Love Among the Single Classes by Angela Lambert

were standing directly in front of the huge, concave magnifying mirror. Then I’d say ‘Open!’ and they would laugh in astonishment at their own enormous reflections, and lean into it and back again, to see their faces swaying moonlike to and fro in its shiny surface. From there we go to the Hilliard portrait miniatures, and the Grinling Gibbons woodcarvings, and then to the Great Bed of Ware, and then down to Tippoo’s Tiger, and then, since I suddenly realize that these are all things to delight children, but not necessarily of riveting interest to Iwo, I take him to the room with embroideries and antique textiles. Some are displayed around the walls, but many are so delicate and friable that they have to be hidden in drawers, away from the light. We pull out the smooth-running, wafer-thin drawers, revealing fragile sheets of silk painstakingly worked with arabesques of fruit and flowers and foliage. The stitching is minute, the colours subtle with age. There are babies’ bonnets, shaped to long-dead little skulls; long kid gloves for women with impossibly tiny hands and narrow fingers, the same hands that stitched these patient works. I used to make the children try to imagine what the ladies talked about as they sat with heads bent over their needles; and they would come home inspired, and I would buy some coarse modern version: a canvas with big holes to make the work quick to finish, crudely printed with a colourful kitten or pony; and they would lose interest after a day or two, and the piece would be discarded full of the knots and tangles of their impatience.
    Iwo and I go down to the ground floor and stand in front of the Persian carpets, even more minutely worked than the embroideries, with hundreds of knots to the inch.
    â€˜They sent these all over Europe, you know,’ says Iwo. ‘They were very popular in Poland: there is a special typecalled the Polonaise, because so many Polish noblemen collected them. I remember …’ and he trails off.
    Is he about to describe some priceless carpet his family once had? Or does it make him sad to recall what he had lost? Or is he too tactful to boast about his family’s former wealth? ‘Yes?’ But he won’t finish his sentence.
    As we stroll along his hand suddenly tightens around my arm.
    â€˜Have you seen enough? Shall we go?’
    â€˜Of course if you want to,’ I say; and we leave.
    Outside on the street he says, ‘Will you come with me, back to my room?’ Smiling with happiness, rapid with sudden urgency, we sweep through the streets, through the dusk, to the house where he lives.
    The room looks exactly as it did before. I can’t imagine him ever leaving it untidy. Its geometrical order is almost ritualistic, as though he were compelled to establish a pure, impersonal, bleached environment, devoid of any sign of permanence or comfort. I gaze around it for a moment, but as he comes towards me, lifts the jacket away from my shoulders and pushes his cold hands under my warm sweater to rest against my skin, I am transfixed by the thought: has
she
been here? Has the beautiful Joanna undressed here; and let her clothes drop, like mine, on to this bare floor; and been gently propelled, like me, towards that cool white bed; and bent back across it, like this; and kissed with
this
strong harsh need? Iwo picks me up and lays me across his bed and, seeing my frown, says, ‘You won’t be cold for long.’ I must not ask. She is the daughter of a friend, a compatriot. He doesn’t have to explain her to me. I have him here, and as his long body rolls on to the bed and covers me I clutch him passionately and hold him as tightly as I can, wrapping my arms around his back, pressing myself into the hollows and curves moulded against me. My mind, behind his kisses, beats a drum-roll of questions: Was she here? Have you made love to her? Will you? Has she been in this bed, your arms? Tell me, tell me,