‘Wasn’t my idea. Bruce organised the whole thing. I don’t know why. I think he was annoyed with Chrissie for some reason, wanted to punish her. So he told the girl, Frances – Bridget, whatever her name was – to join us in bed.’
‘Why didn’t you just tell her to piss off?’
Robert slowly rubbed his face in his palms. ‘I couldn’t see the harm in it. She was an attractive girl …’
‘But you could see that Chrissie was upset, surely?’
‘Not until later. She took off out of the room, Frances and I were left there –’ He laughed miserably, recalling. ‘Next thing I know, Bruce stalks in, tells me Chrissie’s in the other bedroom – in a fucking coma.’
‘Why didn’t you call an ambulance?’
‘I thought Bruce had. When I saw her lying there I tried to … revive her. She was limp, a rag doll. I thought there was still a chance –’
‘The ambulance didn’t come because Haddon didn’t call one. But I’ll never be able to prove it. Ava Dunning found her two hours later, dead.’
‘I didn’t know. Really. I see how bad it looks now. But to be found there would have finished me – everything. Bruce was shouting in my ear, you’ve got to get out of here. So I did.’
Passive to a fault, she thought. As long as she had known him Robert could not face up to things – two-timing her at Oxford; a divorce he delayed and bodged; now girls arranged through a pimp. Strange that he could be so decisive in professional life – the campaigner, the coming man – and so cowardly in private. She sometimes felt she had spent all her life arguing with men, refusing to be bullied by them, demanding her due. It had left some bruises. But at least in an argument you could make sure you were taken seriously. Robert’s disfiguring flaw was that he wriggled out of confrontation, hoping that others would sort out the mess. Not any more.
‘I don’t understand you. I don’t understand how you refuse to deal with people – how you can pretend they don’t have feelings.’
Robert, who’d been staring dead ahead, turned to face her. ‘I’m selfish. Most people are, I find.’
‘That’s not good enough,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You’ve had such advantages – Oxford, a successful career, marriage to a brilliant woman. You’ve lived among sensitive, educated people your whole life. You’ve read Middlemarch.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘I don’t know. Everything. It’s unfathomable to me how someone who’s read Middlemarch could behave the way you have.’
He looked at her askance. ‘You have a very odd idea about the value of fiction. It’s just storytelling, you know, not a primer in morality.’
‘Is that all you think of Nancy’s books – just stories? Do they not have any more meaning than that?’
‘They earn her a living. That’s enough “meaning” for me.’
He leaned forward on the bench, elbows resting on his knees. He seemed pensive, when she had expected him to dissolve in a puddle of remorse. When he spoke again his tone had become musing. ‘Comeuppance. Always liked that word! Slightly afraid of it, too. Like it’s coming for you.’
‘Is that what you think this is?’
‘Well, it’ll make a fine front page. An MP in a scandal of sex and death – this one’ll run. It’s funny, you know. Some people think I’m a hero. You ask any West Indian, who’s been their main defender in Parliament, they’ll say my name.’
‘And you think that should save you?’
Robert gave a shrug. ‘Immigration will be an even bigger issue in two years. It could help win us the election. I didn’t mean to become a spokesman for them, but that’s the way it turned out.’
It was an oblique plea for mercy, but she heard nothing of humility in it. ‘You’re no hero, Robert, whatever they say. That you should try to save your hide like this only shows what kind of man you are.’
He reverted to brooding. Freya half attended to the people passing through the cobbled square: a bespectacled gent wheeled a bicycle, trouser clips throttling his ankles; two young women deep in a lunch-hour conversation; bowler-hatted City men, students, clerkish types.
After a long minute he said, ‘So there’s no appeal I can make to you – to spare me?’
‘What, like you did with Alex? There’s no earthly reason why I should think of sparing you.’
‘There’s one,’ he said quietly. ‘Your best friend.’
She stared at him. ‘You think Nancy would want me to do that – for you?’
‘As a matter of fact I do. She knows my faults, better than anyone, but she has found it in her to forgive.’
‘There’s the mystery. It’s nagged away at me all these years. Why has she been so loyal to you when you’re so utterly unworthy of her?’
Robert flinched, and tried to cover it with a dismissive laugh. ‘Maybe Middlemarch did it. And she’s always had a tender heart. She’d hate to see me dragged into the stocks and pelted, for all my sins.’
Freya shook her head, disbelieving. ‘Let me ask you something. If you had the goods on someone – someone you had cause to loathe – and the story was big enough to make headlines and your own name along with it, what would you do?’
‘I think you already know the answer to that. Fortunately, not everyone’s as ruthless as I am. Some have a conscience about what they do.’
She stood up, despising the charm of his self-reproach and yet swayed by it, reluctantly. Perhaps, at bottom, he did know himself. But why should that earn him a reprieve? For some people admitting the fault was a subtle means of excusing themselves from the blame.
‘I’m going,’ she said.
Robert rose from the bench, his eyes fixed on the ground. ‘Why did you ask me here? You’ve already got the story. I can only think it was to gloat.’
She considered a moment. ‘Maybe it was. I was interested in how you’d react. I wondered if you’d beg.’
‘I see …’
She turned to leave, and Robert took a sudden step forward.
‘Freya, wait. I’m ready to, if that’s what you want. Beg, I mean.’
She stared at him. ‘Don’t bother.’
‘All right. I’m begging you.’ It was as if he hadn’t heard her. His voice was low and urgent. ‘Please don’t do this. I’d offer you money but I know you’d despise me even more.’
‘You’re right.’
‘So I’m appealing to your good nature. Please. However disgusting you think me now, you did like me once, years ago. Think of that naive galumphing chap back in Oxford, the one you knew before his – before all of this. The one who read Middlemarch. Something of him survives, I swear it.’
‘A right good chap,’ she murmured.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked you here. I just wanted to look you in the eye.’
‘But – why?’
She gave a little squint. ‘To convince myself I could still hate you this much.’
With a nod she turned and walked away. She didn’t look back in case the sight of him standing there alone moved her, again, to pity.
She drove up Chancery Lane and into the maze of Bloomsbury. Confused by the area’s remodelling, she made a couple of wrong turns and had to retrace her route. The old Georgian streets had been knocked about badly, first by the Blitz, then by the bulldozers of the university. Whole terraces had tumbled since she was last here. She made it eventually to the threshold of Euston Road and waited at the lights, indicating right, back to Islington in the east. Across the way a colossal void gaped: the vast and trunkless legs of the Euston Arch were gone, and the breakers with them. Nothing beside remains … Cars and buses swished past, unconcerned by the bare, boundless space. We shall obliterate all that we love, and then live on.
The lights changed to green, and, in a split-second decision, she hung a left, heading west. She felt not quite in possession of herself. Life was running things with a logic of its own, invitingly, like the outline of a drawi
ng she was merely required to shade and fill. As cars shoaled and bunched around the junction of Great Portland Street and Marylebone Road she turned north to skirt the perimeter of Regent’s Park. The stately Nash houses looked on, their windows vibrating thinly to traffic that was once all hooves and carriage wheels. The temperature was still muggy; the sky wore a stubborn mouse-grey colour.
When she reached the top of Parkway she began to slow. She wasn’t sure where she was going, except that it seemed she knew the way. Her eyes in the rear-view mirror looked wary, underscored with violet crescents. She found a space to park and pulled up the Morgan’s hood, anticipating rain. Their terrace looked shabbier in daylight, the pavement flags cracked and veined with weeds. It only occurred to her as she tapped the door knocker that she might not be in.
She had taken a step back when the door opened and Nancy stood there, blinking her surprise. ‘Hullo? What are you – come in!’
She followed her down the hall into the kitchen, Nancy chattering on about the warm weather and its encouragement to indolence. She seemed in a good mood, and Freya, watching from the table as she made them tea, felt the weight of what she had to say like a concealed weapon. She hadn’t prepared anything in her head; it would have to come spontaneously or not at all.
‘I’ve just seen Robert,’ she began, taking a breath.
Nancy’s back straightened as she turned from the sink. ‘Robert? You mean, by chance?’
‘No. I arranged for us to meet.’
She stopped what she was doing and looked at her. ‘What on earth for?’ She was smiling, uncertainly.
‘You need to sit down first.’
The smile died. Without a word she took the chair opposite. She tilted her head in a way that invited her to start.
‘I’m afraid this is going to upset you. What’s worse, I have a feeling you’re going to hate me for telling you.’
Nancy was staring fixedly at her. ‘You’d better tell me.’
‘Robert was having an affair with Chrissie Effingham. He was with her the night she died. Bruce Haddon had been pimping for him – there was another woman involved, and Chrissie became upset. She may have had a problem with barbiturates already, but after a row with him it tipped her over the edge. They found her in a coma. Bruce said he’d called an ambulance, but it looks like he didn’t. Robert scarpered, in any case.’
Nancy held herself very still as she listened. Then she said, ‘I see. I assume you’ve told me to pre-empt the report I’ll read in tomorrow’s paper.’
Freya scrutinised her. ‘You don’t seem all that … surprised.’
She looked away. ‘I’ve known, over the years, how susceptible he is. Robert tends to take what he wants, and he’s never been very good at hiding things. The first time I caught him was with a student lodger of ours, here, in the house. There’ve been others that I’ve known about, and – evidently – one or two I haven’t.’
‘Why don’t you throw him out?’
‘I suppose … because I don’t think he can help it. And because he needs me.’
‘He has an odd way of showing it.’
‘I thought there might be something going on with the girl – Chrissie. She was very beautiful, wasn’t she?’
Freya nodded. ‘She also had the kindest heart.’
‘I’m sorry. I know you liked her,’ she said softly. Then her tone took on a note of bravado. ‘So – retribution has come round at last. Robert brought down Alex, and now you bring down Robert. Poetic justice. How did he take it?’
‘Pretty well, in the circumstances. But he did try to bargain with me. In fact, he asked me to spare him for your sake – said that you wouldn’t want to see him disgraced, “for all his sins”. Would that be true?’
Nancy sighed heavily. ‘Just do what you’ve got to do, Freya. Don’t drag it out.’
Freya stood up and walked to the kitchen worktop, where the tea had been brewing, forgotten. She poured them each a cup and carried them back to the table. ‘You know, I’d never understood that old line “be careful what you wish for”. Among the things I wished for was a headline scoop that would make my name, and for Robert to get what he calls his “comeuppance”. I couldn’t have imagined the luck of getting both at once. And yet I find I can’t enjoy either of them.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, running the story will finish Robert’s career in politics. But it will also finish us.’
‘I don’t see that it should.’
‘You can say that, but it will. I’d always be a figure of Nemesis. The bringer of doom. That’s why I’m handing the story over – my gift to you. You can tell Robert you know about it or not. Maybe you think he deserves a second chance, or a third, or however many he’s had.’
Nancy looked taken aback. ‘Why are you doing this – really?’
Freya’s gaze fell. ‘I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you.’
‘I’d rather you did.’
Here it was. Time had been nudging her insistently towards this crisis, and she knew she must find its voice or have it choke her forever. Nancy’s green eyes had become brilliant in intensity. Freya stood up and extended her hand – the gesture was almost courtly – which Nancy took, puzzled, and rose; they stood facing one another. It was like the moment you paused before you began to dance. With the fright and exhilaration of leaping into a pool, Freya stepped forward and pressed her mouth firmly against Nancy’s. Surprised, Nancy yielded for a few moments, perhaps bemused by the sudden strangeness of being kissed by a woman – this woman. Then she pulled away, and Freya was left leaning into space.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You asked me why I’m sparing your husband. This is me telling you. It’s not because I pity him, but because I love you. It’s important that you understand that.’
‘You … love me? – but I already knew that.’
‘No, not like that. I mean, like a man would love you. I’ve spent years, years, wondering if it could be true, and telling myself it couldn’t be. But it never went away, and I realised that however much I kept hiding from it, this love would be there, not moving. When I think of romance, I’m thinking of you. Your face. Your body. Isn’t that the oddest thing?’
Nancy stared at her, half disbelieving. She began to say something, and stopped – then began again. ‘How can you be? It’s only men you’ve ever – How can you suddenly have changed?’
‘It’s not sudden, I just told you. I’ve felt like this for years. Yes, I’m attracted to men, but I’m excited by women. I know it must be hard to understand. It took me most of my life.’
‘So have you ever … with a woman before …?’
‘Now and then. There’d been flirtations when I was in the Wrens, schoolgirl stuff. The first proper experience was with Hetty – you remember her, Ossie Blackler’s friend? That was when I first felt that being with a woman could thrill me as much as being with a man. Maybe more. It was frightening, in a way. But also wonderful, because something in me had been freed.’
Nancy nodded, but her expression was troubled, and she turned away to face the kitchen window. Her arms were crossed over her chest. The clock on the wall ticked out the silence between them. There was a strain in her voice when she spoke again. ‘Thank you for not punishing Robert. I know what a sacrifice you’ve made, professionally and personally –’
‘Nance, please. I don’t give a fiddler’s fuck about sacrifices, or about Robert. I want to know what you think about this.’
She blushed now. ‘I – I hardly know what to think. I think you must be mistaken about me, you can’t be in love with someone who’s –’
‘Married?’ she said in a mocking voice.
‘Yes, married! It’s more than one kind of obstacle. And talk about a bolt from the blue. You didn’t speak to me for eight years. Now, within three months of meeting again, you’re telling me you – It’s too ridiculous. I think you’re still in shock from what happened with the baby. It’s quite underst
andable, you’ve been through a trauma and it’s unsettled your reason –’
‘Stop trying to sound like a doctor. This has got nothing to do with the baby. I understand my sexual feelings perfectly well, thanks. I’m sorry if this has embarrassed you, but circumstances have made it necessary. If I’d said I was doing Robert a favour from the kindness of my heart you’d never have believed me. He should count himself lucky, in any case, because the only person on earth who could have stopped me exposing his contemptible character is you.’
‘And I’m grateful –’
‘Oh, fuck off, Nancy. You’re not listening! I don’t want your gratitude. I’m offering you something. You have my heart in your hands.’
Nancy had looked away, shunning her gaze. She said quietly, ‘I have listened. And whether you care to hear it or not, I am grateful – more than I could ever say. But what you’re “offering” – it’s not something I can accept. I don’t feel that way about you. I’m sorry.’
Freya stared hard at her, hoping to draw her eyes to hers. But Nancy wouldn’t look at her. She waited, in silence, until she knew there was nothing more to say. As she left she trailed her hand lightly across Nancy’s back. She had felt those last words like a wrecking ball to the walls of her life. I don’t feel that way about you. There was an end of it. It seemed a long walk from the kitchen down the hallway to the front door, but she got there, and she didn’t slam the door when she let herself out.
33
‘I’ll miss her, of course,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘She’d become rather a friend.’
‘Please, stop!’ cried Nat. ‘I can’t bear it. I feel like a brute to be separating you.’
‘Well, you gave me fair warning. I’m reconciled to the loss.’
Freya Page 51
