Love Among the Single Classes Page 14

  I hear Kate from next door. She’s been sent to wake my mother.

  ‘Granny? Wake up! Christ, the oldies are a dozy lot! Lu says, do you want a cup of tea and some Christmas cake? Go on: she made it herself.’

  ‘I couldn’t eat a thing. Well, a sliver: literally.’

  ‘I’ll tell her. Anyhow Ben’s coming over in a second, and he’ll eat masses.’

  ‘Ben? Who’s Ben?’

  ‘Oh Granny.’ A weary, patient drone, appropriate to dealing with the forgetful elderly. ‘I told you this morning. Ben and another girl are coming here for tea then they’re all going off for the evening. Ben is Cordy’s fella. Boyfriend. You know.’

  ‘Oh, Cordelia’s … yes dear … Max too?’

  ‘Yes Granny, Max too. I did tell you.’

  ‘Yes, I believe you. What about you Katie?’

  ‘I’m staying here with Daddy and Grandpa, for the night. He’ll drive me home tomorrow. Told you that too.’

  She is merciless. I must tell her not to be so hard on the old.

  ‘Actually I do remember, only I’d forgotten.’ ‘How efficient Paul has been,’ I say to Cordy. ‘He’s fixed everything.’

  ‘You don’t even have to worry about Granny. Dad’s running her over to Kensington Gore’, pronounced with mock upper-class languor, ‘to visit Mrs Watkinson. The two old dears can witter on together about how frightful their grandchildren are.’

  ‘Darling! Don’t be silly. You weren’t frightful a bit. I love my wine glasses.’

  ‘Good. And we washed up while you were asleep. Me and Max and Katie. The kitchen’s pristine.’

  I am mortified to learn that I too had slept. I thought I had only day-dreamed. Am I so middle-aged already, despite being fierce with love and desire? Here comes Max.

  ‘Put some lipstick on, Mother, and look normal. My new girlfriend will be here any minute.’

  ‘What? Ben’s sister?’

  ‘No, not Ben’s sister. Nothing to do with Ben. Nobody’s met her yet. Dad wanted to, so I thought she might as well get you all over in one fell swoop.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘I’ve only just met her, just a couple of weeks ago. I sort of meant to tell you only … anyway. She’s called Danuta.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Danuta. Yeah, what a laugh: she’s Polish.’

  At this I really do laugh. I laugh and laugh, and so does Max, and we’re still laughing when she arrives, which makes for a warm welcome. For ten minutes the little flat is crammed with people. For ten minutes the Christmas spirit overcomes everyone’s unfamiliarity and shyness, as the generations toast one another in sherry and Christmas cake; presents are admired; Ben finds himself talking to Paul’s father – they are both First World War buffs, though in rather different ways; soft, pliant-looking Danuta is pleasing my mother with her gentle manners; I am congratulating Lulu on the brilliant success of the day; and Paul and Katie are quietly sharing one armchair, their arms around each other. But ten minutes is all that can be managed. The young refuse a second glass of sherry, become stiff as they render the obligatory thank-yous, and relax visibly as they go out through Paul’s front door.

  ‘What time …?’ I shout at their retreating backs.

  ‘Late …’ says Max.

  ‘… if at all!’ says Cordy.

  I insist on going home by myself and walk most of the way, to look into people’s lighted windows, and to sober up. Most people are watching television. The snow hasn’t come back, but the air is damp and fresh.

  At first when I enter the quiet, dark house I feel an impulse of self-pity, and have to resist the temptation to ring someone. Instead I make coffee and talk to the complaining cats as I wait for the dark pungent liquid to filter through. I carry the tray to the living room, light the candles on the tree and some of those around the room, and look at the presents still piled up on a side table. Iwo gave me a Polish dictionary. The message inside is written in Polish. It is the first time I have seen his handwriting. It is small, cursive, continental. He has written: Jest to podróz wedlug przewodnika poprzez jednak uwieńczone sukcesem, i przez dziedzictwo Polski jednego z Jej synów – Twój przyjaciel – Iwo Zaluski. With the help of the dictionary I translate only two words: ‘difficult’ and ‘friend’. I shall have to ask Marina for the rest. He is indeed my difficult friend … yet how happy he was yesterday, how unlike his usual self. If only I could suffer less and enjoy myself more, if only I could have fun with him. Maybe then he would drop his guard and let himself love me. What I told Andrew is true: Iwo doesn’t love me. He nearly did; he wanted to; hoped to; tried to. Now, three months or so after our meeting, I have to face the fact that he doesn’t love me, and the harder I try, the more unnatural and unlovable I become. One by one the little candles begin to flicker, and gutter, and fade. The dim room is aromatic with the scent of Christmas tree and evergreen, and the exotic smell of snuffed candles as I pinch my wetted fingers around the final two or three and leave it to darkness.

  11

  During the Christmas holidays Cordelia and Ben spend the night more or less alternately at one another’s houses. When they’re staying with me, they come down, yawning, to a late breakfast, stretching and glowing and healthy. That much I have managed for my children, I think, whatever my own emotional and sexual complications. They are not riddled with sexual guilt; nor are they mindlessly promiscuous. Neither Cordelia nor Max has ever pretended that they don’t sleep with the people they love … and a few others as well: yet they both appear fresher and more innocent than I suspect I did at their age, when my preoccupation with the forbidden (and unperformed) act led me to scandalize my parents by dressing in stark Bohemian black from head to foot, the whole silhouette crowned by my teenage face looking bizarre with white lipstick and black-bordered eyes. I tottered on heels so high and fragile that they constantly snapped off in gratings and escalators. At any other time but the end of the fifties I would have been unmistakably a tart. As it was, half Oxford’s virgins dressed in exactly the same way.

  This is the Constance that Andrew knew; and indeed, he too was a virgin at the time. The changes of the past twenty-five years have benefited my children, but not me. I remain hidebound by the pre-pill morality and my parents’ fossilized attitudes. My father saw me as his to guard and protect and deliver unsullied to my bridegroom. He did his best. He couldn’t know that the man who demanded an unsullied bride was not the kind of man I would ever want to marry. The damage was done anyway; since whatever my progressive mind may have believed, my stubbornly unliberated body conveyed with every gesture that ‘nice girls don’t’. Paul tried to undermine my father’s conditioning – hence the beautiful underwear, treasured but unworn. His, and my, failure to overcome those inhibitions was perhaps the main reason for the failure of our marriage. Paul was a sensual, stylish hedonist who believed pleasure was no sin. I remained a timorous, furious puritan. If Iwo and Paul ever discuss my performance in bed, which, thank God, is unlikely, they would be incredulous at how different are their two Constances.

  Paul is dismissive about Iwo when I ring to thank him for our Christmas Day.

  ‘Can’t imagine what you’re making so much fuss about,’ he says briskly. ‘Nice chap, quite intelligent, lousy dresser, perfectly easy to talk to … Nothing to torture yourself over. Feed him and fuck him and he’s yours, I should have thought. And lucky him,’ he remembers to add, kindly. ‘What about my Lu? The kids seem to like her.’

  ‘Oh they do: a lot. She’s amazingly pretty … hey, is she in earshot?’

  ‘Relax. She’s out.’

  ‘… vachement chic, seems bright, and nuts about you. My dear Paul: what more can you want?’

  ‘It’s a question of what I don’t want. Babies. Lu wants babies, or at the very least a baby, and the thought of going back to sleepless nights and potty-training is more than my aged frame could bear. I’ve done all that, and the kids are wonderful, but I don’t want to start again.’

 
; ‘You’ve told her this?’

  ‘Of course. And either she pretends she can manage without babies and all she really wants is me; or she says I’ll change my mind.’

  ‘Paul, how old is she?’

  ‘She’s twenty-nine, worrying desperately about becoming thirty.’

  ‘I see. Hence the panic. So it’ll all depend on whether you can live without each other.’

  ‘Tried that. We separated for six weeks earlier this year, and it was hell. Kept seeing her in the agency, and I don’t know which was worse: her with red eyes or her with some other bloke going off for a drink. So we got back together again. But nothing’s settled.’

  ‘Can’t help you, darling.’

  ‘Now, what about you? You’re having dinner with Andrew? Why don’t you take the poor man off the shelf and marry him and live happily ever after?’

  ‘For that matter, why doesn’t Lulu?’

  But this remark is not thought to be in good taste, and the conversation ends there.

  Iwo is less forthcoming on the subject of Paul, but it is clear that he liked him, and was puzzled as to why we should have divorced. On the subject of New Year’s Eve he is non-committal; so I phone Andrew and confirm that our dinner is on.

  I am intrigued to hear what other revelations he may have for me: after all, there are still two decades of his life to catch up on. At the same time I mustn’t seem so sympathetic that he misreads the situation. He didn’t attract me then, and he doesn’t now. The answer, I hope, is to affect the same outlandish make-up as was fashionable when we were at Oxford together, and thus emphasize the nostalgic friendly basis on which we meet. With luck he’ll be perspicacious enough to interpret these complex signals. So I blank my mouth out with chalky pink lipstick, enlarge my eyes with black lines flicked up at the corners, and emerge feeling foolish when he rings the doorbell. The children find this teenage apparition hilarious; and its effect is indeed quite startling – from a distance. In close-up, my face has become tense and lined, with a deep frown between the eyes from constant reading. Andrew takes it all as a successful joke, and in high good humour we set off in the car for his smart bachelor address.

  It is early still on New Year’s Eve, but already the streets of London are thick with people, dressed up and in party mood. At zebra crossings and the lights they peer into the car and wave, and I laugh and wave back through the windscreen, happily. Suddenly all motion slows to a halt, the smile dropping slowly, my hand falling slowly down into my lap. Crossing the road in front of us are Iwo and Joanna, her arm locked through his, her face turned up towards him. She is talking. They are quite absorbed. They move in unison. They have not seen me.

  Andrew is in mid-flow. He turns, laughing, for my answering smile, sees my expression, and the light falls from his face.

  ‘Constance! what on earth …’

  ‘Iwo. Doesn’t matter. I’ve just seen Iwo.’

  ‘Where? Which one?’

  ‘He’s gone now. Doesn’t matter. Sorry.’

  ‘But why …?’

  ‘Look Andrew, I’m sorry and it’s absurd, but he’s with a woman. Now for God’s sake go on with what you were saying.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Oh, a Polish girl. I’ve met her.’

  ‘So she’s a friend. Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s probably just a friendly evening out, like you and me.’

  ‘No, Andrew, it wasn’t.’

  ‘Look Constance, I don’t want to hassle you, but either you tell me about this now, or it’s going to ruin our evening.’

  So I tell him, in a tight clipped exposition of pain, about my fears, now all realized. About Joanna’s youth and beauty and Polishness. About my jealousy: now all justified. I wish I could cry, but my father put a stop to crying for sympathy years ago. We reach the flat and park outside and sit in the car till I have finished.

  ‘Right,’ says Andrew, ‘now for a drink.’

  His flat is expensive, untidy, comfortable; a mish-mash of good family furniture and trendy adman’s stuff … Italian light fixtures and lots of black and white and grey, with wire basket accessories. He hangs up my jacket, sits me firmly down on a huge puffy sofa and gives me a straight whisky.

  ‘Now I’m serious, Constance: I won’t have you ruin this evening. Drink that and shut your mind to Iwo and concentrate on seeing the New Year in with me. Music? What do you like?’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘No, not anything. You can have jazz, opera, Haydn or Bach; Beethoven, Sibelius, or sixties rock. You can have Edith Piaf …’

  ‘Mozart. Not opera: something religious.’

  ‘Requiem, Coronation Mass?’

  ‘Oh the Coronation Mass … yes … that!’

  ‘In the Colin Davis version or … ah! Garbo laughs, but Constance smiles. Right?’

  ‘Andrew, you’re lovely. I have stopped thinking about Iwo.’ For the moment. ‘Now, dinner. Do you need help?’

  ‘Watch!’

  At the far end of the room is a long white roller blind. He pulls it up, and there is a miniaturized kitchen with a microwave oven. From the fridge he takes out a salad whose shades of green owe more to avocados and kiwi fruit than lettuce; and a bottle of champagne which he places on the dining table. I begin to feel apprehensive. What does he expect of me?

  ‘Constance, do you realize I have become a fairly rich and rather lonely middle-aged bachelor? I have laid on this performance for quite a number of women whom afterwards I hoped never to see again. Give me the pleasure of doing it for you, and just enjoy, will you?’

  Over dinner we plumb layers of news, gossip, and recollection. Andrew summons up images of us at Oxford, punting, jiving, arguing, celebrating in subfusc after Schools were over. Everything can be told, no questions barred. We quarry through folded seams of memory. He remembers me and Paul as happy young lovers more vividly than I do, since in my case those images are overlaid with our subsequent disillusion and parting.

  ‘Why did you two break up?’ he asks. ‘I was in New York when it happened.’

  I can be flippant, after all these years. ‘Andrew, we were babies, Paul and I, when we got married. And then, right away, we had babies. Max and Cordy were born before we were twenty-five. So there I was, smelling of milk and babyshit; and there was he, all pert in his sharp little sixties suits with striped shirts and floral ties, and the next thing he noticed was that he had this secretary. Well, more of a typist. And she smelt a lot more enticing than me. Wasn’t difficult. After that he was away. As the French say, it’s the first one that counts. When you’ve been unfaithful once, there seems no real reason to stop. I never had a first one. Not till quite a long time after he left me.’

  ‘Poor young Constance.’

  ‘Not so young by then. I was, hang on, thirty-seven when he finally went.’

  I stand beside Andrew as he makes coffee in his galley of a kitchen. It looks complete; yet it’s not. There are no stores, no ordinary supplies like flour and jam and tins. No half-used jars of anything. The fridge is full of bottles – white wine and champagne and Perrier water – not leftovers like mine, or ingredients for the rest of the week. It is bleak in a different way from Iwo’s disciplined bleakness, and it moves me more. We sit down, on the same sofa now, and I ask, ‘What about you? What was Pammy’s secret?’

  ‘Very simple. She taught me about sex and guilt. Plus: do you remember me telling you about my mother? Probably not: long time ago now. She was widowed in the war, too, and brought up me and Rosemary by herself. We were genteelly poor: the worst kind of poverty, because it usually means that those around you are rich. So my grandparents sent me to public school, but in the holidays I never went abroad or skiing like everyone else: just home to Berkshire and the bridge parties and the Young Conservatives. No, wait, it’s relevant. You know what’s lethal about all that? Those women get status by manipulating men, though they actually despise them. My mother’s friends used to sidle up to me and pretend to believe that I must have dozens of gir
lfriends. We were the most sexless household I ever knew. My mother, I’m willing to bet, never slept with a man from the day my father went off to get killed, when she must have been, what, twenty-six? My sister was a tennis club virgin. And me. I finally lost my virginity to Pammy.’

  ‘Andrew! What a killer! How did you survive?’

  ‘Well have I? Look at me. I can only relate to women in two ways. Either I love them and suffer – that’s thanks to my mother and Pammy. Or I distrust and exploit them – my revenge on the bridge club harpies. The only women I have ever felt comfortable with are the very, very few who are my friends. That’s why I’m so glad to have met you again.’

  He tops up our glasses in silence: wine for me, another large brandy for him. The atmosphere grows tense with his pain and need.

  ‘Tell me how you got away from Pammy.’

  ‘I went on an expedition to Antarctica.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I know: bit extreme. I had been swinging from Ann to Pammy and back for years … until I was nearly thirty. And then my mother died, quite young: thank God. It meant Rosemary could get away from home and marry, and now she at least is normal. Our house was sold and we took half each and I put my half into an expedition to the South Pole.’

  ‘Was it wonderful?’

  ‘In many ways, yes. We were there for seven months.’

  ‘Wait, I’ve got it now! “Great stone boulders are not here/ Clear blue mountains shape this land, steer my ship … “I thought all that was metaphorical. I didn’t realize you’d actually been.’

  ‘Constance! You don’t know what a compliment that is!’

  ‘I could quote you more: “Beloved Gorgon, kindest of torturers …” Paul said you had published some poetry, so I went out and found Journey to an Icy Land.’