The Love of a Good Woman

which the cupboards and appliances didn’t properly fill. The floor was gray and black tiles—or perhaps black and white tiles, the white made gray by dirty scrub water. They passed along a hallway lined with shelves, shelves right up to the ceiling crammed with books and tattered magazines, possibly even newspapers. A smell of the brittle old paper. Here the floor had a covering of sisal matting, and that continued into a side porch, where at last he had a chance to sit down. Rattan chairs and settee, the genuine article, that might be worth some money if they hadn’t been falling apart. Bamboo blinds also not in the best condition, rolled up or half lowered, and outside some overgrown bushes pressing against the windows. Kentdidn’t know many names of plants, but he recognized these bushes as the sort that grow where the soil is sandy. Their leaves were tough and shiny—the greens looking as if dipped in oil.
    As they passed through the kitchen Sonje had put the kettle on for tea. Now she sank down in one of the chairs as if she too was glad to settle. She held up her grubby big-knuckled hands.
    “I’ll clean up in a minute,” she said. “I didn’t ask you if you wanted tea. I could make coffee. Or if you like I could skip them both and make us a gin and tonic. Why don’t I do that? It sounds like a good idea to me.”
    The telephone was ringing. A disturbing, loud, old-fashioned ring. It sounded as if it was just outside in the hall, but Sonje hurried back to the kitchen.
    She talked for some time, stopping to take the kettle off when it whistled. He heard her say “visitor right now” and hoped she wasn’t putting off someone who wanted to look at the house. Her nervy tone made him think this wasn’t just a social call, and that it perhaps had something to do with money. He made an effort not to hear any more.
    The books and papers stacked in the hall had reminded him of the house that Sonje and Cottar lived in above the beach. In fact the whole sense of discomfort, of disregard, reminded him. That living room had been heated by a stone fireplace at one end, and though a fire was going—the only time he had been there—old ashes were spilling out of it and bits of charred orange peel, bits of garbage. And there were books, pamphlets, everywhere. Instead of a sofa there was a cot—you had to sit with your feet on the floor and nothing at your back, or else crawl back and lean against the wall with your feet drawn up under you. That was how Kath and Sonje sat. They pretty well stayed out of the conversation. Kent sat in a chair, from which he had removed a dull-covered book with the title
The Civil War in France.
Is that whatthey’re calling the French Revolution now? he thought. Then he saw the author’s name, Karl Marx. And even before that he felt the hostility, the judgment, in the room. Just as you’d feel in a room full of gospel tracts and pictures of Jesus on a donkey, Jesus on the Sea of Galilee, a judgment passed down on you. Not just from the books and papers—it was in the fireplace mess and the rug with its pattern worn away and the burlap curtains. Kent’s shirt and tie were wrong. He had suspected that by the way Kath looked at them, but once he put them on he was going to wear them anyway. She was wearing one of his old shirts over jeans fastened with a string of safety pins. He had thought that a sloppy outfit to go out to dinner in, but concluded that maybe it was all she could get into.
    That was right before Noelle was born.
    Cottar was cooking the meal. It was a curry, and turned out to be very good. They drank beer. Cottar was in his thirties, older than Sonje and Kath and Kent. Tall, narrow shouldered, with a high bald forehead and wispy sideburns. A rushed, hushed, confidential way of talking.
    There was also an older couple, a woman with low-slung breasts and graying hair rolled up at the back of her neck and a short straight man rather scruffy in his clothes but with something dapper about his manner, his precise and edgy voice and habit of making tidy box shapes with his hands. And there was a young man, a redhead, with puffy watery eyes and speckled skin. He was a part-time student who supported himself by driving the truck that dropped off newspapers for the delivery boys to pick up. Evidently he had just started this job, and the older man, who knew him, began to tease him about the shame of delivering such a paper. Tool of the capitalist classes, mouthpiece of