Love Among the Single Classes (7 page)

Yet I sense that, beneath his contemporary perspective, deeper than he can acknowledge, Iwo is nostalgic for this
lost world. His room, stark and immaculate amid the surrounding chaos he can neither control nor reject, is evidence of that. I wonder what his own home was like, and try to frame a tactful enquiry.

‘And your wife … was she proud and fastidious too?'

‘Good heavens no! Quite the reverse. She despised housework and home-making and the women who made it their life. My wife was a fantasist: a fighter in every impossible cause, a dreamer of every hopeless dream. A true, dedicated, idealistic Communist, even when it was perfectly obvious that Communism was as corrupt as any other political creed. My wife harangued meetings and distributed leaflets.'

Dare I risk the next question? I take a deep breath. ‘Then why did you marry her?'

‘My dear Constance, have you forgotten the force of lust when one is twenty?'

Forgotten it? Iwo, I am in thrall to it, and I'm forty-four! ‘Yes, I suppose I had overlooked that.'

He smiles wryly. Did you love her very much Iwo? Or did she love you, that spare, self-possessed elegance which obsesses me? Did she use those female wiles of tantalizing and then withdrawing, blowing hot and cold, those skills of artifice that are beyond me? I dare not ask. He smiles again, this time not at the memory of her but at me.

‘I am so glad we have discovered French. Now we need only speak English with your children.'

‘And my friends … if you ever get to meet them.'

‘Perhaps,' says Iwo enigmatically.

At Newark station Iwo tells the taxi driver to go to the Polish war cemetery. On the way he explains that some hundreds of Polish airmen are buried here; the men who died fighting in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. I am surprised that he should make this pilgrimage, and even more surprised that he should want to bring me. None of the dead airmen was related to him or even known to him; it seems a strange journey for a man who has repudiated his country for ever.

Yet Paul, like so many English public schoolboys, had
been fascinated by the First World War. He knew the most esoteric details about its battles and recited with gloomy accuracy the casualties from the first day of the Somme; the battle of Passchendaele – endless figures, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and finally, numbingly, eight and a half million young men killed in the trenches of northern France. On our way to some sunny holiday destination, he would insist on making the detour to walk the children over one of the battlefields or cemeteries. The mere sight of those smooth English gardens of perfectly trimmed grass, sprouting rows and rows of small headstones, reduced me to tears. The identical crosses marked ‘Known Unto God' were the most distressing of all. Somewhere I supposed that a mother, hundreds, thousands of mothers, had waited with inextinguishable hope. Miracles might happen, had happened. Amnesia; a prison camp; even a disgraced son, finally coming back after years of lonely guilt to confess that he had deserted – anything, if only the young man who had once set off for France would return. These cemeteries were a dreaded prelude to our holidays, but Paul seemed to feel they were a necessary penance; after which the brightness of the sun and the south were more vivid.

Today, with Iwo, my reaction is the same. At the sight of the gaunt memorial to Polish airmen and the neat rows of graves, the tears fall down my face leaving dry prickling streaks at the corners of my eyes. My face is cold and pinched. The wind chills us both. Iwo just stands there. He doesn't pray; he doesn't speak; he doesn't approach any of the other people – the handful of, presumably, Poles placing stiff Cellophane bunches of flowers at the foot of the memorial, or in one case on a particular grave. There is nothing I can say, and in any case my weeping becomes so violent that I can't speak. I am crying, not for these dead airmen but because I am overwhelmed by the passions that Iwo has called forth.

We leave at the same time as an elderly couple heading towards a small car. Iwo speaks to them in Polish, asking for a lift to the station. In the car I hear him speak his mother
tongue for the first time. It is rapid, abrasive, unsmiling. He makes no attempt to introduce me, which is a relief since I am plunged into ugly, frowning despair. It is not that I share his grief, he has shown no grief, but because ten days ago I was moving safely through my small accustomed world. Now it has been transformed into one of vulnerability and terror by my passion for him: this outsider, this exile.

In the train we begin to do ordinary things again. He buys a sandwich and two plastic cups of tea. I read the paper, and look at the pictures in
Marie-Claire
. He dozes and I close my eyes but soon, as the train flashes across the East Anglian flatlands, I open them to watch Iwo's sleeping face. I wish I dared take out my notebook and draw him. His expression is cloudless, his body relaxed. He shows no sign of the tension that has prevented me from sleeping ever since we met. My mind overflows with questions: why did he say he was an ‘unperson', or ‘nonperson', and what does it mean? Is he trying to tell me that he is a dissident under sentence of death, and, if so, why not just say so outright? I study his face: is he victim, or, no, torturer? I try to imagine what he might have done but can only conjure up visions of cells and pain.

We have both been subdued ever since we stood together at the foot of the war memorial. Also, of course, we are both tired. We've made love several times this week, after which, instead of curling up together into natural, animal sleep, I have had to leave his bed and travel home charged with energy. Even last night, which he spent in my bed, I was still awake when the birds began singing in the dawn. By now I am in an almost trancelike state; my perceptions abnormally acute but my body sluggish with exhaustion, dragging itself towards sleep, kept awake by an overactive mind. For Iwo it's so simple. He's tired: he sleeps. I lean against the headrest, my eyelids fall, I doze. At King's Cross we separate, going in opposite directions on the tube. I still don't know the telephone number of the house in which he lives. He might never ring me again.

When I get home I am astonished to find that it is still
only late afternoon, and all three children are having tea. It is unusual for Max and Cordy to be home on two successive weekends, so I assume Kate must have phoned and asked them to come over, to keep her company, or perhaps for a family conference: What shall we do about mother? Although the other two smile, Kate looks sullen if not positively hostile. Oh Lord, please not … I haven't the energy to cope with one of her moods.

‘Darlings, listen, I'm dead tired: I think I'll go and lie down for a couple of hours. Wake me just before seven and I'll make supper.'

‘Do you want us to do it?' asks Cordelia, but I feel guilty already at having been away all day. The least I can do is cook for them.

Later, over supper, I relax a little thanks to their warmth and normality.

‘Drop your shoulders Mother …' says Max, and as I turn to him and laugh and do an exaggerated slump I realize that he is right, my whole body is tensed and rigid. ‘What's up?' he asks.

How do I explain to my children, who have perceived me for years as a comfortable asexual figure, that I am spinning in a maelstrom of love? ‘Why? Do I seem …?'

‘Peculiar? Yes. You've been a bit peculiar ever since you got in.'

‘She's been peculiar all
week,'
says Kate glumly. ‘It's that bloody Polishman. Eeeevoh.'

‘Kate,' I say automatically, ‘don't swear please.'

‘I bloody well will swear if I want to!'

I am taken aback by her sudden sharp outburst.

‘You've been bloody useless all week if you really want to know, and I'm fed up with it. You just moon around by the telephone or you sit and stare into bloody space.'

‘Katie …' says Cordelia warningly, and I recognize from her conspiratorial tone that the three of them have already talked about me.

‘Shuddup Cord! You don't have to bloody well live with her! You don't know what she's been like!'

Cordelia looks at Kate, who is red-faced and shaking and after a moment says, ‘C'mon up kiddo, let's have a chat about this, right?' and the two of them go out.

‘Max,' I say incredulously to my son. ‘Max, am I honestly as bad as that?'

‘I don't live here any more: I don't know. You seemed OK to me last time I was here, but that was Monday morning and a week's a long time in north London.'

‘No, seriously. What's Katie been saying?'

‘She says you've gone all moony. She says you don't talk much, except to ask if he's rung. She says you let her watch television all evening instead of making her do her homework. She quite enjoys it really, so don't get too screwed up about it. What's going on, though? I thought you'd only just met this Pole.'

‘I have. I met him last weekend. I'm in love with him. I know it must sound daft to you, but that's what it is.'

‘Heavy,'
says Max. A pause. ‘Doesn't he fancy you, or what?'

‘Yes, I think he does. I mean …'

‘Yeah I noticed.'

‘… I think he quite likes me, really, as far as I can tell. We've only seen each other four times so far, and I might never see him again. That first afternoon last weekend, when we went for a walk up on the Heath, everything seemed all right. But it's hard to know, with him.'

‘What do you expect if you will go out with someone who doesn't even speak decent English?'

‘Max, belt up. Anyhow I discovered today that he speaks marvellous French, so we've been speaking French ever since.'

‘Well, take it easy, Mother.'

‘You're supposed to be past all that games-playing, your generation.'

‘Just keep cool, that's all. Try concentrating on Kate. She's pretty pissed off. Can I have a coffee?'

‘Ask the other two if they want some as well.'

Later that evening, going to bed, I sniff the towel and sniff
the pillow for traces of Iwo. The sheets are precious because we shared them. Luckily they were clean yesterday so I have a week in sheets that his naked body has slept in … I am a fool: and a selfish, callous one. How has this stranger, quite unknown to me two weeks ago, suddenly acquired the power to plunge me into such despair that I neglect – evidently ignore – my daughter? The answer has to be, not because of what he is, but because of what I need. Not for years has anyone made love to me with such power and patience. I flex and curl my hands and make myself smile and make myself relax, and make myself sleep. They who one another keep alive, never parted be.

Iwo and I had parted abruptly at King's Cross with no suggestion of when or where we might meet again. I have to tell myself constantly that even days of silence won't mean I'm never going to see him again. I struggle to keep some sense of proportion, and resist the hourly temptation to write him a letter or find out his phone number and ring him. I must concentrate on the things which filled my life quite satisfactorily before I met him. If I wait, he will – surely he will? – ring me again. Doing nothing is the hardest of all.

After the highly-strung emotions of the weekend, the ordinariness of the week calms me down. I make a special effort to concentrate on Kate. We do homework together, go and see a film together, I hear her while she endlessly rehearses her Grade V violin pieces. I invite friends over for lunch on Sunday, and persuade Cordy and Max to come as well, to ensure that I have something to fill my weekend even if he doesn't phone. The attempt to appear normal actually succeeds. I realize that I was lashing myself into paroxysms of emotion and melodrama which distanced me from my real feelings. Looked at coolly – ‘Stay cool, mother' – what are they? Iwo and I shared a remarkable intimacy at our first meeting, reinforced since then by the happy discovery that we both speak French. We seem to be compatible, in bed and out of it, so there is no logical reason to suppose that he is not also delighted with our relationship. He has every reason to want to continue it, at least for the time being. There is no other woman in his life; no man in mine – Fred doesn't count.

Meanwhile I give myself a crash course in Polish history. Out goes the Hollywood stereotype of Chopin and Liszt,
long-haired, fine-fingered heroes of the keyboard giving passionate expression to the tortured soul of the Polish nation. In comes a harsh and sober grasp of what drove Iwo away from the country where he was born and lived for fifty-odd years. I learn of the horrors inflicted by the Germans, who murdered some three million Polish Jews and half-starved the rest of the population. I learn about the post-war years of austerity and repression by the Russians, the bleak, blank, black and white and above all grey years of bad housing, bad food, no money and no freedom. It is impossible to picture Iwo in such a society.

On Friday evening he telephones.

‘Constance: how are you? Shall we meet this weekend? Let's do something cheerful and irresponsible … what do you think? Have you any plans?'

‘On Sunday I have people coming to lunch … you are welcome too. You'd like them. Saturday I'm free.'

‘Can one be irresponsible cheaply in London?'

‘With difficulty. But … yes. We could go for a swim. Dance. We could ice-skate. We could …'

‘Then let us start with coffee and Polish cakes, they are delicious, tomorrow at two o'clock. There is a café just by South Kensington station. The Daquise. Can you meet me there?'

On Friday night I have my first uninterrupted stretch of eight hours' sleep since meeting him, and wake looking five years younger.

I dress in the jeans and big sloppy sweater and bright scarf in which I feel most comfortable, and stuff a swimsuit into my handbag just in case. My mood is almost manically light-hearted, and I swing along to the bus stop with a step that is nearly a dance.