‘So this is what all the fuss is about,’ said Hood hopping from the chair. ‘It’s not as good as The Just Judges.’
Mayo said, ‘It’s a good painting, Val.’
‘Quit leering at it.’ He looked at it again, but now it had become again a dense curtain of cracks. He saw a curious unlit antique, smeared with yellow glaze. He said, ‘It’s as ugly as money.’
‘It got them screaming.’
‘Screaming for money — the ones who have it. Collectors and art-dealers. The rest don’t give a damn, and they’re the ones who matter. I think we should burn this turkey right now.’
‘You wouldn’t dare.’ Mayo was controlling her voice but could not conceal the tremble of anger in it.
Hood knelt and clicked his lighter. It spurted: a jet of flame shot to one corner, sparking at the fibres on the edge.
‘Stop that.’ Mayo stepped on his hand. She was still wearing her men’s shoes. She pressed the thick sole down, tangling the lighter in his fingers, then freeing it. But there was no mark on the painting, just the greasy smell of singed cloth in a thread of smoke. ‘You’re a barbarian.’
‘That’s what they say about you.’
‘Let them.’
‘But they’re wrong, because if you were you wouldn’t think it was such a big deal to score an old master. You wouldn’t have set that stately home on fire. Anyway, why didn’t you leave a bomb behind?’
‘I think I know how to deal with them.’
‘I think I know why,’ he said. ‘You’re a barbarian with taste.’
‘Stop getting at me,’ said Mayo. Angry, she lost her slight Irish accent; her voice rose to a higher register of annoyance, gained precision and assumed a smart pitch of indignation that was haughty. ‘Besides, you’re missing the point.’
‘Lay it on me.’
‘It’s a symbol, you idiot.’
‘Now there’s a word that’s really hot shit. Where’d you pick that up?’
‘Stop playing dumb. You know what I mean.’
‘Sure I do. But symbols are a bad substitute for reality — they’re always the wrong size. Go the whole way or don’t go at all. Set the bastards on fire, don’t pick their pockets.’ Hood spat into the sink. ‘Jesus, I’d like to meet the guy that sent Brodie to Euston. A railway station? You must be joking. Who was it?’
‘You’ll find out,’ she said, growing calm at his sudden anger. ‘All in good time.’
‘I’d like to have a word with him. I’m not getting anywhere with Brodie. She sits around staring at her cartoon posters and watching television. She worries about her complexion. And what did she do? Blew a hole in a locker. Now they’ve roped off the lockers and closed the Left Luggage window. You give them a symbol and they give one back to you.’
‘All you can do is mock,’ she said. ‘Well, go ahead — no one’s hunting you.’
‘Not yet, but listen, honey, I think you underestimate yourself. You’ve got your painting and you’re tickled to death. So we’ll hang it up. Very expensive, right? The art world is horrified. But I’ve got news for you — we’re not declaring war on the art dealers and you won’t get anywhere with symbols.’
‘That’s what you say.’
‘It won’t work. You don’t want to win, you just want a few famous enemies.’
‘And what do you want?’
‘I want scalps,’ he said. ‘I’ll get them. You can’t lose if you make all the rules.’
Mayo swore and stooped to roll up the painting. Hood looked at her back and for a moment felt sorry for her. It was a small job but she had done it well; she had taken it seriously. But she hadn’t seen beyond the theft, to the time when that pretty painting would only be a burden.
‘Be serious, May,’ he said. ‘Would you get into the sack with a phallic symbol?’
‘I go to bed with you, don’t I?’ she said lightly, regaining her Irishness and tucking the last few inches of the painting into the roll.
He had met Mayo at Ward’s in Piccadilly in the late spring soon after he arrived. She was drunk; she told him, a perfect stranger, of her plan to steal the painting; and that carelessness worried him: who else would she tell? He spent the night with her and at last moved in and tutored her in caution. They agreed to work together and afterwards — long after he made love to her, since they isolated themselves and hid from each other in sex — he came to know her. She was a short brisk woman in her mid-thirties, habituated to gestures of tidying, as if attempting to sort the clutter in the house and match the order in her mind. But she was the only neat one in the place, and it made her preoccupation hopeless. She was slim, but the men’s work clothes she wore, the blue bib-overalls, the loose denim shirt with baggy sleeves, made her seem stocky, and she tramped clumsily in her heavy shoes. Her hands were small and beautiful, her face plain but unmarked. The clothes made her seem convincingly a man until she turned and showed her face. Then she seemed wrong for the clothes, and the posture — the up-turned collar, the masculine stress in her voice — only exaggerated the prettiness of her mouth. There was something else: the workclothes were clean and the shirt still bore the vertical creases from the box. And yet, in her mask and gloves she had succeeded; her description had been repeated in all the papers with the photograph of the Rogier self-portrait — they were looking for a person, probably armed, with a slight build, a black jacket and the trace of an Irish accent: a man.
Mayo put the painting on the table. She said, ‘Are they still asleep?’
‘Apparently.’
‘How do they do it?’
‘They don’t do anything else,’ said Hood. ‘They fight, make love, then fall asleep. When they wake up they start fighting.’ It was true: the quarrelling of Brodie and Murf invariably turned into love-making. He had seen it enough times to know when to avoid them. They didn’t take off their clothes; they wrestled themselves into an embrace and fumbled until their threats became sighs. It was sexual struggle made out of the most childish assault, and in the same fighting postures they slept, with their faces close.
‘Are you giving them coke?’
‘It’s not coke — it’s low-grade opium. And I’m not giving it to them, they’re taking it.’
‘I wish they’d take a little interest in the movement. And I can tell you one thing — the Provos don’t allow their people to take drugs. It’s an offence.’
‘I should have known. All that clean living,’ said Hood. ‘It shows.’
Mayo waited, then said impatiently, ‘Sometimes I can’t stand you. You wonder why I don’t tell you anything. Listen to yourself. You’re always asking about the Provos, but if I told you about it you’d only laugh.’