She felt her body tense as they turned the corner into Buckingham Palace Road, and then relax as the old Victorian pub with its fussy finials and spires sprang into view. On entering they found the place in a roar; Freya had a sense that every pub in London today would be the same. People stood three-deep at the main bar, and drinks were being passed over heads by a rowdy clientele. Off to the side a piano was accompanying a ragged chorus of voices singing ‘Roll Out the Barrel.’ The sawdust on the floor was damp with spilled beer.
‘What’ll you have?’ Freya asked Nancy, once they had jostled their way to the bar.
‘Erm … a lemonade?’
‘You won’t get stinko on that.’
As Nancy dithered, Freya signalled to the barman. ‘Two pale ales, please.’
They took their drinks and found a place to stand by a window of rippled glass. Freya swallowed a mouthful and looked around; it seemed that no matter what time you stepped into a pub you always had a lot of catching up to do with everyone else. People were tipping back the drink with a steady practised air, as if they’d somehow made it their occupation. The singers had done with ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ and started on ‘Tipperary.’ She fished out a packet of Player’s Weights and offered it to Nancy who, after a moment’s hesitation, took one. They lit up, and Freya watched as the girl took an awkward sip of her cigarette and puffed, without inhaling.
‘You’ve not smoked before, have you?’
Nancy grimaced. ‘Is it obvious?’
‘You’re not exactly Dietrich,’ she said drily. ‘Relax your fingers, like this. Don’t bunch your hand. There – that’s better.’
‘If my parents could see me now …,’ Nancy said with a giggle.
Freya felt it was high time she asked. ‘What is that accent of yours?’
‘Oh, well, Yorkshire, I suppose. Harrogate – but not the smart side.’
Freya, unaware that Harrogate had any sort of ‘side’, let alone a smart one, gave her an appraising look. There was barely two years separating them, yet it might as well have been ten. The war had done that: she had started in the Wrens as a girl, and come out of it a woman. Nancy, in contrast, with her ingenuous gaze and gawky demeanour, was practically a child still. Not her fault, but there it was.
A little knot of drinkers next to them were engaged in an agitated dispute. Freya had overheard one of them say, ‘Churchill’s done a grand job of work for a man his age,’ to which someone raised a dissenting voice – he was sick to death of Churchill, ‘a self-satisfied windbag,’ he said, who ought to stand down and let a younger man take the country into peace. This view, a bold one in the circumstances, was greeted with outraged cries of ‘Shame’ and ‘Sit down, yer fool.’ The argument gained in stridency and heatedness; alcohol, of course, was paraffin poured on the bonfire. Freya, wanting to keep a shine on the day, drained her glass and leaned her head towards Nancy’s ear. ‘Let’s get out of here before they start a brawl.’
Outside the early-evening temperature had cooled a little. The roads were still swarming with people carrying flags, and someone was playing ‘Rule Britannia’ on a toy trumpet. On a quieter street they found another pub, and drank more pale ale. Nancy, becoming expansive, said, ‘D’you know, when I heard someone say that the war was over last Friday, I couldn’t quite believe it. I’d been out with some friends and hadn’t heard the announcement, so when I got back to my digs later on – the landlady must have been away – I crept into the parlour and turned on the wireless for the midnight news, still wondering. Then I heard the announcer saying, “Tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. the war in Europe will be over …” I just stood there in the dark, stunned. I listened right through, until they played the national anthem. And the next thing I knew tears were pouring down my face. I couldn’t stop! It was like – I don’t know – like the world had been given a second chance, and we could start afresh.’
Freya was staring at her. She didn’t quite sound like a girl any more. ‘Did you really think that?’
Nancy paused. ‘I didn’t think it, exactly – I felt it. It was a sort of spasm of hopefulness, wonderful and frightening at once, like the way your stomach gives a jump when you’re in a car that’s going too fast! I had the most exhilarating sensation of something coming to life. Nothing could stop us.’ But then she did stop, and seemed to become aware of Freya listening to her, and laughed. ‘You probably think that sounds rather silly.’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Freya, touched by Nancy’s plain-spoken optimism, and obscurely envious of it. It occurred to her that not everyone had seen the newsreels from Belsen, the stark pictures of hundreds of emaciated corpses piled high, and the lines of blank, hollow-eyed survivors, near-corpses themselves, staring out at the camera. You couldn’t tell if they were men or women. She had watched the films in a cinema on Regent Street, benumbed, listening to the moans and the sobbing of people around her. She hadn’t turned away from the screen, just because other people had. For some reason she found herself hoping that Nancy hadn’t seen them – not yet.
They had another couple, and then Freya became suddenly excited at the thought of a pub in Chelsea she’d been to with her father, and hauled Nancy off into the street again. When they got there the place was heaving and had sold out of everything but gin; so they drank that, large ones, and then a little band started up, and a couple of soldiers who had been giving them the eye asked for a dance. At 9 p.m. the wireless went on for the King’s speech; at the end of it the whole room rose to its feet and sang ‘God Save the King’, and they joined in, almost shouting the words. They danced again, but stayed close to one another, and when Nancy’s partner began to get too familiar Freya stepped in and detached her. Nancy by now looked rather limp, and her eyes had slowed in their blink. Another gin and she’d be under the table.
‘Come on,’ she said, steering through the sweaty tumult, her hand in the small of her back. Outside night had fallen, and they marvelled for a moment at the street lamps, lit for the first time in years. There would be no more sirens, no more blackouts, no more hurrying footsteps in the dark. The cool air was clearing Freya’s head, yet she didn’t want the evening to end.
‘We could go back to my dad’s place – what d’you say?’
Nancy, swaying a little, murmured her assent.
On arriving at Tite Street Freya half hoped that the lights would be on, but there was still nobody about. The mixed smell of white spirit, paint and varnish hung like a presence in the room. She decided on a whim to take down the blackouts from the tall windows. Nancy, surveying the casual disarray of canvases and oils, seemed to be in a daze.
‘I’ll get us something to drink,’ Freya said.
Nancy followed her into the kitchen, trying to dissimulate the fact that she was tipsy.
‘We’ve got gin, some sherry – ah, and whisky. Go and sit down, I’ll bring in some glasses.’
Nancy hovered for a moment, like a bee at a window, before backing out of the doorway. Freya put the bottle of Dewar’s and a heavy soda syphon on a tray, and followed her into the main room. Nancy was staring at a huge dark portrait above the fireplace.
‘Your father – isn’t he awfully famous?’
Freya shrugged. ‘He’s pretty well known. Stephen Wyley. Here –’ She poured her three fingers of whisky. ‘You might want to put some water in it.’
Nancy, handling the syphon as if it were a fire extinguisher, pressed the tap, and unleashed an exuberant flood all over the tray. ‘Sorry, sorry …’
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 sle
eve, and winding up the old gramophone, she dropped the needle. It crackled for a moment on the scratchy shellac, then quietly began.
My love must be a kind of blind love,
I can’t see anyone but you.
And dear, I wonder if you find love
An optical illusion, too?
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!
You are here, so am I,
Maybe millions of people go by,
But they all disappear from view
And I only have eyes for you
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.
And I only have eyes for you-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou!
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?’
2
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?’
Freya Page 2
