My son made no reply to this, but what I could see of his shadowed face made the Conniving Man rejoice.

She turned to Henry, grasped his arm, and spilled wine on his wrist. Ignoring his little mew of distaste, looking into his face with sudden grimness, she said: “Just make sure that when you’re lying down with her in the corn or behind the barn, you’re a no -poke.” She made her free hand into a fist, poked out the middle finger, then used it to tap a circle around her crotch: left thigh, right thigh, right belly, navel, left belly, back again to the left thigh. “Explore all you like, and rub around it with your Johnny Mac until he feels good and spits up, but stay out of the home place lest you find yourself locked in for life, just like your mummer and daddy.”

He got up and left, still without a word, and I don’t blame him. Even for Arlette, this was a performance of extreme vulgarity. He must have seen her change before his eyes from his mother-a difficult woman but sometimes loving-to a smelly whorehouse madam instructing a green young customer. All bad enough, but he was sweet on the Cotterie girl, and that made it worse. Very young men cannot help but put their first loves on pedestals, and should someone come along and spit on the paragon… even if it happens to be one’s mother…

Faintly, I heard his door slam. And faint but audible sobbing.

“You’ve hurt his feelings,” I said.

She expressed the opinion that feelings, like fairness, were also the last resort of weaklings. Then she held out her glass. I filled it, knowing she would remember none of what she’d said in the morning (always supposing she was still there to greet the morning), and would deny it-vehemently-if I told her. I had seen her in this state of drunkenness before, but not for years.

We finished the second bottle (she did) and half of the third before her chin dropped onto her wine-stained bosom and she began to snore. Coming through her thus constricted throat, those snores sounded like the growling of an ill-tempered dog.