Love Among the Single Classes by Angela Lambert Read Free Book Online Page B

and misery.
    I prefer to forgo the possible bliss of the first rather than risk the rebuff of the second, so although I pick the receiver up and put it down a couple of times, to reassure myself that the dialling tone is still there and the telephone will ring if prompted, I do nothing else.
    In the kitchen I feed the clamorous, undulating cats and take a couple of pork chops out of the fridge to reach room temperature. These, with yesterday’s leftover roast potatoes and vegetables made into bubble and squeak, will be supperfor Kate and me. Then I carry my Polish books through to the drawing room and sit on the sofa by the window in the steeply falling darkness. The room is shadowy and placid, its surfaces cluttered with trinkets and trophies of twenty years. Paul’s mother’s collection of enamel boxes had left with Paul, and I wasn’t sorry to see them go. I prefer the random assortment of objects which I have gathered … a saucerless cup of piercing turquoise, its porcelain so fine that each finger is outlined against the blue when looked at from the other side. A plain jug, eight-sided, with a most satisfying shape. A
bonbonnière
of a strange greeny-yellow cut crystal. Few of these bits and pieces have any value, yet they, like my local shops, define who I am and the small daily choices I make.
    Iwo had said something strange, as he arrived for lunch: Tt is so long since I have been in an ordinary room!’
    At the time I was baffled; now, having seen the house and the room where he lives, I understand better. He had not praised my crowded, comfortable home, any more than he had praised my children or my cooking, nor had he apologized for his room or explained its austerity.
    Despite this reticence, I remind myself that I had felt sure when we parted that he
would
telephone me. The happy feeling that everything will be all right fills me again, and I turn on the lights and start to prepare supper.

3
    Two nights later, just as doubts are seriously undermining my confidence, he does ring.
    â€˜Hello: Constance? This is Iwo. Zaluski.’
    â€˜Iwo! Yes! Hello! How are you? I’m so glad you rang.’
    â€˜Please, don’t make me feel as if I should have rung before!’
    â€˜No, no … of course you … I didn’t mean that!’
    â€˜I know, my dear, I am only teasing you. I want to go and see a film with you. Will you be free?’
    â€˜Oh yes! How wonderful! Yes, when?’
    It is arranged. This is Wednesday; we are to meet on Friday. I warn him that, as my children always say, my ideal film would be one made in black and white before 1940 with subtitles. He laughs.
    â€˜And I, of course, am quite opposite. I like decadent Westerns and Hollywood movies, with much blood and rabbits.’
Rabbits?
Oh, robots.
    â€˜It will be difficult to find a film that suits us both, Iwo.’
    Then we may have to see two.’
    I am brimming and foolish with joy. Only Kate is faintly sullen: it’s clear she doesn’t like Iwo, and I know I must be tactful; I must try not to talk about him all the time, must not persuade her how nice he is really, must understand that, to her, he is a tall, thin, laconic foreigner who has disrupted her mother’s life.
    â€˜Kate, my honey bunch, I’m going out on Friday.’
    â€˜Yes. I know. With him.’
    â€˜Yes darling, as you heard. Now listen, what will you do? Shall I ask Laura’ – my sister, the children’s favourite aunt –‘to come over and cook you supper and spend the evening with you?’
    â€˜For Christ’s sake, Mummy, I’m not a baby any more. I can cook my own supper. Can I have some friends round?’
    â€˜Who? Not Billy and Rocco and that girl … what’s her name? The one who was so rude to me.’
    â€˜Well I didn’t think your Polishman was particularly polite to me.’
    â€˜Sweetheart, he’s got two daughters who he had to leave