Freya

by Anthony Quinn

  She fished the keys from her bag and put them on the windowsill. Nat had come to collect the Morgan. His accountant had been ‘doing the sums’, and it seemed he wasn’t quite so rich as he thought he was. Certain assets would have to be sacrificed, starting with two of his three cars.

  ‘Will you have to quit Albany?’ she asked.

  Nat raised his eyes heavenwards. ‘The accountant pushed for it, but I dug my heels in. My financial position hasn’t dropped to the Micawber line of indigence – yet.’

  ‘What about another screenplay?’

  ‘God spare me. Demeaning oneself before people who wouldn’t know good writing if it thwacked them smartly on the arse. Pardon the image. To be honest, I’d like a break from writing altogether.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘Nothing! Truly – I’m sure there’s an art to doing nothing. I simply need to find the gallery that will pay me for it.’

  Their voices echoed in the untenanted house. The floors had been stripped to the boards, and not a stick of furniture except a sofa and mattress had been carried in. They stood on the first-floor front overlooking the square. Nat, having turned up with a bottle of champagne, had to go straight out again to buy glasses. It was characteristic of him that he bought a set of Victorian crystal flutes from an antique shop on Upper Street. A house-warming present, he announced.

  ‘I suppose moving in next door saves you the expense of Pickford’s.’

  ‘Next door but one. And I’ll be needing them anyway for the stuff I’ve had in storage.’

  After all the years of renting it was hard to believe she was a homeowner. She had heard that number 7 was going up for sale back in July, and thought nothing of it. It was Stephen who had suggested she ought to consider buying it. She’d laughed, and asked him where he supposed she might raise that sort of money. The bank? Not a chance. Very well then – he could lend it to her. It looked like a good investment; that sort of property would only appreciate in value, and the area seemed (a brief hesitation) fine. She had dismissed the idea, but it must have wormed its way inside her head because every time she stood on the street she imagined herself living there. A few days later Stephen had handed over a cheque, with its disconcerting vapour trail of zeros.

  And you really believe I’ll pay you this back? she’d said.

  Nat’s thoughts were still running on pecuniary matters. He had been advised to open an account at another bank so that Coutts didn’t have to bear the entire load of his debts. ‘There I was, the very model of a modern major playwright, shaking hands with my new branch manager, in his office. He asked me to take a seat. Can you guess what his first question was? “So, Mr Fane, and what do you do for a living?”’

  Freya spluttered champagne down her nose in laughter. ‘Oh, what I wouldn’t give to have seen your face at that moment.’

  Nat shook his head wonderingly. ‘Odd, isn’t it? We’re all sorts of leading characters to ourselves, whereas other people comprehensively haven’t heard of us. So much for “Nathaniel Fame” …’

  Freya smiled at him. ‘That’s the most humble thing I’ve ever heard you say. Actually, the only humble thing I’ve ever heard you say.’

  He shrugged, brushing off the modified compliment. ‘Am I to see the rest of the house?’

  ‘Of course. Bring your glass with you,’ she said, and they took the staircase, discoloured and denuded of carpet. Fronds of ancient wallpaper curled off the walls. They entered the duplicate of the room below, where the mattress lay rumpled from her night’s occupancy. ‘Sorry, it’s in disarray. I’m sort of camping here at the moment.’

  Nat had paused to examine pencil marks on the jamb of the doorway. ‘Look, this was once a children’s bedroom – they’ve marked off their heights.’

  He shot a sideways look at Freya, who had come over to inspect it. She felt a sudden ripple of embarrassment in the space between them, for he had said the wrong thing, and knew it. He had kept away from her when the news of her stillbirth got out.

  ‘You got my letter, didn’t you, about –?’

  Freya nodded, and patted his arm in thanks, and in pardon. Nat was never at his best around illness, or bereavement, or anything that required a show of deep sympathy. He was beset by a dread of speaking sincerely. The only use he had for other people’s tragedies was to put them, disguised, into his plays. It was a failure of feeling that had, she knew, lost him friends. She sensed that he was grateful to her for not minding.

  With a chastened air he said, ‘Talking of which, I got a letter myself the other week, forwarded by the BBC. From Sonia Effingham – Chrissie’s mother. She’d seen my interview with Chrissie on television, and wanted to thank me for being “such a gentleman” to her. She and Reg had been so proud to watch their girl on the screen; after what they’d been through it was a comfort to see her looking so happy, and they’d had a good cry afterwards …’ Nat looked stricken as he was recounting it. ‘Oh, Freya, the pity of it –’

  He faltered to a stop. His eyes had brimmed, and he looked away. It seems I’ve got him wrong, she thought; it’s not the feeling he lacks, just the means to convey it. A very English trait. Nat straightened, shaking off his fit of grief, and pasted a brave smile to his face. ‘What happened to the piece you were writing about her?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s done. I sent it to Barry Rusk at the Chronicle. He said he’ll run it in the next few weeks.’ It was an admission that the story was no longer urgent.

  ‘Did you find anything? Last time we talked you said you were meeting with Chrissie’s friend, the black girl.’

  ‘Ava. Yes, we talked. I heard rumours … but nothing I could substantiate. It won’t surprise you to hear that Bruce Haddon is a creep – and a pimp.’

  ‘I heard something about a tendresse between Chrissie and Robert Cosway …’

  ‘Hm. I heard that, too,’ she said neutrally.

  Nat stared at her, waiting for more. Silent, she held his gaze. ‘I suppose, even if it were true, his influential friends would have closed ranks to keep his name out of the papers. But I felt certain you’d dig up something on him.’

  ‘Someone once told me that in politics luck counts for more than ambition. Robert’s got both, it seems.’

  Nat looked askance at her evasion. ‘Given the righteous fury you poured into that obituary of Chrissie, I’d have expected something more. He didn’t get to you, did he?’

  She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Come on.’

  But Nat still wanted the last word. After another appraising look he said, ‘Thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this.’

  She laughed. ‘And I have no idea what that means. Here, have some more of this –’ She replenished his glass, and they clinked. ‘Care to see the top floor?’

  The final ascent brought them to rooms of attic-like dimensions which from the back offered a long view towards the east. The sky, a washed-out blue, had flossy little clouds stuck to it, like a sky painted on a ceiling. Tower blocks had sprouted amid the jumble of terraces. They speculated as to what distant part of the city they might be looking on.

  ‘Isn’t it somewhere like … Poplar?’ said Nat, squinting.

  ‘You make every place outside Piccadilly sound like it’s the Andes. We’re still in London, you know.’

  ‘Thank God we are! The idea of living anywhere else is insupportable,’ he sniffed.

  ‘But you grew up in the suburbs.’

  ‘Which is why I never want to go back there. I’m still haunted by the exquisite tedium of Sunday afternoons when my parents would take us for a drive in the country – another frightful place, by the way.’

  Freya shook her head, smiling. ‘That reminds me. Did I ever tell you about the first time I made my dad laugh? I mean really laugh, not the fake “aren’t kids crazy” sort. We’d been on a Sunday drive somewhere in the country and stopped off at a pub. I suppose I was nine, or ten. Mum took Rowan into the back garden and I followed Dad into the lounge. I think he must ha
ve forgotten I was there, because he stood at the bar in this chummy way, like men do, and asked for two halves of bitter. So I looked up at him and said, in a perfectly serious voice, “Aren’t you going to get something for Mum as well?” He just fell about laughing.’

  ‘I can almost hear you saying it,’ said Nat.

  They had ambled through to the front, stuffy from the warmth of the early afternoon. It was the first week of September. Nat hauled the sash window open with a clack and leaned out to look over the square. At this height you could hear the topmost leaves shiver on the trees. The summer was holding steady, but there came a winnowing breeze, like a warning. He was still resting his elbows on the ledge when she saw his attention diverted by something below.

  ‘I believe you have a visitor,’ he said with a sly turn of his head. He leaned forward to shout ‘Ahoy!’ and waved. ‘I’ll go down and let her in.’

  He was past her and bounding down the stairs before she could even ask him. Craning her head out she looked down to the raised pavement. Two doors along Nancy was looking up, perhaps bemused as to why a person she hadn’t expected had hailed her from a house she hadn’t even knocked at. Freya held up her hand in welcome, and Nancy offered a tentative mirroring. They hadn’t seen or talked to one another since the encounter at her house several weeks ago. She watched Nat appear on the pavement, and the dumbshow of greeting. She ducked back into the room, feeling an inward flurry of nerves at this unscheduled visit. She heard their voices climbing the stairs, like a duet, Nat’s drawling tenor against Nancy’s unassuming alto.

  She came out onto the landing just as Nancy, at the turn of the stairs, looked up. Her expression was uncertain, and Freya thought, Well, she would be uncertain, finding herself in a house that had been unoccupied for months, undecorated for years. But she had come. Her hair was pinned up, in a primly attractive way, showing her milk-pale neck.

  ‘I thought you were at 5,’ Nancy said. ‘I kept ringing the bell …’

  ‘I was at 5. Just moved, to 7. I’m going up in the world.’

  Nat had retreated a floor to fetch another glass, and was now filling them up from what remained of the bottle. He cleared his throat theatrically.

  ‘Shall I make the toast? May bliss reign upon this house, and upon its new owner –’ he paused, and beamed – ‘our dearest Freya. May she, like Mrs Proudie, live forever.’

  Freya, with a sideways wag of her head, thanked him. ‘But may I just say, I don’t want to live forever.’

  ‘Oh, but you must,’ he replied, frowning. ‘Who else should keep me company through the dreary wastes of my immortality?’

  ‘Nice to hear you’re making provision,’ she said, and looked to Nancy. ‘What about you – d’you fancy living forever?’

  Nancy dropped her gaze, considering. ‘I’m not sure I feel equipped for it, to be honest. I couldn’t face making the same mistakes over and over again.’

  Nat shook his head, suddenly enthused by his vision. ‘But that’s the beauty of it, we’d have whole lifetimes to correct the mistakes. An infinity of lifetimes!’

  ‘That sounds terribly bleak,’ said Freya. ‘A single lifetime is more than some can bear. I’m sorry, Nat, no takers here. You’ll have to look elsewhere for your companion in eternity.’

  He gave a philosophical shrug. ‘Looks like I must recruit Mrs Proudie after all. Though I’d prefer Emma Woodhouse, or even Emma Bovary. It’s funny how some characters, mere figments on the page, never really die in our heads, or hearts. We think about them even after we’ve clapped shut the book. Nancy, you must have thought about this. Will the characters in your novels live on?’

  Nancy pulled a face. ‘I suppose that’s what every writer hopes. That somewhere they’ll be talked about a hundred years on, like we’re doing with Mrs P. But unfortunately we won’t be around to enjoy it.’

  Nat nodded slowly, with the pleased air of someone conducting a debate. This is all very fascinating, thought Freya, but I do wish he’d go. Nat ran on, however, with further cogitations on immortality, which he somehow managed to incorporate into a quite detailed preview of his next play. He was becoming one of those people who addressed even his friends in the slightly over-loud way of a public speaker. Freya watched Nancy listening, her expression governed possibly more by politeness than enthusiasm. She, too, it seemed, had her mind on other things.

  Only when he caught her sneaking a look at her watch did Nat realise he might have overrun his time. With a knowing look he said, ‘I have delighted you long enough. And I’ve just remembered I have a piece to write for one of the Sundays. “The Twenty Greatest Plays Since 1945”. An impossible task for me, I’m afraid. I have written only five.’

  He looked satisfied by their laughter, and at last he took his leave.

  ‘Nat, the car keys are on the sill, first floor,’ she called down the staircase after him. They heard his footsteps grow fainter, and then the slam of the door. She walked to the window, listening, until she heard him start the Morgan’s engine. Nancy was looking at her, waiting.

  ‘I know it’s only a car. I shouldn’t really feel so sad about it.’

  ‘But look – you’ve got a house instead.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re here. I’m not sure why you’re here.’

  Nancy’s gaze had misted. ‘You remember when we were racing to the hospital, with you bleeding everywhere in the back of the car, and me thinking you might, um –?’

  ‘Snuff it,’ she said, and Nancy winced.

  ‘I never knew I could feel so desperate about someone – I mean, wanting them so badly to live. It frightened me, actually.’

  ‘I must have lost so much blood I hardly knew if I was living or dying.’

  ‘They said at the hospital it was a very close thing. I made a vow to myself, anyway, that if you lived I’d make sure you’d be in my life, always, no matter what.’

  ‘“No matter what,”’ Freya echoed archly.

  Nancy spread her hands in a helpless gesture of appeal. ‘I’m sorry about that day. I wasn’t ready for what you … said to me.’

  Freya gave a half-laugh. ‘It was rather a bombshell, wasn’t it?’

  Nancy nodded, and her expression struggled with a sudden access of pain. ‘I’ve left Robert. We had it out, that night, when he got home. I told him I knew what had happened, with Chrissie, and with the – other girl. He didn’t try to lie about it. I was grateful at least for that.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Freya’s voice came out at a whisper.

  She waited some moments before replying. ‘He started to tell me about Chrissie, and broke down. He seemed almost to age in front of my eyes. He hadn’t known how vulnerable she was – though he ought to have. I asked him if he had been in love with her. He said “yes”. But it was what he said next that really shocked me. He said, “Please don’t ask me to resign.” It hadn’t been foremost in my mind, but of course that’s what Robert most dreaded – not that he might lose me, but that he might be thwarted of his destiny.’

  ‘He knows you have something over him, though. You could make him do what you like.’

  ‘What would be the point? I’m not going to hold him to ransom. He wouldn’t have forgiven me if I’d made him resign. And I couldn’t live with him knowing that he wouldn’t.’

  ‘Do you blame me for telling you?’ said Freya.

  ‘No, I don’t blame you. I blame myself for – holding it all in. I think he must have despised me a little, knowing I’d forgive him – keep forgiving him. We didn’t have a future any more. Perhaps we never did.’

  ‘He loved you, Nance.’

  ‘But not enough. He was driven by something else, that wasn’t love. It’s the way it is. What one person must have, another doesn’t need.’

  They had sat down on the floor, each leaning against a wall. A silence lengthened as they waited for the atmosphere, stirred by revelation, to settle. When Freya eventually caught her eye, Nancy smiled in a weary sort of way. She had stayed with a couple of
friends in the immediate aftermath; for the last few weeks she’d been minding another house while the family were on holiday. She’d start looking for a place soon.

  Freya looked at her. ‘Come and stay here. For as long as you need. You may have noticed I’m not lacking for room.’

  Nancy’s face made a rueful objection. ‘That’s nice of you, really, but I couldn’t –’

  ‘Why not? Because of what I said to you?’

  ‘No, no …’

  ‘Nance, listen. I think I’d be able to keep my hands off you, irresistible as you are. Honestly. You’d have your own bedroom. And your own study.’

  Nancy, blushing, laughing, leaned her head against her upraised knees. Her face was momentarily hidden. Oh bloody say yes, thought Freya, though she would never plead. She was much too proud for that. She waited, refusing to say one more thing, until Nancy raised her head again.

  ‘For a little while? You could let me help with the mortgage.’

  Freya smiled, at last. ‘Whatever you like.’ She lifted the bottle and found it empty. ‘I was going to say we should drink to it, but Nat’s Moët has all gone. I could nip to the caff round the corner and get us some tea, what d’you say?’

  ‘I’d say it’s an excellent idea.’

  Freya hauled herself upright and brushed the dust off her trousers. She held up a finger to Nancy: wait there. On her way down the stairs she stopped at her bedroom and knelt before the Dansette she’d installed in the corner. The record was already on the turntable, and as she dropped the needle onto its rim she lifted the armature so it would play on repeat. The piano slinked in, followed by the high ghostly doo-wops of the backing chorus.

  You are here and so am I,

  Maybe millions of people go by

  But they all disappear from view …

  She turned the volume high, grabbed her keys and took the rest of the stairs at a skip. Outside, she stopped and stared up at the house. She loved these sooty Regency bricks, the reassuring steadiness of them. They were old, older even than Mrs Proudie. How many occupants had they outlived? She pictured Nancy on the top floor, her head back against the wall, while the song drifted up the echoing house, keeping time. She wondered how long it would take her to recognise it.