He saw Brodie at the far side of the room with Lady Arrow. But Brodie was perfectly alone and self-contained. She pinched a roach in her fingers and smirked at it. He was disgusted, like a man seeing his daughter in an unguarded moment in public, among her trivial friends: her foolishness was exposed but mattered only to him. He was responsible; he had taught her to roll a joint one-handed, and he was to blame for having marked her face with this careless mouth.
Lorna said, ‘They’re not up to much.’
‘Screamers,’ said Hood. ‘They’re trying to start a revolution.’
‘Fuckers couldn’t start a car.’
‘Let’s score a drink,’ he said.
‘I seen enough. Let’s go home.’
He admired that. She held them in total contempt. The costumes they wore, the poses they struck, the selfish jeering in their talk — she dismissed it as nothing. They were not even exotic to her, they had no glamour; she seemed embarrassed to be in the same room with them.
‘Mister Hood!’ Lady Arrow rushed over, and ignoring Lorna, and standing eye to eye with him, said, ‘Araba told me you might be coming. I didn’t believe her for a minute, but here you are! It’s a terrible snub for me — you’ve never come to Hill Street. Or didn’t you know I’d be here? Say you did!’
Hood said, ‘This is Lorna.’
Lorna nodded hello. She wore her boots, her shortest skirt, and the jacket Hood had bought her, crushed velvet, bottle green. She looked away to avoid looking up at the much taller woman.
‘Yes,’ said Lady Arrow, assessing her swiftly. She said nothing more.
‘Isn’t that Brodie over there?’ said Hood.
‘She’s mine now,’ said Lady Arrow proudly. ‘She’s made a great hit with Araba’s friends, I can tell you. Quite a debut — it could lead to something, a real part. She’s so natural. Darling!’
The girl raised her head and threaded her way through the room, walking flat-footed in the drooping tights, the crotch at her knees. She gave Hood a sheepish grin and said, ‘Hey, I didn’t think this was your scene.’
‘Pull up your pants,’ he said.
‘I’m stoned,’ she said. She made her goofy face.
Lady Arrow stooped and embraced her. Brodie resisted, but she was enfolded, and again Hood tasted a father’s disgust. Brodie didn’t seem to mind; perhaps she would never know, lost in that woman’s arms. Hood looked at Lady Arrow’s hands, one tightening on the small girl’s tattooed arm, the other a knot of snails inching across the flawless skin of her belly.
‘I hated that woman,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘The one who dropped Brodie off the other day. She came screaming into the house, and do you know what? She accused me of stealing the Rogier self-portrait! I understand she is the thief. Of course, I told her I had no idea where it is — what a shame if someone’s really stolen it. I let her search the house from top to bottom. She was quite upset, said some rather unkind things about you. I imagine she’s from Basingstoke. I need hardly add that I urged her to find my precious picture.’
Hood said nothing. The painting was at Lorna’s, and he had had a long look at it before coming to the party, studying it for changes as if looking at his own reflection in a mirror. The face was more familiar to him than his own, and unlike his own, a consolation. He wondered if he would ever part with it.
Lady Arrow said, ‘I say, did you see our little effort?’
‘The last part,’ said Hood.
‘The fracas,’ said Lady Arrow. ‘Wasn’t it superb? “And so it will continue, as long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.” ’
‘Putrid,’ said Brodie.
‘You said it.’ Hood glanced around the room. The actors, holding glasses of wine, still wore the costumes from the play, the eye-patches, the cassocks, the spectacular rags. Their voices made the room howl.
‘But I won,’ said Lady Arrow. She smiled at Hood. ‘Araba’s absolutely desolate — but there it is. You can’t always have it your own way. I think it’s a lesson to them. They’re terribly nice people, but their Marxism is so moth-eaten. Things aren’t like that anymore — Marx was an optimist! They stink of sincerity, and they will go on trotting out these old ideas. They sound like my father. But they’re much worse — give up your money and we’ll believe you, property is theft, power to the people. Who are these people they are always talking about? They have study groups, reading lists — these ratty little pamphlets with coffee stains on the covers, Albanian handbooks of social change. Albanian! Have you ever heard of such a thing? And Arabs — these filthy little desert folk — they think they’re revolutionaries! No, I tell them, we are beyond Marxism now and Chairman Mao and your Arabs and that’ — she spat the words — ‘that pin-up, Trotsky. Any right-thinking anarchist would have chucked these primitives years ago. But here’s hope. I must sound awfully negative to you, but there’s hope in this room — you can feel it. Look around. Araba hasn’t the slightest idea of what she’s started, which is so often the case. Her days are numbered as an activist. Before long they’ll be looking to someone like me, and she’ll be back on stage, posing for photographers, searching the paper for mentions, like Jane Fonda and Vanessa and Brando and all the rest of them.’
She had spoken in a single burst and was panting from the effort of it. She smiled, as if satisfied there could be no reply, and hearing none she straightened herself with assurance. Hood shook his head. Lorna sniffed and brushed her skirt.
Then Brodie said, ‘But Araba’s pretty.’
Lady Arrow showed her teeth. It was not a smile. She said, ‘White trash.’
She hurried Brodie away.
Hood thought: Die.
‘She hates me,’ said Lorna. ‘Should be ashamed of herself, with that little girl, touching her up. Do you really know these fuckers?’
‘I want to see the lady of the house.’
‘What’s wrong with me?’
‘I’ll deal with you later.’
‘Listen to him,’ said Lorna, and her face clouded with sadness.
But from the moment they had entered the house he had felt close to her: it was the same desire he had known when he saw her bruised. He did want her and cursed himself for hesitating. He feared betraying her by making her trust him too much. But the consequence of his fastidiousness was her excitement: he had not made love to her and that aroused her more than if he had. She was a hostage to an unspoken promise. He had also feared possession, dependency, complication, blame, any reduction of his freedom, any disturbance to hers. Sex, an expression of freedom, made you less free: the penalty of freedom was a reverie of loneliness.
To act, he knew, was to involve himself; no act could succeed because a11 involvement was failure; and love, a selfish faith, was the end of all active thought — it was a memory or it was nothing. But he had come too far, known too much to evade blame, and he sought to conclude the act he had begun on impulse that summer night. He wished to release himself with a single stroke that would free him even if it left him a cripple — like a fox gnawing his leg so he could drag himself from the trap: an amputation, true terrorism.
They got drinks from the kitchen and stood next to the stairs, watching the drunken actors (some were preening; several sang; here was one doing another’s horoscope). Hood put his arm around Lorna and kissed her hair. He had overcome his horror of holding her. Once, he had not been able to touch her without feeling the pressure of her husband’s corpse; now touching her reassured him and she could rouse him simply by seeming wounded or lost, which, he had come to see, was her permanent condition. Not love — it was more drastic than that, a hunger for her very flesh, and what kept him away was his fear that her hunger was greater than his and almost unappeasable.