‘Jessica Vaux is a rather grande dame these days. She’s probably not the type to put herself out for a journalist from Cherwell, with all due respect –’
‘I’m not intending it for Cherwell. I’ve bigger fish to fry. I met James Erskine at the Union last week –’
Stephen looked astounded. ‘Jimmy Erskine?’
‘He said he knew you, years ago – you wanted to paint him.’
‘Correction: he wanted me to paint him, and pestered me for months. But I managed to elude him.’
‘Why?’
‘I didn’t like the cut of his jib,’ he replied mildly. ‘But I did do a portrait of his friend László – d’you remember it? The face in the convex mirror?’
‘The froggy one – that was Jimmy’s friend?’
‘Now there was a lovely man. I wonder if he’s still around …’
‘Anyway,’ continued Freya, reverting to the matter at hand, ‘he promised to help me place it at the Chronicle.’
Stephen acknowledged the dig. ‘Well, that’s nice of him – but Erskine can promise what he pleases. Unlike me, he doesn’t have a personal interest in your safety or your education.’
‘You seem to think I’m still twelve, but I’ve actually served this country in a war, Dad.’
At this point Diana reappeared carrying a plate of sandwiches on a tray. Seeming to twig the unsettled vibration in the air she gave a little nervous laugh before saying, ‘Is everything all right?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Stephen wearily. ‘Just a small difference of opinion. Freya wants me to act as her liaison officer in Nuremberg while she interviews Jessica Vaux.’
Diana tilted her head inquisitively. ‘So Jessica Vaux is reporting on the trials? I remember reading her as a student – that story about –’
‘She’s there for the Tribune,’ Freya cut in. ‘I’ve always longed to meet her, and this would have been my chance. But I’ve been thwarted by the one person who could arrange it.’
‘Don’t be melodramatic. I take to heart my parental responsibilities, that’s all; you’ll understand when you have children of your own.’
Freya had to throttle back her temptation to laugh out her scorn: if he took his ‘responsibilities’ so seriously why had he left his wife and broken up the family? What hypocrisy! But she couldn’t bear a reprise of those hysterics – it was too exhausting, even for her.
‘Have you informed the lady herself about your plan?’ asked Diana. ‘Maybe she would help if you explained it to her.’
‘I wrote to her publishers about a week ago. I’ve heard nothing.’
Diana looked thoughtful. ‘Perhaps you should try her agent. Do you know who that is?’
Freya shook her head, noticing Stephen’s look of wounded surprise: Diana’s show of interest in the matter wasn’t lending much weight to his own authority. She picked up a sandwich and took a bite; Spam, as usual. The talk turned to other things. Diana wanted to hear about Oxford. Freya found herself staring at her open, ingenuous face. As for Stephen, he seemed happier than she’d seen him in years, despite today’s contretemps. Resignedly, she realised she might even learn to like the bloody woman.
Later, as the glum back elevations of Paddington’s terraces slid by the carriage window – she had caught an early-evening train back to Oxford – the fact of Stephen’s refusal to help jangled on her nerves. She knew it had been an ambitious plan. Her own inexperience, Jessica Vaux’s forbidding character, the unlikeliness of finding the time or the money to spend a week trailing her in Nuremberg – the obstacles to success were quite apparent. And yet the idea still inflamed her. It seemed unjust that she had spotted the potential of the story only to be thwarted by practical considerations.
On returning to college she found a note from Robert in her pigeonhole, asking to see her, ‘on a matter of urgency’. Her heart experienced a dismal moment of frustration as she guessed what it might be. When they met the next day at the Eagle and Child, he was seated on his own, smoking in the furtive way of a witness called to the station for questioning. He wore a brown checked jacket and an open-necked shirt, possibly in deference to her avowed dislike of his bow ties. He offered a cigarette, which she took and lit.
‘Is that a new case?’
Robert nodded, gazing at the cigarette case with a slightly sheepish air. ‘It’s from her,’ he said, unsmiling.
‘Nancy? Oh, Christ.’
‘Yeah. You should have seen the look on her face when she presented it to me. The hopefulness … I wanted to shoot myself.’
‘Shouldn’t you have refused it?’
Robert sighed, and opened the case again for her inspection. ‘I would have done, until I saw this.’ On the sprung metal band the initials R.C. had been lovingly engraved. ‘She said it was an early birthday present, so I couldn’t really give the thing back then, could I?’
Freya stared at the gift despairingly. She had wondered whether Nancy still held a torch for Robert, and now she knew: it burned all right. How hateful, how truly ghastly her behaviour would seem once it got out that she and Robert had already …
‘I was on the verge of telling her,’ he continued, as though reading her thoughts.
‘No, you mustn’t. If anyone’s going to it’s got to be me.’
‘“If”? I thought you were sick of us skulking behind her back. I’d rather hoped in any case that you’d do it, well, for me as much as for her.’ There was a faltering humility in his tone that took her by surprise; she did owe it to him. She reached out to take his hand.
‘I need to find the right moment, and I will,’ she said, searching his face for reassurance. ‘Please – please don’t make me regret doing it.’
He shook his head. ‘I won’t. But what about you? I thought you might still be sweet on Scotland the Brave.’ He gave the last three words a humorous Caledonian burr.
‘If you mean Alex – no. I’m not.’ She spoke with conviction, for she knew it would serve neither of them to admit that Alex had given her the brush-off.
‘Good – cos he doesn’t deserve you.’
She gave him a level look. ‘And you do?’
He nodded so boyishly she couldn’t help laughing. ‘We’d better drink to it. You and me, Freya – for keeps.’
She kept finding ways to defer a meeting. The obligation she felt to Nancy persisted, but her conscience was not robust enough to bring the matter to a head: there would be time, the right moment would present itself … Seeking delay, she busied herself by writing to Jessica Vaux’s literary agent in London, though the Nuremberg plan seemed to be up in smoke. She had overreached herself.
Conscious of avoiding Nancy, she had also kept her distance from Alex. On finishing her latest piece for Cherwell she was on her way to the offices to deliver it when she realised the likelihood of running into him. She dismounted from her bicycle and wheeled it along the pavement, lost in thought. After their last encounter in her rooms, coming face-to-face would be awkward. Or maybe it would only be awkward for him, taken by surprise at her unscheduled appearance. By the time she had nerved herself for this performance she had reached the Cherwell building, and felt she had no choice but to go through with it.
He wasn’t there. The girl sitting at Alex’s desk said she hadn’t seen him for a while, though she was welcome to leave a message. Freya, at once frustrated and relieved, said that that wouldn’t be necessary. She was about to hand over her copy when, on an afterthought, she took out her pen and wrote across the top of the first page, Just one of those things – Catullus. She didn’t quite understand what she meant by it, but she had a strange idea that he would.
Telephone calls to the porter’s lodge were accepted only in emergencies, so she felt a lurch in her chest as she picked up the receiver the following evening.
‘Freya?’ It was her father’s voice, though she heard no anxiety in his tone.
‘Dad – what’s happened?’
‘Nothing at all. Darling, I had to tell the porter
it was an emergency or he wouldn’t have sent for you. How are things?’
‘Fine – now that my heart’s stopped hammering. What’s so important?’
She heard a snuffling laugh at the other end. ‘I was wondering how far you’d got with your plan – if you’d heard from Jessica Vaux.’
‘No. She’s in Germany, and I don’t imagine her agent will be desperate to forward post from undergraduates.’ She kept her voice level, with the merest hint of reproach.
‘Ah. So you’re no longer interested in coming out to Nuremberg?’
‘Don’t joke about that.’
‘I’m not joking. I’ve got rooms at some villa just outside the city; it’s where the press are staying. The WAAC have made provision for an assistant. If the college will allow you to take the time off then all’s well. You’ll have to arrange your own flight – I can lend you the money if you haven’t got it.’
She felt her hands tremble as she held the receiver. ‘Oh, Dad, Dad …’ She heard herself laughing, exclaiming, the words falling out of her in a breathless gabble, really, honestly, she just didn’t know how to thank him …
‘It’s not me you should thank,’ Stephen said, ‘it’s Diana. She’s been on at me all week – quite as bad as you are, actually.’
‘Diana – why?’
‘Because that’s the sort of woman she is. She could have come out with me, but she insisted you go instead.’
‘Now I feel … bad,’ she said, hardly able to speak for happiness. ‘I’ll write and thank her, I promise.’
‘Yes, you should.’
But a sudden terror had seized her. ‘D’you think I can pull it off, really?’
‘What’s this? Last week it was “Nobel Prize or bust”!’
‘I know, I know, but – what if the whole thing’s a flop?’
Stephen laughed, but his voice was kind. ‘No use thinking like that. As the poet said, a man’s reach must exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?’
They talked for a while longer about practical arrangements, though she was too giddy to absorb much of it. Stephen was due to leave the day after tomorrow, so the next time they’d meet would be in Germany. When she rang off, she emerged from the telephone cubicle in the lodge and stood at the edge of the empty quadrangle, looking up at the sky’s darkening blue distances. An ordinary Oxford evening towards the end of May, and she scorned its tranquillity, its complacent calm. She felt she had stolen a march on the place, by knowing something it didn’t.
She had decided to keep it a secret; the fewer people who knew about her little venture abroad the smaller the chance of the college authorities getting wind of it. Almost a secret: there was one person she couldn’t resist telling. Hurrying over to St Hilda’s the next morning she darted about in search of Nancy. After getting no answer at her room Freya had a notion of where she must be – the swot! – and, remounting her bicycle, pedalled furiously in the direction of the Bodleian. She had just parked opposite Blackwell’s when she spotted Nancy’s tall figure, bag in hand, walking quickly along Catte Street. She called out her name, but Nancy gave no sign of having heard, veering off down Holywell Street. Freya decided to give chase on foot, and when she came within hailing distance called her again.
Nancy turned. She had a distant air that Freya had occasionally seen before. Her smile was the giveaway: so broad it would animate her whole face, today it seemed constrained, and the light in her eyes seemed more a matter of will than a reflex. Freya thought it might be tiredness – Nancy was the most hard-working of all her friends – which would require only the tonic of her own company to banish. They continued along the street.
‘Nance, I’ve got the most exciting thing to tell you.’ As she recounted her news she felt the contours of her plan take on a renewed brilliance. Even if it failed it would surely be marked for sheer imaginative endeavour: a tyro journalist travelling to Germany in search of the doyenne of twentieth-century war reportage.
‘That is exciting,’ said Nancy quietly. ‘I’m sure you’ll get front page on Cherwell.’
‘Oh, no, this isn’t for Cherwell. I’m going to try for the Chronicle – Erskine said he’d help me place it.’
Nancy stopped, puzzled. ‘And what does Alex think about that?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t told him.’
‘Ah.’ Something knowing in Nancy’s intonation of this syllable put Freya on guard. She glanced curiously at her friend.
‘You think I should tell him?’
Nancy shrugged, and resumed walking. ‘Alex gave you your first chance as a writer. He might be rather hurt to find out you’re aiming for Fleet Street.’
‘I don’t see why. I think I’ve repaid his faith in me. This story’s much too big for a student newspaper in any case.’ Nancy only nodded, and Freya felt some of the shine being knocked off her excitement. Was it so wrong to have ambition? She added, a little resentfully, ‘Well, if you think I should consult my conscience –’
Nancy, with a little snort of sarcasm, said, ‘That would make for lively hearing.’
‘What d’you mean?’ said Freya, feeling her heart go bump down the stairs. No reply was offered. ‘Nance, I’m not sure what –’
‘I know all about it,’ said Nancy with a catch in her throat. ‘Jean Markham told me, in case you’re wondering. Spotted you both in a pub. Of all the men you could have had – why him? You always spoke so slightingly about Robert, I sometimes imagined it was your way of diverting suspicion. But then I thought, Freya’s not like that, she’s my friend – she wouldn’t sneak behind my back –’
‘And I wouldn’t, I swear, it just happened. The whole thing took me by surprise – before I even had a chance to consider your feelings we were just … in it,’ she finished weakly. She dared a sideways glance at Nancy, expecting tearful distress, but her eyes were dry; all she could read in them was wounded pride. Nancy was standing close to the wall, distractedly poking a loose bit of brickwork with her shoe. When she next spoke there was more wonder than indignation in her tone:
‘You said something, a while ago, about Robert being untrustworthy as a romantic prospect. You were probably right. But it never occurred to me that you were the same. You’re the one who’s always judged others by their honesty – it was one of the first things that impressed me about you. It was almost frightening, that complete unforgiving certainty you had. But this … How can I ever believe you again?’
Freya, stung by the question, had to defend herself. ‘But you don’t want me to be honest! Look at what happened with your novel. When I dared to give you an honest view you took offence. Now, when I withhold something for fear of your being hurt, you tell me I’m not honest enough. You can’t have it both ways.’
Nancy shook her head, eyes half closed in disgust. ‘That’s balls. It’s one thing to hold back your opinion of a book – who cares, it’s just an opinion – but it’s quite another to conceal a fact, in this case the fact of your hopping into bed with a man you knew I was crazy about. You demand honesty of other people, but for some reason you think you can pick and choose when it’s demanded of you. The truth is – you’re a hypocrite. A wretched hypocrite.’
A colour had risen to her cheek as she spoke, and for a moment she looked shocked by her own vehemence. Freya, outflanked, belatedly snatched up a shield of injured rationality. ‘If I’d told you about it, what then? How would it have helped to know that he was in love with me and not you? I didn’t ruin anything between you and Robert – all I did –’
‘I know what you did. You allowed me to keep hoping, when you knew there was no hope. You made a fool out of me.’ Nancy gave an unhappy laugh. ‘I thought the one thing I could depend on, whatever else might happen, was your being a friend. But it looks like I’ve been deluding myself about that too.’
Freya, aghast, took a step towards her. ‘Nance, please – please don’t say things like that. If there’d been a way not to hurt you –’
‘There’s always a w
ay. You choose to hurt or you don’t. Just be honest with yourself, Freya.’
Nancy held her gaze for a moment, and started to walk away. Freya watched her back retreating along Holywell Street, head down, and with a heavy, almost swooning air of remorse she turned in the opposite direction. Well, she had known it would be bloody, once it came out, but that had exceeded her gloomiest imagining. She had underestimated Nancy once before, when she had criticised her novel. That was a chastening moment. But this was something far more serious, because it touched on the integrity of her character. Nancy’s appraisal had been very thorough: she was untrustworthy, she was sneaking, she was a wretched hypocrite. Be honest with yourself … She huffed in annoyance as she wheeled her bicycle back towards college. No one had ever spoken like that to her before. Or was it that she’d never really listened? Her habitual response to criticism was one of airy indifference, since it usually came from people not qualified to give it.
She was aware of owing something to Nancy. She had understood Freya instinctively, knew how to accommodate her moods, shared her enthusiasms, forgave her occasional brusqueness. They were real friends – best friends! Now she wondered if they’d both got it wrong: perhaps theirs was not a friendship so much as an infatuation between leader and acolyte. Something had broken between them. But completely – irrevocably?
Back at Somerville she stood irresolute in the lodge. By an unfortunate coincidence this was also the day she had been girding herself for a flagrant violation of honesty – a stupendous whopper indeed – but one that couldn’t be avoided if she was to pull off her plan. She’d realised that in applying for a week out of college it would be simple naivety to disclose the actual reason, so a fiction would have to be concocted in its place. The standard she had run up the pole for honesty was beginning to look pretty ragged.
It was the appointed hour. At her knock a voice invited her to enter, and there was Mrs Bedford, cosy and bespectacled at her hearth in a manner that made Freya think of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle.
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