by Robyn Sisman
Freya twisted her hands in her lap and stared at the coconut matting. It was a good speech—affectionate and urbane, with an edge of that self-deprecating humor she loved. He was welcoming to Roland. He praised Annabelle. He paid tribute to Tash’s real father, who had died so young and whose relatives he was delighted to welcome today. He was graceful and courteous. Freya could not help feeling proud.
“. . . and another way in which I am lucky is that I do, of course, have two daughters.”
Freya looked up, startled.
“I am particularly pleased that my daughter Freya is able to be with us today, along with her friend Jack. For those of you who don’t know, Freya leads a very successful and fulfilled life in New York—in fact, I am relying on her to keep me in my old age. She is the best of companions as well as a beautiful young woman—thanks to her mother, I may say. I love her, and I am proud of her. This event would not be complete without her presence. Thank you for coming, darling.”
Freya bent her head to hide her face. Her heart was full. He had not forgotten her. He was still her daddy.
His speech came to an end; now Roland stood up to embark on his long list of thank-yous. As Freya’s father sat down, he misjudged the position of his chair and stumbled slightly. It was nothing—nobody else seemed to notice—but Freya saw with a kind of panic that he was indeed getting old. One day, not too far from now, she would lose him forever. Instinctively she turned to Jack and found that he was watching her. He smiled reassuringly, as though he could read her mind.
The audience was laughing now. Roland had sat down. Heavens, it was good old Sponge! She must pay attention. “Marriage is a field of battle,” he was saying, “not a bed of roses.”
How strange. That was just what her father had been trying to tell her this morning, about his marriage to her mother. Perhaps she’d been pursuing quite the wrong idea of relationships all these years, expecting them to meet some ideal of perfection and destroying them when they didn’t. Now she thought about it, a bed of roses sounded rather insipid. For a moment she glimpsed an alternative view of men and women as sparring partners, continually testing each other’s strengths and discovering their own weaknesses—combative but not destructive, giving as good as they got, knocking each other into shape. It sounded a lot less boring than lying around on smelly old flowers. It sounded exciting—an adventure.
“. . . to Roland and Tash!” Damn, she had missed Sponge’s speech, though his huge grin indicated that it had been a hit. Freya raised her glass in a toast and took a sip of champagne, enjoying the fizz on her tongue. Impulsively she turned to Jack and clinked glasses with him. “Thanks for coming, Jack. It’s made all the difference.” Her words surprised them both.
The mood relaxed. Cigarettes were lit. The chatter resumed. Everyone started to get up from their tables and spill out into the fresh air. Freya was about to do the same when Hilda Carp’s voice swooped close to her ear. “Freya, dearest. Could you spare a mo? I have a favor to ask. The thing is: Do you think you could possibly get me Tom Cruise’s autograph?”
“We could could show him our old haunts in Brooklyn—take him to Ambrosio’s to say hi,” Jack said persuasively.
“I don’t know . . .”
“And that Japanese place with the live shrimp.”
“Mmm . . .”
“What about a football game?”
“The thing is, I don’t have a place for him to stay.”
“He won’t care where he stays. It’s you he wants to see. He’s your father. He loves you.”
Freya bent her head. “I know.”
“So, do it! In fact, why not go the whole hog and get yourself a decent, permanent apartment. Then you can throw a party for him.”
“A party?” This was a daunting idea.
“Sure. I’d help you.”
“Would you really?”
Jack and Freya were sitting together in a saggy old swing-seat half-hidden in a cave of yew, lazily watching the guests crisscross the lawn. The cake had been cut. Roland and Tash had gone upstairs to change. The sunshine still held, bestowing a mellow glow on the proceedings. After the speeches Freya had mentioned to Jack that she was thinking of inviting her father to New York for a visit, and was surprised by his immediate enthusiasm. Freya still wasn’t sure, but it was fun to be planning treats for him with Jack.
“What a happy day!” The vicar’s wife had paused on the path in front of them and was beaming into their hideaway.
“Yes, it’s been great.” Freya smiled.
“Don’t they make a lovely couple?”
“Yes,” she repeated tranquilly.
“Who knows, perhaps it will be your turn next?” She gazed beadily at Jack.
“Who knows?” Freya could hear the amusement in Jack’s voice. “I love old ladies,” he said, when she was out of earshot. “They’re so subtle.”
Freya lay back in the seat with a sigh. “Today,” she announced, “I love everybody.”
“I say, Jack, do you know anything about cars?” It was Sponge, holding the hand of a pretty girl in blue and looking anxious. He and Jamie were titivating the going-away car with the usual “Just Married” paraphernalia. It was a flash new Japanese sports car that had been the Swindon-Smythes’ wedding present to their son. Jamie had somehow engaged the steering lock and no one knew how to free it. Jack said he’d see what he could do, and Freya waved him off.
She sat alone, idly swinging, and rested her head on the faded cushions. She closed her eyes. It was nearly over. She had survived. In fact, she had positively enjoyed herself. Having someone to accompany her had made all the difference. She wondered if she and Jack would be able to sneak off this evening for a walk to the pub and a quiet supper together. She pictured them in a wooden booth, hemmed in by a fug of beer and chips, or perhaps sitting outside with a candle twinkling between them in the darkness and the swish-swoosh of the sea. They could pick over the wedding and share their thoughts in the comfortable, argumentative way they had always done. Freya felt a spurt of happy excitement. Afterwards, they could walk back in the moonlight and—
The swing-seat squeaked protestingly as Freya sat upright, jolted by a shocking realization. How blind she had been! The issue of whether she had a companion for this wedding—an issue that had tormented her for so long—was, she suddenly saw, absurdly trivial. It was not a man who had made the difference. She wouldn’t be feeling like this if she’d brought Michael or Brett or any other man she knew. What had made the difference was one particular man, a man who took care of her and made her laugh, a man she knew with the intimacy of long friendship, a man she liked—perhaps more than liked? . . .
A hubbub broke through her thoughts, and she noticed that all the guests were now milling toward the driveway at the side of the house, where Roland’s snouted car gleamed like a freshly killed barracuda. Freya’s lips curved in a small, secret smile. No doubt Jack was congratulating himself on his mechanical genius in getting the car moved, even if he’d done nothing more complex than flicking a switch. She strolled over, looking out for him.
Tash had changed into a summer dress splashed with poppies; she looked pretty and excited. Freya saw her hug Annabelle and step into the open-topped car. Roland sat importantly at the steering wheel, a cool dude in shades. Someone was passing around a basket of rose petals to throw.
Roland sounded the horn and Tash stood up on the passenger seat, holding something high in the air: her wedding bouquet. There was a murmur of excitement from the crowd. Tash scanned the faces below her with a slow turn of the head. Her words floated across the air. “Where’s Freya? Where’s my big sister?”
Freya felt a prickle of embarrassment, tinged with anger that Tash should draw attention to her in this manner: her “big” sister, still unmarried. Feeling foolish, she folded her arms, hoping not to be noticed. She had no wish to scramble for the trophy bouquet, even if it was tossed straight into her hands. But she was far too tall to hide; her hat was like a big green
“Go” sign. Already Tash had seen her. She had climbed down from the seat and was walking forward with a smile on her face. The crowd parted. Freya heard a collective cooing. “Aah, how sweet.” “What a generous girl.”
Their words brought her to her senses. However they might each feel privately, this was Tash’s version of an olive branch; she could at least accept it graciously. She raised her head and stepped forward to meet her halfway. Tash pressed the bouquet into her hand, then pulled her into a sisterly embrace. Freya bent down to hug her back. She felt Tash’s arm snake about her neck and the smack of breath in her ear as Tash whispered, “Jack’s a big boy, isn’t he?”
Freya jerked with shock. But Tash held tight, her fingernails vicious. “Pity he isn’t your real boyfriend,” she spat.
Then her armlock loosened. There was a gleam of teeth, the triumphant glint of narrowed eyes and she had gone.
Freya rocked on her heels. Blood thumped in her ears, louder than the cheering voices around her. “Good luck!” they called. “Good-bye!” She saw a blur of waving hands. The air exploded into color. There was the growl of an engine, the spatter of gravel, a clinking of tin cans. She was icy cold. If she moved, she feared she would fall over and splinter. Something was digging into her palm. It was the stiff wired handle of the bridal bouquet.
The crowd wheeled and dispersed, leaving her standing alone in an empty expanse of green strewn with petals. From a distance she saw Jack walking toward her. He was smiling.
Ah, there she was.
The last rose petals spun and drifted to the ground. The crowd cleared. Jack saw Freya staring straight at him. Her hat turned her face into a Cubist portrait of fractured light and geometric shadows, and he thought with wonder and affection of all the different women hidden behind that single configuration of features: scornful goddess, brash poker-player, resentful little girl; the clever woman who kept her brain—and her tongue—sharply honed, the gorgeous creature running down the beach. He realized that he wanted to kiss her.
“Freya,” he called.
She turned and walked away in slow motion, like a figure in a dream who cannot hear however loud you shout.
“Freya!” He loped after her.
“Excuse me.” A female voice shrilled in his ear. “Aren’t you Jack Madison?” He heard a tinkle of jewelry as a manicured claw gripped his arm. “My husband tells me you know Carson McGuire. Our little reading circle in Totteridge—Totteridge Common, that is—would be so thrilled to know what he’s really like.”
“I’m sorry.” He was conscious of musky scent and a confection of tinted hair. “There’s something I have to do. I’ll catch you later.” He pushed past, ignoring Marilyn Swindon-Smythe’s gasp of pique.
But Freya had disappeared. He’d lost her. He thought she’d been heading for the house, and hurried inside. It was cool and silent. He peered into the empty library, then retraced his steps to the kitchen. There was the slow drip-drip of a faucet. Bedivere lay pressed to the Aga; he gave a civil thump of his tail. “Where is she?” asked Jack.
He thought he heard a tiny sound from beyond the kitchen, and wandered down the cluttered passageway, looking through doorways. She was standing with her back to him in a kind of pantry room, doing something at the sink.
He smiled with relief. “Freya, I wanted to—”
“Get out!”
She spun around and something hit him low in the stomach. Jack clutched it instinctively—something pulpy and damp—but it was Freya he was looking at. She had taken off her hat. Her face was gray, with witchy slits for eyes.
“What is it, sweetheart?” Jack was appalled. “What’s the matter?”
“How could you?” she shouted. “After everything I told you. When you knew how I felt. How could you just—fuck my little bitch of a stepsister?”
Jack swallowed. This was bad. “It just happened,” he said. “It wasn’t my idea. I was trying to get some sleep in the library and she—”
“Tash, of all people! What’s wrong with you, Jack? You’re like a dog that has to sniff at every lamppost.”
“It wasn’t like that! She practically seduced me.”
“Oh sure.”
“She did! She came right in and took off all her clothes—”
“Bollocks, Jack. Do you really expect me to believe that? On the night before her own wedding?”
“It’s the truth.” He gestured helplessly. “I’m sorry. I was mad at you.”
“So you thought, ‘I know, I’ll go sleep with Tash. We’ll have a good old snigger together about poor, sad Freya.’ ”
“No!”
“Yes! She boasted to me about it. She wanted to prove that no one could like me enough to show me even the tiniest bit of loyalty—that my feelings are worth nothing, that I am worth nothing. And the terrible thing is, she was right.”
“That’s not true!”
“You even told her that we weren’t really a couple—that you were pretending. Imagine how great that makes me feel. Imagine how much fun it will be for her to stick the knife in for years to come. But hey—who cares? Jack Madison got his rocks off, and that’s what matters, right?”
“It wasn’t like that.” Jack felt as if he’d been caught by a sudden wave and was tumbling blindly in its murky turbulence. He struggled to find his footing. “It didn’t mean anything.”
“It does to me!” Freya slammed her own chest with her fist, so hard that he heard the thud of knuckle on breastbone. A sudden tenderness made him want to put his arms around her. But her teeth were bared. Her eyes blazed wide. “What kind of a friend are you? I ask you to do one thing—pretend that we’re a couple, for four lousy days. But you can’t do it—one temptation, and you cave in. You’re pathetic, Jack!”
“Now wait a minute. You were the one who pushed me away. It would never have happened if we’d—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, grow up! ‘It didn’t mean anything.’ ‘It wasn’t my idea.’ ” Her mimicry was savage. “I don’t give a shit who you have sex with. This isn’t about Tash. It’s about you. About what a useless human being you are.”
Her words poured over him—burning, unstoppable.
“Everything’s always someone else’s fault—your dad, your publisher, Tash, me. You always take the easy way out. You want constant adulation without making any effort to earn it. All the advantages in the world have been showered on you, and you’ve squandered every one of them. You’re too spineless to commit to anything—whether it’s a woman, or a friend, or even your own writing.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Isn’t it?” Her face twisted with contempt. “Let me tell you the truth, Jack. You’re not a writer. You’re a spoiled dilettante living on Daddy’s money and wasting your time with people like Candace Twink and Leo Brannigan. You’ll never finish your novel, because you’re too fucking lazy! You will never be a real writer, because you have absolutely no respect for the human heart.”
Freya let out a shuddering breath. There was a long silence. Something was hurting. Jack looked down and saw what she had thrown at him. It was a bunch of flowers—roses. A thorn had drawn a trickle of blood.
When she spoke again, it was with a quiet hopelessness that was more damning than her anger.
“I opened my whole life to you, Jack. The house, my father, my stepmother, how I feel. I thought you were someone I could rely on. Someone I could trust. Someone I could respect. I thought we were friends . . .”
Her voice broke on the word. Her head drooped. Jack saw that she was crying. A cavity opened in his chest, as if a great stone had been rolled away.
She looked into his face. Her eyes were raw with tears. “I keep trying to like you, Jack, but I can’t. . . .”
He stepped forward. “Freya—”
“Get away from me!” She gave a violent swing of her arm, and nearly fell. She gripped the edge of basin. “Get out! Out of this house and out of my life. I never want to see you again.”
CHAPTER 30
Because it was a weekend at the start of the summer season all the flights to New York were full. Jack had ended up spending the night in Heathrow airport among gray-faced travelers slumped over their luggage and listless cleaners pushing brooms. The hours passed in a fog of jumpy dreams, echoing announcements and relentless internal voices that pursued him around and around.
Finally, midmorning on Sunday, he had been offered a last-minute seat on some Middle Eastern airline, and had handed over his credit card without even bothering to ask the price. He was eager to escape home. He wanted to be out of the airport before Freya turned up for her own flight—the one he would have accompanied her on if everything hadn’t gone wrong.