Freya

by Anthony Quinn

  ‘Oh … Joan Dallington had a little party at Bury Street, mostly people from the gallery. She’s planning a show of war paintings – did I tell you? Home-front stuff. Asked me if I’d contribute a few things.’

  ‘The Blitz pictures?’

  ‘Yes, those. Plus the army portraits. And I dare say the Churchill picture, if they can get it back from the MoD.’

  ‘That’s thrilling,’ Freya said with a slow smile. Though he would never admit it, she knew her father was secretly quite proud of this last. The rumour went that the sitter had admired it, too. With this little upswing of friendliness between them she sensed it would be a moment to clear the air. ‘I felt rather miserable when I got back on Monday night and found the place empty. Mum said she might be up, and wasn’t – but I really thought you would be –’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said, in a chastened tone. ‘If you’d telephoned to say you were coming up …’

  ‘Why weren’t you here?’

  Stephen raised his eyebrows, as though to say it was none of her business, but he too seemed to catch the conciliatory mood. ‘I was out, as I said. I sometimes stay at the club, you know.’

  She stared at him hard for a few moments, and then nodded, acquiescent. She wanted to ask how things stood between him and her mother, but she knew that this would entail a much longer conversation, and the possibility of raised voices. For the present, with a guest in earshot, a truce held, and they would strive to maintain the illusion of family accord.

  She yawned, and took a sip of tea. How strange to contemplate such leisure! She had thought of her life as a line divided into two parts, with September 1939 as the caesura. There was ‘before the war’, and then everything that followed. But what about after the war? To wake up and know that you were not due at the Operations Room at 0800 hours, that you would not be doing another week of night shifts, that the CO would no longer be shooting sour looks in your direction. Impossible to take it in at once. She recalled now a conversation with Nancy from last night, when they were briefly serious, about the people close to them who had died, mere drops in an inconceivably vast ocean of loss and grieving. And what she wanted to know was: why had they survived when so many others had not? How had they come by such stupendous luck?

  The bathroom door had opened, and they heard tentative steps padding across the hall. Stephen, ever the gentleman, rose from the sofa at Nancy’s entrance and introduced himself.

  ‘It’s not the most comfortable couch, I’m afraid,’ he said with a rueful chuckle.

  ‘Oh, no, it was perfectly fine,’ said Nancy, still not quite catching his eye. ‘I really ought to have gone back to my digs –’

  ‘No you ought not,’ said Freya, and turned to her father. ‘It was two in the morning and we were absolutely whizzed.’

  Nancy had, to Freya’s surprise, chosen to wear the slacks, and looked quite fetching in them. The blouse was a tight fit across her chest. Her face, without make-up, had a fresh and vulnerable openness. Freya found herself staring at those wide green eyes, which prompted the girl to ask, uncertainly, ‘Is something the matter?’

  ‘No, no. Those trousers – they suit you.’

  Stephen said, ‘So, how did you meet?’

  ‘Jean Markham introduced us yesterday,’ said Freya.

  ‘Ah, Jean … the foghorn, yes?’ said Stephen.

  Freya stifled a snigger, and looked to Nancy. ‘Dad thinks all my school friends sound like sergeant majors. It’s the Paulina bray.’

  Nancy nodded, and said thoughtfully, ‘I suppose Jean’s voice does carry rather.’

  ‘I do beg your pardon,’ said Stephen, smiling. ‘That’s a much kinder way of putting it.’

  They drank more tea, and Stephen – at Nancy’s earnest prompting – talked about his time in the ARP. (She had seen his tin helmet hanging on the back of the bathroom door.) He had been at his busiest during the raids of 1940 and 1941, when London had been savagely ‘knocked about’. But then at least the engines of the German bombers gave them fair warning of what was coming. In recent months, air-raid precautions in London had been rendered useless by the V-2 rockets coming over from occupied Holland. Hitler had saved the worst till last.

  ‘They travelled faster than sound, so they made no noise. Sirens couldn’t help. You could do nothing to protect yourself. I heard one lady describe them as “bombs with slippers on”.’

  ‘You must have seen some awful things,’ said Nancy with a little shudder. ‘We only read about them in the paper.’

  ‘We didn’t get them as badly here as they did to the south, but it was bad enough –’ He stopped himself, and looked at Nancy. ‘People were brave. Quite amazingly brave. Thank heavens we won’t have to go through it any more.’

  Freya, feeling a sudden sharp pang of hunger, went to the kitchen, and returned with a downcast look. ‘There’s not a thing to eat.’

  ‘Sorry, I haven’t been here much,’ said Stephen. ‘Perhaps I could take you girls out to lunch instead.’

  Nancy, at a loss, looked to Freya, who saw her chance. ‘Can we go to Gennaro’s? Please?’

  Stephen laughed, turning to Nancy. ‘Her favourite place. It’s the ice cream. All right, I’ll see if I can reserve a table.’

  Freya let out a whoop of triumph. Before the war Gennaro’s was the place the family used to go to for a treat, either on her birthday or perhaps after one of Stephen’s exhibitions. Once the house was sold, however, and her mother moved them down to Sussex, the days of dining out faded away. When she joined the Wrens there was an occasional outing to a restaurant, but rationing usually meant that the food was poor and the drink in uncertain supply. Now her memories of Gennaro’s were of an Elysian bounty, tender veal escalopes, or great heaps of spaghetti carbonara, or a fragrant risotto. But they were merely what you ate before the main event, which was two ravishing globes of ice cream in a silver bowl, topped with a wafer and eaten with a slender long-handled spoon.

  She left her father talking to Nancy while she had a wash and dressed. In the mirror her face had managed to shed its blur of fatigue, and she spent a few moments plucking her eyebrows. Her father had left his shaving kit next to the basin, along with a bottle of Penhaligon’s and an unfamiliar wristwatch, a Rolex tank; its black leather strap had the glossy refulgence of crocodile skin. She fixed it around her wrist, holding it at different angles to admire. A beauty. It must have cost him a fortune! His work was obviously selling, even in these straitened times.

  She opened the bathroom cabinet and took out a bottle of Jicky. She squirted a little on her throat, inhaling its notes of vanilla and lavender – and instantly fell to thinking of her piano teacher, Madeleine, who had always worn the scent. Wasn’t it strange, the way smell could put you back in a place more evocatively than any other sense? She hadn’t really thought of it in years, yet just that whiff transported her back to the drawing room in Elm Park Gardens and her first faltering attempt at Chopin, Maddy next to her, tapping out the time. Where was she now? Long minutes passed before she woke up to herself. My God, you could drown in looking back if you weren’t careful; she replaced the bottle and closed the cabinet.

  Stephen said he had some errands to run, so he would meet them at the restaurant. After he had gone Freya enlisted Nancy’s help in taking down the blackout curtains in the two bedrooms. As they struggled with the dusty folds of dark serge drooping over their shoulders, Nancy said with a laugh, ‘It’s like getting lost inside a nun’s skirts.’

  ‘Not an experience I’m familiar with,’ said Freya archly. ‘Were they beastly to you at convent school?’

  ‘There were one or two it was best to avoid, but most of them were all right. And I’m grateful to Sister Philomena, and Mrs Eagle – they encouraged me to apply to Oxford.’

  ‘Mrs Eagle? On a wing and a prayer, then.’

  Nancy stopped, and smiled at her. ‘I’d never thought of – that’s so funny!’

  Freya shrugged, wondering why, if it was so funny,
she hadn’t actually laughed. When they’d first met yesterday she was worried that Nancy had no sense of humour at all. But after last night, when they had guffawed at almost everything, she had felt an enormous sense of relief: you couldn’t really be friends with someone if you didn’t make them laugh.

  ‘Your father’s awfully nice, isn’t he?’

  ‘I suppose he is. What did you talk about?’

  ‘Well, I started asking him about his work, but he insisted on talking about me and what I was going to do at Oxford. He said he had a wonderful time when he was there.’

  ‘Mm. From what I’ve heard he just got tight a lot and chased after girls.’

  Nancy let this priggishness go without comment. ‘I got the impression that – well, he’s rather keen that you should go, too.’

  Freya nodded. ‘It’s partly because he feels guilty about my early education. You see, my parents sent me and my brother to a very odd school called Tipton. It’s a “progressive” place where they let you do what you like, more or less. Pottery and drama and growing vegetables were the sort of things they encouraged, but if you were at all academic you were bored to sobs. I ran away a couple of times, actually, so my dad, who wasn’t crazy about the place either, persuaded Mum to take me out. When I turned fourteen I went to St Paul’s, though by that point I had a lot of catching up to do.’

  ‘And yet you still got a place at Oxford,’ said Nancy.

  ‘I’d already be there if war hadn’t got in the way.’

  ‘But, well, you’ve done your bit, do you not think you’ve earned it?’

  Freya was silent for a few moments. ‘I suppose I worry that Oxford might be a backward step, which I’ve vowed never to take. And can one really live anywhere but London?’

  Nancy’s face indicated that she had a reply to this, but she kept silent. Freya found this agreeable as a tribute from youth to experience. With the blackouts removed the studio was rinsed with lemony daylight; motes of dust swarmed at the windows. Nancy looked around at the high ceilings, and at the walls clustered with paintings and sketches.

  ‘It must be so glamorous, having a father who’s an artist.’

  Freya followed Nancy’s eyeline around the room. ‘Not really. It seems quite ordinary to me. Why, what does your father do?’

  Nancy gave a half-laugh. ‘He’s an insurance broker. Honestly, you don’t know what “ordinary” is.’

  Freya shrugged, conceding the point. ‘This is all I’ve known. Dad has always painted, and I don’t imagine he could do anything else.’

  ‘It must be wonderful to earn a living at something you love, though – don’t you think? To create something out of nothing …’ Her voice had gone dreamy.

  ‘Is that what you’re going to do?’

  Nancy’s expression became serious. ‘If I can. I want to be a writer. More than anything. I’ve wanted to since I was about six.’

  ‘Ah – hence the job in publishing.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s only a job. Writing’s a vocation. I just thought being surrounded by books all day would be an encouragement.’

  Freya made a doubtful moue. ‘It might put you off. You’d probably find out how little most writers earn.’

  Nancy smiled. ‘That doesn’t worry me. I’d write even if it meant having to starve.’

  Freya stared at her for a moment; it was the same tone of voice she had heard last night, when Nancy had talked about the end of the war. Her sense of conviction was amusing, and faintly alarming.

  She looked at the clock. ‘Come on, we’d best be on our way.’

  They walked north through the hung-over streets, which wore a bedraggled bank holiday air, the Union Jacks drooping from the windows like a drunkard’s shirt tails. They passed people still in a daze, their beds unvisited since the excitement of yesterday. On the King’s Road they chased down a number 19 bus as it slowed towards the junction of Sloane Square; Freya, with her long athlete’s stride, got to the platform first and, just as the bus gathered speed, she grasped Nancy’s outstretched hand and practically dragged her on board.

  The bus carried them through the red-brick blaze of Knightsbridge and thence into the circling hum of Hyde Park Corner.

  ‘So what sort of thing do you write?’ said Freya.

  ‘Oh, I’ve written a bit of poetry, but it was terrible rot. And I keep a diary.’

  ‘Every day?’

  She nodded. ‘But I really want to write a novel …’

  ‘You’ve had a try, then?’

  Nancy shook her head, looking slightly embarrassed. Eventually she said, ‘What about you? I saw there was a Graham Greene in the bathroom.’

  ‘I couldn’t write a novel. I remember as a girl wanting to be an archaeologist. That thrilling idea of digging things up that had been lost for centuries.’

  ‘What about now, though?’ Nancy pressed.

  ‘Well … I like the sound of “Foreign Correspondent”. You know, reporting on coups and uprisings from unstable republics. But of course a woman rarely gets the chance to do it. Have you ever read Jessica Vaux?’

  ‘I’ve heard of her.’

  ‘She’s remarkable. Enlisted as a nurse in the First War, went into journalism and became the youngest news reporter on Fleet Street. She wrote her first book about the Weimar – she predicted the rise of Hitler. She was in Paris up to the last days before the Germans marched in – they say she got out with just her typewriter and a suitcase.’

  ‘Crikey. She sounds intrepid.’

  ‘Mm – and she’s still hard at it.’

  They had reached Piccadilly. Stepping off the bus they entered Soho’s bustle of narrow streets, though the shops nowadays looked sorely understocked and bomb damage had torn open melancholy vistas of brick and glass not seen since Victorian days. At least the Italian grocer was still there, and the market traders cawing their prices from stalls on Berwick Street. The pubs, thrashed from yesterday’s festivities, looked shiftier than usual, and some had hung apologetic signs in the window, RUN OUT OF BEER.

  A surprise awaited her at Gennaro’s. Her father, seated at a table in the corner, was not alone. His companion was thirtyish, attractive, well dressed, chestnut-coloured hair done in the ‘Forces Favourite’ style of an American actress; she greeted them with a smile of dazzling affability that put Freya abruptly on guard. Stephen introduced her as Diana, and seemed quite at ease in doing so.

  ‘This is my daughter Freya, and her friend – um – Nancy! Diana works at the gallery with Joan,’ he explained.

  ‘How nice to meet you at last,’ said Diana, as though she had been longing for an introduction. She was nicely spoken, with a genial lightness in her tone. Freya kept shooting glances at the newcomer from beneath her brow. She felt relieved to hear that their connection was a professional one, though the woman’s casual manner wrong-footed her. Far from meeting ‘at last’, she conveyed in her friendliness a suggestion that they’d met on previous occasions, and enjoyed themselves thoroughly.

  ‘I hear you had quite a night of it, cigars and all,’ Diana said.

  Nancy pulled a mock grimace. ‘We agreed that the cigars were a mistake. How did you celebrate?’

  Diana cut an amused glance at Stephen. ‘We had a little party at the gallery, in Bury Street. Joan brought out a case of claret she’d been saving since the start of the war. Very good it was, too.’

  ‘Six years’ worth of hoarding gone in one night,’ said Stephen.

  Nancy, craning forward slightly to examine Diana’s slubbed silk jacket, said, ‘That’s a very smart suit you’re wearing. Is it handmade?’

  ‘Thank you, it is – though not for me. My sister had it made just before the war and grew out of it, so I was the beneficiary. I’ve patched it here and there since, but it’s still the best thing I own. I’m fed up with Make Do and Mend, aren’t you?’

  ‘Rather,’ agreed Nancy. ‘I wonder how long they’ll keep up clothing coupons. Actually, Freya and I took down some blackout curtains this morning
, and it occurred to me they might be just the thing for a winter coat!’ She looked for support from Freya, who offered only a tight smile.

  Stephen, who knew her moods, became more lively in compensation. ‘My suits are in a terrible state – the ones that haven’t worn through have shiny patches at the elbows and the seat. And my pyjamas are so threadbare they seem to have assumed the form of netting – really, they’re getting to the stage where they’ll barely cover my despair.’

  Nancy giggled at this witticism, and Diana said, ‘Your idea about the blackout curtains isn’t so unusual. A friend of mine recently had to go to a smart wedding, and had no coupons left. So she took down a velvet curtain and made herself a dress by tucking and pinning it. When the wedding was over she unpicked the thing and put it back up as a curtain.’

  ‘It would be nice,’ said Stephen, ‘to buy some decent clothes again. We’ve become rather a shabby-looking lot, I’m afraid.’

  Diana sighed. ‘Though I’ve heard that men have started wearing evening dress to the theatre again, like the old days.’

  ‘The condition my dinner jacket’s in I’m not sure they’d let me enter a theatre.’

  ‘Oh, Stephen, don’t exaggerate!’ said Diana. ‘You looked very debonair in it the other night.’

  Freya’s ears pricked up. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Oh, there was a reception in Whitehall for the War Artists’ Advisory Committee. I suppose the Churchill portrait got us in –’

  ‘You mean, you went together?’

  She noticed Diana look sharply at Stephen, who said, ‘Diana was my guest for the evening.’

  Freya left a cold measured pause before saying, ‘I see.’

  An awkwardness briefly settled over the table until Diana said brightly, ‘I don’t know about you but I’m starving. Shall we order?’

  Freya remained quiet throughout lunch, speaking only when obliged to and offering no assistance to the conversation. She hardly touched her spaghetti. It irritated her to see how Nancy had taken to Diana, and how charmingly Stephen behaved with both of them. She sensed her mood at odds with the others’ gaiety, but she could not break through her cloud of suspicion and resentment. After a while they seemed almost to ignore her, happy to entertain one another: Diana’s vivacious good humour, her father’s wry self-deprecation and Nancy’s eagerness to please formed a little circle of companionship she couldn’t breach.