Freya (23 page)

‘Thanks,' she said, as he led her out of the knot of onlookers.

He looked at her and shrugged. ‘I didn't like him bothering you.'

Even that, his lack of fuss, pleased her. They rejoined Jessica's table, and she immersed herself in the talk and the laughter and the steady supply of drinks. Only when she stood up and the room suddenly tipped sideways did she notice how tight she was. Caplan was looking at her.

‘Are you OK?'

She thought she was, but when the room continued to list like the deck of a ship she decided to make for the exit, with Caplan in wary attendance. Once outside she drank in the cool night air, and felt a little better.

‘I think I should call it a night,' she said, with a grimace of apology. She had used up her supply of Benzedrine, so there would be no quick antidote to her wooziness. Caplan, nodding, told her to wait at the entrance; he'd collect the motor and drive her back to the schloss.

‘You're such a gentleman,' she said with a flirtatious tilt of her head.

‘Yeah,' he replied, with a chuckle, ‘a regular Mr Darcy.'

Her laughter hid her surprise: she had underestimated him. Riding shotgun in the open-topped jeep she felt the onrushing wind whip against her face, jolting her back to sobriety, or at least a possible imitation of it. Caplan drove quickly down the empty winding roads, casually assured at the wheel, talking more freely now that he was away from the hotel and its constricting pressures to socialise. She sensed he didn't care for parties, that he preferred the company of one or two friends he could be honest with. He had a watchful gravity about him that might shade towards haughtiness; perhaps he
was
a bit like Darcy.

Along the road the tops of old trees shivered and swayed. Looking up she picked out stars glinting from the vast blue-black sky, and felt a sudden leap of exhilaration within her. It didn't matter that she was still drunk; she was seized by an almost electric feeling of her potential, not just of her inchoate talent as a writer but of what she knew to be her force of personality, that unsought gift of bending people to her will. As they drove up the interminable tree-lined avenue, tyres crunching over the gravel, she wondered how it would be to exercise this power on Caplan, who might be expecting her to make a move in any case. Wasn't their chance reunion this evening an indication that fate had planned it for them? By the time he turned the jeep into the darkened forecourt and parked against a shadowing wall she was fully alive to the possibility. Robert need never know, she could hide it from him; but then hadn't she already steeped herself in dissembling and lying? She had deceived Nancy, to her shame; she had deceived her father and the college just to enable this trip to Germany. She must not allow the convenience of lying to overwhelm her.

Caplan had switched off the engine. He was looking across at her, perhaps in hope, she couldn't tell.

‘You've been so nice to me,' she said, leaning in to kiss his cheek. The chasteness of it felt unsatisfactory to her, and when he reached out to stop her drawing away and kissed her on the mouth she wasn't surprised. The kiss, dry but prolonged, seemed intended as an overture to something else. The euphoric feeling of just before still lingered, and as he pulled her closer to him she was jolted by a wild spasm of sexual urgency. She could feel the powerful bunched musculature beneath his shirt, and the quickening of his breathing. Why shouldn't they, after all? Caplan muttered something against her neck, which she didn't properly hear.

‘I said, we could go somewhere.'

She paused, agonised. Robert would be the easiest of all to dupe – and the easiest to hurt. Which made it imperative that she resisted the temptation. She wondered if thinking about him now, at this moment, rendered her a true romantic; wouldn't a cynic just grab the opportunity when it came along? And yet she
did
want to grab it, she was right in the mood, and so was he.

Caplan blinked, and angled his face downwards. ‘You've got someone – at home?'

‘I'm afraid so. And I'm not sure I can face lying to him.'

He stared again at her, but she wouldn't meet his eye in case it broke her resolve. It really was that fragile. The silence between them extended, until at last he gave an exasperated groan and shook his head. His tone, when he spoke, was wistful. ‘He's a lucky guy.'

She got back to Oxford the following afternoon, having stopped off in London for the night at Stephen's flat. Now that the news of her delinquency was out she saw no reason to hurry. Her mother had been furious with her on the telephone, bemoaning her fright at the college's enquiry coming out of the blue, and her subsequent mortification once it emerged that Freya had led them a dance. ‘How on earth did you think you'd get away with it?' she asked, and Freya didn't bother explaining that she almost
had
got away with it – if she had succeeded in meeting Jessica Vaux that first week in Nuremberg instead of chasing shadows she might have achieved her objective without anyone noticing her absence.

At Somerville the ghost of dissipation hung about her rooms. Smeared glasses, loaded ashtrays and empty bottles indicated that Ginny had been entertaining, but there was no sign of her. She was probably out celebrating the end of her exams. On the mantelpiece Stephen's portrait had been knocked askew. As she straightened it she thought of his disgusted scowl the last time they had spoken. She hadn't said goodbye to him before leaving yesterday. Heaving her suitcase onto the bed she began to unpack, before it occurred to her that this might be a short-term stay. Wedged into a side pocket was her copy of
Pavilions of Smoke
, which she took out and opened to the title page. There, in a serene Edwardian hand, was an inscription:

She felt that ‘best regards' was rather stiff, a bit prim – after all the talking and drinking they'd done had she not earned ‘with affection', or even ‘love'? Perhaps the sensibility was Edwardian, too; the lady was not born of a demonstrative generation. She did like that ‘fearless inquisitor', though.

Down at the lodge she checked her pigeonhole, thinking there might be something from Robert. She had written to him while she was in Nuremberg and had heard nothing back, which was almost certainly due to the chaotic postal service. The only letter awaiting her was from the college principal, summoning her to an interview tomorrow morning.

Restless, she left the lodge and walked down St Giles. Sunlight glinted off the dusty leaves of trees, and the air was muffled with the high sweetish scent of blossom. She knocked at Robert's door in Balliol, without reply. On Broad Street she passed clusters of begowned students, grinning their relief at the end of schools. She thought of her first morning here alone, back in October, and wandered into the covered market as she had then: still the same smell of hanging meat and sawdust. Brown's cafe was packed, but she found a table at Fuller's on the Cornmarket. The end-of-term mood around the place, and her recent truancy in Germany, had a dislocating effect. She could find no purchase on Oxford's cliquish insularity; there was at its centre something smug and unyielding that repelled her.

She had been staring into the middle distance so intently that she failed to notice the figure ghosting up to her table.

‘My dear, look at you! I haven't seen such expressive melancholy on a face since Falconetti's Joan of Arc.'

Freya smiled up at Nat Fane. ‘That's funny, I was just trying to think of the very few things I'd miss about this place, and there you are.'

‘Madam, your servant,' he replied, taking a seat. He was wearing a cornflower-blue summer suit, co-respondent shoes and a floppy bow tie of cream and brown. ‘But this alarms me – are you intending to quit our lovely groves?'

‘Perhaps. I may have no choice.' She told him the story of her German adventure and its likely consequences. It sounded in her retelling hardly plausible. Nat listened with an expression of amusement and mingled envy, as though he wished he'd thought of doing it himself.

‘My word. Chivvying out Jessica Vaux – in Nuremberg! That's a feather in your cap – an entire Apache headdress, one might say.'

‘Actually, I have you to thank, for introducing me to old Erskine that night. It was he who told me she was going to be there, and then I sort of pestered him to help me.'

Nat squinted at her. ‘Do you really think he will?'

‘Well, I did – up until this moment,' said Freya dubiously.

‘Oh, I'm sure you're right – it's just, from what I know of Jimmy he's quite a tricky character …'

Takes one to know one, thought Freya. She wondered if Nat was deliberately trying to unsettle her. ‘Maybe I've been naive. I'll find out soon enough.'

Nat's expression had changed. It was the appraising, foxy look he had fastened on her the first time they met. She stared back at him, frowning. ‘Is there something on your mind?'

‘There is
always
something on my mind,' he said, raising his eyebrows. ‘Such a pity you were never inclined to the stage! Girls like you aren't so common any more. You know, I've a strong intuition you will one day make someone properly unhappy.'

‘I'm sorry about that,' she replied. ‘Are you going to be in London for the summer?'

‘I am indeed. I'm putting on another play at a theatre in Hampstead. You must come along. But wait – the college won't run you out of town, will they?'

‘I honestly don't know. I think they're pretty angry with me.'

Nat's face darkened. ‘Dear, dear Freya. What should we do without you?'

‘“Think, and die,”' she said, and they both laughed.

‘Well,
before
we do that, you must come to the Union tonight – end-of-term bash. I'll put your name on the list.'

She wrinkled her nose in demur, but when he started to plead she shrugged her assent. It surprised her to realise that she might even matter to him.

She was wearing one of the summer dresses that had not been crushed in the packing of her suitcase. The string of tiny pearls she fixed around her neck had once belonged to Stephen's mother – her Jewish grandmother. It was the only bit of jewellery she owned of anything more than sentimental value. She put a packet of Chesterfields in her pocket and opened her medicine box. To arm herself with Benzedrine prior to stepping out for a night had become second nature. She wondered if they really were as addictive as Jessica had said; she was almost tempted to swallow a couple in defiance. But no – that was a promise she must keep.

She could hear the noise from the party before she had even entered the Union. Upstairs she found herself in a dense current of people surging around the main bar. A jazz band was tootling through ‘Stompin' at the Savoy', hardly in the Benny Goodman class, but not bad. She spotted Nat at a table, entertaining his coterie of disciples. He was entwined with a girl of doll-like prettiness; they looked good together, but she could tell from the doll's adoring glances that Nat wouldn't suffer her for long. Freya thought of going over, and stopped herself. This afternoon he had begged her to come, and now they would probably not exchange a word. But she didn't mind. Withdrawing into the crush she wandered around, until a friendly bespectacled face loomed in the distance, hailing her.

‘Freya! Haven't seen you in ages.' It was Charlie Tremayne, Robert's friend, sweatily bedraggled from his exertions on the dance floor. She had forgotten he was a jazz nut.

‘Hullo. Rather good, aren't they?' she said, nodding in the band's direction.

‘Smashing! I thought I was getting somewhere with a young lady a moment ago, but she's disappeared.' He pulled a comical woebegone face. If he weren't so short she would have offered to dance with him herself. Instead, she straightened his tie which had been pulled wildly askew.

‘Have you seen Robert at all?' she asked him. ‘I've been away.'

Charlie hesitated a moment, then said, ‘Now and then. We don't knock around much any more. To tell the truth, I was pretty fed up with the way he treated Nancy.'

‘You mean …'

‘Well, I think he played her along, and all the time he was seeing some other girl.'

‘Did Nancy tell you this?'

‘Some of it. She didn't say who the girl was – if she even knew.'

Freya swallowed hard. ‘Have you – any idea who she is?'

Charlie shook his head. ‘I imagine he'll bring her along here tonight. But surely you've heard all about it from Nancy?'

‘Like I said, I've been away …'

He gave her a rueful look. ‘It was awkward, you know, with me being rather sweet on her. I stopped calling, once I realised there was no chance.'

She squeezed his hand in sympathy. ‘I'm sorry, Charlie. You'd have been a good thing for Nancy, I'm sure.'

‘That makes me sound like medicine. I'm afraid we don't fall for people because they're “good for us”, do we? Attraction is just a thing that happens, like the weather. You can't force yourself to feel something.'

She only nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Charlie, oblivious to her guilty mood, suggested they have a drink. As they waited at the bar he said, ‘How did your exams go?'

‘They didn't,' she replied with a half-laugh.

‘Oh dear. You flunked them?'

‘No, no, I mean – I didn't show up for them.'

Charlie looked aghast. ‘What?'

‘It's a long story. Entirely my own fault. I'm due at the principal's office, eight thirty tomorrow morning.'

‘Crikey. Bad luck. Last cigarette and a blindfold!' He laughed, but then seemed to regret his levity. ‘Sorry, I didn't mean –'

‘It's all right. They can do what they like.'