Paul Theroux - The Family Arsenal

‘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.’