Oliver and Barbara's dining-room confrontation

Oliver and Barbara’s dining-room confrontation turns their dispute over the house into an immediate physical threat. Barbara comes to the table prepared to bargain, but neither spouse will surrender the property or accept the other’s account of what is owed. When the argument gives way to violence, the dining room’s carefully arranged table, its candles and silver, and the weapons each has within reach become part of the struggle.

The Meeting Barbara Arranges

Barbara prepares the room with unusual care. She fills all ten sockets of a silver rococo candelabrum with candles, setting their light over the polished mahogany table, and lays out silver goblets and plates. On Oliver’s plate she places a generous slice of freshly made pâté and a little pile of melba toast. The candlelight lends the room beauty, but the meal is also set within a dispute neither spouse can treat as ordinary domestic life.

Barbara chooses the dining room because she regards it as her domain. Cleaned up as best she can, she waits at the head of the table with a shopping bag beside her foot and a cleaver inside it. Touching the cool blade reassures her of her resolve. She has prepared a proposal, yet she has also prepared to defend herself; the arrangement of hospitality and the hidden weapon sit side by side.

She worries that Oliver may not come, or that her invitation may have sounded too much like a summons. Still, she waits for signs of movement after the big clock strikes nine. When Oliver arrives, the meeting begins over the food and wine she has set out, with Barbara watching him closely as he eats.

The Offer and the Claims to the House

Barbara makes clear that she will not retreat. Oliver has expected something different from the meeting, but she tells him that she has a proposition. She offers him his choice of half the things in the house, including books, paintings, and the Staffordshires, while excluding the dining room, the kitchen, and the furniture in the children’s rooms. He may take his share immediately, she says, provided he leaves the house to her. She considers the offer generous and hopes to settle matters between them without lawyers.

Oliver treats the proposal sarcastically and objects that the dining room, too, is part of what Barbara is offering him. She confirms that he can take the possessions, but not the house. To her, the limit is decisive: she will divide the contents rather than leave the home. She says she is capable of resisting for as long as necessary, and the negotiation becomes a direct test of which spouse can make the other yield.

Oliver answers that the house is his because he paid for it. He says that even a court ruling against him will not stop him finding a way to get it. Barbara rejects his claim to superior rights and tells him that she wants out of a life she hates and compensation for her sacrifices. Oliver answers in terms of the family and accuses her of destroying it; she challenges the idea that she should have to remain in an institution she believes has tried to defeat her.

The argument also exposes how differently they understand their shared history. Oliver claims that his intelligence helped put Barbara in the house, that his money bought their possessions, and that his support enabled her to become a gourmet cook. Barbara responds with bitter irony rather than gratitude. He insists that he will not leave and that nothing will be divided except the two of them. At that point, she feels pity for him as well as for herself, seeing them both as people cheated by what the world calls love.

From Negotiation to Violence

The exchange over ownership continues as Oliver drinks more wine. He identifies the bottle as Chateau Beycheville, a 1964, and regards that year as a good one; Barbara replies that it was good only in his mind. Their disagreement over the wine echoes their larger conflict: even a shared past cannot give them a shared account of what their life together meant.

Oliver says that he wants Barbara out of his house and claims he has more right to it, that he loves it more, and that he deserves to keep it. Barbara will not accept that reasoning. As the tension rises, Oliver calls her selfish and grasping, while she repeats that she worked for the life and possessions she is fighting to retain. He drains the bottle, lets it fall, and staggers toward the door. It rolls under the table without breaking.

Before he leaves, Oliver thanks her for the pâté. Barbara tells him to thank Benny. Oliver repeats Benny’s name, then braces himself against the wall. Barbara senses the movement before he makes it: he raises a crowbar. She grabs the shopping bag and clutches it to her chest as she gets up, overturning her chair. Oliver sweeps the crowbar across the table and knocks the candelabrum away. He then methodically steps on the candles, extinguishing them.

In the darkness, Barbara takes hold of the cleaver and raises it, prepared to use it in self-defense. She expects Oliver to attack, but he does not come at her. Instead, she hears the crowbar strike the Duncan Phyfe table. The scrape of metal on wood and the damage to the furniture make the argument’s threat concrete: the house and its contents are no longer merely objects being divided in a settlement but things being struck and damaged in the spouses’ struggle.

Flight and Immediate Aftermath

While Oliver attacks the table, Barbara backs out of the dining room and moves through the hall and upstairs into Josh’s room. She curls up in Josh’s closet with the shopping bag in her lap and her fist around the cleaver’s handle. Her heartbeat partly obscures the sounds of Oliver’s destructive outburst. The meeting that began with a meal and a proposed division of possessions ends with Barbara hiding in a child’s closet, still armed and listening.

The confrontation does not settle who will keep the house. Instead, it turns the unresolved claim into a contest of endurance and physical force: Barbara will not leave, Oliver will not give up his claim, and the carefully furnished home becomes a place where each can endanger the other. In the immediate aftermath, Oliver lies on the floor of his room for a long while, trying to re-enter time and avoid the pain of existence. The scene’s shift from candlelit hospitality to darkness and destruction marks how far the marriage’s domestic dispute has moved from negotiation.