Freya Read online

  She reached into the corner and lifted out a squarish object wrapped in felt cloth. Untying the string she laid it on the bed; it was a framed head-and-shoulders oil of herself by Stephen, to mark her twenty-first. She stared at it for some moments, not yet reconciled to the bold and somewhat accusing gaze of the sitter. Is that how she appeared to him? He had got her dark eyebrows right, and the somewhat combative jawline, but the hair with its vivid flecks of red and gold seemed an extravagant touch too far. Secretly she’d hoped for something from Asprey.

  ‘Do you have a – oh, I say!’ cried Ginny, who had put her head round the door, and now craned forward for a closer inspection.

  ‘I’m not sure it really looks like me.’

  Ginny folded her arms and swivelled her large eyes between Freya and the painting in her hands. ‘Who’s “SW”?’ she asked, squinting at the artist’s initials.

  ‘My dad. It was his birthday present to me, a few weeks ago,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t sound all that pleased,’ Ginny said with a whinnying laugh, and Freya sensed her own ingratitude. ‘This bedroom’s too poky for it. Here, let’s show it some light.’ Plucking the picture out of Freya’s hands she reversed into the living room. She wandered around, holding it up at different heights. ‘You see, it could go here –’ she framed it against the wall dividing the windows – ‘but it’s still not getting the full benefit.’

  Freya, alarmed at such exposure, even by proxy, shook her head. ‘I don’t think so, not in the living room. It looks …’

  ‘What?’ said Ginny, puzzled.

  Well, it looked like swanking. ‘Let’s leave it for now,’ she said, propping it against the wall; she could sneak it back into her room later. Ginny, thrown off the scent, went over to her own trunk and took out a circular tin, which she placed on a little table by the fire.

  ‘Look what my mother packed,’ she said, wresting the lid off and lifting out a Madeira cake. It turned out that her mother ran some kind of typing school for young women in London, and one of her well-off clients had given it to her – a regular perk of the job. Ginny cut them a piece each.

  ‘It’s awfully good,’ said Freya, through a mouthful. ‘How on earth –?’

  ‘Black market, probably – oh blast, we really will have to get some crockery,’ she added, as the cake began to disintegrate in her hand. ‘And these tin mugs will have to go, too. They make the tea taste of –’

  ‘Petrol?’

  ‘Yes!’

  They spent another hour unpacking and putting the room in order. Ginny was reading History, though she cheerfully admitted that two years in the ATS had more or less destroyed her aptitude for study. (‘I could no more write an essay on the causes of the Thirty Years War than I could explain the internal workings of the combustion engine.’) Freya too felt the long hiatus of the war had unfitted her for scholarly concentration. She had done a good deal of reading while she was in the Wrens – she would have gone mad from boredom without books – but the habits of library-haunting and lecture-going seemed impossibly alien to her.

  She was still not certain why she had decided to come here. In the calm following the storm of lunch at Gennaro’s she had examined more rationally her theory about Stephen wanting her ‘out of the way’ and conceded that he had no such ulterior motive – though she didn’t speak to him for weeks all the same. She knew she ought to have written an apology to Diana by now. After being demobbed she spent the rest of the summer at her mother’s house near Finden, in Sussex. Attlee had brought Labour to power on a landslide in July, though, maddeningly, she had missed being able to vote by a matter of weeks. She turned down her mother’s offer of a birthday party, and asked only that the family should gather for a dinner on the August weekend she turned twenty-one. Her father came down from London with her brother, Rowan, who had been staying with friends before going up to Cambridge. If her father’s present to her was vexing, Rowan’s was severely practical: a huge salmon, caught on a fishing holiday in Scotland. It caused some puzzled laughter in the house. An eccentric boy, he alone perceived no glimmer of oddity in his gift. ‘At least he didn’t try to wrap it,’ said Freya to Stephen privately.

  This family reunion, the first since Christmas, was one in which Freya had invested much; too much. She still nurtured a secret hope that her parents’ estrangement was not irreparable, that the company of their own flesh and blood might somehow revitalise their stalled marriage. But the experience of the weekend showed it to be illusory. It wasn’t even that they argued, at least not in front of her. Cora, far from seeming abandoned, had taken to village life and talked happily of her neighbours. She treated Stephen with perfect civility, which he returned, a mutual show of good manners that baffled and depressed Freya. They might have been acquaintances meeting at a cocktail party. Only once did this social front wobble, when over dinner Rowan made an innocent but unmistakable allusion to Diana. (He would have been forewarned, she knew, but Rowan was no master of tact.) On passing her mother’s bedroom the evening Stephen returned to London she thought she had overheard sobbing.

  To break up the monotony she considered asking Nancy to stay. They had corresponded, or rather Nancy had written five long, newsy, somewhat breathless letters and Freya had replied, once, in what she felt was a more adult temper. It seemed to her that the girl wanted something more than a friend; she wanted a mentor. She sought her approval and advice, mostly about books. She would mention this or that novel she had just been reading, and was eager to know her friend’s opinion, immediately. Of course it was flattering to have someone look up to you, even consider you a kind of oracle, but also a little exhausting; Nancy had paid her the compliment of assuming her to be much better read than she was, and the burden of having to formulate an opinion of an author she knew nothing about put her on the back foot. When she did write back she concentrated on writers she felt able to enlarge upon (Waugh, Henry James, Maugham), and covered her ignorance of the rest with vague generalities on which she hoped she wouldn’t be challenged. It felt a bit like cramming for an exam. The prospect of Nancy coming down and seeking enlightenment at close quarters threatened to be tiresome, so she held off inviting her.

  Her potential as literary adviser proved irresistible, however, and one morning about a month before the Oxford term began she received a large packet addressed to her in Nancy’s responsible cursive. A covering letter explained that the enclosed manuscript comprised the first draft of a novel – The Distant Folds – she had written. She hadn’t yet shown it to anyone. Would it be an imposition on her to have a look? Freya felt the honour of being Nancy’s first reader. She had not had a protégée before. But she didn’t like being surprised by its arrival. She distinctly recalled asking her, just after they met, whether she had tried her hand at novel-writing, and Nancy replying that she hadn’t. It was inconceivable that she had started writing the thing after that conversation; these pages were quite clearly the product of many months – years? – of effort. So why had she not told her the truth when they had first broached the subject?

  And now here The Distant Folds lay, 161 pages of foolscap at the bottom of her trunk, their edges curled from prolonged inspection. At first she had put it aside, until curiosity got the better of her. She had read it straight through once, then reread it slowly, inserting comments, queries and possible improvements down the margins. She had thought of posting it back, with her revisions, but by then the new term was nearly upon them, so instead she decided to bring it with her to Oxford and return it to the author in person. That felt like the proper conduct of mentor–protégée relations, with its promising hint of condescension on one side and humble gratitude on the other.

  The next morning as she was getting dressed Freya heard a woman singing in the room above. By the time she had finished she heard the outer door being opened and the warbling started up again.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said to the singer, who was dressed in a housecoat and kneeling at the grate with a sweeping b
rush. She was fiftyish and on the short side, starved-looking, bespectacled, cheerful.

  ‘Oh, hullo, dear,’ she smiled, rising to her feet. ‘I’m your scout – Miles.’

  ‘Isn’t that a man’s name?’ said Freya.

  ‘Why, yes. Miles is my surname. Olive’s my first name.’

  ‘Then would you mind if I called you Olive? I’ve been in the Wrens for three years and I’m fed up with addressing people by surname.’

  Olive blinked uncertainly. ‘As you please, Miss –?’

  ‘Freya. So you’ll be cleaning our rooms? Ginny’s next door, and still asleep by the look of it.’

  ‘I would have made tea, but I couldn’t see any … cups.’

  Freya conceded that she would have to go out and buy a few things, crockery included. She decided to get started and threw on her coat, calling goodbye to Olive on her way out. Oxford was in sunshine, though the air was gripped by a bracing autumnal cold. Trees were waving farewell to their green and gold leaves. On the Woodstock Road cavalcades of students on bicycles flowed by, gowns flapping like crows’ wings. At the junction of Broad Street she stopped to let a drayhorse clop past. The serenity and steadiness of the town bemused her; after London and Plymouth it was odd to be on streets that bore no trace of bomb damage.

  She browsed in a bookshop opposite Trinity, eventually hunting down second-hand copies of Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity and C. S. Lewis’s The Allegory of Love. Her tutor had recommended both of them in a brusque letter anticipating her arrival at college. She strolled on. Turl Street she loved immediately for its high-walled, compact civility, the facades of Exeter and Jesus and Lincoln each seeming to nod to the other in acknowledgement of their likeness while maintaining their aloofness. Round the corner she entered a market, a stone-paved maze with a roof of glass and sawdust on the floor. The smell of a butcher’s stall bloomed sour in her nostrils. At a grocer’s she spent a week’s worth of coupons on a tiny packet of coffee and a twist of sugar. At a hosier’s a few doors along she dawdled before the window display, gazing covetously at a pair of cream silk pyjamas. Their price was equivalent to the funds she had to make last the whole term.

  She had retraced her steps up the Turl and back along Broad Street when an instinct prompted her to stop at Balliol. Its demeanour felt monastic, rarefied. She found herself mooching about the lodge and reading the noticeboard, as if in search of a message that personally concerned her. One notice announced the revival of a sonnet-writing competition, all entries to be admitted by the last Thursday of Michaelmas. A solemn concession – ‘Enjambement will be permitted between the eighth and ninth lines’ – made her snort with suppressed laughter.

  The arched walkway led out into a long garden quad around which young men in gowns and dark suits were sauntering. She was pretty certain about the number of the staircase. It had the sentry-eyed, forbidding look of a medieval tower, but she felt under no obligation to keep out. Ascending, she heard a low, discreet patter of male voices behind oak doors, that hum of intellectual life that had filled these rooms from time immemorial, its sound as even and concentrated as bees in a hive. Or perhaps it wasn’t intellectual. For all she knew they may have been talking about girls or the cost of laundry or next week’s football.

  She was staring from the window of an upper landing when the door to her right opened and a naked, steaming youth walked out. The towel with which he was absently drying his hair had obscured his vision for the moment, allowing her a flash of his long white torso, and the flat shield of muscle across his abdomen; the bath he had lately emerged from had shrunk his cock to a pinkish mushroom. His cheeks were steamed pinkish too, and became pinker once his eyes flicked up to meet hers.

  ‘God! What the hell –!’ He brought his towel down smartly to cover his nether quarters.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ said Freya, sounding very far from it.

  ‘What are you – this is a men’s college, you know.’ Flustered, he was wrapping the towel around his waist, conscious of the eyeful she had already had.

  ‘I know that. I’m just visiting.’

  He shook his head furiously. ‘Well, these are not visiting hours.’ Having made the towel secure he had put his hands on his hips, in a posture that aimed for landowner-to-trespasser outrage.

  Freya, scornful of pomposity, left a pause before she said, ‘Actually, I’m here because this was my dad’s college – and this, I believe, was his staircase.’

  The youth seemed to wilt before her matter-of-fact explanation. It is not within the command of many men to assert their dignity with only a towel for cover. In the brief stand-off between them she took a moment to consider him. He was lean and tall (though no taller than her); the face was soft-jawed and handsome, if undistinguished, and a great swatch of dark, almost black hair fell across his forehead. Unable to scare off the intruder, he had dropped his gaze, perhaps pondering his next move.

  ‘When was he, um, here? Your father …’ It was weak, but civil at least.

  ‘Just after the First War. He read History. I don’t think he enjoyed it much, but he did say I should look up his old rooms.’

  ‘I see.’ Something in his eyes had brightened as he looked at her. He had come alive to the situation. It was after all not a common occurrence to find an attractive girl waiting on the other side of your bathroom door. ‘Well, if you care to wait while I put some clothes on, I could show you around the place.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no need, thanks –’

  ‘No, no, it’d be my pleasure. Just wait there.’

  He bounded up the stairs, calling over his shoulder that he would be ‘down in a sec’. She watched his white naked back disappear from view and smiled to herself. What an introduction. She was still at the window as he returned. The dark tweed jacket and grey trousers had been hurriedly thrown on. He had brushed his hair into a parting, though his face was still ruddy from the bath.

  ‘That was quick,’ she said, giving him the once-over.

  ‘Oh, I don’t hang around,’ he said with a smirk. He was trying to be suave after his blustering start. ‘I’m Robert, by the way – Robert Cosway.’ He offered his hand, which she took.

  ‘Freya Wyley,’ she said, with a little tilt of her head.

  ‘Right, let us go then, you and I!’

  As they walked in step onto the quad she felt the full curiosity of his gaze on her. It was as though he had accidentally trapped an exotic bird which it now pleased him to parade in public.

  ‘So you’re reading English, then?’ she asked him.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because you just quoted “Prufrock”.’

  He frowned in arch demur. ‘Just because I can quote poetry doesn’t mean I’m studying English. I’ve got some range, you know.’

  ‘So what are you reading?’

  He smirked again. ‘Why don’t you try to guess?’

  Because I hardly care one way or the other, she thought. ‘That’s the hall over there, I suppose?’

  He followed her glance. ‘Ah – yes. Mm. And through here –’ He walked her through a cloister and pulled open a door. ‘We have, as you see, the library.’

  They looked about it for a few moments, and Freya began to suspect something. She decided to put it to the test.

  ‘And where’s the junior common room?’

  He stared at her for a moment. ‘I can show you.’ They proceeded around a curved gravel path and through another archway, emerging into a flagged enclosure. A heavy iron-studded door stood open, and he hesitated for a moment before stepping within. ‘Oh, sorry, this seems to be a fellows’ staircase.’

  She nodded pleasantly. ‘I take it you’re not reading Geography either.’

  He laughed, looking around in distraction. ‘Erm …’ He was no better a guide to the place than she was.

  ‘You’re a freshman, aren’t you? Why didn’t you say?’

  He looked embarrassed. ‘Sorry. I only arrived here yesterday.’ Humbled, he seemed much more
likeable.

  ‘Well, that makes two of us. I’m at Somerville.’ She cast a glance around the brooding ashlar walls. ‘It’s all very High Victorian here, isn’t it?’

  ‘I know. You half expect Ruskin or Walter Pater to be lurking around the next corner. Perhaps I should ask someone …’

  He made enquiry from a passing student, and they presently found their way there. Robert got them each a cup of tea from the buttery. It transpired he was studying PPE, having been a scholarship boy at Manchester Grammar School. He was the only child of parents who doted on him – ‘They’re quite elderly,’ he said, as though to justify their devotion. He asked about her own schooling, and she explained how she had deferred her place to join the Wrens. His eyes widened in astonishment as she briefly recounted her time in the Operations Room at Plymouth.

  ‘Must have been tough work.’

  ‘Yes, it was. But we had wonderful times, too. Lots to eat and drink, sports, silly games. And the dashing officers, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ he echoed, in a drawl. ‘I suppose Oxford will seem rather sedate in comparison.’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s certainly a change. But I have a few friends here …’

  His gaze sharpened. ‘Female friends?’

  She laughed at his eager expression. ‘Yes – actual women.’

  ‘It’s a mighty disadvantage of this place, I tell you, the chronic lack of bir— women. So far I’ve seen nothing but vicars’ wives or bluestockings in inch-thick specs.’ He abruptly checked himself with a glance. ‘Present company excepted, I mean. But really it’s too bad. Someone told me men outnumber women here six to one.’

  ‘Mm,’ said Freya. ‘That seems to me a very promising ratio. I should be able to have my pick.’

  Robert stared gloomily into the distance. ‘Fine for you. I left school with high hopes I would –’ Again he checked himself. ‘I suppose the best thing for it would be to throw a party. D’you think you could rustle up a posse of girls?’