The Family Arsenal

6

Often, seeing a workman propped by a smoking ditch in the road, Hood dressed the man in ermine, envisioned a pronged crown where his tattered cap was and made that shovel a sceptre to lean his chin on. He gave them the benefit of his belief: the rag-and-bone man a stallion, the postman impressive robes. The regal face was puffed and florid; the labourer’s lank hair and heavy jaw only made the imagining more vivid. They might look broken, but they never lost that look of watchful cunning he had seen in powerful men — the pot-bellied general in his bird-bill cap supervising the shelling of empty hills. Hood convinced himself that the shouting hag in Deptford with her handcart of whelks and cockles and her sign Live Eels could be transformed into a braying baroness. It was a swift flight of the mind, and he rarely saw a pack of slender children that could not be possible inheritors: the urchins changed by the eye into princelings.

The slim woman he saw in velvet, a high-collared cape and buckled shoes, with pearls at her throat and a jewelled pistol crammed into her sash. She was agile, with blue eyes and a sly suggestion of toughness on her mouth. She had a boy’s bounce and black hair that was straight and bright and caught the sun like metal. She glided in the heat, always away from him. But that, like the oaf in ermine, was mostly fanciful: he did not know her, he had only timed her movements, as she left the house in striped slacks and a yellow blouse and low slippers. She rarely smiled, but that was half her beauty; the rest was motion: the silver bracelets that rode on her arm and visibly jangled, and the sideways swish of her trouser cuffs and when she shook her hair the sight of her ear-rings; large hoops that jumped against her cheek, and all the light she brought forward on her skin that made him think she could not cast a shadow. She aroused him the moment he saw her, the housewife in Deptford with the large child, and he wondered if perhaps she was ordinarily pretty and he committed to enhancing her. He did pity her, and he felt saddest when her mood was bright and she chased the boy and made him laugh, because she was alone and did not yet know she was a widow.

She went out in the mornings with the boy, whose round head was screwed tight to his shoulders: he looked unrelated to her, his size was wrong, no feature matched. She stopped, carrying a string bag. If it was sunny after lunch she spent the afternoon in a corner of the park on Brookmill Road — the child flopped in the sandpit and she regarded him vaguely, keeping her distance, plucking at the pages of a book. Then, on the Thursday, the police arrived at her house, braking hard, and took her and the child away. An hour later she returned and her posture was so changed they might have taken her away to beat her. She seemed to crouch with grief, her black hair over her eyes, and she held tightly to the child as if, surprised by danger, she was performing a hopeless rescue and moving towards more danger. Her spirit had been arrested; she was weakened; and when she turned to speak to the policeman at the wheel her gaze saw nothing. She entered her house stooping.

Hood watched from a bench on the corner. He chucked the paper away. She knew.

On the following days, apart from one morning — the funeral, he guessed — she continued her routine, the morning shopping, the afternoon at the park, varying it once with a trip to the laundry. Her slimness had become angular, she had grown thin in a matter of days, with a stiff sorrow in her shoulders and a frailty that took the ease out of her walk and made her movements arthritic. Once she looked directly at him with hollow deep-set eyes, and Hood knew she was not sleeping. There was something stunned about her, not saddened but shocked. It was different from grief now; it was as if she had awakened in a foreign country and was listening for a familiar voice. He understood her displacement. Then she wore sunglasses, which emphasized the smallness of her head and gave her the hunched foreshortened look of an insect. She stayed close to the child, holding his hand, though he pulled hard on her arm. She was subdued, but the child was livelier than ever and bigger with infantile glee.

In the house on Albacore Crescent Hood was awakened by the sound of typing, Mayo — always purposeful when she got up — pecking away in the next room. This went on for several minutes. Then she came into the bedroom and said, ‘I have to go to Kilburn. Tell Brodie there’s another envelope inside this one. She’s to take it to the West End and open it and post the one inside — without leaving prints on it.’

‘Why don’t you tell her yourself?’

‘She’s asleep — I looked. Explain it when she’s wide awake or she’ll forget. And you might remind her that her prints are on file at Scotland Yard, so she’d better be careful. Got it?’

Hood took the envelope and rolled over to hide his face from the London sunlight which in mid-summer dawned as early as it had in Vietnam, dazzling the curtains and heating the dust in the room before he got out of bed. That same heat was mingled with the smells of carpets and varnish, the sound of flies. He said ‘Got it,’ into the pillow and heard her go.

It was simple enough, but everything was simple as long as you stayed anonymous: the man who had been told everything was safe because he was dead. The charade with the notes meant nothing; the painting had nothing to do with him. He was glad to have it in the house — it was graceful and indefinite. It warmed him like the sun’s curious hum and startled him each new time he saw it; but he did not feel responsible for it, only lucky that it was on the wall, a patch of order where he could rest his eye. It was a window, nothing more, accessible and well placed, but not his. Mayo always called it ‘My Rogier’; he called it ‘Death Eating a Cracker’.

The ransom notes: in them he saw all of Mayo’s futile diligence. He had sent an inch of the canvas himself and laughed when it was pounced upon by an art critic who saw in the theft and this ripping a terrible crime, as if he had posted the man a bloody finger or a victim’s nose. Then he had watched Mayo follow up with her ransom notes and a list of her demands; he was interested but detached, as the canvas strip, now verified as authentic, was sent an inch at a time. To The Times: Mayo said they had a knowledgeable art critic on the staff — even on the run, in hiding, she did not forget her snobbery. In the week Hood had followed the widow’s movements three notes had been sent, with a crusted fragment and a codeword in a plain buff envelope. They were mailed in different parts of the city, at Clerkenwell, Earls Court, Shepherd’s Bush, anonymous places, densely populated. But though the demands had grown insistent — she was promising to destroy the self-portrait — the response had become muted, and indeed there had been no recovery. ‘What if they ignore it?’ Hood had asked, and Mayo replied, ‘They wouldn’t dare.’ But it was a hollow certainty, since Hood guessed that she had placed a higher value on the painting than anyone else — higher perhaps than the person she’d stolen it from. And so the spate of notes: this was the fifth.

She had, almost from the moment they had met at Ward’s, kept Hood at the edge. They were lovers before they were conspirators, but she had another life, other friends, and though her casual allusions to them gave them the large-seemingness of the very obscure, this prevented him from knowing her well. Her secrecy made their friendship incomplete. She was over-anxious to reassure him, and so he imagined that her urgencies — sexual, political: she turned one into the other — could not but be adulterous. She used his affection like a pledge of purpose, and making love to her was only another aspect of this commitment: comrades became lovers, lovers conspirators and promises whispered to her in bed she repeated later as evidence of political involvement. ‘You told me,’ she once said to Hood, ‘that you’d never met anyone like me.’ He said, ‘Yes, in the sack.’ Their very intimacy excluded him; he was so close to her she could say, ‘All in good time,’ and keep him in the dark. Patience was the lover’s obligation. It would have been easier, he would have known more, if he had never been her lover, and while he mocked her secrecy she replied by criticizing his impatience. He sometimes wondered, like the cuckold, if he was being humoured, all the gentle foolery of occasional sex a cover for her betrayal.

He had been given one specific task. He saw it as trifling, she said it was important. ‘The Provos don’t change people,’ she said. ‘We have chemists, teachers, drivers — they’re all good at their jobs. The only difference is now they work for us. If a carpenter joins and says he wants to be a hit-man, we tell him to get lost. We’ve got enough of those. We want skills.’ So Hood, the consul, was ordered to prepare an American passport for the Provos. He had the necessary equipment, a stock of passport blanks he had stolen when he ran from Hué, with unrecorded and so untraceable numbers; the stamp, the official seal. He had been given a small photograph of the person — the prospective traveller — a bespectacled man with an old-fashioned hairstyle, almost certainly a disguise. He had glued in the picture, forged the passport, stamped and sealed it and given it to Mayo to deliver. ‘They like it,’ she said. And later: ‘They might have some more for you to do.’ But he wasn’t contacted again. He had brought the passport blanks to London almost as an after thought; he had only believed in his anger. He was told he could be valuable, he did not know if he was trusted; and though Mayo said, ‘They’re going to contact you,’ she said it in that remote wifely way and it did nothing to lessen his impatience. The passport business was the work of a morning, but he knew he had done nothing until he had killed Weech, and he wanted to do more.

‘Deal the cards,’ he heard Murf saying.

‘What else?’ said Brodie. ‘Was that all?’

‘Naw, the silly bitch put treacle on it and let everyone lick it off. She was stoned. Anyway, what about you? What’s the sexiest thing you ever done?’

Hood listened. He heard a giggle.

‘I wore five belts.’

‘Leave off!’

‘Straight. Tight as anything.’

‘Five flaming belts.’

‘And nothing else. But there was another one — she was a groupie, too — she had this plastic mac, the transparent kind. She’d put it on and they’d tie her up like a parcel. And then, you know, they’d do stuff to her.’

From the doorway Hood could see Murf ’s head, inclined forward, listening to Brodie. He looked like a bat; he had the ears and snout and the grey pinched mouse-face, the hunched bony shoulders that were like folded wings. There was a solemnity in the smallness of his head, and the gold ring and cross in his earlobe only called attention to the size of his ears, which stuck out enough for the sun to light them pinkly from behind and show the tracery of their veins.

Murf said, ‘Deal the cards.’

Hood entered the room, rapping on the door as he did so and noticing, above the two children sitting naked and crosslegged on their mattress — their sheets twisted about them — the Magic Roundabout poster tacked to the wall with felt pennants nearby (Souvenir of Brighton, Chelsea). On the dresser there was a clothed doll — a stiff-armed Spanish dancer in a mantilla — some cigarette papers, a toy mouse, Murf’s hunting knife, a Chianti bottle with a red candle in the top, a record player and on the turntable a bag of toffees.

‘Rise and shine.’

Brodie turned, smacked a toffee in her mouth and said, ‘What do you want?’

‘I’ve got a surprise for you. Today, you’re going to leg a bomb in Trafalgar Square. This is the big stuff, right? Get Lord Nelson flat on his back and fry those lions. All you do is stick some jelly on the column and you’re laughing. What do you say?’

Murf said, ‘He’s garrity.’

‘Shut up, bat-face and get your clocks out.’

‘Leave him alone,’ said Brodie, glowering at Hood.

‘It’s your big day, sweetheart. Better than Euston — and this is only the beginning.’

‘Don’t pay no attention to him,’ said Brodie. She shuffled the cards, hit the pack on her knee, and flapping her elbows let the sheet fall from her breasts. They were small and very white behind the russet discs of her childish nipples. She scratched lazily at one with her thumb and said, ‘He’s crazy.’

Hood stayed in the doorway, watching Brodie cut the cards again. ‘If you think blowing up Nelson’s column is crazy why did you put the bomb in Euston?’

‘Maybe they wanted me to. Ever think of that?’

‘Deal them bitches,’ said Murf impatiently.

‘But you had a reason, right?’

‘Yeah. These rich people — they’re messing the other ones about, and like the other ones don’t have anything. I don’t know. It’s all politics and shit.’

‘It’s aggro,’ said Murf. ‘The rich ones don’t want to know.’

‘What if you were rich?’

Brodie laughed and cupped her breasts and squeezed them. ‘Heavy!’

But Murf lowered his head and spoke seriously, muffling his words by jerking his mouth to the side. ‘Well, I wouldn’t be rich like that, for one thing,’ he said. ‘They didn’t earn the money, did they? I mean, someone gave it to them. Their fathers or uncles like.’

Fing, favvers, unkoos; the boy nodded, putting his ears in shadow. Hood said, ‘But what if someone gave it to you?’

‘I never thought of it. Maybe buy myself a boat — one of these cabin cruisers. Or a car. Maybe a stereo. Shit like that.’ He grinned. ‘Maybe start meself a army.’

‘Stop hassling him,’ said Brodie, who was both severe and defensive. She was quicker than Murf and seemed to sense he was being mocked. ‘What do you want him to say?’

‘Keep your shirt on, sister,’ said Hood. ‘I was just wondering what I’m doing here, so I thought I’d ask you two.’

‘I like it here,’ said Murf.

‘We don’t get hassled, except by you,’ said Brodie, still sucking the toffee.

‘Okay, let’s be friends,’ said Hood, touching her shoulders.

‘I think he wants to raise you,’ said Murf.

‘Watch it, sonny, or I’ll kick you through that window, ears and all.’

In a low voice, Murf said, ‘Deal them cards.’

‘This is for you.’ Hood handed Brodie the envelope and told her what Mayo had said, making her repeat the instructions. Murf took the cards from Brodie’s lap and dealt them. Once, Hood had seen the boy play solitaire, shuffling and cutting the pack carefully, and arranging the cards on the table; and he had noticed how, muttering his tuneless chant, boom widdy-widdy, he had paused, wet his thumb and cheated.

‘We’ll need fares,’ said Brodie.

‘You’ve got money.’

‘Spent it.’ She sucked the toffee, held it in her teeth and opened her mouth for Hood to see, making a face.

‘Here.’ Hood gave her a pound.

‘It ain’t enough.’

‘It’s plenty.’

‘A quid and all,’ said Murf, still dealing the cards. ‘Maybe buy meself a boat with that.’

Before they went out they dressed themselves in Indian shirts, long muslim smocks with flowers embroidered on them — Brodie’s was sleeveless and showed her tattoo. They wore wristlets, strings of amber blobs and dungarees that had been patched and sewn with badges and army insignia; they carried shoulder-bags they had bought at a jumble sale in Deptford. These flapping costumes made Hood think not of gypsies but of children dressed up as gypsies, amateur players slouching down Albacore Crescent and past the pillar box to some trivial farce. Their costumes revealed more of what was childish in them than their nakedness had. Play-actors — but they could not be blamed: they did what they were told. They disappeared at the end of the road, near the melancholy sight of a man in blue overalls brushing up a circus poster.

Hood had known what to do — the thought had been with him all week — but his certainty made him delay. Certitude unmarked by doubt was suspect, a trap, and he had been proved wrong too recently not to pause. He had been so sure of the dark flaws in the Rogier self-portrait, and then beneath the caked varnish and all the dusty black he had seen the pinpricks of swallowing light, the change in the man’s expression, the riot at the window. And Weech: he had obeyed that impulse without a single doubt. Now he wondered if he had made a mistake. He hadn’t counted on the wife and child: he owed that family something.

Mayo was certain, but Mayo’s movements were brisk with evasion. Hood had always visualized the business of plotting as something which went on all day and late into the night — the poring over plans, the scenarios of assault and siege, the meetings, gaining a controlling advantage by stealth. The exercise of secret crafts. But where was the craft? Mayo watched television when she was in the house, and though she spent some afternoons away from Deptford, when Hood asked her where she had been, she’d say ‘Shopping’ and prove it with a bag of groceries. She never had visitors; he had seen no-one at the house but her and the two children, marriage’s parody enacted in a Deptford hideout that had become a family home. So he was kept at the edge of action, captive in the kind of solitude that can madden. He had come so far for that, and the inaction worked on him, it roused him, lit his imagination — he was made furious by the continual stalling.

He put Weech’s wallet, the money and the bunch of keys in the pocket of his black raincoat. He had given the widow time to leave, but he would be quick — get inside and leave the stuff, then split; he wouldn’t snoop. Already what he knew of the woman depressed him: he didn’t want to know any more. He went to the house, slid the key in the lock and eased the door open.

The house was unusually cold, holding a chill on its walls that muted the sounds of his entering. His face tightened in the morgue-like air, as if the whole place was made of stone slabs that were masked by the arsenic-coloured wallpaper. He waited in the damp passage and listened before proceeding further into the closed clammy rooms, noticing the toys, the telephone directories heaped by the phone. The rooms were neat, bare, anonymous: a sitting room, a dining room — a few pieces of new furniture, a table, a television, a shelf of china figures. A plastic clock filled the tiny kitchen with its ticking. He would leave the money there, weight it with the wallet and keys, and go; but he paused and looked again in the sitting room and began to prowl.

On the upstairs landing there was a twisted slipper, and further on a throttled cloth animal. He tried the doors: a toilet, a bedroom with a white wardrobe and a mirror reflecting a counter of jars and bottles; then a child’s room with an unmade cot and a clutter of toys and torn comics. The frail claim of habitation in the layer of cheap objects. But there were two more rooms. They were locked, and Hood fished out Weech’s bunch of keys and opened the first room. It was filled. Light filtering through the drawn net curtains fell on a great heap of merchandise, a solid wall of brown cartons, a row of new televisions — some still padded in bars of plastic foam; and among these were small objects, radios, record-players, hair-dryers shaped like pistols, and hubcaps, automobile chrome, sink fittings, cameras. He read the cartons: they were cases of cigarettes, tobacco, whisky, perfume, and the boxes lent to the stale air of the room a cardboard aroma of newness. The floor was so littered with goods there was no room for Hood to walk.

In the last room, also locked, there were old newspapers tied into bales, and a broken bed, a lampshade, a sofa with a burst seat and two large tin trunks, padlocked. There were markings on the trunks, numerals, the word Maatschappij and a Dutch name. Hood found the right keys and released the hasps, opened the padlock on the biggest one and lifted the lid. And he whistled. Inside, piled on top, were Sten guns which had been broken down, barrels lying beside stocks; digging down he found boxes and clips of ammunition. The second trunk held more ammunition, low-calibre pistols and fist-sized grenades, and what he recognized as Armalite rifles. The sight of this small arsenal made him self-conscious. Without examining it further, he shut the trunks and securing that room, went back to the first room to make sure it was locked.

He was trying the door when he heard a bang and the rattle of a glass pane downstairs; then a thud, a child hitting the floor. Finally, a woman’s voice: ‘— because I said so, that’s why!’ He heard footsteps downstairs, the woman crossing the house, the sound of the radio being switched on, the child yelling. He locked the door and pocketed the keys.

He did not sneak. He coughed and came down the stairs hard to alert the woman, and before he had gone ten steps he heard the radio switched off and the sound of her running to the foot of the staircase. She drew back when she saw him and tried to speak, but before she could utter a word Hood said with easy familiarity, ‘Can’t seem to find your gas meter anywhere, lady. Where do you hide it?’

‘Who are you?’ The woman was breathless with fear, and she did not seem to notice the child kneeling behind her, holding her legs. ‘What do you want?’

‘Nothing much,’ said Hood, continuing down the stairs. ‘Say, he’s a big fella. Hello, tiger.’

‘How did you get in?’

‘The door was open a mile,’ said Hood, still grinning. ‘I was upstairs waiting for you to come back.’

‘You’re from Rutter,’ said the woman.

‘Sort of.’

‘Bastard. Well, you can tell him it’s all locked — you’ve seen for yourself. I don’t have the key.’

‘I’ll tell him that.’

‘Send you around, did he?’

‘Nope. I don’t work for him,’ said Hood. ‘He works for me.’

‘I’ve seen you somewhere,’ said the woman. ‘But you ain’t English.’

‘Maybe you haven’t heard about the American branch.’

‘Ron never mentioned it. But he never told me anything. Look,’ she said impatiently, ‘I want that stuff out of here and fast. The coppers’ll be asking — Oh, Christ!’ She pushed the child aside.

Hood said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘So you just walk into people’s houses? You’ve got some nerve!’ The woman had become calmer, and calm she regained her indignation. She glared at Hood. ‘Okay, you’ve had your look, now get out.’

‘Who’s that man, Mummy?’ The boy whined, thumping her leg.

‘Big kid,’ said Hood. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Jason. He’s a villain. Just like his dad.’

Hood said nothing. He looked at the boy’s large head and saw the man’s malice.

‘Were you a mate of Ron’s?’

Hood hesitated, then said, ‘I knew him.’

‘Some layabout done him.’

‘So I heard.’ He stared, trying to perceive a reaction on the woman’s face.

She shrugged. ‘He was asking for it. He thought he was so flash, with all his big talk about his connections, Rutter and all. And look what he leaves me with — two rooms full of stolen junk.’

‘Do you know what’s in there?’

‘I don’t want to know, but if the coppers get wind of it they’ll break the bloody door down.’

‘You’ll be all right,’ said Hood.

‘That’s what Ron used to say. You’re just like him — all talk, and underneath you’re nothing.’

‘Maybe I’d better go,’ he said. He wanted to be away; he wished he hadn’t seen the arsenal, the strewn toys, the woman in the cold house. For the first time he felt his anger turning against him, souring into guilt, endlessly repeating. It was physical self-loathing, as if his skin had gone scaly and trapped the sour feeling in him. ‘I’ll see you later.’

‘What are you afraid of?’ said the woman. ‘Me?’

Jason began to slam a toy car on the floor and make the grunting sounds of a motor.

‘I’ll be all right,’ said the woman, mocking. ‘Eighteen quid a week, widow’s pension. And all his big talk about Rutter.’ She walked down the passage to the kitchen, and Hood followed, stepping over the child. The kitchen was a narrow cubicle: a tiny table, a shelf of cups, a worn biscuit tin, the plastic clock and a sink with a scrubbed wooden drainboard. Having seen that he could not leave her, she put a kettle on the stove and when she turned to him again her face was creased.

‘It must be tough,’ he said.

‘It’s not what you think. Not Ron. He was a real bastard — he nearly killed me once. Used to throw things. Always walking out on me and then coming back. He had to come back — for the kid, for the stuff upstairs.’ She sighed, and now Hood saw a slight scar, a half-inch of whiteness on one of her eyebrows. ‘It’s locked. I’ll bet there’s tons of it. I can’t sleep thinking about it — it’s stolen, you know, every bit of it.’

‘I can help you get rid of it.’

‘It’s all locked.’

‘I’ll pick the lock.’

‘I still won’t get to sleep.’

‘Maybe I can take care of that, too.’

‘I’ve tried sleeping pills. They don’t work.’

‘Not sleeping pills.’

‘Bit of the other, eh?’ The woman set out two cups. ‘Just like Ron.’

‘No, no,’ said Hood. ‘I’ve got what you need.’

The woman eyed him suspiciously. ‘You weren’t waiting. You sneaked in here. What do you want from me?’

‘I was waiting for you,’ Hood said, and he sat down.

7

In the train, Brodie licked the cigarette, set its twisted end on fire, puffed it hard and passed it to Murf, who crooked his skinny fingers like tongs on a coal and sucked a lungful of smoke from it. He gave it back wheezing a gust of air the colour of steam: ‘Fanks.’

They rode with their feet braced on cushions in an empty eight-seat compartment, rocking away from Deptford. The great brown warehouses flew at them, knocking the train’s own clatter through the window with an odour of rope and fried bricks. Smoking pot usually flung them into hilarity: they tasted marvels. The sun glanced on the river between buildings and shone in the mirror on the wall opposite, spangling the ceiling with swimming reflections like discs of light from water. The mirror flashed a window of blue sky at them, caught more of the river’s dazzle, a boat dissolving into a prism, a jumping council estate. Murf crept over to it and drew out a broken crayon. He wrinkled his nose, set his bat’s face against it, and scrawled on the glass ARSENAL RULE.

‘Freaks me out, that does,’ said Brodie.

‘You got a buzz on,’ said Murf.

‘No,’ she said, pointing to what Murf had written on the mirror. ‘That. They’ll think it’s football villains.’

‘Forget it.’ He took the cigarette, puffed it and passed it back. ‘Football villains don’t do that.’

‘They do and all,’ said Brodie. ‘Write stuff all over the shop.’

‘Get off. I’ll show you.’ He took his hunting knife from its sheath and kneeling on the seat swung at the mirror, landing the knob of the handle on its centre. There was a crunch; the mirror at once deepened and glittered and a web of hairline cracks shot from the bevelled edge and met at a crusty dent. But the spikes of glass, held together by a tight chrome frame, did not fall. Seeing that the train was drawing into London Bridge station Murf scrambled to a sitting position and grinned at the shattered mirror. ‘That’s what them football villains do. Make holes.’

‘The viwuns mike owls,’ mocked Brodie, screwing up her face. ‘Here, hold this roach. Give me your blade.’

She looked to the side. The train had drawn out of the station. Now the shimmering river was close and she could see across the water to the Monument, its bright gold head ablaze on the tall column and behind it the lid and spires of St Paul’s on a hill of low silver-blue towers. She stood unsteadily, hesitating at every intrusion of the city passing beside the train. She raised the knife to strike the cushion. They pulled into Waterloo.

‘I hate these stopping trains,’ she said, and put the knife down.

The compartment door opened, and a woman with a shopping basket got in. Murf snatched the knife and slipped it beneath his shirt.

‘It’s the last hit.’ Brodie gave him the cigarette.

‘This is a non-smoker,’ said the woman. She sniffed, muttered and threw down the window.

‘Hoo!’ Murf leaped to the door, laughing crazily. He unlocked it and kicked it open. They were crossing Hungerford Bridge — the trestles banged, making the iron spans ring; below, the river was molten with sunlight.

The woman seized her shopping basket.

‘Piss off!’ said Murf and pointed to the open door.

The woman screamed and rocked back in her seat, and she stayed in this position, almost on her back — her feet raised — until they drew into Charing Cross.

‘I’m going to report you,’ the woman said on the platform.

Murf lifted two fingers at her, and they hurried past her, laughing.

In the Strand, Brodie said, ‘How much money have we got?’

‘Sixty p.’

‘I know where we can double it. Come on.’

They crossed the Strand and scuffed into the Crystal Room, an amusement arcade, making for the one-armed bandits. Side by side, they fed pennies into the machines, yanking the handles, watching the fruit spin. Near them, pin-tables coughed and came alight.

Murf said, ‘Cherries!’

There was a clatter, three pence rattled into the metal dish; Murf clawed it out and moved to a new machine, while Brodie continued to tug on hers. At the end of several minutes they counted their coins.

‘Rubbish,’ said Brodie. ‘Twenty-eight p.’

They went over to a machine with shifting trays and slides that nudged clusters of pennies into a chute. They fed nine in and won two very black ones. They lost five pence trying to raise a cigarette lighter with a metal claw. Then they went back to the one-armed bandits and lost all but seven pence.

‘Not a sausage,’ said Murf.

‘It’s fixed.’

‘I know where we can double it, she says. Bugger it,’ said Murf. He went to a tall machine with a rifle on a revolving stand. He put in his coin and began firing — tunk, tunk: bells rang, the scoring wheel spun, the lights flashed and boys playing machines nearby wandered over to see what the commotion was.

‘Look at the cowboy,’ said an old man, holding a ragged parcel in his arms.

‘Dead easy,’ said Murf, and picked off the last object, a wheeling tin bird with a light bulb on its wing.

The old man said, ‘You got a free game coming to you.’

‘It’s all yours, dad,’ said Murf.

‘Rather have the shilling.’

They weighed themselves with the last two pence — ‘We’re skint,’ said Murf, posting the coin — and set off, along the Strand to Trafalgar Square.

At the base of Nelson’s column Murf craned his neck for a look at the standing figure on top. He squinted as if solving a problem, then said, ‘I reckon you could do it. You could blow up this bitch beautyful if you legged it right.’

They wandered around the square, tiny in the basin of dark stone, the looming masonry. The buses circled, and on one of them, Mr Gawber looked down. He saw flocks of filthy pigeons, and people who looked like pigeons; he liked the size, the proportions of the square, and saw the people penned, sunning themselves, scaring the pigeons. It was the people who needed a scare: their idleness made this noble place a dago plaza. Two grubby ones were palavering under Napier. The panic would make them see, the crash would teach them. His bus turned into St Martin’s Place; he whispered his memo; ‘Lunch. Picture insurance. Arrow.’

Murf and Brodie speculated on the square. Murf said he could bring down the Admiralty Arch by blasting away the central supports with plastic explosive — ‘then nip on a Number One bus.’ Two well-placed charges were all that were needed to launch the colonnaded porch of the National Gallery across the square. Brodie, still giddy from the cigarette, saw the steeple of St Martin’s church toppling as Murf described how he’d bomb the pillars. Or an underground charge, a parcel of nitro in the tube station might do the trick, cause an earthquake in the Bakerloo cellar that would send the whole of South Africa House sprawling: they saw it leap in all directions, airborne columns, chunks of marble, glass splinters, all this hugeness in whirling motion. They saw it rising, in smithereens, but nothing more — not the levelling, the smoke: they could not peer beyond the explosion to the flat acres of still rubble and all the dead.

Up Cockspur Street to Pall Mall they swung along, elated, envisioning bursting buildings. They stopped before the Athenaeum, where dark-suited men were going into lunch. Murf said, ‘Wouldn’t that go beautyful, all them posts crashing —’

Brodie’s eyes drummed the wobbling pillars outward, drew the flaming rooms into the sky with cart-wheeling men and spinning hats, and the great gold statue pitching forward, dissolving to a sprinkle of dust, and all the paving stones in Waterloo Place flying.

‘London’s great.’

‘Fantastic.’

It was the only way they could possess the city, by reducing it to shattered pieces. Exploded, in motion, it was theirs. The grandest buildings held them, because in that grandeur, in all the complication ornateness required, were secret corners for bombs. Nothing that could not be raised with a tremendous noise had any interest for them: they celebrated this part of London. They walked up to Piccadilly Circus, sharing another cigarette; then over to the Eros statue where they squatted among the youths with rucksacks and street guides who were roosting and stretching their necks like heavy birds.

‘I got it,’ said Murf. ‘There must be fifty or a hundred heads here. Let’s sell some of that pot. We could get a fiver at least.’

‘No.’ Brodie watched the circus spin, a cascade of lanterns and lighted tubes: the Magic Roundabout — it was here, among the freaks, the centre of London, her life, the world. She felt a kinship with everyone who chose to sit here by the statue.

‘Look, we don’t have any money.’

‘I don’t want any. I hate the shit.’ Brodie turned her pale querying face on the others who sat on the steps. They were perfect to her. She saw a girl with a tattoo: a sister.

‘You can walk back to Deptford,’ said Murf. Brodie yawned. He said, ‘Come on, let’s hustle some cash.’

‘I’d rather hang out,’ said Brodie.

‘Boom widdy-widdy.’

They sat, not speaking, for ten minutes.

Murf said, ‘I’m sick of hanging out.’

‘You’re a real pain.’

‘Me arse hurts. And what about the letter?’

‘I’ve got the stupid thing.’

‘I wish we had some money.’

‘Money, money,’ said Brodie. ‘I can get money — anytime I want.’

Murf grunted.

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘Yeah, every day.’ He grunted again. ‘I hate this poxy place.’

‘Follow me.’

They walked to Berkeley Square where, at the corner of Bru-ton Street, they paused to gape at the Rolls Royce showroom. A man was driving a Rolls into the square, a salesman in the street mimicking a traffic policeman, stopping the flow of cars so that the driver could negotiate his way off the pavement. Murf had been fretful since leaving Piccadilly, sucking his teeth at the expensive shops and complaining about Hood for only giving them a pound, cursing the machines at the Crystal Room for swallowing the last of their money. When he saw the cobalt blue Rolls and the plump face at the wheel he began to pant. The salesman stuck out his hand, demanding room for the bulky boat-like car.

‘Bastard!’ screamed Murf, holding his fists up to his ears. He was twitching with rage, and hopping, as if he was a small instrument of nerve strung on bone. He wanted to slash the tyres, burn the car, rip the man. He saw money lumbering slowly past his mouth, taunting him. ‘I’d like to brick that fucker,’ he said, but only Brodie heard him. He screamed again at a higher pitch, ‘Bastard!’

‘You crack me up,’ said Brodie. Murf was still trembling as they walked to the lower end of the square. Brodie tore the letter open and dropped the smaller envelope into the pillar box in front of the bank, then led Murf across the square.

A young man in a fawn-coloured suit and two pretty girls reclined on the grass sharing a bottle of champagne and food from a small basket.

Murf approached the picnicking group. He stiffened: ‘Bastards!’

The man got to his feet and turned his champagne glass slowly by its stem, eyeing Murf. The girls stopped eating. Murf stared at them, then pushed at his ears.

Brodie took his hand. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m going to flash it.’ He fumbled with his buckle.

Brodie giggled. ‘Let’s go,’ she said, and pulled him away.

They walked up the west side of the square and along Hill Street. Murf said, ‘If I ever see that fucker in Deptford I’ll brick him.’

‘It’s around here somewhere,’ said Brodie. She repeated the house numbers, then stopped. ‘There.’

‘What’s this supposed to be?’

‘Money. I know the old girl who lives here.’

‘You been here before?’

‘Lots of times,’ said Brodie. ‘Come on.’

‘I ain’t going in,’ said Murf quickly. He looked anxious and there was a note of appeal in his voice.

‘Why not?’ Brodie went up the steps and pointed her finger at the bell.

‘No,’ said Murf. ‘Don’t.’

‘Look at him!’

Murf’s face registered surprise and fear as Brodie darted her finger against the bell; and he quailed as he heard its distant purr in the enormous house.

8

‘Fuck it,’ said Lady Arrow, hearing the bell go and banging her fist so hard on the desk-top a silver snuff-box the shape of a beetle jumped open and spilled some of its fine dark powder over her papers, the pages of a financial statement. She pushed her work aside and stood up, still cursing. But her diction shaved obscenity from the words; she enunciated them overprecisely and with the wrong stress, as if speaking a foreign language from a phrase book.

She was a grey large-boned woman and had a long lined face, a look of coarsened hauteur with highlights of fatigue. Her hair was drawn back tightly across her skull and fixed behind with a ribbon of ragged velvet. She was not pretty, she made no attempt to appear so, she had a disregard even for neatness, she was not clean; she was very tall. The height that in another woman would be an embarrassment, causing an awkward stoop, Lady Arrow gave its full length which was well over six feet; and she could accentuate it by holding her head up and slightly back, giving herself another inch. She would appear clumsy, but her clumsiness intimidated: she was an insulting size.

She wore a roughly-woven smock, open at the throat and bound at the waist by an expensive piece of silk rope; a pair of crushed slippers, a man’s watch. Although her hands were large her fingernails, which were bitten to the quick, gave her fingers the blunt stubby look of garden tools; those of her right hand were smudged with inkstains, those of her left with traces of snuff, the same shade that darkened her nostrils and now her financial statement. These hands were active, limbering and foraging, making repeated clutchings. She allowed them this movement and she seemed at times, as she watched them closing on her lap, like a strangler practising alone in a room.

Lady Arrow was a collector. It was from her mother, an early campaigner for women’s rights — there was a statue of her, flourishing a bronze banner, in a London park — that she got her height and interest, as a girl, in social justice. Her father, a Labour member of Parliament, had been an amateur art historian — some of his collection was still in the house, as he had left it, now dusty and much neglected; the rest was in museums on permanent loan. She had inherited his taste for acquisition but not his eye. Though she dramatized it by exaggerating her early unhappiness, it had been a close family, a secure and humane upbringing; and yet the family traits, combined in Lady Arrow, formed something new. The result was a greed for possession, not of objects but of people. She had always believed that she was carrying on a family tradition; she was a proprietress of fame. Her money mattered: the assurance of her wealth blinded her to difference and allowed her a vulgarity that was beyond affectation. It also made her unassailable. She said the opposite. She spoke of the difficulty of being rich, the impossibility of anyone understanding her except the very poor, with whom she felt a special kinship.

It was a unique arrogance of emotion, the sentimental belief that both great wealth and the distress of poverty granted a simplicity of feeling. To be rich or poor from birth was to know a kind of bravery, and Lady Arrow insisted that rich and poor alike enjoyed a common scepticism; neither experienced true shock or the deception of awe; they were hidden, immovable and did most to turn the world. Lady Arrow’s belief was a wish mingled with envy: in a restaurant she would see waiters hurrying to the kitchen laughing, whispering, perhaps mocking, and she would want to leave her table of chinless companions and join those waiters. She envied them their confident humour, and she could share it — she frequently did at her own lunch parties on Hill Street — because they shared an enemy. The middle-class threatened both — selfish, predatory, unprincipled, artless, exposed and lacking any warmth; drooling and cowardly in the most wolfish way. They were the mob — the accountants in Lewisham, the parvenus in Barnes, the trend-spotters in Islington, the predictable Guardian readers in their Basingstoke bungalows; she feared the children most, their enamelled souls, all their hunger and outrage.

The poor could not be outraged, nor could the rich be moved. Her mother had described to her the first night of Pygmalion (Shaw had been to Hill Street, the play was a great favourite in the family), when, at Liza’s sharp reply ‘Not bloody likely’ the whole theatre had suddenly broken into applause — it was joy, relief, a cheer for vitality. Lady Arrow herself, on the radio programme Any Questions?, had used the word ‘fuck’, pronouncing it in her usual way, as if she was conjugating a German verb. She was the first to do so, and there was a hush, but there was no applause. She was not asked back to the show, and later another man, a mediocre drama critic, claimed credit for first saying the word. The BBC, dominated by the wolfish middle-classes, had demanded an apology. Lady Arrow refused and only hoped that she had wounded them or terrorized them in some practical way.

She would not be ordered by them, or anyone. The privilege of ownership was hers, by right, amounting itself almost to a duty: she was the collector. But the proprietorial instinct extended beyond mere objects, the assembling of pictures or jars in a room catalogued and gaped at. She had known from an early age that she could do anything she wished: the vision excluded nothing. It encompassed the country which, when she first knew this, was nearly the world. So she took up — not causes, but those who promoted them, not ideas but those who held the ideas, not action but those who acted. She chose the people with swift skill, like fruit tested for ripeness with a pinch. It was a deliberate campaign of recruitment and she carried it out with persuasive gusto. She offered what she believed to be the considerable protection of her friendship, and sometimes temporary shelter, to the mother and child fleeing a mistake, the working-class poet putting a book together, the rising painter, or simply the man who had come to mend the pipes and agreed to stay the night. She made no distinction between friends and lovers, men and women: she slept with both and found a wicked delight in teaching an anxious girl the narrow pleasure of her own sexuality, introducing her to the taste with her foraging fingers and watching her surprise — the small, astonished, moonlit, frightened face.

She recruited them, broke them in with sexual tutoring, then paraded them at her lunch parties — the handyman, the African refugee, the poet, the Welsh Buddhist, the ex-convict, the terrorist, the actress, the shy girl she had loved the night before. And she invited her own contemporaries for witness — the successful, the powerful, the very rich: golden pigs, balding mice. There in her drawing room the Minister of Home Affairs might meet a sullen young man and never guess that the boy had, a few weeks before, been his prisoner in a London jail. To the eminent lady biographer of a dead queen she would say, ‘Jim and I have been reading your book with enormous pleasure, haven’t we, Jim?’, and the taxi-driver Lady Arrow had manfully seduced would nod, avoiding the biographer’s eyes. Later, Jim might gain courage and say to a guest, ‘I once had a fare from Lord Snowdon — seemed a nice bloke.’ Thieves and the people they burgled, bombers and their intended victims, agitators and their effigies in flesh and blood, the morally sententious and their mockers — how were they to know? — mingled freely, met and chatted in the Hill Street house, like parents and children. She tolerated one and encouraged the other, for she saw her role as essentially maternal: they were hers.

On the piano there were three framed photographs — her husbands in a curious sequence of age. The first, a painter, had been quite old — she married him when she was nineteen — the next a middle-aged banker, and the last, whom she had married in her own middle age, fairly young, a television director. The photographs might have shown her father, her brother, her son — they didn’t match her. But the three marriages had given her an even greater profusion of relatives, an extended family that verged on the tribal. This, taken with her aristocratic habit of referring to famous people with great casualness as her relations — ‘He’s supposed to be a cousin of mine,’ she would say of a man in the news — made it seem as if there was no one on whom she did not have some claim. Those whom she could not prove a relation either by marriage or blood, she collected in other ways, either confronting them with memorable directness (‘I want to get something straight between you and me, my darling’) or striking up occasional liaisons which she alluded to by saying — and it might be an African prime minister — ‘He’s an old boyfriend of mine!’ in that loud silencing voice.

There were always tragedies, disappearances, desperate phone-calls at odd hours. She understood: the poor were seized by the same tide as the rich, and jailed, or their friends were. She knew: she was a regular visitor to prisons. Yet that had started in the most conventional way, out of nervous concern, as a duty, her reply to the cautious gentility that led others to visit the sick in hospital wards, the lame and the blind, Chelsea pensioners and the like. Lady Arrow set off in a different direction, to Wormwood Scrubs and Pentonville. She brought gifts of cigarettes and fruit and spent afternoons helping the convicts with lessons from correspondence courses. She organized drama groups: lifers at the Scrubs put on Conrad’s stage-version of The Secret Agent (Lady Arrow played Winnie), Holloway did Beckett and Brecht, Brixton a Christmas pantomime. She had plans — for a murderer to play a murderer, a thief to play a thief; to do The Importance of Being Earnest with the girls at Holloway, herself as Lady Bracknell; and lately she had thought of Shadow of a Gunman done by IRA prisoners in Wandsworth. The convicts were released and she saw them at her house, those lunch parties. She was uncritical, helpful, attentive, welcoming; she performed, seeing herself as a character in an unwritten novel by someone like Iris Murdoch, and while she remembered any slight with unexampled malice she invited dependency for the way it obliged the dependent and so she could say without risking contradiction, ‘You can’t refuse me — you’re one of the family!’

She brought her pondering hands to the level of the doorknob, pulled it and crossed the landing. At the foot of the stairs, Mrs Pount, her cleaning woman, held the front door open a crack. Mrs Pount was plump, clean, correct and wore a floppy white cap which she tugged, peering through the crack, as if the cap was a badge of authority empowering her to turn away callers.

‘Two youngsters to see you, ma’am.’

‘Is it urgent?’

Mrs Pount muttered to them, then turned her face to Lady Arrow, towering at the top of the stairs: ‘They say no.’

‘Then send them up,’ shouted Lady Arrow.

Brodie and Murf crept past Mrs Pount into the house, and as if sensing the vastness of the place and startled by their movements repeated in the several mirrors — corridors of themselves prowling towards gilt frames — they bent slightly and hurried forward. Murf held his head down and seemed to paddle sideways to the stairs. Brodie pawed a greeting to the tall woman standing by a palm in a keg who, with the sun behind her and her face in the shadow was unreadable.

‘Dear Brodie!’ said Lady Arrow, watching the two ascend, pulling themselves up on the banister and kicking the carpet. It had always interested Lady Arrow to see how slowly strangers moved in her house, how uncertainly in all that space, as if they had plunged from the entry-way into a wide hole and had to fight their way up a vertical wall. She had met Brodie at Holloway, and had found her careless, intelligent and pretty; she had listened with horror to Brodie’s story of her parents, her ordeal — dreadful, and yet like her own, disturbing. She too had suffered. In the prison the girl had shown little interest, but her visits since to Hill Street had given Lady Arrow encouragement, and she longed for her in a way that made her feel old and foolish and vulnerable.

She wrapped a long arm around Brodie and hugged her warmly. ‘So sweet of you to come — and who is your charming friend?’

‘Murf,’ said Brodie. ‘He’s scared.’

Hearing his name, Murf drew back. He felt the woman’s gaze bump the top of his head and he stepped back to take her in. But after a single glance he looked down again at his feet.

‘Come in and sit down,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘You both look exhausted.’

She threw open the doors, making more light and space, another vastness from the vastness of the landing. She sat and put her legs out and said, ‘Now I want you to tell me what you’ve been doing. I haven’t seen you for ages.’

Brodie took a seat near her, holding a cushion for balance. Murf looked lost. He fled to a chair some distance away and sat on the edge gingerly, as if he feared it might collapse; his knees were together, there was a look of worry on his face, and his hands made the feeding gestures of smoking, his fingers straying to his mouth.

Lady Arrow said, ‘Walking the streets! I suppose that’s what you’ve been doing — walking the streets!’

‘Here and there,’ said Murf. But he choked on it. He cleared his throat and repeated it softly.

‘We had to come up this way,’ said Brodie. ‘I reckoned we should pop in and say hello.’

‘I’m so glad you did. But you caught me on one of my busy days.’ She waved her hand at the desk. ‘Look at all those letters. And every one of them wants a reply. It’s all rubbish. What do you do on your busy days, Murf?’

‘Me?’ He swallowed. ‘Sit around.’

‘Usually we just hang out,’ said Brodie.

‘Yeah, listen to the radio,’ said Murf.

Lady Arrow said, ‘I thought only blind people listened to the radio.’

Murf looked away wildly, as if searching for a reply, and finally fixed his anxious eyes on the row of photographs propped on the piano.

‘Them are all her husbands,’ said Brodie.

Murf gave a grunt of surprise. He said, ‘Free?’

‘Free, free!’ said Lady Arrow, raking her thighs with her fingers. ‘You’re priceless, Murf. How many times have you been married?’

Murf shook his head. ‘But I lived with a bird once, in Penge it was. Couple of years ago. She was under-age, and then I was had up — threatenin’ behaviour, utterin’ menaces and —’ He stopped abruptly, pushed at his ears and said nothing more.

‘Young people are so sensible. How I envy you!’ She stared at Murf, then at Brodie. ‘Do you know how lucky you are?’

Brodie hunched and locked her hands around the cushion.

‘Do you?’

Murf wagged his head, neither yes nor no.

‘You are,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘Extremely lucky.’

Brodie said, ‘I won five p at one of them amusement arcades. Fruit machine.’

‘Good for you,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘I do envy you. I’m always going by those places — they look so cheerful and scruffy. I went in once, but it wasn’t much fun. The machines are way down here’ — she measured with her hand — ‘they’re not made for freaks like me. I had to hunch so.’

‘Murf won a free game on the rifle range.’

‘Did you?’ said Lady Arrow loudly.

Murf sniffed and cleared his throat again, but he did not speak. He saw the woman’s long face smiling at him and he looked away.

Brodie said, ‘Been over to Block B?’

‘Holloway?’ said Lady Arrow. ‘Let me see. This is August — June, I went in June. That was for the Brecht — it went down wonderfully. Can’t you just see me as Mother Courage? All the girls were asking about you — you were so popular. You really must go back.’

‘No fear,’ said Brodie. ‘I hate that place.’

‘But you have ever so many friends there.’

Brodie was laughing, a little girl’s mirth, chirp and hiccup: ‘Back to the nick!’

‘Don’t think of it like that. I’m doing Beckett with the girls now — it’s super fun. Believe me, England’s prisons are full of splendid people.’

Murf said, ‘And bent ones.’

‘That’s just a word they use,’ said Lady Arrow.

‘Straight up,’ said Murf. ‘Mate of mine came out of the slammer with a crimp.’ He looked at Brodie. ‘Arfa — he’s crimped.’

Brodie shuddered and made her goofy face. ‘Back to the nick! No thanks, I’ll stay where I am.’

‘Where are you living at the moment?’

‘Deptford way,’ said Brodie.

‘Deptford!’ said Lady Arrow, tasting the word, as if Brodie had said Samarkand. ‘Deptford!’

‘It’s not too bad,’ said Brodie.

‘Yeah,’ said Murf. ‘It’s okay.’

‘Deptford! Marlowe was stabbed there — in a pub.’

Murf said, ‘Well, it’s a rough area.’

‘Christopher Marlowe,’ said Lady Arrow.

‘I got no time for them pubs,’ said Brodie.

‘Worse than Penge,’ said Murf.

Lady Arrow smiled and flexed her hands. She was delighted, but only her fingers showed it. She said, ‘Deptford is near Blackheath, is it not?’

‘No,’ said Brodie.

‘I’m sure it is.’

Murf said, ‘Black’eaf’s in Kent, something like that.’

‘Shooter’s Hill way,’ said Brodie.

‘I’m going out there some time soon,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘A friend has just taken Mortimer Lodge. Perhaps you know her. Araba Nightwing, the actress? Perhaps not.’

‘Is she on telly?’ asked Murf.

‘She does quite a lot of television, but she’s in a West End play at the moment. Charming girl, very committed, very involved. You must have read about her campaign for banning Punch and Judy shows. She’s going to play Peter Pan this Christmas — it’s quite a feather in her cap. Which, I should say, is a good cloth cap and bright red. She’s a Trot.’ Lady Arrow waited for a reaction, but Brodie and Murf only fidgeted. ‘So many of the actors are, you know — Trots. I say, what do you think of this bomb business?’

Brodie gnawed at her lips, bringing a pinkness to them. She said, ‘Interesting.’

‘Isn’t it?’

Murf glanced at Brodie with a dumb furtiveness and saw her swallowing a smile, pursing her pink lips. He said, ‘Not half.’

Lady Arrow said, ‘The Old Bailey, and another in Oxford Street, and the Stock Exchange. All the right targets. And Victoria, too.’

Murf looked again at Brodie, then lowered his eyes.

‘And Euston,’ said Brodie.

‘No,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘I’m sure you’re mistaken.’

‘Straight up,’ said Murf.

‘Was there one at Euston? I had no idea.’

‘Blew up some lockers,’ said Brodie. ‘Where you put your cases.’

‘But I have no cases,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘I travel with a carrier bag. I throw in my plastic mac and a bottle of Cyprus sherry and I’m off.’

‘Did a lot of damage,’ said Brodie, persisting.

‘A ten-pounder,’ said Murf. ‘Legged to a clock.’

‘I don’t remember that one,’ said Lady Arrow.

‘June fourteenth,’ said Brodie. ‘Well, around then.’

‘We were doing the Brecht. I didn’t notice — we were working flat out. I can hardly keep up with all these explosions,’ said Lady Arrow, sitting up and drawing in her long legs. ‘But do you know what I say when I hear about them?’

Murf stared.

‘Do you?’

Murf cleared his throat and wagged his head non-committally as he had when she’d said, ‘Do you know how lucky you are?’

Lady Arrow said in her harsh trumpeting voice, ‘I say, “Jolly good luck to them!” That’s just what I say.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘What do you say?’

‘Something like that,’ said Murf.

‘Murf’s got a mate in the Provos,’ said Brodie.

‘Not exactly a mate. More a friend, like.’

‘That’s just what this country needs,’ said Lady Arrow, continuing. ‘A good shaking up, root and branch, the whole business. Oh, I know there are some people who don’t approve of the means. Stockbrokers, people in the City, all the money men.’ She shook her head. ‘No, I’m sorry, but they’re sadly mistaken. There’s only one way to change this old country.’

While she spoke, Murf’s head sank to the level of his shoulders, his ear-ring brushed his collar bone, and he eyed Lady Arrow with keen apprehension. Brodie too, crouched with an expressive alertness, as if she had had a whiff of danger. Lady Arrow was talking fast and as she continued she sat straighter in her chair, gaining height; Brodie and Murf drew away, as if the tall ranting woman was ganging up on them.

‘— They call them murderers, barbarians, assassins, terrorists!’ Lady Arrow threw out her chest and the bracelets jangled on her gesturing arm when, conspiratorially she hissed, ‘Don’t you see? We are the terrorists!’

That ‘we’, so easily given, did not appear to include Brodie and Murf. They watched the woman, waiting for her to erupt again.

But Lady Arrow, beaming with triumph, did not see how she had silenced them. She took the beetle-shaped box and tapped it lightly on the back of her hand, then said, ‘Snuff?’

Brodie said no. Murf still stared.

Lady Arrow lifted her hand and drew the snuff into her nostrils with an energetic snort, working the back of her hand and her fingers against her nose. She gave a slight sob but did not sneeze. She saw how the two were watching her; she said, ‘When are you going to invite me to Deptford?’

‘You wouldn’t want to go there,’ said Brodie.

‘But I would!’

‘Maybe when it’s fixed up,’ said Murf.

‘Don’t do that. Don’t do a thing to it. You’ll just fuck it up —’

Murf’s eyes widened, his mouth fell open. His face then tightened into seriousness. He heard but he did not understand.

‘— I want to see it the way it is.’

‘It wants to be toshed up,’ said Murf. ‘But the trouble is with toshers — they’re all villains.’

‘Viwuns,’ said Brodie, and made a face. ‘Yeah, he’s right. There’s nothing in it. In the house.’

‘But there’s nothing here either,’ said Lady Arrow.

Brodie frowned. Murf said, ‘This is quite a nice set-up.’

‘Everything — it’s nothing! They’re the same. This room is desperately commonplace. It might be absolutely bare.’ She dismissed it all with a sweep of her arm: the marble fireplace, the bust wearing a crushed felt hat, the paintings stacked against the wall, the piano, the glass case of Chinese jars, the desk with its clutter of papers, the tall drapes, the shelves and shelves of books, and the room itself with its high delicate coping of plaster, the moulding of roses and trailing leaves. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I know because I have everything. It doesn’t amount to a row of pins — all this is nothing. Take it, take anything you like.’

‘That’s what I was wondering,’ said Brodie.

But Lady Arrow was on her feet. ‘Can I interest you in a genuine Jacobean inkstand — notice the engraving?’ She flourished it. ‘Or this splendid bust — he’s supposed to be an uncle of mine. Take it if you can carry it. And the paintings — there’s a Turner watercolour somewhere in the middle of that stack. Come now, Murf, haven’t you always wanted a piece of Wedgwood?’ She handed a blue pillbox to Murf and looked at Brodie for approval.

Murf held the pillbox up to the light, studied it and then carried it to Brodie. She took it and touched it with disappointment.

‘In that amusement arcade, um, I won five p.’ Brodie juggled the pillbox nervously. ‘But then I lost the lot.’

‘Not a sausage,’ said Murf.

‘Do you think we could have a few quid?’

‘A loan, sort of,’ said Murf.

Lady Arrow put her hands on her hips and said, ‘Would you believe it? I haven’t got a penny. I never have cash. It’s so awkward to carry around.’

Murf said, ‘What we do is we usually spend it.’

‘Maybe just the trainfare,’ said Brodie. ‘That’s forty p for both of us.’

Lady Arrow went to the desk and slapped the papers. ‘Not a penny.’

‘That really freaks me out,’ said Brodie.

‘Funny,’ said Murf showing the stained pegs of his teeth.

‘I know what we can do,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘Let’s ask Mrs Pount. She’s always got money. She won’t mind.’

Mrs Pount was buzzed. She entered the room timidly, in her white cap, twisting the buttons on her cardigan in expectation.

‘I say, Mrs Pount, do you have a quid or two you could give my friends here? Of course, I’ll pay you back.’

Mrs Pount took a purse from the stretched pocket of her cardigan and opened it slowly. She poked in it with her fingers, saying nothing.

Lady Arrow said, ‘And I can give you back that other loan at the same time. We’ll settle up. Now don’t leave yourself short.’

‘Here,’ said the old woman. She unfolded a pound note and gave it to Lady Arrow. As she did so the front doorbell rang. She said, ‘I’ll get that,’ and left the room, snapping her purse shut.

Lady Arrow held the pound in Brodie’s face. ‘When are you going to invite me down?’

Brodie said, ‘You’ll hate it. It’s not like this.’

‘If it’s not then I’ll adore it.’

Brodie reached for the pound, but Lady Arrow moved it away, and waving it and smiling wickedly she said, ‘When?’

‘Anytime you want,’ said Brodie. She pinched the pound.

‘You didn’t have to say that,’ said Lady Arrow, letting go.

At the door Mrs Pount said, ‘It’s for you, ma’am. Mister Gawber.’

‘That means you must go, my dears,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘But please leave your telephone number.’

Brodie scrawled the number on a pad and left, giggling to Murf.

Mr Gawber paused on the staircase to let them pass. He said cheerfully, ‘Good afternoon!’

The door slammed on their laughter, ending it with a thud.

‘You got my message,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘I was up to my neck in financial statements.’

Mr Gawber took a chair and when Lady Arrow seated herself behind the desk he said, ‘I chased up those claims forms. It seems they’ll have to conduct an investigation of their own as well as get a police report.’

‘Let them,’ said Lady Arrow crisply. ‘But frankly I am in no mood to put in a claim.’

Opening his briefcase, Mr Gawber said, ‘Here they are. You sign at the bottom. I’ll do the rest.’ But he did not hand them over. He held the papers away from her and said, ‘It would be ill-advised for you not to put in a claim. It was a valuable item, and I’m worried about your cash-flow.’

‘Mister Gawber,’ said Lady Arrow flinging out her long arm and seizing the papers, ‘I have told you before, I have no wish to die solvent.’

‘I’m so glad you said that,’ said Mr Gawber.

9

‘Why do you take this stuff?’ she asked the first time, watching Hood roll a pill of sticky opium in his fingers.

‘Because I don’t dream.’ But here in this brown bead he held up the colours of love, a prism of bravery, a bath of warm feathers, an erotic beak, long cinnamon-scented wings, and a flight under diamonds to Guatemala.

‘Ron never did either.’ She pouted sadly and a frightened tearful look came into her eyes. He thought she was going to say more — she opened her mouth but expelled only a sigh. Now she was cautious when she mentioned her murdered husband.

Hood understood that she had disliked and feared Weech and had wanted him dead. But now that he was dead she felt obligated — accused — by that dislike, as if she was responsible for his death. There was no grief in her, only a tremble of resentment, half sadness, half anger, because she had her wish. She was left alone with the guilt, as empty and resourceless as if she had been cursed. She had no friends; she had a house furnished with stolen objects and two rooms of loot she had never seen; a child with blotchy legs whom she seemed at times to look upon as an enemy, and a dread that made her wakeful — that she was being punished for the way she had felt about her husband.

She trusted Hood in a hopeless way, asking nothing, offering nothing, resigned to his attentions, like an orphan taken up by a strange parent. Hood had waited for her to reveal some aspect of support — a mother somewhere she might return to, an old boyfriend she could live with. But she was alone, her family was dead, she had no plans. Having come to her with promises he could not leave her, for though she did not react to him — ‘You again,’ she said flatly, when he dropped in — he knew that to stop seeing her would be to deprive her of opium, withdraw her sleep. That desertion would ruin her.

He had succeeded with her so far because he had shown her how to sleep: a pellet of opium while the child napped upstairs. She was no smoker — she couldn’t handle a cigarette lightly enough; she fellated it with her lips and missed the smoke. But the brown beads brought dreams to her trance of exhaustion. Hood sat and saw the liveliness on her mouth, the relaxation of the drug, a chromatic slumber that induced in her a sense of well-being, even cheerfulness, as if in her sleep she was complimented. That was opium, the imagination flattered. The drug was all praise. Hood said, ‘It’s the only way to fly.’

‘You could do me while I’m asleep,’ she said the third time, lying on the sofa and tugging down the hem of her skirt and smoothing her knees with a kind of absent-minded innocence.

‘I’d rather look at you.’

‘I’m not much to look at. My tits don’t stick out. That’s what Ron used to say.’

‘They’re not supposed to stick out.’ Hood licked the pellet and put it in her mouth. He lingered at it, making it a sexual suggestion, this transfer from his mouth to hers.

She held the pellet against her cheek like a gum-ball. ‘Hey, when I’m asleep, don’t touch me, okay? Just don’t touch me.’

‘All right, Mrs Weech,’ he said.

‘And don’t call me that.’ Her name was Lorna, but Hood never said it. It sounded too much like forlorn, alone.

She slept, and he was aroused. He lay his head on her stomach and waited until she woke.

The drug restored her, gave her rest, removed suspicion from her mind, and yet she said she still never slept at night. She told Hood how she lay awake on her bed, sometimes going downstairs in the dark and washing all the floors in the hope of tiring herself so she could sleep: and he imagined her pounding her mop in the hall or standing alone in her small kitchen before the black window. He wondered if by killing her husband he had inflicted a fatal wound on her memory. But it was not that at all, not the guilty feeling of bewildered resentment that kept her awake. The two locked rooms worried her. She speculated on what they contained — burglars’ loot, forbidden things, a whole cupboard of snatched purses, parcels she’d seen her husband sneak in with, boxes he’d dragged upstairs, danger. Weech had been secretive: his thievery was a mystery to her, but all the more sinister for that. She was afraid it would be discovered by the police and she would be thrown into prison and the child taken away from her. She knew nothing of trials; arrest meant years of solitary confinement in a cage, helping police with their inquiries. She pleaded with Hood to help her.

He told her not to worry. He said, ‘I know where we can stash it.’

‘But the rooms are locked.’

‘So we’ll unlock them.’

‘There’s no keys. Ron was robbed!’

‘We’ll unlock them with a crowbar.’

He did not dare use the keys he’d taken from Weech’s pocket. The wallet, the money: he had been too ashamed to think of a lie, a pretext for giving them back to her. He unscrewed the plates from the locks and burst the mechanisms with a hammer. The bolts flew. He kicked open the door to the first room.

‘Oh, God, what do we do with all this clobber?’ The sight of the stack of new televisions, the radios, the crates of cigarettes and whisky alarmed her. She saw a reason for her worry. She stomped the floor and swore and belched with fear. She was less frightened by the two steel trunks in the second room: Hood didn’t open them. She said, ‘It’s probably clothes.’

‘This is going to take some doing,’ said Hood. ‘It’s a lot to shift. But where did it all come from?’

‘You know — you’re one of them.’

‘I almost forgot,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to get a truck. I’ll need help.’

The ice-cream van with its faded signs SUPERTONY and MIND THAT CHILD had been parked in Albacore Crescent since the night Mayo had come back with the painting. Every day — it was one of his family chores — Murf started it up to charge the battery, because it was so seldom driven. Hood went to the house.

He found Murf with a small nervous man he had never seen before. Seeing Hood the man shuffled his feet and coughed. He wore buckled sandals and torn socks and a greasy necktie; his breast pocket bulged with pens. He had been smoking with Murf, and Hood saw the man drop a marijuana roach behind him and find it with his heel and crush it into the floor.

‘Who’s your friend?’

‘This here’s Arfa,’ said Murf. ‘Arfa Muncie.’

‘Start talking, Muncie.’

‘Go ahead.’ Murf sniggered. ‘The great Arfa.’

Muncie started, then coughed and cleared his throat. He looked terrified. ‘Me? I run the second-hand shop down the road. Victoriana. You must have seen the sign.’

‘The only sign I see is “Palace Are Wankers”,’ said Hood.

‘I’m a Chelsea supporter,’ said Muncie. ‘Him, he’s for Arsenal.’

‘Arsenal rule,’ said Murf, and winked at Hood.

‘Cut the shit,’ said Hood. ‘What do you want?’

‘Arfa wants to buy that picture,’ said Murf.

‘What picture?’

‘The, um, poxy one upstairs.’

‘I’ll give you a tenner for it,’ said Muncie eagerly. ‘Too bad it don’t have a frame. Ones with them gold frames fetch up to twenty-five. More sometimes. Depends if they’re chipped.’

‘It’s not for sale,’ said Hood.

‘Give you another ten bob,’ said Muncie. ‘Okay, fifteen.’

‘You’re going to give me a case of worms if you keep that up.’

‘He was just asking,’ said Murf, seeing Hood’s face darken.

‘Get out,’ said Hood to Muncie. Muncie backed to the door and left. Hood turned to Murf. ‘You really have your head up your ass.’

‘Leave me alone.’

‘Sorry, I’ve got a job for you, sport.’

Hood explained what he wanted Murf to do. Murf refused. But Hood had a threat: he would tell Mayo that Murf was planning to sell her painting to his friend Muncie for ten pounds. Murf agreed and sulked until nightfall. In darkness they went to Lorna’s house and loaded the ice-cream van. Five trips were necessary, but Murf was interested, panting, the weight of the cases making him bow-legged as he tramped back and forth. ‘There’s more and all,’ he kept saying. ‘It’s fucking diabolical.’ Diabowicoo: he meant it; it was the first hint he’d had that Hood was mixed up in something unlawful. Until then, he had been antagonized by Hood’s mocking abuse; he suspected him of being an intruder. Hood jeered at him and he never had a reply. But he was impressed by the amount of loot and looked upon Hood with a new respect, an admiration for what this secret transfer of goods meant. Hood had talked tough, and now Murf believed he was tough. He grinned at all the television sets and strained and swore as he helped heave the metal trunks. ‘Diabolical. I wish Arfa could see this stuff. He’d shit.’

They carried it to the top of the house on Albacore Crescent and filled one of the unused middle rooms. The harvest of another impulse; Hood thought: I’m in it up to my neck.

‘I know where it come from,’ said Murf. ‘Fell off the back of a lorry, right?’

Weech’s phrase. Hood said, ‘Never mind.’

‘Who’s the bird?’

‘Which one?’

‘At the house, where we got all this stuff. I seen her mooching around upstairs.’ Murf licked his lips. ‘She’s got your nose open?’

Hood grabbed the front of Murf’s shirt and marched him backward against the wall. ‘There’s no bird,’ he said. ‘You didn’t see one, did you?’

‘Yes, no,’ said Murf. He gagged. ‘Hey, leave off!’

‘You didn’t see a house.’ He twisted Murf’s collar, choking him.

‘I can’t breeve!’ Murf’s eyes bugged out, his ear-ring danced.

‘Did you?’ said Hood softly.

‘Okay, okay,’ said Murf, and Hood let go.

‘You’re murder,’ said Hood. Murf rubbed his throat and looked uneasily at Hood, who said, ‘You’ve got a lot to learn.’

‘I won’t say nothing.’

‘Keep your friend Muncie out of here and your trap shut. You’ll be all right, but if I see you’ — he snatched at Murfs ear, but the boy ducked — ‘if I see you messing around again and shooting your mouth off, I’ll go ape-shit. And if I go ape-shit, pal, you’re in trouble.’

‘I’m knackered,’ said Murf. ‘Hey, want to turn on with me? Here, I’ll make you one.’ He fumbled with his cigarette papers and took out his stash.

‘Produce it.’

They squatted in the dimly lit hallway. Murf nudged him and said, ‘Muncie’s a fence, but nothing like this. Credible. Hey, I meet all these geezers and I think they’re posh, and they’re really villains. This old girl the other day and now you.’ He laughed at the thought of it and showed Hood the cigarette; he smiled in friendship moving his lips apart to reveal his stained tooth-pegs. ‘This all right?’

Hood said, ‘Make it a fat one, squire.’

The next day, Mayo said, ‘You found it?’

‘Right,’ said Hood. ‘Ask Murf.’

‘I don’t know nothing,’ said Murf.

‘But you know we found it, don’t you, squire?’

‘Oh, yeah, I know that,’ said Murf. ‘But I don’t know nothing else.’

‘So that’s why you wanted the van. I leave the house for six hours and I come back to a muddle. Give me the keys.’

Hood handed her the keys and said, ‘There’s no muddle, sweetheart. Everything’s fine. We found the stuff, now stop shouting.’

‘I think you’re lying,’ said Mayo.

‘You think I’m lying? Are you a screamer or what? Of course I’m lying.’

‘Then where did it come from?’

Hood said, ‘When I get a few answers from you, sweetie, you’ll get some from me.’

‘I’ve been straight with you.’

‘Sure you have. You haven’t told me a thing.’

‘It’s too soon. But I’ll tell you this. There’s something big, a Provo offensive in England. We don’t want to blow it.’

‘Hear that, Murf?’ said Hood.

‘Yeah.’

‘Something big. An offensive.’

‘Yeah.’

‘But she doesn’t want to blow it.’

Murf sniggered.

‘He thinks you’re full of crap,’ said Hood to Mayo. ‘He’s a bright boy.’

‘Hop it, Murf,’ said Mayo. ‘I want to talk to Hood alone.’

‘See you later, squire,’ said Hood. Murf winked and hunched out of the room.’

‘I’m glad you two are finally getting on.’

‘We’re pals, Murf and me. He doesn’t know whether to scratch his watch or wind his ass, but we’re pals.’

‘Those televisions upstairs, all those boxes,’ said Mayo. ‘I don’t like secrets.’

‘You’re not telling me anything, so I’m not telling you anything. I thought I could help. I can shoot and I can move faster than those drunks in Kilburn. But who do they trust? Teenagers — these tenth-rate screamers and tip-toes. It’s a joke, and so far I haven’t done a goddamned thing.’

‘You did that passport.’

‘It takes ten minutes to make a passport. They don’t even realize that it’s harder to forge a visa than a passport — ask any consul. Look, I didn’t join up to make passports. I joined to take scalps.’ Hood glared at Mayo. ‘Well, I get the message. I’m on my own.’

‘That’s not true,’ said Mayo. ‘We need you.’

‘Prove it,’ said Hood. ‘Tell me something I don’t know. Tell me why they’re stalling.’

‘They’re not stalling,’ said Mayo, but she turned away as she said it and Hood read evasion on her back.

‘Yes, they are,’ he said. ‘You’re trying to protect them. They’re supposed to be so efficient, but as soon as I saw Brodie I knew they were a bunch of amateurs. Professionals don’t risk a whole campaign by sending a kid like that to do the dirty work — and Murf has the political judgement of a tunafish. No, they’re beginners — like you with your painting. Sure, it’s a nice painting, but you’re the only one who thinks so. You’re wasting your time. All these secrets, all this waiting — tomorrow, next week, next year. It means one thing: they don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve got no skill, so they’ve got no nerve. And you want me to believe there’s some big secret! Honey, I know their secret — they’re incompetent. They’re stupid. They’re stalling. Admit it.’

‘They have got a plan, Val,’ said Mayo. ‘There’s going to be an English offensive. In terms of headlines, one bomb in Oxford Street is worth ten in Belfast.’

‘They’ve got a plan,’ he said. Their opiates were plans, plots, counterplots, circular stratagems, this drugged sentry-duty to which they attached importance. Threat and plot replaced action, the motions of militant bureaucracy blinded them to the fact that they had no power. But they were satisfied with the self-flattery of their secrets, like addicts sucking a pipe of smoking promises. ‘Well, they haven’t got me.’

‘Don’t say that. If you leave I’ll be blamed. I told them we could trust you.’

‘Did they need you to say that?’

‘You’re an American. You were in the State Department. How were they supposed to know you weren’t a spy or —’

‘They thought I was a spook?’ he said sharply.

‘At first.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me that before?’

‘Because I knew you weren’t.’

‘How do they know I’m not one now?’

‘The passport you made. It worked. He wasn’t picked up, whoever used it.’

‘I still think it’s a pretty sloppy outfit. You can tell them I said so.’

‘Maybe I will.’

‘And another thing,’ said Hood. ‘Tell them I know they’re stalling. They’ve got a plan. Big deal — a plan is just a piece of paper, or in their case one Guinness too many. Any drunk can have a plan. There’s only one thing to do and that’s act. What are they waiting for?’

‘All right,’ said Mayo, fatigued by the argument. ‘Something’s gone wrong. There, are you happy now?’

‘What is it?’

‘I can’t tell you. I don’t know.’

‘They’re drunk.’

‘It’s serious. Something to do with supplies. All the contacts were made — that’s why they needed the passport. They think they’ve been burned.’

‘Supplies,’ said Hood. ‘You’re talking about hardware. What about their supply-lines? What kind of mob is this?’

‘This isn’t America, Val. We don’t buy machine-guns at the local iron-mongers. We have to get them on the continent — from Arabs, thugs, anyone. Then they have to get them into the country. It’s bloody hard.’

‘You’re wrong, sister. It’s easy,’ said Hood. ‘Just send one of those creeps around here and I’ll tell him how.’

‘You’re so belligerent all of a sudden,’ said Mayo. ‘You’ve got all the answers, haven’t you? Well, I saw that room full of stuff upstairs. What do you propose to do with your twenty television sets?’

Hood said, ‘Get twenty people and watch them.’

Mayo shrugged, but the talk had rattled her; she started out of the room.

Hood said, ‘And what do you propose to do with your painting?’

‘I don’t want to think about it,’ she said.

‘I’ll be sorry if they pay your ransom,’ he said, ‘I’m beginning to like it.’

The painting’s secret had been revealed slowly. It had changed from day to day, from week to week, and now nearly a month since he first saw it the image had set. It was definite. He had seen Rogier as confused, furious, hesitant, holy, insane; one day the thin smile was mocking, the next day it was benign, then it was not a smile at all but a mouth mastering pain. It was the portrait of a villain in black. It was a patrician gentleman gleaming with wealth. It was an anxious bridegroom pausing at the window of experience. It was an ikon with saintly hands and small feet, a man suffering an obscure martyrdom, his soul shining in his face. Hood gave it titles: ‘The Expelled Consul’. ‘The Jailer Lord’, ‘The Hangman’, ‘Death Eating a Cracker’. One time it was not a man at all; he’d had an opium dream in which it was revealed as a woman, slender, like a heron in black, with small breasts, a dainty griffin standing in a high attic — the onset of loneliness, the moment of widowhood. All these, then none of these. The legs were apart, the boots planted almost athletically on the square of carpet; the arms were rising on the handle of a silver dagger, the eyes were awakened with fury and pricked by the red light of imagination. The neck was tensed to turn, the hands to fight. It was the instant between decision and movement, a split-second of calm. It was, passionately, a man of action.

‘You’re bourgeois to like it,’ said Mayo.

‘You were bourgeois to take it,’ he said. ‘A real revolutionary would have burned it weeks ago.’

For Mayo it was the proof of her commitment, and when Hood challenged her with doing nothing she said, ‘At least I’ve got the picture,’ using the theft to seek exemption. Hood said, ‘Right, you’re stuck with it.’ She did not see that it was purely theatrical, the dramatic flourish of a well-publicized burglary. But incomplete, a hollow gesture, since there had been no word from the owners, no further response from the newspapers. The sanctimonious warnings had ceased, the aggrieved art critic who had called it ‘a national treasure’ was silent. The loss was accepted; its last mentions had the serene factuality of obituaries. And none of Mayo’s demands had been met. The reward offered was laughable and would hardly have covered the cost of reframing it. There was not much more that could be done with it. The frayed bottom edge had been sent to The Times; to send any more would mean cutting into the painting itself, slashing the finished work. Mayo appeared unwilling to do this, and Hood knew that he would prevent her from damaging it. She had threatened in one of her letters to burn it. He reminded her of that threat, but hoped she wouldn’t do it. It seemed more valuable to him now than anything he had ever known, the reassurance of a perfect man; and it filled him with resolve, like a summoning trumpet.

She kept it tacked to the wall of the bedroom cupboard, like a trophy, regarding it with embarrassed pride. Hood noticed her standing before it, inhaling it, growing hostile in a glum way, as if she saw nothing in it but a man. The image did not move her; the painting itself mattered. It was hers. Her attitude, then, was one of simple ownership: possessing it somehow bore witness to her dedication, enhanced her little role. That idea drugged her, helping her to ignore whatever remained of the plot. To steal money was crime; to steal a million-pounds’ worth of art was a political act. She was no ordinary thief. Once she had looked at the self-portrait and said, ‘It’s butch.’

Butch! Hood came to despise that in her; how casually she acknowledged the painting, with what pompous certainty she spoke of the future. The painting taught him all he knew about her.

She said nothing about her family, whom Hood guessed must be wealthy — they had left that mark on her, or rather no mark at all, but an absence of blemish which was itself vivid as a scar. The impression she gave was one of aggressive independence, as if she had simply arrived. She gave no hint of preparation; no doubt, hardly a motive, only the smug certitude that anything was possible. It was a snobbery of assurance Hood had seen in the rich, an awareness of power: what could not be changed could be bought wholesale and owned, or stolen without blame, or killed. Privilege: only the powerful knew the enemy; but they had no true enemies, they could not be touched. The poor might suspect a threat but the world for them was the world outside Rogier’s window, a confusion of the unseen.

Mayo, Lorna: he compared them and made his choice. The house on Albacore Crescent was a family, parents and children; the television, the kitchen, the bedroom. Hood had, in a modest way, supervised Brodie and Murf; and he had gone to bed when Mayo had, obeying a kind of marital signal, looking to her for sexual encouragement, the unspoken suggestion that meant they would make love. ‘I’m tired’ or ‘I’m not tired’. He had lingered, and finally he sat up reading and let her go to bed alone, penalizing her by pretending not to understand the hints that familiarity made obscure. She hadn’t insisted on sex. By mutual agreement he slept with her, watching how she stiffened on penetration and clung to him, relaxing as if unlocked with his blunt key. Then his feeling lapsed. He said nothing. Now, Mayo always went to bed alone.

Murder had brought him to the widow. He visited her out of a cautious curiosity; and, afraid of giving her false hope, he had kept his distance. The guilt he saw in her intensified his own. He regretted that. He did not want to think that in killing Weech he had done anything but rescue his victims — and Lorna was one of them. The murder was an act of preservation. But with Mayo’s refusal to bring him into the plot, and with her objections to the cache of loot in the room — fear again: he did not want her to know of the arsenal — he turned more and more to Lorna.

He had been treating her for her unspecified grief, a drug for her guilty anger. He liked her company, then he preferred it to Mayo’s; and finally he needed it, found in this widow’s trust the solace of the drug itself.

‘Put the kid to bed,’ he said one afternoon.

‘He won’t go,’ said Lorna. ‘He wants to go out.’

‘Can’t you do something with him?’

‘In the way, is he? Look, if he gets on your nerves you don’t have to come round here.’

‘My nerves? What about yours?’

‘I’m stuck with him,’ she said, and Hood could see that everything she had feared in her husband she hated in the child, who was the brute, blameless in miniature.

‘He should be in school. I see kids his size going to school. It’s September — they’ve started already.’

‘Playgroup,’ said Lorna. ‘He’d like it.’

Hood said, ‘Then send him.’

‘Just like a Yank,’ she said. ‘You never think of the money side. I’m on a widow’s pension. I can’t afford things like playgroups.’

‘They’d let him in free if they knew that.’

‘I’m not a beggar.’

Hood took out his wallet. He said, ‘How much?’

‘I don’t want your money.’

‘Please take it,’ said Hood. ‘You can pay me back.’

‘Stuff it.’

‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ he said angrily. ‘Understand? Don’t say that to me.’

It was the first time Hood had ever raised his voice with her. He was sorry; she looked scared: she had known other threats.

‘I’m not giving you the money. I’m giving it to him.’ Jason lay on the floor, playing happily. An uncommon sight; usually he screamed for his mother’s attention when Hood was around. Hood saw him as he saw the mother, through the narrow aperture of pity. He called the child and said, ‘Want to go to playgroup, sonny?’

‘No,’ said Jason, wrinkling his nose. ‘I want to do a shit on your head.’ He laughed a crass adult laugh.

‘Ron was sarky like that,’ said Lorna.

‘Look,’ said Hood to the boy, ‘you want to go to a playgroup. I know you do, so take this’ — he gave the boy a five-pound note — ‘give it to the lady and you can go.’

‘Keep digging,’ said Lorna. ‘It costs twelve quid.’

It rained the next day, a heavy downpour ending a week of sun and dropping autumn on to that part of London, chilling the trees and darkening the brickwork of the angular terraces and washing all the traces of summer away. Where there was green, as in the park on Brookmill Road, it was sodden and depleted; and the city looked smaller and fragmented in the mist — it was a sea of sinking islands. Hood put on his black raincoat, turned up the collar and trudged around the corner to Lorna’s.

She said, ‘I knew you’d be over today.’

Hood entered and opening his coat, took out a paper bag that was flecked with rain.

‘What’s that?’

‘I’m going to do some cooking.’

The house was cold and unusually quiet; the toys were put away; he could hear the clock ticking in the kitchen. He looked across the parlour and said, ‘It’s a good place for him. He’ll like it.’

‘So will you.’

‘What makes you say that?’

She looked at him; resignation tugged at her smile. ‘I know what you want.’

Hood ignored her and opened the paper bag. He took out a thick blackened pipe, some tweezers, a candle and a cigarette lighter. He pulled the cushions from the sofa and spread them on the floor; and he squatted, setting out the simple apparatus. She watched him and shook her head.

Her voice was flat: ‘You’re going to do me.’

Hood lit the candle and broke off a piece of opium. He took it with his tweezers and heated it in the flame. It sparked, then grew black, but it did not light. It thickened to a rounded blob and became glossy and then was encircled by fire. He said, ‘Lie down.’

Lorna came near and sniffed. ‘What is it?’ She lay beside him propping herself on a cushion. Hood took the pipe, poked the softened plug of opium inside and clicked the lighter over the hole.

‘Put it in your mouth,’ he said, handing her the pipe. He told her how to puff it, and they passed it back and forth until the fragment was reduced to a coal. Then he scraped the bowl and started again. The candle lit her face, the flame giving her cat’s eyes: she was lovely, feline in this small light. The rain pattered against the window, while they lay on the floor smoking. She did it with her lips, holding the pipe-stem tentatively, using her tongue, kissing the smoke, and he was half in love with her as the room filled with the aroma of sweltering poppies. They lay side by side, barely touching, breathing slowly; they puffed the pipe and did not speak. He felt an urgent shudder, a dumb hilarity in his groin. Then it weakened and passed through him, warming him. There was thunder from the river, but the warehouses hid the lightning flashes. In the rain and opium smoke he smelled Hué, the fleeting gulp of a bobbing boat. She was the first to sleep. He watched her as he prepared a fourth pipe, then he moved very close to her and kissed her still lips: they were cool with sleep. He puffed and closed his eyes and he was travelling to the drum and whine of a raga, an Eastern lament, sorrowing for a love that was distant and danced like flame in water. He opened his eyes: already the dream had begun to roll.

10

Pitchforked awake by a sharp pain in her back, Norah sat up in bed quickly, pushing at the mattress with her hands, making Mr Gawber’s whole body leap. She switched on the bright bedside lamp, blinding her feebly enquiring husband, who turned and groaned. He lifted his pocket watch from the side table and swung it to his eye. It was just past eleven-thirty — he’d had one hour’s sleep. Norah, motioning to stifle a sigh, managed to amplify it. She jerked on the bed, testing her back, drummed her legs and sighed again, drawing the noise slowly through a grievous scale, high to low, the sound of a person spinning down a deep shaft and never striking bottom, only whimpering at the end and growling into silence. They were both fully awake now, and in pyjamas and night-dress, their hair fluffed into tangled white wigs, they looked blanched and ancient, whitened by frailty, two-hundred years old. Mr Gawber quaked. The light jarred him like noise. Norah said, ‘I can’t sleep.’

Mr Gawber pretended not to hear; but how typical of her to wake him to tell him that! She was no solitary sufferer. She demanded a witness, involving him in her discomfort, made him endure it. Invariably she touched him with her pain, and there was not an upset she’d had that he had not somehow shared. She sighed, he groaned. It was in part the penalty of the double bed, marriage’s narrow raft.

‘Wake up, Rafie, I can’t sleep.’

‘What is it?’ He exaggerated his drowsiness.

‘I feel ghastly. Yes, I think I’m coming down with something.’ She tried her fingers, tasted her tongue, blinked — to locate symptoms.

‘Probably’ — he yawned: a stage-yawn, almost a pronouncement — ‘probably just wind.’

‘No,’ she insisted. ‘I’ve pins and needles. A splitting headache. I’ve gone all hot.’ She got a grip on her head and out of the corner of his eye Mr Gawber saw her swivel it. She looked as if she might be trying to unscrew it.

‘Leave your head alone. You’ll just make it worse.’

‘I’m feverish.’

‘Poor thing.’ Without wishing to he yawned again, an authentic rebuke.

‘You don’t care.’ She started to cry softly. ‘Oh, my head. It won’t stop.’

He said, ‘I believe you’re coming down with something.’

‘It’s flu,’ she said and was calm. She listed her symptoms once more.

‘I’m not surprised. There’s a lot of it around. Thornquist was out all last week.’

He wanted to be sympathetic, but Norah’s illnesses were always so laborious that it annoyed him to hear her complain of their annoyance. He resisted consoling her. Then her aches and pains gave him some satisfaction — she deserved them for the pain she caused him. By a queer process of reversal, charity made antagonistic, he came to enjoy hearing her say how it hurt.

The bright lamp knocked against his eyes. He said, ‘Do turn the light off.’

‘How can I find my medicine in the dark?’

She thumped the mattress again, bouncing him, and went to the bathroom, switching on lights. She returned with a bottle of Doctor Collis Browne’s Mixture. It was an old bottle, containing a fluid now unlawfully potent, the active ingredient being opium. She was a regular user of patent medicines and pills: green lung tonic, fruit drops, stinging ointments, syrup of figs, dragées that stained her tongue purple. She was troubled by wind; she took iron for her blood. Old ailments, old cures. She measured the Collis Browne into a soup spoon and sucked it noisily.

‘Do you a world of good,’ Mr Gawber muttered.

Norah lay panting. Mr Gawber reached across and turned the light off. She snored.

But he stayed awake, alert, panic preventing sleep. Perhaps it would happen like this, a fiscal cramp that couldn’t be unknotted with a dose of the old mixture; a sickening for which there was no name or cure; a fever that couldn’t be shaken off. The workers all down with something, brokers with their fingers badly burned, industry halted at a stage of senility, a hardening in the usually swift canals, blockage, and the old country supine, helpless on her back like he himself in a ridiculous parody of repose.

He found his small radio and put in his earplug. He moved the dial. Radio Three had gone off the air. He spun the wheel to the World Service. He heard,

… let no star

Delude us — dawn is very far.

This is the tempest long foretold –

Slow to make head but sure to hold.

Stand by! The lull ‘twixt blast and blast

Signals the storm is near, not past;

And worse than present jeopardy

May our forlorn tomorrow be.

Kipling, the old mixture, favourite of puzzle-setters. Mr Gawber passed the night like this, worrying about England as if she was a dear old aunt in failing health and not whether or how soon the death would come, but how she would look, laid out among her indifferent mourners. The medical analogy he knew to be fanciful, and Kipling’s storm-cone was romance. Whenever he thought of the catastrophe ahead one image remained in his mind: the war. He hadn’t fought, yet he had felt it keenly. It was a dark brown newsreel in his memory he could run at any time, and that flicker from the past was a flicker of the future. Powdered eggs, rationed sweets, sugar coupons, bread queues, the occasional bombed building in the middle of a terrace, like a decayed tooth in a bad denture; books printed illegibly on villainous paper, the brave voice of Churchill on the steam radio and the officious Mr Mullard from number twenty-nine over the road — and now in Bognor — in his warden’s helmet. Coley for tea, the sizzle of snoek, the sound of buzz bombs. War! It had shaped him. He remembered it on this long night with a certain cheer, because the war had helped him to find himself an access of strength. He was not afraid.

Still Norah snored, and dayspring — who said that? — dayspring was mishandled. The traffic began on Catford Hill, and on Volta Road the clank of the bottles in the milk float, the grinding front gates, the plunk of the letter-slot. And the September sun — for once he was glad dawn came early. He went down, made tea and brought Norah a cup. She slept as if she had been coshed, bludgeoned there on her half of the raft: her mouth was open and she sprawled face-up, ventilating her sinuses with rattling snores. He woke her gently. She blinked and smacked her lips and said, ‘I had a dreadful night.’

He was silent at breakfast, though he allowed himself a glance at the crossword, the letters, the obituaries. An item on the front page shocked him.

‘You know what that means, don’t you?’ Norah said.

… unclothed and partly decomposed body, he’d seen. Why did they print such things, and which ghouls read them? He folded the paper and said, ‘What’s that, my dear?’

‘I won’t be able to go to the play.’

Indecent — worse: hideous. He saw the body and tasted it on his toast. ‘What play is that?’

‘Tea for Three,’ said Norah. ‘I was so looking forward to it.’

That too? How trivial and sour the title seemed over breakfast. He said, ‘I’d completely forgotten about it. You might be feeling better tonight. I must say, I’m feeling a bit off. That’s enough breakfast for me.’

‘I won’t enjoy it. It won’t be the same.’

‘Then I shall cancel the tickets.’

‘You can’t do that. It’s a gift — Miss Nightwing will be terribly upset. She was counting on us to go.’

‘But what will I do with the extra ticket?’

‘You can take someone from the office. Miss French.’

‘The inevitable Miss French.’

‘One of the clerks. Mr Thornquist. They’d be glad of a chance. And you can tell me all about it.’

‘Are you sure you can’t go?’

‘Rafie, I feel ghastly. I have this rotten feeling in my stomach —’

She described it with disgusting care, checking Mr Gawber’s reverie. Sick people knew their ailments so thoroughly. He clucked and tilted his head in concern; he listened and felt a vengeful glee rising to his ears. He was ashamed, but even that did not diminish the pleasure of hearing her drone on about her stomach. She had deprived him of a night’s sleep.

He promised to get tickets for another play: they’d see Peter Pan at Christmas. A penance — he would have to sit through two plays for her gastric flu. And she said she couldn’t face making his lunch. So the crush of a noon-time pub as well, elbows and soapy beer and the yakking of loud clerks in the smoke. The catastrophe would finish them, but he wanted it soon. Sometimes he wished there was a chain he could pull to start the landslip quickly.

‘Why are you smiling?’

‘I’m not smiling.’ Was he? What did that mean? ‘I’ve got something stuck in my tooth.’

‘Is there anything in the paper?’

‘No.’

He left for work, glad to be free of the house, the stale air of the sickroom. He crossed the frontier of the Thames and was restored by the fresh air in the solider part of the city. He chose the Embankment route to the Aldwych, walking behind the Savoy, pausing at the statue of Arthur Sullivan where the heartbreaking nude sorrowed on the plinth; then along the neat paths to the stairwell below Waterloo Bridge. The graffiti howled from the walls, unpronounceable madness and the threat that had become so frequent: ARSENAL RULE. Two homeless old men bumped their belongings down the stairs in prams, like demon nannies with infants smothered under teapots and ragged clothes. The men and their prams were secured with lengths of string. It was an omen: soon the whole population would be shuffling behind laden prams, crying woe.

His reflection was interrupted by the tickets he had been lumbered with. Who to take?

In the course of the morning he worked through a short-list. The receptionist yawned at him. Not her, an any case: people would talk. The messenger, Old Monty? He had a room in a men’s hostel in Kennington. A clean man, he smelled of carbolic soap and was always speaking to Mr Gawber of weevils and black beetles and how the other men never changed their shirts, and how they left the bathroom in a mess. He had been in an army band: Aldershot, Indian camps, Rangoon. ‘I should have stuck with the clarinet,’ Monty said. He’d enjoy a play. Mr Gawber risked the question, but Monty said, ‘I always do my washing on Thursdays.’ Rodney, the stockroom boy? Rodney brought fresh pencils at eleven o’clock, but with a clatter that hurt his teeth. In such a careless gesture he saw the boy would resign one day soon. It was the pattern: they became clumsy, then they quit. Not Rodney.

‘Ask Ralph — can’t you see I’m busy?’ said Thornquist irritably waving a secretary away.

And not Thonky.

Sadly, the inevitable Miss French. But she said, when he approached her, ‘I hope you’re not going to ask me if those letters are typed. They’re all here, just as you gave them to me. I couldn’t read your writing.’

He was proud of his handwriting. It was a good uniform hand, sacrificing loops for a workmanlike clarity. The woman was lying. Not her.

He picked up the phone and dialled. There was a buzz, a jumble of clicks, then, ‘— but if I sell now at thirty-three I’ll be out of pocket to the tune of four thousand.’

‘By tomorrow morning it will be five thousand,’ said another voice.

‘Sell now,’ said Mr Gawber, and hung up.

He took out the business card and confirmed the Kingsway address, found the entrance and just inside on the wall the name Rackstraw’s on a column of varnished boards. He ran up the steps three at a time and met the receptionist who, with headphones at rest on her neck, was reading a magazine.

‘Mister Gawber, please.’

The girl looked up from her magazine. ‘Do you have an appointment?’

‘No.’

‘You’ll have to take a seat.’

‘I’ll stand.’ He saw the girl return to her magazine. Then he said, ‘You can tell him I’m here.’

‘There’s someone ahead of you.’

‘I don’t see anyone, sweetheart.’

‘He’s got an appointment. He’s not here yet.’ Now the girl was not reading, but simply holding her elbows out and flipping pages to avoid facing another question.

‘I wish you’d do something. I’m in a hurry.’

‘I’m doing everything I can.’ She didn’t look up. ‘This is a busy office. Appointments only. That’s the rule.’ She turned the pages quickly and shook her head. ‘I don’t make the rules.’

An elderly man in a dark blue messenger’s uniform came through the outer door. He stopped at the desk and made a swift reflex with his heels.

‘That packet’s from Mister Thornquist,’ said the girl crossly. ‘It was supposed to be delivered an hour ago to the City. By hand.’

‘Sorry,’ said the man. ‘I was doing the post.’

‘The post doesn’t take two hours, Monty.’

‘Parcels,’ said the man. ‘They wanted weighing.’

‘Listen, Monty, that packet’s been sitting there —’

‘Back up,’ said Hood striding over to the girl. She was startled. He said, ‘Why are you talking to him that way?’

‘I’m sorry but —’

‘Cut it out. Don’t use that tone with him.’

The man stared.

Hood said, ‘Don’t let her talk to you that way.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said the man. ‘I was just going to say that myself.’

Hood turned again to the girl. ‘If I catch you giving him any lip I’ll come back here and slap your ass.’

He walked past her to the office door.

The girl stood up. ‘You don’t have an appointment.’

‘Move over, sister,’ said Hood with such fury the girl sat down and twisted her magazine in both hands.

Hood marched through the office of typists quickly, saw a glassed-in cubicle in which Mr Gawber was working at a desk, and headed for it. He knocked and went in.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Mr Gawber rising, trying to remember the name.

‘Valentine Hood.’

‘Exactly,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘I never forget a face. I should be royalty or a tax inspector or a politician. Cursed with total recall! Lower Sydenham — about six weeks ago — and your friend.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘It’s gone — what was his name? But his face is there, oh his face is there!’

‘He wasn’t a friend of mine,’ said Hood.

‘Of course not. Nasty piece of work, wasn’t he?’ Mr Gawber made passes with his hands. ‘Now do have a seat — what can I do for you?’

Hood said, ‘You told me that if I ever had a financial problem I should come to you —’

Mr Gawber listened with apprehension. He took a pencil and holding it like a cricket bat said, ‘I’d like to interrupt you before you go any further. I might have given you the wrong impression. We’re mainly a firm of accountants, which means we don’t handle loans or mortgages. Some people think — and I don’t blame them one bit — that we’re bankers.’ He batted with the pencil. ‘Chap was in here last week, sitting where you are now. Tradesman, I imagine. Awfully nice chap. Wanted some cash. Had to tell him he’d got the wrong end of the stick. Bowled!’ Mr Gawber studied the pencil he had been batting with. ‘He was terribly creased. There are so many misconceptions about this business.’

‘I didn’t come for a loan,’ said Hood.

‘I’m so glad you said that.’

‘Mine’s more a question of procedure, about directing funds. I’m sure an accountant should have the answer.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’

‘I’d like your advice on transferring money to another person’s account without that person knowing where it came from.’

Mr Gawber leaned forward, as if he hadn’t quite heard the proposal. He had heard, but a detail bothered him: when a man said ‘person’ he always meant a woman.

‘I owe this person some money,’ Hood went on, ‘and the person will be offended if I just hand it over — pride, I suppose. The only solution is to transfer it. From an unknown source, as they say.’

‘How much is outstanding?’

‘A lot, I’m afraid. But I’d like to transfer it in instalments, a certain amount every week.’

‘Does this, um, person have a bank account?’

‘Yes,’ said Hood.

‘Then it’s really quite simple,’ said Gawber. ‘I don’t know how they handle these things in your country, but here — apart from Coutts, lovely old firm — banks don’t specify the source of funds on the statements anymore. The money comes in, it’s credited and that’s the end of it. There might be a deposit notice, though — a chit through the post. Your name might appear on that.’

‘Or yours.’

‘If we acted for you.’

‘It would simplify things,’ said Hood.

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘Now if you give me the name of the young lady’s bank and the account number —’

‘I didn’t say it was a young lady.’

‘Of course you didn’t!’ Mr Gawber blushed and he rubbed his eyes in embarrassment. ‘Why did I think that? I’m terribly sorry — you must forgive me.’

Hood smiled. ‘No problem. It’s a young lady, all right. Here’s her cheque. The account number’s on the bottom.’ He unfolded the cheque he had torn from a book in Lorna’s handbag.

‘Weech,’ said Mr Gawber, examining the cheque. ‘That rings a bell. I’m good on faces, but so bad on names. Should I know her?’

‘No,’ said Hood, and attempted to distract Mr Gawber with the details of his own account.

Mr Gawber wrote on a pad. He said, ‘Very odd. I hope you don’t think I always go canvassing for new accounts in the public houses of Lower Sydenham. That was my first time in the area. A little mix-up. But I told you, didn’t I? It started with a crossed-line on that telephone. Had another one this morning. But what an extraordinary day that was. I suppose you’ve forgotten all about it.’

Hood said, ‘I’d better be going.’

But Mr Gawber didn’t want him to go. Hood was more than a witness to that day; and now he recalled the other fellow, a tough rowdy man whose every word had alarmed him. Hood had not been afraid — he had stood between them and given Mr Gawber a kind of protection. He was tired now. That night’s sleep lost. Norah was paying for her disruption, but he needed someone, a little company. Alone, depressed, he would think only of the catastrophe. He said, to stall Hood, ‘No, you’re absolutely right.’

‘I’m off,’ said Hood.

‘No, I couldn’t agree more,’ said Mr Gawber. He doodled on his pad. ‘We’ll have to tighten our belts, like everyone else.’

Hood rose and backed to the door of the cubicle. He said, ‘I’ll write you a letter to make it official.’

‘You’re not going so soon?’

‘I’m wasting your time.’

‘Not at all — I’m enjoying our little talk,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘Have a cup of tea. I’m sorry I can’t offer you anything stronger.’ Tea: he remembered. ‘I say, Mr Hood, do you have any plans for this evening?’

11

Like filing into church, but the wrong one. Mr Gawber felt very tired and wayward, and he paused with Hood in front of the theatre deliberately to anger himself. The critics’ praise was displayed like gospel verses on a Baptist motto-board, calling doubtful people in: I LAUGHED TILL I CRIED — THAT RARITY, A SHEER DELIGHT — RELIEF FROM THESE DARK TIMES — I BEG YOU TO SEE IT! — THE SADDER MOMENTS ALSO RING TRUE — IT DESERVES TO RUN AND RUN — A SHATTERING ACHIEVEMENT — I DIDN’T WANT IT TO END! He knew there was even an organ inside, flanked by boxes that might have held choristers. The lobby had all the carpets and brass of a presbytery, and there glassy-eyed people smoked, chattering excitedly, searching faces for friends, a commotion of tenative greeting. Clerical-looking ushers in dark uniforms stood at attention, tearing tickets near the doors to the stalls. The people passed by them, entered the theatre — a stupendous hollow temple trimmed with pagan gilt — and dropped their stubs: an attitude of sombreness that was almost stately. Churchgoing for them, too, but they were reverential.

Mr Gawber bought a pound of chocolates. It was a habit. He excused himself and fell into that queue as soon as he arrived, and then he tucked them under his arm, and picking up the tickets at the box office — a slight thrill seeing his name importantly lettered on the envelope — led Hood to the seats. They were down front, so near to the footlights they could hear the mutters of stage-hands behind the curtain pushing furniture into position. Then Mr Gawber sat with the box of Black Magic on his lap, wearing an expression of extreme anxiety, as if he expected the place to catch fire at any moment; or a bombing? Public places had become terrorists’ targets. He hugged the box and stared at the curtain. It was more than discomfort — it was a rapture of fear on his face so keen it could have been mistaken for joy.

‘Looks like a full house,’ said Hood, and saw Mr Gawber’s grasp tighten on the chocolates. Allowing the old man to escort him, Hood had experienced a son’s cosy serenity. Mr Gawber had acted with polite conviction, almost gallantry, steering Hood down the Aldwych, occasionally warning him about pick-pockets, and apologizing in advance for the play he promised would be appalling. But Mr Gawber had said little else. His guidance was unobtrusive — paternal nods that were helpful and mild and with a hint of pride. He was like the father who remains silent because so much is understood; and Hood was relieved that no brightness was demanded of him. He had been unwilling to go to the play, but he had nothing better to do, and Mr Gawber had shyly insisted: ‘I’d consider it a great favour.’ Now, seated in the theatre under a sky of lights and paint he felt he had stumbled into an anonymous pause, outside time, like a formal reverie which would leave him empty. He expected nothing of the play but for it to end.

The mutterings from behind the curtain grew louder, the bump of furniture quickened, and the curtain itself bulged on the backs of the stagehands. There was a crash and a muffled cry: ‘Balls!’

‘This is the part I like,’ said Mr Gawber.

Hood glanced at him, puzzled. He wondered if the old man was cracked. The curtain had not risen. Mr Gawber relaxed and clasped his freckled hands.

It happened again, porkers’ grunts preceding a wooden thud that made the hem of the curtain dance.

‘Forgive me,’ said Mr Gawber, shaking with laughter. He snorted into his handkerchief. He was enjoying himself now, his look of fear replaced by a cheery appreciation of the random bangings. This, for him, was the only comedy: harmless error, unplanned and unexplained.

The house-lights dimmed, silencing the murmurs in the audience and bringing a hush like piety.

The curtain went up on a modern kitchen the width of the stage, as efficient-looking as an operating room, with chrome and bright fittings and a muted yellow decor. Sunbeams leaned against the windows. A large stove, a refrigerator the size of a wardrobe and a series of oblong cupboards at eye-level, one with its door open revealing shelves crammed with cans of food: there was a gasp of approval from the audience. On counters that ran between the appliances, and on a table at the centre, cooking paraphernalia had been set out — spice-jars, bowls, a pitcher of milk, an electric blender, copper pots and whisks, ingredients in cartons, and a varnished firkin labelled Flour.

‘That’s the kind I want,’ said a woman behind Mr Gawber, biting on a chocolate wafer.

‘Looks awfully expensive,’ said the man next to her.

‘But there’s masses of working surface. Nice units. Fitted cupboards. Vinyl.’

‘Is that a gas cooker?’

‘Electric,’ said Gawber softly to himself.

A red light flashed on the back panel of the stove and a loud buzzer rang. It rang continuously in the empty kitchen and after a minute of this piercing sound a ripple of mirth — embarrassed, expectant, then confident — ran through the audience, responding to the buzz. This unattended signal mimicking rage, went on for another few minutes, causing hoots and finally shouts of laughter.

At the side of the stage a door opened and a woman in an apron rushed across the kitchen. She was recognized by the audience and applauded. She acknowledged this with a small girl’s pout. She was a plump, aged woman with loose heavy arms, brittle make-up, stiff blue hair and a wet drooping mouth. She wore bracelets that flopped and tinkled above the sound of the buzzer. She glared at the noise, making impatient passes with her hands.

‘Blanche Very,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘She’s an old timer. Norah loves her. We saw her as Ophelia at the Hippodrome in Catford. That’s going back a few years.’

The buzz droned on. Blanche Very took a wooden spoon from a counter and whacked the control panel, magically stopping it. This sent the audience into peals of laughter. The hilarity depressed Hood; and Mr Gawber sat with his mouth fixed in a grim bite.

Blanche Very drew on a pair of thick red mittens, then peeked through the window of the stove and groaned — more laughter: it was abrasive and forced — and pulled the oven door open, releasing a tremendous cloud of black smoke.

‘Knickers!’ she cried, bringing out a tray of burned scones.

The audience was now hysterical and a woman sitting near Hood was stamping her feet and wiping her eyes and nearly gagging with croaks of merriment.

‘It’s her timing,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘Can’t see it myself, but there it is.’

For the next several minutes Blance Very measured and sifted flour, broke eggs, poured milk and banged about the kitchen, making each busy gesture into casual blundering and repeating it when she raised a laugh. At one point she opened a cupboard, revealing another assortment of food, impressive for the size of the packages and the way it was stacked, from top to bottom. There was a significant hush in the audience at the sight of it that did not quite conceal an envious hunger.

— Now let’s see here. ‘Baby’s Bottom Muffins’. That’s it.

She worked from a hefty cookbook, which she held up in one hand and read slowly, satirizing the recipe by giving it a Shakespearian stress and intonation. As she spoke the side door opened and a man came in. He wore slippers, clenched a newspaper in his shaking hands and puffed a pipe. He was recognized and applauded.

‘Dick Penrose,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘They’re married. I mean, in real life. Though Norah says it’s touch and go.’

Penrose winked at the audience and Hood saw that all the movement of the head and hands was not for comic effect but rather an elderly twitching that was uncontrollable. It was as if he was being pelted with acid. He shook and walked arthritically, fooling with his paper, blowing on his pipe. Like the woman, he was dressed and made to look more youthful than he was. The programme notes described them as ‘a childless couple in early middle age, perhaps forty,’ but their pinkness was powder. Hood saw two old people in clown’s masks.

— Did you call me, love?

— No, I said ‘knickers’. I’ve burned the scones. They looked like pieces of coal.

— Save them. Might come in handy this winter when the miners are on strike and the Arabs are squeezing our liquid assets.

There were bawls of appreciation, and even scattered clapping, for this.

‘Right,’ said Hood. ‘I’ve seen enough. I’m leaving.’ He hitched forward and started to rise.

But Mr Gawber was asleep. He slept upright, facing the stage, holding the pound of chocolates on his lap, like a train passenger in a tunnel. His posture was attentive; only his eyes, tightly shut, indicated his slumber.

— Speaking of Arabs. Hear about the one that was trying to get back? Goes into an airline booking office and hands over a hundred quid for his ticket. Feller at the desk says ‘You’re ten p. short.’ So this Arab walks outside and stops a City gent. ‘May I have ten p. sir? I want to go back to Arabia.’ ‘Here’s a pound,’ says the gent, ‘take nine more of the buggers with you.’

Hood folded his arms angrily.

There was some business with the electric blender. The woman left the top off and switching it on sent the mixture flying in blobs that plastered the kitchen and shot into their faces. The jokes were about food — the shortage of sugar, the cost of flour, the hoarding of butter; and the audience reacted as if their own grievances were being accurately represented.

— Three weeks on the Costa Packet. Isn’t it smashing to be back? Imagine, a cup of tea without grease in it!

— And no enterovioform for dessert anymore.

— Blimey, they even put garlic in the cornflakes.

— Wasn’t it shocking? Why did we do it?

— Perversion, that’s Europe. But I’ve been looking forward to this. High tea. Good English food after all that Spanish muck.

Mr Gawber swayed in sleep. Hood was restive; the stupid happy faces of the audience, the idiocy on-stage, the gaping at food, the ineffectual humour put him in the mood of the sharpest rage. He could destroy them for this fooling. They were acting out their strength, celebrating their petty hatred. But the worst of this malice was the acceptance of things as they are, the assumption of oily foreigners, the assumption of greed, the assumption of funny little England. That and the moronic display of food stacked, burned, thrown about — which titillated the audience like naked flesh. Hood saw it as the coarsest pornography — hunger’s greedy ridicule.

He wanted to wake up Mr Gawber and tell him he was going; he could wait in the lobby until it was all over. And he had half-risen to leave when a boy made his appearance on stage — a handsome boy in an old army shirt and woollen cap and boots.

— You mean, while we were in Majorca you were sleeping in the garage?

— Yeah. I’m a squatter.

— Spanish style? Well, there’s a time and place for that.

— He means he’s moved in.

— He can bloody well move out. He’ll rust me mower.

— You can’t throw me out like that. Anyway, maybe I can help.

Hood sat down. The boy, unseen by the man, winked at the woman, who was obviously attracted to him. The man gave in and allowed the boy to help with the dishes. This was the beginning of a prolonged and punning flirtation, with winks for emphasis, that lasted throughout the first act. The audience screamed at the farce the woman made of the cooking and barked at the sexual innuendo. But Hood was looking closely at the boy, studying the face, the ears, the set of the mouth.

The woman tossed a bowl into the sink, splashing and soaking the boy’s shirt.

— Oh, I’m terribly sorry. You’re drenched.

— That’s okay. It’ll dry.

— Here, take that off. Can’t have you catching cold.

— I’ll get you one of my shirts. Won’t be any worse than the one you’re wearing.

The man plucked at the boy’s shirt, but the boy objected and covered himself. The man snatched and with fumbling fingers worked at the buttons. He opened the wet shirt and shook loose two well-developed breasts, nodding softly in the man’s astonished face.

That was the end of the first act.

Mr Gawber woke and smiled, ‘Disappointing.’

‘Who did you say the girl was?’

‘Araba Nightwing. Client of mine. Awfully nice girl. She’s going to play Peter Pan in the Christmas pantomime.’

‘I’d like to meet her.’

‘Would you?’ Mr Gawber seemed surprised. ‘I can arrange that. It’s the least I can do after putting you through this. We’ll go backstage afterwards. But I think it’s only fair to say that her company can be rather, um, frenzied. How about a tub of ice-cream?’

He hailed a woman passing with a tray and bought two ice-creams. He gave one to Hood and said, ‘Or more than frenzied, if there’s a word for it. It’s the profession, you know. All that publicity. Money, then unemployment. It does things to them. They never stop acting — it’s very trying. They cry and it’s not sad. They laugh and you wonder why. I’d applaud if only they’d stop, but they take it as encouragement. Norah loves them, poor old thing. I always think they could have puppets instead of actors. Big puppets, of course.’

‘The Japanese have them,’ said Hood, digging at the ice-cream.

‘You don’t say,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘I thought it was my own invention. Big puppets, absolutely life-like. I’d feel better about it. It wouldn’t be so embarrassing somehow.’

‘It’s a good idea.’

There was a thump behind the curtains. Mr Gawber laughed. ‘Oh, I say!’

Hood said, ‘I hate this play.’

‘Then we shall go,’ said Mr Gawber, crushing his empty ice-cream tub and shifting in his seat.

‘No,’ said Hood, ‘I want to meet that actress.’

‘She’s got quite a reputation.’

The warning bells rang at intervals of a minute and then the lights dimmed, the chatter ceased, and the curtain rose. Mr Gawber went to sleep at once. The second act was a reversal of the first: now the boy was exposed as a girl in a tight-fitting dress. The woman was angry. The man flirted. There were whispers.

— She’ll have to go.

— But you wanted her to stay!

— That was when she was a boy.

— But you’ve got to admit she knows how to cook.

The cooking, the preparations for tea, had gone on. The woman made mistakes; it was the girl who made the cakes, the scones, the kippers and poached eggs. This amazed and delighted the audience: cakes baked before their eyes, an egg poached on stage, the scones brought steaming from the oven. The food was theatre. A little cheer went up each time a new item appeared and was set out on the table. And it was the cooking that won the woman over. At the end of the play they sat around the table, the woman champing on a cake, the man leering, the girl looking at once seductive and demure.

— We dreamed about this in Spain.

— A real English tea!

— Kippers, cakes and scones.

— Toast.

— No garlic.

— And a bit of crumpet.

‘Awfully disappointing,’ said Mr Gawber, blinking as the curtain came down.

There were five curtain calls, and then the audience was depleted, but smiling in the glare of lights. They filed out with mincing stateliness, as they had entered. Hood noticed how fat and satisfied they looked, repeating the lines of the play with sleek self-assurance, laughing through down-turned mouths in hearty contempt.

At the stage door Mr Gawber said, ‘I feel such an ass doing this.’

Hood said, ‘I’ll ask for her.”

A porter in a peaked cap said, ‘Help you?’

‘We’re looking for Miss Nightwing.’

‘Come in. I think she’s still inside,’ said the porter. He spoke to another man. ‘Has she turned in her key?’

The other man, at the window of a booth just inside the door, glanced up at a board on which were a number of keys with tags. He said, ‘It’s not here. She must be changing.’

An old man walked towards them, carrying a leather satchel. He moved slightly stooped and his head shook. He wore a thin brown overcoat and a small trilby hat. His face was deeply wrinkled and pale and he looked very tired as he passed and handed a key to the man in the narrow booth. ‘Night, George.’

‘Night, Mister Penrose. Mind how you go.’

Mr Gawber whispered, ‘Dick Penrose.’ He saw the old actor struggle with the door and pull his satchel through, and he thought: Poor old fellow, he must be seventy. He felt a tug of pity seeing the actor alone, so exhausted, stepping into a damp wind gusting from Drury Lane. He had never seen an actor after a performance, and he could not separate the two men in his mind. He watched the battered door, sorrowing for the man, then turned to face Araba Nightwing, who tripped into him and burst into tears.

‘Mister Gawber!’ she held him tightly and sobbed.

‘This is my friend. Mister Hood, I’d like you to meet Miss Nightwing.’

Araba’s crying ceased. She smiled at Hood. Suddenly she said, ‘Your wife — what’s happened to her!’

‘Under the weather, I’m afraid. A bout of flu. Nothing serious.’

‘I was going to suggest a drink,’ said Hood.

‘God, I need one,’ said Araba. She wiped at her tears and wiped away that mood. She gave her key to the man in the booth and they started through the door. There was a shout from the hallway.

‘Has my old man ditched me again?’ The speaker was a short fat woman with a face the colour of plaster. The voice was Blanche Very’s and she was still shouting as the stage door banged shut.

They went up Catherine Street to the Opera Tavern, Araba wrapped in a black cape, speaking slowly in her deep attractive voice, repeating how kind it was for Mr Gawber to have come to the play. She did not speak to Hood directly, and it was not until they were in the pub and seated under the old theatre posters and signed photographs that he was able to get a good look at her face. The shine, the pinkness she’d had in the play, was gone — that mask was off — but there remained traces of the make-up flecking her long cheeks. She was tall, with large perfect features forming true angles and sloping planes which, because they fit so exactly, did not give the impression of largeness. She had the sort of beauty that is at once familiar and strange, a remembered face, full of clues. Her lips were full and she spoke emphatically without noticeable effort, but with an anger she hadn’t used in the play. The scarf she’d wrapped tightly on her head in imitation of the great Twenties’ actress she was often compared to, hid her hair, and tailing to drape her shoulder gave her the look of a desert princess. But it was her eyes that struck Hood — they were green, and she seemed to be able to intensify their light to give a point to her words. She still spoke to Mr Gawber — he was jammed against the wall — but she watched Hood with those green eyes, studying him closely, almost suspiciously.

‘Sometimes I don’t think I can bear it a minute more. It’s such a fag, and there’s a matinée on Wednesdays. I don’t know how I do it — I have to suck sweets to keep awake. It’s dreadful.’

‘You seemed to be enjoying yourself,’ said Hood.

‘I am an actress,’ said Araba.

‘Yes, the play was very interesting,’ said Mr Gawber.

‘Interesting?’ she said, using her voice to doubt it. ‘No one’s ever said it was that.’ She addressed Hood. ‘What did you think of it?’

‘I’m not a very good judge of plays,’ said Hood. ‘The audience seemed to like it, though.’

‘I don’t want to talk about them,’ said Araba.

‘We’ve heard your good news,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘About Peter Pan.’

‘It was the boy-girl part in this thing that did it. It’s just a gimmick. Peter Pan is a big play — I wonder if you know how big? I hate some of the audiences, so many queers think of it as their own vehicle. I’m only doing it for the kids. They understand it — they go out hating their parents. That’s how it should be. God, I love acting for kids! They really appreciate what you do for them. They don’t have any hang-ups. They’re terrible critics — if they think it’s a lot of old rope they say so; if they feel like screaming, they scream. I love that.’

They were seated near the door, drinking half pints of beer, and from time to time young men with blow-waves and backcombed hair, and girls peeking from beneath wide-brimmed hats, had called out ‘Araba’ and ‘Darling’. Araba had smiled and gone on talking about acting for children (‘There’s no ego-trip involved — they’re not interested in stars and personalities’). Now they were approached by a short woman pushing through the crowd, holding a small dog Hood had first taken for a handbag — it was square and still, with tight curls. The woman had freckles on her thin face and chewed an empty cigarette holder. Under this veil of freckles the woman — who was no larger than a child — had the sly mocking face of an old elf. But there was about her size and the way she was dressed a neatness that was sharp and unconcealing: the small body showed through the green coat as the slyness had through the freckles. She said in a high voice, ‘Poldy wants to say hello.’ She spoke to the dog: ‘Say hello to Araba, my dear. Get on with it — don’t just sit there.’

‘McGravy, I’d like you to meet one of my dearest friends, Ralph Gawber.’

Mr Gawber said, ‘Very pleased to meet you. This is Mister Hood.’

‘Mister Hood is not a very good judge of plays,’ said Araba.

McGravy said, ‘Send him to Tea for Three.’

‘I just saw it,’ said Hood.

‘What’s the verdict?’ said McGravy.

Hood considered for a moment, then said, ‘It’s got a lot of food in it, hasn’t it?’

‘It’s all about food,’ said McGravy.

‘And that was one damned hungry audience. I could see them licking their chops.’

‘Everyone’s starving nowadays,’ said McGravy, looking uncertainly at Hood, who was smirking. ‘It’ll get worse.’

‘I sometimes think that,’ said Mr Gawber.

‘It’s the system,’ said Araba, and her eyes flashed. ‘All this deception. All these hangmen. And these leeches — bleeding people to death. It makes me want to throw up.’

‘Parasites,’ said McGravy, cuddling her dog until he growled his affection. ‘Well, they’ll get what they deserve.’

‘I think that needs saying,’ said Mr Gawber.

‘Bloodsuckers,’ said Araba. ‘It’s a Punch and Judy show, but it can’t go on like this.’

‘I couldn’t agree with you more,’ said Mr Gawber.

‘It really is rotten,’ said McGravy. ‘It’s like a boil that needs lancing — then it’ll all come gushing out, all the corruption and lies.’

‘I’m so glad you said that,’ said Mr Gawber. He leaned forward, encouraged. Two hours of sleep in the theatre had rested him. He said spiritedly, ‘No, the workers have had it all their own way since the War, but now they’re simply malingering, holding industry to ransom. A period of recession wouldn’t be a bad thing. A crash might even be better — a dose of salts. I agree unemployment’s a bitter pill, but the workers have to realize —’

‘Who’s talking about workers?’ said McGravy sharply in her high child’s voice.

‘Let him finish, sister.’

‘Whose side are you on?’ McGravy demanded.

Mr Gawber said, ‘Aren’t you talking about workers?’

‘No,’ said Araba, patting Mr Gawber’s hand. ‘We’re talking about the power structure, my darling.’

‘But the unions,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘With all respect, there’s your power structure, surely?’

‘The union leaders are in league with the government,’ said McGravy. ‘It’s a plot —’

‘Dry up,’ said Hood.

‘I had no idea,’ said Mr Gawber.

‘Let’s talk about the play,’ said Hood.

‘I’d rather not,’ said Araba.

‘Wait, Araba. Perhaps he has some insight he wants to share with us.’

‘My insight,’ said Hood, ‘is I think it’s the biggest waste of time since parchesi.’ He smiled. ‘A load of crap.’

‘Come now,’ said Mr Gawber. He thought it tactless of Hood to say it, but all the same agreed and felt a greater fondness for him.

‘It made him mad,’ said Araba.

‘It’s supposed to make him mad,’ said McGravy.

‘But it is a wank,’ said Araba.

‘If only it was,’ said Hood. ‘I was sitting there and saying to myself, “What’s the point?” ’

‘If only he knew,’ said McGravy, grinning at Araba.

‘What don’t I know?’

‘Several things,’ said Araba. ‘But the first one is that McGravy wrote it.’

‘Oh, my,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘You have put your foot in it.’

McGravy stroked her dog and let him nuzzle her. She turned to Hood. ‘You were saying?’

‘Nothing,’ said Hood.

‘Go on, I’m rather enjoying your embarrassment.’

‘It’s not embarrassment, sister, and if you think I’m worried about hurting your feelings, forget it. If you wrote that play you must be so insensitive you’re bulletproof.’

‘I wish I were,’ said Araba.

‘Who are you anyway?’ said McGravy.

‘Just part of the audience,’ said Hood.

‘Drink up, please,’ said a man in a splashed smock, collecting empty glasses from the table.

‘I have a train to catch,’ said Mr Gawber.

‘Let’s get a coffee at Covent Garden,’ said Araba to Mr Gawber. ‘Then we’ll let you go home.’

They trooped up to Covent Garden, turning left at the top of Catherine Street, where long-bodied trucks were trying to back into fruit-stalls at the market. There were men signalling directions with gloved hands, and behind them stacks of crates and displays of vegetables. In spite of the trucks it had for Hood the air of a bazaar — the dark shine of the cobblestones, the littered gutters and piles of decaying fruit; the men jogging with boxes on their heads and others bent almost double under the weight of sacks. Mr Gawber thought he saw the two men with the laden prams he’d seen earlier that day in the stairwell below Waterloo Bridge; he remembered the warning, ARSENAL RULE, and then actually saw it, splashed on the arches of Covent Garden Market. Over by the tea stall gaunt men stood inhaling the steam from cups of tea.

‘I love it here,’ said Araba, whirling her cape open, performing.

The men saw her and grinned. McGravy’s dog, lively for the first time, yapped at the tea drinkers. Mr Gawber was uneasy: the men were wretched and dangerous-looking; he wanted to go home. But Araba had bought four cups of coffee from the man in the stall — he had tattoos, and a torn singlet, and a hat folded from a sheet of newspaper — and she was handing them out. Mr Gawber kicked the squashed fruit from his shoes.

‘They don’t treat you special here,’ Araba said. ‘They’re real people.’

But the men were gathering and muttering a little distance from her. In the half-light of the high lamps Mr Gawber saw their faces as shadowy and criminal, and their eyes as thumb-prints of soot over whiskery cheeks. McGravy’s dog continued to howl at them.

Hood said, ‘Your play. Both of you must be making a lot of money.’

‘It’s for a good cause,’ said McGravy. Again she said to Araba, as she had in the Opera Tavern, ‘If only he knew.’

‘Let me guess your sign,’ said Araba. ‘Aries. The Ram. Am I right?’

‘Pisces,’ said Hood. ‘Sorry, sweetheart.’

‘My actor clients are frightfully keen on horoscopes,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘They read their stars in the newspaper and get ever so excited.’

Hood had not taken his eyes from Araba’s. He said, ‘Let me guess your passport number.’

‘How extraordinary,’ said Mr Gawber.

‘It begins with a “Y”. Seven digits. And it’s light blue —’

‘Ah, you’re mistaken,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘Bad luck. British passports are navy blue.’

‘This is an American passport,’ said Hood.

‘That’s enough!’ cried Araba, and seeing her fury in the lamplight the men at the tea stall laughed. She gathered her cape, said goodnight to Mr Gawber and walked away, making her exit between the great stacks of crated fruit.