Freya (11 page)

The room where the gramophone played was smoky and beery and thronged with young men, some in earnest discussion, most of them goggling in amusement at the fellow in the middle of the floor dancing by himself. Dancing was perhaps too genteel a word for it: with his elbows flailing away, his knees going like pistons and his head twitching this way and that, he seemed as one in the throes of a possession – or a fit. He was quite oblivious of anyone else in the vicinity.

Freya, after observing this spectacle for a few moments, said, ‘Robert.'

The man stopped abruptly and, as if emerging from his trance, looked around. He squinted at her momentarily before a smile of recognition creased his face.

‘Why, if it isn't Freya!'

‘I didn't know there'd be a floor show. What d'you do for an encore?'

Robert cackled, sweeping a dark fringe of hair from his sweating brow. ‘I can't help it. I love this thing.' He saw that Freya was not alone. ‘Hullo there!'

‘This is Nancy,' said Freya. ‘Nancy – Robert, whom I last saw in –' she paused, with a little smirk – ‘Balliol.'

Robert, reading the pause correctly, explained to Nancy: ‘This is the second time your friend has caught me unawares. I can't tell if it's coincidence or if she lies in wait before pouncing.'

He began ushering them through to a back room where a knot of men were crowded round a beer barrel. It had been tipped onto its side and fitted with a makeshift nozzle. He called to one of the drinkers and held up three fingers, inscribing a rough halo to encompass his guests. This bar-room tic-tac soon had the desired effect: the youth approached bearing four glasses of beer on a wet tray. His hungry glance at Freya and Nancy suggested that an introduction should be the reward for his errand. Robert drawlingly obliged.

‘Freya, Nancy – this is Charlie Tremayne, guide, philosopher and friend.'

‘And beer carrier,' Charlie added with a little nod. He was a short, pleasant-faced boy with tortoiseshell spectacles and close-cropped, mouse-coloured hair; Freya intuited that he would be playing second fiddle to Robert.

They clinked glasses, and Robert, blowing a strand of hair from his eyes, looked from Freya to Nancy with candid interest. ‘Your arrival has definitely raised the tone of this party. It's been very second-rate up to now.'

‘Really?' said Freya. ‘When I heard “The Sheik of Araby” blaring out back there I thought we'd come to the right place.'

Charlie blinked in surprise. ‘Don't often meet a girl who knows about jazz.'

‘Oh, I don't know much. I just like the stuff my dad plays – Ellington, Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, that sort of thing.'

‘And how about you?' said Robert to Nancy. ‘Know your Basie from your “Basin Street Blues”?'

‘I'm afraid not,' she said with a little grimace of apology. ‘Vaughan Williams and Elgar are more my line.'

‘Nancy's a wonderful pianist,' said Freya loyally. ‘We spent VE night together tickling the ivories.'

‘Lucky old ivories,' said Robert, waggling his eyebrows. ‘By the way, you might want a bit of this.'

He had produced a hip flask from his pocket to hand around. Freya took a sip and tasted the perfumed sourness of warm gin. Ugh. Charlie followed suit; Nancy, she noticed, quietly declined it. Robert, having taken two long swigs, became lightly combative. Across the room a target had caught his eye.

‘Look at that twerp. Who does he think he is – Noël Coward?'

The ‘twerp' was in fact a pale-faced young man, slender as a reed, in a provocatively garish outfit of green velvet suit, gold satin shirt and buckled shoes. His blond hair, severely parted, fell over one eye, like a male Veronica Lake. He blew languid smoke rings from a cigarette clamped in an ivory holder. He made a self-conscious spectacle, though Freya suspected that what most annoyed Robert was the man's being the centre of attention: a little group had crowded around, almost gawping at him.

‘He's very exotic-looking,' said Nancy. ‘I think he's wearing make-up.'

‘I wonder who his tailor is?'

‘Someone the police are still looking for, I imagine.'

‘I think he's rather dashing,' said Freya, goading him.

Robert made a disgusted hissing sound, and looked away. The velvet-suited dandy had by now twigged the vibrations of interest emanating from the other side of the room, and, discarding his circle of familiars, approached. He had a walk to match his appearance, a high-stepping lope that was part athlete, part show pony. His hooded blue gaze took hold of Freya.

‘Have we met?' he said in a purring baritone.

Freya shook her head, watching him.

‘Are you
sure
?' he persisted.

‘I think I would have remembered a suit like that,' she said, with a quick glance up and down. ‘I'm trying to decide on that shade of green – sort of … froggy.'

The gaze didn't move an inch. ‘Chartreuse. But tell me, where might we have met before, outside of a dream?' His eyes widened saucily on the last word.

‘I can't think. I'm Freya. And you are …?'

Again came the considering blink. ‘Nat Fane.' He offered his exquisite pale hand in the manner of a pope expecting a kiss.

Robert, who along with Nancy and Charlie had been ignored by the stranger, now interposed, ‘Nat? As in the insect?'

He looked down his nose at Robert, and replied, ‘As in Nathaniel.'

‘Well,
Nat
, we've been asking ourselves what kind of fellow wears an outfit like yours. My money's on – a male impersonator.'

Charlie sniggered behind his hand, but Fane returned only a slow, pitying nod. ‘I shall presume that's what it pleases you to call wit. To answer your question, however – I am an artist and an actor. I am a playwright and a producer; I am a writer, a critic and a composer. I am a connoisseur and a collector of beautiful things.' He paused, and in a tone of magisterial condescension added, ‘I am also, for the time being, a student at this university.'

‘My goodness, isn't that a lot?' said Charlie sarcastically.

‘Indeed, I do wonder,' replied Fane, eyeing him like a cobra, ‘how can there be so much of me – and so
little
of you?'

Freya, stepping in as peacemaker, said, ‘Well, since we're doing introductions, this is my friend Nancy, and these two are Robert and Charlie.'

Fane acknowledged them with a lordly tilt of his head. He then turned his gaze back on Freya, and said in a confiding voice, ‘May I have a private word?'

Freya gave a little shrug to the others, and allowed Fane to draw her aside. She was more curious than ever. He offered her a cigarette – a tipped Sobranie – which she took, and lit it with a slim gold lighter. Through a cloud of smoke he said, ‘I have a proposition for you.'

She suppressed a laugh. ‘What, already?'

He ignored her facetiousness. ‘Do you act – I mean, have you done any acting?'

‘I once played Mary in the Nativity. But it was a non-speaking role. Aside from that, no,' she said.

‘That doesn't matter. To explain: I am, at present, casting my own production of
The Duchess of Malfi
. I have already auditioned several ladies for the title role, without success. It's vital that I find someone with the right face, the right voice, the right …
demeanour
. I have an inkling that someone is you.'

‘And you can tell all this in thirty seconds' acquaintance?'

‘Of course.'

Freya smiled and shook her head. ‘I'm afraid your inkling is unreliable. I don't know the first thing about acting, and I shouldn't like you to waste your time trying to teach me.'

He stared at her a moment, as if amused at the idea of being turned down. ‘You need a little time to consider it, I understand – the part is a challenging one. We should arrange a meeting.'

His self-confidence was impermeable. Far from hearing her answer as a refusal, he seemed to take it as an encouragement to further discussion.

‘Here she is!' There was no mistaking that parade-ground voice: Jean Markham had burst through the party crush in a cloud of Yardley. She was heading up a small gang of serious-looking women. Only then did Freya remember inviting her. Fane looked at the interloper with the bristling disdain of a peacock eyeing a parrot. He nodded at Freya and withdrew.

‘Jean – you've come,' she said weakly.

‘Well, you said there'd be a lot of men!' Jean made a quick survey of the room, and seemed satisfied. Then, indicating with her eyes, she said, ‘Who was that extraordinary boy you were just talking to?'

‘Oh, he's called Nat Fane.'

‘Ah, so
that's
him … I did wonder – they say he put on a school production of
The Merchant of Venice
, starring himself, and took it to the West End. What did he want with you?'

‘I'm not entirely sure. He said he wanted to cast me in a play, but …' She made a comical grimace to suggest some deeper intention than this.

Jean, reading her look, demurred. ‘I don't think so, darling. Surely you can see he's a roaring queen?'

Freya only shrugged – though from the glint in Fane's eye she doubted it. The party was picking up in volume; next door she could hear them chanting along to ‘Minnie the Moocher'. Even Jean was having to raise her voice to be heard. Jean's gang, friends she had made in the University Labour Club, wore the unsmiling air of prison warders about to break up a riot.

Spotting Robert still hovering in the wings, she caught his eye and pulled him towards her as if with an invisible lasso. She had secured her means of escape.

‘Jean, meet Robert Cosway – he's the chap who invited us here.'

Jean's eyes gleamed as they settled on Robert. As Freya slipped away she saw in Robert's glance a full awareness of his being used as a decoy; the stab of guilt was not deep enough to discomfit her. She ducked back into the roar of the party on the lookout for Nancy. After a few minutes she found her in the relative quiet of the kitchen talking to Charlie, who clearly couldn't believe his luck. He didn't even seem to mind that she towered over him.

Charlie looked over her shoulder. ‘So you managed to shake off that flaxen-haired fop?'

Freya laughed. ‘It wasn't difficult. Anyway, I'm told he's queer.'

‘That's not what we've heard,' said Charlie. ‘For one thing, he's engaged to be married. For another, he's been tupping the ladies in his
Hamlet
production.'

‘Ophelia
and
Gertrude,' Nancy added.

‘Ah, that's interesting. He's just asked me to be his Duchess of Malfi,' said Freya.

Nancy looked horrified. ‘You don't act!'

‘That didn't seem to deter him.'

She had been flattered by his attention. He attracted her, not in a sexual way – he was too epicene for that – but in his willingness to stand apart from the crowd; no other man here would have dared to wear such clothes, or to affect that languid manner of address. He was an extraordinary creature, and he behaved as one who knew it. Through the doorway she could see Robert shooting glances at her: another suitor. He was as self-involved as Nat Fane, she thought, but less assured, more bumptious; an arrogance lacking in confidence. He had practically confessed to her that he'd never had a girlfriend. His desperation rather touched her.

Another jug of beer was being passed around, and she helped herself to more. She had taken two Benzedrine on her last trip to the lav, and felt ready to go again. She grabbed Nancy's hand and led her back to the music room, where she could hear Louis Armstrong playing ‘Ain't Misbehavin''. Another one she loved! Since no one asked them to dance she turned to Nancy, and by unspoken consent they improvised a quick-step waltz across the floor. It was the first time they had danced together since VE night at her dad's flat, and as she surrendered to the music and inhaled Nancy's scent and her scalp tingled with the wild silvery onrush of the drug, she fancied she saw at last the point of being at Oxford.

With her eye on the curfew Nancy said she would have to get going. Freya offered to walk her back to St Hilda's, and having extracted their coats from a heaped bed upstairs they slipped out. Hazed gaslights along Banbury Road offered illumination against the night. Behind them they heard the door open and a blast of the party echoed forth; a figure had emerged in their wake. Freya for a moment thought it would be Robert or Charlie, but the grand billow of his silhouette argued otherwise.

‘Ladies, a moment please,' Nat Fane drawled. He sauntered up to join them on the drive. The billow was explained by the opera cape he had slung around his shoulders: no ex-army greatcoat for him. In the dark his face gleamed as pale as the moon. On learning they were heading for St Hilda's he asked leave to accompany them, since he was going that way too, though once they fell into step Freya had the confounding sense that they had tagged along with Fane – he had the air of one who led, not one who joined.

‘So how did you become so devoted to the theatre?' Nancy asked him.

Fane made an interested ‘hmm' noise before saying, ‘I long for the day when someone asks: How did the theatre become so devoted to
you
? I suppose my
coup de foudre
was Olivier as Hamlet. The first time, I adored him. Second time, I studied him. The third time, I understood him.'

‘And the fourth time?' asked Freya.

‘There will not be a fourth time. The challenge now is to unseat him.'

‘But I thought you wanted to be a playwright, or a producer?'

‘Why not all three? I am a creature of ambition … I'm minded to regard modern stage acting as a Trinity of sorts. Irving is the Father. Olivier is the Son –' he paused, glancing at his listeners – ‘and I am the Holy Ghost.'