Love Among the Single Classes (33 page)

‘What about you, Constance? I've never really understood why you love Iwo so much.'

‘Mainly, I suppose, because I thought he might marry me, because I thought he needed to.'

‘But why do you need to? You've got this house, your children, a job…'

Why indeed? Because a man is safe-conduct through this man's world. A lone woman is open to exploitation, ridicule, and attack. She has to be forever on her guard, conciliating, avoiding, anticipating trouble, because being alone means being exposed. Women are biologically designed to be vulnerable: soft-fleshed, soft-breasted and bellied, they need a man to protect them from predators. You can learn kung fu and judo and anti-rape tactics; you can wear shapeless, colourless clothes to disguise your pliable body; but still you must be wary – and not just of rapists: the everyday threat is more banal than that. Builders, doing a job for a woman on her own, will ‘fix' the leak in the roof with a few licks of cement, and then overcharge, and then when the
drips continue to stain the ceiling will say, ‘Well, lady, what do you expect? What you really need is a whole new tiling job. Cost you, of course …' Late-night taxi drivers – if you can get one to stop for you – will take it for granted that a woman who has to go home by herself will be grateful for their leering compliments; in fact, you sit on the edge of the seat, waiting for the journey to end, nervous in case it ends badly. What about all those correct, safe couples at parents' meetings, who glance covertly at you and avoid your solitary figure, the wife whispering in explanation, ‘You remember, I did tell you, she had that rather attractive husband …' shwush, shwush, as your private catastrophe is reduced to a public cliché. It gets worse. You're awkward to accommodate at dinner parties – they've got to find a spare man and so few of them are around – though you probably still qualify for an invitation to their parties: a wedding anniversary perhaps, or somebody's fortieth birthday. But you accept, trying not to think stupidly optimistic thoughts. You face the ordeal of entering a roomful of people on your own; attach yourself – smiling at everybody and nobody – to a group, and work out who belongs to whom. An unclaimed attractive man is always a rarity, and if you find one you try too hard to be funny and intriguing and he senses this, and becomes evasive, and starts looking over your shoulder. Your smile slides away and so does your lipstick and you end up with some maudlin type who's drunk too much and transfixes you with his wandering story. So you thank your host radiantly for a lovely party and wait for your mini-cab. More tales from no-man's-land? What about the nutters on the tube, lurching into you with fumbling hands and incoherent oaths? The lone man in the cinema who edges towards you … is he sliding his hand under your thigh or do you just imagine it? The pervert who rings in the small hours, waking you from sleep, to whisper obscenities. Even if a woman manages to cope with all this, she finds herself called a ‘hard bitch' because she lacks the one essential female attribute: vulnerability. A woman has no right to be strong. Be weak, dear lady, and let the men be strong. A
woman alone must be a victim, for how else can you describe someone who only wins approval by being passive, weak, and acquiescent? If she becomes strong then she is too like a man, and men don't want her. She is a victim on a sliding scale from neglect and pity down through contempt to violation. There are exceptions. Magda is one. But I'm not as brave as Magda.

And those are only the public reasons. The private ones? I want a man in the mornings and the evenings. I want him in my bed at night: yes, of course, to make love, but also to hold and to have sleeping beside me. I want a man for tenderness. I want a man to whom I can unfold the daily journal of my life, telling it to make him laugh, sympathize, or understand. Paul, in leaving, took away from me the cast of characters from his working life, and left all their stories unfinished. I liked that soap opera of office intrigues and romances, seen through his eyes. I liked to watch him embroidering the story as he told it for me, much as I had earlier told bedtime stories to the children. I liked tucking up into him at night, even when we made love less and less: I liked the secrets of his physical presence, his smell, his habits, his illnesses and imperfections. For me, since I want to be part of a couple, the choice is to become a lesbian or a wife. I couldn't be a lesbian. I like women, love my women friends a lot, but I don't want to fuck them. That's why I need to marry.

Marina is still looking at me expectantly, as though I had only paused.

‘I've been on my own for, what, seven or eight years now. I'd like to be a couple again. Life is easier with a man.'

‘Yes …'

Yes, she knows that, too.

‘Oh Marina – we must be mad! We were going to get drunk and be daft and irresponsible. And I was going to tell you very solemnly all about your duties as a wife, and warn you that there are certain services every husband expects … And here we are, grave as widows! Perhaps it's just as well. Marriage is a serious matter. But let's have one last
drink. Brandy? There's even some vodka left over from the last time Iwo was here – God knows how long
that
was.'

I am lying. I know exactly. It was Easter Monday, over two months ago. Two months since I made love to him.

‘Vodka please.'

I take our glasses across to the sofa and sit down beside her, stretching my arm along its bumpy back, picking at the stray threads torn by cats and children.

‘What do you want to know?'

‘Everything, Constance. Tell me my future. Can I change him? Have I the patience to last for a lifetime?
Will
I learn to love him? What if I'm unfaithful? Does it matter? If it happens, do I tell him? What must I do to make it work? Everything, I want to know everything …'

As darkness encloses the guttering candles on the table, the sky outside seems to get lighter, with the long midsummer radiance of June. It's the time of the corn goddess, but this ripe young peasant is a long way from the pagan rituals of her ancestors. Exiled, barren, she is deprived of her roots and her tongue by accident of the place and date of her birth.

‘Marina, tomorrow morning, early, you should telephone your mother. Let me pay for the call. But book it now.'

She leans across and puts her arms round me. How sweet she smells.

‘That would be
wonderful.'

‘You're in Max's bedroom. There's a telephone up on the top landing.' I have prepared the room for her as though it were for her wedding night, rather than the last time she will sleep alone. There are flowers and candles beside her bed, a snowy white duvet and pillows plump and soft as ducks, and laid across the bed my present to her: a nightdress of intricately pleated white cotton, as elaborate and virginal as anything a village maiden would have stitched for her bottom drawer.

‘Go to bed Marina. Everything will be all right.'

* * *

Next morning we hardly have time for a calm breakfast together before the chaos begins. It is almost entirely a telephonic chaos, most of it incomprehensible as well, being in Polish. Every five minutes the infernal instrument rings and my simple Polish is stretched to breaking point. Everyone wants to wish her luck and check the morning's arrangements: how to get to the church; what time the service begins; they are right, aren't they, the reception is at the club afterwards and should they bring anything? Marina darts between bathroom and telephone in her underwear, wrapped in a towel, with wet hair, hair-dryer, but won't let me leave the phone off the hook so that she can get dressed in peace.

Suddenly it's half past ten. Andrew has offered to pick us up at eleven-fifteen and drive Marina to Iwo's, who will take her up the aisle, and then come with me to the church in Fulham Road. Marina is ready, wearing an apricot-coloured linen suit, and I have to rush to catch up. From downstairs I can hear her voice on the phone bubbling away. It seems that the only person who hasn't rung is Peter. As Andrew arrives she pulls one last, marvellous surprise. She must have got up early to pick fresh flowers from the garden, and these are woven into a little chaplet which she wears perched on top of her upswept hair. Very few young women could carry off such ingenuous simplicity. We both gaze at her as she descends the stairs, and Andrew says, ‘You look very beautiful.'

In the car after we have dropped off Marina, I say to Andrew, ‘I am … sorry … about the other night. The theatre. It was dreadful of me.'

His gaze fixed on the road, he replies, ‘Yes. I'm sorry too. But I daresay a quick death is better than a slow one.'

‘Does that mean … not that I'd blame you … have I wrecked our friendship? Does it mean we can't be friends?'

‘I hope not. But it means we can't be lovers. Not that we ever could. My fault, probably. How could a dream compete with an obsession?'

‘You are good to take me to this wedding.'

‘I'm lethal at my job, you know. Real New York stuff: no holds barred. A killer in creative think tanks. I just can't be tough with women. I don't suppose it could have worked anyway. Us as lovers.'

‘No …'

‘I'll drop you here and find somewhere to park. You go in. I'll join you.'

The organ is already rumbling like distant, melodious thunder as I seat myself and wait for Marina to arrive on the arm of Iwo.

The unfamiliar Catholic ceremony forces me to concentrate, and as I sit and stand and kneel and watch her back view I find myself praying for her. I lost the habit of praying in childhood, and now I find myself using the same childish, almost pidgin language. Please God, make Marina happy, no, make them both happy, but specially her. Please God, let it all work. Iwo stands stiffly next to Joanna in the pew in front of me, and I add my uncertain prayers for him. Please God, make Iwo find what he's looking for, preferably with me, but if not then with his wife, and please let her welcome him and make them be happy too. And, since no-one listens to a marriage service without recalling or imagining their own, I think about Paul and me, and my young hopes, so desperately innocent, curdled by reality. It is odd to think that Andrew was present on that occasion, too. I remember walking up the aisle towards the rigid back of the man I was about to marry and thinking trustfully, How extraordinary: now I shall never kiss any man but Paul again.

What is Marina thinking? What, I really want to know, is Iwo thinking? Around me the deep Polish voices rise and fall, mostly male, for the club members have turned out to a man, it seems. Everyone's here except young Lochinvar. The frail voices of elderly Polish women tremble on a register above the men's as they cross themselves, and genuflect, murmur and move in unison like solemn grey and black birds swept up and down by unseen winds. Marina's voice is steady; it is Peter who scarcely speaks above a whisper.
The priest, in his stiff white brocade vestments, seems to be the centre of the ritual, the rest of us mere onlookers, deferring to his superior knowledge. His sonorous voice and unsmiling expression are more appropriate to a funeral than a wedding – which intensifies my feeling that Marina is being sacrificed to the young man awkwardly pushing a ring on to her finger. Oh God, forgive me these grudging thoughts! I do want them to be happy really …

My attention wanders back to Iwo and Joanna, standing far enough apart not to touch even at the elbow. She is wearing an expensive coat and a small, shiny hat: no doubt she hopes the wedding may weaken his resolve. Does she know he's going back to Poland? Does she know how soon? She could not possibly care as much as I do! Oh
God
, let me get
married
again! Not for the procreation of children but for the – what does the Book of Common Prayer say? – something about mutual comfort and society one to the other.

The service proceeds to the long nuptial mass, which I don't understand and can't share. People smelling musty and moth-balled in their best clothes brush past on their way to the altar, and again on their way back, and I smile and try to look holy, as they do. All these decorous, shuffling footsteps and downcast eyes: what are they thinking? Iwo doesn't take Communion either.

At last it ends. Marina walks shiningly down through us all, and Peter relaxes and smiles. Before leaving the church I make a little bob, in deference to all those genuflections, like a republican who can't help acknowledging the passing of royalty, and we find ourselves milling about in the street with passers-by skirting us irritably just as though nothing particular had happened: as though two entirely different and separate people had not just vowed to stay together and look after each other every day for the rest of their lives.

They leave in Peter's car after a few hasty photographs have been taken outside the church. A wide white nylon ribbon makes a fluttering V for victory along the bonnet. A few people attempt to throw confetti; a few curious onlookers stare into Marina's face as she sits smiling beside her
husband, remembering to give a special wave to his mother. ‘See you in a minute!' Peter calls out, and then the car disappears into a mêlée of lunchtime traffic.

Ten minutes later we're at the club where, although it soon fills up, the Polish contingent and the English guests stand at opposite ends of the room, eyeing one another. Peter introduces me to his mother, a stout lady with a strained expression that might be due as much to her corset as to the emotion of seeing her only son bind himself to another woman.

‘Peter says you've been ever so kind to Marina,' she says.

‘I haven't been kind – it's been a joy getting to know her. I do think she's a wonderful woman. She'll make him very happy.'

‘She's certainly a very nice-looking girl. As for the rest, we'll just have to wait and see, won't we? See how it turns out, whether she can learn to do things the way he likes them. I've always done my best for him, that I know.'