The Family Arsenal by Paul Theroux
Murf kicked off his wet shoes and sat on the sofa with his legs outstretched. He squinted at the television and tapping his stash began making a joint.
‘Where you been?’ Brodie rolled sideways and screwed up her face for the reply.
‘Hanging out.’ Murf lit the cigarette and inhaled. He passed it to her. ‘Anything on?’
‘Nah.’ She puffed and winced at the smoke.
Hood was at the doorway, smiling at the litle scene: Murf slumped in the chair, sucking at the joint, Brodie on the floor with her chin in her hands, her thin jersey riding up her bony back. It was a zone of complete calm, warmed by the sizzle and smell of the frying meat from the kitchen. Murf and Brodie’s postures gave it a look of slatternly innocence.
‘Have a seat, guv. It’s lovely in here.’
‘I’ve got to talk to Mayo.’
Murf swallowed smoke. He gulped as if stifling a belch, then waved the cigarette at Hood and said, ‘Hit.’
‘Give it to her,’ said Hood. He peered at Brodie. ‘Okay, angel? How’s your tattoo?’
Brodie said, ‘You know what you can do.’
‘Shut up,’ said Murf, digesting more smoke. ‘He’s just trying to be matey.’
Hood left them quarrelling. In the kitchen, Mayo said, ‘I hope you haven’t eaten already. I’m making something special.’ She worked at the counter, cutting carrots and potatoes, and as she spoke she reached over and shook the frying pan of meat cubes.
Hood saw Murf pass the kitchen door, headed for the stairs.
‘Irish stew,’ said Mayo. ‘I make it with beer.’
Hood said, ‘How did you know I’d be here.’
‘This,’ she said. She took a letter from her apron pocket and handed it to him. ‘I knew you’d be back to collect it. It came this afternoon – express. Looks like money.’
‘You should know.’ He glanced at it – the return address was indecipherable (but a London postmark: another from Mr Gawber?) – and stuffed it into his pocket without opening it. He continued to watch Mayo slicing the carrots into discs. The knife was new and there were more, all sizes, in a rack over the counter. He said, ‘A new set of knives.’
‘Cutlery,’ she said, and he wondered if she was correcting him. ‘The old ones were getting dull.’
‘What a cosy place,’ he said.
Mayo grunted and added the meat to the simmering broth.
The kitchen door burst open. Murf came in, laughing crossly, high and angry at the same time, and swinging an alarm clock in his fist. He said, ‘Who’s been fucking with me clocks?’
‘What is it, squire?’ said Hood, putting a hand on his shoulder to quiet him.
‘Me clocks,’ said Murf. ‘I always leave them a certain way, like. But someone’s been messing around – me drawer’s open, like it’s been fucked about. There’s one on the floor, just flung there, and look at this one I found on the stairs. She’s bust.’
Hood took it. The glass was broken, the hands twisted. He rattled it and handed it back to Murf. ‘Too bad, squire.’
‘But who done it that’s what I want to know.’ Murf was panting. He spoke to Mayo. ‘Was it you?’
She laughed and swiped with her vegetable knife. ‘I expect it was Brodie.’
‘Brodie keeps her hands off me hardware.’
‘An intruder,’ said Hood, keeping a grip on Murf, who was making furious leaps at Mayo.
‘He probably forgot where he left it,’ said Mayo. ‘Admit it, Murf – you pig it up there.’
‘I ain’t lying!’ cried Murf. He stepped near to her and shook the clock in her face, making the bell rattle.
‘Don’t you shout at me,’ said Mayo, sternly, her voice dropping into a tone of command. ‘I’ve been cooking since six o’clock while the rest of you have had a little holiday. You’ll want to eat it, too, but a lot of help I get! So don’t come around screaming at me.’ She had been holding the knife at Murf. She turned and whacked at the vegetables, making the cutting-board jump. ‘Go away – I’m busy.’
Murf’s face was pained. He said, ‘I ain’t lying, but she’s laughing at me.’
‘What’s all the noise?’ Brodie hung at the door, scratching the bluebird on her upper arm.
‘Yeah,’ said Murf, ‘and I expect I know who it was that fucked with me clocks. Your mate, the hairy giant.’
‘So what?’
‘So what, she says.’ The clock rattled in Murf’s hand.
Mayo said to Brodie, ‘Was someone here?’
‘Maybe the lady I told you about,’ said Brodie casually.
‘Impossible. How would she get in?’
‘I gave her a key.’
Hood folded his arms and whistled through his teeth.
Seeing hostility in Mayo’s face, and the others’ attention on her, Brodie came awake. ‘Hey, she got a right to be here. Hey, that’s her picture upstairs, ain’t it? Hey –’
‘I stole that picture,’ said Mayo, with an owner’s scream of petulance, as if the picture was being claimed by a stranger.
‘But it don’t belong to you,’ said Brodie.
‘It’s mine,’ said Mayo crisply.
Hood said, ‘So you gave that old bull a key?’
‘She bought it off me,’ said Brodie. ‘Anyway, she’s okay.’
‘She’s okay,’ said Murf, shaking the broken clock at Brodie. ‘That’s why she fucked with me clocks, right?’
‘I can’t cook with you in my way,’ Mayo said.
‘You’re murder,’ said Hood in disgust, and without another word he went into the parlour. He itemized what he owned there, the Chinese objects, the carvings, the silver. Upstairs, he looked through the closets, assessing his belongings, his suit, his stack of clothes, his consular briefcase with the blank passports and the official seal, his Burmese box of drugs. There was little more to do; there was nothing else he owned. He did not look at the painting: he coveted it too much. He went into the spare room, where the televisions were, the appliances, the crates of whiskey and cigarettes, and the two locked trunks with the Dutch words lettered on them. He sat on one and considered opening it, taking a pistol and keeping it. But no – they wanted them all. They’d get them.
He sat for a long time on the arsenal, smelling the stew, hearing the clank of Mayo in the kitchen and Brodie and Murf braying at the television. It was not disorder, it was the routine of any noisy family, an ordinary racket. This was a home, a family arsenal; safety was like remoteness, disturbance was elsewhere. He took the letter out and tore it open. You Are Invited To A Peter Pan Party. He read down the printed sheet, and at the bottom, in a large vain hand was scrawled, Hope you can make it. A.N. And holding the invitation and hearing the clatter downstairs he was reproached again by his safety and pitied Lorna the more. He could stay or go – it didn’t matter. By accident, in this randomly chosen city, he had invented his own struggle. He deserved to fail. It’s up to you, Sweeney had said. Yes, at last; but every delay had saved him, as if inaction itself was, like the surest assault, a celebration of security. At the centre of it all, in an attitude of reflection that was indistinguishable from an attitude of pain, was a mother and child. He was stirred by fear at the thought of them, for he had acted once and only now saw the truth of it – to act was to fail.
Mayo called up the stairs: dinner was ready. She conveyed it in a tone of irritation, and he heard her nagging Brodie and Murf to set the table. He went down and took his place. Brodie banged the soup bowls on the table, Murf poured beer; Mayo carried the stew in a tureen and with a housewife’s disgusted pride, grumpy satisfaction mingled with resentment, ladled it into the bowls. Hood got up and turned off the television. Brodie said, ‘I was watching that.’ Murf said, ‘Watch your gob.’ She reacted obstinately, trying to float the round end of her spoon in the stew. Mayo said, ‘Stop playing with your food!’ There was no more talk; the gas fire sputtered in the wires of the white-hot grate.
Hood said, ‘We’re leaving,’ and before anyone could resp
He ate, the others watched him, and the only sound was from the shelf, where Murf’s clock had begun to tick.
Finally, Mayo said, ‘You’re crazy.’
‘I’m in charge,’ he said, and went on eating.
‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ said Mayo.
‘He’s the guv,’ said Murf.
‘What about all that stuff upstairs – those televisions, that junk?’
Hood thought: In a moment this wife will scream. He said, ‘We’ll leave those for the next tenant.’
‘I feel crappy,’ said Brodie. She put her spoon down and made a sour face.
‘So look around,’ said Hood. ‘Find anything you consider valuable, anything with writing on it – anything that can be traced to us – and put it in the van. All the rest we’ll leave.’
‘What a dumb idea,’ said Brodie. ‘Hey, where are we supposed to go?’
‘No problem,’ said Hood. ‘You can go to Lady Arrow’s.’
‘The hairy giant,’ said Murf. ‘She’ll eat you for breakfast, sister.’
‘What about me?’ said Mayo.
‘Back to your husband, Sandra.’ Hood was going to say more, but Mayo blushed and stared at her hands.
‘I’m sticking wif you,’ said Murf.
‘What about Muncie?’
‘The great Arfa,’ he said. ‘I’m wif you.’
‘Okay,’ said Hood. ‘Then it’s settled.’
‘And you?’ Mayo faced Hood, her eyes meeting his and then faltering.
Hood said, ‘I’ll think of something.’
Brodie looked around the table, and at the walls, the floor, the ceiling. She said, ‘We’re not going to be here anymore.’
‘It’s a nice place,’ said Murf. ‘You don’t get hassled. You can hang out here.’
Brodie shook her head. ‘It’s kind of sad.’
‘I don’t feel hungry,’ said Murf.
‘I made that especially for you,’ said Mayo, sitting up and raising her voice, ‘and you’re going to eat it.’
‘Let’s not have an argument on our last night,’ said Hood. He picked up his glass of beer and winking at Murf he said, ‘This is it, then. The beginning.’
‘Look at him,’ said Brodie. She scraped her chair back and ran out of the room.
Murf followed her, his arms flapping, and then Mayo said, ‘You’re on your own now. I don’t trust you.’
‘Then start packing,’ said Hood. ‘You’re going home.’
But she refused to pack. She followed him around the house, sulking, and then complaining as he collected his artifacts from the parlour. Upstairs, he filled his suitcase, lining it quickly with his clothes, and she stood next to him, accusingly, not making any move to pack. Hood said nothing. She stamped the floor angrily, as if she was being left behind; and she threatened him, but her anger was pathetic, proof of her helplessness. Because she could not do anything more she raged; she was like a wife at the moment of a divorce she demanded as a rash threat, seeing her mistake and knowing she is lost – too late, too late. She kept her wronged face at him. He ignored her.
‘Go to hell,’ she said, and went to bed with unnecessary noise, punching the pillow and switching off the lights and screaming when he turned them on again. He knew she wanted a scene, something final to seal it, and he had felt – with his back to her – that she wanted to hit him. Now, deprived of argument, she lay in the bed with her head under the blanket. He saw her clearly, as he once had when she had spoken of the painting: a child who was used to getting her own way, as if being a clever daughter was an incurable condition for which the only consolation was the fatherly praise of an attentive lover.
Brodie and Murf were on the stairs, in the back room, calling to each other, banging and slamming. ‘Don’t cry,’ he heard Murf saying; Brodie whimpered; Murf’s coaxing turned to blame – he swore and shouted, ‘Shut up!’
‘Tell them to stop making so much noise,’ Mayo sobbed. She burrowed deeper into the bedclothes.
Later, when he was in bed, there were murmurs from their room, Murf insisting and from Brodie an odd pained cry. Then a muffled kicking and the small strangled howls of the two children making love. It ended with a series of brief despairing thumps, and lying there in that large house Hood believed it was the saddest sound he had ever heard.
The next he knew it was morning, he was being shaken. Mayo stood over him, all teeth and hair, pulling his shoulder and saying, ‘It’s gone – the picture’s gone!’
Across the room his suitcase lay open, the clothes were strewn; his briefcase was unzipped – disorder where he had left a neat pile of his belongings.
‘Who did that?’ he said slowly.
‘I did,’ said Mayo. ‘Well, if you didn’t take it, who did?’
He got out of bed cursing, righted the suitcase and rearranged the clothes. Then he went to the cupboard and saw the empty space where the painting had been, and it was as if a hollow was carved in his stomach. He had been robbed, and on his eye a dim after-image of the loss. Feeling very tired, he sat down on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands. He said, ‘When did you see it last?’
‘I don’t know.’
He loathed her for saying that. ‘It must have been Brodie’s friend,’ he said. ‘She was here yesterday. And it’s hers.’
‘The bitch,’ said Mayo. She was packing now. She pushed clothes into her suitcase.
He was glad she wouldn’t have the painting, but sorry to think that he might never see the self-portrait again. He tried to picture it, but his imagination simplified it, and all he saw was a nearly expressionless face, a gesture, obscurely lit; already it was gone. He knew he would have to see it for it to speak to him. And it was odd, because in all the estrangements he had known this was the most severe. His spirit had been thieved and in its place was fatigue. He was assailed by another feeling – unexpected – an enormous sense of himself, his own smell and weakness, an absence of light; a brown reminder of mortality. The theft was like a death, and his feeling – that shabby weight of flesh, that futile sigh that did not even have anger’s strength – was close to grief.
‘I knew it,’ said Mayo, with her scream of petulance. ‘As soon as my back is turned –’
‘Dry up,’ said Hood, not looking at her.
She grumbled and finished packing. She had several suitcases, a large cardboard box, and in three tea-chests the dishes, the pots and pans. He had always wondered who the kitchenware belonged to – who owned the towels, the sheets, the blankets? They were in her luggage: all the furnishings were hers. The house was stripped; the furniture that was left looked useless and dirty in the empty house. But it had seemed empty from the moment he saw the painting was missing.
Brodie came downstairs carrying a shopping bag of her belongings and a guitar he had never seen her play. Murf followed with more of Brodie’s things and he and Hood began to load the van. Entering the house for more of Mayo’s boxes he heard her shouting in the kitchen: I’m the one who has to answer for it, not you! And Brodie’s whine: I couldn’t help it. Anyway, it’s hers, ain’t it? It’s not yours. When they came out, breathless from the quarrel, Mayo still blustering and Brodie sheepishly dragging her feet, Hood said, ‘Off you go then, Sandra.’
‘I don’t even know where I’m going,’ said Brodie. ‘I’m going to get anorexia again, for shit sake.’
Mayo took the keys from her handbag. She started for the van, then stopped and walked back to him. He wondered what she was going to do – kiss him, slap him, shout. She was beyond caring about risk. But she said in a controlled voice, ‘Last night you said this is the beginning. Well, you’re wrong – this is the end, but you’re just too cowardly and selfish to admit it.’
‘Don’t you believe that,’ said Hood. Murf had run to the bottom of the crescent. Hood saw him running back, holding a paper bag. He handed it to Brodie: toffees. Brodie started to cry.
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‘I’m counting on you to do that.’
‘I’m staying in London,’ she said.
‘Then you’ll be hearing from me,’ said Hood. ‘But one last thing – don’t come back here. Stay away from this house.’
She said, ‘You’ll never be happy,’ and started the engine.
They sat side by side, not speaking, mother and daughter, a pair of enemies. The van jerked forward, then disappeared at the turning of the crescent.
Murf said, ‘Now what do we do?’
‘We make the house burglarproof.’
‘Yeah,’ said Murf. ‘Good idea. If you can find the locks.’
Hood said, ‘You’ve got the lock, squire.’
‘Yeah.’ Murf smiled. ‘Nah. I ain’t got a clue.’
Hood said, ‘We’re leaving a bomb behind.’
‘Yeah.’
‘A trip-wire,’ said Murf. Now they were in the spare room, standing among the stacks of crates and televisions, the two large metal trunks. ‘Maybe use that wall-socket there for juice. Beautyful. Go like anything.’
‘You’re the boss.’
‘Or else a battery, self-contained like. But sometimes it’s hard to get a spark.’
‘Just one thing, Murf. Make it a fat one.’
‘About ten pounds should crack it. It’s an old house.’
‘Make it thirty,’ said Hood.
Murf cackled. ‘A thirty-pounder would get this fucking pile to the moon. Yeah, with knobs on.’
‘Let’s get started.’
Murf opened his leather satchel and took out wire, a small transformer, pliers, a spool of tape. Hood indicated the trunks and said he wanted the bomb wired to the lids, so that opening the trunks would detonate it. Murf nodded and set out sacks of powder, one bone-white, the consistency of detergent, the other a fine grey zinc-like dust.