‘I love someone, he’s called Martyn, he’s very handsome, his face is all bony and he’s got this really thick hair …’ the girl started and a shudder ran through her again.
‘I’ve never been in love before, but with him I fell in love the moment I saw him. I only met him a few weeks ago. He started at the college this term. He’d been thrown out of public school, he said, and he’s come to the college to do his A Levels like me. He’s really, you know, laid back, he doesn’t fool about like most boys and he really knows about things like jazz and French films and stuff like that. All the girls were after him as soon as he arrived and he’s got this really posh accent. I’m not a snob. He’s tall and he wears ever such nice clothes and his parents have got a lot of money only he doesn’t get on with them so he’s got his own place. He has this flat, right? And after we’d been going out a few times he asked me to move in with him, that was two weeks ago.’
She stopped and seemed about to cry again, so I asked, ‘And did you? And what did your parents say?’
‘Not my parents, my dad, I live with him. He was mad. He was fucking mad and he said if I went I needn’t ever bother to come back so I went. That was two weeks ago.’
There was another silence while she relit her cigarette.
‘My wife didn’t throw me out, I left of my own wish, I fled from Poland, after December the thirteenth. But we had been living like strangers under the same roof for years. We shared the same flat but we slept in separate rooms. The girls had left home by then.’
‘So anyway I moved in with Martyn and it was lovely. He has this really nice flat because like his parents have got pots of money. Course I’ve been with lots of blokes before, I started when I was thirteen, but never like this. I really love him. I got frightened of him because I loved him so much, and so I couldn’t be a laugh or anything like I usually am, and I got dead jealous if he didn’t come back with me after college. Three times last week he didn’t and once he came in after midnight and I gave him real hell, and then on Monday he did it again and I’d spent the whole evening on my own in his place crying, and I didn’t even know who to ring and ask, and I couldn’t do my work either. Then when he did get back he didn’t want to like, go with me, you know? I mean he slept with me, he had to there’s only this one bed, but he wouldn’t…’ She started to cry again.
‘I have to go in a minute,’ I said. ‘My lunch hour is supposed to end at half past one.’
‘Yeah. I don’t care. What the fuck anyway?’
‘So you had a row …?’
‘Row? All night long. We made it up in the morning, I thought, but since then he hasn’t you know, and this morning when I was doing his coffee he said perhaps I ought to go. And I can’t. My dad’ll never have me back and I love Martyn just so much, and I’ve got tickets for this jazz concert next week because it’s his birthday and I love him, I really really do, I really do.’ She got up and lurched away from me into the rain and walked out of the square on to the street. I didn’t run after her. I let her walk away. After a minute or two I also got up and walked back to Fordyce Music and that basement.
In the evenings I watch more and more television. It has become a sort of hibernation, and means that I go out even less than I did. News pictures of the miners’ wives shouting furiously in support of their husbands remind me of Katarzyna, my wife. How splendidly she spoke at rallies, reckless and single-minded, without a fragment of doubt. She always remained convinced that the doctrines of Communism were inviolable; it was the leaders who were flawed. A government of Katarzynas, a party of Katarzynas, would indeed have produced a Utopia! She is incapable of hypocrisy or self-interest. Belatedly I recognize her nobility. The miners’ wives shout or shake their fists into the camera, spit their defiance at the police, and all those wives are one wife: my own. How is it possible that I never recognized her qualities while I lived beside her? As though her lovers reduced the largeness of her spirit! Besides, did I really care? I was jealous – but did I care? My pride was clipped but I never asked myself why she needed to take other men to her bed. Now at last I want her in her entirety: but even if I can convince her of that, will it make any difference? There are television programmes about Poland; re-creations of the events at the Gdansk shipyard, interviews with Walesa, and during all of them my eyes dart like frantic little fish across the screen, searching the crowd for the face of my wife. Often I think I see her, and then I pay attention to the commentary and find the film was shot in some place where she couldn’t possibly have been. I fear the return of the tumour. Thoughts of Poland are insidious, and draw me into daydreams that overwhelm my waking hours.
Constance telephones, and I agree to meet her. It is a long time since I saw her, and I have almost forgotten her existence. I tell her blatantly that I have no money; that I have just sent a parcel of food and clothes to my family, which is true, but she assures me that this is unimportant; she will pay.
Down in the underground there are more miners than ever, shaking their plastic buckets covered with stickers that say ‘Coal Not Dole’. They respond cheerfully to those who throw coins in with a word of encouragement, and equally cheerfully to those who spit, sometimes in tones of extraordinary malevolence, ‘Fucking Scargill! Ought to be bloody locked up!’ But few people challenge them directly. In the rhythm of my head I sense a slow crescendo. I feel it in the miners, too: they are accelerating towards what will be an astounding victory or a crushing defeat. The strike has lost its timeless feeling; events are moving towards a conclusion. I have the same sense about my own affairs; I have resolved my dilemma without consciously knowing how I have resolved it or what I am going to do. Now I must wait and let the decision rise to the surface of my mind, and then wait again to see how it translates itself into action. I move passively with the momentum of events, not really thinking, waiting for them to engulf me.
Constance is vibrant with energy. She looks bright-eyed and vivid, but her voice is nervous.
‘Iwo! Don’t you look well? Marina thought you’d lost weight but you haven’t! Isn’t this weather foul? How are you? Gosh, it’s ages since we saw each other … must be, what, over a month?’
‘Perhaps it is. You too look very well, Constance: the winter suits you.’ She glows with pleasure and I am touched to see her made happy so easily, and draw her arm into the crook of mine and let her guide me to the cinema where she has booked tickets.
‘I would have come over to see you when you were ill, Iwo, but Marina said you’d specially asked not to be visited, so I didn’t. But I would have done otherwise. Did you have plenty to read? I actually enquired at our library about some Polish books for you but then of course I had no idea what you’d have read or which authors were any good so I …’
She tails off anxiously, so eager to please, so ineffectual.
‘My dear, I have been a recluse, but now I have emerged, all the better for my retreat. Tell me something about this film, before we get there.’
She knows everything about it: the career of the director; the private lives of the stars; she will tell me the plot if I want her to. She has chosen an American film for us, which is a pleasant surprise, and I prepare to surrender to some other man’s patriotic fantasies.
In the restaurant afterwards, a stone’s throw from my position in Soho Square, she softens with the warmth of the food and thick red wine.
‘Have you ever been hungry, Constance?’
‘Only when I’ve been trying to diet. I’ve never had to miss a meal because I couldn’t buy the food. Oh Iwo, have you been eating properly? You must eat properly, it’s terribly important, especially in the cold.’
‘I was thinking how different your life has been from mine. It’s like the men where I work. They have no concept of struggle, it seems to me.’
‘I don’t know: look at the miners. Some of them were probably quite complacent until a year ago. Now look at them.’
‘In Poland we have seen the earth shake. For the last twenty year
s, thirty, more, for as long as I can remember, the struggle has been constant. Ordinary things are hard all the time. Buying things is hard. Teaching is hard. Talking with friends is hard. A knock on your door is hard. I think I have come to need that, that tribulation.’
‘Your life doesn’t seem exactly easy now. Not even mine is entirely without its problems …’
‘My dear: look at us. You have arranged the evening and taken care of me: and I don’t have to wonder why; if you can be trusted; if I should guard my tongue, or whether you will start to question me about one of my students or friends. Here, on this menu, we can have whatever we choose. There are no shortages. The other people eating here … they’re nothing to be afraid of. They can overhear us and it doesn’t matter. No-one wonders why we are speaking in French …’
‘Iwo! I meant to tell you: I’ve been learning Polish! With your dictionary; and with an old lady who sometimes comes into the library.’
She makes me feel guilty: she must be doing this for me.
‘Good day my name is Constance and I lives in England,’ she says painstakingly in my mother tongue. ‘I have three children, two is girls and one is boy. What is your name?’
Suddenly I am tired and bored and I feel a great longing to catch the tube from my usual stop and let it carry me home to bed. The film and the food have relaxed me and I know I could sleep now, without thoughts or dreams. But the wine has made Constance skittish.
‘Shall we go? Shall I get the bill? It’s nearly midnight. Are we going to my house or what?’
You go to your house and I’ll go to mine, I want to say; but the most I can manage is, ‘I’d rather go to my room.’
‘All right then. I warned Katie I might not be back. She’s got a friend staying the night. Iwo, how was my accent?’
Appalling. ‘Not bad at all.’
‘Really? It’s a terribly difficult language.’
‘I hope you aren’t learning it on my account.’
‘No, I’m enjoying it. And the old lady – her name’s Magda, she’s wonderful – she really enjoys teaching me.’
‘I may not be here all that much longer. Don’t learn for me.’
In the silence she signs for the bill and smiles glassily at the waiter, who fetches our coats. We leave the deep plush warmth of the restaurant and swing open the doors into a cold night.
‘Where are you going? Is it for long?’
‘I don’t know. I might not. I’m still thinking about it.’
‘I see. Well. What does Joanna think?’
‘I’ve no idea. I haven’t discussed it with her. I told you, haven’t decided anything yet. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’
She is silent at that, and silent on the tube, and silent as far as the front door of the house. Then she says, ‘I can always catch a taxi home … I don’t have to …’
‘What nonsense! You will stay, I hope,’ I have to say, and of course she does.
But as I sit on my bed and watch her undress, a longing for human contact takes me by surprise. It is weeks since I held a woman’s body in my arms, in my bed, and Constance smells sweet and her flesh is warm.
‘I’ll warm your side …’ she whispers, as she slides between the cold sheets and shivers. As I undress, the prospect of being welcomed into bed makes me glad of her presence. I kiss her to stop her talking; her breath tastes of wine. Her body arches towards me, and I find that the old mechanisms work, they still work, the flag is hoisted up the flagpole to the sound of a solitary trumpet.
Towards the end of February snow falls hard for several days, making the streets first clean and then mucky. Waking up one morning to find a snowstorm whirling down from a high white sky, I lie in bed watching the crystallized trees and black, huddled birds, and sink deeply back into childhood. Each morning they would begin with the announcement of the temperature. ‘Minus fifteen Celsius’ the grown-ups would say, and sometimes, with bated breath, ‘Minus twenty degrees Celsius’ and, very rarely, ‘Minus twenty-five degrees Celsius! Iwo, mind your nose doesn’t drop off!’ ‘It can’t, it’s impossible,’ I would insist, but they’d wag their heads and with long faces tell stories of children whose noses had got frostbitten without their even realizing it, and dropped off, leaving them for the rest of their lives with faces like lepers. Fingers and thumbs and even toes were liable to the same disfigurement if I didn’t wear my warm scarf, my warm gloves, my galoshes, drink my warm milk and come in when I was called. With threats and blackmail they controlled my days, cutting short my play and using my ignorance to fill me with fears. Why do people tell lies and talk nonsense to children? What they didn’t know was that I disobeyed most of their commands – took off the gloves and scarf and defiantly exposed myself to Jack Frost. My fingers turned first blue and then yellowish-white with cold and stung with pain, but I didn’t become a leper, so their bluff was called.
After that I skated and sledged for as long as I wanted, especially during that magical time towards sunset when the blue winter dusk wiped out all shadows and made the snow-covered ground look perfectly smooth. My sledge would skim this glittering surface and for those fifteen or twenty minutes – the brief time between whiteness and darkness – each bump that went shuddering up through my backside along my spine came as a shock, because my eyes hadn’t anticipated it. Tense with bravado, I went faster and more recklessly than usual, dashing into danger, wanting to fall off and break a limb. I never got more than bruises. My mother used to bathe them with witch-hazel, and its pure, healing smell is the perfume I associate with her. She wore scent in the evenings, but I preferred her in witch-hazel. She had to anoint me secretly, because my father and grandmother accused her of coddling me and making a fuss. The secrecy made the smell enticing. Grand’mère I associate with bitter aloes, which she painted on my fingertips to make me stop biting my nails, and eau-de-Cologne, with which she washed her ears. Her house smelt of beeswax and the lemon water which the servants used for whitening marble, and logs for the fire. Smell is the most primitive of the senses and snow one of my earliest memories. It wafts me backwards in time. A little boy lies here in bed, cosseted in plump starched sheets and feather pillows, a night-light beside him, watching the snow.
Jack Frost gets me in the end: thanks to the London winter. Being without a warm scarf and gloves, I develop a genuine bout of flu and am forced to stay in my room. I lie in bed for days, sick and self-pitying, haunted by unresolved events from my all-too-present past. How can I help being in thrall to my childhood? Raw perceptions were branded on my senses, while my emotions were exposed to a complicated rhythm of pleasure alternating with pain. The love of the grown-ups around me was pleasure; their disapproval was pain. Love and disapproval seemed meted out at random. Had those years been all misery they might at least have given me the tough hide of a realist, which is to say, a cynic. As it was, my heart was cramped by the timidity or harshness of the people who ruled my boyhood.
I began by fearing and obeying my father. Next I hated him, because he tyrannized us all in the sacred names of discipline and duty. Finally, I despised him, realizing that he was a bully, a cowardly man behind the erect façade. He was contemptuous of tenderness, which he called sloppiness, and love, which he called sentimentality. Today at last I understand why: the tiny, tyrannical figure of his mother, my exquisite Grand’mère, was reason enough. I wish I could forgive him for the harm he did me … especially now, when I am becoming like him in so many ways.
As for the settings against which these dramas took place: far from being timeless drawing rooms they turned out to be as flimsy as plywood. In one decade the family house and hierarchy collapsed. By the end of the war my grandparents were dead – luckily for them – my ineffectual mother was frail in health, and my father reduced to being a worker among fellow-workers in the publishing house he had once headed, which now became a conveyor belt for shoddy propaganda.
The lesson I learned in these crucial years was: do what you want and confide in nobody. Yet
in spite of myself the search for harmony and kindness still goes on, and still occasionally seems to have found its happy ending. A complete cynic doesn’t believe in happiness, and therefore doesn’t bother to pursue it. I am still capable of yearning for Marina, or detecting in Constance, for a while at least, that same intelligent heart which as a small boy I treasured in my mother. I am half a lifetime away from closing my eyes and calling out for my mother. I am an ageing man in a strange house and this flu is making me ache. To hell with self-pity! To hell with the past, and with all phantoms and shadows and silhouettes and ghosts!
I’m sick of being sick. Flu is at its worst, not in the days when one is most ill – those pass in a haze of sweat and boredom, and are hardly different from standing in a queue for hours on a hot summer’s day – no, the worst of flu comes afterwards, with the depression and weakness. In this state I have no resistance to nightmares. Those maudlin daydreams about my childhood were infinitely preferable to these images from my adolescence. In old churches in the country, frescoes with black visions of hell-fire and purgatory have sometimes survived for centuries: maleficent demons grimacing at their victims, who are twisted into caricatures of pain. These images, I learned, are exact, not melodramatic. We have no need of hell when this world does its job quite satisfactorily. The hurts inflicted by my family, which distorted me for life, were good training: they helped me to survive what I witnessed later. I did not believe I could become a man, after what I had seen as an adolescent, and yet I did. One does, unless one happened to be Jewish.
That’s as much as I can manage now. I’ll have to talk about something banal. But I’ll come back to the nightmares – I have no choice, since they always come back to me.
It’s only my thoughts that burn. Outwardly I am not warm. People have sometimes called me enigmatic or inscrutable, which fills me with a mixture of incredulity (me? Iwo, the small boy who craves approval, enigmatic?) and satisfaction, since I know that inscrutability is a baffling and attractive quality. Women like a man to seem unfathomable.
Love Among the Single Classes Page 19