Hood said, ‘Don’t you want to know why we’re doing it?’
Murf didn’t look up. ‘You’re the guv,’ he said. ‘I ain’t asking.’
They were at it for most of the morning. Murf insisted on hiding the transformer in the fireplace, which was sealed with a square of hardboard. Opening it they found it to be full of soot which had fallen from the chimney; it had to be cleaned and the soot disposed of before the transformer could be lodged inside. Murf wouldn’t be hurried. When Hood said they could trail the wires along the wall and cover them with old newspapers, Murf said, ‘That’s just sloppy workmanship,’ and tore up the floorboards to hide the wires. He brought to his peculiar method of destruction the laborious and precise dedication of a builder. Then they were finished, and the room was as it had been — no wires showed.
‘I pity the poor fucker who messes with this baby,’ said Murf. ‘I’m knackered. How about a cup of tea?’
‘Okay,’ said Hood.
‘Hey, where are we going?’
Hood said, ‘Guatemala.’
Murf smiled. He understood the euphemism.
They secured the windows, locked the front door, and in the back entryway Hood was saying, ‘That does it —’
‘Half a tick,’ said Murf. ‘I almost forgot.’ He dug into his paper bag and pulled out a rolled tube of old canvas. ‘The picture,’ he said, handing it to Hood. ‘I nicked it last night. I hope it ain’t too squashed.’
‘Murf!’ Hood held it. He felt rescued, and he wanted to throw his arms around the boy.
Murf saw Hood’s gratitude and he was embarrassed. ‘I knew you liked it,’ he said. ‘And Mayo and that other bitch — they laughed at me.’
Part Five
24
‘To be born’ — she lingered on the cue. Her arms were upraised in the dark thronged room. A vapour of light from outside Mortimer Lodge — the yellow streetlamps on Wat Tyler Road — was broken by the window slats and it shone in beams on her branched arms and the heads of the people watching her, sharpening the corners of the masks some actors wore. At the end of her phrase, on cue, a spotlight’s dazzling velocity picked her out, and she stood charged with brilliant light, her feet apart, pausing for effect. She was mostly naked, but her skin rubbed with green powder made her seem as if she was wrapped in a tight membrane. Her breasts and hips were criss-crossed by strands of skeleton vines; her hair was cut, and her face, without make-up, was an oval of white that looked as thin as porcelain. She showed her teeth and began again: ‘To be born is to be wrecked on an island.’
She saw fifty people in fifty postures, her actors half-dissolved in shadow. A hush of approval from them and she continued, ‘The man who wrote that did not write this. But how could he know that the spirit he set into motion could be interpreted this way —’
‘She looks so splendid,’ said Lady Arrow. Lady Arrow wore a combination of costumes. She was to play Mr Darling and (or so Araba said) his piratical manifestation, Captain Hook. A copy of the Financial Times in one hand; a hook protruding from her right sleeve; a frock coat and boots. She was pleased — already the party was a success, a great improvement on that other one she’d been to, when Araba lived off the King’s Road, that dreary pageant they’d rehearsed for the rally at the Odeon in Hammersmith. ‘Come over to the Lodge,’ Araba had said. ‘We’re having a cell meeting.’
It was no ordinary cell meeting. For Lady Arrow this gathering of actors — a show of youth, strength and poised optimistic anger — was a glamorous occasion. Many were beautiful. That girl over there, naked under her loose suede overalls, her breasts plumped against the straps of her leather bib, with bare arms and long hair, saying nothing — Lady Arrow could smell her from across the room and she smelled of genius. That boy dressed as a gangster pirate, with a velvet bow on his pigtail and his tight striped suit — she could eat him, clothes and all. She felt lucky, and she looked over the guests, squinting with greed and impatience, frenzied by the choice. The sight of so many perfect faces in that steamy stage-lit room was a shock that left her slightly breathless. Whatever I want. And this time she had a role to play — two roles. It made her almost mournful with excitement, and it was as if she had only acted before, performed a humdrum farce for her friends at Hill Street — her powerful friends: golden pigs and balding mice — and now in this play she was allowed a brief life without pretence.
‘Tonight we improvise,’ Araba was saying. Lady Arrow had no lines. She had a costume — so did the others. But Araba said there was no need to rehearse the best-known English play. It was every child’s first play, a fulfilled vision of his longing, and there was not a child who saw the curtain fall on the last act who did not hate his thwarting parents. By the nimblest magic it showed the fraudulent intrusion of authority and convinced the child ever after that to recapture the rule of Pan was to be free. Araba said, ‘Peter Pan is the saboteur of the bourgeois dream, the best English expression of the beauty of revolt. Remember, Neverland is an island —’
Lady Arrow watched with admiration. Then she looked down and said, ‘Are you all right, my darling?’
Brodie, dressed as Tinker Bell, sat at Lady Arrow’s feet. Her thin legs were sheathed in dancer’s tights, her small breasts and tattoo showed through her blouse of pale silk, and she held a spangled wand. She shifted position and said, ‘I’m nervous. Hey, there’s nobody here my age.’
Lady Arrow was rebuked. They were all young! She offered her snuff box and said, ‘Have some of this.’
‘Yuck.’ Brodie smiled and reached for her pouch. She rolled a cigarette, licked it and puffed. Then she relaxed, rocking slowly back and forth, regarding Araba with wide staring eyes. She laughed, a little drugged giggle, like chatter, causing heads to turn. ‘Fairy dust,’ she said. She made a nibbling face at them and went on smoking.
‘— Or any age,’ Araba said. ‘Now, we begin.’
She snapped her fingers, starting the music — the notes of a single flute, sweetly plangent, trilling as the spot-light dimmed. Araba entered the shadow at the side of the room as an armchair was dragged forward.
‘I’m on,’ said Lady Arrow, and strode to the chair, scowling as if acknowledging applause. There were whispers, a wondering at her size. With the spot-light on her she looked enormous and slightly misshapen; she cast a crooked shadow and made that large armchair seem suddenly rather small and inefficient. She sat down heavily, raised her newspaper and began reading. She crashed the newspaper. She said, ‘I am responsible for it all. I, George Darling, did it …’
I know very little and I hate them, Hood thought, watching darkly from a corner near the door. If I knew more I’d probably kill every one of them. He watched the play proceed, with gaps and accidents freaking the self-conscious design. But it was the play’s own heartless lines that hinted most at menace; the actors, attempting to give it political colouring, only drew attention to themselves.
In the fooling to upstage, improvisation’s risk, it was Brodie who got the laughs. Her popularity was apparent from the outset, and as the play unfolded — Peter battling with Hook for the leadership of the Lost Boys who were trying to liberate the Neverland from the rule of Pirates and Redskins — she realized how she could stop everything by pulling a face or pretending to assault another actor. During one of Wendy’s speeches she rolled a joint and had the room in stitches. Araba called for order and began to deliver a prepared monologue on the power of youth to destroy, but her words were drowned in laughter, for as she spoke, Brodie — who was alone at the side of the stage — clawed her buttocks and then, making a business of it, sniffed her fingers. It ended in farce: Lady Arrow accused Araba of bullying Brodie, and making passes with her hook, caught Araba on the arm and scratched her. Araba screamed and ran upstairs. So the play closed in disorder, incomplete, a collapse; and Hood heard one actor murmur, ‘Beginner’s night.’