“Well, it was only after you came that I was able to tell the mater that I didn’t want to do as she wished and couldn’t. . . . Where are you living?”
René described Ann’s two rooms.
“Do you like it? I mean, aren’t they rather grubby and piggy?”
René thought it over with a clear picture in his mind of Ann’s room and Jimmy’s and Kilner’s, and the women standing at the doors and leaning out of the windows, and the children playing in the muck. For him it was all colored emotionally. Moments of distaste he could remember, but nothing like the offended fastidiousness expressed in Kurt’s tone.
“Well, yes. Untidy and careless. One day’s work slops over into the next day. But, you know, my home was not so very unlike that. I used to hate it at home when I got back at night to find my bed unmade. That used to happen.”
“Can I come and see you? I’m here for a fortnight. My business is up north. Got a factory now. You must come and see it if ever you are——”
“I don’t think I’m likely to go north again. I feel that’s finished. I don’t know why. It isn’t that I have any hatred for it, or any bitterness about what happened. Only I feel on firmer ground here, as though I had taken root.”
“I’ll come along then. Any night?”
“Almost any night.”
“I’ll take my chance.”