The Family Arsenal

by Paul Theroux

  ‘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.

  Part Three

  12

  Lady Arrow got out of the taxi in Deptford High Street, looked around, and felt cheated. Then she walked to assess it, to give it a name. No name occurred to her; she wondered if she had come to the right place. But she had: there were the signs. Deeply cheated, tricked by the map and her imagination. She had wanted to like it and had prepared herself for a complicated river-front slum with the kind of massive mirrored pubs she’d passed on the Old Kent Road; damp side lanes and blackened churches and brick-peaked Victorian schools contained by iron fences and locked gates; with a quaint decrepitude, credibly vicious and with visible remnants of danger, a place where you could believe a poet might have been stabbed.

  She had expected something different, not this. It was ugly, it was shabby – but not in any interesting sense. It was, sadly, indescribable. She had wanted to be startled by its grime, and the taxi ride across the vast grey sink of London had been long enough to suggest a real journey to a strange distant place. Deptford was only distant: characterless, without any colour, a dismal intermediate district, neither city nor suburb, boxed in by little shops and little brown terraces – many defaced with slanted obscure slogans – and very dusty. You could become asthmatic here: the air stank of dust and chemicals and the unhelpful sun was the size of an apricot. She looked for the river (she could hear boats farting in water) and saw a green gasworks. Closer, a power station poured out heavy clouds of tumbling smoke that gave the sky an ashy hue. The smoky sky seemed no higher than those square chimneys. If anyone asked she would say Deptford was like the scar tissue of a badly healed wound. She was oppressed by the council estates, cheap towers of public housing draped in washing lines. All those people waiting; she could see many of them balancing on flimsy balconies, staring gravely down at her.

  She might have gone back to Hill Street – her disappointment was great enough – but it had been so hard for her to get here! Not only the taxi (the driver first refused to take her that distance – she had to agree to pay an extortionate fare), but the invitation, too. She had telephoned the house five times and either no one answered or else a strange voice demanded to know who she was. ‘Who are you?’ she’d asked in return, and hung up. When, finally, Brodie picked up the phone the girl was evasive, and it was only by Lady Arrow blurting out that she wasn’t in the least interested in getting her pound back – indeed, she’d gladly give her another one if it was needed – that Brodie said to come over and told her the address.

  ‘Albacore Crescent! I can just imagine it.’

  ‘It’s on the map. Just get off the train at Deptford.’

  ‘We’ll have tea somewhere,’ Lady Arrow had said, and now she laughed at the thought of it, seeing nothing in ten minutes of walking but two fish-and-chip shops with steamy windows, and a take-away Chinese restaurant. She was angry for noticing they were filthy: she didn’t like to think of herself as a fastidious person. Here, everywhere she looked, she had to face the limits of her tolerance. And she thought: This is what it means. When people say they’re living in Deptford they mean this, the gasworks, the nasty little shops, these poky houses, the smoke. Really, a pitiful confession.

  Across Deptford Broadway to the hill and then into Ship Street, where she saw the entry to Albacore Crescent. She had not wanted to arrive by taxi; she deliberately avoided taking it to the door: she was ashamed. But it would not have mattered – the house was larger than she expected, and all the blinds were drawn. Seeing it, she remembered why she had come. It was more than a glimpse of Brodie at home, how she lived, what she did, whom she saw, a piecing together of the girl’s other life to make a story for herself she hoped she figured in – a way of ordering it, like an artist, so that it could be set aside. She wanted that, but she wanted more: Brodie. At Hill Street she had resented Murf’s hold over her, the companionable glances, the laughter, the assumption that she was his. She wanted to separate her from Murf, break his hold over her and have the girl to herself.

  Lady Arrow was not discontented with her life, but she knew it lacked any edge, and it was enclosed – too secure. Other people, living close to the ground, spent more congenial days, like the waiters she envied, whispering intimately to each other in restaurants where she was dining. And sometimes she thought that even the girls she visited in prison had more to challenge and amuse them than she did. The plays she brought them gave her a chance to act with them. She would not be shut out from anyone’s life, and she was surprised that Brodie’s seemed so inaccessible: five phone-calls and what amounted to a bribe to gain entry!

  She rang the bell, heard footsteps on the stairs and listened to the snapping of locks, bolts at the top and bottom of the door being shot. Brodie’s pale eager face appeared at a crack.

  ‘You’re barricaded in!’ said Lady Arrow as she stepped through the door, seeing the locks and bolts and heavy chains.

  ‘We don’t usually come in this way, said Brodie. ‘We’re supposed to use the back door.’

  ‘I hope I’m not infringing the rules – but who makes these rules? I say, is that your ice-cream van?’

  Brodie was shrugging at the questions. ‘Sort of. It belongs to someone, but they’re not here, see.’ She was vague. In a thin sleeveless shirt, Brodie’s breasts budded at the pockets, and Lady Arrow saw the tattoo, the blue-bird chevron on her white upper arm. Brodie’s trousers were much too large for her; she held them up by the waist to prevent them falling down.

  ‘Hey, Murf – she’s here!’

  Murf put his head through the door and nodded. His head was small and the sun behind his ears lighted them to look like the membranes of kites, one with a gold tail, the swinging ear-ring. He wore a jersey with a chewed collar, a pair of girl’s tight pink slacks, and in his bare feet he clawed at the rug with his toes. He plucked at the slacks that sheathed his legs and pushed at his thighs. Lady Arrow thought of a pet beast, ridiculously costumed.

  ‘They’re mine,’ said Brodie. ‘Them slacks. I’ve got his on. We decided to wear each other’s clothes today.’

  �
��What a splendid idea.’ Lady Arrow moved down the hall and she smelled – what? – something she couldn’t name, a hairyness of sour perfume.

  ‘Murf said it turns him on.’

  ‘Except it don’t,’ said Murf. ‘It was just an experiment, like.’

  ‘A pity it’s not working,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘But then how awkward for me if I’d come and found you fucking. I’d hardly know where to look!’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ said Murf, averting his eyes, pushing at his ears. ‘That’s how it goes. Have a seat.’

  ‘Is this all yours?’ Lady Arrow entered the parlour and paced. ‘It’s quite huge. I think it’s a success, I really do. And I imagine there are lots more rooms in the back and upstairs. It reminds me of a dove-cote, all these little rooms rising to the roof. Whatever do you do with them all?’

  ‘There’s some other people,’ said Brodie.

  ‘Yes, the owner of the ice-cream van.’

  Murf glanced uneasily at Brodie, then said with mild aggression, ‘We don’t know nothing about that there van. Maybe someone nicked it and left it there.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘You can trust me with your secrets.’

  ‘We don’t have no secrets,’ growled Murf, still facing Brodie, who got up and left the room.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘Why should you?’

  ‘Have a seat,’ said Murf again, pulling a stuffed chair away from the wall and awkwardly presenting it.

  Lady Arrow ignored him. She leaned into the hall and said, ‘Does it extend very far? It seems to go on forever, more rooms in the back – and a garden as well.’

  ‘Here,’ said Brodie, entering the room. In an attempt at etiquette she had placed an unopened bottle of pale ale on a green saucer with a souvenir opener. ‘Oh, I forgot the glass.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘I never drink beer. I’ll have some of this.’ She tapped some snuff onto the back of her hand, lifted it to her nostrils and tipping her head back inhaled it. She snorted and blinked, then she said, ‘Aren’t you going to take me on a tour?’

  ‘Sure, there’s some pretty groovy places around here. We could go down to the power station. Murf’s got a mate who works there. Or we could take a bus to the Cutty Sark. It’s up Greenwich.’

  ‘I meant a tour of your house.’

  ‘There’s nothing to see,’ said Brodie. ‘Just more rooms.’

  ‘But how many?’

  ‘Six or seven.’

  ‘Why it is huge!’

  ‘You can’t go up,’ said Murf. ‘I’m redecorating the bathroom.’

  ‘Do let me have a peep.’

  ‘Have a seat,’ said Murf, and now he looked as if he might spring up and throw her into the chair.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘But I’d much rather have a tour of this lovely house. By the way, who owns it?’

  Murf said, ‘Some people.’

  ‘You are a mysterious fellow, aren’t you? But you’ll see – Brodie will vouch for me – I don’t pry. I’m just interested. I was hoping we could be friends. Don’t you want to be my friend, Murf?’

  ‘Sort of,’ said Murf and picked self-consciously at Brodie’s pink slacks sitting so uncomfortably on him and clinging to his skinny thighs.

  ‘I’d like that,’ she said. But she thought: No, what’s the point, what am I doing here? She had tried to flatter them by taking an interest in the house; but flattery didn’t work – there was narcissism even flattery couldn’t penetrate, and her compliments, so close to satire, only made them suspicious. She had guessed, alighting from the taxi at Deptford, that it would be a failure and now that was confirmed. She had expected too much, and she could see she was unwelcome. It occurred to her that she might take a hundred pounds from her purse and say, ‘Here – it’s yours.’ It was a hopeless thought: they were children. You could give them anything, and they wouldn’t notice; but you couldn’t take a thing from them. They made themselves inaccessible. She had been foolish to think that she could take Brodie away and keep her. The young were not free enough to know affection, and why, she wondered, did they always insist by their lazy silence on kidnap?

  Then she saw the Chinese carvings, the jade eggs on wooden tripods and the ivory figures on the fireplace. On the far wall was a painted scroll. Until then they seemed like the cheap plastic Chinoiserie she’d seen in other working-class houses. But these were delicate; they were small beautiful things, finely done. Even across the room they glittered.

  ‘Who do these belong to?’ She walked over and lifted the carving of a camel. It was ivory, heavy and cool, resting perfectly in her hand. It had a red saddle and tiny gold tassels. You had to hold a carving in your fingers to know its value, because a craftsman had held it. And now she could see the brushstrokes on the scroll, a column of anxious swallows in a pale landscape.

  ‘They belong to some people,’ said Murf.

  ‘There’s a few over here,’ Brodie brought her a carved red-lacquer box, and Lady Arrow was reminded of an idle child on a beach noticing an adult’s interest in shells, offering to sustain that interest – tempting the stranger’s desire and yet knowing nothing even of friendship – by searching for more and trailing along until they were both alone in a far-off cove. There was such casual cruelty in innocence.

  ‘It’s quite beautiful,’ said Lady Arrow, opening the lid. There was a mirror on the underside, and Brodie’s face reflected in it, framed by the lining of yellow silk. She wanted her, and again she was mocked by her reason for coming. The face slipped from the mirror. ‘Chinese.’

  ‘And this,’ said Brodie, finding a silver frog with filigree on its back. She handed it over. Lady Arrow felt the heat of the girl’s hand on the silver.

  ‘Very, very nice,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘Don’t you think so, Murf?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It don’t belong to me.’

  ‘This is my favourite,’ said Brodie. She held out a tarnished brass ashtray with a crude pagoda and a Thai dancing girl etched on it.

  ‘I like that one,’ said Murf. ‘When you give it a polish it comes up nice and shiny.’

  Lady Arrow studied it. It was a cheap bazaar trinket, ugly and roughly done, the native’s revenge on tourists. You could cut your hand on it. She smiled at Brodie, agreeing, but she looked at the other objects and thought: She doesn’t know the difference; as long as she values this ashtray she will never know me.

  Murf said, ‘I’m going upstairs to take Brodie’s gear off. I’ll be right down.’ He left the room walking in a self-conscious way in the tight slacks.

  ‘Anything I can get you –’ asked Brodie.

  ‘Call me Susannah,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘I’d love a cup of tea.’

  ‘Right.’ Brodie ran.

  Lady Arrow could hear her shifting the kettle in the kitchen. She went to the door and listened: Brodie was still occupied. She climbed the stairs, distributing her weight, testing each step, taking care not to make them creak. She passed a bathroom, then saw the room in which Murf was changing – he was stamping out of the slacks – and another room, open and simply empty. She went up another flight, to the top of the house. It was darker here – the doors were shut. She tried one: locked. The second was open but held only a stock of newspapers and an old sofa. Then she was at the front of the house, in the large room with the low double bed – whose? – and the Indian cushions: almost a salon. The sour perfume she’d smelled earlier was strongest here – and she noticed the Burmese box on the mantelpiece, the silk robe, the view from the window. It was her first sight of the Thames: the power station, the old church, the Isle of Dogs, and at a great distance, St Paul’s. She wanted more. She went to a long cupboard and threw the door open, and gasped. Seconds later she was laughing very loudly.

  ‘Hey!’

  Murf was on the stairs. She hurried into the hall, but he was fast, moving nimbly on all fours up the last flight. He bounded to the landing and ran to the door of the back room, then c
rouched in an attitude of truculence like a startled sentry, protecting the room as Hood had ordered.

  ‘I told you not to come up here! You’re not supposed to – this here room’s private.’

  He had surprised Lady Arrow with his speed and noise, interrupted her laughter. But now she saw the absurd boy with the reddened ears, puffing and holding himself so importantly in front of the door –the wrong door! –and she laughed all the harder.

  ‘Sneak!’

  13

  She was delighted, she was justified, she knew why she had come: it was an inspired visit. And she had a claim on them. She would stake it emphatically. Now she could reach the girl, separate her from Murf; and though she felt like an intruder and vulnerable to humiliation (it had happened before: that hysterical procuress at Holloway had screamed from her cell, ‘Here she is again to look at the monkeys!’) – her voice alone sometimes made her an enemy – she knew Brodie was hers. And the others, whoever they were: all hers. The knowledge of strength, her certitude, was comedy. She had cracked a great joke.

  Downstairs she was still laughing at the thought of it, and again she saw the brass ashtray, the piece of junk they’d singled out and preferred to the small Chinese treasures and she knew how they could make such a silly mistake. But what worthless thing were they protecting in that other room?

  ‘Your friend was upstairs,’ said Murf. ‘Nosing around.’

  ‘It probably don’t matter,’ said Brodie.

  ‘It’s private,’ said Murf. He spoke to Lady Arrow. ‘I told you it’s private, didn’t I?’

  ‘You’re being awfully boring, Murf,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘What is it you don’t want me to see?’