Love Among the Single Classes Read Online Free Page A

becoming; their clothes look cheap, made of poor material and assembled without much sense of colour or style, let alone fashion. Most important, can I detect a likeness to him? The older daughter seems to have inherited his fine bone-structure. ‘This one looks rather like you, doesn’t she?’
    â€˜Henryka. Yes.’
    Enough. A man’s love for his daughters is a minefield. He forestalls me in any case by showing me the other photograph. ‘My … wife.’ She is a handsome woman, though almost comically Slav with her strong, square face, severe hairstyle and broad shoulders. I try to discern her breasts under the shapeless dress and flowered shawl. Large, soft, deep, a fine figure of a woman. Not like me. Iwo’s hand reaches across my bare shoulder and takes the pictures from me. He leans behind him to put them on the floor under the bed. Then he folds his arm, and the blankets, around me.
    â€˜I shall have to get used to your warmth in my bed.’
    I analyse those words, examining them for every shade of meaning from I am uncomfortable with you in this bed, to Now we sleep together as a couple in future. Why can’tI take them at face value, as a declaration of intent, a commitment to many nights together, and respond with some generous word or gesture? It must be because I am afraid. It is so long since my desire for a man has been reciprocated. Either lame dogs fall in love with me – they seem to think I must be a strong woman; or I am fucked after a party by someone I have just met and may never see again, using and being used. With Iwo, now, I hesitate in case I jump to the wrong conclusion, and find myself rebuffed. The sexual humiliation of having been rejected for a younger woman cuts deeper than anyone knows. I was the complacent wife in her mid-thirties who never stopped to think about taking care of her looks until it was too late. After many years of sexual neglect, as Paul’s moments of physical need or tenderness for me became less and less frequent, I had almost succeeded in persuading myself that sex was no longer anything to do with me. And so now I take it for granted that the surge of lust that I feel for Iwo is one-sided, and don’t dare to believe in the first delicate tendrils of hope and affection that he extends towards me. The moment passes. But we do make love again.

2
    When I wake up in my own bed my first thought is of Iwo, just as it was my last before I finally fell asleep. But I can only lie in bed for a few moments – long enough to wonder if he will telephone me today – because it’s already after half past seven, and I must launch the children into their week. He didn’t say when we parted that he would ring, but, as I tiptoed out of his room hoping not to wake him, he suddenly spoke from the bed.
    â€˜Constance. That was a lovely day with you. The most happy day since I came to England.’
    I turned back to the bed, and his long naked arms reached up. He held my face in between his two hands and smiled at me and said, Thank you.’
    I can still feel the touch of that gesture against my skin.
    I always love breakfast time, particularly when my children are around. I love the simple responsibilities it demands, the ritual of laying out bowls and cereal packets and jars of marmalade, timing eggs and not burning toast while at the same time doing Kate’s school lunch box. When they were young and all still living at home I used to love the cross, preoccupied faces and morning smells of my children at breakfast. Paul would come down first and make a pot of coffee, gulp down a cup himself and hurry off to work, leaving me to drink the rest as I wove through the habitual dance from table to dishwasher to airing cupboard. The children too wove in and out looking for Sellotape, one glove, a lost gymshoe, or homework; later on borrowing make-up or money. It was a safe hour in my day, knowing myself to be needed and