Later that week she did something she had vowed not to do and let Robert into her bed again. Even as she did so an inner voice chided her, scaldingly aware of at least two reasons why she ought to have resisted. First, she felt her betrayal of Nancy redoubled. There had been no explicit agreement that either one of them had prior claim on him. But there didn’t need to be. It was simply that Nancy had declared a liking for him, so for Freya to jump in ahead of her, in secret, would be both underhand and disloyal. The other reason, less serious but more immediately demanding, was Robert’s swain-like intensity. Now that he had ‘breached the sacred portal’ (he found this faux-courtly language much funnier than she did) he was becoming determined to gain exclusive access. There had been an early warning sign when, some days after they had first slept together, she had been at dinner in hall. One of the white-jacketed serving staff had sidled up to her and asked shyly, ‘Miss Wyley, is it? There’s a gen’elman outside –’ he gave a quick backward glance as if worrying that he’d been followed – ‘says he knows you. A Mr Cosway. Guests who aren’t on the list, you know …’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Freya, rising. ‘Thank you.’ She felt several lifted gazes pierce her as she walked the gauntlet of the humming hall. She found him skulking in the stone-flagged entrance, and was irritated to see no hint of apology clouding his face.
‘There you are,’ he said, smiling apparently in relief. He moved towards her, but she deflected his attempt at an embrace.
‘Robert, what are you doing here?’
‘I was going crazy looking for you – in your rooms, in the library –’
‘I’m having dinner,’ she said, frowning hard. ‘What on earth is the matter?’
He looked rather offended by her tone. ‘Well, you didn’t reply to my letter, for one thing. I also thought, given what we’d done in your room –’
‘Shh, for God’s sake,’ she hissed, aware of pricking ears in the vicinity. ‘You want the whole bloody college to know?’
He bristled visibly. ‘It’s of no consequence to me who knows.’
‘Well, it is to me,’ she snapped, wincing at her own volume. This would not do. She couldn’t very well go back into hall, but she didn’t care for a set-to in public with Robert, either. Her brusque manner had reduced him to silence, and seeing his hurt expression she relented. With a toss of her head she led him off around the quad and into a shadowed staircase, deserted at this hour. This furtive setting evidently gave Robert the wrong idea, for once hidden from view he grasped hold of her and pressed his mouth on hers.
Having struggled to free herself she pushed him away. ‘Robert, please –’
In the grainy gloom his face had lost definition, but the wounded edge to his voice was unmistakable. ‘Why are you being so unfriendly? Have I done something wrong?’
‘No – no. But you can’t just come barging in here any time you please.’
‘I wanted to see you! And it was only the other night you seemed quite happy to see me –’
‘Yes, but that was – We did something on the spur of the moment that probably wasn’t a good idea.’
‘What do you mean?’
She sighed. ‘I don’t want to hurt people – Nancy.’
He snorted in disbelief. ‘That’s ridiculous. This isn’t about Nancy, it’s about you and me.’
‘She’s in love with you, Robert. And she’s my best friend.’
‘Bit late to worry about that, wouldn’t you agree?’ A silence fell between them, and she could sense from his brooding that he had spotted a different angle to the problem. When he next spoke his tone had become judicial. ‘I don’t think you’re doing this to protect Nancy. It’s because you’re involved with Alex, isn’t it?’
Freya gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Oh, I wish –’ That tore it. She heard Robert give a little gasp of surprise, and knew she had blundered.
‘I thought so,’ he said coldly. ‘He’s turned you down, I suppose.’
‘No, he hasn’t. He doesn’t even know I –’ She wasn’t going to spell it out.
‘Sorry, but I – I’m baffled. How can you prefer him to me?’
‘You’ve asked me that before.’
‘So give me an answer.’
He had pushed her, pestered her, to speak honestly. And since that was her governing principle she would let him have it. ‘I prefer him because I just do. He’s charming, and he’s kinder than you are. And he would never ask me a question like the one you just did.’
Robert stared at her as though she had slapped him. There was a little catch in his throat when he said, after a moment, ‘You’re a bitch, you know.’
He turned on his heel and stalked off into the night.
A week went by, then most of another, without any word from him. That was fine by her, still mindful of his unpleasant parting shot and the look of disgust as he delivered it. More troubling was her obligation to keep up appearances in front of Nancy. Robert had been such a frequent caller on both of them that a sudden break in his visiting pattern would naturally arouse suspicion. When the subject came up between them Freya was quick to make a show of indifference as to his whereabouts.
‘Maybe he’s snowed under. You know how he moans about being worked so hard. Have you sent him a note?’
Nancy nodded. ‘Last week. It’s odd, he’s usually so prompt to reply. It may not be work, of course …’
‘What d’you mean?’
She couldn’t keep a forlorn note from her voice. ‘Well, you know what he’s like – cherchez la femme.’
‘I’m not sure. He’d very much like to play the Lothario, but he’s not especially good at it – you can feel the desperation underneath.’
‘Can you?’ said Nancy quietly, her eyes averted.
Freya sensed her subtle misdirections being baulked. Nancy didn’t like the idea of Robert as a skirt-chaser, but she was too kind-hearted to derive satisfaction in thinking him, on the contrary, a sexual failure. All might be well if Robert could only see Nancy for the amazing catch she was and sweep her off her feet, thus releasing Freya from the treacherous position she had connived at. But even for this fantasy to stand a chance would require a basic commitment on her own part – namely, to detach herself from Robert. She would have preferred to effect this in a civilised way, with an agreement to stay on friendly terms. In the event he had aborted that possibility on the night he called her a bitch and stormed off – but at least the break had been made, and a distance of days put between them. Pride alone was enough to keep her silent; now she was also fortified by a moral purpose to resist any reconciliation.
Their estrangement might have continued indefinitely had not Freya chosen to have a quick half at the Lamb & Flag one evening with Ginny. She was putting her coat on when the door of the saloon bar swung open and Robert walked in. He was on his own, and looked as taken aback by the coincidence of their meeting as she was. It was a quiet night in the pub, with few other patrons around, so they had no way of pretending not to have seen one another. There is also a charm about such happenstance, which seems to unite the chance-meeters as beneficiaries in the mysterious scheme of the universe: fate has fingered them, and to deny its spell would be churlish, and possibly ungrateful.
Ginny, who knew something of the imbroglio with Robert, shot Freya an uncertain look, to which she replied, ‘I’d better catch you up.’
Once Ginny had gone they had a drink together, and another argument. But this time they finished it in bed.
8
Freya got down to some serious work during the Easter vac, for fear of embarrassing herself at mods next term. (Dr Melvern had already been on the warpath about her lack of application.) Accordingly she thought it best to stay put at Somerville rather than risk being distracted either at home with her mother or in London at her father’s. Perhaps Stephen had interpreted this as a snub, because the letter she’d received from him that morning was all conciliation and flattery – he thought her Cherwell profile of Nat Fane mos
t entertaining (she had proudly sent him a clipping) even if her subject did sound ‘terribly full of himself’. He was sorry not to have managed a trip there yet, he wrote, though his favourite time to see Oxford was Trinity term anyway.
In fact (he continued), they should set a date soon, because he would have to plan it around a big commission that had just come his way.
I’m sure you’ve read about the trials still dragging on at Nuremberg. The War Artists’ Advisory Committee has agreed to send me as part of a group to document proceedings. I’ll be there for two weeks, possibly longer, and depending on courtroom access I should be able to get up close to Goering, Hess and the rest of them. Rather disconcerting to think of oneself in the same room as the men responsible for millions upon millions of dead and dispossessed. Can there be any defending them? Of course one imagines this lot as the very epitome of evil, but from the photographs I’ve seen they appear to be just tired, plain-faced, middle-aged men – they look more like bank managers and tax inspectors than war criminals. Maybe that’s what is so disturbing about them …
Two weeks before the end of the vac Nancy returned to keep her company, and in the quiet studentless streets, with the town opening its face to spring, she had what she would remember in years to come as the most enchanted period of her Oxford life. They went walking arm in arm through the Botanical Gardens, had beer and sandwiches at the Trout along the river, took tea in the covered market and read aloud to each other in the evening as swallows wheeled and swooped outside the windows. They talked of Robert, but briefly and without consequence, as if they were spies reluctant to betray one another, hoarding their own supply of information. She knew that Nancy had exchanged letters with him – he was gadding around up north somewhere – but apparently they hadn’t seen one another in the interim.
One evening the conversation turned to Alex, who had been on holiday with his mother in the Highlands. Freya had received a letter from him that morning stamped with a distant island postmark.
Nancy said, narrowing her eyes as if to conjure his image, ‘I like Alex, but he’s ever so private about things. Whenever I mention something personal he just changes the subject. Has he ever talked to you about his father?’
‘A little bit. He walked out on them when Alex was small – never heard from him again. I think that’s why he’s close to his mother.’
‘And what about the mysterious girlfriend – anything in the letter?’
Freya made a downward twist to her mouth. ‘Not a thing. Most of it was just Cherwell gossip and what he’s reading at the moment. Oh, that reminds me –’ she leaned over to her bedside table and picked up his letter – ‘he quoted this tiny poem in it, by Catullus, clearly assuming I have Latin, which I don’t. Can you make it out?’
She passed the page to Nancy, who recited it.
Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
‘It’s quite famous, I think. “I hate and I love. Why do I do that, perhaps you ask? I don’t know, but I feel it, and I am tortured.”’
Freya stared at her for a puzzled moment. ‘What on earth does he mean by that?’
‘Well, it’s a poetic conundrum, he’s divided in his feeling –’
‘I don’t mean Catullus, you nit – I mean, why has Alex quoted it?’
Nancy shrugged. ‘Maybe he loves his girlfriend and hates her, too. I suppose you’d have to ask him.’
‘Or maybe he loves and hates me,’ suggested Freya, only half joking. Could she possibly have elicited such extremes of feeling in him? It seemed unlikely, but as Nancy said, he was so private you couldn’t tell. She had tried to draw him out on a few occasions, and failed. In matters of the heart he was a clam.
Nancy, frowning at her, said, ‘Why would anyone hate you?’
She laughed and made a mock-simpering expression in reply. ‘You’re terribly sweet, aren’t you?’
But Nancy gave a little shake of her head, as if to say sweetness had nothing to do with it.
The old boy came in at a shuffle, supporting himself on a silver-knobbed walking stick. Stout and red-faced, he wore a checked tweed suit and an expression of disdainful amusement. A monocle glinted over his eye. Nat Fane, with whom this gentleman had just been sparring in a stage conversation (‘Whither a National Theatre?’), danced attendance on him in a mixed spirit of obsequiousness and impudence. Freya was among the guests at a private party in the Oxford Union bar. Fane, ushering the illustrious personage to the centre of the room, called for quiet.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have been blessed this evening. Our guest in the debating chamber is not only the most renowned drama critic of our day, he is a speaker whose coruscating personality has ornamented this evening with flashes of incomparable brilliance and erudition. He is, if I may –’ he shot a sideways glance – ‘the monocle of all he surveys – Mr James Erskine.’
A thunder of clapping burst forth as the critic offered a bow and a smile which suggested that this outpouring of appreciation was simply his due.
As they watched Fane steering the old man around the room, performing introductions, Nancy turned to Freya. ‘Nat’s like a dog with two tails, isn’t he? I think he’d die of happiness if Mr Erskine only patted his head.’
Freya smiled. ‘Ah, it’s not his head that interests him. Nat told me that in the taxi on the way from the station Erskine put his hand on his knee and said, “Dear boy, may I ask whether you’re a votary of Greek love?”’
‘You mean – he’s queer?’ said Nancy in whispery, wide-eyed surprise. ‘I’d like to see the look on my father’s face if he heard that. He’s read Erskine’s column in the Chronicle for years.’
‘Would he stop reading him once he knew?’
‘Oh, he’d stop reading the Chronicle!’ said Nancy, and they both laughed. Alex, who was returning from the bar with drinks, asked them what was so funny.
‘Just talking of the “coruscating personality” over there,’ replied Freya. ‘We were speculating on the shock it would be to his readers once they found out he was not as other men.’
‘A poof, is he?’ said Alex, wrinkling his nose in disdain.
Now it was Freya’s turn to be surprised: it was so unlike Alex to disparage anyone, let alone a whole ‘type’. When she looked at him some moments later his features had returned to their amiable ease, and all was well. She wondered again how she’d stopped herself making a dead set at him. A few days into the new term she had mentioned the Catullus poem he’d quoted in his letter, hoping to tease out the ambiguity of odi et amo, but he stonewalled her completely, claiming only that he had had the poet ‘on the brain’. She could almost believe him.
They were about to settle at a corner table, she and Nancy, when Nat approached, Erskine at his side, like an eager courtier leading on his bored monarch.
‘Jimmy, would you allow me?’ he said, in his most purring tone. ‘Here are two young ladies who’ve been longing to meet you.’
Freya, whelmed in a cloud of cologne and smoke from Erskine’s cigar, hadn’t been ‘longing’ at all, but for Nat’s sake she decided to play the game and baste the old bird with a juicy compliment or two.
‘That was an extraordinary performance,’ she said.
Jimmy fixed her with an odd look. ‘You know, they are the very same words I’d use when I had to go round to flatter some halfwit actor after a show. “Extraordinary” was large enough to appease his vanity and ambiguous enough to keep my self-respect. The other thing I used to say was “I don’t know how you do it, my dear”. It sounded like a tribute but of course it hid a little dagger!’
‘Well, I can’t imagine how you do it,’ said Freya pertly.
His eye sharpened behind his monocle. ‘Ah. Very good.’ He turned to Nat. ‘You could cut yourself on this one.’
‘Quite,’ agreed Nat with a smirk. ‘She’s already a star writer on Cherwell.’
‘That so? What d’you say your name was?’
<
br /> ‘Freya Wyley. And this is my friend Nancy – she’s going to be a writer, too.’
Jimmy nodded like a man who had heard it before. Nancy was too shy to say anything, so Freya jumped in again. ‘Do you perhaps have some advice for young aspirants?’
‘Advice …’ he said, clamping the cigar in his mouth and taking a draw. ‘The danger is in giving advice to people who only imagine themselves to have talent. You may be doing them a disservice.’
‘So how can you tell –’
Jimmy anticipated the question: ‘– if your talent is base metal or the real thing? Of course one never can, not absolutely. Doubt is intrinsic to the artist’s calling. And the greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Only the talentless have perfect confidence.’
Now Nancy did find her voice. ‘Then … how did you become convinced you were a writer?’
‘Ha! You may well ask. I started out fancying myself an actor, until the company manager told me, firmly, that I wasn’t good enough. Crushing at the time, but I afterwards found that I had something else – a voice. What I needed was an opportunity. I’d been writing theatre notices in my twenties, and decided to submit one on spec to the editor of the Post. He printed it, and kept on printing ’em – they got sackfuls of mail from people, some of it very disobliging. But they all read me. A few years later the Chronicle made a bid for my services, and off I went. Now –’ Jimmy paused, gathering himself for the next flourish – ‘you may think “he was bloody lucky”, and I would agree, luck played its part. So let us imagine that the first editor who took me on was a dolt incapable of distinguishing between my prose and that of the butcher’s boy, but gave me the job just because I was available. That would be luck. But when another paper’s editor comes along offering more money and a bit of a fanfare, well, that’s not luck any more. That’s talent.’
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