‘The viwuns mike owls,’ mocked Brodie, screwing up her face. ‘Here, hold this roach. Give me your blade.’
She looked to the side. The train had drawn out of the station. Now the shimmering river was close and she could see across the water to the Monument, its bright gold head ablaze on the tall column and behind it the lid and spires of St Paul’s on a hill of low silver-blue towers. She stood unsteadily, hesitating at every intrusion of the city passing beside the train. She raised the knife to strike the cushion. They pulled into Waterloo.
‘I hate these stopping trains,’ she said, and put the knife down.
The compartment door opened, and a woman with a shopping basket got in. Murf snatched the knife and slipped it beneath his shirt.
‘It’s the last hit.’ Brodie gave him the cigarette.
‘This is a non-smoker,’ said the woman. She sniffed, muttered and threw down the window.
‘Hoo!’ Murf leaped to the door, laughing crazily. He unlocked it and kicked it open. They were crossing Hungerford Bridge — the trestles banged, making the iron spans ring; below, the river was molten with sunlight.
The woman seized her shopping basket.
‘Piss off!’ said Murf and pointed to the open door.
The woman screamed and rocked back in her seat, and she stayed in this position, almost on her back — her feet raised — until they drew into Charing Cross.
‘I’m going to report you,’ the woman said on the platform.
Murf lifted two fingers at her, and they hurried past her, laughing.
In the Strand, Brodie said, ‘How much money have we got?’
‘Sixty p.’
‘I know where we can double it. Come on.’
They crossed the Strand and scuffed into the Crystal Room, an amusement arcade, making for the one-armed bandits. Side by side, they fed pennies into the machines, yanking the handles, watching the fruit spin. Near them, pin-tables coughed and came alight.
Murf said, ‘Cherries!’
There was a clatter, three pence rattled into the metal dish; Murf clawed it out and moved to a new machine, while Brodie continued to tug on hers. At the end of several minutes they counted their coins.
‘Rubbish,’ said Brodie. ‘Twenty-eight p.’
They went over to a machine with shifting trays and slides that nudged clusters of pennies into a chute. They fed nine in and won two very black ones. They lost five pence trying to raise a cigarette lighter with a metal claw. Then they went back to the one-armed bandits and lost all but seven pence.
‘Not a sausage,’ said Murf.
‘It’s fixed.’
‘I know where we can double it, she says. Bugger it,’ said Murf. He went to a tall machine with a rifle on a revolving stand. He put in his coin and began firing — tunk, tunk: bells rang, the scoring wheel spun, the lights flashed and boys playing machines nearby wandered over to see what the commotion was.
‘Look at the cowboy,’ said an old man, holding a ragged parcel in his arms.
‘Dead easy,’ said Murf, and picked off the last object, a wheeling tin bird with a light bulb on its wing.
The old man said, ‘You got a free game coming to you.’
‘It’s all yours, dad,’ said Murf.
‘Rather have the shilling.’
They weighed themselves with the last two pence — ‘We’re skint,’ said Murf, posting the coin — and set off, along the Strand to Trafalgar Square.
At the base of Nelson’s column Murf craned his neck for a look at the standing figure on top. He squinted as if solving a problem, then said, ‘I reckon you could do it. You could blow up this bitch beautyful if you legged it right.’
They wandered around the square, tiny in the basin of dark stone, the looming masonry. The buses circled, and on one of them, Mr Gawber looked down. He saw flocks of filthy pigeons, and people who looked like pigeons; he liked the size, the proportions of the square, and saw the people penned, sunning themselves, scaring the pigeons. It was the people who needed a scare: their idleness made this noble place a dago plaza. Two grubby ones were palavering under Napier. The panic would make them see, the crash would teach them. His bus turned into St Martin’s Place; he whispered his memo; ‘Lunch. Picture insurance. Arrow.’
Murf and Brodie speculated on the square. Murf said he could bring down the Admiralty Arch by blasting away the central supports with plastic explosive — ‘then nip on a Number One bus.’ Two well-placed charges were all that were needed to launch the colonnaded porch of the National Gallery across the square. Brodie, still giddy from the cigarette, saw the steeple of St Martin’s church toppling as Murf described how he’d bomb the pillars. Or an underground charge, a parcel of nitro in the tube station might do the trick, cause an earthquake in the Bakerloo cellar that would send the whole of South Africa House sprawling: they saw it leap in all directions, airborne columns, chunks of marble, glass splinters, all this hugeness in whirling motion. They saw it rising, in smithereens, but nothing more — not the levelling, the smoke: they could not peer beyond the explosion to the flat acres of still rubble and all the dead.
Up Cockspur Street to Pall Mall they swung along, elated, envisioning bursting buildings. They stopped before the Athenaeum, where dark-suited men were going into lunch. Murf said, ‘Wouldn’t that go beautyful, all them posts crashing —’
Brodie’s eyes drummed the wobbling pillars outward, drew the flaming rooms into the sky with cart-wheeling men and spinning hats, and the great gold statue pitching forward, dissolving to a sprinkle of dust, and all the paving stones in Waterloo Place flying.
‘London’s great.’
‘Fantastic.’
It was the only way they could possess the city, by reducing it to shattered pieces. Exploded, in motion, it was theirs. The grandest buildings held them, because in that grandeur, in all the complication ornateness required, were secret corners for bombs. Nothing that could not be raised with a tremendous noise had any interest for them: they celebrated this part of London. They walked up to Piccadilly Circus, sharing another cigarette; then over to the Eros statue where they squatted among the youths with rucksacks and street guides who were roosting and stretching their necks like heavy birds.
‘I got it,’ said Murf. ‘There must be fifty or a hundred heads here. Let’s sell some of that pot. We could get a fiver at least.’
‘No.’ Brodie watched the circus spin, a cascade of lanterns and lighted tubes: the Magic Roundabout — it was here, among the freaks, the centre of London, her life, the world. She felt a kinship with everyone who chose to sit here by the statue.
‘Look, we don’t have any money.’
‘I don’t want any. I hate the shit.’ Brodie turned her pale querying face on the others who sat on the steps. They were perfect to her. She saw a girl with a tattoo: a sister.
‘You can walk back to Deptford,’ said Murf. Brodie yawned. He said, ‘Come on, let’s hustle some cash.’
‘I’d rather hang out,’ said Brodie.
‘Boom widdy-widdy.’
They sat, not speaking, for ten minutes.
Murf said, ‘I’m sick of hanging out.’
‘You’re a real pain.’
‘Me arse hurts. And what about the letter?’
‘I’ve got the stupid thing.’
‘I wish we had some money.’