The Family Arsenal

by Paul Theroux

  ‘This here’s your explosive,’ he said. ‘Safe as anything as long as you don’t pack it too tight and don’t smoke, like.’ He uncoiled the wire. ‘This here’s your trip.’ He took another small object, with a spring, a switch and a tightly wound spool of wire. He handled it and showed Hood. He was obviously enjoying himself and his enjoyment was tinged with an oddly pedantic way of speaking. ‘Explosive? Well, it’s just a word, ain’t it? You can use fertilizer, any shit really. The world, like,’ – was he quoting Sweeney? – ‘it’s explosive right the way through. Now this,’ he said, and smacked his lips, ‘this here’s your mousetrap. Remember that. Mousetrap. Trip. Power supply. Explosive. Put them together and what have you got?’

  ‘Come on, Murf. Step on it.’

  ‘You got a circuit,’ said Murf, taking his time. ‘Okay. But there’s a choice. Your trip-wire. String that bitch on the door – they fling it open – ba-boom! Or your mousetrap under that floorboard there – one step and they’re fucking airborne. That’s a beauty – no wires showing – but it’s bloody dangerous to leg. I know a geezer who done himself that way. McDade. His picture was in the paper. The Stickies give him a funeral.’

  ‘Hurry up.’

  ‘You mentioned them trunks,’ said Murf. ‘Quite honestly, I could cut some holes in them lids. For wire. They’re unlocked. Fucker lifts them up. Circuit breaks. She sparks, and it’s all over.’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Put the powder under the floor. Get this lino up and jam a charge down there. Beautyful.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be quicker if we put the explosive in the closet?’

  ‘Neighbours,’ said Murf. ‘Fuckers would be up in the sky – fucking astronauts. Kill innocent people. Hey, I’m telling you, the walls are thin in these here terraces. No, put the charges under the floor, then she goes straight up – whoosh!’ He took a small drill from his satchel and made holes in the sides of the trunks, then threaded a wire and joined the lids. ‘No,’ he was saying, ‘can’t kill the neighbours. They never done anything wrong.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Start pulling up the lino, so we can get at the floorboards. But don’t tear the shit. People see lino torn a certain way and they know something’s up.’

  Hood worked on the linoleum, peeling it from the sides of the room and rolling it across the floorboards. Murf wired the transformer, then mixed the powder in a plastic bag.

  ‘This is the way to do it,’ said Murf. ‘Teamwork, no one bothering you. Wire it up, all the apparatus fixed, nice solid charge seated in the floor. Electric detonator. All nailed down. Them incendiaries in carrier bags are dinky little things. But this – this here’s scientific.’

  Hood said, ‘Don’t you want to know why we’re doing it?’

  Murf didn’t look up. ‘You’re the guv,’ he said. ‘I ain’t asking.’

  They were at it for most of the morning. Murf insisted on hiding the transformer in the fireplace, which was sealed with a square of hardboard. Opening it they found it to be full of soot which had fallen from the chimney; it had to be cleaned and the soot disposed of before the transformer could be lodged inside. Murf wouldn’t be hurried. When Hood said they could trail the wires along the wall and cover them with old newspapers, Murf said, ‘That’s just sloppy workmanship,’ and tore up the floorboards to hide the wires. He brought to his peculiar method of destruction the laborious and precise dedication of a builder. Then they were finished, and the room was as it had been – no wires showed.

  ‘I pity the poor fucker who messes with this baby,’ said Murf. ‘I’m knackered. How about a cup of tea?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Hood.

  ‘Hey, where are we going?’

  Hood said, ‘Guatemala.’

  Murf smiled. He understood the euphemism.

  They secured the windows, locked the front door, and in the back entryway Hood was saying, ‘That does it –’

  ‘Half a tick,’ said Murf. ‘I almost forgot.’ He dug into his paper bag and pulled out a rolled tube of old canvas. ‘The picture,’ he said, handing it to Hood. ‘I nicked it last night. I hope it ain’t too squashed.’

  ‘Murf!’ Hood held it. He felt rescued, and he wanted to throw his arms around the boy.

  Murf saw Hood’s gratitude and he was embarrassed. ‘I knew you liked it,’ he said. ‘And Mayo and that other bitch – they laughed at me.’

  Part Five

  24

  ‘To be born’ – she lingered on the cue. Her arms were upraised in the dark thronged room. A vapour of light from outside Mortimer Lodge – the yellow streetlamps on Wat Tyler Road – was broken by the window slats and it shone in beams on her branched arms and the heads of the people watching her, sharpening the corners of the masks some actors wore. At the end of her phrase, on cue, a spotlight’s dazzling velocity picked her out, and she stood charged with brilliant light, her feet apart, pausing for effect. She was mostly naked, but her skin rubbed with green powder made her seem as if she was wrapped in a tight membrane. Her breasts and hips were criss-crossed by strands of skeleton vines; her hair was cut, and her face, without make-up, was an oval of white that looked as thin as porcelain. She showed her teeth and began again: ‘To be born is to be wrecked on an island.’

  She saw fifty people in fifty postures, her actors half-dissolved in shadow. A hush of approval from them and she continued, ‘The man who wrote that did not write this. But how could he know that the spirit he set into motion could be interpreted this way –’

  ‘She looks so splendid,’ said Lady Arrow. Lady Arrow wore a combination of costumes. She was to play Mr Darling and (or so Araba said) his piratical manifestation, Captain Hook. A copy of the Financial Times in one hand; a hook protruding from her right sleeve; a frock coat and boots. She was pleased – already the party was a success, a great improvement on that other one she’d been to, when Araba lived off the King’s Road, that dreary pageant they’d rehearsed for the rally at the Odeon in Hammersmith. ‘Come over to the Lodge,’ Araba had said. ‘We’re having a cell meeting.’

  It was no ordinary cell meeting. For Lady Arrow this gathering of actors – a show of youth, strength and poised optimistic anger – was a glamorous occasion. Many were beautiful. That girl over there, naked under her loose suede overalls, her breasts plumped against the straps of her leather bib, with bare arms and long hair, saying nothing – Lady Arrow could smell her from across the room and she smelled of genius. That boy dressed as a gangster pirate, with a velvet bow on his pigtail and his tight striped suit – she could eat him, clothes and all. She felt lucky, and she looked over the guests, squinting with greed and impatience, frenzied by the choice. The sight of so many perfect faces in that steamy stage-lit room was a shock that left her slightly breathless. Whatever I want. And this time she had a role to play – two roles. It made her almost mournful with excitement, and it was as if she had only acted before, performed a humdrum farce for her friends at Hill Street – her powerful friends: golden pigs and balding mice – and now in this play she was allowed a brief life without pretence.

  ‘Tonight we improvise,’ Araba was saying. Lady Arrow had no lines. She had a costume – so did the others. But Araba said there was no need to rehearse the best-known English play. It was every child’s first play, a fulfilled vision of his longing, and there was not a child who saw the curtain fall on the last act who did not hate his thwarting parents. By the nimblest magic it showed the fraudulent intrusion of authority and convinced the child ever after that to recapture the rule of Pan was to be free. Araba said, ‘Peter Pan is the saboteur of the bourgeois dream, the best English expression of the beauty of revolt. Remember, Neverland is an island –’

  Lady Arrow watched with admiration. Then she looked down and said, ‘Are you all right, my darling?’

  Brodie, dressed as Tinker Bell, sat at Lady Arrow’s feet. Her thin legs were sheathed in dancer’s tights, her small breasts and tattoo showed through her blouse of pale silk,
and she held a spangled wand. She shifted position and said, ‘I’m nervous. Hey, there’s nobody here my age.’

  Lady Arrow was rebuked. They were all young! She offered her snuff box and said, ‘Have some of this.’

  ‘Yuck.’ Brodie smiled and reached for her pouch. She rolled a cigarette, licked it and puffed. Then she relaxed, rocking slowly back and forth, regarding Araba with wide staring eyes. She laughed, a little drugged giggle, like chatter, causing heads to turn. ‘Fairy dust,’ she said. She made a nibbling face at them and went on smoking.

  ‘– Or any age,’ Araba said. ‘Now, we begin.’

  She snapped her fingers, starting the music – the notes of a single flute, sweetly plangent, trilling as the spot-light dimmed. Araba entered the shadow at the side of the room as an armchair was dragged forward.

  ‘I’m on,’ said Lady Arrow, and strode to the chair, scowling as if acknowledging applause. There were whispers, a wondering at her size. With the spot-light on her she looked enormous and slightly misshapen; she cast a crooked shadow and made that large armchair seem suddenly rather small and inefficient. She sat down heavily, raised her newspaper and began reading. She crashed the newspaper. She said, ‘I am responsible for it all. I, George Darling, did it …’

  I know very little and I hate them, Hood thought, watching darkly from a corner near the door. If I knew more I’d probably kill every one of them. He watched the play proceed, with gaps and accidents freaking the self-conscious design. But it was the play’s own heartless lines that hinted most at menace; the actors, attempting to give it political colouring, only drew attention to themselves.

  In the fooling to upstage, improvisation’s risk, it was Brodie who got the laughs. Her popularity was apparent from the outset, and as the play unfolded – Peter battling with Hook for the leadership of the Lost Boys who were trying to liberate the Neverland from the rule of Pirates and Redskins – she realized how she could stop everything by pulling a face or pretending to assault another actor. During one of Wendy’s speeches she rolled a joint and had the room in stitches. Araba called for order and began to deliver a prepared monologue on the power of youth to destroy, but her words were drowned in laughter, for as she spoke, Brodie – who was alone at the side of the stage – clawed her buttocks and then, making a business of it, sniffed her fingers. It ended in farce: Lady Arrow accused Araba of bullying Brodie, and making passes with her hook, caught Araba on the arm and scratched her. Araba screamed and ran upstairs. So the play closed in disorder, incomplete, a collapse; and Hood heard one actor murmur, ‘Beginner’s night.’

  He saw Brodie at the far side of the room with Lady Arrow. But Brodie was perfectly alone and self-contained. She pinched a roach in her fingers and smirked at it. He was disgusted, like a man seeing his daughter in an unguarded moment in public, among her trivial friends: her foolishness was exposed but mattered only to him. He was responsible; he had taught her to roll a joint one-handed, and he was to blame for having marked her face with this careless mouth.

  Lorna said, ‘They’re not up to much.’

  ‘Screamers,’ said Hood. ‘They’re trying to start a revolution.’

  ‘Fuckers couldn’t start a car.’

  ‘Let’s score a drink,’ he said.

  ‘I seen enough. Let’s go home.’

  He admired that. She held them in total contempt. The costumes they wore, the poses they struck, the selfish jeering in their talk – she dismissed it as nothing. They were not even exotic to her, they had no glamour; she seemed embarrassed to be in the same room with them.

  ‘Mister Hood!’ Lady Arrow rushed over, and ignoring Lorna, and standing eye to eye with him, said, ‘Araba told me you might be coming. I didn’t believe her for a minute, but here you are! It’s a terrible snub for me – you’ve never come to Hill Street. Or didn’t you know I’d be here? Say you did!’

  Hood said, ‘This is Lorna.’

  Lorna nodded hello. She wore her boots, her shortest skirt, and the jacket Hood had bought her, crushed velvet, bottle green. She looked away to avoid looking up at the much taller woman.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lady Arrow, assessing her swiftly. She said nothing more.

  ‘Isn’t that Brodie over there?’ said Hood.

  ‘She’s mine now,’ said Lady Arrow proudly. ‘She’s made a great hit with Araba’s friends, I can tell you. Quite a debut – it could lead to something, a real part. She’s so natural. Darling!’

  The girl raised her head and threaded her way through the room, walking flat-footed in the drooping tights, the crotch at her knees. She gave Hood a sheepish grin and said, ‘Hey, I didn’t think this was your scene.’

  ‘Pull up your pants,’ he said.

  ‘I’m stoned,’ she said. She made her goofy face.

  Lady Arrow stooped and embraced her. Brodie resisted, but she was enfolded, and again Hood tasted a father’s disgust. Brodie didn’t seem to mind; perhaps she would never know, lost in that woman’s arms. Hood looked at Lady Arrow’s hands, one tightening on the small girl’s tattooed arm, the other a knot of snails inching across the flawless skin of her belly.

  ‘I hated that woman,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘The one who dropped Brodie off the other day. She came screaming into the house, and do you know what? She accused me of stealing the Rogier self-portrait! I understand she is the thief. Of course, I told her I had no idea where it is – what a shame if someone’s really stolen it. I let her search the house from top to bottom. She was quite upset, said some rather unkind things about you. I imagine she’s from Basingstoke. I need hardly add that I urged her to find my precious picture.’

  Hood said nothing. The painting was at Lorna’s, and he had had a long look at it before coming to the party, studying it for changes as if looking at his own reflection in a mirror. The face was more familiar to him than his own, and unlike his own, a consolation. He wondered if he would ever part with it.

  Lady Arrow said, ‘I say, did you see our little effort?’

  ‘The last part,’ said Hood.

  ‘The fracas,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘Wasn’t it superb? “And so it will continue, as long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.” ’

  ‘Putrid,’ said Brodie.

  ‘You said it.’ Hood glanced around the room. The actors, holding glasses of wine, still wore the costumes from the play, the eye-patches, the cassocks, the spectacular rags. Their voices made the room howl.

  ‘But I won,’ said Lady Arrow. She smiled at Hood. ‘Araba’s absolutely desolate – but there it is. You can’t always have it your own way. I think it’s a lesson to them. They’re terribly nice people, but their Marxism is so moth-eaten. Things aren’t like that anymore – Marx was an optimist! They stink of sincerity, and they will go on trotting out these old ideas. They sound like my father. But they’re much worse – give up your money and we’ll believe you, property is theft, power to the people. Who are these people they are always talking about? They have study groups, reading lists – these ratty little pamphlets with coffee stains on the covers, Albanian handbooks of social change. Albanian! Have you ever heard of such a thing? And Arabs – these filthy little desert folk – they think they’re revolutionaries! No, I tell them, we are beyond Marxism now and Chairman Mao and your Arabs and that’ – she spat the words – ‘that pin-up, Trotsky. Any right-thinking anarchist would have chucked these primitives years ago. But here’s hope. I must sound awfully negative to you, but there’s hope in this room – you can feel it. Look around. Araba hasn’t the slightest idea of what she’s started, which is so often the case. Her days are numbered as an activist. Before long they’ll be looking to someone like me, and she’ll be back on stage, posing for photographers, searching the paper for mentions, like Jane Fonda and Vanessa and Brando and all the rest of them.’

  She had spoken in a single burst and was panting from the effort of it. She smiled, as if satisfied there could be no reply, and hearing none she straightened herself with assurance. Hood shook his head. Lo
rna sniffed and brushed her skirt.

  Then Brodie said, ‘But Araba’s pretty.’

  Lady Arrow showed her teeth. It was not a smile. She said, ‘White trash.’

  She hurried Brodie away.

  Hood thought: Die.

  ‘She hates me,’ said Lorna. ‘Should be ashamed of herself, with that little girl, touching her up. Do you really know these fuckers?’

  ‘I want to see the lady of the house.’

  ‘What’s wrong with me?’

  ‘I’ll deal with you later.’

  ‘Listen to him,’ said Lorna, and her face clouded with sadness.

  But from the moment they had entered the house he had felt close to her: it was the same desire he had known when he saw her bruised. He did want her and cursed himself for hesitating. He feared betraying her by making her trust him too much. But the consequence of his fastidiousness was her excitement: he had not made love to her and that aroused her more than if he had. She was a hostage to an unspoken promise. He had also feared possession, dependency, complication, blame, any reduction of his freedom, any disturbance to hers. Sex, an expression of freedom, made you less free: the penalty of freedom was a reverie of loneliness.

  To act, he knew, was to involve himself; no act could succeed because a11 involvement was failure; and love, a selfish faith, was the end of all active thought – it was a memory or it was nothing. But he had come too far, known too much to evade blame, and he sought to conclude the act he had begun on impulse that summer night. He wished to release himself with a single stroke that would free him even if it left him a cripple – like a fox gnawing his leg so he could drag himself from the trap: an amputation, true terrorism.

  They got drinks from the kitchen and stood next to the stairs, watching the drunken actors (some were preening; several sang; here was one doing another’s horoscope). Hood put his arm around Lorna and kissed her hair. He had overcome his horror of holding her. Once, he had not been able to touch her without feeling the pressure of her husband’s corpse; now touching her reassured him and she could rouse him simply by seeming wounded or lost, which, he had come to see, was her permanent condition. Not love – it was more drastic than that, a hunger for her very flesh, and what kept him away was his fear that her hunger was greater than his and almost unappeasable.