Freya (54 page)

‘Wyley?' he said, reading off a dispatch notice. ‘Miss Eff Wyley?'

He had a delivery for her.

‘I haven't ordered anything.'

The man shrugged, and recited her name and address. ‘Been sent on someone's account, it looks like.' He called to his mate in the van, who got out and unlocked the rear. Moments later he was wheeling onto the pavement an enormous cardboard box on a metal trolley. It would be a two-man job to lift.

The flat cap said, ‘Don't tell me, you're on the top floor.'

She nodded, and he slumped his shoulders with a groan. It took them twenty minutes of huffing to manoeuvre it up the narrow Regency staircase and into her flat. As she signed for delivery she noticed the account name on the document: C. Effingham. When they'd gone she started cutting open the box, still in the dark as to what it contained. From its squarish shape she guessed it would be a Harrods hamper, stuffed with all the food Chrissie believed she ought to be eating. She dug out layers of protective grey padding until she reached something hard-edged and wooden, wrapped in a plastic shroud. It was a few moments before she realised, with a curious sense of being both excited and offended, what it was.

Chrissie hadn't sent food. There, sleek in its walnut finish and reflecting her face in the convex black screen, crouched a brand-new television set.

She knew the handwriting on the envelope the moment she saw it, as distinctive as a voice. Because it had been sent care of the newspaper, she had marked it PERSONAL in the corner. Nancy's mature, unflappable cursive hadn't changed down the years, though the NW postmark was new. Freya felt a pouncing jolt of curiosity as she tapped the letter on her desk, delaying the moment.

She was obliged to delay it a little longer when the editor appeared and called her into his office. Brock was minded to run something about Jimmy Erskine on his eighty-fifth birthday, and having heard that it was the old boy who'd given Freya her first break when she was at Oxford, well, she was the ‘obvious candidate' for the job. It seemed that Jimmy had written a book, too (Nat had got that wrong), a follow-up to the first volume of his memoirs.

‘I've got a copy of it somewhere,' said Brock, rummaging through his stacked in-tray. He found the book and passed it across his desk to Freya.

‘
Ecce Homo
,' she read. ‘Bit of a risky title, I would have thought.'

‘What? Oh, I see – “homo”. Ha ha.'

Jimmy had agreed to be interviewed at his flat, Brock continued, though in a letter to his publishers he had apparently stipulated that his interviewer must not be ‘a twelve-year-old', ‘an unpublished writer', or ‘a woman'.

Freya chuckled. ‘I could take offence at that.'

‘We'll give him notice that you're coming. You can turn on the charm.' She was on her way out the door when he said, ‘How's the Rise of Youth piece, by the way? Get anything out of Chrissie Effingham?'

‘I'm working on it,' she said. ‘But I'd better press on with this if it's his birthday coming up.'

Brock nodded. ‘Yeah. Age before beauty.'

Back at her desk she picked up a knife and slit open the letter. The text was closely written, in fountain-pen ink, with no crossings-out.

She sat at her desk, motionless. She felt rather stunned by the tone of the letter, the way it delicately balanced the qualities of contrition and kindness. It brought back Nancy's voice to her keenly. How could she turn down an olive branch proffered with such humility, with such rueful wisdom? Nancy could tell that the ‘good long chat' she and Robert were supposed to have had at the Corsair was nothing of the sort. She had Robert's measure as a spinner of yarns, but she covered for it without offending Freya or belittling him. She reread it; again she felt the open-hearted character of her old friend, and her gentle reaching out to the possibility of reunion.

On a third reading she felt her critical instincts tauten, like a string on a bow. The letter was not an entirely blameless effort: two phrases in it caused her lip to curl. Nancy's reference to ‘being in love', albeit cited as an excuse for her distraction, was a shaming reminder of her foolishness over Robert. In the face of Freya's warnings she had fallen for him, then compounded the error by marrying him. How deluded did she want to show herself?

The other phrase that displeased her was more difficult to cavil at, though she would have a go nonetheless.
We entertain quite a lot since his promotion
, she had written towards the end. Nancy had never been one to swank, which made the note of smug satisfaction all the more surprising.
We entertain
, do we? And there was surely no need
at all
to refer to his promotion, as if she didn't know that Robert was Labour's coming man. That she had put the line in parentheses was practically an admission of its irrelevance.

It occurred to her that she might be nitpicking. Perhaps her objections said more about her than they did about Nancy. She didn't want to hear Robert being puffed up, he was conceited enough as it was, but perhaps Nancy couldn't really be accused of anything other than stating a fact: they were a sociable couple. In any event, Freya could not deny her pleasure in receiving the letter, which in its quiet way conceded that the fault had been wholly on their side. It was tantamount to an apology. Would it not be the right thing to match Nancy's graciousness with her own and accept it?

She had picked up Fosh at his flat en route and was now scanning Bedford Avenue for a parking meter. Lolling in the passenger seat, Fosh had looked about the Morgan and drily pronounced it to be ‘very
groovy
'. She shrugged, not wanting to admit that she'd miss the thing once Nat asked for it back.

After the cold spring there was at last a mellowing in the air. Sun glinted through the latticed branches of the solemn beech trees. Across the sky an aeroplane's languid vapour trail was disappearing. There happened to be a space directly opposite the red-brick mansion block where Jimmy Erskine lived, and she swung the car into it. Fosh got out his heavy old Rolleiflex from the boot and they headed up the steps.

Inside, as they waited for the lift he mused brightly, ‘James Erskine. D'you know, I honestly thought he was dead.'

‘Might be best to keep that to yourself. There's a whole chapter in the memoir about his fear of dying.'

‘Oh, so he's got a book out, too?'

‘Published by a small press and reviewed hardly anywhere.
Ecce Homo
, it's called.'

They were admitted to the flat by a cheery fellow in a striped apron named George, who seemed to be the old boy's manservant. He led them through a hallway hung with a lot of dusty paintings and photographic portraits of theatrical bygones; thence into a stuffy living room. The two-bar fire was on, despite the mildness of the day, and the windows overlooking the street were shut firm. A sour smell of Brasso and mothballs permeated the place. The furniture was all pre-war; certain things, like the gramophone, possibly pre-Great War. There was no television, but by the armchair hunkered a huge old wireless, the sort that once would have crackled with the voices of the Crazy Gang. George, bending his ear to a closed door, gave it a respectful knock.

‘Jim? Your visitors are here.'

From the other side of the door came an indecipherable muttering. George offered them a smile that seemed to plead for patience. He joined them in the middle of the room and, dropping his voice, said, ‘He's just had a new set of teeth put in. They're giving him some grief.'

He asked them if they'd like tea, and disappeared off to the kitchen. Fosh, staring in bemusement around the room, silently picked up an ancient pair of lorgnettes from a side table and gawped at Freya through them. He replaced them quickly on hearing the far door open: Jimmy Erskine's bald head poked out like a venerable tortoise from its shell, followed slowly by the rest of him. He had shrunk to gnome-like proportions in the years since Freya had last clapped eyes on him, though the sartorial style was largely unaltered: a checked three-piece suit, dicky bow, and cream-coloured spats over his shoes. A monocle glazed his left eye.

He shuffled towards them on his cane, wheezing piteously, and stopped. Everything about him looked tired – everything but his eyes, which blazed fiercely in the ruined mosaic of his face.

‘What's this – it requires two of you to conduct an interview? One holds the page, the other reads the questions off it, I presume.'

Freya gave a polite laugh. ‘No, he's the photographer. I'm doing the interview.'

Jimmy shook his head, and muttered, ‘The monstrous regiment advances.'

She ignored that. ‘Actually we've met before, quite a few years ago. Freya Wyley.'

Jimmy frowned and shook his head. ‘I think not.'

‘Spring of 1946,' she continued. ‘We were introduced at the Oxford Union.'

The old man paused, staring ahead. ‘Then possibly at the Oxford Union I may know you again.'

George returned at this moment carrying a tea tray and invited them to sit down, since Jimmy hadn't. Fosh asked Jimmy how he would like to be photographed.

‘Oh,
clothed
, I think,' said Jimmy, running his eye up and down Fosh.

‘No, I mean, would you prefer to be standing or …?'

Jimmy waved away the suggestion and lowered himself into an armchair. ‘I'm not standing for anything. Snap away as you wish.'

George, having poured them all tea, was backing out of the room when Jimmy looked around and asked him where the biscuits had got to. They didn't have any in, the manservant replied.

‘Then would you kindly go and purchase some. Those sponge ones with the orange and chocolate on top.'

‘Jaffa Cakes.'

‘No, no, I don't want cakes. These are biscuits.'

‘Yes, I know the ones. They're called Jaffa Cakes,' George explained.

Jimmy looked unimpressed. ‘Well, whatever the blazes they're called, I should like a plate of 'em.'

George hurried off, and Jimmy leaned back to gaze in a bored way at his guests. Fosh, checking the focus on his camera, said, ‘Congratulations on the book. A triumph!'

Jimmy nodded. ‘It has its moments. But it's a mere distillation of the diaries that I've been keeping since 1931. They're now close to half a million words. I'd have liked to put the lot out. My publisher thought otherwise.'

‘Oh, shame,' said Fosh, raising the camera to his eye. ‘Personally I don't think you can have too much of a good thing.'

He's laying it on a bit thick, Freya thought; the old boy's going to slap him down. But Jimmy, far from suspecting flattery, accepted Fosh's compliment as his due. ‘I'm not alone in thinking the diaries the best of my
omnia opera
. A hundred years hence I'd like them to be considered alongside Pepys and Evelyn. In some respects I'm a better diarist than either. They had the Plague and the Fire to help 'em, after all.'