The Family Arsenal by Paul Theroux

Author:Paul Theroux
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780241958872
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2011-05-30T10:00:00+00:00

14

At midnight there was still no sign of Mayo. He wondered if she could be teasing him with her more frequent absences; she knew he was waiting and was deliberately hiding herself. She made her inaction secret to give it drama. She was whining in Kilburn over a pint of beer or in bed with an Irishman – for her a political act. She had deceived him over the passport, tricked him into forging one for the well-known actress, whose single attribute, so far as he could guess, was her theatrical ability to alter her face. You had access to a wig, so you were a conspirator. Araba had struck him as hysterical and insincere, a fraud, persuasive only to those who didn’t know the real thing. The trick had made him doubt his own judgement – the victim losing respect for himself when he knows how easily he has been victimized. But he said nothing to Mayo: he would have his own secrets.

He had drawn the cushions to the centre of the upstairs room and he lay on them in his bathrobe, with the cupboard door open wide and the lamp tilted to face the painting. He pondered it and smoked a pipe of Navy-Cut sprinkled with hashish grains. He had a feeling of wealth, the comfortable security of resting in undisturbed solitude. For the moment he wanted no more than this, and the self-portrait only added to his pleasure: now it could not be snatched away; he didn’t need to hide it; the owner didn’t care. It shone on him. Its greatness lay in the way the cubes of colour gathered to match his own mood. It was consoling: it did not reproach him – perhaps the greatest art never did – it exalted the eye. It shimmered with certainty, it was the surest vision, an astonishing light. What Mayo and the others did to enrage him the painting corrected: it was the only solace he had received, this illumination. And like a light it printed a small white star on his retina that stayed to remind and console him long after he turned away.

There was a knock at the door. Mayo never knocked. It was Murf.

‘You busy?’

Hood pulled the pipe out of his mouth and blew a grey-white cone of smoke at the lamp, watching it untangle in the light. ‘Come in, squire. Where’s Brodie?’

‘Watching telly. She thinks you’re narked. She said she’s sorry.’ Murf bobbed nervously and pushed at his ears. ‘I don’t know what that old girl told you, but she’s lying. She didn’t see nothing.’

‘It’s okay. But you can tell Brodie she’s got some pretty hot-shit friends.’ Hood puffed the pipe. He felt high, happy, a buzz inching down his ears like a centipede with sparking feet. ‘Don’t let me catch you bringing any lords and ladies down here, squire, or I’ll have to change my socks.’

‘I hated her,’ said Murf, who had started to sweat. ‘I wanted to brick her.’

‘No kidding. What for?’

‘She was laughing at me.

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