Freya Read online

  With nothing else to do she traipsed over to a cafe on St Clement’s. The room was mutterish with conversation, punctuated by the hiss of steam from a giant tea urn behind the counter. She ordered coffee and a bun, which was stale. Students arrived in packs, their entrance bringing a whoosh of cold through the door. Looking about the place she seemed to be the only person sitting alone. How did people manage to acquire so many friends? She brooded on this while she smoked, absently aware of the cafe’s clientele coming and going around her. She didn’t bother to look up when someone asked if the seat next to her was vacant, only nodded – and then heard the same voice say, ‘Freya?’

  Nancy stood there, a thick scarf muffling her neck, her pale cheeks rouged from the cold, russet hair streaming from beneath a black woollen hat. She looked like a beautiful witch. Freya rose from the table, stunned, then winded by the force of Nancy’s hug. They gazed at one another, laughing their disbelief; Nancy’s eyes gleamed, even greener than Freya had remembered them.

  ‘What – what are you doing here?’

  ‘I just called at your room,’ said Freya, ‘and you weren’t in! I’ve been stooging around here for ages –’

  ‘Darling!’ Nancy cried, and with a little groan of longing embraced her again. The warmth of their reunion had attracted glances around the room – a neutral observer might have assumed these two young women hadn’t seen one another for five years, rather than five months. Nancy, detaching herself from the gaggle of friends with whom she had arrived, insisted that Freya return with her to college, as though they had not another minute to lose. Once outside, they crossed the busy confluence of the Cowley and Iffley Roads and turned into Cowley Place, arm in arm. Nancy did most of the talking on the way, and Freya sensed even in these early moments how she had grown in confidence since they’d last met.

  ‘You look very fetching in that hat,’ said Freya.

  Nancy beamed at her. ‘I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you.’

  ‘So why haven’t you called on me yet?’

  Nancy gave her a sidelong glance and seemed about to speak, but only shook her head. Her room at St Hilda’s was much smaller than Freya’s, with a bed, bookcase, desk and chair the only furniture. Nancy set about boiling a kettle while Freya inspected the photographs and knick-knacks arranged across the mantelpiece. Her attention was caught by a small devotional portrait of a bearded man, eyes lifted imploringly heavenwards and his head encircled by a fragile halo.

  ‘“St Francis de Sales”,’ she read from the inscription. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘A great man,’ said Nancy proudly. ‘The patron saint of writers.’

  ‘Ah, very apt for a writer – Sales.’

  ‘No, I think it’s pronounced – oh, I see, you’re being funny …’

  Freya shook her head. Some things hadn’t changed. Nancy, hiding her embarrassment with a giggle, went back to preparing the tea. With so much to say they couldn’t help being skittish around each other, starting to speak at the same time and then holding back (‘Sorry, you first –’ ‘No, you go!’). Freya, observing Nancy, privately reproached herself for delaying the reunion; she ought to have come round on the day she arrived, pride go hang. Intimations of something she had felt before in Nancy’s company were reawakening. It was an enlivening sense of being admired, perhaps even adored, and in consequence a desire to justify that admiration by becoming a cleverer and wiser person than she actually was. She supposed this striving for a better self was rather like being in love, though not having experienced the condition she couldn’t be sure.

  ‘I gather you’ve been knocking about with Jean Markham,’ she said, accepting a cup of tea.

  Nancy nodded, looking thoughtful. ‘Yes, a little. Though I get the impression Jean finds me rather tiresome – considers me, you know, a chit of a girl.’

  Freya laughed. ‘Well, I’ve been in the services and I find your chittishness perfectly charming.’

  ‘I suppose you’ve got heaps of friends at Somerville.’

  ‘Not really. One or two. Jean’s invited me to a reunion of Paulina girls I have no particular wish to see again. Have you met any nice young men yet?’

  Nancy blushed and shook her head. ‘There seem to be a lot of thirsty ex-servicemen roaming the place. I went into a pub where you could hardly move for them.’

  ‘Don’t you think this 11.15 curfew a bit of a bore? I find that the very point of the evening when things start to get interesting.’

  ‘I suppose so. But, in all honesty, it’s been quite a handy excuse when I need to get out of temptation’s way.’

  Freya hoisted her eyebrows and said in a suggestive croon, ‘I think I’m going to have to take you in hand, my dear.’

  Nancy’s mouth split into the crazily wide grin that had disarmed her the day they met. It was the most artless and lovable thing Freya had ever seen. But after a moment her expression changed, became quite solemn. ‘Actually, I was starting to wonder if I’d ever see you again,’ said Nancy.

  ‘What? Why on earth would you think that?’

  She paused before answering. ‘It was a mistake to send you my novel – I shouldn’t have been so hasty. I had an idea you were so embarrassed on reading it that you couldn’t bear to face me.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m the one to blame – I should have written to you as soon as I’d read it. But it was so near to term beginning that I thought I’d see you before I had a chance to write, and then –’

  ‘So you weren’t appalled by it?’

  ‘Of course not!’ said Freya, holding up her document wallet. ‘In fact I’ve brought it along, with a few notes I’ve written in the margins. Maybe I could –’

  ‘Oh, I’m so relieved,’ said Nancy. ‘I thought I’d driven you off forever.’

  Freya had taken out the manuscript of The Distant Folds and squared it up on her lap, pleased to be reminded that she was its first reader. The promise of the writing seemed to her self-evident, but she was wary of misleading its author. Better to dispense honest medicine than coddle her with useless flattery.

  She cleared her throat with barely a trace of self-importance. ‘The first thing to say is that the book, in its present state, is unpublishable.’

  Nancy blinked in surprise, and said, in a tentative way, ‘Well, I see that it would need some editing –’

  ‘No, no, more than that; I think it needs entirely restructuring. In this first draft it just sort of sprawls. There are too many characters, too many points of view crowding the story. Mark Fordyce, for example, doesn’t seem quite substantial, and what’s-her-name – Roland’s sister – is just dead weight. It needs sharper focus, and a single consciousness to hold it all together.’

  Nancy’s face had begun, by small degrees, to fall. ‘Fordyce was one of my favourite characters in the book.’

  Freya could hear the hurt in her muted tone; the honest medicine was not going down so well. She pressed on. ‘You must also learn to stop explaining every little thing. The reader needs some space to inhabit – you can’t just keep telling and telling in this breathless, impetuous way. Allow your reader to wonder, to question, instead of hectoring them with information. I think it comes down to trusting one’s characters; once you’ve got them on the stage, so to speak, you should let them tell and act the story for themselves. The writer should perform a kind of disappearing act. D’you see?’

  Nancy only nodded, without catching her eye. Freya sensed that her strictures were more baldly spoken than they needed to be, that she was perhaps too zealous in showing the path of artistic righteousness. But this would be important in toughening up a first-time writer. She continued a little more in this vein, riffling the pages of the manuscript as if they were the examination papers of a bright but wayward pupil. Just as she was about to conclude she spotted a note she had marked ‘NB’.

  ‘Oh, one other thing. You keep using the word “suddenly”. I counted it at least a dozen times in the first fifty pages. You have to stop – I
mean, nowhere is so terrifying and unpredictable as this. “Suddenly he spotted her … suddenly she realised … suddenly they came into view.” It creates a false sense of drama, d’you see? I’ve marked them on the manuscript, in any case.’

  She looked over to Nancy, who was staring into vacancy, preoccupied. Eventually she lifted her gaze to Freya, and said in a small, baffled voice, ‘Was there anything you liked about it?’

  Freya pulled in her chin. ‘Of course. I only thought you’d prefer my being honest about what needs changing.’

  ‘Yes. You have been very … honest.’

  ‘I’m beginning to sense that you’d rather I hadn’t.’

  Nancy looked into her lap and said, distantly, ‘I was prepared for criticism, but I didn’t imagine that “unpublishable” would be the first thing you’d say.’

  Freya clicked her tongue. ‘I know it may have sounded harsh, but I’m speaking to you as an editor, an adviser – someone who wants to help you.’

  ‘In that case I’d rather you had spoken as a friend. Then at least I mightn’t feel as though I’d written something incompetent.’

  ‘I didn’t say that –’

  ‘You didn’t have to.’

  ‘Nancy, listen to me, why would I have read it twice if I didn’t think there wasn’t something worthwhile there?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Nancy, shrugging; she picked up the manuscript and held it protectively against her. ‘What is it, I wonder, this “worthwhile” something? You haven’t said a single kind word about it, so it’s hard to tell.’

  Freya was taken aback by this combative tone. She had never suspected Nancy, meek, gentle Nancy, capable of such a tone, and for the first time she wondered if she had been quite tactful: the writerly ego was known to be a fragile mechanism, but it hadn’t occurred to her that it applied to youth as much as to maturity. Now she had to decide whether to praise and thus appear to capitulate, or to stand her ground and allow the offence to linger. The dilemma was taken out of her hands by Nancy’s announcing that she had ‘an appointment’ to keep – the excuse seemed the more insolent for its vagueness. She had stood up and presented a steady smile to her guest.

  Feeling somewhat diminished by this turnaround, Freya said, ‘I’m afraid something has gone amiss. Half an hour ago we seemed to be so – jolly.’

  Nancy had put on her coat, and with it a polite air of nonchalance. ‘It has been jolly,’ she said, still smiling, ‘and I’m very glad to see you again. But I really must go, I’m sorry.’

  She walked Freya out of her room and down onto the quad, keeping up a deflecting stream of pleasantries. She even asked after her father, to which Freya replied in a distracted way, hardly aware of what she said. At the entrance to a staircase Nancy stopped and indicated, with a regretful tilt of her head, that this was where they must part. She gave a little wave (their embrace at the cafe seemed a long time ago) and disappeared within.

  Freya walked on, slightly dazed by this abrupt ending to their reunion. She had an impression of being ‘managed’ that was both unfamiliar and disagreeable. Ought she to have used the soft pedal? But no, she wasn’t going to blame herself, she had offered her advice in good faith. It was Nancy’s lookout if she couldn’t take it. All the same, she had never imagined such cold self-possession in the girl. It had been a little humiliating, really. A lesson there, if she only knew what it was.

  5

  Freya was disgruntled. In the days following she brooded on the scene of her recent encounter with Nancy, dimly aware of her own mishandling of the occasion. She wished she could play it over again, perhaps by starting with a few positive comments about The Distant Folds before pitching in with the criticism. Or perhaps not. For her overriding feeling was not one of remorse; the honour she had felt in being the novel’s first reader was congealing into a resentment that she had ever been landed with it. Should a friend have put her under such a delicate obligation? And, having done so, turned huffy on being given an honest opinion? She reread the letter Nancy had enclosed with the manuscript and narrowed her eyes when she came to the line the only response I can imagine being hurt by is indifference. Huh! Not quite the only response, it would seem. She considered her alternatives: she must either bite her tongue and keep silent or else ‘have it out’ with her. Both prospects were vexing.

  In the end she decided to write to her. A letter would serve to clear the air without necessitating an outright apology. It was the grown-up thing to do. She rehearsed a few phrases in her head before beginning, but she would get only so far before a sentence took an adversarial tone and checked her flow:

  I do think you have taken needless offence –

  I do wonder if you are too thin-skinned to be a writer –

  I do feel you have wilfully misconstrued my words –

  Each time the page was clawed up into a ball and deposited in the waste-paper basket. She thought of something her mother had once told her when a difficult letter had to be written: ‘If you can’t think of what to say just write something truthful. And if you can’t make it truthful then write something kind.’

  Somerville, Ox. Nov, 1945

  Dearest Nancy,

  I’m so sorry about last Friday. What should have been an entirely happy occasion ended in a misunderstanding, and without ever intending to I caused you distress. I don’t want to revive an argument that would best be forgotten, so instead let me state for the record: You have all the makings of a true writer. St Francis de Sales, and I, and many others, are going to be proud of you.

  One more thing. My mum’s coming up for a visit Friday week and taking me to lunch – I thought you might like to meet her.

  With my love,

  Freya

  She felt rather proud of her mother as she took her on a little tour of the college. Cora Wyley was tall and slender as a mannequin, still striking in her mid-forties, even if her clothes bore signs of weathering; the soft tweed jacket and silk blouse pre-dated the war, and Freya had an inkling that she might have worn the jacket more recently to do the gardening. No threads of silver could be seen in her brown hair (she dyed it) and her eyebrows were so neatly arched they looked plucked. Even the tiny wrinkles that had formed around her eyes and mouth heightened her sad elegance. She let out little coos of appreciation as Freya conducted her around the chapel and the hall, but she sensed her mother’s relief on getting back into the open so she could have a cigarette.

  ‘Has your father been up yet?’ she asked as they made their way towards the lodge.

  Freya shook her head. ‘He wrote to say he would, maybe next term. He intends to bring Diana.’ She gave the name a tart emphasis.

  Cora said, in a level voice, ‘He wants you to like her.’

  She found this mild-mannered acceptance of Stephen’s new help-meet unfathomable. As one who had nursed a grievance against her mother’s controlling personality – it was she who had instigated her hateful education at Tipton – she imagined that Cora would put up more of a fight to keep her marriage together, and would have raged against Stephen’s taking up with someone else. But she seemed determined to put a glad face on the whole business. The college tour done, they were walking down the Woodstock Road towards St Giles. Freya thought she had better ask or else go mad from wondering.

  ‘Mum, why aren’t you more upset about him?’

  Cora gave her a sidelong look. ‘I was upset at the beginning, but what good would moping about it do? It was the war, and company was valued – people had to make temporary arrangements.’

  An alarm rang inside Freya’s head. She stopped on the pavement and looked at her mother, and wondered how it had never occurred to her. ‘Did you – have you – I mean …?’ She couldn’t bring herself to articulate it.

  A crooked smile tweaked her mother’s mouth. ‘You have to remember, I was alone, for a long time. Stephen was mostly in London getting up to who knows what, you were in Plymouth, and Rowan was either at school or – well, you know what he’s like. He�
�s not even there when he’s home, so to speak.’

  ‘So who was – is – he?’

  ‘It’s over now, and it was no one you know. Darling, don’t look so disapproving. D’you expect me to just retire from life?’

  ‘No, no – of course not. I only wish you’d told me. You should have been honest with me.’ She realised she had said the same thing to her father at the Lunch of Doom.

  ‘Oh, you and your honesty! Why does everything have to be so personal? Choosing not to tell isn’t being dishonest, my love. When your father first went off with someone, I didn’t know about it, and frankly it wouldn’t have helped if I had. The pain of being thrown over isn’t lessened by somebody confessing it …’

  Freya’s voice went very quiet. ‘Are you going to get a divorce?’

  ‘Well, Stephen has told me he wants to marry –’

  She came to a halt on seeing her daughter’s face averted, shoulders in a silent judder. She was right, thought Freya, leaning into her misery. Being honest didn’t always help, for there was no comfort in knowing this, the final evidence that her mother and father were parting irretrievably. She sobbed it out against Cora, her consoling murmurs briefly tautening the ache within.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do,’ she said, her voice gluey, not sure if she was asking or telling.

  Her mother, still holding her, sighed. ‘I’m afraid not, darling. But nothing else has changed – we’re still your parents, you’re still our marvellous girl.’

  Freya wasn’t used to being vulnerable in front of her mother. Cora had been a loving parent to her and Rowan, but she wasn’t soft. In the face of distress she was brusque and given to no-nonsense exhortations along the lines of ‘Buck up, dear’ and ‘Don’t be a ninny’. It had become a family joke. That she did not take recourse to those phrases now suggested to Freya how chastening this flood of emotion had been for her.