Love Among the Single Classes Read online

  ‘I bloody well will swear if I want to!’

  I am taken aback by her sudden sharp outburst.

  ‘You’ve been bloody useless all week if you really want to know, and I’m fed up with it. You just moon around by the telephone or you sit and stare into bloody space.’

  ‘Katie …’ says Cordelia warningly, and I recognize from her conspiratorial tone that the three of them have already talked about me.

  ‘Shuddup Cord! You don’t have to bloody well live with her! You don’t know what she’s been like!’

  Cordelia looks at Kate, who is red-faced and shaking and after a moment says, ‘C’mon up kiddo, let’s have a chat about this, right?’ and the two of them go out.

  ‘Max,’ I say incredulously to my son. ‘Max, am I honestly as bad as that?’

  ‘I don’t live here any more: I don’t know. You seemed OK to me last time I was here, but that was Monday morning and a week’s a long time in north London.’

  ‘No, seriously. What’s Katie been saying?’

  ‘She says you’ve gone all moony. She says you don’t talk much, except to ask if he’s rung. She says you let her watch television all evening instead of making her do her homework. She quite enjoys it really, so don’t get too screwed up about it. What’s going on, though? I thought you’d only just met this Pole.’

  ‘I have. I met him last weekend. I’m in love with him. I know it must sound daft to you, but that’s what it is.’

  ‘Heavy,’ says Max. A pause. ‘Doesn’t he fancy you, or what?’

  ‘Yes, I think he does. I mean …’

  ‘Yeah I noticed.’

  ‘… I think he quite likes me, really, as far as I can tell. We’ve only seen each other four times so far, and I might never see him again. That first afternoon last weekend, when we went for a walk up on the Heath, everything seemed all right. But it’s hard to know, with him.’

  ‘What do you expect if you will go out with someone who doesn’t even speak decent English?’

  ‘Max, belt up. Anyhow I discovered today that he speaks marvellous French, so we’ve been speaking French ever since.’

  ‘Well, take it easy, Mother.’

  ‘You’re supposed to be past all that games-playing, your generation.’

  ‘Just keep cool, that’s all. Try concentrating on Kate. She’s pretty pissed off. Can I have a coffee?’

  ‘Ask the other two if they want some as well.’

  Later that evening, going to bed, I sniff the towel and sniff the pillow for traces of Iwo. The sheets are precious because we shared them. Luckily they were clean yesterday so I have a week in sheets that his naked body has slept in … I am a fool: and a selfish, callous one. How has this stranger, quite unknown to me two weeks ago, suddenly acquired the power to plunge me into such despair that I neglect – evidently ignore – my daughter? The answer has to be, not because of what he is, but because of what I need. Not for years has anyone made love to me with such power and patience. I flex and curl my hands and make myself smile and make myself relax, and make myself sleep. They who one another keep alive, never parted be.

  4

  Iwo and I had parted abruptly at King’s Cross with no suggestion of when or where we might meet again. I have to tell myself constantly that even days of silence won’t mean I’m never going to see him again. I struggle to keep some sense of proportion, and resist the hourly temptation to write him a letter or find out his phone number and ring him. I must concentrate on the things which filled my life quite satisfactorily before I met him. If I wait, he will – surely he will? – ring me again. Doing nothing is the hardest of all.

  After the highly-strung emotions of the weekend, the ordinariness of the week calms me down. I make a special effort to concentrate on Kate. We do homework together, go and see a film together, I hear her while she endlessly rehearses her Grade V violin pieces. I invite friends over for lunch on Sunday, and persuade Cordy and Max to come as well, to ensure that I have something to fill my weekend even if he doesn’t phone. The attempt to appear normal actually succeeds. I realize that I was lashing myself into paroxysms of emotion and melodrama which distanced me from my real feelings. Looked at coolly – ‘Stay cool, mother’ – what are they? Iwo and I shared a remarkable intimacy at our first meeting, reinforced since then by the happy discovery that we both speak French. We seem to be compatible, in bed and out of it, so there is no logical reason to suppose that he is not also delighted with our relationship. He has every reason to want to continue it, at least for the time being. There is no other woman in his life; no man in mine – Fred doesn’t count.

  Meanwhile I give myself a crash course in Polish history. Out goes the Hollywood stereotype of Chopin and Liszt, long-haired, fine-fingered heroes of the keyboard giving passionate expression to the tortured soul of the Polish nation. In comes a harsh and sober grasp of what drove Iwo away from the country where he was born and lived for fifty-odd years. I learn of the horrors inflicted by the Germans, who murdered some three million Polish Jews and half-starved the rest of the population. I learn about the post-war years of austerity and repression by the Russians, the bleak, blank, black and white and above all grey years of bad housing, bad food, no money and no freedom. It is impossible to picture Iwo in such a society.

  On Friday evening he telephones.

  ‘Constance: how are you? Shall we meet this weekend? Let’s do something cheerful and irresponsible … what do you think? Have you any plans?’

  ‘On Sunday I have people coming to lunch … you are welcome too. You’d like them. Saturday I’m free.’

  ‘Can one be irresponsible cheaply in London?’

  ‘With difficulty. But … yes. We could go for a swim. Dance. We could ice-skate. We could …’

  ‘Then let us start with coffee and Polish cakes, they are delicious, tomorrow at two o’clock. There is a café just by South Kensington station. The Daquise. Can you meet me there?’

  On Friday night I have my first uninterrupted stretch of eight hours’ sleep since meeting him, and wake looking five years younger.

  I dress in the jeans and big sloppy sweater and bright scarf in which I feel most comfortable, and stuff a swimsuit into my handbag just in case. My mood is almost manically light-hearted, and I swing along to the bus stop with a step that is nearly a dance.

  At first sight, the Polish café he takes me to is disappointing. It is dimly lit and dingy, in need of redecoration. Yet it is also instantly, obviously foreign – or is it just my imagination that invests it with an air of mittel-European seediness? What is mittel-European seediness anyway, except for a few half-remembered black and white films seen with Paul in the friendly darkness of the Academy or the Scala for ls.6d. when we were undergraduates?

  On the wall an oil-painting – by Feliks Topolski, at a guess – shows the Horse Guards on parade, high-stepping, plumes flying: a perfect symbol of the ambiguity of this place, a Polish enclave in a foreign city. Although my first assumption is that everyone here is Polish, I realize that in fact only about a third, at most, of the people seated at banquettes against the walls are speaking Polish. A very beautiful, black-haired young woman, chic in a moiré-patterned black raincoat, sweeps in and whirls past. Her hair is cut to curve sharply around her jaw. I ask Iwo, Ts she Polish? Is she typical?’

  He laughs. ‘My dear, a girl like that is not typical in any country!’

  I feel snubbed, though he doesn’t mean to be unkind. I invest him with endless old-world sophistication, although his clothes are the oddments he arrived with, or has bought cheaply in second-hand shops, and his room of course betrays only a kind of pride in possessing nothing.

  The people at the next table are speaking Polish: soft and yet guttural. An old man with an angular face – Iwo will look like that in twenty years’ time – sits with folded arms opposite two women. Their conversation is intense, oblivious to my stares.

  ‘What are they talking about?’ I whisper in French to Iwo.

 
‘The past,’ he says, resignedly.

  The food they are eating looks substantial, and everything smells of red cabbage or sauerkraut. Chunks of smoked meat or sausage are much in evidence. The Polish cakes we eat with our coffee are, as he had promised, delicious.

  ‘Is it proper Polish cooking?’ I ask Iwo. He looks at me incredulously.

  ‘We haven’t eaten like this in Poland for fifty years,’ he says.

  I am ashamed of my stupid lack of tact. Why would he be here, in London, with me, if the old Poland still existed? His very presence is a measure of despair with the country that has made him, and all the Poles here, exiles.

  A tall, distinguished-looking man in a camel coat and old-fashioned beige Homburg enters. He greets Iwo gravely, in Polish. Iwo introduces me in French, and the three of us converse in that language. The other man, Tadeusz, is also fluent.

  ‘We met at the Polish Club,’ Iwo tells me.

  Tadeusz says, ‘I have lived in England for over forty years, yet I still behave like a Pole!’

  Moments later we are joined by his daughter. She is slender, her face quite clear of make-up although she must be in her mid-thirties. She evidently knows Iwo already, and as he rises to greet her they kiss formally on both cheeks. As we are being introduced, my mind races. She wears no wedding ring. Have they a more than friendly relationship? In the past? Still? Am I imagining the intimacy in her voice as she addresses him in Polish?

  ‘Il faut que nous parlons français,’ says Iwo to her after a while; ‘Madame Liddell ne parle pas polonais.’

  ‘In that case,’ she says easily, ‘we shall have to speak English. My French never got beyond school standard.’

  She is relaxed, confident, charming. I am smitten with the hammer-blows of jealousy. It has not occurred to me for a moment that Iwo might know other women here in London, or even other Poles. I suppose I thought he had been living in a vacuum, except for the workshop. I thought him mine exclusively. New avenues of torture stretch before me, peopled with Polish women as sophisticated as he: elegant, old-world, yet belonging here.

  Joanna’s auburn hair falls over her forehead as she leans earnestly across the table towards Iwo, speaking in a mixture of perfect English interspersed with rapid explanatory Polish. How foreign she looks! How European, in contrast to my over-anxious, over-made-up Englishness! I dare not look at Iwo or catch his eye, for fear I should see that he’s as mesmerized by her as I am. I bleed. Suddenly the café fills up with a group of chattering English students, and I am grateful for their intrusion. They too are relaxed; they too are charming and vivacious, just like the Poles.

  Iwo and Joanna have now lapsed completely into Polish, and he seems even more forthcoming in his native tongue than with me in our new-found French. Precise, metallic, flexible, the incomprehensible words ricochet across the table between them. I suffer. Does it show? Probably it does, because his friend engages me in conversation. In a low voice (but he needn’t bother: the other two are absorbed) he says, ‘Our friend Iwo is of a very old family. Poles who have lost their lands consider it bad form to use their titles. But his father was a Count. His name comes from their estate – Iwomicz, down in the Tatras.’

  It is no surprise to me. I nod and smile and raise my eyebrows.

  ‘I hope we shall see you at the Polish Club one day,’ says Tadeusz courteously.

  ‘I should like it a great deal,’ I reply. Does he see me bleed? If only I could understand what his daughter is saying to this stranger whom I adore. I gaze over his shoulder at an elderly, aristocratic-looking Polish couple opposite us. This is absurd. All Polish émigrés can’t be dispossessed aristocrats. Both are white-haired, fine-boned, with lean hands and fingers. He has a small white moustache and pale but lively blue eyes which he focuses on her as he gesticulates vividly. The coffee, in Pyrex cups, is bitter and frothy. I long to leave.

  ‘Constance,’ Iwo is saying, ‘have you any change?’

  I root in my handbag and extract a ten pound note. He gives it to the waitress. For the first time since we met he seems ill at ease. We say goodbye to his friends, who hold my hands and my eyes with what is either great courtesy or real warmth. Yes, yes, we must meet again. Yes, the Polish Club, soon. How glad I am to be out in the sharp autumn sunshine!

  Iwo takes my arm.

  ‘My dear, I apologize …’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘I … today I have very little money. I was not expecting them. I could not pay for everything. That is why I had to borrow from you. I will repay you, of course.’

  I had already forgotten the money I had lent him.

  ‘Iwo! Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t mind paying. In fact I should have offered. I remember now: you said we would have to do something cheap.’

  Now we are both mortified. I hadn’t really considered how poor he must be. He must have to exist on low wages, and he said something about sending money back to his family in Poland. He probably had to save up for the train fare to Newark last weekend: was it so important to him, to visit those unknown Polish graves? For a little while I am distracted by safe thoughts about his poverty and can batten down my mind over the words, ‘What a beautiful young woman … what a charming daughter … have you known Tadeusz and his daughter for long? … what a beautiful young woman … beautiful… young … woman.’ They beat rhythmically against my mind in the silence between us, until I have to let them out.

  ‘Your friend was charming … and his daughter is a beautiful young woman.’

  Iwo feigns to be – is? – indifferent. ‘You think so?’

  Jealousy will betray itself if I am too enthusiastic. With great difficulty I say nothing, even though it elongates the silence.

  ‘What can we do around here without money?’ asks Iwo. Evidently his train of thought is still on the embarrassment of having to borrow from me. ‘Perhaps you could show me the Museum?’

  ‘The Victoria and Albert?’ I say joyously.

  ‘Yes. Since we are practically outside it. I have been in a few times, but it is so big, I never know what I am missing. Show me what you like here.’

  I adore museums, and especially this mauso-museum, vast, ornate, Victorian, crammed with the spoils of Empire. A guided tour, oh, wonderful!

  Once we are inside the V and A my confidence returns. I have been here many times with the children and can find my way around it effortlessly. Back on what feels like my territory, I relax. I will begin by showing him the surprise with which I first delighted my children. We go left, up the stairs to the English furniture galleries. I used to make them shut their eyes until we were standing directly in front of the huge, concave magnifying mirror. Then I’d say ‘Open!’ and they would laugh in astonishment at their own enormous reflections, and lean into it and back again, to see their faces swaying moonlike to and fro in its shiny surface. From there we go to the Hilliard portrait miniatures, and the Grinling Gibbons woodcarvings, and then to the Great Bed of Ware, and then down to Tippoo’s Tiger, and then, since I suddenly realize that these are all things to delight children, but not necessarily of riveting interest to Iwo, I take him to the room with embroideries and antique textiles. Some are displayed around the walls, but many are so delicate and friable that they have to be hidden in drawers, away from the light. We pull out the smooth-running, wafer-thin drawers, revealing fragile sheets of silk painstakingly worked with arabesques of fruit and flowers and foliage. The stitching is minute, the colours subtle with age. There are babies’ bonnets, shaped to long-dead little skulls; long kid gloves for women with impossibly tiny hands and narrow fingers, the same hands that stitched these patient works. I used to make the children try to imagine what the ladies talked about as they sat with heads bent over their needles; and they would come home inspired, and I would buy some coarse modern version: a canvas with big holes to make the work quick to finish, crudely printed with a colourful kitten or pony; and they would lose interest after a day or two, and the piece would be discarded full of the knot
s and tangles of their impatience.

  Iwo and I go down to the ground floor and stand in front of the Persian carpets, even more minutely worked than the embroideries, with hundreds of knots to the inch.

  ‘They sent these all over Europe, you know,’ says Iwo. ‘They were very popular in Poland: there is a special type called the Polonaise, because so many Polish noblemen collected them. I remember …’ and he trails off.

  Is he about to describe some priceless carpet his family once had? Or does it make him sad to recall what he had lost? Or is he too tactful to boast about his family’s former wealth? ‘Yes?’ But he won’t finish his sentence.

  As we stroll along his hand suddenly tightens around my arm.

  ‘Have you seen enough? Shall we go?’

  ‘Of course if you want to,’ I say; and we leave.

  Outside on the street he says, ‘Will you come with me, back to my room?’ Smiling with happiness, rapid with sudden urgency, we sweep through the streets, through the dusk, to the house where he lives.

  The room looks exactly as it did before. I can’t imagine him ever leaving it untidy. Its geometrical order is almost ritualistic, as though he were compelled to establish a pure, impersonal, bleached environment, devoid of any sign of permanence or comfort. I gaze around it for a moment, but as he comes towards me, lifts the jacket away from my shoulders and pushes his cold hands under my warm sweater to rest against my skin, I am transfixed by the thought: has she been here? Has the beautiful Joanna undressed here; and let her clothes drop, like mine, on to this bare floor; and been gently propelled, like me, towards that cool white bed; and bent back across it, like this; and kissed with this strong harsh need? Iwo picks me up and lays me across his bed and, seeing my frown, says, ‘You won’t be cold for long.’ I must not ask. She is the daughter of a friend, a compatriot. He doesn’t have to explain her to me. I have him here, and as his long body rolls on to the bed and covers me I clutch him passionately and hold him as tightly as I can, wrapping my arms around his back, pressing myself into the hollows and curves moulded against me. My mind, behind his kisses, beats a drum-roll of questions: Was she here? Have you made love to her? Will you? Has she been in this bed, your arms? Tell me, tell me, tell me! I may relinquish control of my body, but never of my words. But hark, my pulse, like a soft dram, beats my approach, tells thee I come.