She bristled at that. ‘I think some of it’s implied. And I’m not likely to mention his being queer, am I?’
Joss looked to Nancy, who had just entered the room with her breakfast tea, still in her dressing gown and dozy from sleep. ‘Nancy, be my witness. Didn’t you tell me you thought Jerry Dicks a revolting specimen?’
Nancy blinked at the question, seeming to find it a little demanding at this time of the morning. ‘Well, I couldn’t say for certain. I didn’t meet him, whereas Freya actually did. Super article, by the way.’
‘Thank you, my darling,’ smiled Freya. ‘Some felt it rather pulled its punches about his character.’
‘I thought it was very fair,’ said Nancy. ‘You mention his reputation for troublemaking, unprofessional behaviour and so on, but you offer that against a proper reckoning of his talent, which does seem … unusual.’
Freya turned a pointedly triumphant look to Joss, who glanced at his watch and rose from the table. ‘Couldn’t have put it better myself,’ he said, effectively concluding his defence. ‘I’m off. See you tonight.’
He picked up his battered old briefcase and approached Freya. She held out her cheek for him to kiss, imitating a prim maiden aunt’s gesture she knew he didn’t like, then laughed heartily at his exasperation.
When he had gone she made them a fresh pot of tea and flicked through the paper with brisk unconcern. Whatever Joss might think, hers was easily the best piece in today’s paper. She wondered whether Jerry Dicks might read it, and decided that he probably wouldn’t. She heard Nancy chuckling under her breath and looked over to where she was reading on the couch. It was the same library copy of Lucky Jim.
‘Have you got to the hangover scene yet?’
Nancy nodded, eyes closed in smiling bliss. After some moments she became aware of Freya steadily regarding her. ‘It just feels so different from everything. The way Jim picks apart things, motives, prejudices. The self-mockery. You know Robert can quote whole reams of it by heart?’
‘Yes …,’ said Freya, though she wasn’t sure she did know that. They tended to knock around as a trio, so whatever Nancy had heard him say she would have heard too. Robert liked to quote from the book, of course, but she had not heard him recite ‘whole reams’ of it. Unless – she felt a sudden tweak of panic. She didn’t want to ask Nancy whether she had seen Robert on his own, first because to put the question would sound like prying, and second, she would feel excluded if it turned out they had. And after all, she and Robert saw one another at the office nearly every day; they’d often have a cup of tea and a chat. Did she tell Nancy every time that happened? There might be nothing in it.
Still turning it over in her head Freya said, ‘Has Robert ever talked to you about his divorce?’
Nancy, who had returned to the book, looked up in confusion. ‘Erm – no. I only know what you’ve told me. Why d’you ask?’
‘Oh, just wondering,’ she replied, sensing she could have been more subtle.
‘I have the impression that he’d rather not.’
Freya felt almost light-headed with relief. Her suspicion that they were confidants was mistaken. She rolled a cigarette and said, ‘By the way, you know I mentioned that villa in Italy my stepmother goes to? Well, she’s invited me to stay.’
‘How lovely. Whereabouts exactly?’
‘In Fiesole. Just outside Florence.’ She paused for a moment before continuing. ‘I was wondering whether you’d like to come too.’
Nancy’s eyes widened in astonishment. Did she mean it? Of course, she replied. Diana would be there for a month – it belonged to her aunt or someone – and was always inviting her to go. They could stay for a week, or ten days, if they could get the time off. Stephen said it was one of the loveliest places he’d ever been to. They would go to Florence and visit the galleries and churches and the rest of it, or they would lounge by the pool drinking and reading all day.
‘Oh, it sounds heaven,’ cried Nancy.
‘We’ll have to pay for the tickets to Rome, and then a train, but the place won’t cost anything.’
She still looked uncertain. ‘Is Joss coming too?’
‘No. I mean – I haven’t asked him.’
‘Won’t he expect you to?’
Freya shrugged. ‘I suppose he might. But I don’t really want him there the whole time.’
They laughed, and when their gazes met Freya sensed, with the intuition born of long friendship, that Nancy had someone else in mind she hoped might get the nod, someone they’d been recently discussing. But neither of them gave voice to the thought, and they talked on excitedly of what day they should go, and what food they would have, and how much Italian they could speak. Poco …
As the summer crept on, the air became still and sultry, modulating to a violet shade by the early evening. Seeking refuge from the parched streets, from the buses and the grimy pigeons, Freya had discovered a small pocket of secret London. Halfway down Chancery Lane towards Fleet Street an open gate offered pedestrian access to Lincoln’s Inn and a quiet square with its own gardens. Bomb damage still obtruded here and there, as if some giant had taken a calamitous misstep; but most of its stateliness had been spared. One of the buildings, a later Victorian addition in mauve brick, reminded her of Balliol, and she would occupy one of the benches adjacent to it while eating her lunchtime sandwiches.
One morning when the sun was playing a long game of hide-and-seek with a dreary cortège of clouds she took a coffee break from the office and sat in the square, intending to read a letter she had just got from her mother. Instead she drifted into a daydream, from which she was only roused by a shadow falling across her vision. The shadow had spoken her name, and she looked up, hand shielding her brow. It took a few moments for her to absorb the contours of his face, and once she had time to focus it caused her to jump.
‘Alex?’ she said, sounding almost fearful.
‘I thought it was you!’
‘That’s so odd – I’d only been thinking of Oxford a few minutes ago.’
Alex McAndrew: just to hear his voice again made her heart beat faster. He was still handsome, though his lean face and greying hair no longer seemed youthful. Judging by his dark suit and tie she supposed he was something in the law, as most people around this neighbourhood were. But no, he worked in a Defence department at Whitehall, he said, having spent some years abroad. Freya recalled how close he was to his mother, and Alex seemed touched when she asked after her; she was still up in Edinburgh, though in poor health.
He had sat down on the bench next to her, and as they faced one another he shook his head in a sort of smiling disbelief.
‘Freya. You know, you haven’t changed – not one bit.’
She would have dismissed this as blandishment from anyone else, but she found herself laughing, almost skittishly. ‘I’m not sure about that. I’m going to be thirty next month.’
‘I see your name in the papers, of course. I’ve often wondered how you were.’
You only had to look for me, she thought. But then she hadn’t kept up with him, either. She could remember the last time they had met, it must have been early in 1947, when she was visiting Nancy in Oxford. It had been a freezing cold day – that bitter winter! – and they’d taken shelter in a pub off the high street. They were muffled up, stamping the cold out of their feet, when she had spotted him sitting at a table with a woman and a man she didn’t know. From the embarrassed way Alex had greeted her the encounter was not a delightful surprise for him; he had introduced his two friends (the man had a foreign name, she thought) but did not invite her and Nancy to join them. She recalled feeling hurt by this, though she could understand his awkwardness: that was probably his girl, the one he had given her the brush-off for.
She wanted to ask him if he was married – he wore no ring – but she didn’t. Instead, she said, ‘Actually, it’s you I have to thank for where I am now. No, I mean it – if you hadn’t asked me to write for Cherwell I don’t think I’d have
got started at all.’
He inclined his head to the compliment. ‘Then I’m very pleased and honoured to have been a handmaid to your talent.’
How lovely it was to hear that old-fashioned graciousness again. They talked on, reminiscing about Oxford and catching up with the present whereabouts of this or that one of their peers. Freya was not surprised to find that Alex had lost touch with them all; even she, who had been only a year at the university, had made more of an effort to keep up. There was something of the loner about him; there always had been. Yet despite his apparent indifference to the ties of youth she sensed his pleasure in encountering her, and he seemed delighted to hear that she and Nancy were sharing a flat. She hesitated before mentioning Robert, but Alex responded to the name with a smile of acknowledgement. They hadn’t been friends at Balliol, he said – ‘I don’t think he was much interested in me.’ Freya didn’t correct this impression.
When she saw him glance at his watch she felt a surge of melancholy, for she knew that any agreement to stay in touch would be wasted on Alex. He had gone his own way for this long: it was unlikely that he would seek any renewal of acquaintance with people he had let drop. So she was secretly astonished when he almost implored her to come to his place for dinner one evening soon. They could celebrate the end of rationing while they were at it.
‘We’ll have steak, and a really good bottle of wine. What d’you say?’
‘Smashing,’ she said, still half wondering if this was just the fond pretence of people who didn’t intend to see one another again. Yet before he went off he asked for her telephone number, and carefully took it down in a notebook.
She walked back to the office lost in thought. Alex – after all these years! It struck her that he’d not pried very deeply into her life. He hadn’t asked her whether there was a man on the scene, for instance, and she hadn’t volunteered anything. Would Joss object to her swanning off to dinner with someone she used to be crazy about at Oxford? Would she bother to tell him in any case? There had been a bit of coolness of late between them. Despite his protestations to the contrary, she suspected Joss still resented her jumping ship at Frame, where sales were falling every week. He had supported her during her time at the magazine, and perhaps thought she owed him – and it – more loyalty.
Something else, more personal, had rocked the boat. Her thirtieth birthday in August had come up a few times in conversation, and as often as she insisted she didn’t want any fuss made Joss kept harping on the idea of a party. She didn’t feel up to it, and anyway the flat was too small. That wasn’t a problem, he said, they could use his house in Hampstead, or else hire rooms somewhere. Curious, she eventually said, ‘Why are you so keen for me to have a party?’
Joss looked confused. ‘Because … you might enjoy it. You told me you never had a twenty-first, and there’s not been any other big event since.’
‘What d’you mean, “big event”?’
‘Well, big like a wedding, or giving birth, or – I don’t know …’
She looked at him very steadily. ‘I see. You want to throw a party because you feel sorry for me. Poor old Freya, unmarried and childless at thirty!’
‘That’s not what I meant. I just thought it was a milestone in your life, and given there hasn’t been one before –’
‘Ah yes, you can also include not getting a degree. Another big one missed.’
‘Why are you being so touchy?’
‘Maybe because you’re being so fucking patronising. Did it ever occur to you that I might have different priorities? What about getting my first salaried job, or my first cover story on the magazine – aren’t they milestones?’
Joss looked cowed by this sudden vehemence. ‘Of course they are. For God’s sake, Freya, I was only trying to be nice. Sorry! You’re turning thirty, and I wanted to help you mark the occasion.’
She stood up, and with as much queenly disdain as she could muster, said, ‘Well, you needn’t.’
But even as she stalked out of the room she was beginning to feel she had overreacted. Joss was only trying to be nice, it was in his nature, but he had given himself away by making more of the event – the ‘milestone’ – than he needed to. It seemed he really did think of a woman in conventional terms: marriage and family for him trumped career and achievement. It wasn’t as though she had ruled herself out as a wife, or even a mother; rather that she wasn’t ready for it, not at the moment, not when she was halfway up the ladder. She had promised herself never to take a backward step, and so far she hadn’t. But if she ever did find herself hankering for a husband and kids and took a rest from the shinnying, she knew there would be no getting back on it. ‘Funny business, a woman’s career …’ – she was remembering the Bette Davis speech from All About Eve, she had quoted it once in a piece – ‘the things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you’ll need them again when you get back to being a woman.’
A couple of hours later when she had calmed down she found him again, and apologised. She had protested too much, she said with a laugh, and was an ungrateful bitch.
Joss, warily putting his head outside the doghouse, said, ‘Look, I don’t want to force you to do anything –’
‘I know. I was just being – what did you call me that time? – “a rampant individualist”. My fault – slapped wrists.’
‘I won’t mention it again.’
‘No, no, you were right – I should have a party. We can put up a banner to greet the guests: “Thirty – A Milestone At Last”!’
‘Freya –’
‘I’m joking. I’d like to have a party, really – it’s sweet of you to think of it.’
She meant it, though she also felt a sympathetic fuse between them had blown; they didn’t know one another quite as well as they thought. Not long after this she decided to invite Nancy on the Italian holiday.
It was the two photographs that had done it, she thought, as she made a weary turn into Great James Street. She had just heard a church bell ring one in the morning; the house was deathly quiet as she let herself in. Alex, true to his word, had telephoned and asked her to dinner at his flat in Bayswater; he’d even cooked them steak, as promised, and they’d drunk a bottle of old claret. Her unsteadiness on the staircase attested to the quantity of whisky they’d had afterwards. Without turning on a light she stepped into the kitchen and gulped down a long glass of water. In the living room she flopped onto the couch, reclining her head so her eyes met the ceiling. What an evening … A few moments later she heard a door open and Nancy, in pyjamas, appeared in the room.
‘What are you sitting in the dark for?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t mean to wake you,’ said Freya.
‘I was awake anyway,’ she replied, switching on the table lamp. She peered at Freya, whose rag-doll posture on the couch prompted her to ask, ‘Are you drunk?’
‘I was. It’s worn off. I walked half of the way home.’
Nancy seemed to hear the flatness of her tone. ‘What happened? How was Alex?’
Freya paused, not sure which to answer first. ‘D’you mind if I have a cigarette before …?’ Once it was rolled and lit, she started on the story of her evening. Alex had been talking about his job at the Ministry of Defence, which she had been slow to realise was quite a senior position. How had he managed to rise through the ranks so quickly? Alex had given her an odd look then, and said that he oughtn’t really to tell her this – it was technically breaking the law – but during the war he had worked for a ‘hush-hush outfit’ in Military Intelligence. Suffice it to say by the end he came under a severe amount of stress; on his superior’s advice he had decided to take up his place at Balliol, deferred since 1941.
‘Good heavens,’ said Nancy, wide-eyed. ‘Alex … we always did wonder about what he’d done. Remember that argument you had with Robert about men going in for safe office jobs?’
Freya nodded, and took a long drag on her cigarette. ‘In any case, there was more to come
. You know the photographs?’
There were two, dating from Freya’s last weeks at Oxford. One of them was of Alex that Freya had taken: he was standing outside the lodge at Balliol, his head cocked to one side, his face seeming to express a gentle plea for leniency, for mitigation of some sort – she had always found it unaccountably touching. The other was of a group of them lounging by the river which showed Freya with her eyes fixed, somewhat adoringly, on Alex. Nancy, who had taken the picture, had teased her about it. She hadn’t looked at either photograph much in the intervening years, but she had considered them just the thing to kindle a nostalgic mood. They had finished eating, and Alex had poured the last of the wine when, like a children’s conjuror, she produced the pictures, slightly creased at the edges, more silvery than black and white. She told him how she had dug them out from an old box of college memorabilia, and remembered his words the other day about her not having changed a bit! Well, here was evidence to the contrary –
All this time Alex had kept his head bent in examination of the pictures. When at last he looked up his eyes were filmy with tears, and not ones of tender remembrance, she thought, but drawn from some private well of misery. She stared at him, perplexed, and asked him what was the matter. Her voice seemed only to hurry on his collapse; he turned his face away, and his shoulders quivered from silent wretched sobs. What is it? she asked again. ‘You, in that photo,’ he panted out. ‘The way you’re … looking at me …’ She reached across the table to take his hand. ‘I was in love with you, Alex – you knew that.’ She said it gently, as though it was water under the bridge, but he still looked stricken by some grievous apprehension. He wished – he wished that things could have been different between them. Then Freya recalled the last time they had encountered one another, the pub in Oxford, she had been with Nancy, and he had been with two friends, a man and a woman. ‘You seemed embarrassed, and I supposed that the girl was your …’
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