The Family Arsenal

  ‘What’s the rush? We can give this one a miss. There’s still one more race. I’ll put a tenner on the last race – I’ve never bet a tenner before.’

  They watched the preparations for the race, a handicap with staggered traps in pairs along the last stretch. When the lights went out and the race began, Hood said, ‘Let’s go to the paddock now.’ He did not wait for a reply. He helped her through the darkness of the enclosure, taking care not to alert her that he was running away from the man she had named.

  In the paddock he instinctively looked for another exit. Seeing none he felt cornered. Lorna was at the fence, examining the dogs. The fence was a semi-circle, gateless, meeting the back of the grandstand at one end and joined to the gangway, leading to the track, at the other. Beyond it, above the dogs’ stalls, was the railway. He was trapped. The dogs began to moan loudly, a wolfish baying that made his own throat dry.

  ‘I’ve seen all I want,’ said a man near Lorna, and he started away. The rest of the men left and the dogs themselves were led out. The dogs’ close pelts gave them a look of nakedness, exaggerating their skinny, punished bodies, and they shook as they trotted beside the fence. From trap to trap, with the interruption of a futile chase: the agony was as familiar to Hood as waking to life.

  He said, ‘So let’s go.’

  ‘I haven’t made up my mind.’

  ‘Decide at the window. It never fails.’ He took her arm and tried to hurry her, but as he turned the paddock entrance, that small alley, filled with three men.

  ‘There she is,’ one said, and the men started towards them. The smallest, whom Hood took to be Rutter, was in the middle; the two others marched at his elbows.

  ‘Here comes trouble,’ said Lorna into her hand.

  Hood faced them. The paddock was empty – the dogs, the attendants, the starter had gone for the last race, and Hood could hear the voice quacking on the loudspeaker, urging people to place their bets: Ladies and gentlemen, the race will begin in three minutes. In the paddock there were only the cries of the dogs locked in their stalls, and the light broken by posts and trees into blocks of shadow that half hid the approaching men.

  ‘Hello, Willy.’

  ‘Lorna, baby,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you. Sorry about Ron.’

  Hood said, ‘We were just leaving.’

  ‘Who are you?’ As Rutter spoke the two other men drew close to Hood, preventing him from moving on.

  ‘He a friend of yours, Lorna?’ said Rutter.

  ‘What if he is?’ she said.

  ‘You’re in the way,’ said Hood. ‘We’re betting on this race.’

  ‘I got a tip for you,’ said Rutter. He lifted his hands and pointed at Hood. ‘Start talking.’

  ‘Put your cock-scratchers back in your pocket or I’ll break them off.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question. You one of the family?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’ said Hood snarling and trying to keep back from the men so that they couldn’t slip behind him. A dog began to yelp from his box and he started more shrill baying from the others.

  Rutter said, ‘Because if you’re one of the family, then maybe it don’t matter. But I think you’re crow-barring in, and the thing is, we’re looking after Lorna. Aren’t we, baby?’

  ‘I can look after myself,’ she said.

  ‘Ron was a mate of mine,’ said Rutter. ‘More than business. We done each other favours. When he copped it I cried like he was my own brother.’

  ‘Get out of the way, shorty,’ said Hood.

  ‘Don’t push your luck,’ said Rutter. ‘You can go if you want, but Lorna and me are going to have a little chat. Come on, baby, leave this geezer.’ He went to put his arm around Lorna, but as he did Hood chopped at his shoulder and Rutter staggered back.

  Lorna screamed, and from the far side of the grandstand there was the muffled bang of the traps opening, the snare-drum mutter of the crowd, the whine of the fleeing rabbit.

  Rutter clutched his bruised shoulder and yelled, ‘Okay, Fred! Do him! Do him!’

  The taller of the two came at Hood, but the men were working to a plan he saw only when it was too late. As Hood prepared to throw Fred off, the second man jumped him from behind and began kicking him. Hood felt one tearing at his sleeve and he tried to swing on him, but still he felt the weight of the other on his back, choking him and booting his legs and trying to drag him down. Lorna was screaming still, and there was more noise: the thunder of the train above the dogs’ howls, the deafening clatter of the tracks banging above the railway embankment. He imagined from her shrieking that Lorna had been pounced on, and he tried to reach her. But the sound smothered him and as he stumbled he sensed the paddock’s lights tipping into his eyes. He was being pulled in two directions; he fought to stay upright and he felt warm blood trickling down his legs and gathering in his shoes. Then the train died on the rails. The men’s grip loosened on him. He heard strangled woofs. He steadied himself to hammer the nearest man when he heard an excited stutter.

  ‘If anyone moves, this fucker gets it in the chops.’

  Murf held Rutter’s head in the crook of his elbow. They were almost the same size, both very short, but Murf had a demon’s insect face, his ear-ring twitched back and forth, and he stood just behind Rutter in a grotesque embrace, as if he was about to devour him. He had jabbed his hunting knife under the knot of Rutter’s tie and he was moving it menacingly against his throat. Rutter had gone white, and for a moment Hood imagined the knife halfway through his windpipe, preventing utterance.

  The men backed away from Hood. Lorna ran to the exit, stumbling in her new boots. Hood went over to Murf, who still hugged Rutter tightly.

  Murf said, ‘You want to put the boot in?’

  ‘Drop him,’ said Hood. He straightened his jacket and started to limp away.

  Murf swung Rutter around, gagging him with the knife at his throat. Using the same childlike plea he had at the house – as if there was no knife, no thugs, as if they were alone – he said, ‘Now can I come wif you?’

  ‘Come on, brother.’

  Part Four

  18

  Once the boat was out of sight of Tower Bridge, travelling downriver on this bleak backwater lined with ghostly rotting warehouses, there were no more landmarks to distract Lady Arrow, and her memory was buoyed by the river’s surge. Her mind began to move with the current. So much better than the bounce and stink of a taxi, though at first on the excursion boat she had felt only nausea. She had been struck by the discomfort, the choppy water under the grey sky, and up close she could see that what she had taken for turbulence were chunks of rocking flotsam, the arm of a chair, a cupboard door, a greasy eel of rope, a bar of yellow factory froth, all simulating the dance of waves. Like the boat itself: a deception. She had seen it gliding towards the quay at Westminster and had a foretaste of pleasure; but on board, the engine droned against her feet and set her teeth on edge, and then she worried that the flimsy craft might go under, slip beneath the water’s garish tincture of chemicals and sink before she gained the Embankment walls. She was sickened by the motion and noise and bad air, and she decided that she had been so far from the boat and water she had mistaken clumsiness for grace. She had reached for something tranquil and seized disorder; her snaring hands had put the peaceful bird to flight. The boat was frantic; it tipped and rattled; the smell of gas made her dizzy. The four other passengers huddled at the edges of the cabin like stowaways. The windows were splashed, but there was nothing to see except a zone of water distorting her landmarks and suddenly the rusty hull of a looming tug – she heard its hoot – and behind it, on a cable, its ark of sewage.

  That was at the beginning of the trip. The wind had wrinkled the river’s surface, she had been cold. The late-October chill had settled, an afternoon in the afternoon of the year, reminding her – as foul weather invariably did – of her age. But now the landmarks were gone and the river carried the boat and her thoughts; she remembered her errand. Her disc
omfort helped her to reflect: she knew she was playing a role that required moments of furtiveness, an anonymity she sometimes craved. She had asked for this accidental hour on the river to keep her appointment on Greenwich pier for the meeting later; she needed all the props of secrecy for her mood. So after the first shock of the boat, the feeling she wanted to shout, the dread she was going to vomit, the window’s dampness prickling her face and that icicle jammed in her spine – after all that, she saw how right it was and she enjoyed its appropriateness to her stealth. It could not be different. The pretence warmed her. And, as always, enjoyment was a prelude to greed: she wanted to buy a boat, think of a name for it, hire an ex-convict to pilot it, moor it beside Cheyne Walk and give a party on the deck.

  Downriver, down its grey throat, seawards, the boat was borne: she could think here.

  Instinct, no more, had brought her this far. She had always struggled to find among the choices within her the truest expression of her will. She had groped to show herself the way through her wealth. Like the painting. That theft. It had been so embarrassing at the time she had only felt exposed and had not seen the simplest thing – that she might have managed it all herself, upstaged the thieves and been the triumphant victim of her own plot. She wished she had been involved from the very beginning. But she had discovered it soon enough – a vindication of her curiosity that made her more curious. She had once thought of selling everything and giving away the proceeds, pouring it all into the river of common hope – like this river beneath her, murky and slow – to speed the current and cause a flooding so great they’d be knee-deep in it in places like Cricklewood and Brixton. But there were other stratagems (anyway, charity was the century’s most deliberate fraud – what were her do-gooding parents but pious cheats?), and of them theft was the greatest. The stolen painting taught her to see her role in a different way. She thought: perhaps I have spent my whole life encouraging people to steal from me, because I have been too timid to give. The most outrageous reply to money was the only one. She had improved on Bakunin – using privilege to rid herself of privilege. She wished for others to do violence to her wealth and yet to have her own say in their acts. She deserved to be the victim and yet she could not be deprived of that other role she had set for herself. She wished to be both the terrorist and the terrorized. Her own painting hung as hostage in the upstairs room of the Deptford house showed her how central she was to the drama of disorder, how her importance confounded simplicity and made all the layers of travesty political. It was like Twelfth Night in Holloway Women’s Prison: the woman chosen to play the man’s part was disguised as a woman, who was revealed as a man who was offstage a woman. And how far she’d come! Until she had discovered the complications of the theft her most revolutionary idea had been to sack Mrs Pount.

  She could feel the boat’s progress, the splashings at her elbow, the window’s mist on her cheek. The painting had redeemed her and, most of all, that theft was one in the eye for Araba. She had stopped visiting Hill Street. She said she was too busy. But Lady Arrow knew the reason. It was not that over-praised farce and had nothing to do with the Peter Pan business – those rehearsals wouldn’t start for weeks. No, a needless sense of rivalry had sharpened in Araba. She too had money; she had prominence; she had her group, the militant actors who had done little but give themselves a name – the Purple League – and disrupt Equity meetings. Play-acting with costumes and aliases, their substitute for action. A mob of howling fairies, frenzied because the best part went to younger stars who didn’t lisp – amazing how many actors in the League had speech impediments or were too short. They got noisier until they landed a place in some safe repertory company and then they fell silent: politics was a way to fame, Marxism to wealth; the furious little Trots wanted to be film stars! Araba believed in them, or said she did; she staged their pageants, led the attacks on the Punch and Judy shows, chaired their meetings, loaned them money. If they disappointed her she expelled them.

  ‘You must come to a meeting one day,’ Araba had said. It was not an invitation. Only an actress celebrated as Lady Macbeth could exclude you by seeming to invite you.

  But she believed, in spite of her mockery. Of all the people Lady Arrow had ever known only actors had been able to combine power with glamour; and the best were gods, moving easily from world to world. They made you believe in that pretence. More than their friendship Lady Arrow wanted their loyalty. It would be like owning the priests who officiated at the public ceremonies of a popular religion. It was, she knew, an irrational trust that she had, but she could not help it. Actors lived in a way she would have chosen for herself; they could be anyone and they could persuade others to believe in their masks. She guessed they were weak, but she seldom saw their weakness and for them to make weakness seem like power filled her with approval. More than that, she saw how in organizing plays in prisons and assigning roles for herself she was secretly imitating them – and what prisoner would criticize her acting ability? This was her unspoken answer to Araba, and a way of proving to herself that she could act well. The more Araba avoided her, the more she tried to divine how she might make the actress dependent, and then they could conspire together. She wanted to be included, but Araba kept her away, as if encouraging the rivalry. Money did not enter into it – so much the better. But Lady Arrow had gathered that Araba did not trust her, did not quite believe the principles Lady Arrow claimed for herself. She seemed to imply in her disbelief that Lady Arrow had a fictitious ambition. Or was she demanding proof – a tactic for ignoring her – because she was not interested in her? Araba might even be on the verge of expelling her in some casual way. Today, Lady Arrow had invited herself and Araba had allowed it with reluctance, showing interest only when Lady Arrow had said, ‘I’m not coming alone. There’s someone I want you to meet.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘One of my prisoners.’

  The river stopped, then her thoughts; the boat was turning, hooting. The spattered windows revealed nothing but the water’s cold light. The engine was still. The boat bumped. Lady Arrow guessed they’d arrived at Greenwich. She walked unsteadily to the ladder and climbed to the deck.

  Brodie was at the top of the ramp, waving. Seeing her, Lady Arrow felt a helpless exalted hunger for the girl, something physical tightening in her that made her strength clumsy. Desire seldom activated her mind – it pulsed at her throat and made her flesh burr as with the onset of fever. It was always like this: it broke her in two and one half hid from the other, like shame from pride. She rushed up to Brodie and kissed her, feeling huge, hoping she did not look foolish and yet not caring. She saw she had startled the young girl with her tongue and teeth, and she said, ‘Are you going to be warm enough in that jacket?’

  ‘I’m all right. I liberated it from a second-hand shop.’ It was a school blazer, with a badge and a Latin motto on the breast pocket. Under it Brodie wore a thin jersey. The wind whipped at her lapels and pushed her long dress against her small thighs.

  ‘We’ve got a stiffish walk,’ said Lady Arrow, feeling guilty to be so warmly dressed in a heavy coat and long scarf. ‘Why don’t we have a drink at the Trafalgar before we set off?’

  ‘I don’t drink,’ said Brodie, ‘but I’ll keep you company.’

  They walked on the riverside path in front of the Naval College to the Trafalgar, where Lady Arrow ordered a double whisky. Brodie excused herself and by the time she returned Lady Arrow had finished her drink. Brodie was brighter, laughing to herself and staring with glazed hilarity at Lady Arrow.

  ‘Have you taken a pill or something?’

  ‘I turned on in the loo,’ said Brodie. ‘You mean you can smell it on me?’

  ‘Rather,’ said Lady Arrow; then she sniffed.

  ‘You said we were meeting this heavy actress. I always turn on before I meet people.’

  Outside, Lady Arrow said, ‘In my favourite novel there’s a lovely scene here in Greenwich – an outing, like this. Do you know Henry James?’

/>   ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘That’s much better than knowing his name and not reading him.’ She looked at the young girl’s white face and thought: she knows nothing – she is free.

  They cut across the park and climbed the path that led around the front of the Observatory to a road and a little hill. Although it was only mid-afternoon the light was failing and the ground darkening with an imitation of shadows; and the air had thickened, so that the trees that led to the far end of the hill, where some tennis courts were just visible, were dimmed by a mist so fine it was like cigarette smoke. And now the Observatory looked distant, like an old Dutch mansion on a promontory of a grey-green sea.

  ‘How is my friend Mister Hood?’

  ‘He’s not around much. I think he’s got a chick.’

  ‘Has he?’ Lady Arrow was momentarily jealous, then she was calm: she was with Brodie. This was what she had wanted most. ‘He seems quite a remarkable man.’

  ‘He’s pretty heavy.’

  ‘You must bring him over to Hill Street.’

  Brodie laughed. ‘He won’t come. He don’t like you.’

  Lady Arrow stopped walking. She said, ‘Why not?’

  Brodie went a few more paces, then turned and said, ‘He’d go crazy if he knew I was meeting you. He told Murf and me not to see you. He says it’s not our scene. You’ll fuck us up.’

  ‘Do you think I will?’

  ‘I’m fucked up already. Anyway he’s not my father. He can’t tell me what to do.’

  ‘Good girl,’ said Lady Arrow, and seeing that they were alone and surrounded by trees she stooped and put her arm around the girl’s small shoulders. Crushing the blazer she pulled her close – even in those thin clothes Brodie was warm. Lady Arrow said, ‘I’d like to adopt you – legally. Then we could be together all the time.’

  Brodie looked up and smiled. ‘You’d be my mother. Really strange.’

  ‘I’d be a nice mother,’ said Lady Arrow, then urgently she said, ‘Let me.’