faces of buildings like screens around a fragile patient. In spite of the festival atmosphere the city felt shabby, haunted, makeshift. You couldn’t imagine it ever returning to the place it once had been. Freya began to wonder if the pub she was leading them to would still be there, in any sort of repair. A cafe she used to frequent in Soho had taken a direct hit one night; she had felt it almost as a personal affront when she turned into the street and found it gone.