Pandy was Nat’s wife. He had married, seemingly on impulse, at Marylebone Register Office a year after coming down from Oxford. The first time Freya had met her was at their wedding reception, though she already knew her by repute. Pandora Fairhurst-Dunnett, to give her full name, was, at twenty-one, a fixture on the West End stage. She had been playing Juliet when Nat was struggling in the Tybalt role, and the critical swooning over her performance was in stark contrast to his own treatment. Freya wondered at the time if he had married her in unconscious revenge; aside from her beauty, there was very little about the lady that she could imagine captivating restless, intellectual Nat. In the years since, Freya had never heard her say a word of the remotest interest to anyone about anything. Pandora’s star had continued to rise as Nat’s stalled. But tonight she could tell he was in a good mood; his attentiveness had taken on a dallying note.
‘I espied Nancy earlier,’ he said. ‘Bowered in domestic bliss?’
‘We’re still living together, if that’s what you mean,’ she replied.
He paused, narrowing his eyes. ‘They can’t prise you two apart, can they? It’s always Freya and Nancy, Nancy and Freya …’
‘We both have chaps, you know,’ she said.
‘Of course you do,’ he said airily. ‘But I could tell them – they don’t stand a chance. With either of you.’
‘You’re being rather mischievous, Nat. We get along well, Nancy and I, but it’s not like we’re the Ladies of Llangollen. We’re not inseparable.’
His look was veiled, measuring. ‘So you won’t mind coming to dinner solo? No offence to your darling housemate, or your “chap.”’
‘None taken,’ she replied. ‘I’ll come however you like.’
She walked briskly home through Covent Garden and up Kingsway. The mullion-windowed pubs were preparing last orders; a memory of winter chill lingered on the March night. She was pondering her encounter with Nat, and the strange course their friendship had taken. The bizarre night of racket-swishing that had begun their intimacy all those years ago had never been repeated. Though Nat made unembarrassed reference to the occasion, it was understood he would not try an approach again, and she had never invited one. All the same, she sensed that his sexual curiosity about her remained an itch, and that his marriage would perhaps be no obstacle to giving it a good scratch. For her part she warmed to him in every aspect but the physical; while good-looking in his foppish way, there was something feline and self-admiring in him that repulsed her. Nat would always be his own most ardent suitor.
She let herself in. She found a tin of Heinz tomato soup in the kitchen and lit the gas ring; while she stirred it she read a report in The Times about Soviet agents continuing to infiltrate Whitehall. The mood there was still nervous after Burgess and Maclean. She carried the soup through to the living room and ate it with some cheese crackers. Her interview at the Envoy was scheduled for tomorrow. In her bedroom she pulled open the wardrobe and considered the queue of dresses and skirts and blouses packed within. She had one or two smart things she could wear. She took from its wooden hanger a black woollen jacket, cut stylishly close, a gift from her stepmother, Diana. She modelled it in the cheval mirror. Her face looked searchingly back at her. The frown that had once smacked of wilfulness now came more slowly, and sadly.
With her library book she went back into the living room. She kicked off her shoes and lay on the couch, sipping her gin. From downstairs came the rattle of the latchkey, and the murmur of voices. She suppressed a fleeting quiver of disappointment that Nancy had not returned alone. Here came their footsteps on the stairs, and she snatched up her book so as to convey the impression that her evening had been one of intellectual absorption. Nancy was first through, and in the seconds before she had spotted Freya over on the couch her face betrayed a strain of preoccupation. It vanished into her smile. Stewart followed after, favouring her with a little wave.
‘Evening. Nice dinner?’
Nancy nodded. ‘We went to Wheeler’s. I had lemon sole, Stewart had – what did you have?’
‘Oh, the whitebait. And the oysters. All highly agreeable,’ he said in his polite, undemonstrative voice.
‘Wheeler’s? Very smart. I had tinned soup and crackers.’
She saw Nancy giving her look, as if to say You should have joined us, though to judge from the subdued mood they had brought in with the cold Freya felt rather glad she hadn’t. She got up from the couch and fetched glasses from the kitchen. In a bright voice she said, ‘Guess who I ran into after you’d gone – Nat Fane.’
‘Really? How is he?’
‘Unchanged. They’ve just moved to South Ken, apparently.’
‘Fane – the fellow married to Pandora whatsit …?’ asked Stewart.
Nancy rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t ever let him hear you say that. He’d die if he thought people only knew him as the helpmeet of Pandora Fairhurst-Dunnett.’
‘True,’ agreed Freya. ‘I don’t think he had any inkling when he married her that she would become the leading partner.’
‘She was terribly good in Romeo and Juliet,’ said Stewart, adding, almost daringly, ‘Far better than him.’
Nancy clicked her tongue at this disloyalty. ‘She’s just a pretty little fawn, with feathers in her brain.’
Freya smiled at this rare instance of asperity from Nancy, and said, concedingly, ‘Stewart’s right, though. Nat’s the cleverest man I’ve ever met, but he’s not going to make it as an actor. Feather-brains, on the other hand, really has talent, proving –’
‘Proving what?’ asked Nancy, frowning.
‘I don’t know – that acting relies more on instinct than intelligence? Pandora’s rather a blank in person, but up onstage I believed in her completely.’
‘And the critics backed that up,’ said Stewart, seeming to take heart from Freya’s endorsement. ‘They loved her, and they hated him.’
‘The critics aren’t always right,’ said Nancy, who seemed to be taking this depreciation of Nat quite personally.
‘No,’ said Freya patiently, ‘only they were this time. Come on, Nance, you remember watching him in Romeo. Nat spoke his lines as though they were in quotation marks. He didn’t want to serve the play, he wanted to project himself.’
Nancy gave an irked shrug that withheld agreement, and the discussion appeared to be closed. Stewart was perched, awkwardly, at the opposite end of the couch from Freya, who now dragged herself upright from where she’d been lolling and invited him to sit down properly. He directed an uncertain look at Nancy, who, returning no more than a glance, indicated that he should not make himself comfortable. There was a definite ‘atmosphere’ between them now, and Freya, surprised by a pang of pity for Stewart, said, ‘I think we’ve got some beer in the kitchen, if you don’t want gin.’
But Stewart didn’t need to be warned twice. ‘Thanks, no,’ he said, rising. ‘I should be pushing off – I just wanted to see Nancy home safe.’
They said goodnight to one another, and Nancy followed him downstairs. Freya couldn’t help being curious to hear what was said between them as he left, but their voices at the door were muffled and indistinct. Some minutes later Nancy returned, her brow clouded and her mouth primmed up. Without saying a word she began tidying the room, picking up a discarded newspaper and a porcelain ashtray filled with crushed stubs. Freya let the silence linger for a minute or so.
‘Is everything all right, Nance?’
Nancy abandoned her sweeping and stood still. She was twisting the tiny gold cross at her throat, a giveaway sign of her inner agitation. She sat down in the easy chair and addressed a point in the middle distance.
‘Stewart and I shan’t be seeing one another again.’
Freya stared back, trying to gauge her mood. ‘I see. How did you break it to him?’
Nancy gave an unhappy half-laugh. ‘I didn’t. He broke it to me. Can you imagine? There I am, mouth full of lemon sole, and he jumps in with a line about “let’s part as friends”. I
t was all I could do not to look shocked.’
‘But isn’t that what you wanted? You said as much back at the gallery.’
‘Yes, I know. But it should have been me telling him. It’s humiliating. I asked him how long he’d been thinking about it – he said two months!’
Freya was puzzled. ‘So why did he take you out to dinner?’
‘Because he wanted to be a “gentleman” about it. And then walks me home, as though I’d be too upset to make it back alone.’
‘But, Nance … it sounds like you are upset.’
She answered with a sad lift of her eyes, saying nothing. Freya got up from the couch and knelt, resting her hands like a supplicant on Nancy’s knees. She raised her face to her, waiting it out, until Nancy, after some moments, returned her gaze. Something she had noticed had brought a gleam to her downcast expression.
‘Why are you wearing that posh jacket?’ she asked.
Freya had forgotten about it. ‘Oh, I was just trying it on. I’ve got that interview at the Envoy tomorrow.’
Nancy was running her eye over it, admiringly. ‘It looks very good on you. But not with that skirt?’
Freya admitted she hadn’t given any thought to the skirt. In a trance of preoccupation Nancy stood up and stepped purposefully out of the room. She returned a minute or so later carrying two skirts, one in each hand.
‘Green or black?’
Freya rose and took first one, then the other, to hold against her. Nancy watched with the appraising eye of a master couturier.
‘Perhaps the black is too much with your jacket – more for a funeral.’
Freya nodded. ‘And I prefer this green one anyway.’ Quickly discarding her own skirt she stepped into it, then walked through to her bedroom to consult the mirror. Nancy followed behind.
‘Oh, Nance, it’s so … chic! How clever of you.’
She smiled over her shoulder. ‘Remember the morning after VE Day?’
‘How could I forget? – you darting off like a frightened deer when Stephen walked in. You were such a modest girl.’
‘Well, I had just woken up half naked on his couch. I think I blushed the whole length of my body.’
Freya laughed at that. ‘I got together a few things for you to wear, d’you remember, and you really surprised me by choosing those slacks. I’ll always have that image of you crossing Wardour Street, with the ice creams in your hands.’
Her voice had become fond and faraway as she talked on, angling her body this way and that in the mirror. By the time she turned round Nancy had gone quiet again, her expression lost in melancholy.
‘Nance?’
Jolted from her reverie, Nancy said, after a pause, ‘It just set me thinking – that was nearly ten years ago. And what have I got to show for it? A badly paid job in publishing, a handful of rejected novels, and – as of this evening – single.’
Freya realised that this unhappy reckoning would feel the more acute in contrast to her own progress. But she would not let her brood. ‘You forgot to mention two significant pluses. You have a first-class degree from Oxford, which is something most of us will never get near.’ She stared at her until Nancy was compelled to acknowledge it, with a reluctant smile.
‘And the other?’
‘Why, you’ve got me for a housemate!’
And now there was nothing reluctant about her smile. Freya leaned in to give her a hug, and squeezed her until Nancy started to laugh.
15
A few weeks later Nancy was in the kitchen at Great James Street prodding a casserole. Freya was pouring gin fizzes for their guests in the living room. They were throwing a dinner in celebration of Freya’s new job at the Envoy. As she went round with the cocktail jug she wondered at the slightly odd mix of people she had invited. One of them, her brother Rowan, had not been anticipated; he had arrived early that afternoon from Cambridge, unannounced, and she didn’t have the heart to send him off to stay at Tite Street. Joss, of course, was there, so too Elspeth, her friend – and now former colleague – at Frame; Ginny Gordon, whom she had kept up with from Somerville days; Fosh – Arthur Fosh – a photographer she had got to know through work. And one more who hadn’t yet arrived.
‘If he doesn’t show up in the next five minutes we’ll have to start without him,’ Nancy said, ‘else it’ll be ruined.’ Her face was flushed from the heat of the pan.
‘Righto,’ said Freya, sloshing the gin fizz into Nancy’s glass.
The latecomer was the only guest about whom she felt a mild apprehension. She had last seen him on the day of her interview at the Envoy. Simon Standish, the editor, had been decent about not keeping her in suspense: the paper was eager to have her on board. Her remit on the ‘About Town’ page, he said, would encompass everything from film premieres and Fabian Society meetings to ballroom-dancing contests and WI bunfights. ‘We’d be looking for a light touch,’ said Standish. ‘Nothing to frighten the horses – or the housewives!’
‘I shall keep both readerships in mind,’ replied Freya, deciding not to react to his old-fashioned condescension.
‘Splendid, splendid,’ he cried. ‘Well, that should conclude business for now – unless you have any questions of your own?’
‘Just one,’ she said. ‘On the day I received your letter inviting me here I also got a bouquet of flowers – from this office. I was wondering whether you had sent them.’
Standish was frowning his puzzlement. ‘I’m not sure I know anything about – are you certain they came from here?’
She nodded. ‘The note was unsigned, but the letterhead was unmistakable.’
‘None of my doing, I’m afraid,’ he said, then added, grinning, ‘though it seems to have done the job as a recruiting tool!’
They briefly discussed the notice Freya would have to give to Frame – a month, maybe six weeks – and then shook hands. She was on her way to the office lifts when a voice called her name from across the room. Turning, she saw a face that took her a couple of seconds to identify: Robert Cosway, grinning from ear to ear.
‘Freya Wyley, as I live and breathe,’ he said, laughing, coming from around his desk towards her. He registered the surprise in her face. ‘God, have I changed that much?’
‘It must be the beard,’ she said, starting to smile, though he had changed, noticeably, in the five years since they had last seen one another. He was swarthier, and had put on some weight, though he carried it with a kind of swagger. The raw-boned youth she had known was gone. Robert was another who had got married straight after university and had moved – she had heard – to the South Coast. ‘I didn’t know you worked here – I didn’t even know you were in London.’
He held open his palms in an expressive way. ‘Started here a couple of months ago. Been working at the Hove Courier down in Brighton for a few years.’ The homely Mancunian accent had also disappeared, she noted; he could have passed for a southerner.
‘So you’ve moved up with – sorry, I can’t remember your wife’s name …’
‘Elaine. And it’s ex-wife. I’m back on my own.’
‘Oh,’ said Freya, measuringly, waiting for him to explain further. Instead he turned the focus back on her.
‘So all’s well with Standish,’ he said, eyes glancing at the office from which she’d just emerged. ‘I know he’s very pleased to have poached you.’
Freya heard something rather arch in his tone. Robert was smiling at her, and she began to wonder. ‘Would I be mistaken in thinking you sent me a bouquet of flowers a couple of weeks ago?’
His laughter indicated she had guessed right. ‘I wanted to be the first to offer my congratulations.’
‘But I don’t understand,’ she pursued, ‘why would you send them before I’d even got the job?’
‘Sorry, I couldn’t help myself, it was naughty of me,’ he conceded. ‘But I know Standish. He always gets his man. Or his woman.’
So they would be colleagues, she and Robert. She had heard news of him, now and then, in
the years since Oxford, and it surprised her to learn he was a journalist; with his degree in PPE and his vociferous opinions on social class he had seemed to her more likely to enter politics. When she asked him what he did at the Envoy he said that he had ‘a roving commission’ (not the only roving thing about him, was her unkind thought) though he had his sights fixed on the post of political correspondent; he knew a few MPs and liked the gossipy atmosphere at Westminster.
She had invited him to dinner to mark their fresh start, and also because she thought he might be lonely following his separation. Nancy had just served up the casserole when the doorbell went, and since she was on her feet she went down to answer it. She returned with the latecomer, who looked sheepish as he was introduced to the assembled; only Ginny, aside from the hosts, had met him before.
‘Sorry to have kept you,’ said Robert, seeing that everyone had started. ‘The office was just bedlam tonight.’
‘Bedlam, eh? Must be looking forward to that, Freya?’ said Joss, still a little piqued by her defection from the magazine.
‘I can’t imagine it will be any madder than it was at the Chronicle,’ she said, ‘and at least I won’t have to make the tea.’
‘Golly, this gin fizz is strong,’ said Elspeth, widening her eyes as she sipped her drink. ‘I can feel myself getting tipsy.’
‘There’s wine instead, if you like,’ said Freya, hurrying out to the kitchen and returning with the two bottles of claret that Joss had brought.
‘So, Robert,’ said Joss, working the corkscrew into the bottle, ‘you’ve known Freya since Oxford?’
‘Yes – and Nancy,’ he said, with a respectful glance to his left. ‘I dare say Freya has told you about the first time we met?’
‘I don’t think she has. Do go on,’ said Joss over Freya’s protests. Robert, not requiring much prompting, began to relate the story of his first morning at Balliol and the surprising encounter outside his staircase bathroom.
‘So there I am, stark naked, I look up to find this girl just staring at me, quite unembarrassed.’ Giggles had started up around the table.
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