Paul Theroux - The Family Arsenal

Hood said, ‘But you’re not married anymore.’

‘No,’ she said, and she looked so sad he thought she was going to cry. She surprised him by saying, ‘He was a right bastard, he was. Sometimes I think, “Poor bugger, he’s dead,” then I remember how he used to treat me and I think, “Good — the fucker deserved it.” ’

‘Maybe he had it coming to him.’

‘Maybe, maybe!’ she mocked. ‘Are you trying it on? You always sound as if you’re defending him.’

‘Do I?’ She was quick; he wondered if it was so.

‘Yes, you do. I tell you what an absolute fucker he was and all you do is nod your head and say, “Oh, yeah, maybe you’re right.” Jesus, whose side are you on?’

He said coldly, ‘It’s unlucky to badmouth the dead. Even if they are fuckers.’

‘No, that’s not the reason,’ she said. ‘I keep forgetting you’re one of them. You’re different, but you’re one of them. Why aren’t you like the rest of them?’

He almost objected. He so easily forgot how he had come into her life; then he remembered that he had introduced himself as one of the family. Had he said he was Weech’s friend? He no longer knew. Lorna had told him all the other names, and he had given them faces and cruel teeth. He could not ask for any more, he could not reveal himself. It was too late for that: assumptions had to be taken for truth.

He said, ‘Maybe I am like them.’

‘If you was,’ she said fiercely, ‘if you really was, I wouldn’t want to know you.’

‘Take it easy, sister,’ he said. ‘How do you know them so well?’

‘I know they’re filth,’ she said, tightening her mouth, pronouncing it, as Murf did, filf . ‘They’ve been over here. The other night — Monday, it was. Ernie — you know him, the little one, eyes like a rat, hair way down to here — Ernie come round. I thought it was you, so I let him in. Asking questions, but I knew he wasn’t listening to me. The fucker’s just going sniff, sniff.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘I thought you knew,’ she said. ‘Anyway, it don’t matter.’

‘Did he ask you about the stuff upstairs?’

‘No. But I knew he was checking up. I could see the little fucker’s eyes.’

‘I should have known.’ Hood was uneasy; he didn’t want to be exposed, but there was a greater danger for Lorna, and he regretted that he had told her so little. At once he saw how he had toyed with her affection — his victim’s wife was his victim: the thought repeated, more deliberately and so more cruelly. He said, ‘If they ever ask you about that loot, say you don’t know where it is.’

‘I don’t, do I?’ she said lightly. She was calm, she didn’t know how unsafe she was. ‘Like I’ve never been to your house, have I?’

‘Right,’ said Hood. ‘So you don’t know anything.’

‘I don’t want to know anything.’

Hood said nothing. For a moment he thought of telling her everything, from the murder onwards, but there was a threshold in every friendship which, once crossed, made the past a deception. Then, every explanation seemed like a suppression of a greater fact, and truth looking like a lie was an unforgivable taunt.

Noticing his silence she said, ‘Anyway, they’re your friends, not mine.’

‘Sure,’ he said to stop her. Then, ‘You said you were going to show me the other clothes you bought.’

‘What’s the use? There’s nowhere to go. I can’t go shopping around here wearing stuff like that. The butcher’s, the newsagent. They’ll take me for a tart.’

‘We’ll go somewhere,’ said Hood, but he could not think where. They had only ever been to the park on Brookmill Road together and once to Greenwich to see the Cutty Sark and the Royal Observatory (he told her about Verloc; she said, ‘The fucker sounds like Ron’). ‘Where would you like to go?’

‘How about the flicks?’ she said. ‘I can sit in the dark wearing my new gear.’

‘Come on, think of a place.’

She said, ‘What I’d really like to do is go to the dog track, like I used to — not with my girlfriends, but my father. He’d find me a seat where it was warm and tell me which dogs to back. He’d have a cup of tea with me and he’d put his arm around me and keep the teds away.’ She smiled softly. ‘Sometimes we used to win. He always gave me half.’

‘We’ll do it,’ said Hood. ‘Where is it — Catford? We’ll win a bundle!’

‘Not a chance,’ she said. ‘What about the kid?’

‘Get a babysitter,’ he said. ‘You’ve got the money. Remember, sister? You won the pools.’

She sat back and sighed, then she said, ‘I’d love to go. There are races tonight. It’s Thursday.’

‘We’re going,’ he said.

‘Okay,’ she said, but she added quickly, ‘I didn’t win no pools. It’s their money. Ernie said, “We’ll take care of you, don’t worry.” And then, the next day, this thing came from the bank — fifty quid deposit. I don’t care, and maybe they ain’t such fuckers after all. But they probably stole it off Ron.’

The railway arches in the half dark — the black brick spans — were shaped like the crust of a burnt-out cloister. They ran parallel to the poorly lighted road all the way from the station at Catford Bridge to the dog track. And there were dead monks underneath — or so it seemed to Hood, who preparing himself to enjoy the dog races had smoked a joint in the train — discarded cartons, peaked like the cowls of monks’ habits, lay on the ground, holy casualties in the broken place, feet and hands and covered heads, and an odour of ruin. Ahead he saw the greyhound motif, a starved lunging dog picked out in lights, but between the stadium entrance and where they now stood was this shadowy rising brickwork mottled with football slogans, CRYSTAL PALACE, CHARLTON RULE, SPURS, barely legible, like the last messages of heathen raiders. The highlights were unexpected — rubbish that had the appearance of thick bushes and an impression of autumn foliage that was no more than the suggestion of darkness and the smells, verifying the dead cloister and giving it a further authority, the veiled aspect of a brittle engraving. And when the train rumbled on the spans and shook the yellow lamps on the line — but was itself hidden from this road — the sound raised the tattered smell again and corrected the engraved dimension the silence had imposed: the noise loosened it all and gave it brief life for the duration of the passing train.

Lorna said, ‘I always used to be afraid of this road.’

‘I like it,’ said Hood.

‘Well, maybe because I saw a bloke nobbled here,’ she said. ‘I mean killed.’

It had a name, this puddly two-hundred yards: Adenmore Road, London, was closely mapped. No city he had ever seen had been so examined. The darkest corner had an inaccurate caption, and even the wild place, the sudden hill of hiding trees above Peckham where he’d dumped Weech’s body — that, too, had a name.

Hood was surprised when Lorna chose the second-class enclosure instead of the more expensive one. At the turnstile she said it was the one she had always used with her father. The stadium was gaily lit with strings of coloured bulbs, and Hood could see the smoke drifting up from the various enclosures to the floodlights on tall poles, as if the whole circus was cosily smouldering. There was no shouting, only a low roar of voices.

‘There’s the dogs,’ said Lorna. ‘Way over there.’

The first race was about to begin. Across the track, on the far side of the stadium, six girls in hunting clothes marched in single file. Each held a sleek dog on a leash, and the sharp snouts and thin bodies were silhouetted in the lights like black metal cutouts in a row, shooting gallery targets. Then they turned under the lights and came towards the near grandstand, and up close Hood could see how young the girls were, how skinny the dogs — tottering on bony paws, panting in their tight wire muzzles.