Love Among the Single Classes by Angela Lambert Page A

tell me! I may relinquish control of my body, but never of my words.But hark, my pulse, like a soft dram, beats my approach, tells thee I come.
    After love comes a little sleep; and when I wake up, I see Iwo fully dressed at the other side of the room, making coffee. He brings me a cup, and sits beside me on the bed. Even in French, he never uses words of endearment, nor does he afterwards utter those tender explosions of pleasure and gratitude that I cannot suppress. They are my substitute for telling him that I love him: but he, evidently, needs no substitute. Why should I think he loves me? Sex is quite different for men, and he’s probably been without it for quite some time – oh God, here comes Joanna again! I must dismiss her from my thoughts.
    â€˜Iwo, we haven’t done our mad irresponsible thing!’
    â€˜No?’
    â€˜No, I mean, not
that
. We were going to be irresponsible on the cheap.’
    â€˜Constance, you have so much energy.’
    â€˜Do I? Is that bad?’
    â€˜No, not bad: it’s good. I have often noticed that women have more energy after making love, and men have less.’
    Often
noticed? ‘I don’t know about that. I’ve just been asleep. You’re the one who woke up first.’
    â€˜I wanted to make sure the bathroom was clear for you, and it is. Do you want to borrow my dressing gown?’
    And so, enveloped in his striped towelling robe, redolent of him, I pad bare-foot along the linoleum corridor to the bathroom. How shabby it is, with leaking, stained pipes and peeling wallpaper. Iwo has of course left it as clean as possible, but he can do nothing about the rust marks in the bath, or the damp corners where the lino rises up from the wooden floor. How he must hate this! Is it really the best he could find? Oh, if only he would come and live with me! Hastily I wash and return to him.
    â€˜I am sorry about …’
    â€˜It’s all right. You can’t help it. Did you have difficulty getting this room?’
    â€˜I lived in a men’s hostel for the first six months.’
    â€˜Iwo … was it awful?’
    â€˜Yes. But I was determined not to accept charity from any of the kind, well-meaning people who offered me a room in their houses. I couldn’t bear to have to creep past their drawing rooms, hearing the family conversation, being invited to join them, knowing they preferred me to refuse.’
    â€˜You sound as though you’d tried it.’
    â€˜No, that is just my imagination. But we have a saying: Guests are like fish, they stink after three days.’
    I laugh, but am shocked by his bitterness.
    â€˜So: this room seemed like a haven. A man from the Polish Club was marrying an Englishwoman, and he told me about it, and persuaded the landlord to let me take it over from him. Luckily he’d been a good tenant.’
    â€˜And you are too.’
    â€˜The landlord was offended when he saw what I had done in here, but I assured him that when I left I would put everything back exactly as it was. I have learned to ignore the bathroom, and I never cook in the kitchen.’
    â€˜And the other people in the house? Have you made friends?’
    â€˜They are all transients. I have been here longer than anyone now, I think. The Australians come in, and have a lot of girls and a lot of parties, and get thrown out, and others come. I am the old man in this house.’
    â€˜Iwo, don’t be absurd! You’re not an old man!’
    â€˜I am to them. And to myself.’
    â€˜Not to
me
. You are …’
    How can I tell him? He is beautiful, his body attracts me like no other body since I was a student: perhaps not even then. I can’t remember feeling this same magnetic pull towards Paul. We made love a lot, in the beginning, inexpertly but enthusiastically, sometimes several times a day. But Iwo’s body is my North Pole. I cannot tell him that.
    â€˜You must be fit.’
    â€˜Yes. I