Welcome back to Blighty! The car is at 15a Wimpole Mews – you have Thos’s number already, I think.
Once you have your own telephone installed please call and arrange a time to drop by. The ‘bachelor rooms’ here will amuse you.
SO MUCH to catch up with – a lifetime may not be enough.
Love, Nat xxx
Back on the sofa she picked up the telephone, mentally girding herself. She had Nat’s number in front of her, could almost hear his voice purring down the line, My dear … She yawned, and replaced the receiver. She felt too tired.
She took up The Hours and Times once more, still running phantom candidates for the honour through her head. It would be a grave disappointment should F.W. turn out to be someone else. But she was trying to trick herself. She knew it could be no one else.
24
The offices of the Journal were on the ninth floor of a brutal glass-fronted block. From her desk Freya could see the sluggish grey-green ribbon of the Thames and a higgledy-piggledy assortment of warehouses on the opposite bank. They looked vulnerable to development, as most things made of brick were nowadays. She had just come from her first staff meeting, where the editor, Ivan Brock, had introduced her around the table. A handful of them she knew already, jobbing hacks who had ridden the Fleet Street merry-go-round for years; they exchanged nods ranging from friendly to the merely courteous. The only one whose eye she refused to meet was her old boss Simon Standish, who had upped sticks from the Envoy a few years back.
The tea lady had just delivered ‘the cup that cheers’ when Freya heard a familiar voice hail her across the room. It was her old friend Arthur Fosh.
‘Bloody hell! Freya – is it really you?’
Fosh was bulging a little under his corduroy suit, and his beard was flecked with silver, but otherwise he seemed in fine fettle. A certain incredulity tweaked the edge of his grin.
‘It’s been a while,’ she grinned.
‘Has it ever. My God, you just … vanished!’
‘Only to Italy. Eight years in Rome.’
‘Ah. Did you get that haircut on the Via del Corso?’
‘No. Upper Street – last week. Still snapping away?’
‘Busier than ever. The paper’s stepping up its pagination, which’ll mean more room for photographs.’
They bandied names of friends between them, trading reminiscences of old times. Fosh seemed in no hurry to move on, and grew expansive about ‘the game’. As they talked she felt his gaze become more appraising and speculative.
‘I suppose you had some hotshot Romeo out there?’
She laughed. ‘You know what those Italians are like.’
Fosh lifted his chin, acknowledging both the sentiment and her evasiveness. ‘I ran into Joss, you know, just after your birthday do … He was pretty sore.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘He said you’d been seeing Nat Fane behind his back.’
Freya sighed. ‘That’s not exactly how it was’ – as Joss well knew, she thought. Fosh’s expression had brightened with curiosity, but she was too aware of the earwigging opportunities around them. ‘I’ll tell you about it sometime,’ she offered in concession, and Fosh returned a knowing look.
‘By the way, d’you know much about Chrissie Effingham?’
‘Only what I read,’ said Fosh with a shrug. ‘Party girl. Hangs about the Corsair a lot.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Club in Mayfair. Quite a scene – actors, TV people, politicians. The odd pop star. Crawling with girls, you know.’ He gave her a wink as he turned to go. ‘You’d fit right in.’
He walked off, his arm raised in silent farewell.
Berwick Street had always been the tattiest thoroughfare, even by Soho’s low standards. But she liked its fruit and vegetable market, and finding herself nearby one afternoon she wandered over. The market had survived, only now it cowered in the shadow of a tower block that had wiped out the south-west end of the street. She was pretty certain that Hetty used to rent a flat in the row of old terraces, though she’d not visited her there, and now never could. She walked round the corner to the paved court where Jerry Dicks lived. Was that his door? She knocked on it, with no idea of what she would say if he answered. She lifted her gaze to the clouded sashes, wondering. There was no reply.
She walked back to the car. Only half doubting her father’s mumbo-jumbo, she had taken to walking a witch’s circle each time she left it, and hadn’t had a parking ticket since. She drove out of Soho’s bustling grid and, on a whim, crossed Regent Street into Mayfair. She had reversed into a space on Savile Row and was climbing out the car when she felt a weird sluggishness in her movement. Her slender frame suddenly required more of an effort to manoeuvre. It was inconceivable to her that she was putting on weight; even in Italy, where the temptations to eat were stronger, she had never had difficulty staying thin. Clothes she had worn ten years ago still fitted her. It must have been a trick of the mind – the new job had been tiring her.
Inside the hushed vestibule of Albany the hatted porter took her name and put the phone to his ear. Yes, Mr Fane was in residence. She had often gazed at the princely graciousness of the facade and wondered how it looked within. The porter conducted her along the covered rope-walk into a white-walled court, surrounded on all sides by manicured window boxes on grand Georgian sills. Red and white tulips leaned their heads forward, eavesdropping. A collegiate calm reigned; even their footsteps sounded muffled on the wide flagstones. Nat was waiting for her at the far end of the colonnade, the door to his ground-floor apartment ajar. She nodded her thanks to the porter, who tipped his hat and withdrew.
‘Well, it’s about time,’ said Nat, grinning. ‘I seem to recall your promise to visit three weeks ago – or was it four? I would have gone to look you up in Islington, had I known how to find the place.’
Having kissed her with the slow solemnity of a cardinal, he waved his arm in extravagant invitation, and she crossed the threshold. The living room was shaded and cool; through folded double doors she could see a second one, its mirror image, with another large fireplace in its marble surround. ‘They don’t call them flats,’ he continued, as though correcting her. ‘They’re known as sets.’ His walls displayed an eclectic array of artwork, landscapes jostling for attention with satirical prints and modish abstracts, while gleaming black-and-white photographs boasted of his wide-ranging theatrical acquaintance; pride of place, inevitably, went to an imposing portrait of himself, cross-legged and steeple-fingered in a director’s chair, staring right into the camera’s eye. They had reproduced this one a good deal when stories began to appear about The Hot Number, Nat’s first screenplay.
They sat at opposite ends of a red damask sofa and drank milk-less Earl Grey. Nat had retained his youthful air of nonchalance. He still dressed like someone who expected a photographer from Vogue to stop by at any moment. Today it was an expensive narrow-trousered suit of fine dogtooth check with a knitted navy tie. Freya had wondered if he’d be awkward with her after their odd coming-together (she couldn’t find a better word for it) that summer, but he treated her with the same feline mixture of affection and distance as always. She liked that about him. They were discussing his divorce from Pandora.
‘She’s an improbable creature, and so am I. It was success that did for us in the end – or at least the timing of it. When she was the cynosure of New York eight years ago I was still failing to write my first play. I resented her, I admit it. Once The Hot Number took off, Pandy soon sickened of the acclaim I got. My brilliance had quite alienated her! And being no longer the star du jour, well …’
‘I heard her on some radio drama the other night.’
Nat arched an eyebrow. ‘The case rests.’
‘Quite a nice place to be a gentleman bachelor,’ she mused, looking around the room. ‘Didn’t Byron live here?’
‘Among others. I do rather enjoy it. I have the whole town on my doorstep, and yet work in splendid isolation. Whe
never I’m in the throes of composition that dear old porter guards me against pests from Porlock. It probably encourages selfishness, but then, why pretend? – I am selfish.’
Freya said, ‘I see now my good fortune in being admitted.’
‘Don’t be absurd! You are one of very few I should welcome at any hour. How’s the car running?’
‘Like a dream. I offered a chap in management a lift somewhere the other week. His eyes almost popped out when he saw it was a Morgan. He was probably wondering how I could afford it – and I decided to keep him guessing.’
‘That’s the spirit.’ Nat cocked his head, and continued, in a changed tone. ‘By the way, I was talking about you to an old friend the other day. Hetty.’ There was a glint of a challenge as he said the name, but she met his gaze without fluster.
‘Funny you should say. I was just on Berwick Street, and noticed her old flat had gone. How is she?’
‘Living down in Brighton, with a couple of dogs she rescued from the pound. Still does a bit of modelling. She has a –’ he hesitated, with a wicked smirk – ‘boyfriend.’
Freya nodded, still holding his eye. ‘I also tried Jerry Dicks’s place round the corner. Is he still there?’
Nat shook his head. ‘Old Jerry’s fallen on evil days. He’s in and out of the sanatorium with his lungs. And there’s nothing to be done about his drinking.’
‘That’s very sad,’ she murmured, rising from the sofa and moving to the window, whose view beyond the military-trimmed privet hedge showed a vaulting parapet: his neighbour, the Royal Academy. ‘There are picture jobs I was hoping to get him for at the Journal.’
‘Afraid not. Jerry’s over as a photographer. The only glass he looks through now is a shot glass – darkly.’
Genius always paid for the gift; Freya remembered the Henry James line. She would have to rely on Fosh instead, a good sort and a genial companion; but he would never be half the photographer that Jerry Dicks was. She left the window and wandered the room, pausing at this or that picture. One, of a corrida, she had last seen on his wall at college. She felt Nat watching her, and presently she turned to him.
‘D’you happen to know a place called the Corsair?’
‘I was there with my agent last Friday. Why?’
‘Oh … I’m minded to write something about this new infatuation with youth – all of a sudden people seem to regard it as the most magical thing that’s ever happened. I gather Chrissie Effingham and her friends go there.’
Nat smiled knowingly. ‘Miss Effingham and I are acquainted. She’s going to feature on a slot I’m doing for Parade.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Late-night arts programme. On the BBC …?’ He squinted at her in lordly suspicion. ‘Do you even own a television?’
She made a comical grimace. ‘I have a Dansette.’
‘My dear, you’re positively antediluvian. “Telly” has to be your first port of call if you’re to write about youth. And of course there’s the extra attraction of it allowing you to gaze upon my lovely features.’
‘That does sound irresistible.’
‘Hmm. The boys have all gone mad about Chrissie Effingham. Quite the little sex-doll.’
‘Really? The girl I saw looked barely out of knee socks.’
Nat’s expression was wry. ‘She’s legal, by all accounts.’
‘Diana said she was seeing Roger Tarrant.’
Nat wrinkled his nose. ‘Long gone. I felt for the poor girl having to suffer Roger’s company. It’s one thing for a man to suppose that the world revolves around him –’ he made a modest pause – ‘but Roger believes the cosmos does too, and history, and the workings of destiny. I mean, he’s an actor, for pity’s sake.’
Freya laughed. ‘You were an actor once, Nat.’
‘“The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none,”’ he shrugged, lighting one of his plump Turkish cigarettes.
‘Chrissie, anyway …,’ Freya said, getting back on track.
‘Yes, indeed. Why don’t you come to the studio and watch the recording? I can introduce you.’
Nat got up and poured out more tea. He padded over to a console table where a tall pile of new books stood. He had just popped out to Hatchard’s this morning, he explained, and bought in bulk. After a quick glance over his shoulder at her he plucked one from the stack and wandered back to the sofa.
‘Seen this?’ He was holding up a copy of Nancy’s new novel.
She nodded coolly. She had finished it a week ago and was still puzzling over it to herself. Nat had paused, waiting for a reaction. When none came he lay back against the cushions and began leafing through it provocatively. After some moments he made a little show of noticing something and looked up.
‘For F.W. I wonder who that could be?’ He even scratched his chin.
Freya gave him a level stare. ‘Mysterious.’
Dropping the pretence, he gave a little chuckle. ‘Come, my dear. I’m only curious. Have you seen her at all?’
Freya shook her head. ‘Not once. But I’ve read all her books – including that one.’
‘I thought you would have,’ he said. ‘The Hours and Times. Interesting title. Does the story explain it?’
‘Not that I recall. Why?’
Nat looked rather pleased she didn’t know. ‘From the Sonnets. Being your slave, what should I do but tend / Upon the hours and times of your desire. Would that have a bearing upon its … themes?’
‘You’ll have to read it yourself.’
‘I intend to. Perhaps they’ll ask me to adapt it into another award-winning film.’
‘Congratulations on that, by the way. I forgot to say.’
‘Oh – you mean the small matter of my being the youngest writer in the Academy’s history to win Best Screenplay? Don’t mention it.’
He seized this moment to take her on a proud tour of his set and a peek at the award, glimmering on the chimneypiece in his study. Freya showed willing, but it was their previous conversation about The Hours and Times that occupied her thoughts – notably its protagonist, Stella, whose resistance to the stifling dreariness of life in a Thames Valley commuter town leads her first into indiscretion and thence into calamity. A thirtyish single woman, Stella presented a notably unappealing character for most of the narrative: wilful, abrasive, spoilt, demanding, extravagant, she nearly becomes the unwitting engine in a family’s doom. No reader could have liked her and yet, by the same token, none would ever forget her, so thrumming with life was the portrayal. Freya, bewitched and repelled by Stella’s awfulness, had pegged her as one of Nancy’s greatest creations when, towards the end of the book, she came across a line of dialogue: ‘Stella has at least one attraction, you know – that bold way of saying exactly what she’s thinking. Sometimes before she has even properly thought.’ The words hit Freya with the force of a slap. She knew that line; she had read it years before, almost word for word, in Nancy’s diary. Only then it was a comment about her, Freya, her best friend. She was stricken. That Stella, this odd, vexing, emotionally incontinent creature, could have sprung from somewhere other than Nancy’s imagination hadn’t occurred to her. But now the appalling suspicion took root that the woman was actually a version of herself. And the dedication, ‘For F.W.’, seemed to bear it out.
‘Am I boring you?’ said Nat with cool bemusement.
He had been lecturing about a portrait of someone or other. Freya looked up.
‘Miles away, sorry. You were saying –?’
‘No matter. Perhaps you were still thinking of your erstwhile friend – or her latest book?’
Nat was shrewd, as ever, but she didn’t quite fancy taking him into her confidence on this. It would make her look vulnerable – and potentially a bit of a fool if it proved she was mistaken. Instead she said, deflectingly, ‘Have you ever had a book dedicated to you?’
His expression turned martyred. ‘It grieves me to say I haven’t. I’ve dropped hints, which thus far my writer friends have c
hosen to ignore. But it’s a delicate business. Wilde, when he was in prison, learned that Alfred Douglas had dedicated a volume of poems to him, and was furious – said that Douglas ought first to have asked his permission. There’s gratitude. Mind you, knowing Bosie’s poems, Oscar was well within his rights to complain.’
‘For once I feel on Bosie’s side. A dedication is a kind of gift, isn’t it? You don’t seek permission, you just … bestow it.’
‘Or withhold it, in my case.’ There was a plaintive note beneath the drollery.
‘Nat, if ever I write a book, it’s yours.’
He stared at her. ‘Do you swear it?’
She laughed, which he seemed to regard as good as an oath. They continued with their inspection of his various memorabilia and objets d’art. The only moment of awkwardness arose when they came to his bedroom; she was aware of remembering what had happened the last time she had been in a bedroom of Nat’s, and from his look of amused complicity so was he. But the spectacle of the room itself provided a helpful diversion; its swagged velvet curtains, gilt mirrors, cream carpet and four-poster bed with scrolled headboard reduced her once more to fits of laughter.
‘It looks like something out of Versailles …’
‘My decorator’s bill suggested that may have been his previous job.’
The large mirror threw back their reflections. She saw again the faint violet crescents beneath her eyes: the barometer of fatigue. She needed to get some sleep.
They talked on for a little while. As she finally got up to leave she noticed a card on Nat’s mantelpiece, and a name she hadn’t encountered in years. A dinner in honour of James Erskine. She held it up for his attention.
‘Ah, yes. It’s the old boy’s eightieth birthday – or no, his eighty-fifth.’
‘Gosh. Remember that night he came to Oxford? I pestered him to help me place a piece about Jessica Vaux for the Chronicle.’
Nat raised an eyebrow. ‘Ambitious little cuss, weren’t you? I recall the evening principally for the taxi ride from the station. Jimmy, whom I’d known for all of ten minutes, put his hand on my knee and asked me if I was homosexual.’
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