Love Among the Single Classes (29 page)

Oh my lovely, four-square, casual daughter: have I managed to spare you that emotional and sexual baggage that has lumbered me and led me to this state of ludicrous anguish; those outdated, irrelevant trappings of sexual puritanism, social class and female marriageability that I have lugged about all my life, outwardly denying they matter, inwardly strait-jacketed? Do you make love without guilt, claiming your due of pleasure and giving it in turn without modesty or shame? Can you meet a man without covertly checking up on his marital status, and becoming arch if he's ‘free'? The long shadow of my parents looms over me still. Ts he a nice boy darling? What does his father do? Well, if you don't know you must
find out.'
They couldn't quite bring themselves to ask whether the hapless youth ‘respected' me, but I knew the question was always there. When my father learned that I had lost my virginity a few months before I married Paul, but with Paul, of course, he erupted with indignation. ‘I would rather have heard that you'd committed
murder!'
he said; and I knew that he meant it. Had I been a murderess they would have stood by me, loyally
convinced of my innocence; sat white-faced and brave throughout my trial, and confronted the cameramen outside the court tight-lipped, wan, no comment. But the loss of my chief female asset was a far greater disaster, and my father felt as though
he'd
been robbed.

I have tried not to burden Cordy with any of this, and looking at her now it seems possible that I have succeeded. Beside her stands the spectral figure of myself at the same age: rigid, self-conscious, signalling correctly with Braemar twinset and real pearls, meticulous accent and deferential manner. Cordy, by comparison, is relaxed, her clothes falling shapelessly around her soft, uncorseted body, all her limbs at ease. Her face, though, is bright, alert, individual – in vivid contrast to my useless, middle-class, all-purpose smile.

And now here I am half a lifetime later, still playing a part: this time that of the operatic heroine overcome with grief and unrequited love. Yet however unreal it may look, and worse than unreal, absurd, the pain is as acute as though I were suffering from a perforated ulcer. At best I am gnawed by a soft, searching ache; at worst, great flashes of lightning stab me with new humiliations.

One of these occurs when Marina phones me to talk about her wedding and reveals – deliberately, but with great tact – that Iwo will be partnering Joanna.

My first instinct is to say petulantly, Well it's clearly going to be a very Polish event, you won't want me intruding, but I manage to suppress this childish reaction. ‘Why her?' I ask.

‘Constance, you mustn't take it to heart. He's just saving Tadeusz's face, hers too, of course, by not letting their Polish friends see that she hasn't got a man to escort her. Whereas you … everyone knows you've been married and got children and so on.'

‘I daresay he's been seeing her a lot lately. He certainly hasn't been seeing me,' I complain.

‘He comes alone to the club about once a week. I haven't seen them together since Christmas. I get the impression he's become very solitary. He looks very fit, but his mind is somewhere else. Not on Joanna.'

There is a pause, during which I wait for her to supply more details but she says nothing, so I gather up the shabby cloak of my good manners and say, ‘But how are
you
, Marina? Looking forward to the wedding, being married, all that?'

Another pause, longer this time. Then she begins to speak, in slow, disjointed sentences.

‘Oh Constance. I don't know if I want to marry Peter. It will mean that I have given up hope. Solidarity, you know, offered us hope for a new, free Poland. Those were very important, very beautiful feelings. Life in Poland was harsh, we spent many hours queuing, and what we could buy was poor. We didn't have your choices, but Polish women, especially the young women, were becoming equal. Whoever got home first did what needed doing. Sometimes I cooked or washed for Jerzy, sometimes he did it for me. There was an excitement, a newness in life that made up for the harshness. And we had our writers. Polish literature has always stood guard over human rights and our national pride. Now … I wrote to my mother, you know, and told her I was marrying an Englishman. It was hard to describe Peter in words that would convince her I loved him. Then, when I sent her a letter with the date of our wedding, she wrote back and said, “I shall think of it as your marriage to Jerzy”. Oh Constance … I am losing so much!'

‘Is your mother coming over?'

‘No. I can't afford to pay her fare – even if she could get a visa – and Peter hasn't offered.'

‘Ask
him.'

‘I can't. He is spending all his savings on furniture for our flat, on equipping a wonderful kitchen for me, on our honeymoon – he won't tell me where we're going, says it's a secret – I can't ask him for yet more money. He wouldn't even be able to talk to her. She doesn't speak more than a few words of English, and he can't speak any other language.'

‘I'll pay her fare, Marina, if you like.'

‘Dear Constance. You are very generous, but no. Iwo will
represent my past and that's all I want. Is it a bad sign, do you think?'

‘You've never been as proud of Peter as he is of you. It was always him pushing for the marriage.'

‘I have tried …'

‘We ought to meet, Marina. Do you have a free evening soon?'

‘This week I'm off on Thursday.'

We meet at a place she suggests: a Polish club in Kensington called the Ognisko. It has not been easy for her to see me alone. Peter is accustomed to sharing her evenings off, and Marina has to promise that he can join us for coffee at half past nine, so we hurry through our meal and our conversation. Concentrating on her, I hardly take in the people around me, who are mainly Polish, with the fine, elegant bones I have come to love. Their voices are sibilant with emotion, in contrast to their faces, which tend to be dignified and static. Poles do not smile easily.

I sense that the trap has closed around Marina since I last saw her. Peter is asserting ownership as though fearful that she might elude him, even now, a month before their wedding. He must be regretting that it was booked so far in advance; but they are marrying at the Church of Our Lady of the Dolours in the Fulham Road, and summer weekend dates are not easy to secure. She has lost weight since the evening of our party and the soft curves of her cheeks and chin have become more angular. She looks as beautiful as ever, but older.

‘I keep asking myself why I was so keen to marry him. Suddenly I can think of far more reasons why I should not.'

‘Well, let me give you some reasons why you might want to, and then you can tell me why you don't. He is a good, honourable, decent man. He will not hurt you, abandon you, cheat you, or let you down. He will give you a home: a house, with rooms, with objects that will make your life more comfortable and spacious. Above all, he will give you children.'

‘I can't have children.'

‘What?'

‘I had an abortion, in Poland, when I was seventeen, and then after Jerzy died, another. I saw a gynaecologist the other day, and she told me she had her doubts. I had a test. It's most unlikely I shall ever have children.'

‘Have you told Peter?'

‘Yes. I don't think he was all that sorry. He is very possessive. I think he would rather have me all to himself.'

‘Do you mind very much?'

‘Yes. Very much. Very much.'

She begins to cry, tactfully, with restraint, so as not to embarrass anyone in this crowded, ornate dining room. Her eyes glisten and sparkle with tears, which she wipes away.

‘Never mind, Constance. Let's talk about you. You don't look happy, I have to tell you.'

‘I never see Iwo. That's why. And when I do, he's so changed, he's quite different from when we first met.'

‘Yes, I find him changed, too. He's very abstracted. His mind doesn't seem to be in the same place as his feet.'

‘It isn't just me, then?'

‘Oh Constance … of course it isn't
you!
I suspect he's ill with homesickness. A lot of us go through it. He'll get over it. Be patient with him. When I'm married I'll ask you both to dinner. Often.'

‘So you think you will marry Peter?'

‘I have to, don't I? I know that really. I am just playing with the idea that I could get out of it. He is everything you say, and I ought to have realized that perfect happiness with the perfect man is a fairy tale. And even if it weren't, what would my perfect man be doing chatting up a waitress in the basement of the Polish Airmen's Club, huh?'

‘You met Peter at church.'

‘You don't think I'm allowed to go to church by myself nowadays? No, it's all right Constance, I've come to my senses. You've even cheered me up. I'll be OK. I'll marry him. I don't want to turn into a Joanna.'

‘Oh Marina, meeow!'

‘She is going to be a cross middle-aged spinster in a few years' time.'

‘Is that why she's so set on Iwo?'

‘I suppose so. He thinks so. Don't worry, he won't marry her. Look, here's Peter. Darling? Here we are!'

Behind him stands Iwo.

I gaze at him. Time pauses, like my heart, and moves on. It is five weeks since I saw him. Over and over again during those weeks my mind has tried to assemble his features or conjure up his stance. Iwo in the flesh is overwhelming, and I feel myself colour as though my own physical reality were coming to life. Blushing, tongue-tied, dry-mouthed, trembling, I am aware of Peter bending to kiss Marina on the forehead, of Iwo lifting her hand to his lips, then nodding to me, while Peter's clipped, nasal voice is saying, ‘Hello my dear … Mrs Liddell… am I late? I bumped into your friend Monty in Exhibition Road and assumed he was on his way to meet you both. He said he wasn't: but here he is anyway!'

Peter looks none too pleased at his intruder, but must hope that he can palm us off with each other.

As the four of us sit uneasily around the table over coffee – uneasily because Peter would rather be alone with Marina; who might want to finish her conversation with me; while I certainly want to be alone with Iwo, though he looks as though he would be happiest by himself. I think, she's right: he does look fit. But he looks different. He is more inaccessible than ever. How wonderfully his face is moulded on to his skull! How self-contained he is: not fidgeting with his hands, as Peter is: nervously tangling and untangling his fingers as though itching to get at Marina; nor staring around him at the other diners, as I had been doing; nor feeling obliged to join in the little froth of social pleasantries that Marina is trying to whip up. He just
is:
and in being, is perfect.

A waitress comes over with the bill, hoping to move us to the bar so that she can clear the table. Marina and I engage in an argument over who is to pay, which I win, and then – trying to prevent Iwo from leaving us – I suggest a drink.

Everyone declines, but Iwo says, ‘Come Constance, the happy couple must want to be left alone. I will take you to the tube station.'

We walk briskly side by side through the late-darkening streets, flanked by grand, stuccoed buildings. I stare miserably at my feet. Where are those fantasy conversations, now that I need them? Where is the cheerful bravado of ‘… and then come live with me, and be my love'? I watch the little shiny bows on the toes of my shoes twinkle incongruously to and fro. Iwo doesn't offer his arm, as one happy afternoon on Hampstead Heath he did, and Boadicea wouldn't have had the courage to reach out and take his hand. We walk in silence towards Earls Court underground.

I remember an evening like this nearly thirty years ago. I was seventeen and he was my first love: a handsome boy with a craggy face and a heavy lock of Teddy boy hair curling over his forehead. He was tall and he liked jazz and jive and my parents would have disapproved of everything about him. He wasn't really interested in me, but I had found some pretext for offering him a ‘spare' ticket to see a modern dance company and he had agreed to come with me. The performance was a disaster – he hated it, and I could find no words to justify having liked it – but as we came out of the theatre he said, grudgingly, ‘I'll walk you to your station.'

Then, as now, my head buzzed with conversational openings, all of them unspoken. Then, I had been wearing a brand-new pair of shiny black Italian shoes with uncomfortably high stiletto heels and elongated toes. I had watched these toes preceding my feet like medieval jesters' shoes and in silence we had walked along the Embankment from the theatre to Waterloo station, suburban entrance. It was almost precisely the same distance, too: perhaps half a mile. For half a mile I looked at my feet and played a searchlight into the corners of my mind in case some brilliantly witty remark might lurk there to break the tension and make him laugh and spark off an interested response. None did, and after a while he said, ‘You're very serious, aren't you? I wish you'd
stop looking at your feet …' Just as now, Iwo says, ‘Relax, Constance. They'll be all right.' Both times, I expect, I half laughed and said, ‘Gosh … sorry … I mean … yes, I know …' Only then, I was seventeen and it was forgivable. Now that I'm forty-four it's absurd.

It is hard to convince myself that this secret Constance isn't blatantly obvious to outsiders. Yet Iwo's remark shows that he simply assumed I was silent because I was worrying about Marina's future. He can't see the inner panic that has never subsided. The plain little girl in her flesh-pink National Health glasses who knew she came a long way behind her vivacious younger sister in everyone's affections –
that
self-conscious, awkwardly clever child is the ugly duckling still waddling along with me. In due course I was surprised to find that lots of people thought me funny, affectionate, generous and good company; but the people whose opinion mattered – my father, my husband, my lovers – weren't fooled. Their power over me was rooted in my sexual insecurity. I never had much trouble with the male world of authority, which was easily outfaced and outwitted. I acquired the skills of competence: a fairly simple matter of advance planning, lists, and debt-balancing. I wrote long letters to bank managers accompanied by pitifully small cheques and promises of greater to come. I could deal with teachers and doctors and, eventually, solicitors and accountants, and, last of all, an employer and colleagues. My children took it for granted that I was adult – I was their mother, I must be – and thus forced me to grow up. Yet, as she pointed out the other day, sometimes my daughter Cordelia feels, quite rightly, older than me. Is it all a matter of confidence, instilled by love? Guided by the failure of my own childhood, I decided when I became a parent to do the opposite of everything my parents had done. Not criticism: praise. Not frugality: lavishness. Not rules: trust. It was risky and occasionally disastrous. But by and large I loved them, complimented them, encouraged them, defended them and hoped that everything else would fall into place.