Freya Read online

  For my fearless inquisitor Freya, who tracked me down!

  With my best regards,

  Jessica Vaux

  Nuremberg, June 1946

  She felt that ‘best regards’ was rather stiff, a bit prim – after all the talking and drinking they’d done had she not earned ‘with affection’, or even ‘love’? Perhaps the sensibility was Edwardian, too; the lady was not born of a demonstrative generation. She did like that ‘fearless inquisitor’, though.

  Down at the lodge she checked her pigeonhole, thinking there might be something from Robert. She had written to him while she was in Nuremberg and had heard nothing back, which was almost certainly due to the chaotic postal service. The only letter awaiting her was from the college principal, summoning her to an interview tomorrow morning.

  Restless, she left the lodge and walked down St Giles. Sunlight glinted off the dusty leaves of trees, and the air was muffled with the high sweetish scent of blossom. She knocked at Robert’s door in Balliol, without reply. On Broad Street she passed clusters of begowned students, grinning their relief at the end of schools. She thought of her first morning here alone, back in October, and wandered into the covered market as she had then: still the same smell of hanging meat and sawdust. Brown’s cafe was packed, but she found a table at Fuller’s on the Cornmarket. The end-of-term mood around the place, and her recent truancy in Germany, had a dislocating effect. She could find no purchase on Oxford’s cliquish insularity; there was at its centre something smug and unyielding that repelled her.

  She had been staring into the middle distance so intently that she failed to notice the figure ghosting up to her table.

  ‘My dear, look at you! I haven’t seen such expressive melancholy on a face since Falconetti’s Joan of Arc.’

  Freya smiled up at Nat Fane. ‘That’s funny, I was just trying to think of the very few things I’d miss about this place, and there you are.’

  ‘Madam, your servant,’ he replied, taking a seat. He was wearing a cornflower-blue summer suit, co-respondent shoes and a floppy bow tie of cream and brown. ‘But this alarms me – are you intending to quit our lovely groves?’

  ‘Perhaps. I may have no choice.’ She told him the story of her German adventure and its likely consequences. It sounded in her retelling hardly plausible. Nat listened with an expression of amusement and mingled envy, as though he wished he’d thought of doing it himself.

  ‘My word. Chivvying out Jessica Vaux – in Nuremberg! That’s a feather in your cap – an entire Apache headdress, one might say.’

  ‘Actually, I have you to thank, for introducing me to old Erskine that night. It was he who told me she was going to be there, and then I sort of pestered him to help me.’

  Nat squinted at her. ‘Do you really think he will?’

  ‘Well, I did – up until this moment,’ said Freya dubiously.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you’re right – it’s just, from what I know of Jimmy he’s quite a tricky character …’

  Takes one to know one, thought Freya. She wondered if Nat was deliberately trying to unsettle her. ‘Maybe I’ve been naive. I’ll find out soon enough.’

  Nat’s expression had changed. It was the appraising, foxy look he had fastened on her the first time they met. She stared back at him, frowning. ‘Is there something on your mind?’

  ‘There is always something on my mind,’ he said, raising his eyebrows. ‘Such a pity you were never inclined to the stage! Girls like you aren’t so common any more. You know, I’ve a strong intuition you will one day make someone properly unhappy.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ she replied. ‘Are you going to be in London for the summer?’

  ‘I am indeed. I’m putting on another play at a theatre in Hampstead. You must come along. But wait – the college won’t run you out of town, will they?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know. I think they’re pretty angry with me.’

  Nat’s face darkened. ‘Dear, dear Freya. What should we do without you?’

  ‘“Think, and die,”’ she said, and they both laughed.

  ‘Well, before we do that, you must come to the Union tonight – end-of-term bash. I’ll put your name on the list.’

  She wrinkled her nose in demur, but when he started to plead she shrugged her assent. It surprised her to realise that she might even matter to him.

  She was wearing one of the summer dresses that had not been crushed in the packing of her suitcase. The string of tiny pearls she fixed around her neck had once belonged to Stephen’s mother – her Jewish grandmother. It was the only bit of jewellery she owned of anything more than sentimental value. She put a packet of Chesterfields in her pocket and opened her medicine box. To arm herself with Benzedrine prior to stepping out for a night had become second nature. She wondered if they really were as addictive as Jessica had said; she was almost tempted to swallow a couple in defiance. But no – that was a promise she must keep.

  She could hear the noise from the party before she had even entered the Union. Upstairs she found herself in a dense current of people surging around the main bar. A jazz band was tootling through ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy’, hardly in the Benny Goodman class, but not bad. She spotted Nat at a table, entertaining his coterie of disciples. He was entwined with a girl of doll-like prettiness; they looked good together, but she could tell from the doll’s adoring glances that Nat wouldn’t suffer her for long. Freya thought of going over, and stopped herself. This afternoon he had begged her to come, and now they would probably not exchange a word. But she didn’t mind. Withdrawing into the crush she wandered around, until a friendly bespectacled face loomed in the distance, hailing her.

  ‘Freya! Haven’t seen you in ages.’ It was Charlie Tremayne, Robert’s friend, sweatily bedraggled from his exertions on the dance floor. She had forgotten he was a jazz nut.

  ‘Hullo. Rather good, aren’t they?’ she said, nodding in the band’s direction.

  ‘Smashing! I thought I was getting somewhere with a young lady a moment ago, but she’s disappeared.’ He pulled a comical woebegone face. If he weren’t so short she would have offered to dance with him herself. Instead, she straightened his tie which had been pulled wildly askew.

  ‘Have you seen Robert at all?’ she asked him. ‘I’ve been away.’

  Charlie hesitated a moment, then said, ‘Now and then. We don’t knock around much any more. To tell the truth, I was pretty fed up with the way he treated Nancy.’

  ‘You mean …’

  ‘Well, I think he played her along, and all the time he was seeing some other girl.’

  ‘Did Nancy tell you this?’

  ‘Some of it. She didn’t say who the girl was – if she even knew.’

  Freya swallowed hard. ‘Have you – any idea who she is?’

  Charlie shook his head. ‘I imagine he’ll bring her along here tonight. But surely you’ve heard all about it from Nancy?’

  ‘Like I said, I’ve been away …’

  He gave her a rueful look. ‘It was awkward, you know, with me being rather sweet on her. I stopped calling, once I realised there was no chance.’

  She squeezed his hand in sympathy. ‘I’m sorry, Charlie. You’d have been a good thing for Nancy, I’m sure.’

  ‘That makes me sound like medicine. I’m afraid we don’t fall for people because they’re “good for us”, do we? Attraction is just a thing that happens, like the weather. You can’t force yourself to feel something.’

  She only nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Charlie, oblivious to her guilty mood, suggested they have a drink. As they waited at the bar he said, ‘How did your exams go?’

  ‘They didn’t,’ she replied with a half-laugh.

  ‘Oh dear. You flunked them?’

  ‘No, no, I mean – I didn’t show up for them.’

  Charlie looked aghast. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a long story. Entirely my own fault. I’m due at the principal’s office, eight thirty tomorrow morning.’

&
nbsp; ‘Crikey. Bad luck. Last cigarette and a blindfold!’ He laughed, but then seemed to regret his levity. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean –’

  ‘It’s all right. They can do what they like.’

  He stared at her for a moment. ‘You know, if it were anyone else I’d worry for them. But you – you’re quite unafraid. I remember Robert saying as much the night we first met, at that party. “A real hard case” – that’s what he called you.’

  ‘Did he?’ The thought made her smile. Charlie handed her a gin, and they clinked glasses together.

  ‘Talk of the devil,’ he said, and she followed his eyeline across the room to where Robert had just appeared. After what they’d been talking about Freya didn’t relish the timing of this reunion: it would become apparent to Charlie that the girl Robert had been seeing behind Nancy’s back was herself. Too late, he was waving him forward in invitation. But as Robert approached through the press of bodies she became aware of someone, a girl, trailing in his wake; she was young, with blondish-brown hair and a delicately featured face. Robert’s half-embarrassed expression, and the girl’s proprietary closeness to him, conveyed the way things stood a split second before Freya grasped the inconceivable truth of it for herself. She felt her whole body go into a sudden tremble.

  ‘We were just talking about you,’ said Charlie, unaware of the awkwardness he had just initiated.

  ‘Really?’ said Robert, not catching Freya’s eye. It was impossible to go on without an introduction, and equally impossible that Robert would make one. Freya turned to the girl. ‘I don’t think we’ve met …’

  At that, Robert seemed to collect himself. ‘This is Cressida – my friends Charlie and Freya.’ Friends, then. The girl gave a twitch of a smile and nestled a little closer against Robert, who had taken on the unnatural expression of someone who had deliberately turned his face from a traffic accident.

  Freya said to the girl – Cressida – ‘Have you two known one another for long?’

  ‘Oh, no, just a few days.’

  Robert, aiming for safer ground, said to Freya, ‘I gather you’ve been away.’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Just a few days, as a matter of fact.’ The ironic echo could not be mistaken, though only Robert knew its meaning.

  ‘You missed schools, didn’t you?’ he said.

  ‘I was in Germany. I wrote to you. Did you not get my letter?’

  Robert shook his head. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were going?’

  She shrugged, and fixed him with a sceptical look. ‘Would it have made any difference?’

  Charlie had picked up the tension crackling between them, but showed no sign of guessing its cause. ‘Freya’s up before the beak first thing tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Which is why I hope you’ll excuse me. I’m going to have an early night,’ she said, swallowing the remainder of her gin. She was still trembling. She had to leave now or else risk having a fight. Her ‘goodnight’ was cursory, and directed mainly at Charlie.

  She was out of the building and onto the street, vituperative curses spilling mutely off her tongue. Of all the treacherous fuckers! After all the begging and cajoling he’d done, the bastard had just thrown her over. ‘Don’t make me regret this,’ she’d said to him that day, knowing that a showdown with Nancy would be unavoidable. This was how he repaid her. Oh, the cold-hearted, viperous fiend …

  Behind her she heard footsteps, close behind her, and she kept going. If the fiend tried to stop her, if he laid a finger on her, she would punch him so hard she’d break his jaw. She tensed as the footsteps caught up with hers, and felt her fist closing in readiness. He was going to get the fright of his life – She half turned, and a man walked past her, hurrying on. He wasn’t Robert; he wasn’t anyone. She stopped, and felt her own agitated breathing. Her jaw was clenched, her heart drumming fast, but there was nothing and nobody to vent herself against. The trace of something uncompleted, of a scene unplayed, lingered in her body hours later. Robert had not come after her. She was alone on the street.

  12

  The morning was overcast, and a fine drizzle was already spotting the pavement. Freya, in a daze of preoccupation, walked along Merton Street. People were passing by her on either side, but she didn’t look up. She had just been to see Leo Melvern at Corpus and was feeling rather winded from the interview. She had been told to apologise for her failure to attend schools, and though she had done so with due humility it was clear that Melvern meant to take her truancy as a personal affront. He did not invite her to sit down, and scowled in the manner of a petulant schoolboy as she confessed the deception she had played on Mrs Bedford. She had hardly got the story out before he launched himself into an indignant reproach of her behaviour, the like of which he had never encountered in his time as tutor – which must be all of about four minutes, Freya was minded to reply, but did not. He then widened his field of fire to include her character, which he deplored as arrogant, devious and unprincipled … She waited there, taking it, like a commuter standing calm on the edge of a platform while the express roars deafeningly past. When he had finished, his lip still curled, she said, in a neutral tone, ‘Will that be all?’ He flinched at that, as if from a blow. He narrowed his gaze, disbelieving. ‘My God, you’ve got some nerve.’ It was not admiringly spoken. She faced him, saying nothing, until he dismissed her.

  She was halfway along Merton Street when she looked up from her brooding and saw Jean Markham about to pass her. She called out her name, and Jean, with a curious veiled look, checked her step.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, unsmiling, and Freya only then realised that Jean had been intending to ignore her.

  ‘How are you?’ she said, making an effort at friendliness.

  ‘Fine,’ said Jean, flatly. ‘Not seen much of you this term. I gather you’ve been stepping out with that boy from Balliol – Robert.’

  ‘I was. Not any more.’

  ‘Oh. I supposed you were keen on him, I mean, after going behind Nancy’s back –’

  ‘It wasn’t quite like that.’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’ Jean couldn’t keep the distaste out of her voice. ‘I’d call it a strange way to behave to a friend, and I’m pretty sure Nancy thought so, too.’

  ‘What did she say when you spoke to her?’

  ‘Nothing against you. She’s too nice a girl to start mud-slinging – though I wouldn’t have blamed her if she had.’

  Freya had had enough of this. ‘Is there something wrong, Jean? I can’t help feeling I’ve offended you.’

  ‘Really? I’m surprised you’ve noticed. You’re so wrapped up in yourself it’s as though other people don’t exist. When we came up here the first thing you did was drop all of your school friends – you thought you were much too good for us, didn’t you, knocking about with Nat Fane and that set.’

  ‘What are you talking about? I barely know them. As for dropping my school friends, I don’t see how that’s possible – apart from you I don’t have any fucking friends from school. And to judge from the way you’re behaving I’m not sure I can count on you any more.’

  Jean was shaking her head. ‘I was your friend, until you decided to cut me off. Do you think I’m so stupid I didn’t notice? No – you’re too arrogant to care.’ It was as though Jean had been listening in on her recent interview with Melvern and picked up where he’d left off.

  ‘I’m sorry you feel that way,’ she said in a conciliatory voice. ‘I certainly didn’t mean to cut you off.’ She searched Jean’s face for some relenting twitch of forgiveness or understanding. There was none. They stared at one another for a few moments longer before Freya gave a little shrug and said goodbye.

  It confounded her to think she had offended Jean – stolid, impervious Jean with her loud voice and her barging confidence. But the contempt in her tone just then could not be doubted. Had she behaved badly? Freya had always thought of her own personality as something fierce and bright and unbending, perhaps ‘difficult’ in some degree, but essential
ly benign. Now the repeated accusation pressed her towards some unglimpsed reality: she was arrogant. It was true she had avoided Jean when it suited her. But she had never thought it had been noticed.

  Her step along the pavement – she had come to Magdalen Bridge – was tentative and chastened; she wasn’t sure she could take another rebuke in such quick succession. And the difference now was that this would really hurt her. When Nancy answered the knock on her door Freya met her enquiring look with a mixture of inhibition and defiance.

  ‘I hope you’re not going to send me away,’ she blurted. Nancy, hearing this self-abasement, pulled back the door in invitation, and she entered. She said ‘Please’ to the offer of tea, and not knowing where to stand or how to proceed she loitered around her bookcase. Its contents had become more interesting since the early days: the stiff parade of course textbooks had admitted intruders into their ranks, insolent orange-spined Penguins and contemporary novels that seemed to announce their owner’s free-thinking seriousness. Nancy herself seemed changed, more assured in her movement and the way she dressed. She was growing into a woman.

  As she handed Freya the tea Nancy said, ‘I thought I might see you at schools; then somebody said you weren’t there.’

  ‘I was still in Germany, on my mad mission …’

  ‘So did you find her?’

  Freya nodded. ‘She gave me an interview.’

  Nancy’s head jerked back in surprise. ‘That’s wonderful. You must – You’ll send it to the Chronicle?’