And so it goes
Ivo hadn't expected me to stay. He figured it was infatuation, that I would move on soon enough. He had me pegged as a lightweight, living only for what I could get out of the moment. He knew the type and wouldn't allow himself to grow attached to me. When he felt he was in danger, he would withdraw, speaking to me as a tenant rather than a lover. The day after I moved in he disappeared for three days – the only sounds of him late at night when he came in and closed his bedroom door and early in the morning when he left again, closing the front door.
And so it went, he got on with his life as if my existence were superfluous. When he did see me, when I walked into the room, he spoke to me not as if we'd been apart for 72 hours but as if we were in the middle of a conversation. "Right, would you hand me that box?" gesturing towards it with his head. No greeting, no inquiry as to how I was or what I had been up to.
His aloof manner upset and hurt me. I was confused as to how after our passionate New Year's honeymoon I had become nothing more than "the student renting the smaller room". I wanted to confront him, to demand an explanation for his sudden indifference. Did he not still feel the heated desire that had bound us to one another not two weeks earlier? Had he already cooled toward me? Was I so tiresome to him? I was afraid of what the answer might be and held my tongue.
But then he would knock on my bedroom door, asking me if I wanted a drink with that look that left no doubt as to what would follow - violent lovemaking that tore my emotions and body asunder. Then he was off once again - returning first to his room and then to his office! I was at wit's end trying to comprehend what was happening to us.
When faced with the prospect of returning to Aldeburgh for Easter I panicked and threw myself at him.
"What is it you want, Tim?" He was sorting the slides in the overhead projector for his lecture the next day.
"I just want to be with you," I said, "and know what you are doing and where you are. I want to talk to you." I wanted something other than just sex, in other words. "I want us to have a relationship."
"Is that all? Not a very tall order," he laughed, but I saw a flicker in his eyes. He stopped laughing abruptly. "I see. You're asking for a commitment," and then added quietly as if he was afraid, "We shall have to see."