Freya

by Anthony Quinn

  ‘Thank you, Bruce,’ he said, hopping off his stool. ‘I shall bear most, if not all, of that in mind. Now let’s have Miss Effingham in the chair, and we’ll pop a microphone on to catch that silvery voice of hers.’

  Nat placed his hand lightly at Freya’s back, steering her towards the TV monitor at the side.

  ‘You might prefer to watch my performance – or rather our performance – on this,’ he said, and with a quick backward glance he lowered his voice. ‘Remarkable, isn’t it, that such an imbecile gets to run the girl’s life? And those others – the moustachioed griffin is her accountant; that tubby lady, with the smaller moustache, is the agent; the woman next to her a legal assistant. All battening on young Christine in the hope they’ll ride her coat-tails to payday.’

  Across the floor one of the clipboarders was signalling for him. He turned to Freya with a lazy grin. ‘Showtime!’

  The recording was a prickly affair. Chrissie, bemused and sometimes baffled by Nat’s line of questioning, kept shifting her large brown eyes sideways as if to appeal for help from ‘offstage’. The director of the programme would step forward to remind her to keep her eyeline on the interviewer, and a minute later she would forget. Then Bruce Haddon decided to wade in, complaining that the questions were too windy. (‘Do we need all the long words – who the hell knows what “cynosure” means?’). When Haddon interrupted a third time, Nat lost his temper and rounded on him: ‘D’you know the meaning of “cretin”, or is that word too long for you as well?’ The director was eventually forced to separate them, though not before Nat had laid down instructions regarding Haddon and the rest of the court: ‘If they move, kill them.’

  Watching from the sidelines Freya thoroughly enjoyed the contretemps, though she felt for Chrissie, tongue-tied and blinking under the lights. There followed more argument about who was to stay while they did audio pickups for the broadcast. Nat insisted that they all cleared off and left Chrissie in his charge; the court finally made their exit, but Haddon refused to budge. He watched morosely as Nat and Chrissie re-recorded a few exchanges, both of them more at ease without the distraction of an audience.

  By the time they were finished it was nearly eight o’clock. An arrangement had been made to meet up at the Corsair. Nat said that he would join them later, and with a surreptitious wink suggested that Freya drove Chrissie to Mayfair. Haddon, still impersonating a limpet, escorted them to the BBC car park. Upon seeing the Morgan he was momentarily dumbfounded.

  ‘What a smashin’ motor!’ said Chrissie, wide-eyed.

  ‘Oh. A two-seater –’ said Haddon.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ shrugged Freya, realising Nat’s craftiness.

  ‘I’ll call a taxi for us, Chrissie,’ he said.

  Freya said, ‘I can drive her.’ Haddon started to object, but Chrissie decided to put her foot down.

  ‘Bruce, I want to go with Freya. You get a taxi and we’ll see you there.’

  Haddon looked put out, and Freya, relishing the moment, said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after her.’

  He stared at them for a moment. ‘Ask for my name at the door,’ he said and stalked off.

  It was a fine spring evening, the retreating light still pearly. Freya said, ‘Shall I put the hood down?’ Chrissie smiled and clapped her hands like a child off to a birthday party. The late rays of the sun bounced off the glossy amber walnut of the car’s dashboard.

  They had just nosed into the traffic flowing out of Shepherd’s Bush when Chrissie began rummaging in the soft leather bag she had in the passenger footwell. After a moment she produced a ball of yarn spiked with knitting needles, and the front of a scarlet woollen jersey. She set to work. Freya couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d pulled out a French horn and started playing it.

  Chrissie saw her looking at it. ‘You don’t mind – while we talk?’

  Freya shook her head and said it was fine.

  ‘It’s a birthday present for me nephew,’ she explained, the needles ticking along. ‘I love knitting. Helps me to relax.’

  ‘D’you find it hard to relax otherwise?’

  ‘Well, I get ever so nervous with interviews an’ that. I mean, Nat’s lovely, but half the time what he’s sayin’ just flies over my head.’

  ‘That’s not uncommon.’

  ‘Oh, so you find that too?’

  ‘I think Nat would be very upset if you claimed to understand everything he said.’

  The girl absorbed this with a serious expression. Freya by degrees coaxed her into talking about her life. She was the youngest of three sisters, had grown up in a council house in Bromley. Her mum was a dinner lady, dad had a job at a local printworks. School had been a secondary modern – ‘It was a bit rough,’ she said – and at weekends she had waitressed at a cafe on the high street. That was where the scout from the model agency had spotted her, two years ago.

  ‘So you went straight from school into modelling?’

  ‘Yeah. Dad was a bit worried. He thought I should wait and get some qualifications, but I couldn’t see the point. And once the work started comin’ in it didn’t really matter.’ She looked sheepishly from under her fringe. ‘It’s silly, you know … I can earn more in two weeks than he does all year. A grown man!’

  ‘I’m sure he’s very pleased for you.’

  ‘Oh yeah, yeah,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’m gonna buy a house for them.’

  She probably earned more this week than I do in a year, thought Freya.

  Chrissie bent her head back to her knitting, click-clack, click-clack, chatting while she concentrated. They had just reached Notting Hill Gate when a car burst out of a side road right in front of them, causing her to brake suddenly.

  ‘What the bloody hell –’ Freya cried, slamming on the horn in fury. Craning her neck upwards at the windscreen she shouted after the offender, ‘Mind where you’re going, you fucking arsehole!’

  The traffic droned on, unconcerned. She glanced sideways at Chrissie, who’d fallen silent, her knitting limp in her hands.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she said with a half-laugh. Freya had hardly ever apologised for her language before, but the girl’s open-mouthed astonishment had tripped her up. Chrissie gave a sudden giggle.

  ‘I never heard a lady swear like that before.’

  I am setting a terrible example, thought Freya. ‘Well, I’m no lady, as you can tell.’

  ‘My mum’d hit the roof if she heard me talk like that.’

  Freya shrugged. ‘An old habit I got stuck with. I went to a “progressive” school, before the war, where they allowed us to do pretty much as we liked. Swearing was just another thing, and I took to it.’

  ‘Say something else,’ said Chrissie, staring at her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go on. Please. It’s funny! It’s like hearin’ your teacher swear.’

  ‘Christ, I’m not that fucking old!’

  Chrissie spluttered out a laugh, which made her laugh in turn. Piqued by the unwelcome reminder of her age, Freya gunned the accelerator. The engine snarled into life, its feral, clattering howl echoing up through the trees. The car almost leapt along the Bayswater Road, the ground hurtling away beneath them. Next to her Chrissie gave a little shriek of frightened laughter.

  The Corsair was on three floors of a Regency house on Charles Street. They had parked round the corner and were approaching when Freya’s mouth unfolded into a helpless yawn. Chrissie looked enquiringly at her.

  ‘Haven’t been sleeping well,’ Freya explained.

  ‘Oh, me too! Terrible insomnia.’

  ‘My doctor told me I might be anaemic.’

  Chrissie came to a halt on the street and opened the leather bag into which the knitting had been stowed. ‘Why don’t you try these?’ She handed her a brown glass bottle of pills. ‘They’ll knock you out good an’ proper.’

  Freya frowned at the label. They were Tuinal. ‘Aren’t these a bit strong?’

  ‘I’ve got some Seconal, if you’d r
ather.’ Chrissie’s eyes narrowed with maternal anxiety. ‘Honestly, you have to look after yourself. I’m good for nothin’ if I haven’t popped one of these.’

  Freya handed the bottle back to her. ‘I’ll wait until the tests come through. Thanks all the same.’

  The low-lit corridor and staircases of the club were faced with smoked mirrors that seemed to throw back Freya’s image questioningly. Once the black-tied manager realised that she was with ‘Miss Effingham’ the welcome became expansive, and he personally ushered them to a shadowed circular booth as if they were royal travellers, exhausted from a long trip. On their table the foiled heads of champagne magnums peeked over the lip of a silver bucket. Chrissie’s party from the recording studio were already helping themselves.

  Chrissie waggled her hand at them, and leaned over to Freya. ‘There’s someone I want you to meet,’ she said, steering her to the bar where a few more of the court were loitering. One of them, legs scissored on a stool, was a thin black girl in an orange minidress. Chrissie threw her arms about her.

  ‘Freya, this is Ava, my pal!’ It was artlessly said, though it implied that the retinue around her didn’t merit the designation.

  Ava’s smile was a slightly reluctant tweak of the mouth. The interest was all in her eyes. Her black curled hair was as short as Freya’s own.

  ‘You weren’t at the studio,’ said Freya.

  She shook her head. ‘Been workin’. How d’you know Chrissie?’

  ‘We’ve only just met, over at the BBC.’

  The girl stared at her, sipping her drink through a straw. Freya was mesmerised by her face, angular like a carving, and impassive as a sphinx. Chrissie explained that they had met at school; Ava, a couple of years older, had been her sister’s friend first. As if to demonstrate their closeness she leaned over Ava’s drink and sucked on the straw.

  ‘Ugh! I thought it was water!’ she said, wrinkling her nose.

  ‘Vodka, isnit?’ Ava said softly, adding for Freya’s benefit, ‘She doesn’t drink.’

  Just then Bruce Haddon reappeared, darting a quick daggered glance at Freya. He asked Chrissie if she had ‘everything’ she wanted, to which she replied with a quick impatient nod, possibly in the hope that he might now leave her alone.

  ‘You must have shifted some,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah. Freya drove like greased lightnin’.’

  This didn’t go down well, either. His expression seemed to say he’d already pegged her as a bad influence. Pointedly ignoring Ava and Freya, he said to Chrissie, ‘We’ve got some VIPs in tonight. Come over to the table when they arrive, OK?’

  Chrissie seemed to sense his rudeness. When he said ‘OK?’ again she lifted her chin in acquiescence, and he went off.

  ‘Who are these “VIPs”?’ said Freya, raising her eyebrows in mock excitement.

  ‘No one,’ replied Chrissie, offhandedly. It was the first time her front of good humour seemed to droop. ‘Just people Bruce wants me to be nice to, you know.’

  Her mood was soon restored when the club’s maître d’ invited them to take a side booth for themselves and brought over some food. It was only chicken sandwiches and chips, but Chrissie and Ava pounced on it as though they hadn’t eaten all day – which was in fact the case. As she ate Chrissie politely asked Freya about her job, though her range of reference was limited. It turned out she didn’t read the papers much; she preferred watching the news on telly. She was also keen on Coronation Street, and looked amazed on discovering that Freya didn’t own a TV.

  ‘So what d’you do when you’re at home?’

  ‘Oh, I read … I listen to stuff like this,’ Freya said, nodding at the stage where a tuxedoed jazz band had just kicked off, their backdrop a shivery curtain of gold lamé. Chrissie, still munching on a sandwich, bopped unselfconsciously to the syncopated beat. Ava, more reserved, steered a watchful gaze around the room. When it landed back on Freya it had sharpened a little.

  ‘I’ve been trying to think who you remind me of,’ she said. ‘It’s that actress, isnit? – the one with the short hair. Roman Holiday.’

  Freya gasped out a laugh. ‘I think you’re flattering me.’ She stared at the girl again. ‘Actually, you’re the beautiful one. People must have told you.’

  Ava considered. ‘No, not often. Hardly at all.’

  ‘So you’re not a model –?’

  She shook her head. ‘They don’t really have girls my colour – you’ve probably noticed …’

  Freya, whose seat faced the doorway, spotted him first. He had arrived with some other men, dressed in suits and ties, and something inside her tightened at the sight of his face. He was talking in a familiar nodding way with the manager. She lowered her head and muttered an oath, prompting Chrissie to lean forward and ask her what was up.

  ‘I’ve just seen someone …’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The spectre at the feast.’

  The girls both turned in his direction before she could warn them not to. Chrissie looked back at her and said, almost in apology, ‘They’re Bruce’s crowd – the “VIPs”. Do you know Robert Cosway?’

  Freya lifted her eyes again and saw, to her horror, that Robert was not only making a diagonal across the floor to their table but waving hullo at Chrissie and Ava. She supposed she had about five seconds’ advantage on him – five seconds before he realised who their other guest was. The smile on Robert’s face as he saw her suffered a fleeting death-wobble that perhaps only Freya could detect. His head had jolted back in surprise – disbelief – and yet, like a boxer on the ropes, he kept his guard high.

  ‘Freya?’

  ‘Hullo,’ she heard herself say.

  He was shaking his head, as if he might sieve this awful waking dream out of it. Chrissie was looking from one to the other.

  ‘You know each other?’

  Robert was still holding his smile in place. ‘Oh, Freya and I go a long way back. Great friends …’

  She saw him swallow at that risky presumption. He hadn’t lost his looks. The puppyish softness of a face that had once threatened corpulence had instead merely rounded; the beard had gone, but a bluish tinge shadowed his cheeks. Robert had come up in the world. He had abandoned journalism to stand as Labour candidate for a marginal seat in the Midlands, and won it by a comfortable majority. His rise thereafter had been rapid. Welcomed into the Shadow Cabinet, he was being sharpened as a spearhead for the party’s general election campaign two years hence. Perhaps it was the politician’s confidence, she thought, that helped him to carry off this awkwardness.

  With a bumptious air of familiarity Robert eased himself into their booth. ‘And how do you know these young ladies?’

  Freya stared straight ahead, not trusting herself to speak. Chrissie jumped into the silence.

  ‘I’ve just been doing an interview at the BBC. Freya gave me a lift here.’ She seemed to be figuring out a problem in her head. ‘So how far do you go back?’

  ‘We met at university,’ she said, staring at Chrissie. ‘Later we worked on the same newspaper. We haven’t seen one another in – seven or eight years?’

  Ava said uncertainly, ‘You must have a lot to talk about …’

  Calmly, Freya said, ‘On the contrary. We have nothing to say to each other at all.’

  The air at the table seemed to freeze. Robert’s tittering laugh in reply was conciliatory, though on looking up she saw a flare of panic in his eyes. The last thing in the world he wants is a scene, she thought. Lowering his voice he asked the girls if they wouldn’t mind leaving him and Freya alone for a moment. Freya’s immediate instinct was to get up and leave with them, but something – a tiny pricking of revolted curiosity – kept her in her seat. Ava and Chrissie, edging out of the booth, were silent, like children being sent upstairs while their parents had it out.

  When they’d gone Robert leaned forward, elbows on the table. ‘Does it have to be like this?’ His voice had turned husky, confidential.

  ‘Like what?’ />
  ‘You being hostile, and hateful. Looking like you wished I was dead.’

  ‘That’s pretty much how I feel.’

  ‘Even now, after all these years?’

  ‘It’s not that long. What, you think I should be over it? I should forgive you for destroying my friend’s life?’

  ‘He went to prison. I didn’t murder him, for God’s sake.’ When Freya didn’t say anything more Robert heaved a sigh and continued. ‘D’you ever hear from him? McAndrew, I mean.’

  She shook her head. She had visited Alex when he was in Pentonville. He had been stripped of his freedom, his career, his reputation: there was nothing left to say. He served eight months of his sentence, during which time his mother died. He left London shortly after they released him, and nobody seemed to know where he might have gone: Canada, or Czechoslovakia, it was said. Freya had not heard from him again.

  ‘I don’t know how you have the nerve to ask. Or even to mention his name.’

  Robert sat back, enduring the silence that followed, occasionally looking up to offer a tight smile at a well-wisher. She wondered why he was even bothering with her. His life had moved on; he was a rising star. She was preparing to get up and leave when he said, ‘Nancy still talks about you.’

  It was the one thing he could have said to make her stay. At last she lifted her eyes to him. ‘How is she?’

  He seemed relieved to have found a conversational outlet. ‘She’s well. Hard at work. I wonder if you’ve seen her latest, it’s called The Hours and –’

  ‘I’ve read it,’ was all she said. Another pause intervened.

  ‘She was hopeful you might come to the wedding. It hurt her that you weren’t …’

  As much as it hurt me? she wondered. ‘How does she like being a politician’s wife?’ she said.

  The question seemed to startle him. He gave a nervous laugh. ‘She’s – she’s, er, very supportive. Takes an interest, you know. She was surprised when they gave me Shadow Home Secretary. I think most people were!’ He had always had a knack for self-deprecation, she reflected. It was one of the few things she could still like about him.