Paul Theroux - The Family Arsenal

He tried to reassure her, but he saw how he was failing at it and he left. Outside, his confusion hardened into anger: he raged, he swore, and again in the grassy cemetery of the heath he saw the shadow of a seam preparing to part for the canyon of a mass grave, to swallow it all. The calamity — but no, it was only a cloud passing overhead. Not yet, not yet.

‘You like them?’ She was wearing white thigh-length boots; the short black skirt was new as well, and standing before him she reminded him of a tropical bird with slender legs, a small-bodied heron raising her head and flicking her tail before taking flight. She walked up and down for him — the boots made her taller: not the slouching flat-footed girl anymore but a preening woman. Perhaps sensing the novelty of her height, she stood straighter and danced towards him, laughing. Then she sat down beside him and smoothed the boots. ‘I’ve always wanted ones like these. Real leather.’

‘Classy,’ said Hood. He knew they were out of fashion elsewhere, but they were still considered chic in Deptford.

‘You don’t think they make me look like a tart?’ She narrowed her eyes and peered sideways at him.

‘A little bit,’ he said. ‘Maybe that’s why I like them.’

‘I’ll go up the Broadway looking for pick-ups.’

‘You could make a fortune as a hooker,’ he said. ‘I’d take a cut.’

‘Funny,’ she said. ‘First time I seen you I took you for a ponce. Ron knew a lot of them. They’d come sniffing around for him. Something about the eyes. You’ve got mean eyes.’

‘And you’ve got a nice ass,’ he said.

‘You think so?’ She wriggled on the sofa. She laughed. ‘Me, I’m a raver — you don’t know!’

‘A new skirt, too,’ he said. ‘Nice.’

‘Got a blouse upstairs. I’m saving that for later. You can almost see through it.’

‘The hooker,’ he said.

She wrinkled her nose. ‘It don’t matter.’

The new clothes flattered her, and he knew they were for him. Lately, Lorna had begun to dress up for his afternoon visits. Suspicious at first, she had worn old dresses and slippers in the house as if to challenge his interest. She said, ‘Don’t mind me — I usually pig it around the house.’ But he noticed that she always made up her face and wore a white raincoat and silk scarf when she took Jason to the playgroup — for the other mothers. With time she relaxed; she sat in her dressing gown and drank coffee with him, talking with trusting familiarity, as if they had spent the night together. Hood had not responded to her clothes; he imagined her in other clothes, a riding outfit, a leather suit, a great robe; he played with the idea that there was no difference between her and a princess but jewels. But now she dressed for him as she did for the mothers at Jason’s playgroup, and today the clothes were new. The money had arrived.

He visited her regularly. He asked nothing of her. If there was time they smoked the pipe. She saw nothing unusual in his visits. At one time she might have been able to ask, ‘What do you want?’ and demanded he be explicit. But (and like the crescent of scar over her eye he had always meant to ask about — Weech’s work?) it was too late for that. He liked her too much to risk embarrassing her. He believed they were as close as friends could be, for the friendship had grown out of a cautious study of each other’s weaknesses. Once she had said, ‘I thought you wanted to fuck me,’ and when he laughed she added, ‘It’s better this way — for now.’ He had wanted to, but he was shamed by his advantage — his victim’s wife was also his victim — then he decided that sex made a couple unequal with doubting tension: if sex was tried it became the only reassurance, and there was power for the one who withheld it. That part had been set aside, though for Hood it was accidental — he had only desired her the first instant he’d seen her rushing out of the house. He hadn’t known who she was and then, when he remembered, the feeling died in him; afterwards, he did not think of making love to her. His remoteness made her curious and inspired trust in her, and though he saw how she was uncertain of him in the early weeks when she had expected sexual sparring, that awkward hinting dance, after a month it was plain he had no further intentions and she stopped being defensive. She was perfectly naked, but he did not want another victim.

The afternoons they spent together were happy. They touched more than lovers because they were not lovers; they kissed easily, they hugged and she lay with her head in his lap. It meant friendship. No further bargain was being struck: the kisses led to nothing. With the sexual element removed they were equal, mutually protective, like brother and sister, as if they had shared a parent they both hated, now dead and unmourned. And it was partly true: Weech was in a cemetery in the blackest part of Ladywell. Hood saw her new boots and skirt as an expression of her freedom, and he admired them as a brother might, congratulating his sister’s taste.

She said, ‘Ron never let me buy new clothes — at least not like these ones. Men are such fuckers. They like to see dolly-girls, all tarted up, false eyelashes, miniskirts and that. But not their wives.’

‘You think every man is like Ron?’

‘I didn’t know any others, did I?’

‘You know me.’

‘I used to think you were the same,’ she said, ‘only you ain’t.’

‘I sure ain’t.’

‘You’re the quiet type, you are. You bottle it up. I used to think, “What’s he waiting for?” ’

‘You don’t think that anymore?’

‘Now I know what you’re waiting for — nothing.’ She pursed her lips and kissed him, holding his head, then she stamped her boots and said, ‘These things are killing my feet. Here, help me get the buggers off.’ She zipped them down to her ankles, showing the pink roulettes of the zipper on her inner thigh and then she raised her legs playfully for Hood to get a grip. She was unembarrassed with her legs in the air, her skirt to her waist; but even holding her this way and pulling her boots off he felt no twinge of arousal.

She said, ‘Stop looking at me knickers, you dirty devil.’

Only then he looked and saw the wrinkle fitting the parrot beak of hair where she was narrowest. ‘Black ones. Very sexy.’

‘I bought a dozen. All colours.’

‘You’re a new woman, sweetheart,’ he said, tugging her boot, tipping her backwards. ‘All these new clothes — you must have won the pools.’

She looked away. ‘I don’t know.’ He worked the second boot off, then she smiled and said, ‘Right. I won the pools. But it’s a secret.’

‘I hope it was a bundle.’

‘A packet — well, enough anyway.’ In a resentful monotone she said, ‘He knew I wanted boots like these. But he always said no. Or a skirt — I used to wear skirts like these but when we got married he said I was just trying to get other men to look at me. As if he didn’t look at other women! It was the same as the dog track. That’s where I met the fucker — at the dogs. My father took me there a few times, and then when he died I went with my girlfriends from work. Nothing serious — just for fun, like, a little flutter on a Thursday night. Made a change from going home to the telly. It was at the track one Thursday. Ron come over and chatted me up. He’s wearing this expensive suit, he tells me he’s something in insurance, full of talk. How am I supposed to know he’s a villain? He was a heavy punter — always showing off with his money and talking about his connections. He knows this bloke on the Continent, he’s got business with the Arabs. Then we got married and after that he wouldn’t take me to the track. He went with his mates — Willy, Fred and them. “That’s no place for no married woman,” he says.’