Paul Theroux - The Family Arsenal

‘I can look after myself,’ she said.

‘Ron was a mate of mine,’ said Rutter. ‘More than business. We done each other favours. When he copped it I cried like he was my own brother.’

‘Get out of the way, shorty,’ said Hood.

‘Don’t push your luck,’ said Rutter. ‘You can go if you want, but Lorna and me are going to have a little chat. Come on, baby, leave this geezer.’ He went to put his arm around Lorna, but as he did Hood chopped at his shoulder and Rutter staggered back.

Lorna screamed, and from the far side of the grandstand there was the muffled bang of the traps opening, the snare-drum mutter of the crowd, the whine of the fleeing rabbit.

Rutter clutched his bruised shoulder and yelled, ‘Okay, Fred! Do him! Do him!’

The taller of the two came at Hood, but the men were working to a plan he saw only when it was too late. As Hood prepared to throw Fred off, the second man jumped him from behind and began kicking him. Hood felt one tearing at his sleeve and he tried to swing on him, but still he felt the weight of the other on his back, choking him and booting his legs and trying to drag him down. Lorna was screaming still, and there was more noise: the thunder of the train above the dogs’ howls, the deafening clatter of the tracks banging above the railway embankment. He imagined from her shrieking that Lorna had been pounced on, and he tried to reach her. But the sound smothered him and as he stumbled he sensed the paddock’s lights tipping into his eyes. He was being pulled in two directions; he fought to stay upright and he felt warm blood trickling down his legs and gathering in his shoes. Then the train died on the rails. The men’s grip loosened on him. He heard strangled woofs. He steadied himself to hammer the nearest man when he heard an excited stutter.

‘If anyone moves, this fucker gets it in the chops.’

Murf held Rutter’s head in the crook of his elbow. They were almost the same size, both very short, but Murf had a demon’s insect face, his ear-ring twitched back and forth, and he stood just behind Rutter in a grotesque embrace, as if he was about to devour him. He had jabbed his hunting knife under the knot of Rutter’s tie and he was moving it menacingly against his throat. Rutter had gone white, and for a moment Hood imagined the knife halfway through his windpipe, preventing utterance.

The men backed away from Hood. Lorna ran to the exit, stumbling in her new boots. Hood went over to Murf, who still hugged Rutter tightly.

Murf said, ‘You want to put the boot in?’

‘Drop him,’ said Hood. He straightened his jacket and started to limp away.

Murf swung Rutter around, gagging him with the knife at his throat. Using the same childlike plea he had at the house — as if there was no knife, no thugs, as if they were alone — he said, ‘Now can I come wif you?’

‘Come on, brother.’

Once the boat was out of sight of Tower Bridge, travelling downriver on this bleak backwater lined with ghostly rotting warehouses, there were no more landmarks to distract Lady Arrow, and her memory was buoyed by the river’s surge. Her mind began to move with the current. So much better than the bounce and stink of a taxi, though at first on the excursion boat she had felt only nausea. She had been struck by the discomfort, the choppy water under the grey sky, and up close she could see that what she had taken for turbulence were chunks of rocking flotsam, the arm of a chair, a cupboard door, a greasy eel of rope, a bar of yellow factory froth, all simulating the dance of waves. Like the boat itself: a deception. She had seen it gliding towards the quay at Westminster and had a foretaste of pleasure; but on board, the engine droned against her feet and set her teeth on edge, and then she worried that the flimsy craft might go under, slip beneath the water’s garish tincture of chemicals and sink before she gained the Embankment walls. She was sickened by the motion and noise and bad air, and she decided that she had been so far from the boat and water she had mistaken clumsiness for grace. She had reached for something tranquil and seized disorder; her snaring hands had put the peaceful bird to flight. The boat was frantic; it tipped and rattled; the smell of gas made her dizzy. The four other passengers huddled at the edges of the cabin like stowaways. The windows were splashed, but there was nothing to see except a zone of water distorting her landmarks and suddenly the rusty hull of a looming tug — she heard its hoot — and behind it, on a cable, its ark of sewage.

That was at the beginning of the trip. The wind had wrinkled the river’s surface, she had been cold. The late-October chill had settled, an afternoon in the afternoon of the year, reminding her — as foul weather invariably did — of her age. But now the landmarks were gone and the river carried the boat and her thoughts; she remembered her errand. Her discomfort helped her to reflect: she knew she was playing a role that required moments of furtiveness, an anonymity she sometimes craved. She had asked for this accidental hour on the river to keep her appointment on Greenwich pier for the meeting later; she needed all the props of secrecy for her mood. So after the first shock of the boat, the feeling she wanted to shout, the dread she was going to vomit, the window’s dampness prickling her face and that icicle jammed in her spine — after all that, she saw how right it was and she enjoyed its appropriateness to her stealth. It could not be different. The pretence warmed her. And, as always, enjoyment was a prelude to greed: she wanted to buy a boat, think of a name for it, hire an ex-convict to pilot it, moor it beside Cheyne Walk and give a party on the deck.

Downriver, down its grey throat, seawards, the boat was borne: she could think here.

Instinct, no more, had brought her this far. She had always struggled to find among the choices within her the truest expression of her will. She had groped to show herself the way through her wealth. Like the painting. That theft. It had been so embarrassing at the time she had only felt exposed and had not seen the simplest thing — that she might have managed it all herself, upstaged the thieves and been the triumphant victim of her own plot. She wished she had been involved from the very beginning. But she had discovered it soon enough — a vindication of her curiosity that made her more curious. She had once thought of selling everything and giving away the proceeds, pouring it all into the river of common hope — like this river beneath her, murky and slow — to speed the current and cause a flooding so great they’d be knee-deep in it in places like Cricklewood and Brixton. But there were other stratagems (anyway, charity was the century’s most deliberate fraud — what were her do-gooding parents but pious cheats?), and of them theft was the greatest. The stolen painting taught her to see her role in a different way. She thought: perhaps I have spent my whole life encouraging people to steal from me, because I have been too timid to give. The most outrageous reply to money was the only one. She had improved on Bakunin — using privilege to rid herself of privilege. She wished for others to do violence to her wealth and yet to have her own say in their acts. She deserved to be the victim and yet she could not be deprived of that other role she had set for herself. She wished to be both the terrorist and the terrorized. Her own painting hung as hostage in the upstairs room of the Deptford house showed her how central she was to the drama of disorder, how her importance confounded simplicity and made all the layers of travesty political. It was like Twelfth Night in Holloway Women’s Prison: the woman chosen to play the man’s part was disguised as a woman, who was revealed as a man who was offstage a woman. And how far she’d come! Until she had discovered the complications of the theft her most revolutionary idea had been to sack Mrs Pount.