‘Who’s talking about workers?’ said McGravy sharply in her high child’s voice.
‘Let him finish, sister.’
‘Whose side are you on?’ McGravy demanded.
Mr Gawber said, ‘Aren’t you talking about workers?’
‘No,’ said Araba, patting Mr Gawber’s hand. ‘We’re talking about the power structure, my darling.’
‘But the unions,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘With all respect, there’s your power structure, surely?’
‘The union leaders are in league with the government,’ said McGravy. ‘It’s a plot —’
‘Dry up,’ said Hood.
‘I had no idea,’ said Mr Gawber.
‘Let’s talk about the play,’ said Hood.
‘I’d rather not,’ said Araba.
‘Wait, Araba. Perhaps he has some insight he wants to share with us.’
‘My insight,’ said Hood, ‘is I think it’s the biggest waste of time since parchesi.’ He smiled. ‘A load of crap.’
‘Come now,’ said Mr Gawber. He thought it tactless of Hood to say it, but all the same agreed and felt a greater fondness for him.
‘It made him mad,’ said Araba.
‘It’s supposed to make him mad,’ said McGravy.
‘But it is a wank,’ said Araba.
‘If only it was,’ said Hood. ‘I was sitting there and saying to myself, “What’s the point?” ’
‘If only he knew,’ said McGravy, grinning at Araba.
‘What don’t I know?’
‘Several things,’ said Araba. ‘But the first one is that McGravy wrote it.’
‘Oh, my,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘You have put your foot in it.’
McGravy stroked her dog and let him nuzzle her. She turned to Hood. ‘You were saying?’
‘Nothing,’ said Hood.
‘Go on, I’m rather enjoying your embarrassment.’
‘It’s not embarrassment, sister, and if you think I’m worried about hurting your feelings, forget it. If you wrote that play you must be so insensitive you’re bulletproof.’
‘I wish I were,’ said Araba.
‘Who are you anyway?’ said McGravy.
‘Just part of the audience,’ said Hood.
‘Drink up, please,’ said a man in a splashed smock, collecting empty glasses from the table.
‘I have a train to catch,’ said Mr Gawber.
‘Let’s get a coffee at Covent Garden,’ said Araba to Mr Gawber. ‘Then we’ll let you go home.’
They trooped up to Covent Garden, turning left at the top of Catherine Street, where long-bodied trucks were trying to back into fruit-stalls at the market. There were men signalling directions with gloved hands, and behind them stacks of crates and displays of vegetables. In spite of the trucks it had for Hood the air of a bazaar — the dark shine of the cobblestones, the littered gutters and piles of decaying fruit; the men jogging with boxes on their heads and others bent almost double under the weight of sacks. Mr Gawber thought he saw the two men with the laden prams he’d seen earlier that day in the stairwell below Waterloo Bridge; he remembered the warning, ARSENAL RULE, and then actually saw it, splashed on the arches of Covent Garden Market. Over by the tea stall gaunt men stood inhaling the steam from cups of tea.
‘I love it here,’ said Araba, whirling her cape open, performing.
The men saw her and grinned. McGravy’s dog, lively for the first time, yapped at the tea drinkers. Mr Gawber was uneasy: the men were wretched and dangerous-looking; he wanted to go home. But Araba had bought four cups of coffee from the man in the stall — he had tattoos, and a torn singlet, and a hat folded from a sheet of newspaper — and she was handing them out. Mr Gawber kicked the squashed fruit from his shoes.
‘They don’t treat you special here,’ Araba said. ‘They’re real people.’
But the men were gathering and muttering a little distance from her. In the half-light of the high lamps Mr Gawber saw their faces as shadowy and criminal, and their eyes as thumb-prints of soot over whiskery cheeks. McGravy’s dog continued to howl at them.
Hood said, ‘Your play. Both of you must be making a lot of money.’
‘It’s for a good cause,’ said McGravy. Again she said to Araba, as she had in the Opera Tavern, ‘If only he knew.’
‘Let me guess your sign,’ said Araba. ‘Aries. The Ram. Am I right?’
‘Pisces,’ said Hood. ‘Sorry, sweetheart.’
‘My actor clients are frightfully keen on horoscopes,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘They read their stars in the newspaper and get ever so excited.’
Hood had not taken his eyes from Araba’s. He said, ‘Let me guess your passport number.’
‘How extraordinary,’ said Mr Gawber.
‘It begins with a “Y”. Seven digits. And it’s light blue —’
‘Ah, you’re mistaken,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘Bad luck. British passports are navy blue.’
‘This is an American passport,’ said Hood.
‘That’s enough!’ cried Araba, and seeing her fury in the lamplight the men at the tea stall laughed. She gathered her cape, said goodnight to Mr Gawber and walked away, making her exit between the great stacks of crated fruit.
Part Three
12
Lady Arrow got out of the taxi in Deptford High Street, looked around, and felt cheated. Then she walked to assess it, to give it a name. No name occurred to her; she wondered if she had come to the right place. But she had: there were the signs. Deeply cheated, tricked by the map and her imagination. She had wanted to like it and had prepared herself for a complicated river-front slum with the kind of massive mirrored pubs she’d passed on the Old Kent Road; damp side lanes and blackened churches and brick-peaked Victorian schools contained by iron fences and locked gates; with a quaint decrepitude, credibly vicious and with visible remnants of danger, a place where you could believe a poet might have been stabbed.
She had expected something different, not this. It was ugly, it was shabby — but not in any interesting sense. It was, sadly, indescribable. She had wanted to be startled by its grime, and the taxi ride across the vast grey sink of London had been long enough to suggest a real journey to a strange distant place. Deptford was only distant: characterless, without any colour, a dismal intermediate district, neither city nor suburb, boxed in by little shops and little brown terraces — many defaced with slanted obscure slogans — and very dusty. You could become asthmatic here: the air stank of dust and chemicals and the unhelpful sun was the size of an apricot. She looked for the river (she could hear boats farting in water) and saw a green gasworks. Closer, a power station poured out heavy clouds of tumbling smoke that gave the sky an ashy hue. The smoky sky seemed no higher than those square chimneys. If anyone asked she would say Deptford was like the scar tissue of a badly healed wound. She was oppressed by the council estates, cheap towers of public housing draped in washing lines. All those people waiting; she could see many of them balancing on flimsy balconies, staring gravely down at her.
She might have gone back to Hill Street — her disappointment was great enough — but it had been so hard for her to get here! Not only the taxi (the driver first refused to take her that distance — she had to agree to pay an extortionate fare), but the invitation, too. She had telephoned the house five times and either no one answered or else a strange voice demanded to know who she was. ‘Who are you?’ she’d asked in return, and hung up. When, finally, Brodie picked up the phone the girl was evasive, and it was only by Lady Arrow blurting out that she wasn’t in the least interested in getting her pound back — indeed, she’d gladly give her another one if it was needed — that Brodie said to come over and told her the address.