Love Among the Single Classes Read online

  ‘How can you be sure he felt the same?’

  ‘I think so. Anyway, I have my boyfriend now, an English boyfriend, so it is no longer possible. And now he has you.’

  ‘But does he want me?’

  ‘Why not? Do you want him?’

  ‘Oh Marina … you’ve no idea how much!’

  ‘Well, all you must do is give him the things he needs. Comfort. Warmth. Love. Do you have children? It is nice if he is in a home sometimes. And let him have a nice time … you know, let him enjoy. He is too serious.’

  ‘But does he want all that? He’s so remote and … He frightens me.’

  ‘Yes, he frightens me too. I think he frightens himself. Iwo I think is in love with our country, only he didn’t know this until he had gone. He is like many Poles: I see it here, all the time. They become such patriots when they are away from Poland! But he can’t go back, he must accept that his life is here. I have a nice English boyfriend who will marry me if I want to, and that makes me feel that I can belong here. Perhaps you do the same for Iwo?’

  I am intrigued, though not surprised, to learn that she has a boyfriend. He must be unusual to attract her. She has already experienced so much: no ordinary, conventional Englishman would appeal to her. I’d like to ask more about him, but my immediate curiosity is focused on Iwo. I long to know more about his earlier life – what was his wife like? Did he sleep with his students? But just then a group of people comes in wanting to have a meal, and Marina has to look after them. I smile gratefully at her, and leave my phone number on a piece of paper.

  As I prepare to go she seizes my hand and says, ‘You will come back and see me again, won’t you Constance?’

  ‘I will, I will … thank you so much!’

  Outside on the cold street I realize I am only a few hundred yards away from his house. Dare I go and visit him? I walk towards his street and stand a few doors down from the house, looking at it. I walk round to the back of the square, trying to make out which is his window and whether a light burns in his room. My heart thuds with nervous anticipation. This is ridiculous, I think, either stay and offer the comfort Marina says he needs, or go back home to Kate, but don’t stand gazing up at what is probably the wrong window. I walk purposefully back to the house and ring the doorbell. A blast of light and raucous laughter. The Australians are there in force. Their noisy gusto pauses as they look at me expectantly.

  ‘We do anything for you, lady?’

  ‘Is … have you seen? … well, I wondered if Iwo, or Monty, is in?’

  ‘I know you! The lady who’s always on the telephone! Why don’t you go up and take a look? Know which is his room? Yes, of course you do! Go on: give him a nice surprise!’

  They mean to be kind, but they are overwhelming. Surely, if Iwo were there he would have heard my voice and put his head out? If not, perhaps he doesn’t want to see me? Perhaps he has company already – Joanna? Anyway, I didn’t have the usual bath and ritual dressing-up before I left. My lipstick has come off.

  ‘No, no, thank you very much but it’s all right. I was just passing and I wondered …’

  ‘Come in and have a Foster’s with us, why don’t you?’

  ‘No, honestly, thanks awfully, no I must go home.’

  I escape. It is not the sort of ordeal I will risk repeating.

  Perhaps they told Iwo that I had been looking for him: Hey Monty, you’re a sly bastard. Nice little Sheila came round for you last night, where were you? No sign. Missed your chance there, didn’ya? Or perhaps he realized he had been short on the telephone; at any rate, a couple of days later he rings me, and it is time for the good policeman to take his turn. He enquires solicitously after my week: how are the children, how is the library, how am I and do I still want to meet this weekend? Shall we see a film? Shall we both consult Time Out and then compare notes this time tomorrow? If I had a shred of self-respect I would berate him for having been so abrupt. If we had a normal sort of relationship, relaxed and easy as Paul described, I would tell him that I had talked to Marina. But I don’t do either: instead, I agree rapturously to look in Time Out and phone him back later.

  With winged fingers I scan the film columns. I know his preferences and it is not hard to convince myself that I, too, want to see these films of intergalactic slaughter; these worlds, pre-historic or post-nuclear, peopled with blonde teenagers in well-rounded breastplates and designer lingerie. The film is unimportant: a pretext for meeting. I have other plans. Marina is right when she says I must make Iwo enjoy himself. I have thought of a way. It’s a risk, though, he may scoff, as he did at the candles.

  He meets me in central London in the early evening and together we hurry through the rain, through the cheerful weekend crowds, through the technicoloured neon reflections bouncing in and out of puddles, and into the plush passivity of the cinema. This time I let him buy the tickets, not least because he has chosen the film, which could have been computer-assembled from the ten commonest elements in American college-kid movies. He watches it with the fascination of an anthropologist observing the fertility rites of a new tribe and I, glancing sideways through my fingers, watch his attentive profile outlined by the bluish light from the screen. We leave the cinema in high spirits.

  ‘Excellent film!’ says Iwo, with real satisfaction. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Now I have plans for us. Let’s go back to your room. You’ll see …’

  It is early December. The streets are cold and wet, the shop windows glittering. The tube is full of shoppers laden, even at this hour, with bulky plastic bags. I too am weighed down with a supermarket carrier. I have planned a picnic: a luxury picnic which we shall eat on the floor of his room. He will either shrug eloquently and make some dismissive comment or he will like the eccentricity of the idea, and join in. Luckily for me his good humour, prompted by the absurd film, inclines him to the latter. Midnight feasts in the dormitory used to be like this, tinged with the same edge of hysteria, but in those days it was the fear of matron’s sudden entry that made us stifle our giggles as we gorged ourselves to nausea on tinned peaches and artificial cream, Mars bars, sweet sherry or cider and bags of crisps. But tonight Iwo is not going to be matron. He looks on with astonishment as I produce the delicacies I bought this morning: two bottles of wine, and a corkscrew; plastic cups and plates; smoked meat and sausages and fish; four kinds of cheese, with celery already washed and stripped of its fibres; apples and parsley and even salt and pepper … I have thought of everything. I sit on the floor surrounded by the food, and open the first bottle of wine. A grin spreads over his face – oh, it is so lovely to see him smile!

  ‘Wonderful! What an idea!’ he says. ‘Pity we have no music. Well, you must imagine, at the far end of the room behind that curtain, four musicians in dinner jackets: a string quartet. They are going to play Mozart, don’t you think? Yes. My dear, have you been carrying all this food all evening? I wondered what was in your bag.’

  ‘It’s much cheaper than eating out, and it’s fun. If you didn’t hate candles so much …’

  ‘Who says I hate candles? Look, here, you want candles? I have some.’

  He fixes three candles firmly in saucers, and they surround us flickering softly, making small points of orange in the gleaming glass of the wine bottles. Outwardly I am vivacious and talkative. I laugh as I tell him the story of my week – told to make him laugh about the people who have been in the library, Linda’s problems with the exasperating Stavros, Kate’s mulishness.

  I can’t bear silence, which has always seemed synonymous with disapproval, ever since my childhood. My father used to come upstairs after my mother had kissed me good night and switched the light out. He would sit mutely on the end of my bed in the dark heavy with disappointment at my behaviour. He might begin a sentence, ‘Your mother tells me, Constance, that you’ve been rude again …’ but his voice would trail away as though in despair, his lack of words a more eloquent reproach than anything he could have said. At other times I didn’t g
et any clues at all; he would merely sit, and sigh. Eventually he’d get up, saying something like, ‘I hope tomorrow I shall be able to feel more like kissing you good night …’ and he would walk slowly out of the room, closing the door very gently behind him. He had no idea how much harm he was doing, after all, he hadn’t hit me, hadn’t even raised his voice. I am sure he thought of himself as the kindest of fathers. I would be left lying in bed, clenched with remorse for the unknown sins I had committed, probably the same ones as usual: rudeness, showing off, ingratitude. But because my father had said nothing, the sins never felt forgiven or forgotten. My deep-seated anger and guilt remained. Iwo never accuses me of anything – how could he? I have done nothing wrong – but his failure to praise is far more damning. It means that everything I am is inadequate.

  In the attempt to amuse Iwo I work out in advance what I am going to say. Nothing is spontaneous. On bad evenings my foolish remarks fall into leaden silence and leaden looks. Tonight, thank God, is one of the good evenings. Iwo, eating Polish krakowska sausages and smoked pork fillet on black bread and rye bread, sipping a glass of good white wine from Paul’s – no, dammit, my – cellar, cocks his head towards me and contrives to make me feel as though he is indulging me, when surely it is the other way round.

  Because our relationship is discontinuous, each meeting becomes a separate event. It’s hard to imagine us reaching that relaxed and happy state of people who telephone every day or two and chat about what’s been happening, just to say that all’s well. For every hour spent in Iwo’s company there have been five of thought and planning. Tonight the stage is softly lit and the props are food and drink, but the dialogue is false. It looks like a scene from one of the films I love so much, Pandora’s Box maybe, and if only I looked like Louise Brooks! Here we are in Jack the Ripper’s attic room, black and white, a slanting beam of light from the window emphasizing his sharp cheekbones and the cut of her hair and chin. Amid this surreal menace my one-woman performance is all wrong. This cold picnic in a cold room with a cold man is a farce. Let’s get drunk and replace the artificiality that I have orchestrated with one that’s alcohol-induced. No: I can pretend to be drunk and ask him questions I couldn’t risk when sober.

  ‘This wine is good.’

  ‘Mmm, isn’t it? Pour me out another glass … Iwo: tell me about your wife.’

  ‘We mustn’t drink too much. It’s late already.’

  ‘Tell me all about her. What was she like? Do you think about her all the time?’

  ‘What time is it? Do you want to sleep here tonight?’

  ‘Yes. Go on Iwo, answer.’

  ‘What about Kate? Are you happy to leave her alone?’

  ‘She’s not alone. Cordy’s there. Can I have another glass of wine? You have one as well. What about your daughters?’

  ‘If I drink any more I’m afraid I shall disappoint you.’

  ‘You couldn’t. Iwo, tell me …’

  ‘Constance, what do you want me to say? That I think about my wife? Yes, I do. Not all the time. And my daughters? Yes. Now will you come to bed?’

  It’s no good. Even drunk – he must be a bit drunk – he’s had the best part of the two bottles – his self-control never falters. In his orderly fashion he tidies away the remains of our meal, putting the plastic bag full of debris behind the curtain so that the gleaming floorboards are bare again. I sit on the edge of his bed and watch. He undresses, folding up his clothes. It’s like a striptease, his slow, absorbed movements heightening my desire. When he is quite naked, shivering in the blue air of the room, he puts his arms around me.

  ‘Now I am going to do the most erotic things to you he says.

  Why do I invent a monster and torment myself, when the real Iwo makes love to me with skill and generosity? He leaves no part of me untouched. What does it matter if he doesn’t speak? Why do I need words, when here, coiling around me, over and under, warm body and entwined limbs, is the proof that he wants me? And yet, I wish he would speak. I know that the words, ‘I love you’, uttered by either of us, would bring me to instant orgasm. But he doesn’t say them, and I can’t.

  Sleep on, my love, in thy cold bed, never to be disquieted.

  8

  The good alternates with the bad. The ordinary is followed by new horrors that I hadn’t thought of; and I thought I’d thought of them all. But to start with the ordinary, the comfortingly normal, the safe bits of my life: all of which I would overturn for him.

  The library on Monday morning has more than its usual quota of pensioners escaping from their cheerless rooms. They come here because it’s warm, and full of company. From the speed with which they get through their library books, I reckon some of these pensioners don’t speak to anyone all weekend.

  Not that they’re all to be pitied. Take the huge and formidable Mrs Rowe, doing her usual trick of commandeering all the serious Sundays and monopolizing them by simply sitting down and spreading her skirts across the ones she isn’t reading. She’s so myopic she has to hold the relevant section right up to her eyes and peer at it from a couple of inches away. Perhaps that’s why she likes to get them first, so that they don’t smell of other people’s dirty or nicotine-stained hands.

  Some are in a desperate plight, yet manage to confront it without a trace of self-pity. Like my old favourite, Mr Southgate: he’s in again this morning, looking for the reference books on law.

  ‘Thinking of embarking on a life of crime?’ I ask.

  ‘Never left it!’ he says.

  He has recurring problems with his tenant. He’s far too delicate to sully my feminine ears with the precise misdemeanours, but I’m given to understand, by those meaningful looks and pauses that indicate the physical functions, that nowadays the man not only … when he’s been drinking, he’s even taken to … as well.

  ‘It’s shocking. It’s not right, and I won’t have it in my house!’

  Mr Southgate wants to find out his legal rights as regards evicting the man. I direct him to the reference section of the library, knowing that he won’t in fact take action – the same tenant has been there for years – but understanding too that the mere act of doing something will make him feel better. I’ve suggested in the past that he should go and talk to the Law Centre or the Citizen’s Advice Bureau, but his fierce independence, combined with his fear of authority in any form no matter how benign, precludes this.

  One or two housewives want to look up Christmas recipes in cookery books or magazines. I recommend Good Housekeeping, and tell them it costs ten pence to use the photocopier. Linda wants to know if I’ve made my Christmas pudding yet. The morning passes sluggishly. The light beyond the windows is dark grey, and the rain is thickening into sleet. In spite of this I decide, on the spur of the moment, to go home for lunch.

  I am in the middle of loading the washing machine when the phone rings. Iwo? Max? My mother? Three possible phone conversations have already flashed through my mind by the time I pick it up.

  ‘Constance? I hoped you might be at home. This is Iwo.’

  ‘Iwo! Already! Where are you?’

  ‘In the workshop.’ You mean postroom. ‘Eating a sandwich. Tadeusz rang to ask if we – he invites you, too – can come to see a Polish play at the Centre. I said I’d check with you. He needs to book.’

  ‘Iwo, how wonderful! In Polish. When?’

  ‘It is a play about an informer, in Warsaw, in the early fifties. A time I remember. There’ll be headphones to translate for you. He suggested Thursday.’

  ‘Will Joanna be there too?’ Damn. ‘Yes, I’m free. Thursday will be fine. How kind. Isn’t this weather foul?’

  ‘I am in the basement: I can’t see it from here. I don’t know about Joanna. Does it make a difference?’

  ‘No, no, of course not… I just wondered. Yes, please say yes for me.’

  ‘Good. I will meet you at Ravenscourt Park, the tube station, at about seven thirty.’

  ‘Fine, lovely, what fun, yes, see you then.’
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br />   ‘Your sandwiches are very good.’

  ‘My sandwiches?’

  ‘From last night.’

  ‘Oh I see: yes, of course. I’m so glad. Iwo, you know there’s this old man who comes into the library a lot? He was in there this morning, and …’

  He interrupts. ‘I have to go, Constance. You may tell me on Thursday.’

  ‘Of course, sorry, it’s not important. Thanks for ringing …’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  Well, maybe everything will be all right, after all. We’re going out together publicly, as a couple, that’s a first.

  The sky outside my window casts an almost black light and heavy rain flattens the leaves into a slimy mass. I go upstairs to surprise Kate by making her bed for her, and leave a cheerful note welcoming her back from school before returning to the library. It’s cold. I need my woollen gloves.

  My ritual for getting ready before meeting him takes longer and longer. It didn’t take me nearly as long to prepare for my wedding – but I was young and I thought Paul loved me. On Wednesday evening I go through Cordy’s wardrobe as well as my own, trying on and discarding several possibilities, and finally decide on simplicity: high-necked black sweater, narrow black skirt and boots. This unrelieved black is relieved with some of Cordy’s unconventional jewellery. On Thursday I come back from work to an empty house – Kate is spending the night at a girlfriend’s house again – and the stillness and solitude calm me down. The rites of preparation are enjoyable. I lie in a scented bath, breathing scented steam and trying out Cordy’s henna rinse. Best if I assume Joanna will be there, and make a point of talking to Tadeusz. Then Iwo can do what he likes.