‘Come on now, lady … what’s your name?’
‘Constance Liddell.’
‘Constance, come on, join in the fun! Have a little drink! Seen you around lots of times and never asked you for a…’
‘No, I think I’ll be off now, if you don’t mind. Thank you.’
He stands aside, then leans forward and opens the front door. Dusk is beginning to fall, and the rain still patters gently on to the warm pavements. A cooling wind is blowing, rustling the leaves.
I walk away from the house and, after a hundred yards or so, stop. He has gone. He’s already in the train. He didn’t say goodbye. He knew I was coming, and didn’t even ring to say goodbye. Perhaps he left a note? They would have told me. Perhaps not. I turn and run clumsily back to the house, ring the bell, bang on the door. The same tall girl opens it.
‘You again!’
‘Did he leave a note for me? Was there a note?’
‘He left some money for the landlord in an envelope. Nothing else.’
‘Are you absolutely sure there wasn’t a note?’
‘Look pet, the way that room was left, I’d have noticed a postage stamp!’
‘So no envelope … nothing?’
‘No. Sorry.’
I turn and walk away again, hearing the door close a few moments later. I head automatically towards the tube station. After a while I notice how heavy the bag is. I put it down, leaning it against a tree, and stop to think. Inside it I have packed a picnic for Iwo, to sustain him on his long train journey. A few last luxuries from the West. Brown bread with smoked salmon. A pound of sweet, dark red cherries. A packet of black bread, already buttered and wrapped in cellophane. A quarter of smoked sausage. I had debated whether to buy him a sharp knife, but decided there was bound to be someone on the train who would lend him a knife to slice it with. A bottle of red wine. Half a bottle of vodka. And my final presents to him. I had spent a long time thinking about those presents. In the end I bought him an anthology of English verse, and wrote inside, To Iwo – I have asterisked the ones that mean most to me – I hope you will like them too. Thank you for that first afternoon on Hampstead Heath. All love, Constance’ and the date, written out in full just below the inscription. The other present was an odd one; I hadn’t been sure that he would even understand it. I bought him a collection of Posy’s cartoons from the Guardian and wrote inside, ‘Dear Iwo – This is what you missed. I shall miss you. Constance’ and the date again.
I stand for some time looking down at this bag. In the end I leave it where it is, leaning against the tree, and walk away, towards the lights and clamour of the Earls Court Road. I hope somebody finds it who needs – well, the food and drink at least. Not the books. I don’t want the books back. What use are books?
In a little while it will be dark. The wind is blowing from the west, and the rain falls softly. Christ! That my love were in my arms, and I in my bed again!
THE END
Acknowledgements
Several poems are quoted in this book, both English and, in translation, Polish, but the poem from which I have taken the greatest number of lines is Exequy upon His Wife by Henry King (1592-1669).
The name Iwo Zaluski has been borrowed, with his surprised but generous permission, from a Pole whom I last knew thirty years ago, when we were both seventeen. Everything else about the character is imaginary.
I am grateful to Kris Kalinski for his help and suggestions for this book, and in particular for his careful translation of Iwo’s words on page 145.
Cast of Characters
In London:
Iwo Zaluski
‘Monty’, a Polish political refugee in his mid-fifties, living in poverty in Earls Court; formerly an economics teacher at Lodz University
Constance Liddell
a divorced librarian in her mid-forties, living in north London with her youngest child
Max
Constance’s twenty-three-year-old son, living in a south London squat with his girlfriend
Cordelia
‘Cordy’, Constance’s twenty-one-year-old daughter, at college and living in digs in South London
Kate
Constance’s thirteen-year-old daughter, living at home
Paul
Constance’s ex-husband, an advertising man in his mid-forties, living in a flat in Hampstead with his girlfriend
Steve
Constance’s colleagues at the library
Linda Fred
an unsuccessful, unemployed would-be writer who uses the library and is having a desultory affair with Constance
Tadeusz
a widowed Polish friend of Iwo’s, in his mid-sixties
Joanna
Tadeusz’s unmarried daughter, in her mid-thirties
Marina
an ex-student of Iwo’s, in her late twenties, now living in London and working as a waitress
Peter
Marina’s English boyfriend; in his mid-thirties
Lulu
Paul’s live-in girlfriend from the advertising agency; in her late twenties
Andrew
an unmarried friend and Oxford contemporary of Constance and Paul
Judy
Danuta
girlfriends of Max
Ben
Cordy’s boyfriend
Magda
Constance’s Polish teacher; in her late seventies
In Poland:
Katarzyna
Henryka
‘Kasia’, Iwo’s wife; still living in Lodz Iwo’s elder daughter, married to Stanislaw
Alina
Iwo’s younger daughter, married to Janek
Jerzy
Marina’s former Polish fiancé, now dead
Kika
a one-time student of Iwo’s, now dead
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
Copyright © Angela Lambert 1989
The moral right of the author has been asserted
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ISBN: 9781448204168
eISBN: 9781448203574
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Love Among the Single Classes Page 28