Love Among the Single Classes

by Angela Lambert

My face, my body, are as though turned to stone. I can only look at him, no longer able to hide my feelings. For that matter, could I ever?

  ‘I am sorry, my dear. I don’t think you understand.’

  Understand? I have never understood. To understand means, literally, to feel supported from below; to bestride certainties; to be buttressed by knowledge. My love for Iwo tried to take root in imagination, guesswork, and fantasy: all of it probably wrong. I have been standing on air. This time my thoughts are slow, and in the silence we stare at one another. Then he takes a step towards me, two, three, and puts his arms around me, without speaking.

  I stand rigid, held in a gesture, not an embrace, until all my control sags and I say, Two, shall we go to bed?’

  An image flashes into my mind – Joanna and Andrew coupling rapturously – and as I dismiss it guiltily I hear Iwo murmur into my hair, ‘I think it would be better not. I am bound to disappoint you,’

  But thou wilt never more appear folded within my hemisphere, since both thy light and motion like a fled star is fallen, and gone.

  Walking like an automaton through the sunshine towards the tube in my best clothes, my mind knotted and my emotions brimming, I realize that I am not far away from my mother’s flat. On an impulse, for the first time in years, I decide to visit her unannounced, and, now that I have a source of comfort, I almost run through the streets towards her. I stumble clumsily down the steps and press hard on the doorbell, breathing heavily, knowing that the moment I see her I shall cry: Oh Mummy, oh Mummy it hurts, please make it better! Where does it hurt, darling? Here, here, it hurts all over. Now Constance, pull yourself together and don’t be a silly girl. Tell Mummy clearly where it hurts most and then we’ll put some TCP on it …

  She stands in the doorway, incongruously smart. Her eyebrows shoot up at the sight of me, but she recovers instantly – as, indeed, do I. Ah, the English self-control!

  ‘Darling! What a lovely surprise! I think there’s some tea left. Come in …’

  Leading the way, she walks through to her small drawing room where, amid her best teacups and slivers of lemon and thinly-sliced cucumber sandwiches, an elderly man is rising to his feet.

  ‘Constance darling, you remember Uncle Leonard, don’t you? Leonard Elphinstone?’

  ‘She won’t remember me, goodness no! But I remember you, very well.’

  He is wrong. I do remember him. Uncle Leonard and Auntie Janet. They used to play bridge and tennis with my parents when we were all young: when, come to think of it, my mother must have been younger than I am now.

  ‘I do remember you, though. And Auntie Janet.’

  An expression of conventional grief comes over his face, and my mother says hurriedly, ‘Auntie Janet died a couple of years ago, Constance. So brave. It’s been a very difficult time. But Leonard’s been wonderful. Oh yes you have, Leonard!’

  Deference has been observed towards the dead.

  ‘Well my dear, you look very smart. Been lunching with an admirer, hm?’

  ‘Not exactly, Mr Elphinstone.’ I will not call him Uncle Leonard, yet I can’t bring myself to utter his naked Christian name. ‘I’ve just come from a wedding.’

  ‘A wedding!’ bubbles my mother. ‘Darling, how lovely! Whose? Do I know them?’

  ‘No: some Polish friends of mine.’

  ‘Splendid chaps, the Poles. Lot of them fought in our Air Force in the last war … Did you know that, Constance?’

  ‘Really?’ I say, and drink my tepid tea quickly, thwarted in my search for consolation, wanting now just to be left alone.

  My mother is talking about the grandchildren and he winks at me. ‘Very much the proud grandmother, eh? And quite right too, from all I hear. My young feller-me-lad emigrated to Canada, so all I see of my grandchildren is a lot of shiny photographs.’

  Poor old thing: so he’s lonely, too. Well, isn’t everyone?

  The human condition. Old age, decrepitude, resentment, memories.

  As I leave I notice in the hall a carrier bag full of freshly ironed shirts. ‘Goodbye Mother,’ I say, kissing her formally on both cheeks. ‘Thanks for the lovely cup of tea.’

  She looks anxious. ‘You’re sure you’re all right, darling?’

  ‘Fine,’ I say, flashing a big bright smile. ‘Just a bit pissed, I expect. See you on Tuesday … ‘Bye!’

  But woe is me! The longest date too narrow is to calculate these empty hopes.

  18

  The aftermath of a death must feel like this. The loss has changed your life irrevocably, yet the rest of the world goes about its business impervious. Iwo leaves me for ever on Thursday, Thursday of this week. Wednesday evening will be the last time I see him. I have failed. All he wanted was a wife, any wife, and still I wasn’t good enough. What help is poetry to me now; what use my books, my library, my stalwart friends? In a way it would be easier if he were dead. That would also put an end to everything, but I wouldn’t be to blame. This way, I shall have to live with the thought of him in Poland, with his wife. Well then, Katarzyna, I give you what I could not keep. Be kind to him.

  I wish I could have believed Paul when he said that what was wrong was not what I offered, but Iwo’s ability to take it. But I remember how we met: that first afternoon on the Heath when the trees burned. He reached out to me then, eager to share his sense of self and learn about me and mine, and I thought I had found my soul’s dear wish … It hasn’t worked, and I am numb with loss.

  Sunday is interminable. Katie’s with Paul. Cordy’s bent over her books, inaccessible. I try to read the Sunday papers, usually such a treat, but after a sentence or two my concentration falters and I stare blankly into the ominous brightness of the summer day, its heat too heavy to last. I wander through the house and garden, barefoot, unkempt, sticky in a faded T-shirt and loose cotton trousers. I finger my address book, wondering whom I could ring. Nobody. I languish out, not live the day. I take salad and a glass of iced lemonade upstairs to Cordy, who barely looks up.

  ‘Great. Thanks. Later. Hot …’ she says.

  I go down again and lie in the garden, but the sun gives me a headache and the grass itches against my bare skin. With the coming of evening the house cools but the pressure is still there inside my head. The telephone rings, so loudly that I jump, and I rush to pick it up.

  It is Max, his voice strong and happy. ‘Hi Mother, how’re you?’

  ‘Fine darling. You?’

  ‘Yeah, great. Smashing day, wasn’t it? Danny and I went to Richmond Park. Took a picnic. Got pissed and lay in the sun. My arms are all burnt.’

  ‘A picnic. How lovely. How is she?’

  ‘Look: it’s a bit short notice but we thought we might come over and have supper in the garden with you sometime this week. Wednesday would be best, or Tuesday?’

  ‘Wednesday I can’t. Tuesday.’

  ‘OK then. Want us to bring anything? Bottle of wine?’

  ‘Don’t bother. There’s still a surprising amount in Daddy’s cellar.’

  ‘Right then. Sevenish? Eightish? You say.’

  ‘Any time. Be lovely to see you both again.’

  Their visit will be a godsend, taking my mind off my farewell to Iwo, if only for a few hours. Max and Danuta have been together for six months now, and despite her parents’ objections she has moved in with him. How ironic, if after all this I were to acquire a Polish daughter-in-law! But the young are in no rush to marry and I don’t suppose those two have even discussed it. In their twenties they still have so much time and so many choices …

  On Monday morning I wake up to find the weather has broken. It’s much cooler, and it is starting to rain. Rain patters on to the pale green lime shoots springing from their truncated boles. The peonies are at their height, fatly glorious, their texture magnified by raindrops. People come into the library with damp hair or shaking water from their umbrellas, and joke about the English summer.

  ‘Just in time to ruin the last week of Wimbledon – typical, isn’t it? Never fa
ils. Still, we got two weeks. All you can expect.’

  ‘Winter begins officially next week,’ I say, trying to match their cheerfulness. For me, it has begun already.

  Katie’s school sports day is a sodden disaster, the gamesfield streaked with muddy skidmarks. The parents have to make do with PE displays in the gym and indoor sandwiches. Kate is furious. Running is one of the things she’s really good at, and for all her adolescent precocity she’s still enough of a child to care about winning races. Paul is annoyed too. Having arranged to take this Monday afternoon off so that he can be seen to do the decent, divorced father act and cheer Katie on, he now sits fuming as other people’s children perform wobbly gymnastics.

  He drives us home in his latest shiny car – ‘Firm’s car,’ he explains – and goes upstairs to say hello to Cordy. She, her examinations already under way, is haggard with last-minute revision.

  ‘She can’t really have done as badly as she’s predicting?’ he asks, sitting spreadeagled in the old sofa with a glass of white wine in one hand and Katie curled into his shoulder.

  ‘She’s just trying to prepare us for the worst,’ I tell him reassuringly, ‘so that whatever her results, it’ll come as a relief to us that she’s got a degree at all.’

  He nods. ‘Can’t be easy, us with Firsts and all that.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ve ever put any pressure on her, have we?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know about you. I’ve made it bloody clear that it’s a hard, cold world out there, and if they want jobs they’d better get a damn good degree. How’re things with young Tim?’

  ‘Ben.’

  ‘Whoever. She serious about him?’

  ‘They seem to get on very well, yes: but what’s that got to do with her exam results?’

  ‘If she’s going to be a wife and mother of six it doesn’t matter what she gets. If she wants to be a media whizz-kid it makes a hell of a difference. Competition’s shit-hot nowadays. Even the secretaries have degrees.’

  I am astonished how untouched Paul is by the changes in the lives of women of his own generation: the changes that our divorce made in my life. He seems to take for granted that I, once his mousey, stay-at-home wife, now earn my keep and that of our children, as well as running the household single-handed. Yet it doesn’t occur to him that the same might happen to Cordelia. He pays lip-service to the language of feminism in his advertising campaigns because he must, but other than that he remains sturdily indifferent to the New Woman.

  ‘You’re Neanderthal, do you know that?’ says Kate grumpily. ‘Why should Cordy and Ben get married? They’ll be like Max: live in a squat or buy a flat or something and just stay together.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see …’ says Paul. He strokes her hair and she snuggles down again. ‘So, young lady, now that you’re out of training, where would you like to eat?’

  We decide, as we always did in the past, to go to the small Italian restaurant down the road. The food isn’t up to much, pretty awful in fact, but it holds memories of birthday celebrations for years back, and they always make us welcome. Kate goes upstairs to change out of her school shorts and Aertex shirt, and I’m just about to follow her when Paul stops me.

  ‘Stay here. Have a glass of wine and talk for a minute. I’ve got news for you, and I want you to help me tell the girls.’

  ‘Paul! What?’

  ‘Sit down. Here. Want a fag?’

  ‘You ought to know by now that I’ve given up smoking. It’s been nearly eight years. What news?’

  ‘Lulu’s pregnant.’

  ‘Darling! Er … congratulations?’

  ‘I was pretty appalled at first. Can’t honestly say I fancy going back to sleepless nights and nappies.’

  ‘So? What are you going to do?’

  ‘I tried for a while to talk her out of it. But she’s determined to go ahead. She says she’ll have the baby whether I get involved or not. Did you know she was that keen to have a child? I mean, she went off the Pill without telling me!’

  ‘I only met her that couple of times over Christmas: how should I know? But didn’t you?’

  ‘I knew she was feeling broody. But I thought she’d wait until we’d sorted ourselves out.’

  ‘And when was that going to be?’

  He grins. ‘I suppose you’re right. No reason for me to change the status quo.’

  ‘So she’s forced your hand?’

  ‘A bit. Not that I don’t love her. I do. Well, I hope I do, because we’re getting married.’

  ‘So it is congratulations!’

  He smirks, and I see that he is not unhappy at the prospect. The wedding is to be next month, and the holiday they had already planned for August will become their honeymoon. Lulu is nearly four months pregnant – with my husband’s child. The thought of it makes me lonely. I had hoped to have a chance to talk to him about Iwo. Now I can’t. Instead I have to smile, and kiss him, and tell him I’m sure our children will be thrilled – but will they? – and all the time I’m remembering the births of our babies. How young we were then – how unprepared for parenthood! This baby will be born into an affluent household, complete no doubt with nanny and daily cleaner; with half-brother and -sisters. It’s being born so that Lulu can have what she wants: a husband, my husband. I am angry and jealous and envious and confused, but my smile stays fixed in place. This is it. He’s really gone from me now. He belongs to another woman and another family. I am on my own, no Paul, no Iwo. My father died five years ago, and now there is no male in my life.

  We hear Katie and Cordy coming down the stairs and I say quickly, ‘Don’t say anything to them just yet. I’ll think about how you ought to break the news. It’s bound to be a bit of a shock, but they’ll be pleased in the end. Don’t worry …’

  He flashes a grateful nod as the two of them bounce in. My lover, my husband, my mother: one by one they step outside the roles I have allotted, refusing to be what I need them to be and pursuing their own, so much more satisfactory, lives.

  On Wednesday I’m tempted to take the day off, but realize that if I do it will only mean eight empty hours in which to brood about the coming evening. Better to spend the time in the library and hope to be distracted. In my lunch hour I hurry to the shops, buying the last presents I shall ever give Iwo, to accompany him on his train journey away from me. The rain sweeps warmly, softly down.

  As I get ready to see him for the last time, bathing and washing my hair and putting on my scented underclothes, I know that for once I shall let him determine the conversation. I can’t behave as though nothing were happening, or put a brave face on his going. All I know is that I won’t embarrass him by ‘making a scene’, as my parents always described any show of emotion. I feel turgid, passive, fatalistic: a swimmer going under for the third time, already half-drowned. There is nothing to gain by struggling.

  The journey to his house on foot, by bus, and by tube takes exactly as long as it always did, and I shall arrive exactly at eight, as arranged. Will we go out and eat a final meal together; or walk through the wet streets while dusk lasts, and then go to the Polish café, not Marina’s, the other one, where we first met Joanna? Will we stay in, sit on the floor or the bed, and talk, able finally to be honest with one another? Will he try to explain why he could not, could not love me? Or will we go to bed together, and make love one last time? I only know that he must decide.

  I try to dawdle the few hundred yards to his house, delaying the moment when our final time together will begin – and then realize I’m losing precious moments, and make up by hurrying. I stand outside the house. I press the doorbell. A rangy Australian girl opens it, tanned and loose-limbed. ‘Oh … good evening … sorry: Iwo’s expecting me. The man on the first floor.’

  She turns and yells behind her towards the open door of the kitchen. ‘Bobby! Who’s Ian? Do we have an Ian?’

  ‘Not Ian,’ I say. Two. Don’t worry. I’ll find my own way.’

  One of the Australians emerges, flushed and br
ight-eyed, shutting the door on the laughter behind him.

  ‘Oh, hello lady! You’re looking for the Polish fella, aren’t you? He’s gone.’

  ‘No,’ I explain. ‘No, it’s tomorrow he’s going. I came to … well…’ and I hold out my bag full of things I’ve bought for Iwo. ‘I brought him stuff for the train.’

  ‘No lady, he’s left. Went this morning.’

  ‘He can’t have done. Look, don’t worry. I’ll just go up to his room. Sorry; didn’t mean to bother you …’

  ‘Please yourself,’ he says, standing aside, and I climb the stairs.

  I knock on the door of Iwo’s room but there’s no answer, so I push it open. The room is unrecognizable. A shabby carpet, still showing creases from having been unrolled, covers the floor. There are curtains at the window. The two ceiling tracks have gone, and the bed has been moved to the wall opposite me. In the centre of the room stands a battered table that I haven’t seen before, flanked by a couple of wooden chairs. On the table is a dark green octagonal saucer brimming with cigarette stubs. There’s a sleeping bag under the window, and a couple of half-unpacked suitcases have overflowed around it. Apart from its white walls, the room bears no trace of Iwo.

  The Australian girl has followed me up the stairs and is standing behind me. ‘Help yourself to a look,’ she says. ‘Nice isn’t it? Me and Brend arrived today. You knew the last fella here or something?’

  ‘Yes,’ I answer. ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘We’re over for the summer. Boys fixed up for us to live here. We’ll stay a few months, till it gets cold, then move on.’

  ‘Yes,’ I repeat. ‘Cold. Wet now. Gone.’

  I brush past her and walk stiff-legged down the stairs again.

  The young Australian reappears, saying, ‘See? Told you so. Went this morning …’ And then, seeing my expression, his own changes and he asks, ‘You all right, lady?

  Everything OK? Look, we’re having a party. Welcome the girls. My name’s Bobby. Come and join us. Cheer you up.’

  ‘No. Thank you. Better go then.’

  He glances down and catches sight of the bottles in my carrier bag.