Paul Theroux - The Family Arsenal

He said, ‘Maybe you’ll listen to me now.’

‘Do you think she’ll cough?’

‘Not a chance,’ said Hood. ‘She’s on your side — whatever side that is.’

Mayo said, ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

‘Really?’

‘Don’t you see? That’s one of the reasons I was held up last night. We expelled someone —’

‘So there’s a post vacant,’ he said.

‘You can put it that way. I was trying to convince them you were clean. Well, they’re convinced.’ Mayo lowered her voice. ‘There’s a problem, Val. They want to talk to you. They think you can help them.’

‘I used to think that.’

‘Oh, God, don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet!’

‘Cold feet,’ said Hood, sneering. ‘Wise up, sister.’

‘I knew it. As soon as things started to go your way you’d begin your consul act — the big, cool, non-committal thing.’

‘I’ll play it by ear.’

‘They’re coming tonight.’

‘I might be out tonight.’

‘I told them they could count on you.’

‘They can count on me tomorrow. I’ve got other plans.’ He stood up and moved towards the door.

‘Where are you going?’

‘That shouldn’t be hard for you to figure out. You’ve got training — you said so! You’re a conspirator, aren’t you? You don’t have to ask questions like that. Get your raincoat and shadow me.’

‘Don’t go now, Val. Stay awhile — it’s nine o’clock in the morning! Don’t make me wait, please.’

‘You made me wait last night, sweetheart.’ He looked at her imploring face. He wouldn’t stay. There was Lorna, but more, he was punishing Mayo for her past, for betraying her parents’ trust; the picture. My parents used to take me there.

‘So that’s it. You’re going to get your own back on me. God, it’s as stupid as a marriage! It’s sickening. You’ve got other plans. All these secrets. You’re hiding something from me. Why don’t you just come out and say it — you’re not interested in me anymore.’

‘But I am. Come on, smile.’

‘The painting,’ she said. ‘They trusted me after that. If they find out it belongs to that woman they won’t like it — it’s no good to them.’

‘I won’t tell them.’

‘Thanks, Val,’ she said. ‘I feel such a failure.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Hood. ‘Think of the painting! It’s yours — you’ve committed the perfect crime!’

‘Kiss me,’ she said.

He hesitated, then he drew near to her.

She said, ‘What do you want?’

‘I want to kiss you, sister.’

‘Don’t,’ she said. She faced the wall and said, ‘Go! That’s what you really want to do, isn’t it?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I want to kiss you.’

She turned expectantly and lifted her arms in hope to embrace him, but Hood was on his way out of the room.

As he passed through the kitchen, he slapped Murf on the shoulder. Murf said, ‘Take me with you,’ and whispered, ‘I don’t want to stay here with these two hairies.’

‘Next time, pal.’

It was a lovely autumn day and Hood was so distracted by the sunshine he did not at first see the sweeper — just the father today, with his shovel and broom and the yellow barrel on wheels. The man pushed at the papers and dead leaves, then stooped to pick up a button. He looked at Hood with mistrust and said, ‘That your ice-cream van?’

‘Not mine,’ said Hood.

‘I can’t sweep there unless it’s moved.’

‘I don’t know anything about it,’ said Hood, and he heard the man mutter a curse.

— Because when it came, Mr Gawber was thinking, the thunderclap and the short circuit in the heavens, announcing itself there in the City like the rumble and flash of summer lightning, it would travel in every direction and be most evident here on the pitches of this bald heath: a sudden airless fissure streaking across the grass to that silent church, dividing Blackheath into two treeless slopes. Already there were no trees, so the slightest crack would heave open the unrooted ground and make it a place where there was no shelter; no place to squat either. It could be horrific: London’s most mammoth sewer ran under this heath.

The morning, so beautiful, with tufts of white cloud racing in the sky, intimated a ripeness that was next to decay — the season’s warning. And more than this, Blackheath, a square mile of grass, was like a roomy cemetery, all that space awaiting diggers and coffins. How lonely sat the city that was full of people! She was a widow, she who had had an imperial fortune. The princess of cities was supine with tramplings. The prospect made him sad, remembering. He had protected himself from life, which was pain, but the last pain was unavoidable. Yet if the eruption came, the fissure underfoot, the storm overhead, he might be granted the life he had denied himself, as the war had briefly proven his resourcefulness; and he came to see in the quake he imagined a humbly heroic retirement, testing him with the repeated whisper ‘Die!’ He would say no and live.

Mr Gawber puffed his morning pipe on the top deck of a bus. His mind, undistracted by a crossword puzzle, sped easily to thoughts of doom; he looked up from the simple puzzle and there was the unsolvable world. He lingered over his annoyance. She had rung again, as she had done a month ago, with the same weepy haste. I must see you , she’d said, it’s very important. You’re the only one who can help me . A dirty trick, that; singling him out to throw herself on him. Perhaps you can stop by on your way to work. I live quite near you now — Blackheath . But only the map made it near. In every other way it was a troublesome detour. He would not get to Rackstraw’s before lunchtime. Charity blunted his anger, and he made his objection general: I’m glad we never had a daughter.

He recognized her house at once, Mortimer Lodge, the fresh coat of pale green paint and white trim subduing the Georgian plumpness. In the western edge, it faced directly onto the heath, like a fort fronting an open plain, defying intruders. It was secure, unshakeable, detached, not crowded by nearby houses; and though it was not tall, its weight was apparent in the spread of its bay-windowed wings. Its hedge had body, its garden balance. The girl was luckier than she knew, but as Mr Gawber swung open the gate he had a vision — he did not know why: perhaps it was an effect of the sunlight slanting explosively on the rooftiles — a vision of Mortimer Lodge bursting open; the front toppling forward into the fountain and birdbath and the roof caving in and a puff of smoke rising from its shattered design. He endured it, let it pass across his mind, and he was left breathless. Now the house was unmarked. He thought he had rid himself of these punishing visions, but since the day he had uttered ‘macaroon’ to the strangers on the crossed line he had sensed a fracture in his life. It surprised him; he was strengthened by it, enlivened, like an old man who senses the onset of magic in his eyes. He wondered if he was mad, then dismissed the thought. He was only late for work, and Araba’s phone-call the previous night had made his dreams anxious and disconnected (searches, a son, ruins). He thought: I hope she doesn’t cry.

He pushed the bell and set a dog yapping inside. The gnome-faced woman with freckles answered the door, the puppy under her arm yelping and choking like a child in tears. He had been told this woman’s name; he could not remember it. Tomorrow, seismic, was at the front of his mind. He removed his bowler hat and said, ‘I believe we’ve met.’

‘Araba’s waiting for you,’ said the little woman.

‘I’m in here,’ called Araba, and when Mr Gawber found her in her loose blue dressing gown in the sunny room he was ashamed for having seen the house so furiously destroyed. He had confounded himself with exaggeration — surely that was insanity, not magic? Araba said, ‘I’m sorry you had to come here like this, but honestly there’s no one else who can help me.’