Sheba's Home, Chapter Six
"Hanging on the wall were several paintings - the sort of gimmicky modern abstracts that aren't my cup of tea - and a primitive wooden instrument, possibly African, which looked as if it might be smelly if one got too close to it. The bookshelves housed a decent but not very inspired collection of fiction, suggesting the strong influence of newspaper "Books of the Year" lists. You could tell there weren't any real literature lovers in the family. The mantelpiece was a gathering point for household flotsam. A child's drawing. A hunk of pink Play-Doh. A passport. One elderly-looking banana."
The most interesting aspect of the description of the Hart home is that it almost says more about the character of Barbara than that of the occupants. The author paints an image of one small area of the room in great detail, the art collection showing the Harts to be savvy about collecting and also showing again the artistic flair of Sheba that makes her so attractive in the first place. However the presence of the odds and ends on the mantel also shows that although they enjoy a nice home the Harts are not obsessive about it and place higher value on family times and needs than they do on what a guest might think of their home. It also shows that they are confident in their decor choices and in themselves as they have a "take us as you find us" kind of outlook. The descriptions also speak volumes about Barbara, whose judgements about their literature selections show her to be a frightful intellectual snob.
Living Alone, Chapter Six
"When you live alone, your furnishings, your possessions, are always confronting you with the thinness of your existence. You know with painful accuracy the provenance of everything you touch and the last time you touched it. The five little cushions on your sofa stay plumped and leaning at their jaunty angle for months at a time unless you theatrically muss them. The level in your salt shaker decreases at the same excruciating rate, day after day. Sitting at Sheba's house - studying the mingled detritus of its several inhabitants - I could see what a relief it might be to let your own meager effects be joined with other people's."
Barbara's description of her own home emphasizes her loneliness; the persnickety neatness and order of the little cushions also illustrates that she is not a person who had friends drop by, as the cushions are only moved if she moves them herself. This description also demonstrates Barbara's illusion that it is the fact that she is living alone that makes her lonely; many people who live alone have friends, acquaintances and guests to mess up the orderliness of the sofa or use up the salt in the shaker. The image of loneliness is juxtaposed with the image of a family whose possessions are mingled and this is the root of Barbara's jealousy of Sheba.
Sheba's Pottery, Chapter Six
"We were standing now in a large, slightly damp-smelling room. It was painted primrose yellow and outfitted with a kiln and a pottery wheel. Along one wall there were shelves displaying Sheba's work. I had never seen anything she had produced before. For some reason, whenever she had mentioned her work to me, I had always envisaged earthenware - those clumpy, grey-beige objects that they sell in gift shops. But the pieces on the shelves were not like that at all. They were delicate,romantic things - bowls with lacy latticework rims; urns with handles in the shape of animals and birds. Rows and rows of rainbow-colored plates."
Barbara's description of Sheba's pottery studio appeals to both the reader's sense of smell and sense of vision. The room is said to smell damp which is undoubtedly due to the moistness of the clay, but a smell that could feel dank and oppressive is offset by the bright, airy colors of the studio itself and the work displayed in it.The description also again contrasts Barbara's outlook on life with Sheba's; Barbara imagines pottery in grey and beige whereas Sheba's imagination has led her to create plates in all the colors of the rainbow. The image of the pottery, said to be delicate and romantic, could also apply to Sheba herself.
Connolly's Home, Chapter Ten
"Inside, the air was sickly with air freshened. There was a nylon, patterned carpet, a display case containing several framed school pictures of Connolly and his sister, and a large three-piece suite in beige and cream stripe. Sheba had never actually seen a three-piece suite before, she says. Not in real life. The sighting amused her. It was like meeting a crying clown, she says, or a sailor with an anchor tattooed on his forearm."
Using both visual imagery and images appealing to our sense of smell, the reader learns not only about the feel and appearance of the home, but about the characters in their reaction to it. Mrs Connolly is very neat and house-proud but very concerned about the appearance of things,the sickly air filled with too much air freshened almost as if wanting to hide what life in the house actually smells like. Mrs Connolly feels that her home is a reflection of her homemaking skills which is why the "white backsplash tiles gleamed" whereas Sheba would never feel judged by her home's cleanliness. The three piece suite is a stereotype of the lower-middle class in Britain, and the author uses this imagery to emphasize the theme of class differences; Sheba has never associated socially out of her class bracket and so sees the Connolly home as a stereotype that she believed to be almost fictional.
Steven Connolly's Bedroom, Chapter Ten
"Whenever Sheba triesto picture Connolly's bedroom, she had imagined something along the lines of her brother Eddie's childhood room. A fusty den, with skull and crossbones on the door; a chaotic carpet of cricket bats and chess sets and other Boys Own jumble. But Connolly's room was nothing like Eddie's. it was absolutely square and white, and it bore the same signs of fastidious housekeeping as the rest of the house. The curtains and eiderdown were made of crackly nylon, imprinted with images of Grand Prix racing cars. On the wall facing the bed there was a large, almost life-size poster of an American actress whom Sheba recognized bur could not identify. The actress was standing with her hips thrust forward and her wet lips slightly open."
The image painted of Connolly's bedroom is extremely important not only in giving the reader a picture of his everyday life but also in visually emphasizing the unlikeliness of their relationship and also in emphasizing why it began to end as soon as Sheba went to his home. Outside they could make believe that they were a romantic and equal couple, but Connolly's bedroom is clearly that of a child in the process of becoming a young man, the racing cars of his childhood giving way to crushes on overtly sexual celebrities young enough to be Sheba's daughter. The signs of fastidious housekeeping also tell the reader that Connolly still has his room cleaned by his mother, like a child.
Another important aspect of this description is Sheba's mental image of how the room would be; by imagining it like the typical boy room of her brother's childhood she is not painting a picture of a young man's apartment or even a stereotypical bachelor pad, which hints that she is far more aware of his age than she admits. It also again accentuates the class divide between them, Connolly's environment a million miles away from the typical private school upbringing of the young Sheba and Eddie.
