Freya (37 page)

Outside again the heat assaulted them. They started to look for the restaurant that Kay had recommended, but somehow kept making wrong turns. The streets they took alternated glare and gloom; they tried to hug the shadows but the sun quickly found them out. Nancy, drained from the effort of breathing, lingered in a doorway. Then Freya spotted a trattoria directly opposite, and decided they should eat there.

‘My body seems to be undergoing its very own heatwave,' said Nancy, fanning herself with a menu while a waiter smoothed out their paper tablecloth.

‘You do look a bit flushed,' admitted Freya. ‘
D'acqua, per favore
.' She mused for a moment. ‘I rather love Kay, don't you? She's like someone out of Forster. You know what she said to me this morning? – “My dear, I would like to influence you unduly.” I couldn't help laughing.'

‘I think she rather likes
you
,' said Nancy, weighing her words.

‘You think she might be – well, yes – it would explain a few things.'

It hadn't occurred to her when they talked this morning about living on her own. Now she thought of it, Kay had said she'd never met anyone she could live with – not
any man
, as most women would have said, but
anyone
, the ambiguous pronoun. Perhaps Kay really was reconciled to a solitary life, but it seemed unfair that someone so gregarious should be alone just because society wouldn't –

It was no use. The subject was too tender to bear in silence. She had to get it out or it would poison her.

‘Nance, there's something I've got to tell you, and I need you to be honest with me. It's quite important.'

Nancy stared over the table at her. ‘What is it?'

She took a deep breath. ‘You remember the night I got back from dinner with Alex, and you wondered why he was telling me all that stuff about himself now – why he'd waited so long? Well, I found out.' She recounted the story of his being tracked by his old wartime snitch, the photos, the blackmailing. That sort of thing happened quite a lot, it seemed; there were criminal syndicates that made big money out of extorting queers, especially those in public office. It could go on for years.

‘Of course I felt terribly for him – how could I not? Then he asked me if I could lend him cash.'

Nancy gasped in disbelief on hearing how much. ‘Three hundred?! Is he mad?'

‘No. Just desperate. Of course I told him I didn't have that sort of money …'

Nancy shook her head. ‘Poor Alex. To be caught like that, with no recourse to the police, to the law – to anything.' She brooded for a moment, before looking to Freya. ‘So what did you do?'

Freya turned away, feeling an unpleasant warmth. ‘That's just it. I did nothing – actually something worse than nothing. I basically accused him of opportunism. The timing of it felt too deliberate – he'd waited less than a week to telephone, and next thing I know he's asking me to bale him out.'

Puzzlement chased over Nancy's features. ‘But you said yourself – he's desperate. And even if it does look suspicious, he surely wouldn't have asked you unless it were a last resort.'

It was what Freya had been afraid of hearing: the truth, more or less. Pride had tricked her. She had been so touched by Alex's confessional spirit at dinner that the bombshell of his blackmail story had made a chaos of her reasoning. The abruptness of his request for a loan would have surprised anyone, but she had been far too quick to judgement. Could she not have grasped that Alex was genuinely pleased by their reunion
and then
decided to ask her for help? She shrank to recall the way she had spoken to him –
I don't have that sort of money
. It was true, but she couldn't forget the ice in her tone.

She pressed her joined hands against her lips. Nancy was watching her, and not for the first time she felt grateful that her friend refused to make accusations against her, however deserved they might be.

‘I wish I knew a way to help him,' she said presently. ‘In my wilder moments I thought of asking my dad. He's the only person I know who'd have three hundred pounds to lend.'

‘But you can't think of paying,' said Nancy. ‘You can't get involved.'

‘If I thought it might save him I would.'

They ate some lunch, though the heat had taken away their appetite. As she sipped black coffee Freya returned to the subject, probing it like a sore tooth.

‘Of course I can't tell anyone about it. And you mustn't either, Nance – promise.'

‘Who on earth would I tell?'

‘I don't know. You might let it slip in front of someone – like Robert.'

She had said his name with a dissembling airiness, thinking she might catch her out if anything was going on between them. But Nancy returned only a frown. ‘I wouldn't dream of telling him, or anyone,' she said, looking Freya in the eye.

She thought back to the argument she'd had with Robert about the Vere Summerhill case. They had both written about the wider implications of his sentencing and the diminishing hope of leniency towards other homosexuals. Even if the public attitude to Summerhill had softened – he had put on a noble front in the dock – the law wasn't going to budge. And now the irony of Alex's story dropping right in her lap. Any other journalist would have hotfooted it straight to the editor and stopped the presses. The scandal of a queer in the heart of Whitehall was something you could make your name on. Alex must have known that, and yet he trusted her as a friend to keep his secret.
Oh God
– the more she turned it over the more callous she felt.

Walking back to the spot where they'd left the Vespa they passed the Duomo again, its majesty dwarfing all around it. Freya watched nuns file out of a side entrance. She turned to Nancy, busy wafting herself with a fan she had just bought at a market stall.

‘I noticed you lighting a candle in there before we left. You looked a picture of devotion.'

Nancy smiled. ‘It's odd, I hardly ever think of doing that in London. It must be the Italian influence.'

‘So what did you pray for?'

‘Oh …'

‘Go on. You must have asked for something.'

After a pause Nancy said, ‘Actually, I didn't ask for anything. I was – giving thanks.' A quick deprecating laugh escaped her. ‘That sounds awfully pious; I don't mean to. It's just, I often pray for things, then feel rather selfish about it. He isn't there just to petition. So I try to remember to thank Him as well, you know –'

‘For what?' asked Freya, curious.

‘For everything! For my being here, in this beautiful place. For my good fortune.' She laughed again, and said, ‘For being spared a violent death with my driver on the road this morning.'

‘Really?' said Freya, not sure how lightly this was meant to be taken. It remained an unfathomable part of Nancy that she could believe in this communion with the unknown. It was as though she were able to draw upon a vast company of friends and intimates whom she would refer to openly yet never introduce; St Francis de Sales had been the first, back in Oxford. Unfathomable, and in some obscure way, enviable, for there were times (like now) when she would have welcomed help from this ethereal assembly.

They had reached the parked motorcycle by the time she decided to say it. ‘Nance, do me a favour? Next time you're back there, light one for Alex, will you?'

The drowning heat discouraged any further trips into town. For the next few days they kept to the villa, reading, dozing, swimming, lolling on deckchairs in the shade. With Stephen usually off painting somewhere, the four women formed their own little society around the pool. Diana and Nancy made lunch and talked about books, while Freya obliged Kay, a card fiend, by playing a lot of canasta and whist. Kay also mixed the drinks, her favourite being an extra-strong negroni that made them all a bit woozy by teatime.

On the Thursday the sun, without disappearing, eased off the glare a notch, and the air was touched with a liquid softness. The pool's electric blue-green had cooled to a glimmer. All morning squadrons of tiny swifts had divebombed the water's surface for a sip. Nancy, who after the first day had shunned the sunlight, was at last persuaded by Freya to take a dip. The paleness of her skin dazzled against the peacock blue of her swimsuit and the thick russet rope she made of her hair.

‘It's freezing!' she yelped, lowering herself gingerly into the water.

‘Just get in, you ninny,' laughed Freya, already immersed. Anyone observing them both would perhaps have been tempted to extrapolate character from their very different styles. Nancy favoured a slow, stately breaststroke, legs kicking softly behind her like a frog. Freya in contrast sharked through the lengths with her stern front crawl. She had always been a good swimmer, and loved the propulsive thrust her long legs gave her; she remembered Nat Fane once describing her movement through the water as ‘phocine', which she later discovered meant ‘seal-like'. A compliment?

Having taken a deep breath she was plunging below to explore the soundless angular world of the pool, its smooth white walls and sloping tessellated floor. Turning, she was surprised to see Nancy approach, waving in slow motion; her hair had come unloosed from its braid and she thought, not for the first time, of Millais's Ophelia. Freya put a kiss to her palm and blew it towards her. A slender thread of bubbles escaped Nancy's lips as she smiled – or was she laughing? – and began gravitating upwards. Freya caught up alongside, and they broke the surface together with an exhilarated gasp.

They were still idling there when Freya saw from the corner of her eye Marina, the housekeeper, descending the trellised stairway towards them. She was waving a piece of paper in her hand. ‘
Telegramma per Mizz Nancy
,' she called, and Freya felt her heartbeat start to thicken. A telegram always meant doom – unless it was a birth. She would remember this scene, she thought, the sway of the water, suddenly cold again, the rasping of the cicadas somewhere beyond, the quick way Nancy heaved herself out of the pool to meet her messenger. Freya looked around to where Diana and Kay were sitting, and they must have caught the mood of crisis, too, for they were abruptly silent, leaning forward, braced against this ill wind just blown in. With mechanical urgency she climbed out of the pool, dripping, and held back a few yards from where Nancy stood, opening the little envelope now and reading.

Oh Jesus
, thought Freya, as Nancy's hand flew to her mouth. Dead. Someone is dead. They would be going home, packing tonight. Misery would accompany them, like a chaperone. Nancy was looking around, her face a mask of shock. She seemed quite unable to speak.

‘Nance. Is it bad news?'

Nancy stared at her, almost in fright, but she was shaking her head. She swallowed hard before she found her voice, which was small. ‘No, it isn't bad, it's – my book. They're going to publish my book.'

Freya took the note from her hand and read:
DOUBLE PERSONAL SOLD TO S&G STOP NEXT SPRING PUB STOP CONGRATS
.

And then they were suddenly in each other's arms, crying, and laughing, and whirling each other round. Marina, smiling in confusion, was also embraced, and kissed, and then dispatched by Kay to bring down a bottle of champagne. Freya found herself giddy, giddy with the sense of having escaped an atrocious fate and somehow emerged the other side into euphoria. With nothing at stake in the news but relishing its unforeseen arrival Kay and Diana had taken charge of the moment, offering one toast after another, whereas Nancy, for so long invested in the cycle of raised and frustrated hopes, looked slightly dazed by it all. Freya, drinking more quickly than any of them, detected a tiny quiver of dismay stirring below her own mood. It came of an awareness that this moment would mark the first step in Nancy's eventual detachment from her – from her influence. Success did that, even to the closest friends. It fortified self-esteem, it offered new chances to experiment, to explore, to determine the person you wanted to be. Hitherto Nancy had lived – both of them knew it – in Freya's shadow. It was her apprenticeship. Nancy colluded in it because she regarded Freya not just as her best friend but as a guide. The moment was coming, not yet, but soon, when the apprentice would leave behind the tutor entirely.

The sun had dropped down behind the hills by the time Stephen got back, his face and hands madly splotched with paint.

‘What's all this?' he said, catching the dizzied air of elation.

‘We're celebrating, dear,' said Kay. ‘This brilliant girl has just got her novel accepted. She's to be an
author
!'

‘Oh, Nancy,' he said, hugging her lightly. ‘That's marvellous. You must be – What's the matter?'

‘I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' gasped Nancy, her eyes silvery with tears. ‘It's just that everyone's been so lovely to me –'

Diana laughed, and draped her arm around Stephen. ‘They've been like this all afternoon. I haven't seen such tears since we were at the Coronet for
Brief Encounter
.'

‘Answered prayers,' said Freya.

‘What?'

‘“There are more tears shed over answered prayers than unanswered prayers.” St Teresa of Avila. Nance told me that.'

The remark met with bemused looks, because she had quoted the line so wistfully. Kay, searching for a link, said, ‘I always loved that Tennyson poem – do you know it?
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean …
But this is all rather morbid. One more round of drinks, then dinner, I think.'

Another surprise awaited Freya before the evening was over. They had returned to the terrace after dinner, by which time a decided nip in the air and the afternoon's booze were making her shiver. She hadn't packed any warm clothes, but Nancy had, and told her to borrow a cardigan which she'd left in her room.