Nancy, chin resting on her cupped hands, began, ‘You know, I never really did understand …’
‘Understand what?’
‘Why you ever left. I know how furious you were with him, and with the Envoy. I could see why you’d quit that. But the country? It felt so … out of proportion.’
Freya paused before answering. Her tongue had been loosened by the Martinis. She had already got away with it once; Nancy’s question was inviting her again. The confidential mood between them was so like it was in the old days. ‘I suppose – I don’t know – the real reason was that I couldn’t bear the fact you preferred him to me.’
Nancy, with a look of fond puzzlement, said, ‘But that doesn’t make sense! It wasn’t a matter of preferring one of you to the other. Robert was my boyfriend, and you were my best friend. Why would you make it a choice?’
She hadn’t understood. She couldn’t. And she never would, unless Freya chose to be direct with her. But how could she do so without the risk of scaring her off? At times she had wondered if Nancy had suspected – in a look, a glance – and then dismissed it. Impossible for her to guess something that Freya herself had barely come to understand after all these years. My God, she was sweating just to think about it.
‘Darling, you’ve gone awfully pale,’ said Nancy, leaning forward across the dinner table.
‘Have I?’ She was feeling a bit strange, come to think of it. ‘There wasn’t anything wrong with that fish, was there?’
‘I don’t think so. It tasted fine to me.’ Nancy came round the table and held her hand gently on Freya’s forehead. ‘Maybe you’ve had too much sun today.’
She nodded, and drank off the rest of her wine. The sun had been fierce, and with the car’s hood down the whole time … ‘I think I might have an early night. Sleep it off.’
‘Good idea. I’ll bring you a glass of water and an aspirin.’
But she didn’t drop off for ages, despite the astonishing quiet outside her bedroom window. She heard the distant hooting of an owl, but nothing else – no cars, no traffic of any kind, pierced the velvety black night. She switched on her bedside light and read a few pages of her book, which calmed her for a while. It had been a long day: a good one …
Next thing she knew she was waking groggily from sleep, the bedside light still on. Nancy, in shadow, was lifting the splayed book off the pillow.
‘Must have dozed off,’ she slurred. ‘What time is it?’
‘Just after midnight,’ Nancy whispered, holding up the book to squint at. ‘In a Summer Season. Is it good?’
‘Very. Though nothing to compare with The Hours and Times.’
Nancy laughed softly, and stroked Freya’s hair. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Not so wonderful. My stomach’s sending out distress signals.’
‘Could it be –?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. It’s been fine so far.’
Nancy, on the edge of the bed, got up to leave, but Freya said, ‘Would you – not go just yet? Is that OK?’
‘Of course. I’ll lie here next to you.’
She felt Nancy’s weight settle behind her, and then took her hand in hers to rest across her stomach. She thought, as she often did, of those raw mornings at Great James Street when they pressed themselves together in bed, for warmth. Her head was still buzzing with the things she had meant to say when they’d been talking downstairs. Another time. Another time.
She felt better in the morning, and opened the curtains to let in a flood of peachy sunlight. She couldn’t help marvelling at the stillness of the place. They weren’t far, she gathered, from the new motorway and yet all she could hear outside the window was birdsong. In the bathroom she examined her reflection and found some of the colour restored to her cheeks. She palpated the mound of her stomach, and found nothing amiss after the ominous roilings of last night.
Down in the kitchen Nancy was already dressed and making breakfast.
‘Morning! They really did know we were coming – there’s coffee and butter and everything. Would you like eggs?’
‘No thanks. Just a slice of that toast.’
They talked about what they might do with the morning. Freya was game for a walk despite her discomfort the day before, and in a drawer Nancy had found maps of the neighbourhood. On the drive from Oxford they’d seen one or two decent-looking pubs they might stop at.
‘You’re sure you feel up to it?’ Nancy asked, searching Freya’s face.
‘Of course. I’m only pregnant, you know – not crippled.’
An hour later she was dressed and ready, while Nancy outlined the route they’d be taking. Nothing too strenuous, she said, and had pointed out a village on the map, towards which they’d be walking. Freya nodded, not really taking any notice. She had only ever lived in big cities, and while she liked the idea of the countryside she had no feel for the country. If she wanted to go somewhere she’d get a bus, or a train, or drive.
The sight of Nancy with walking boots and rucksack made her determined to muck in, however. The sun was out again, though it was relieved this morning by a fresh little breeze. Their stride soon hit a rhythm, and she found the roll of the hills calling her onwards. The ground had a dry, tussocky feel underfoot, and when they passed by woods she could hear the branches creak like leather. Nancy had insisted on her taking a thumb stick, which helped her gain a little purchase as she walked. Across the horizon woolly clouds bumbled, refusing to be hurried.
They had been out for half an hour when Nancy stopped and pointed upwards. Freya, lifting her gaze, at first saw only a faint dark flake, like a screw of charred paper rising from a bonfire. But then it resolved itself into something winged – a hawk, hovering, whirling, almost dancing. It seemed to juggle the air. As they stood there, Freya felt a sudden bolt of burning pain through her abdomen that almost doubled her over.
Nancy stooped at her side. ‘Darling, what’s the matter?’
At first it was too disabling even to speak. She felt herself gripping Nancy’s hand, waiting for it to pass. ‘I feel – like I’ve been – fucking stabbed – in the gut.’ When at last she raised herself upright again she said, ‘I think I might have to go back, Nance.’
‘Of course – we must,’ said Nancy immediately. ‘Do you think you’ll be able to walk?’
Freya nodded, though she knew they had no choice in the matter. Even without having to consult the map she sensed they were approximately nowhere. They hadn’t been near an actual road for twenty minutes. She took Nancy’s arm, like an invalid, as they began to retrace their steps. The stabbing inside kept on, like terrible period pains, causing her to stop and take deep breaths. Gently, Nancy asked if there was anything she could do, but Freya shook her head.
‘Just keep talking. Tell me about your new book.’
There was comfort in the feel of Nancy’s arm in hers, in being helped and guided. Nancy began to explain the novel she had started writing a few months ago, describing the characters, the setting, the outline of the plot which she hadn’t quite fixed yet. It was her first go at a historical novel, London society in the 1870s, and what did she think of that? Her voice was tender, reassuring; it would not panic, it would maintain its steady lilt even when her listener wanted to cry out against the agonising turmoil within. It would help her keep going – keep going.
When they came within sight of the cottage Nancy said, ‘Right, you can rest your bones on the couch while I call for a doctor.’
‘Oh no,’ said Freya, palm to her forehead in frantic dismay. ‘There’s no telephone here. I remember Dad telling me. They’ve got leather-tooled books and a wine cellar but no bloody phone!’
‘In that case,’ said Nancy, ‘I’ll have to borrow your car. There’s a village a few miles west – they’ll know of a doctor in the neighbourhood.’
They had settled that crisis when, at the very door to the cottage, Freya was overtaken by a new emergency. It came first as a warmth, then a trickling down he
r leg; she thought she had wet herself, but a glance at the crotch of her trousers told otherwise. The stain was spreading dark, and reddish.
‘Nance … what’s happening to me?’
She looked up to see Nancy’s face, dumbstruck, appalled.
‘Let’s get you inside,’ she said, sounding shaken, and Freya realised for sure what trouble she was in. She made it to the bathroom and rolled down her trousers. The V of her white knickers had crimsoned, and blood was dribbling down the inside of her leg. Nancy plucked a sanitary towel from her make-up bag and helped her onto the toilet seat. The molten pain inside her gut no longer seemed round in shape but elongated. She felt nauseous, and her stomach heaved once, twice, but only bile came up. And just as abruptly she was calm again, and had command of herself. She took the sanitary towel, and glancing up said, ‘Just try to find a doctor, will you.’
Nancy nodded, and kissed the top of her head. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
As Freya heard her hurry down the stairs she called out: ‘The keys to the car – I think they’re on the kitchen table.’
She wasn’t sure if Nancy had heard, but a minute or so later she heard the growl of the Morgan’s engine and a brief racking of the gears before she was off. Left alone, she felt the accelerated beating of her heart. What if the pain got so bad she couldn’t move? She felt sweat pricking on her face and brow, and wiped them with her sleeve. Blood, sweat, tears: every part of her was oozing something. Slowly, she stood up and turned to examine the lavatory bowl. The sides were streaked red; the water was a witchy stir of red and purplish black. She pulled the chain, and the bowl was nearly clean again. Standing up had made her dizzy, though, and she felt herself leaking again from between her legs – more freely now. The sanitary towel was a sodden mess, and she threw it in the bowl; the guest towels were pale, the colour of butter, but that couldn’t be helped. She grabbed one from the rail and her hands, slippery with blood, made a vivid imprint, like the dumb clue in a pulp crime novel.
The dreadful ache had started up again in her abdomen, and as she lowered herself onto the side of the bath she began to sob, such quiet and childish sobs that the sadness of them made her weep more openly. Something terrible was happening to her. Was there anything she could do to stop it? Perhaps if she held herself very still the flow of the blood might slow. But then another wave of nausea crashed through her, and she gasped out her distress. Sitting was no better than standing; she noticed that the bathroom floor was spattered with blood, already turning to brown on the pinkish carpet. She’d have to give the place a good scrub before they left. The floor, though … If she could lie down on the floor that would surely stop the bleeding. Gingerly she lowered herself onto the carpet, carefully folding the towel beneath her as a sponge. There, that was better, even if the pain hadn’t really abated.
She tilted her head back until it touched the carpet. She was staring up at the curved porcelain underside of the tub, a free-standing Victorian thing with wrought-iron feet. It was more soothing to look there than at her own underside. The pain was still shrieking away, and she remembered something Nat once told her, about his obsession with being beaten. He said it wasn’t the pain itself he enjoyed, that was awful; no one who shared his habit had ever admitted to relishing the violent impact of cane or crop. What he loved, what he craved, was the apprehension of pain, the threat of it. So too the warmth afterwards, and the sight of the marks on your arse. It had baffled her. How, she asked him, could he experience pleasure in anticipating something he knew would hurt him? He shrugged in his lordly way, and said, laughing, that there used to be an ointment for sale that deadened the skin: it was much sought after by masochists. But the pain, she repeated, how could he stand it? ‘Pain is merely the price demanded for the pleasure that precedes and follows it.’
She had distracted herself for a few minutes. If she’d known how to pray she would have done. (Nancy would know the right saint to petition; Catholics seemed to have one for every eventuality.) The hot tarry coil that had been elongating inside her: it was coming. An unholy tumult was swaying up to the boil, burning, burning through her innards and slithering out between her thighs in an unstoppable viscous rush. The last thing she remembered before blacking out was the strange sensation of emptying herself while lying down.
She woke to the sound of Nancy at the bathroom door with a man – the doctor? – and her smothered exclamation of dismay, ‘Oh! …’ Freya looked down to find herself bathed in blood, buckets of it, and still coming. She watched the doctor kneel down and take something that looked like a tiny pink doll from the floor; he wrapped it in the sopping bloody rag that had been a towel.
Nancy was kneeling at her side, holding her slippery hand between hers. Confusingly, she seemed to be covered in blood, too. Then Freya realised it must be her blood, getting everywhere.
‘Is it dead?’ she heard herself say in a broken voice.
Nancy’s face was close to hers. She was crying, taking deep gulps, unable to speak.
And so Freya knew it was.
32
She had ended up back at Oxford, almost back at Somerville, in a room at the Radcliffe Infirmary. The view from her window, over lines of uneven rooftops, was familiar from years ago, and she lost herself for minutes just gazing out at it. Lives were going on beneath those gables, behind those walls; whenever she saw a face at a distant window she would stare at it, fixedly, until it moved away.
It puzzled her that she should spend quite so much time crying for something she hadn’t even known she wanted. Before visiting hours she composed herself, which fooled most of them: she had never been one to ‘give way’ in public.
‘Just think – back in your own backyard, right next to the alma mater,’ Stephen had said brightly, looking from that same window a few hours earlier. He and Diana had come loaded with flowers, which she had no sooner put in vases than she broke down again. Her imagination refused such a beautiful sight.
Stephen, holding her as she hid her face, waited until her shoulders had stopped heaving, and said, ‘You really wanted chocolates instead, didn’t you?’
‘Stephen!’ cried Diana in sharp reproof, but Freya could laugh through her tears.
They could all laugh now, just about, with tragedy eluded by a whisker. It was fortunate that a local GP had been at the village pub Nancy had entered in such panic that Saturday afternoon. Fortunate, too, that he had a nippy motor hard by, and knew the quickest route to an emergency department. Freya had lost so much blood she was almost white by the time they arrived. Nancy told her, in a shocked undertone, that the bathroom had looked like ‘a murder scene’. She had continued bleeding all over the back seat of the doctor’s car while Nancy held her, shivering piteously beneath a blanket. Christ, she had never felt so cold! She remembered being carried from the car to a stretcher and then wheeled hurriedly down corridors, half listening to the babble of urgent voices: then a needle in her arm delivered her to sweet oblivion.
Nancy was there when she woke. She was at her bedside every day, having taken a room at a hotel nearby. It transpired that Freya had suffered a placental abruption, a complication of late pregnancy most commonly found in older women. The placenta would detach itself from the uterus to cause internal and then external bleeding. In most cases the foetus would be stillborn; sometimes a severe complication might be fatal to the mother also. They didn’t know why it had happened to her in particular, it wasn’t anything she’d done that had caused it; just a case of bad luck.
One evening, when Freya had woken from a doze, Nancy said, in a voice brittle with nerves, ‘Darling, there’s been something on my mind, and I want to ask you about it in case – well, in case you blame me in some way.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘It was that night of the party, at our place – I said the most dreadful thing.’
‘I don’t remember,’ she replied, though of course she did.
Nancy paused, and swallowed. ‘I said that yo
u always abandoned things, and people. And I indicated that I could tell you were going to –’
‘Oh yes,’ said Freya, jumping in to save her, ‘abort the baby. I prefer to put that down to your amazing intuition.’
‘It was horribly unfeeling of me. And I just hope I didn’t provoke you –’
‘Into going through with it? Of course not. Is that what you’ve been worrying about?’
She nodded, and Freya gave a sad little laugh. ‘Don’t. I mean it. I was in such a state at the time I hardly knew what I wanted. The thing that actually tipped it was Chrissie Effingham. Her death unnerved me, and what I intended to do – well, I just couldn’t any more.’
Nancy looked thoughtful. ‘I think Robert was quite shocked …’
‘Did he know her well?’
‘I think so. He meets a lot of people in that world.’
Freya waited for her to say more, but Nancy didn’t continue. She rose from her bed and took out from the cupboard a round tin. Inside it was a cake.
‘From my mother. Lemon sponge. Will you have some?’
She cut them each a slice. Nancy, her mouth full, offered an appreciative humming sound. ‘How was your mother?’
‘Strangely sympathetic – managed to refrain from mentioning her dashed hopes of being a grandmother.’
‘I should hope so,’ said Nancy.
‘As well as the cake, she brought Gerald.’
Nancy laughed. ‘I love the Lady Bracknell-ish way you say that name. What was he like?’
‘Oh, perfectly agreeable, had a small moustache, knows about sport and not much else – the doggishly loyal type, I suspect, which is probably what she wanted after Dad.’
She watched Nancy as she said this, wondering what sort of loyalty she got from Robert, who wasn’t that type of dog. There was danger in prying, though, and she feared putting her foot in it. She was picking crumbs off the bed when she said, casually, ‘What you were saying about Robert and “that world”. You must meet these people, too?’
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