Love Among the Single Classes Page 9

  ‘What were you doing in Poland?’

  ‘Oh, hasn’t Monty told you? I was one of his students, at Lodz.’

  ‘No, he didn’t tell me.’

  Why not? He must have known I would hear it from Marina. He ought to have forewarned me. Now I am plunged into speculation and despair, and can’t keep up this charade of polite small-talk. Fortunately, she can.

  ‘He didn’t know I was here. He came down those stairs one day quite by chance, and I thought I was seeing a vision! Nobody had told me Professor Zaluski was here in London – I couldn’t believe it! How we talked, that first evening! He gave me news of so many friends at university and in Lodz. It was marvellous for me, but it made him homesick.’

  He is evidently pleased to hear her tell me how respected he was among the students; how well attended his lectures were, how audacious his ideas. I learn something new about him: that he likes to hear himself praised.

  ‘Did you know his wife?’ I ask abruptly. Now Iwo will be angry with me.

  ‘Sometimes I saw her at the university. But I was just a young student.’

  In a moment I shall ask her whether Iwo’s wife was beautiful too, and perhaps he senses that my recklessness is on the verge of becoming lunatic, for at last he interrupts.

  ‘I have told Marina she was far too good a student to be working here as a waitress …’

  ‘… and you are too good a professor to work in a repair shop: yet here we both are! And if we complain Mrs Liddell will think we are ungrateful to her country which is our host, and, really, we are not!’

  Grateful, ungrateful, what do I care? Must I endure this? Can’t we go? Two: should I leave you two? I have to go back home tonight.’ Just so that she knows I do sleep with him.

  He shows no annoyance, but stands up, extends a courteous hand to me, speaks to Marina in Polish and moments later we are outside on the street.

  I march along in silence. Let him speak.

  We walk several hundred yards to the tube station before he says, ‘Do you really want to go home now?’

  I am either forced to say yes, which he will know to be a lie, or to capitulate and say no, and apologize, and be graciously taken to his bed. ‘What do you think?’ I say.

  ‘I think we have time for a coffee in my room.’

  ‘Yes, all right then.’

  His room is dappled with shadows and reflections. It is impossible to imagine the life-giving Marina here. It is also impossible to imagine him refusing any comfort she might offer: and she offers so much. The comfort of her young body, her curving smile; the comfort of someone from his own town, who knows the people he knew; the comfort of recapturing Poland, in memories and ideas. How could he resist her?

  ‘How old is Marina?’

  ‘Constance, she is more than twenty years younger than me. She can’t yet be thirty. And now, will you stop frowning if I ask you to come to bed, or will that make you frown all the more?’

  I will stop frowning. I turn to him, cleave to him. Tonight I want kisses to comfort me. The body he kisses becomes the map of Poland. In a half-sleep, in a kind of trance, I cease to be my own self and become what he wants me to be, which is his country. These arms its borders, these feet its limits, these breasts its cities, and here, his home. The body of this world like thine, my little world! … My mind detaches itself and hovers, quite clear and rational, above the bed where Iwo is mapping out his territory. The mind reasons, Do not ask him about Marina, for he will not deign to answer, neither with truth nor kindly excuses, he will simply rebuke you for asking. Assume the obvious, that she has been here; but take her friendship at face value and use it. Make an ally of her. Talk to her. Ask her questions about him. Tell her you love him, and ask for help. But he – this self-contained and secretive man, silent even in these paroxysms – will tell you nothing.

  The victim may also remain silent under torture.

  7

  Yet I am not always plunged into self-indulgent melancholy. At home and in the library I am quite often my normal, quick-witted self. On the telephone or with my friends I make my relationship with Iwo accessible by making it absurd: reducing it to a series of picaresque incidents in which I star as a sort of Charlie Chaplin of the heart. Then they laugh and say, ‘Oh Constance, you are hopeless …’ and few realize that the comic melodramas I rattle off for their benefit are a painful parody. My emotions are so vast and turbulent that if I were to describe them literally people would think I must be going mad. It’s easier and safer to joke.

  Sometimes I try to tell myself that the relationship has manifestly failed and I might as well cut my losses. I could say to Iwo, Look, sorry, we’re wasting our time: I can’t marry you. Find someone else. This course of action would at least allow me to walk away with dignity and self-respect intact. Late at night, waiting for him to ring – he hardly ever does – I practise letters of graceful renunciation. Any form of action is better than aching hours of thought, and sometimes the letters are so plausible they almost convince me. I need advice, but whose? It ought to be someone who has also experienced this kind of lunatic obsession; preferably someone who has met Iwo and could tell me whether in fact his impassivity might conceal something more than indulgent tolerance. Maybe an objective viewpoint could persuade me to take action; whether by reason or ridicule, it doesn’t much matter. But whose?

  An unlikely comforter turns up: Paul, my ex-husband. The children must have talked to him during a weekend spent at his flat; at any rate, he brings Kate home one Sunday evening, invites himself to supper, packs her off to bed early (she goes with unusual docility) and says, ‘Can I go down to the cellar and fetch up one of my bottles?’

  ‘Our bottles, Paul: yeah, sure, why not, help yourself. Good idea. Let’s get pissed. I could do with a sympathetic shoulder.’

  ‘’76 claret do?’

  ‘Christ Paul, you know I haven’t a clue. I don’t even know what’s still down there. Just get it and open it and pour the stuff out.’

  ‘Waste of a ’76,’ he mutters, as he goes down the steps.

  I look in the mirror in a reflex gesture – Oh God! is he going to tell me I look a mess again? was always my first thought when I heard his key in the front door – and am shocked to see how haggard I look. He returns.

  ‘Don’t worry, love, you look fine. Lost a bit of weight, haven’t you? It’s good. Suits you. Now listen: Kate’s been going on about this new bloke of yours. She’s very loyal – don’t think she criticizes you – but I get the impression she doesn’t care for him a lot. Who is he?’

  ‘Polish. I’ve known him for getting on for two months now. He’s about ten years older than us. Quite unlike any of our friends… sort of mirrei-European intelligentsia type. Very serious; a bit humourless I suppose, rather laconic. Not your type, but mine.’

  ‘What’s he doing here?’

  And so I tell Paul everything, wallowing in our former intimacy, which means that I don’t have to make it funny; need not conceal my own disasters, yet can rely on the old shorthand of marriage and know that he will understand. Even as I tell him how much I love Iwo I find myself looking at Paul with nostalgia for the simple, undemanding cosiness of marriage. What’s all this nonsense about sexy underwear and candlelight and having to double-check everything I say and analyse everything Iwo says? It’s all so exhausting.

  ‘Conce, do you honestly think he’s right for you? Because it doesn’t sound like it, the way you tell it. You make it sound hell.’

  ‘Look, right from the beginning I was certain that he was – well, saving your presence, Paul – the one man I’d been waiting for. I stumbled on him like a well in the desert and could hardly believe my luck. He was clever and attractive and he needed me.’

  ‘So? What’s gone wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know … in fact I never know whether I’m imagining it all. One time we’ll meet and it’s just fantastic and I’m up and flying … the next time it’ll be awkward and stiff with long silences and it all
seems like my fault and I come away feeling a complete fool.’

  ‘He sounds like a sadist to me. One of those types who gets a kick out of proving his power over women because he can’t actually make a go of a relationship.’

  ‘Darling, don’t, don’t say that! You put my nightmares into words and I can’t bear it!’

  ‘Has he said he’s in love with you? Can you talk about your feelings?’

  ‘Never. I don’t know why but that’s taboo. I’ve never said I love him and he of course hasn’t either, and doesn’t, I think, love me.’

  ‘But he fucks you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Earth-moving stuff?’

  ‘Paul that’s an odd sort of question to ask!’

  ‘Think of us as just good friends. Is he a good fuck, or are you a real masochist?’

  ‘He’s a good fuck.’

  ‘Now listen my dear ex-wife … no, don’t look like that. I’m not being patronizing. I’m extremely fond of you and I flatter myself I still know you pretty well. Here, might as well finish the bottle. You are, if I may say so, a sexual innocent. Apart from me, and not counting the gropers in the back row who preceded me, you haven’t been to bed with a great many men, I would think?’

  ‘Depends what you …’

  ‘Don’t muck about, love. Have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And especially not lately?’

  ‘Some. Well, I suppose not that many.’

  ‘Which makes you a pushover for any bloke with a hard-on and a passable line in intellectual chat. But apart from bed – yeah, I take your word on that – what do you have in common? Hobbies? Friends? Bird-watching? Does he like the kids? Make you laugh? Constance … whatever … sweetheart for God’s sake don’t cry.’

  He gets up and beckons me over to the lumpy old sofa that has always sat in a corner of the breakfast room, where the children did their homework and cuddled cats and quarrelled with each other; and I get up too and fold myself into his familiar lap, and there I lay my head against his shoulder and cry and cry. I cry for us, so fond and close and irretrievably apart; I cry for me and Iwo, so much hope and love going to waste; and finally I cry for me, for the black pit of fear and loneliness and humiliation that yawns in my unwanted unmarried state. I cry for a friend, a lover, a husband.

  When at last I have finished crying, Paul kisses my hot, swollen eyes and says, ‘Every instinct tells me to make it better by taking you upstairs to our room and our bed; but it isn’t our bed any longer, and I would make that lady waiting for me back home very unhappy if I did. But Constance, listen to me. If something’s right, you know it’s right … because it’s easy, not difficult; relaxed, not tense; funny, not miserable. Because you’re not in awe of the guy, like some kind of superhero, you know his faults and his weaknesses and you love him for them. When something’s wrong it’s no good torturing yourself. And you do know, really, that this one is wrong.’

  ‘Paul, you don’t understand. I know all that… and I love him. I just totally, helplessly, beyond my control, even against my will, love him.’

  ‘Now you sound like a Barbara Cartland heroine. “But sire – or papa, or my Lord, or whatever – I love this man.” “Why then, Mistress Constance, he shall be thine!” Snap out of it, silly cow, and come back to real life; since apart from making yourself a misery, you’re not doing my children a lot of good. Stop languishing in some romantic novel and start being a real, funny, liberated human being again. Next time Lulu and I have people round for dinner do you want to come along?’

  ‘God forbid! One advertising man is more than enough for a lifetime!’

  ‘Thank God for that … you sound like yourself again! Don’t be rude and I’ll see if lurking anywhere in my limited circle of acquaintances there might be someone quite uncontaminated by the advertising world.’

  And so we kiss and part; and for a few days my sense of perspective is restored and I feel better, even quite indignant with Iwo. I hold brisk imaginary conversations with him in which I say, Stop mucking me about, Iwo and tell me what’s going on! What do you actually feel for me, if anything? or, even more bravely, Who are all these Polish women who make such a fuss whenever you put in an appearance – Joanna and Marina and God knows who else?

  Until he rings; and on the phone he is nice to me, his voice is tender and he says he’s been thinking about me and needs to see me. Immediately the old addiction floods through my veins again, and my mind is clouded with the heady knowledge that I shall see him within less than forty-eight hours. Paul’s sensible advice seems utterly misguided and irrelevant.

  Iwo is uncanny. He knows the precise moment when he has pushed me to the edge; when I could almost bring myself to say that our relationship is making me unhappy and we had better stop … and at that moment, he will become gentle and attentive, full of little hints about what we can do together in the spring. These moments expunge all my past doubts. I reproach myself for having been foolish, self-indulgent, introspective; for failing to make allowances, expecting too much, too soon. After such a meeting my mind races away to the opposite extreme. I am buoyant, confident, positively audacious. I may even overreach myself to the point of telephoning him. If I do, I am punished. He’s out, and some strong, casual Australian voice doesn’t know where he is; sometimes, not even who he is.

  ‘Iwo? Who’s he? Monty? Hey you guys, anyone know a fellow called Monty? Sheila here says he’s Polish … What do you want with a Pole, lady? No, don’t answer that! You want to leave a message?’

  But that is the lesser of the two evils. It’s worse when I ring and he does come to the phone.

  ‘Yes, hello?’

  ‘Iwo, hello, yes, are you there? It’s me, Constance …’

  ‘Yes, hello Constance.’

  ‘I, well, just wanted to say hello, you know, and …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh Iwo you are hopeless on the telephone! I just wanted to chat. What’ve you been doing this week? Shall I see you at the weekend?’

  ‘This week has been much the same as all the others and yes, if you like we can meet at the weekend.’

  From this cheerless conversation I retire humiliated, angry with myself and him. If I am interrupting something, why doesn’t he say so? Maybe he can’t. Maybe Joanna is at his elbow, blowing on his ear and smiling, centimetres away from my little pleading voice. If I’m not interrupting anything, why can’t he make amiable conversation for five minutes? This man has now made love to me a dozen times, yet he still can’t be civil on the telephone.

  On the spur of the moment I decide to go and talk to Marina. She has known him for years and, despite having been his pupil, she manages to treat him as an equal. She’s the obvious person to turn to for advice. She’s practically a stranger to me but the important thing is that she knows him. If anyone can provide clues to the riddle of Iwo, she can. I grab a book, my purse, coat – so different from the preparation for meeting him – and I’m off.

  I don’t know the club’s address, and wouldn’t normally be able to find my way there after just one visit. But I only have to recall that evening when Iwo brought me there, what I wore, where we met, and the rest follows naturally. I remember everything. I am a little abashed at entering this Polish haven without him, but this is submerged in the much greater fear that I may find him there. He is not.

  As I reach the foot of the stairs Marina sees me, and a wonderful curving smile lights up her face.

  ‘Oh, it’s Monty’s friend!’ she says. ‘I did so hope you would come back. I want to talk with you.’

  ‘Me too: are you busy? Can we sit and talk now? Look, you must call me Constance … and please, can we call him Iwo? Monty sounds strange.’

  ‘Constance: yes, of course. If more customers come I may have to leave you, but sit here and I’ll get some coffee and pastries.’

  Marina takes charge of the conversation, and doesn’t allow me to feel embarrassed or intrusive.

  ‘I was so glad w
hen I met you that Monty – sorry, I will remember! – Iwo had found a good woman to love him. It is so necessary for a man. They are bad alone. For him, he makes this big step, he leaves Poland, and for what? He is poor and bored with a stupid job and …’

  ‘It’s not such a stupid job. You know he mends violins and things?’

  ‘Is that what he tells you? Well, probably I should not say different: but the truth is, he packs for a musical instrument shop. Guitars and pop music things, they sell. He packs them in paper and cardboard for being sent away. How should he mend them? He knows nothing about instruments!’

  I am dumb with the poignancy of Iwo’s deception. To have gone from being an economics professor to a violin mender would have been bad enough; now I find he has actually had to go lower still. No wonder he can’t make small talk about his working life. How crass I’ve been! Clumsy, tactless – oh, fool.

  ‘It is not important. Look: I am a waitress. There is a famous Polish writer who is often in here. He works as a postman. We all have to start right down. But Iwo: his mental state is bad, do you think?’

  ‘Marina, I don’t know. He isn’t an easy man to get to know. Is he usually more cheerful?’

  ‘No, not that. Professor Zaluski was never cheerful. But he used to be full of fire and beliefs, always talking about his work, having great big arguments with his students. He was very outspoken against the authorities … ever since I can remember, not just when everyone suddenly got brave. And now … he is very bitter, don’t you find?’

  ‘I thought it was me.’

  ‘You? No, Constance, I think he is better since you. I tried to help him, to make him look forward instead of back, always, always back, to Poland.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. I wondered about that. So you did … well, I mean, did you … sorry. I’m being rude.’

  ‘No. I will tell you, because if I tell you the truth then you may believe there was no more. Yes, when we first found each other here, soon after he had arrived, yes, I went back to his room with him. It was strange for me. He was my professor once, and he is the age of my father. But he had known my fiancé – I had been a classmate with his daughter: Henryka, the older one – and it was as though all the people we had left behind in Lodz were suddenly concentrated into just the two of us. So: yes, I made love with him. But it was only comfort we wanted, not sex. After that we could be just friends.’