Joss, hands in pockets, leaning at her bedroom door, wanted to know why he hadn’t been asked to dinner at Nat Fane’s.
‘I really don’t know,’ replied Freya, doing her make-up before the dressing-table mirror. It was the truth, though she was secretly relieved the invitation was only for her; relations were still very brittle.
‘Bad manners, I’d say. It’s not like we’d invite him to dinner without his wife.’
Freya considered this. ‘I imagine Nat would rather like that. And Pandora won’t be there anyway this evening.’
‘What, has she left him?’
‘Not yet. Just the country. She’s doing a film in New York.’
Joss gave a mirthless laugh. ‘I see. He’s clearing the field so he can make a play for you.’
Freya didn’t flinch from the mirror. ‘I think not. We established our non-attraction to one another long ago, back in Oxford.’
‘Pretty rum, all the same. Maybe he’s got someone lined up for you – one of his attractive young friends from the theatre.’ He was still skittish about turning forty, and no assurances from her could help him.
‘I don’t think pimping’s his style either. Would it surprise you if Nat had just invited me for the pleasure of my company?’
Joss pulled a face. ‘Not really. Lucky him! The pleasure of your company seems to be at a premium these days.’ He caught the reflection of her face in the mirror for a moment; their eyes spoke to one another, and he slouched out of view.
She took the Tube from Holborn to South Kensington, and walked the five minutes to Nat’s place. She was wearing a black velvet cocktail dress that showed off her legs, and a rope of tiny pearls gleamed at her throat. Nat had come up in the world. An inheritance from a late aunt had enabled him and his wife (also from money) to buy a large flat on two floors in Onslow Square, its stuccoed pillars and black-and-white marbled entrance announcing their affluence. But she hadn’t expected the new plum-coloured Rolls-Royce parked in front.
‘Darling Freya,’ purred Nat, answering the door with his best alligator smile. His all-white suit was offset by an aquamarine silk shirt.
‘I see you’ve been shopping,’ she said, accepting his kiss and thumbing at the Roller.
He sniggered. ‘A little pricey even for me, dear. It’s Ossie’s.’
He led her down the hall into a long dining room where the guests were already at table. Two or three looked up expectantly at her. ‘Sorry, am I late?’ she said to Nat.
‘No, no. Jerry’s not here yet. It’s a point of honour that he must be the last to arrive – like the Queen.’
‘Yeah. He’s probably out photographing some guardsman’s cock,’ said Ossie Blackler, puffing on a black cheroot. His tone was flat, and charmless.
Nat, pulling a what-can-you-do-with-him? face at Freya, said, ‘Very well, let me perform some introductions …’
As well as Ossie she already knew Hetty Cavendish, who greeted her warmly. Seated next to her was a young actor, Roger Tarrant, whose chiselled features and almond-shaped eyes were almost cartoonishly beautiful. He was one of the leads in Nat’s new play, and wore the affable air of a man who expected nothing of his fellow diners but their unqualified admiration. Opposite them was a solemn, pale-faced girl named Gwen, the latest in Ossie’s rolling harem of playthings, and along the table a livelier girl named Martine, who Freya suspected was Nat’s plaything for the night. She also appeared to be doing most of the serving, in concert with the hired cook. There were two older people at the table, Felix Croker, the theatre impresario, and Edie Greenlaw, an actress with the languid magnificence of an ageing Cleopatra. Freya liked her expressive, heavy-lidded eyes and the queenly way she sipped at her cigarette, clamped in an ivory holder.
‘I fancy by your colour you’ve been abroad,’ said Nat, pouring her a glass of straw-coloured wine. ‘A touch of the Provençal sun, perhaps?’
‘Fiesole,’ she replied. ‘As a matter of fact I met someone at our hostess’s who was asking about you. Lambert Delavoy.’
‘Ah, Delavoy! I suppose his fat wife was there too?’
‘She’s not as fat as he is,’ said Freya, offering accuracy where gallantry was impossible – she had disliked both of them.
‘I dare say,’ Nat conceded. ‘Let us call her the lesser of two ovals.’
‘Is that a line from your play?’ asked Hetty with a smirk.
‘Not at all. I save all the best stuff for my guests – just like the wine.’
‘Delavoy is a fuck-pig,’ said Ossie, unable to compete with his host for wit and so twanging the air with an obscenity instead.
‘Ladies, Ossian, ladies,’ said Nat with weary tolerance. ‘Nothing they haven’t heard before,’ said Ossie, glaring around the table.
‘Who is this Delavoy person?’ asked Edie, from the other end.
‘A critic and journalist, dear,’ said Nat. ‘And an American, I’m afraid.’
Roger Tarrant said, with a sniff, ‘Wouldn’t you like to put ’em all up against a wall and shoot ’em?’
‘What, Americans?’
‘I mean journalists – smug bunch of –’
‘Errr, Roger,’ Nat interposed, ‘you’re evidently unaware that an esteemed member of the profession is sitting right next to you.’
‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ said Roger, smiling at Freya. ‘It’s just that I’m rather fed up with journos, sniping away. At least as actors we give something of ourselves.’
Freya stared at him. ‘Do you? I thought you just recited other people’s lines. Anyway, if all actors were stood against the wall and shot, that would be the end of acting. If all journalists were shot, that would be the end of democracy.’
‘Touché,’ Nat crowed, then said, in an effort at peacekeeping, ‘But of course you’re all creative in your different ways, be it modelling, or acting, or writing, or painting – we all make something –’
‘Apart from Felix,’ sneered Ossie.
‘I make money,’ protested Felix Croker, ‘and happen to keep half the West End theatres going at the same time. Or doesn’t that count?’
Edie, evidently pairing up each guest with a profession, turned to the hitherto silent Gwen. ‘And what line are you in, darling?’
The girl blinked and blushed. ‘Oh, I’m with Ossie,’ she mumbled.
‘Yes, I see that, but what do you do?’
Before she could reply Ossie said in his unillusioned tone, ‘Homework. She does homework.’
Freya had a sense of the whole table aghast, but Edie didn’t miss a beat. ‘Thank goodness it’s not a school night, then.’
Perceiving the need for a change of subject Nat said to Freya, ‘Your father’s got a show coming up, I see. I spotted him at the Café Royal a few months ago and kept my profile tilted just so in case he looked up and felt an overmastering urge to immortalise me in oil. I’m sorry to say he didn’t even glance in my direction.’
Freya said, ‘I could ask him for you.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly afford his prices myself,’ Nat replied. ‘I just thought he might one day conceive an interest in my phiz and decide to paint me, you know, for the nation.’
Freya couldn’t help laughing. ‘You should listen to yourself …’
‘But I do!’ he said. ‘Martine here was kind enough to read out a whole newspaper article about me the other day. It ended: “If Fane’s ego were not tethered with strong ropes it would rise and float away over the horizon.”’
‘He has the piece pinned above his bed,’ said Martine, adding hurriedly, ‘– so he tells me.’
But the mistake was out, and Nat, covering for it, said, ‘Martine’s not a bad artist herself. That little sketch you did of me –’
‘Oh, I’m just a student,’ she said to Freya. ‘Your father’s stuff is wonderful – those London park paintings …’
‘I’ll tell him,’ smiled Freya. ‘He’s very proud of those.’
Nat said, with decision, ‘I prefer the portraits, but then
I’m no nature lover. Countryside bores me. I see a hill as no more than an obstacle to be got round, and a stream as something that disgorges a trout for supper. As for a beach, what is one supposed to do with it?’
‘Comb it?’ said Freya.
Roger piped up, ‘Really, Nat, how can you of all people despise nature – it’s there in all that poetry and painting you love.’
‘Ça va sans dire. Art has been nature’s great beneficiary. By all means let Wordsworth have his daffs and Keats his mists and mellow fruitfulness. Constable must attend to his clouds and Turner to his storms. But the actuality of nature means little to me, and I do wonder if it meant much to Wordsworth beyond something to write poetry about.’
‘You should spend more time out of doors, darling.’
‘I don’t see the need,’ Nat shrugged. ‘I’ve never skimped on visual experience, it’s just that I prefer it in a gallery, or a theatre, or a cinema. The fluid movement of dancers on a stage seems to me more beautiful and mysterious than anything you might encounter in the Lake District. The only nature that moves my soul is human nature, and human form. The sweet curve of a woman’s mouth, the graceful slope of her neck, the twin domes of her –’
‘– arse,’ supplied Ossie, defiantly unlyrical.
‘I was thinking of higher things,’ said Nat, shaping an hourglass with his hands.
A distant knocking had sounded from the hall.
‘That’ll be Jerry,’ said Nat. ‘He’ll have a few things to say about the beauty of the human form.’
Freya had half expected Jerry Dicks to be plastered, but on being led into the dining room by Nat he seemed merely cheerful. His suit and tie were unrumpled, and a grin lit up his debauched clown’s face. A skinny roll-up poked from his fingers. He took the vacant seat between Edie and Freya. Asked to explain where he had been, Jerry blew out his cheeks and said, ‘I’ve been dashin’ about like a fart in a bubble bath.’ No more detail was forthcoming.
‘Have you two met?’ said Edie.
‘I interviewed him for the Envoy a few months ago,’ replied Freya.
‘Oh yes, I read that. Did you enjoy being in the newspaper, Jerry?’
Jerry picked a flake of tobacco from his teeth. ‘Couldn’t say. I didn’t see it.’
‘But surely you did,’ Edie pursued, ‘if only out of curiosity?’
Freya jumped in. ‘No, I can believe it. It was hard enough just getting him to agree to an interview in the first place.’
‘Unlike some people,’ said Martine, glancing at Nat.
‘I don’t like the papers,’ said Jerry. ‘They give me the wiffle-woffles.’
Edie and Freya exchanged looks of incomprehension. It was the sort of old phrase Jerry liked to trot out, as if he had just come from Collins’s music hall. Perhaps he had.
‘What on earth are you smoking, by the way?’ Edie asked, sniffing the air. ‘Smells like … old rope.’
‘No, that’s just Felix’s latest production.’
Jerry stared at his roll-up for a moment. ‘Kif. Cannabis resin. I smoked a lot of it when I was in Morocco.’
‘He gets it from his bumboys – among other things,’ said Ossie, leaning across the table to pluck the frail-looking cigarette from Jerry’s fingers. He took a long drag of it and held the smoke in his mouth before exhaling.
Hetty called down the table: ‘Would you like some poached salmon, Jerry?’
Jerry smiled and waggled his hand in refusal. He smoked and he drank – he didn’t eat.
‘What’s it like?’ asked Freya. In answer Ossie held it out for her to take.
‘You have to suck it right down to feel the benefit,’ he said.
‘Oo-er!’ giggled Felix. ‘Ossie’s off again.’
Hetty, watching intently, said to Freya, ‘Be careful. I had a few drags and went half mad on it.’
‘ ’Strue,’ said Ossie. ‘She tried to take her drawers off over her head. It’s – what-d’you-call-it – an hallucinogen.’
Freya drew on the limp stub and felt the bitter rubbery taste of the resin engulf her nose and mouth. She was determined not to cough, and didn’t until she felt the smoke billow hot and sour in her lungs. ‘Fuck,’ she gasped, which provoked Ossie’s humourless machine-gun laugh: ha ha ha ha ha ha. He pronounced each ha individually, without inflection.
‘I hadn’t envisaged my dining room being used as a drug den,’ said Nat archly. ‘The Sobranies I was going to offer now seem a little déclassé.’
Jerry had taken out his pouch and papers to roll another one. When Ossie whispered something to him it triggered one of his tubercular cackles. For a few minutes they talked in low voices to one another, ignoring the other guests. Freya got up to help Martine clear the plates. Nat’s hireling had made a summer pudding, which was carried off to the table, while the host lingered in the kitchen to consider a bottle of amber-coloured wine. Freya leaned over to take a look.
‘Château Filhot. A Sauternes, from 1904,’ said Nat, sniffing the cork. ‘You see the stuff I pour down their throats,’ he added wistfully.
‘I’m sure they’ll appreciate it,’ said Freya.
‘D’you think so? Jerry will swig it down like bootleg hooch. Ossie and that sweet cretin Roger will do the same. Felix will pretend to know but hasn’t a clue. That leaves the ladies: Edie I can’t tell, though at least like Felix her birth pre-dates the wine. Martine – no. Hetty drinks gin and Nescafé. And the schoolgirl drinks – milk? Which leaves us.’
He poured them each a glass, and took a sip, his eyes closed as if in prayer. He whistled softly: ‘Fifty years old and yet fresh as a breeze. I think it can be safely said that no one else in the world is drinking this wine at this moment.’
Freya had taken a sip, too, and felt embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, Nat – it’s delicious, but I’m no connoisseur, either.’
If Nat was disapppointed he hid it well. ‘Christ, it’s only a bottle of wine,’ he said, his tune abruptly changed. ‘Here’s how.’
They drank again, and she sensed him watching her over his glass. He was in an odd mood tonight, preoccupied, though his hosting could not be faulted. Did he perhaps miss Pandora? That was, she thought, unlikely. He lit a cigarette, picked up the bottle and guided her back into the dining room, where Jerry was entertaining them with another of his tall stories. The kif had made a bluish fog over the table, and Freya took a couple of long drags when her turn came round. Time seemed to thicken and slow. She found herself giggling at Jerry’s vaudevillian patter; egged on by Ossie and Hetty, he strung together a magical routine of jokes, impersonations, surreal flights of fancy, before topping them with a tale about being drunk and ill in a hotel bedroom where the wallpaper frightened him ‘horribly’. It was Poe, as narrated by Max Wall. Somehow he used his spindly body to act out the sinister whorls and curlicues of the wallpaper’s pattern while simultaneously describing his own befuddled self cowering beneath the blankets – by which point the whole company were crying tears of laughter.
Bottles kept arriving at the table, and emptying without notice. As the clock struck half past midnight a slow exodus began. Roger and Felix were the first to go, taking Martine with them. Ossie was slumped in his chair, eyes glazed like a doll’s. Gwen, with urgent whispers, got him to his feet.
‘How are you getting home?’ Edie asked them.
‘Motor’s outside,’ he mumbled, his dark hair stuck sweatily to his forehead.
Gwen looked in appeal to the others. ‘Could you help me out with him?’
Freya and Jerry, each with an arm around the shoulder, slow-walked Ossie out onto the pavement, Edie following behind. The Roller gleamed imperious under the street lamp. Gwen had optimistically opened the driver’s door, but Jerry, trying a few slaps across Ossie’s face, couldn’t rouse him. He said, ‘This one’s too pissed to go in the back seat.’
‘But how will we get home?’ wailed Gwen.
Edie, surprising them all, announced that she would drive them. She didn’t live far from O
ssie in Notting Hill, it turned out; she’d got merry without being paralytic, and she had at least stayed off the kif.
‘Are you sure about this?’ asked Freya.
‘I’ve been driving since I was twenty-one, darling,’ said Edie, briskly pulling on her gloves and climbing behind the wheel. They managed to shovel the near-insensible Ossie into the back with Gwen, who had turned in panic to Freya and said, ‘He’ll hit the roof if there’s a scratch on it.’ But Edie, warming to the role of chauffeur, had already started the engine and cried, ‘All set?’
The car pulled out, like a boat heaving massively into water, then – with an insolent toot of the horn – surged off into the blue-black night. Freya went back into the house with Jerry. She realised, on returning to the dining room, that some perceptual mischief was at work. The detritus of smeared glasses and loaded ashtrays and discarded plates were sprawled on the table like a still life gone wrong. Indeed the stillness of the room seemed quite arbitrary; some objects had detached themselves from their background and floated into her field of vision. She was very far from sober. As though in a dream she reached with both hands for a coffee pot, still warm, and keeping a close eye on it succeeded in tipping the vessel over an empty cup. From its spout poured something black and aromatic – why, she’d made herself a coffee! She asked Jerry, seated opposite, if he cared for a cup, and was rather glad when he declined. She didn’t trust herself to repeat the manoeuvre.
Jerry had just decanted half of a bottle of claret into two glasses, of which the first he quaffed down in one. He placed the second daintily in a waiting position while he got out his cigarettes and offered one to her. She smoked, happy to listen to Jerry running on about his time in Tangier and his first encounter with cannabis when he and Ossie were on holiday. He talked fondly, almost fraternally, about Ossie, and Freya, disinhibited by booze and kif, asked him whether there’d ever been anything more than friendship between them. Jerry was unruffled by the question and said that when they first knew one another he’d been physically attracted to Ossie and wondered for a while if the feeling might be reciprocated. The reality soon dawned that Ossie was the most ravenously heterosexual man he’d ever met (‘only two things he cares about – painting and fucking’) and also the least trustworthy; it wasn’t that he made a point of cheating on women, merely that he saw himself under no obligation to be faithful to them.
Freya Page 30