That was at the beginning of the trip. The wind had wrinkled the river’s surface, she had been cold. The late-October chill had settled, an afternoon in the afternoon of the year, reminding her — as foul weather invariably did — of her age. But now the landmarks were gone and the river carried the boat and her thoughts; she remembered her errand. Her discomfort helped her to reflect: she knew she was playing a role that required moments of furtiveness, an anonymity she sometimes craved. She had asked for this accidental hour on the river to keep her appointment on Greenwich pier for the meeting later; she needed all the props of secrecy for her mood. So after the first shock of the boat, the feeling she wanted to shout, the dread she was going to vomit, the window’s dampness prickling her face and that icicle jammed in her spine — after all that, she saw how right it was and she enjoyed its appropriateness to her stealth. It could not be different. The pretence warmed her. And, as always, enjoyment was a prelude to greed: she wanted to buy a boat, think of a name for it, hire an ex-convict to pilot it, moor it beside Cheyne Walk and give a party on the deck.
Downriver, down its grey throat, seawards, the boat was borne: she could think here.
Instinct, no more, had brought her this far. She had always struggled to find among the choices within her the truest expression of her will. She had groped to show herself the way through her wealth. Like the painting. That theft. It had been so embarrassing at the time she had only felt exposed and had not seen the simplest thing — that she might have managed it all herself, upstaged the thieves and been the triumphant victim of her own plot. She wished she had been involved from the very beginning. But she had discovered it soon enough — a vindication of her curiosity that made her more curious. She had once thought of selling everything and giving away the proceeds, pouring it all into the river of common hope — like this river beneath her, murky and slow — to speed the current and cause a flooding so great they’d be knee-deep in it in places like Cricklewood and Brixton. But there were other stratagems (anyway, charity was the century’s most deliberate fraud — what were her do-gooding parents but pious cheats?), and of them theft was the greatest. The stolen painting taught her to see her role in a different way. She thought: perhaps I have spent my whole life encouraging people to steal from me, because I have been too timid to give. The most outrageous reply to money was the only one. She had improved on Bakunin — using privilege to rid herself of privilege. She wished for others to do violence to her wealth and yet to have her own say in their acts. She deserved to be the victim and yet she could not be deprived of that other role she had set for herself. She wished to be both the terrorist and the terrorized. Her own painting hung as hostage in the upstairs room of the Deptford house showed her how central she was to the drama of disorder, how her importance confounded simplicity and made all the layers of travesty political. It was like Twelfth Night in Holloway Women’s Prison: the woman chosen to play the man’s part was disguised as a woman, who was revealed as a man who was offstage a woman. And how far she’d come! Until she had discovered the complications of the theft her most revolutionary idea had been to sack Mrs Pount.
She could feel the boat’s progress, the splashings at her elbow, the window’s mist on her cheek. The painting had redeemed her and, most of all, that theft was one in the eye for Araba. She had stopped visiting Hill Street. She said she was too busy. But Lady Arrow knew the reason. It was not that over-praised farce and had nothing to do with the Peter Pan business — those rehearsals wouldn’t start for weeks. No, a needless sense of rivalry had sharpened in Araba. She too had money; she had prominence; she had her group, the militant actors who had done little but give themselves a name — the Purple League — and disrupt Equity meetings. Play-acting with costumes and aliases, their substitute for action. A mob of howling fairies, frenzied because the best part went to younger stars who didn’t lisp — amazing how many actors in the League had speech impediments or were too short. They got noisier until they landed a place in some safe repertory company and then they fell silent: politics was a way to fame, Marxism to wealth; the furious little Trots wanted to be film stars! Araba believed in them, or said she did; she staged their pageants, led the attacks on the Punch and Judy shows, chaired their meetings, loaned them money. If they disappointed her she expelled them.
‘You must come to a meeting one day,’ Araba had said. It was not an invitation. Only an actress celebrated as Lady Macbeth could exclude you by seeming to invite you.
But she believed, in spite of her mockery. Of all the people Lady Arrow had ever known only actors had been able to combine power with glamour; and the best were gods, moving easily from world to world. They made you believe in that pretence. More than their friendship Lady Arrow wanted their loyalty. It would be like owning the priests who officiated at the public ceremonies of a popular religion. It was, she knew, an irrational trust that she had, but she could not help it. Actors lived in a way she would have chosen for herself; they could be anyone and they could persuade others to believe in their masks. She guessed they were weak, but she seldom saw their weakness and for them to make weakness seem like power filled her with approval. More than that, she saw how in organizing plays in prisons and assigning roles for herself she was secretly imitating them — and what prisoner would criticize her acting ability? This was her unspoken answer to Araba, and a way of proving to herself that she could act well. The more Araba avoided her, the more she tried to divine how she might make the actress dependent, and then they could conspire together. She wanted to be included, but Araba kept her away, as if encouraging the rivalry. Money did not enter into it — so much the better. But Lady Arrow had gathered that Araba did not trust her, did not quite believe the principles Lady Arrow claimed for herself. She seemed to imply in her disbelief that Lady Arrow had a fictitious ambition. Or was she demanding proof — a tactic for ignoring her — because she was not interested in her? Araba might even be on the verge of expelling her in some casual way. Today, Lady Arrow had invited herself and Araba had allowed it with reluctance, showing interest only when Lady Arrow had said, ‘I’m not coming alone. There’s someone I want you to meet.’
‘Who?’