A Choice of Enemies by Mordecai Richler Page B

the midnight drive back to London she slept with her head on his shoulder. The next afternoon they visited Hampton Court together. They managed to avoid the Winklemans and Charlie and Joey until Saturday night, when Norman had promised to bring Sally home for dinner. In all that short febrile time, though everyone had put them down for lovers, they had not been to bed together. Norman, after the first night’s failure, had shied away from trying to make love to her again. He lived in perpetual fear of rejection. With the fear, though, he also had his dream. He and Sally were married, they had three children, and they were uniquely happy. They did not hang impressionist prints on their walls. Sally, like him, enjoyed making love in the mornings. But when the kids came that was seldom possible. The kids woke them early each morning, jumping up and down on their not-Swedish Modern double bed.
    After they had dinner with Charlie and Joey on Saturday night Sally invited him into her room for a drink, even though it was quite late.
    Sally sat on the floor, her legs tucked under her wide green skirt and her blouse sufficiently open at the neck so that he could seewhere her breasts began. Norman told her about the time he spent with his father in Spain and Sally spoke about her parents. Their conversation was forced. Norman was always so annoyingly a man of no frivolity that she was constantly afraid of making a fool of herself with him. When Sally wasn’t getting up to twist a dripping faucet tight or to pull the curtains or replace a book, she seemed just a little petulant.
    “Well,” she said at last, “here we are.”
    “Here we are.” Norman cleared his throat. “Bob says we can have his car again tomorrow. We can drive down to Brighton, if you like.”
    Sally gathered that Norman was particularly proud of his community of friends. There was, to be sure, an instinctive generosity about the way they lent each other money, their cars, and even – as in Norman’s case – a flat. There was plenty to be said for a group of men who, though they were naturally competitors and professionally jealous of each other’s success, still did their utmost to share out the available work. But what astonished her was the ways in which the “enlightened” left was similar to the less intelligent groups it despised. The loyalties, the generosity, like those of the Rotary, lost in purity by being confined to the group strictly. You didn’t wear a badge with your first name on it, you weren’t asked the name of your “home town,” but your contributions were “concrete,” your faith “progressive,” and your enemies “reactionary.”
Joe Hill
ousted
Down By The Old Mill Stream
, but, though the sentiment was loftier, it was still uncritical, still stickily there. It seemed to Sally that Norman and his friends were not, as they supposed, non-conformists, but conformists to another rule.
    “All right,” she said. “If you like.”
    This time when she rose to fill his glass again, and Norman circled her waist with his arm, she did not withdraw or look at him severely. Instead she came closer to him.
    “Oh please,” she said. “Hurry. I want you to.”
    He raised a hand to her breast. Sally shut her eyes, murmured something inaudible, and fitted her body closer to his. As they sank down on the bed together he began to undo the buttons of her blouse. Sally leaped up, her slip coming off with a black swish, and in a moment she stood naked before him.
    “You’re beautiful,” he said.
    Then, as they fell into another embrace, the phone began to ring. That startled them. Norman sat up, he began to sweat. The phone rang again and again. Sally, trying to pull him down to her, said huskily, “Let it ring. Who cares?”
    It was Joey. He knew it. Anger knotted inside him.
    “It’s probably not for me.” Sally offered him her mouth again, but as he took her in his arms the phone rang and rang. A buzzer sounded. Obviously the phone