The Family Arsenal

by Paul Theroux

  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?’
r />   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.