Freya Page 17

  11

  Freya was at a refectory table sipping the last of a bitter Bavarian coffee. It was now Wednesday morning – Jessica had persuaded her to stay on. Around her journalists were finishing breakfast prior to departing for the trial’s morning session. She was terribly hung-over. She really hadn’t felt this rough since the morning after VE Day when she and Nancy had got stinko.

  She braced herself at the sight of her father entering the room and looking about in agitated distraction. She knew what was coming. Stephen planted himself squarely in front of her.

  ‘Freya, I have just had the most – I’m in a state of shock. Please tell me what the hell’s going on.’

  She looked up and smiled. ‘And good morning to you, Dad!’

  ‘I’m not joking with you,’ he said. ‘I’ve just had an emergency telephone call put through to me – from your mother. She’s been frantic with worry, crying. Your college tutor telephoned her at home yesterday enquiring after your whereabouts – some cock and bull about you taking the week off to look after her while she “convalesced”. Then she wanted to know why you hadn’t turned up for your exams! Of course poor Cora had no idea what they were talking about – and frankly, nor do I.’

  ‘All right, calm down –’

  ‘No, I won’t bloody calm down,’ Stephen cut in, furious. ‘You just lied to me – to us. D’you think I would have agreed to let you come here if I’d known you were due to sit exams this week?’

  ‘Of course not. But it was the opportunity of my life and I had to take it, even if it meant lying to you. I’m sorry, Dad, I understand why you’re angry, but if I hadn’t done this I knew I’d regret it forever.’

  Stephen was staring off, the shake of his head slowing from rage to regret. ‘Shameful of you to use your mother like that. Can you imagine how upset she was, realising that nobody knew where the hell you were? Why would you put her through that?’

  ‘You know why, I’ve just told you. I’ve managed to get an interview with a writer who hasn’t talked to the press in over ten years –’

  ‘And what about Somerville? You know they could send you down for this.’

  ‘I thought it was a risk worth taking.’

  Stephen, sinking onto the bench along from her, was silent. Presently, he said, ‘I don’t understand you. Really. Quite apart from the disrespect to your tutors, I don’t understand why you would chuck it all in – an education at a great university, in a beautiful city – on the chance that you might, might, get a break in newspapers. I mean, you could try for that anyway in two years’ time. What’s the hurry?’

  Freya studied the dregs of her coffee cup. ‘I don’t know. I never felt sure about Oxford in the first place. The war, the Wrens – it felt like I had a life and then I put it on hold to do something that didn’t really matter. I don’t care about essays and Anglo-Saxon and the fucking Faerie Queene. The only thing I’ve done that seems like an achievement is that first piece I wrote for Cherwell. I’m sorry if that disappoints you …’

  He looked at her now. ‘It’s your life, Freya, not mine, and I know you’ll go your own way no matter what. But it pains me that you could show such a disregard for others. You’ve always made a thing about being honest, and yet you’ve duped the people who’ve always loved and trusted you.’

  ‘Dad, I can’t –’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more,’ he said, standing up. ‘I’ve got work to do. You should telephone your mother.’

  She watched him walk away.

  The court had just adjourned for lunch as she arrived. Queues had formed at the row of telephone booths installed for the press, and white-helmeted military policemen drifted about like inmates in a prison yard. Robed prosecutors sauntered in twos and threes around the vast entrance hall. Translators, stenographers, court officials likewise stretched their legs, seeking distraction, their expressions all seeming to ask the same thing: How much more of this?

  Amid the emerging throng she spotted Jessica, who broke off talking to a courtroom colleague and approached. She was wearing a smart gunmetal-blue trouser suit, with a girlish slide in her hair. She betrayed no sign of the previous night’s heavy drinking, which confounded Freya.

  ‘So you’re going off already?’ she said, eyeing the suitcase at Freya’s side.

  ‘Yes, I’ve been, um, called home. The college has been getting anxious about my return.’

  ‘I seem to recall drinking an awful lot last night.’

  ‘We did. I feel a bit deathly.’

  Jessica narrowed her eyes. ‘May I give you a little advice, my dear? Go easy on that Benzedrine. In fact, stop it altogether. I’ve seen it ruin people. They used it first as a pick-me-up, like you, and then they found they couldn’t do without it.’

  Freya didn’t think it had been noticed, but very little was lost on this woman. She began to make some vague conceding reply, but Jessica cut her short.

  ‘I want you to promise me. No more.’

  Had it been almost anyone else Freya would have taken pleasure in snubbing them. But she sensed she had met her match. ‘No more. I promise.’

  Jessica responded with a sharp emphatic nod, as if they were shaking hands on it. There was an awkward pause as Freya prepared her farewell. ‘I wanted to thank you for being so –’

  ‘No need for that, dear. You can thank me by writing something marvellous – I don’t mean about me!’ she laughed throatily. ‘I mean, something that will enthral your readers, so that they’ll want more.’

  ‘I’ll try. Really I will.’ Then she thought of something and began to rummage in her shoulder bag. ‘I wanted you to sign my book …’

  Jessica shook her head. ‘Freya, darling, you must have been blotto. I signed it in front of you, last night.’ She allowed herself a quick smirk at Freya’s confusion, then bent her head to kiss her on the cheek. ‘Goodbye, dear. And good luck.’

  Freya had by no means forgotten everything from the night before. On the way to the airport, as the fairy-tale spires of the schloss receded in the car’s back window, she retraced the events of her last evening. Having wangled dinner with her on the Sunday evening and then a lunch yesterday, Freya didn’t want to push her luck by presuming on her interviewee’s patience. But Jessica, who was au fait with whatever passed for society in Nuremberg, had then invited her to a party at the Grand Hotel, hosted by an eminent American prosecutor she knew. Freya, a little star-struck, didn’t have to be asked twice. The hotel, wearing its pre-war grandeur as sadly as an old lady sporting the jewellery of her youth, seemed startled by the abrupt influx of so many guests, and so much foreign largesse.

  She had begun with Martinis. The place was heaving with servicemen, but there was also a contingent of luminaries from the British and American press, many of them in plain awe of Jessica. Some sought her opinion as if she were the Sibyl herself, but she only shrugged and delivered a resonant sentence or two in her throaty drawl. ‘Of course the man’s a fool,’ Freya overheard her say of one well-known lawyer, ‘which wouldn’t alarm me if he weren’t so utterly sincere.’ Men seemed especially mesmerised by the authority of her voice (women were not expected to hold forth in this arena). Freya mostly listened, though at one stage she felt a distinct thrill when Jessica turned and said, apropos of some matter, ‘Perhaps we ought to consult my companion here – what do young people think of this?’ She had somehow become Jessica Vaux’s junior adviser.

  One drink led to another as she basked in the reflected glow of celebrity. During a hiatus when briefly separated from Jessica she wandered into the hotel’s smaller bar. Someone tapped her on the shoulder.

  ‘It’s Freya, right?’ said a young well-built officer. ‘Richard Caplan.’

  She was glad he had saved her from the embarrassment of forgetting his name. They shook hands, and he smiled in a distant way. He seemed more relaxed – more human – than on the day he had driven her to the schloss. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, uncon
sciously slipping into the local vernacular. She stared at the side of his shaved head. His ears looked so delicate, like tiny snails on a slab of rock. ‘So this is the place you come when you’re off-duty?’

  ‘One of ’em. Parties are pretty good here.’

  They settled at the bar over their drinks. The good manners she had discerned on their first encounter were stiff at the edges, like his uniform. He was perhaps a touch wary, or else she was too forward, for he answered questions about himself with a stranger’s laconic politeness. Home was a small town in Massachusetts, about two hours from New York. His father had been in the service during the First War; his mother was a schoolteacher. He was the oldest of five, three sisters and a brother.

  ‘Three sisters! You’re lucky – I always wanted a sister.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘I’ve got a younger brother, but he’s, well, quite odd. I always thought a sister would be like having a best friend, only closer. You know, like Lizzie and Jane in Pride and Prejudice.’

  Caplan only nodded; the reference had gone over his head. She asked him whether he had any plans after the army, which he thought about for a few moments. One thing he’d been crazy about as a kid (apart from baseball) was painting, he said; he’d taken it up quite seriously just before he enlisted. He wasn’t sure if he was any good, but a landscape he’d done had won third place in a local competition.

  ‘My father’s a painter,’ said Freya. ‘He never rated his talent that highly but he’s made a very good living out of it.’

  ‘That so?’ said Caplan, properly interested at last. ‘Is he famous?’

  ‘Hmm … he’s quite well known in London, as a portrait painter. Stephen Wyley. He’s here. I should introduce you.’

  Caplan smiled. ‘I don’t think he’d be interested in anything I’ve done. It’s pretty basic, really. I guess I’ll just follow my old man into the business.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘Sells cattle feed,’ he said, with a funny-sad resignation that pierced Freya. It was the thought of someone with an artist’s temperament but not an artist’s talent. Perhaps there were many such. What assurance did she have that she was going to be a writer? Only this: she would be one, or die in the effort.

  Just then they heard a commotion out in the corridor, a thump of footsteps and raised voices, foreign accents. A negotiation seemed to be in progress; this gave way to the entrance of four young officers in a uniform Freya didn’t immediately recognise. She turned to Caplan.

  ‘Russians,’ he supplied, studying them from beneath his brow. ‘And drunk by the look of ’em.’

  Freya stared for a moment. Only one of them was drunk, for certain, and talking too loudly; the others, humouring him, were just drinking. ‘Ought they to be here?’ she asked sotto voce.

  ‘They’ve as much right as anyone, I guess. In this place you get to mix, the British, the French, us. But not the Russians. We just – don’t have anything to do with ’em.’

  They talked for a while longer, and Caplan, glancing at his watch, said the music was scheduled to start. Would she care –

  ‘Would I ever!’ said Freya, almost jumping off the bar stool. She hadn’t danced for ages. Propelled by drink and the light pressure of Caplan’s hand at the small of her back, the evening started to speed up. When they had a break from dancing she introduced him to Jessica, who seemed to approve of his grave American manners. The trouble started when she was returning from a trip to the ladies and found herself waylaid by the roistering Russian officer who’d been in the bar. His fellow officers affected not to notice him. Up close he was square-faced, handsome in a loutish way, with light blond hair feathered by inebriation. Even to Freya he reeked savagely of alcohol.

  He asked her, in slurred English, if she would care to dance. Freya excused herself, joking that her dance card was full. The officer, bleary-eyed, plainly didn’t comprehend anything she said beyond the implied refusal.

  ‘Why not?’ he importuned her.

  Seeking a more straightforward reason she said, ‘Because I believe you’re even drunker than I am.’

  ‘No no no,’ he said, wagging his finger and grabbing her arm.

  He jostled her forward to the dance floor. She sensed a reckless determination in his grasp even as she tried to break free. One of his comrades called out something – a warning? – but he ignored him, seeming to hear only the beat of the music. He had just started moving her about when a shadow fell between them, and Caplan was prising his hands off her. He moved his head to within inches of the Russian’s face, his jaw moving urgently: she couldn’t hear his words, she could only tell they weren’t friendly. The sight of an American squaring up to their comrade drew the others into a menacing cluster, but Caplan held his ground. As she watched him negotiate she felt grateful: other men might have opted for a show of force, trying to impress her, but Caplan wanted only to defuse the potential unpleasantness. The scene was abruptly concluded on the arrival of two unsmiling military policemen, who hustled the Russians out of the room.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, as he led her out of the knot of onlookers.

  He looked at her and shrugged. ‘I didn’t like him bothering you.’

  Even that, his lack of fuss, pleased her. They rejoined Jessica’s table, and she immersed herself in the talk and the laughter and the steady supply of drinks. Only when she stood up and the room suddenly tipped sideways did she notice how tight she was. Caplan was looking at her.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  She thought she was, but when the room continued to list like the deck of a ship she decided to make for the exit, with Caplan in wary attendance. Once outside she drank in the cool night air, and felt a little better.

  ‘I think I should call it a night,’ she said, with a grimace of apology. She had used up her supply of Benzedrine, so there would be no quick antidote to her wooziness. Caplan, nodding, told her to wait at the entrance; he’d collect the motor and drive her back to the schloss.

  ‘You’re such a gentleman,’ she said with a flirtatious tilt of her head.

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied, with a chuckle, ‘a regular Mr Darcy.’

  Her laughter hid her surprise: she had underestimated him. Riding shotgun in the open-topped jeep she felt the onrushing wind whip against her face, jolting her back to sobriety, or at least a possible imitation of it. Caplan drove quickly down the empty winding roads, casually assured at the wheel, talking more freely now that he was away from the hotel and its constricting pressures to socialise. She sensed he didn’t care for parties, that he preferred the company of one or two friends he could be honest with. He had a watchful gravity about him that might shade towards haughtiness; perhaps he was a bit like Darcy.

  Along the road the tops of old trees shivered and swayed. Looking up she picked out stars glinting from the vast blue-black sky, and felt a sudden leap of exhilaration within her. It didn’t matter that she was still drunk; she was seized by an almost electric feeling of her potential, not just of her inchoate talent as a writer but of what she knew to be her force of personality, that unsought gift of bending people to her will. As they drove up the interminable tree-lined avenue, tyres crunching over the gravel, she wondered how it would be to exercise this power on Caplan, who might be expecting her to make a move in any case. Wasn’t their chance reunion this evening an indication that fate had planned it for them? By the time he turned the jeep into the darkened forecourt and parked against a shadowing wall she was fully alive to the possibility. Robert need never know, she could hide it from him; but then hadn’t she already steeped herself in dissembling and lying? She had deceived Nancy, to her shame; she had deceived her father and the college just to enable this trip to Germany. She must not allow the convenience of lying to overwhelm her.

  Caplan had switched off the engine. He was looking across at her, perhaps in hope, she couldn’t tell.

  ‘You’ve been so nice to me,’ she said, leaning in to kiss his cheek. The chasteness of it felt u
nsatisfactory to her, and when he reached out to stop her drawing away and kissed her on the mouth she wasn’t surprised. The kiss, dry but prolonged, seemed intended as an overture to something else. The euphoric feeling of just before still lingered, and as he pulled her closer to him she was jolted by a wild spasm of sexual urgency. She could feel the powerful bunched musculature beneath his shirt, and the quickening of his breathing. Why shouldn’t they, after all? Caplan muttered something against her neck, which she didn’t properly hear.

  ‘I said, we could go somewhere.’

  She paused, agonised. Robert would be the easiest of all to dupe – and the easiest to hurt. Which made it imperative that she resisted the temptation. She wondered if thinking about him now, at this moment, rendered her a true romantic; wouldn’t a cynic just grab the opportunity when it came along? And yet she did want to grab it, she was right in the mood, and so was he.

  Caplan blinked, and angled his face downwards. ‘You’ve got someone – at home?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. And I’m not sure I can face lying to him.’

  He stared again at her, but she wouldn’t meet his eye in case it broke her resolve. It really was that fragile. The silence between them extended, until at last he gave an exasperated groan and shook his head. His tone, when he spoke, was wistful. ‘He’s a lucky guy.’

  She got back to Oxford the following afternoon, having stopped off in London for the night at Stephen’s flat. Now that the news of her delinquency was out she saw no reason to hurry. Her mother had been furious with her on the telephone, bemoaning her fright at the college’s enquiry coming out of the blue, and her subsequent mortification once it emerged that Freya had led them a dance. ‘How on earth did you think you’d get away with it?’ she asked, and Freya didn’t bother explaining that she almost had got away with it – if she had succeeded in meeting Jessica Vaux that first week in Nuremberg instead of chasing shadows she might have achieved her objective without anyone noticing her absence.

  At Somerville the ghost of dissipation hung about her rooms. Smeared glasses, loaded ashtrays and empty bottles indicated that Ginny had been entertaining, but there was no sign of her. She was probably out celebrating the end of her exams. On the mantelpiece Stephen’s portrait had been knocked askew. As she straightened it she thought of his disgusted scowl the last time they had spoken. She hadn’t said goodbye to him before leaving yesterday. Heaving her suitcase onto the bed she began to unpack, before it occurred to her that this might be a short-term stay. Wedged into a side pocket was her copy of Pavilions of Smoke, which she took out and opened to the title page. There, in a serene Edwardian hand, was an inscription: