Libby was going to say something, though she hardly knew where to start, when Freddy glanced up and saw her in the doorway. His eyes widened, bulged really, and his mouth fell open so that the cigarette dangled from his bottom lip, then fell into his lap and he came to life with a curse.
‘Goodness, Freddy, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ Libby said, as she came into the room and shut the door behind her.
It would have been quite a nice room if Freddy didn’t have the curtains drawn and a large collection of dirty plates, glasses and cutlery littering every surface. Libby knew only too well how cross he got if someone tried to distract him when he was writing. No wonder the lady downstairs had looked so furious at the mention of his name.
‘Libby. What the hell are you doing here?’ Freddy turned in his chair to watch as Libby strode over to the windows, drew back the curtains, then wrestled with the handle to get some air into the room. It was dark now, but she could hear the hum of conversation, the chink of glasses, from the bar across the street. ‘You’re the very last person I expected to see.’
‘I’ll bet.’ Now that she’d arrived at her destination, Libby was dog-tired and the bed, even with crumpled sheets and blankets, looked inviting. ‘Your Mr Gough at the Mirror was going to send a cable.’
‘Madame la Receptioniste hates me. I’m not surprised she’s withholding my messages,’ Freddy said. He held up a packet of cigarettes. ‘Do you want one? And are you ever going to tell me what you’re doing here?’
‘Yes, please.’ Libby perched on the window sill. Freddy had his back to her and she could see a dressing taped to his shoulder, which looked as if it hadn’t been changed in days. ‘We got a telegram saying you’d been shot and that someone needed to fetch you home from Paris. I drew the short straw.’ She was determined to be aloof, a little haughty. ‘Are you in terrible pain?’
‘Hardly. Here, catch!’ He threw Libby a cigarette, then a box of matches. ‘It only hurts if I forget and do something silly like try to stretch my arms when I get stiff. Anyway, Libs, you’ve had a wasted trip; I’m going back to Spain, you see. First, though, I’ve been commissioned to write a book about what’s been happening in el hermosa pais. Publishers want fifty thousand words by Friday week. Quite a decent advance too. What day is it?’
Libby had forgotten this; Freddy’s quicksilver mind, his thoughts everywhere all at once. It was impossible to keep up, one just had to sift through and pull out the most pressing pieces of information. ‘You are coming home, Freddy. Both your editors at the Mirror and the Herald were quite adamant. Said that you’d taken the most appalling risks while you were in Spain and that neither of them wanted your death on their consciences.’
Freddy snorted in derision. ‘What rot!’ He was pale, though Libby couldn’t tell if it were because of his wound or because he’d been shut up for days, the only light coming from his desk lamp. ‘I was accidentally shot by a pal, a Spanish poet called Jorges, who didn’t know one end of a rifle from another. We laughed about it.’
‘Oh, Freddy, you don’t change! You’re absolutely infuriating!’ Libby took an angry drag of her cigarette, as a poor substitute for slapping some sense into him. ‘Your mother is beside herself – claiming that she’s having palpitations and goodness knows what else – and you are coming back to London because I’ve just travelled over with your replacement and —’
‘Oh really, who? Hollis, I shouldn’t wonder, though he can’t write for toffee. Always thought his political allegiances weren’t as —’
‘Freddy! Shut up!’ It was a pained scream. ‘They’ve sent a man called Chivers and a photographer called Maxwell, who have both been very kind.’
‘Chivers? That pompous old windbag. Or pompous young windbag, rather. And Maxwell? I expect he was only kind because he wanted to make love to you.’ Freddy leaned back in his chair then winced as if the movement had jarred his shoulder. ‘You’ve come all this way, Libby? That’s very noble of you.’
‘It’s not at all noble of me.’ She’d also forgotten this truth – that when she wasn’t with Freddy she loved him more than when she was with him. He was just too much. Too bloody much. ‘Did you not get my last letter? I sent it to your hotel in Madrid.’
‘The letter when you told me you were done with me? That if I cared anything for you, that I’d let you be, not write to you again.’ Freddy pushed his hair back from his face. ‘I do care for you, Libs, so I honoured your wishes. Besides, I haven’t been in Madrid for months.’
It would have been so much easier if Freddy hadn’t claimed to still care for her. If he didn’t look so thin and tired, like he hadn’t shaved or washed or eaten a proper meal in weeks. She couldn’t tell him now. Couldn’t kick a man while he was down. ‘Chivers said to meet in the bar across the street at eight. You need to wash and shave first. Do you have clean clothes?’
‘I won’t go.’ Freddy shook his head. ‘I have work to do and there’s no point in meeting my replacement when I’m heading back to Spain myself. Don’t look at me like that, Libs. My mind’s made up – there’s nothing anyone can do to change it.’
They were half an hour late to meet Chivers and Maxwell, by which time Libby had bullied Freddy into having a tepid bath, while two maids restored order to the room. Then Libby took great pleasure in tipping iodine on Freddy’s wound as he shuddered and swore at her. The bullet had been removed, the hole crudely sewn up with black thread. It looked sore, the skin still knitting together, but not infected.
‘I’m not at death’s door,’ Freddy grumbled when Chivers and Maxwell greeted him like a conquering hero. ‘It’s barely a scratch.’ Though he didn’t need much persuasion, or whisky, to describe what life was like on the Republican lines. Men and women coming from all over Europe to join the International Brigades, though too many of them had a romantic notion of what it was like to fight for a worthy cause. ‘The romance soon ends when you’re outnumbered, surrounded and being shot at.’
The two men peppered Freddy with questions, Chivers quite deferential now he was face to face with ‘a comrade who’s taken a bullet for the cause’.
‘Not at all,’ Freddy laughed. ‘Was just in the wrong place when someone was playing silly buggers with their rifle.’
Then he sketched out the key positions with the help of the hardboiled eggs that were a feature of most Parisian bars, though a hard-boiled egg was the very last thing Libby ever wanted to eat when she was drinking.
As it was, after a small cognac, she was done. Maxwell stood up when she did, though Chivers and Freddy stayed seated, oblivious as they blethered on about Franco. ‘I’m going to leave you boys to it,’ Libby said, swaying on the spot. ‘I’m absolutely fagged.’
Maxwell insisted on accompanying Libby and lingered on the hotel steps making pointless conversation about his sister who longed to go on the stage so that Libby thought there might be some truth to what Freddy had said about him wanting to make love to her. In which case, he was doomed to disappointment, especially when Libby yawned in his face.
‘Sorry! How rude!’ she trilled. ‘You’d better go back to the bar. I can see Freddy glaring at us through the window.’
Freddy was doing nothing of the kind and Libby was sure if she and Chivers made love in the middle of the road Freddy wouldn’t give two hoots.
Libby hadn’t planned to share a room with Freddy, but by now it was too late to make other arrangements in her rudimentary French. She pulled off the creased clothes she’d travelled in, gave herself a whore’s bath with cold water and a flannel then dropped onto the bed like a stone. She’d left the window open, could still hear the chatter from the bar opposite, but she was soon dragged under by sleep.
‘I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, Libs. And yet, here you are. Are you sure you’re not a dream?’
In the foggy, groggy hinterland of awake and asleep, Libby thought that she was the one who was dreaming, but then Freddy closed his arms around her, nosed that spot on the back of her neck as he’d used to.
‘Of course you’d have seen me again,’ she mumbled, her words thick. ‘I’m living in your mother’s house, for one thing.’
‘Ah, but I’d planned to exile myself for the wrongs I’d done you. Do you hate me or have you forgiven me?’
Now, Libby was remembering when she’d loved Freddy the best and it had been these still, quiet hours in the dead of night, the world slumbering, when he’d put his arms around her and whispered things that she could hardly believe he was saying.
‘I don’t hate you,’ Libby said, because she never had, no matter how hard she’d tried. ‘But I can’t forgive you, Freddy. You left me when I was… You left me in the very depths of despair and I had to claw my way back out.’
She felt Freddy flinch but he didn’t retreat, instead he tightened his arms around her. ‘I’m sorry things didn’t work out, Libs.’
‘You can’t even say it, can you?’ she asked a little sadly. ‘Can’t say that you’re sorry about the baby. I know that it’s silly to still be so blue about a baby that was never even born but I loved him already and I think I always will.’
‘Darling Libs.’ Freddy kissed her nape, his fingers threading through her hair. ‘It’s not that I didn’t care; it’s just so impossible to find the right words.’
He let go of her and Libby was unanchored, alone, as he moved off the bed then stumbled about in the dark as if he knew that hot tears were coursing down her cheeks and that she didn’t want him to put the light on. Libby heard him rummage in a corner and then he was back, kneeling at the side of her bed, to take her hand. ‘I carried these with me,’ he said. ‘They were all I had of you, of the baby.’
Libby felt something soft and warm and it was she who reached out to snap on the bedside lamp to see that he was holding the white layette; jacket, trousers, little hat and booties, that she’d knitted for the baby as she’d sat on the sidelines in Parisian cafés and bars while Freddy had taken centre stage.
Perhaps the bitter memory of it gave her that little edge of spite to say what she had to say. ‘The letter you never received… I wrote asking for a divorce.’ Libby marvelled at the clear, steady beat to her voice. ‘I’ve fallen in love with a man, he loves me very much too, and I’m having his child.’
Freddy’s gaze was dark and serious. ‘Does he treat you better than I did?’
‘That wouldn’t be difficult, would it?’ Libby smiled to take the sting out of her words and Freddy smiled back.
‘Then I’m happy for you, truly I am.’
Libby sighed. ‘You could at least pretend to be angry, Freddy. Even a little piqued. Makes a girl feel wanted, you know.’
Freddy turned off the light. ‘I’ve certainly never met a girl who falls in love as often as you do. This chap, me, that fellow you ran off to New York with…’
‘Jack and I didn’t run off, he cast me in his revue, which he took to New York…’
‘And before that, the man who seduced you when you were…’
There had been five or six men and Libby had been in love with each of them: that wonderful giddy, heart-skipping feeling as if champagne ran through your veins. When she’d greedily count the hours that they’d spend together; the afternoons taking tea, walking in parks and the nights, those wonderful nights that seemed to last for ever but ended too soon. But always, always, their love gradually withered away to nothing and all the tears and the gin in the world couldn’t wash away Libby’s pain.
But this time, Hugo loved her back. Had never treated love like a silly game but declared his intentions from the start. So, this time, the love was different. Safer. Solid, so that Libby sometimes imagined that she could reach out her hand and be able to touch it.
Or maybe it was Hugo who was safe. Solid. A man of honour, who kept his word. Still…
‘I’d much rather love and have my heart broken, than never know love at all,’ Libby said as Freddy got back into bed, put his arms around her again, his hands coming to settle on the swell of her stomach where another’s man’s child grew.
‘Your need to be loved – it will be the death of you, Libby,’ Freddy murmured in her ear and Libby thought that he was probably right, but she couldn’t find it in her heart to care.
It would be such a lovely way to go.