Love Among the Single Classes Page 25

  The room she lives in – just one furnished room – lurks on the top floor, and there is no lift. Curtains, once purple, are so shabby that the light shines through them. Her spoons are silver, which she must polish twice a week, and make the coffee that they stir taste better, lending it their quality. As for herself, Magda’s hard to describe. She sits here in this room of faded, pock-marked velvet, rising above its meanness and giving it dignity by her own splendour. On either side of her hang pictures of her boy, smiling and stupid with embarrassment. His cheeks have been coloured pink by the photographer, so that he seems to blush.

  Magda is one of those women who are uniquely mittel-European. They have no English equivalent. She must be in her late seventies, but although she has lived through some of the grimmest events of the century they have not dulled her optimism or soured her view of human nature. She is Jewish, and her strong features and piercing gaze make her stand out in any English bus queue. Her table is covered with the latest novels and biographies which she orders from the library – that’s how I met her. She also borrows classical records and a changing selection of paintings to brighten up her walls. She is all alone, the last of her family. Her husband disappeared one day in 1942 with their son – ‘they were picked up in the street where they’d gone to try and scavenge some food’ – and she never heard of either of them again. She spent the rest of the war in hiding: moving from one precarious refuge to another, relying on the frail goodwill of neighbours, buying silence with the last of her jewellery. But she survived, managed to make her way to England, and found a job as a sales assistant in the hosiery department of a big store. She worked there for nearly twenty-five years. It must have been as demeaning for her as Iwo’s job in the post room; yet she is totally without self-pity: on the contrary, she is grateful to England. Now she lives on a tiny pension, supplemented by occasional pupils like myself. Although she doesn’t smile easily she brims with warmth. Her voice is resonant and her concerns never trivial. She is Mother Courage, and I learn much more from her than just her difficult language. Our lessons, now that I have an elementary vocabulary, take the form of laborious but impassioned discussions about the miners’ strike, Greenham Common, and the behaviour of the people she observes around her. She cannot understand the apparent indifference of the English towards their children: not that she condemns them; she literally cannot understand them.

  ‘You are a good woman, a good mother,’ she says, carefully choosing simple words and construction. ‘Can your daughters go out alone at night? Can they drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes? Are they rude to their grandparents? How is it possible to allow such things?’

  Haltingly, I try to explain. Times have changed. My daughters at thirteen and twenty-one are more mature – mature? oh, right – than I was at twenty, even twenty-five.

  ‘That cannot be,’ she answers fiercely. ‘Maturity only comes with experience and responsibility. While they live with you and take your money they are children, and must show respect and be obedient.’ She studies their photographs and smiles.

  ‘They are lovely girls. I am sure they will make you proud. They will find good husbands, lead fine lives …’

  Her only son is dead.

  She is curious about Iwo – her son would be about his age – whom she has never met. I try to describe him, becoming so tongue-tied that I have to lapse into English, and she says, ‘I know his type. He is proud, so proud that real life can’t touch him. He has created a Poland that never was, nostalgic for the “good old days” of Hapsburg rule. They were bad days. Don’t break your heart over him, my dear: he is a relic of a way of life that he has only imagined.’

  I try to protest, but she stops me.

  ‘I know those old Polish aristocrats. Ruthless, pleasure-loving egoists. Believe me, they didn’t live beautiful lives. They exploited everyone to gratify ever more meaningless whims. They were cold, stone cold. Yes, their façade was perfect, but behind that formality they were brutal. To everyone except their own kind. Tell him that, my child: make him answer that. He cannot.’

  In pleading Polish I say, as I have said to many people these past weeks:

  ‘What can I do? I love him.’

  ‘Love him? No you don’t! You are seduced by his dreamworld. He treats you with the same superiority and contempt that his ancestors treated their servant-girls. No, Constance, he is not real, and you are lucky that he doesn’t want to marry you. Go to this wedding – Marina sounds a lovely girl – but smile and dance with all the other men.’

  The lesson is over. She puts a record of Bach’s piano concertos on her elderly gramophone – ‘Listen: his music is truly celestial. It was composed for God to hear.’ – and brews us each a tiny cup of thick, sweet black coffee. Magda personifies self-respect and joy. Having had to discard everything irrelevant she has pared her life down to the simplest and best human qualities: energy, imagination, tolerance. And paradoxically, I think she is happy.

  * * *

  Marina has given her landlord a month’s notice and, not wishing to be married from the room which she has occupied for the last three years, and which was one of the main factors impelling her into wifehood, she packs her stuff for Peter to take to their new flat, and moves out. She is to spend the last night before the wedding under my roof. He drives her over and drops her off at my house before going on to his stag party.

  ‘Don’t worry darling,’ he tells her, ‘I won’t drink too much. I’m looking forward to an early night.’ He smiles at her tenderly, and I retreat into the drawing room as they embrace for the last time as single people.

  ‘Let’s get pissed!’ Marina says to me, the moment my front door has closed behind him. ‘Let’s drink too much and talk too much and celebrate my last night as a single woman!’

  Together we totter down the cellar steps and grope around among Paul’s carefully stacked bottles of wine. The maturing clarets are hidden away at the back, and by the dim light of one bulb we peer at their labels.

  ‘How about a ’75?’ I say. ‘Look … this should be good: a Pomerol. Château de Bel-Air. Or … hey! Look at this, Marina! A ’70 St Emilion! I bet Paul didn’t realize there were any of these left!’

  ‘Will he be angry when he finds out it’s gone?’ she says.

  ‘Oh what the hell! Why should the best wine always be reserved for the men? We’ll drink it!’

  She carries the wine upstairs and opens the bottle, and it and she wait and breathe and unfold while I sit at the breakfast room table preparing the meal. For her last supper I have chosen rich but finicky dishes: a cold Roquefort quiche to start with, then loin of pork with a prune sauce, a pale green salad, and finally strawberries that have been absorbing vanilla sugar and a glass of Tokay since this morning.

  ‘Here, give me that knife,’ I say bossily. ‘You don’t want your fingers smelling of garlic for the next forty-eight hours do you?’

  Instead, she peels the courgettes lengthwise for me until their shiny skins are variegated dark green with lime-green stripes, and chops parsley and mixes vinaigrette.

  It is almost the longest day of the year, and the garden beyond the back door is still suffused with warmth, even at half past eight. The cats crouch in the grass, their ears semaphoring to catch every promising rustle. The sky is that unnaturally deep blue that comes when dusk changes from early into late.

  ‘Let’s eat outside?’ I suggest. I unfold the spindly garden furniture and cover the table with a starched white cloth. It gleams, turning pale blue as the light falls.

  From the surrounding gardens we hear fragments of other people’s conversations. The teenager next door says, ‘… I hate being a girl. I’ve always hated being one. I always – wanted to be a man – well, a boy when I was at school – I’d much rather be a man …’

  The voice of her friend drifts across: ‘Oh I shouldn’t bother, in ten years’ time all the blokes will be wearing make-up anyway …’

  ‘Here, Jools, d’you think I ought to do my to
enails, now everyone’s barefoot and sandals and stuff?’

  From the other side, Mrs Williams, known as ‘Mrs Jubilee’ because she organized the street party in Jubilee year, shouts out of the back door to her children. ‘What you lot doing out there? Come on in now. It’s long past bedtime. You come in now and I’ll give you a nice Crunchy bar to eat in bed. Harreee! Nicky! Hurry up or I’ll tell your dad.’

  The children amble up the garden.

  ‘Look Mum, we found a butterfly.’

  ‘What’ve you done with it?’

  ‘Killed it. We can take it to Miss for the nature table.’

  Screened by the high wall which surrounds the terrace outside my kitchen window, Marina and I idle over our meal in the cooling evening.

  ‘What sort of cooking will you do for Peter?’

  ‘English. I want to learn to cook English food. I don’t want to run a Polish household. Nor does he.’

  ‘But won’t you always feel Polish?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hope not. Of course, I can never forget my language, but …’

  ‘Is this Peter’s influence?’

  ‘No, Constance, you’re too hard on him. He’s a sweet man you know, really, underneath … all that.’

  ‘What do you mean “all that”?’

  ‘You mustn’t forget, he’s lived all his life with his mother in Ealing. His father died when he was a little boy. Just the two of them, in half a house, poor, decent, good Catholics. He was terrified his mother would marry again. And she, I suppose, has dreaded him getting married. But he’s never suggested she should come and live with us. We shall be quite near, of course – lunch every Sunday …’

  ‘Does she know about… you?’

  ‘You mean, no children?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Peter said he’d leave it a year or so after we were married, and then tell her. In case of a miracle, he said.’

  ‘Does he believe in miracles?’

  ‘Constance – you mustn’t think I am conceited, but – he thinks I’m a miracle. He says.’

  I bet he does, I think. Can’t believe his bloody luck.

  ‘It is not bad to have a man who loves me like that.’

  Shall I risk it? Yes: ‘Marina, can I tell you what perhaps your mother would be telling you? You still don’t have to marry him. Because I sense … you don’t honestly love him, do you?’

  I make a business of lighting candles and fitting the round glass chimney over the candlestick to stop the flames blowing out, so that Marina can decide how to answer.

  ‘I don’t love him. No. Not nearly the way I loved … you know … but then, I didn’t expect that, ever again. But I will. I shall change him, you’ll see. He thinks he’s going to change me; but I shall change him more.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Little by little. When he’s not living with his mother, he won’t have to listen to her narrow ideas every day. That’s a start! First I shall try and get him to show his feelings more. Then, I shall ask him questions, get him to discuss things with me. You wait. Little by little I shall make him softer and more relaxed. He will learn not to be afraid of everybody who isn’t like him. I will teach him, I hope, how to enjoy. Now, he just wants to be invisible. What matters to him most is not to stand out, never to offend. I think he can be happy, I think he has that possibility.’

  Lucky old Peter! I think. She’s taking him on as her family, her country, her pupil, her life’s work. She has a generous spirit.

  ‘Coffee?’

  We carry the plates indoors while the kettle boils and, when the coffee is made, we settle in the breakfast room, Marina curled in the lap of the ancient sofa, me sitting at the table.

  ‘Don’t let’s have the light on,’ I say. ‘Nicer to watch the candles burn down. Anyhow, you must get to bed fairly soon.’

  She looks at me in the flickering stillness.

  ‘What about you, Constance? I’ve never really understood why you love Iwo so much.’

  ‘Mainly, I suppose, because I thought he might marry me, because I thought he needed to.’

  ‘But why do you need to? You’ve got this house, your children, a job…’

  Why indeed? Because a man is safe-conduct through this man’s world. A lone woman is open to exploitation, ridicule, and attack. She has to be forever on her guard, conciliating, avoiding, anticipating trouble, because being alone means being exposed. Women are biologically designed to be vulnerable: soft-fleshed, soft-breasted and bellied, they need a man to protect them from predators. You can learn kung fu and judo and anti-rape tactics; you can wear shapeless, colourless clothes to disguise your pliable body; but still you must be wary – and not just of rapists: the everyday threat is more banal than that. Builders, doing a job for a woman on her own, will ‘fix’ the leak in the roof with a few licks of cement, and then overcharge, and then when the drips continue to stain the ceiling will say, ‘Well, lady, what do you expect? What you really need is a whole new tiling job. Cost you, of course …’ Late-night taxi drivers – if you can get one to stop for you – will take it for granted that a woman who has to go home by herself will be grateful for their leering compliments; in fact, you sit on the edge of the seat, waiting for the journey to end, nervous in case it ends badly. What about all those correct, safe couples at parents’ meetings, who glance covertly at you and avoid your solitary figure, the wife whispering in explanation, ‘You remember, I did tell you, she had that rather attractive husband …’ shwush, shwush, as your private catastrophe is reduced to a public cliché. It gets worse. You’re awkward to accommodate at dinner parties – they’ve got to find a spare man and so few of them are around – though you probably still qualify for an invitation to their parties: a wedding anniversary perhaps, or somebody’s fortieth birthday. But you accept, trying not to think stupidly optimistic thoughts. You face the ordeal of entering a roomful of people on your own; attach yourself – smiling at everybody and nobody – to a group, and work out who belongs to whom. An unclaimed attractive man is always a rarity, and if you find one you try too hard to be funny and intriguing and he senses this, and becomes evasive, and starts looking over your shoulder. Your smile slides away and so does your lipstick and you end up with some maudlin type who’s drunk too much and transfixes you with his wandering story. So you thank your host radiantly for a lovely party and wait for your mini-cab. More tales from no-man’s-land? What about the nutters on the tube, lurching into you with fumbling hands and incoherent oaths? The lone man in the cinema who edges towards you … is he sliding his hand under your thigh or do you just imagine it? The pervert who rings in the small hours, waking you from sleep, to whisper obscenities. Even if a woman manages to cope with all this, she finds herself called a ‘hard bitch’ because she lacks the one essential female attribute: vulnerability. A woman has no right to be strong. Be weak, dear lady, and let the men be strong. A woman alone must be a victim, for how else can you describe someone who only wins approval by being passive, weak, and acquiescent? If she becomes strong then she is too like a man, and men don’t want her. She is a victim on a sliding scale from neglect and pity down through contempt to violation. There are exceptions. Magda is one. But I’m not as brave as Magda.

  And those are only the public reasons. The private ones? I want a man in the mornings and the evenings. I want him in my bed at night: yes, of course, to make love, but also to hold and to have sleeping beside me. I want a man for tenderness. I want a man to whom I can unfold the daily journal of my life, telling it to make him laugh, sympathize, or understand. Paul, in leaving, took away from me the cast of characters from his working life, and left all their stories unfinished. I liked that soap opera of office intrigues and romances, seen through his eyes. I liked to watch him embroidering the story as he told it for me, much as I had earlier told bedtime stories to the children. I liked tucking up into him at night, even when we made love less and less: I liked the secrets of his physical presence, his smell, his habits, his illnesses and i
mperfections. For me, since I want to be part of a couple, the choice is to become a lesbian or a wife. I couldn’t be a lesbian. I like women, love my women friends a lot, but I don’t want to fuck them. That’s why I need to marry.

  Marina is still looking at me expectantly, as though I had only paused.

  ‘I’ve been on my own for, what, seven or eight years now. I’d like to be a couple again. Life is easier with a man.’

  ‘Yes …’

  Yes, she knows that, too.

  ‘Oh Marina – we must be mad! We were going to get drunk and be daft and irresponsible. And I was going to tell you very solemnly all about your duties as a wife, and warn you that there are certain services every husband expects … And here we are, grave as widows! Perhaps it’s just as well. Marriage is a serious matter. But let’s have one last drink. Brandy? There’s even some vodka left over from the last time Iwo was here – God knows how long that was.’

  I am lying. I know exactly. It was Easter Monday, over two months ago. Two months since I made love to him.

  ‘Vodka please.’

  I take our glasses across to the sofa and sit down beside her, stretching my arm along its bumpy back, picking at the stray threads torn by cats and children.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything, Constance. Tell me my future. Can I change him? Have I the patience to last for a lifetime? Will I learn to love him? What if I’m unfaithful? Does it matter? If it happens, do I tell him? What must I do to make it work? Everything, I want to know everything …’

  As darkness encloses the guttering candles on the table, the sky outside seems to get lighter, with the long midsummer radiance of June. It’s the time of the corn goddess, but this ripe young peasant is a long way from the pagan rituals of her ancestors. Exiled, barren, she is deprived of her roots and her tongue by accident of the place and date of her birth.