Love Among the Single Classes Read online

  Marina phoned me yesterday and asked me to stop by the club, as she had something to tell me. I knew what it would be, and of course I was right: she has definitely decided to marry that oaf, Peter. She even has a flashy engagement ring, which she shows me with bravado.

  ‘My dear, it is a beautiful ring,’ I say. ‘Now everyone who sees you will know that you belong to some generous man.’ I know that will gall her.

  ‘It’s not new,’ she says, ‘it belonged to his mother. She gave it to him for me. It’s her way of saying that she approves of me, I suppose: though after having had him to herself for so long she must dread him going. So it was generous of them both.’

  She is clever, and I smile at her in recognition of the fact.

  ‘Will your fiancé allow me a congratulatory kiss?’

  ‘He’s allowed all the others … one more can’t make any difference.’

  My lovely and defiant little Pole, you’re going to be wasted, I think, as I kiss her smooth brown cheek.

  ‘Has Constance spoken to you?’ she asks.

  ‘Not for a week or two … whenever I saw her last.’

  ‘She’s giving a small party for us, to celebrate our engagement. I know she’s going to invite you. Iwo, you will come, won’t you?’

  Constance is giving a party for Marina? I’m astonished. But then, who else is there? Me, I suppose: and she knows I couldn’t do it. The club might have organized a party for her: but then it would be impossible to keep all the elderly Polish airmen away, and an engagement party of veterans would be depressing. So … yes, Constance. She is kind – and she must be closer to Marina than I had realized.

  The party is on a Saturday evening. It is strange to arrive at Constance’s cosy English house and find it full of the intense babble of Polish voices.

  Constance herself greets me in Polish, with a sentence that has been carefully rehearsed: ‘Welcome to our celebration of the betrothal of our dear friend Marina.’ Its archaism must be due to the age of her teacher, but I manage to bite back a smile.

  I take her hand and kiss it, saying very slowly, Thank you. It is an honour to be here.’

  She smiles vaguely. I presume she understands.

  At the same moment her forbidding younger daughter comes and pushes a glass of wine into my hand saying, ‘Well? Aren’t you even going to come and say hello to them?’

  Marina looks like a young Polish peasant woman, ruddy from fresh air and farm food, her eyes sparkling and her movements full of vigour and candour. I can hardly bear to turn from her to the pinched face of the fellow who stands beside her, complacently accepting the congratulations of her friends.

  ‘My dear Peter, you are a very lucky chap indeed,’ I tell him.

  ‘I know that. I hope Marina is considered lucky as well?’

  Ignoring this arrogant remark, to which the only honest reply would be, Certainly not! I ask instead if he plans to learn some Polish.

  ‘Like Constance, you mean? No, we’ve decided that our household will be a proper English one. Marina’s English is pretty good already, you wouldn’t know, probably, but it is, and it will get better the more she has to speak it. For the time being I plan to have her go on working, but as soon as we start a family she can give up waitressing and devote herself full-time to me and our children.’

  The little man is intolerable. I find myself almost wishing he were doing it to provoke me, but I fear he’s always like this. In Lodz he wouldn’t have got within a hundred metres of her.

  I see Marina moving towards a group of young English people – presumably Peter’s friends – but I wander off before she can try to introduce them to me. Tadeusz is surrounded by a group of elderly Poles, Jewish mostly, who have glasses of vodka in one hand and are gesticulating vehemently with the other. They are arguing – it’s hardly possible, but they are – about the validity of the Polish Government in exile here. Standing in pearl-grey double-breasted suits, they are so unaware of their absurdity that for an instant I sympathize with Marina in her desire to put all this futile nostalgia behind her. Then I remember what caused them to leave Poland. I remember the mad parties during the war. Whatever else was happening, we were young. We packed our youth into a single room, round a single candle, and while a girl’s voice sang, unaccompanied, or to scratchy music from a wind-up gramophone, we would couple: all of us together, in that one room, bodies grappling on the floor with no possibility of privacy. Why pretend, when everyone was doing the same thing? Do it now, in case tomorrow you’re dead. Besides, the rooms were so cold that most people were fully dressed, including overcoats. These old men were those young men once, or their parents. The more layers of fantasy they can interpose between themselves and that reality, the easier it is for them to forget: and if those layers mean a shabby-imposing building, which they call The Castle’; and a group of self-deluding old men, whom they call The government in exile’, grouped around a nonagenarian, whom they call The President’ – well, so Kafka lives!

  Constance is beside me, her hand clinging to my arm, her voice cheerful and vivacious. Two! Don’t look so melancholy! Don’t you like parties? What you need is another drink. Hang on, where’s Katie? … Katie, darling! … Now Iwo, has anyone talked to you about making a speech? Because it seems to me it would be nice if …’

  ‘Do you really think Marina and Peter want speeches? Can’t they just enjoy a pleasant evening with their friends? I will make a speech if you really think it’s necessary, but …’

  ‘Would her father? If Marina were back in Lodz now, would he want to say something?’

  ‘I’m not her father. Have you asked Marina what she thinks?’

  ‘Peter was the one who suggested it. Don’t worry. I’ll go and ask Tadeusz. Look, Joanna’s all on her own. Why don’t you …?’

  ‘I told you. If you think it necessary I will make a speech.’

  ‘Right. Good. Excellent. Give me a few minutes to get the champagne out. Kate! … Look! … Iwo’s glass is empty.’

  She goes off unhappily. She doesn’t know what she’s asking. How can I simulate pleasure in this preposterous engagement?

  ‘Kate? Can you keep a secret? Then listen: just keep filling up my glass. That’s right. And again. Good girl. Thanks.’

  Later that evening, well into the small hours, I lie in my bed alone and angry. Marina I can’t ever have again. But tonight, either Constance or Joanna would have been welcome. Constance was dancing with some young man half her age and although she embraced me all too publicly and urged me to dance too, I could see that it would be hours before she was ready for bed. I left before midnight. As I stood at the open front door, I caught sight of Kate, circulating among the guests, and beckoned to her.

  ‘I owe you a secret, don’t I?’ she said as she arrived, a half-full wine bottle in each hand.

  I bent towards her, to humour her maudlin adolescent confidences. Her eyes glittered.

  ‘Shall I tell you?’ she said flirtatiously. ‘Shall I, really?’

  ‘Just as you like,’ I said, so she beckoned me closer, and fastened her hot mouth to my ear.

  ‘I hate you,’ she said softly. ‘We all call you the Undead. But I hate you.’

  I straightened up and smiled at her conspiratorially.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I won’t tell anyone.’

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t,’ she said, and swirled on her heel, back into the thick of the party.

  Joanna and her father gave me a lift home, she sitting primly upright in the front seat, gazing straight ahead, and although I stroked the back of her neck invisibly under the warm sweep of her hair, she didn’t respond. So here I am, horny and alone. I shift position and reach beneath the sheets; but not even a furiously effective hand-job sends me to sleep. Finally I get up and compose a letter to my wife:

  My dear Kasia,

  Do you I wonder remember a young student of mine, about eight years ago, called Marina Dubinski? If you don’t, ask Henryka. They were class-mates at s
chool. I have just attended a party given to mark her engagement to an Englishman. Marina sends you and the girls her kind regards.

  In your last letter you urged me to make up my mind, and gave me no clues as to which way you hoped I would jump. Well, I’m coming home. Not just home to Poland. Home to you. You are my wife, and that means for life. I finally understand that. I finally mean my marriage vows.

  I know it’s a risk, but I have always loved risks. The girls’ husbands will take care of things for me. The girls will be glad that we are together again. And I want to see my grandchild, and hold him in my arms. It must be very soon now. It is good that Alina has plenty of vitamin C. I will make a little package of pills and send you some more, so you can all benefit from them.

  Other than Marina’s engagement I have no news. My visa expires in three months’ time, in June. That should be long enough for us both to prepare for the idea of being together again. Kasia: really together, man and wife.

  Send my love to our daughters. Embrace them from me. Please write to me as often as possible. Tell me your thoughts. Are you afraid, too? Don’t be.

  We shall be all right.

  Your loving husband,

  Iwo.

  * * *

  I feel perfectly calm now, without regrets. So this is what it took, to show me that I loved my wife? How many complications I have had to unravel to reach this final simplicity. Now that I have put words to the force that has driven me all these months, I am not even impatient. Curious, yes. Will I get my job back? Or will I go to prison? Will I be arrested at the border, or betrayed by one of my former associates? But that’s impossible. No-one knows.

  I sleep like the dead.

  15

  The following day I telephone Constance and offer my formal thanks for the party.

  ‘Wasn’t it fun?’ she bubbles. ‘You should have stayed. We danced for hours. Didn’t Marina look wonderful? I’m even getting to like Peter. The last person left after four or something. What are you doing today?’

  It is a Sunday.

  ‘Nothing much. I just wanted to say thank you.’

  ‘By the time I’d finished clearing up – Marina and Peter stayed on and helped, in fact they’re still here – it was practically breakfast time. Do you have any plans for Easter?’

  ‘Easter? When is it?’

  ‘Oh Iwo … next weekend!’

  ‘I hadn’t realized.’

  ‘On Easter Monday they always have a fair on Hampstead Heath. For years we used to take the children. It’s quite fun really. Merry-go-rounds and stalls where you can win goldfish and that sort of thing …’

  ‘Let’s see what the weather’s like.’

  ‘Yes, great, it’s a deal. If it’s sunny, we’ll go to the fair.’

  Why not? Time drags on a long weekend.

  During the week I go to the sports centre the Indian guy told me about. I remember the school gymnasium when I was a youth: a big, old-fashioned hall with a parquet floor and panelled walls, above which were ranged the parallel bars. There was a shabby leather horse with iron hoops that made your hands tingle. I used to strengthen my arm muscles by hanging suspended from the long ceiling ropes with padded rings on the end of them. I would grip these, bend my elbows, and gradually winch myself up until my arms were rigid at my sides. Then Fd hold this position as long as I could, till my muscles shivered under the strain and the rings shook in mid-air.

  I must be physically fit, to deal with whatever may happen. The place is cheap, and the changing rooms are rough, but the instructors are good and there is a range of modern equipment that I’ve never seen before. I am given a programme of exercises and weight-lifting, and take satisfaction from extending my body till my muscles ache, knowing that I will need these resources of stamina and strength. Many of the regulars at the gym are unemployed, and have become obsessional about perfecting their bodies – for what? They sweat and strain and crack their biceps as they shape themselves for work they are not offered. The gym is lined with mirrors. Each man is engrossed in his solitary narcissism, glancing sideways at himself and comparing his sleek triangular body with those around him. Afterwards, in the showers or changing rooms, they talk a jargon of incomprehensible figures.

  ‘I got my 1600 under 7 today. I’m aiming for 6.30,’ one will say; and another, ‘I can’t push the ab reflexor higher than 45. Mike says if I keep working at it, it’ll come.’

  None of them drinks or smokes. Their self-respect is linked to a physical efficiency which apparently needs no justification. For me it may be the difference between life and death. A sprint of one or two kilometres … a stretching routine that keeps me fit even in a cell … there will be buckets of water, or other things, that I can use as weights. If nothing else, I will achieve a muscularity that can still surprise Katarzyna. I have goals to aim for.

  My optimism is ended by a letter from her, which must have crossed mine. I open it casually one evening when I get back from work, knowing she can’t have had time to receive and answer the news of my homecoming.

  Dear Iwo,

  I am sorry to send you bad news, but you have to know. Alina’s child was still-born yesterday. It was a boy. He seemed normal, and the birth, though long, gave no hint of trouble until the end. Alina is still sedated, and hasn’t really understood yet. Please don’t think you must come home. There is nothing you could do. They are both young, and can have many more children. There is nothing more I can tell you, and to wish you a happy Easter would seem a bitter jest. Katarzyna.

  My heart contracts for my daughter. I sit hunched up, curled over on the edge of my bed, arms around my empty chest. Alina! Oh my distant flesh and blood. Later in the evening I walk to the late-night shop in the Earls Court Road, buy a bottle of vodka, and carry it back to my room. There I sit stonily drinking. It takes half an hour to finish, and another hour to work. I stretch out on my bed, fully dressed, eyes open, staring at the glaucous moon. My daughter is without child? I think: there was a child, a male, and now there is no child. At last I take my shoes off – bang! bang! – and lie stiff and straight and close my eyes. Deprived. And why shouldn’t you be deprived? Those better than you were deprived.

  In the next days I dull the pain by transporting myself back to the times, twenty years ago, when they were children. The mornings were Katarzyna’s job, but I enjoyed the clatter and urgency of breakfast, as the little girls worried conscientiously about their overalls, their exercises, or the letter to teacher. With newly combed and plaited hair they would set off together, oblivious to me within a few steps of leaving, absorbed in the rivalries and gossip of their classmates. Sometimes I watched their backs from a window: Henryka upright and responsible, Alina hurrying along to keep pace with her. Then my own world would claim me. Was I happy then? Not that I knew. Yet the sounds and smells and the very air in the room from those mornings saturate my senses.

  There is a man in the postroom, a few years older than me; a little, round, good-natured man whose face shines with sweaty goodwill, the butt of everyone else’s jokes. He is uxorious, devoted to his daughters, coming in every Monday morning with proud accounts of his latest feats of DIY on the suburban house where he lives. He has discovered that I too have daughters, and he worries about me.

  ‘You OK, mate?’ he says one morning. ‘Everything all right back home? How’s the family?’

  ‘I heard from my wife last week …’ I begin, not knowing how to continue, but already he is beaming with approval.

  ‘Writes regular, the Missus, does she? That’s the spirit! Like me in the war. Regular as clockwork, me and the Missus wrote to each other. Every week. I’m not much of a one for letter-writing, not normally, but those letters …’

  ‘She didn’t say much. A short letter only.’

  ‘Never mind, it’s the thought that counts. Be going over there this summer I suppose? Gives you something to look forward to. Makes the time pass a bit quicker.’

  If he had known that I was expecting to becom
e a grandfather, perhaps I could have told him, but I’ve never mentioned it – not wanting the showing around of photographs and pronouncing of Polish names that would follow – and so I smile and let his kindly platitudes roll over me.

  The week is a short one, since we don’t work on Good Friday. I have rejected all attempts to involve me in plans for the Easter weekend. I have nothing to celebrate, and would be a kill-joy. For three days I sit in my room, brooding about my dead grandchild. I cannot grieve for a baby I never saw and cannot imagine – it’s so long since I saw a new-born child – but a great line pointing into the future has been severed, and the darkness ahead has closed in again. I try to find words to tell Alina how much I care, but in the end write only a short, formal note that will seem callous to her. It is easier with Katarzyna, for she feels closer to me than she has done for years. In a long letter I repeat my intention to come home. It feels as though these intervening years have been a war that has kept us apart, and now I am returning like a soldier from a distant battlefront. I comfort her, tell her how eagerly I look forward to seeing her, ask her to cook my favourite dishes, promise to bring presents for everyone. I even smile to myself as I write the letter. Oh my dear wife.

  I try to cancel the meeting with Constance, but she overrules me. She is childlike with excitement, and after all it will only be for a few hours, and then I can leave, or stay and fuck her if I feel like it. Keyed up by work-outs at the gym, my body is filled with an energy of its own that seems detached from my state of mind.

  Easter Monday is a dull day, with rain lurking behind low grey clouds, and I half expect Constance to ring and cancel our meeting. But she doesn’t, and so I leave the house for the first time in three days to have lunch with her. Kate hides her enmity behind a civil greeting and immediately retires to her room with a group of schoolfriends.

  ‘Oh Iwo, it’s so good to see you!’ exclaims Constance, as she draws me into the kitchen. ‘Have you had a lovely Easter weekend? What have you been doing?’