Paul Theroux - The Family Arsenal

‘What are you going to do about it?’

‘Absolutely nothing. One can’t be burgled by people one admires. You can trust me, Mister Hood, I won’t tell a soul. I might even collect on the insurance — my accountant’s been insisting on it. You’re welcome to that, as well. I do feel it’s a bit out for you to want to chase me away. You see, when I saw that picture in your cupboard I suddenly realized what a family affair this has all become. I wish I had planned it this way — arranged for someone to steal my own painting. But that sort of thing takes genius. However.’

Hood said, ‘I’m going to check on everything you say.’

‘Do that, Mister Hood. You’ll see I’m telling the truth.’

‘Okay, now beat it.’

‘Not so fast, my man,’ she said. ‘You can’t order me now. You see, your project very much concerns me. I support you! I believe we can be friends at last, and I consider this house as much mine as yours. Frankly, I was rather hoping Brodie would come back with me. She’s not yours, you know.’

‘She’s staying here.’

‘She’ll come to me eventually,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘And you’ll visit me now, won’t you?’

Hood pursed his lips, but said nothing.

‘I’m sure of it,’ said Lady Arrow, and she picked up her handbag. At the door she said, ‘I can’t tell you how pleased I am that things have turned out this way.’

‘Keep going,’ said Hood in a flat threatening voice.

He banged the door and locked it, but when he went back to the parlour he clapped his hands and laughed — a yell of gladness, and still chuckling he sat down and waited for Mayo. The picture stirred him from its hiding place at the top of the house.

At midnight there was still no sign of Mayo. He wondered if she could be teasing him with her more frequent absences; she knew he was waiting and was deliberately hiding herself. She made her inaction secret to give it drama. She was whining in Kilburn over a pint of beer or in bed with an Irishman — for her a political act. She had deceived him over the passport, tricked him into forging one for the well-known actress, whose single attribute, so far as he could guess, was her theatrical ability to alter her face. You had access to a wig, so you were a conspirator. Araba had struck him as hysterical and insincere, a fraud, persuasive only to those who didn’t know the real thing. The trick had made him doubt his own judgement — the victim losing respect for himself when he knows how easily he has been victimized. But he said nothing to Mayo: he would have his own secrets.

He had drawn the cushions to the centre of the upstairs room and he lay on them in his bathrobe, with the cupboard door open wide and the lamp tilted to face the painting. He pondered it and smoked a pipe of Navy-Cut sprinkled with hashish grains. He had a feeling of wealth, the comfortable security of resting in undisturbed solitude. For the moment he wanted no more than this, and the self-portrait only added to his pleasure: now it could not be snatched away; he didn’t need to hide it; the owner didn’t care. It shone on him. Its greatness lay in the way the cubes of colour gathered to match his own mood. It was consoling: it did not reproach him — perhaps the greatest art never did — it exalted the eye. It shimmered with certainty, it was the surest vision, an astonishing light. What Mayo and the others did to enrage him the painting corrected: it was the only solace he had received, this illumination. And like a light it printed a small white star on his retina that stayed to remind and console him long after he turned away.

There was a knock at the door. Mayo never knocked. It was Murf.

‘You busy?’

Hood pulled the pipe out of his mouth and blew a grey-white cone of smoke at the lamp, watching it untangle in the light. ‘Come in, squire. Where’s Brodie?’

‘Watching telly. She thinks you’re narked. She said she’s sorry.’ Murf bobbed nervously and pushed at his ears. ‘I don’t know what that old girl told you, but she’s lying. She didn’t see nothing.’

‘It’s okay. But you can tell Brodie she’s got some pretty hot-shit friends.’ Hood puffed the pipe. He felt high, happy, a buzz inching down his ears like a centipede with sparking feet. ‘Don’t let me catch you bringing any lords and ladies down here, squire, or I’ll have to change my socks.’

‘I hated her,’ said Murf, who had started to sweat. ‘I wanted to brick her.’

‘No kidding. What for?’

‘She was laughing at me.’ He pushed at his ears again, a combing motion with his palms. Hood had noticed how he did this when he was upset, made self-conscious by a stranger. But the ears, as if exercised with brushes, sprang out wider. ‘Just standing there, laughing like a fucking drain. I could have smashed her face.’

‘I know the feeling,’ said Hood. ‘Don’t let it get you down.’

‘Hood?’ Murf sighed, whacked at his ears and shook his head. ‘There was something else. I said she didn’t see nothing. Well, maybe she did. But it wasn’t my fault. She come up here while I was changing. I caught her on the stairs. Laughing, she was. I don’t know for sure, but maybe she come in here.’

‘Maybe,’ said Hood. ‘You couldn’t help it.’

‘Honest, I couldn’t. Brodie was supposed to be watching her. Maybe she seen your picture. Anyway, she didn’t nick it, did she?’

‘It’s still here,’ said Hood. Murf leaned and looked at it, cocking his head to the side as if trying to understand it better. ‘What do you think of it?’

Murf said, ‘It’s a bloke, ain’t it? Old-fashioned bloke — them boots, them clothes. Yeah, I like it. First time I seen it I thought it was poxy. Who’s this flaming great tit, I says. Then Arfa sees it and he says it’s a antique, it’s worth something, they’re paying for them up the West End. He’s got ready money, he says. I thought maybe I could do you some kind of favour, flog it to Arfa. Sorry about that. Anyway, I had a crafty look at it. Later, this was. I’m knocked over! It’s all shiny, sort of moving and blowing up in me mush. Bloke’s looking at me, yeah, like he’s going to jump out and kick me in the goolies.’

Hood loved him for that. He had despaired of ever changing Murf. The boy was unaffected by the afternoon concerts on the radio Hood had listened to before he began spending his afternoons with Lorna. No symphony, not the finest phrase had altered those blaring ears, and nothing Hood had ever shown him — the Chinese scroll, the carvings from Hué — had worked his eyes wider than a squint. He had given Murf a Chinese treasure and Murf, making a claw of his fingers, had handled it like a turd. The silk shirt from Vientiane, his present to Murf for helping shift the arsenal and the loot, had become a rag on his skinny shoulders; the pocket bulged and drooped where he kept his stash of tobacco. He carried himself like an ape, with his arms hanging loose. He had one skill: the clock-legged bomb. But a sense of loyalty had brought him to the room tonight; he had told the truth; his response to Lady Arrow was crudely accurate — Hood himself had wanted to smash her in the face. And his description of the painting — how civilizing a thing it was! — had insight. In that small crooked boy Hood saw a shy friend.

Hood poked his pipe-stem at the painting. He said, ‘I’ve been trying to figure out who it is.’

‘Funny bloke.’ Murf scratched his head. ‘Sort of smiling and sad at the same time.’

‘And look at his eyes.’

‘You think he’s going to say something,’ said Murf. ‘Yeah, I like it.’ He caught his lips with his fingers in embarrassment and pinched them. He said, ‘Reminds me of you, he does.’