‘Just rooms — empty rooms. Nothing.’ She began to cry. ‘Please let me go. I’ll do anything you say.’
‘You’re giving me ideas,’ said the taller one.
They frightened her, and her awareness of this fear gave her the greatest sense of outrage she had ever known. She wanted them cowering, dead, chopped into pieces. Rape: she would let them; afterwards, she would find them and kill them.
‘Tell me what you want,’ she said.
‘Keep her away from the window.’
‘Off we go,’ said the taller man. ‘Make a funny move and I’ll brick you so fast you won’t know what happened.’
They pushed her into the hall. She thought of running downstairs. They had guns; but something else kept her from making a dash — there was nothing in the house, nothing at all, and remembering that gave her hope. Somehow, they knew about the painting. She hoped they’d find it; they could have it. But no, the house was empty.
She stayed ahead of them, walking along the landing. She said, ‘These are bedrooms. They’re all empty.’
‘How many upstairs?’
‘Two. No, three.’
‘What about this one?’
The voice was over her head. It was rough, unpleasant, deliberately threatening. She trembled; her fear was like penance, purifying her. She felt innocent, a young girl, without any blame, punished for no reason. And again she wanted the men dead, at her mercy.
‘Which one?’
‘Here. The door’s closed.’
‘Empty, like the rest of them.’
‘The rest of them are open.’
‘Let’s have a look.’
They gathered at the door. She remembered the televisions, junk, and Hood saying, We’ll leave them for the next tenant. A hand moved across her shoulder. Don’t touch me. Pure. Most of all she hated Hood: Don’t come back here. You only said that if you had something to hide. She thought: I will do whatever they say, and be safe; the ones who fight, die.
They stepped into the room.
The Number One bus that had taken him to Deptford would take him the rest of the way to Catford, but he had waited twenty minutes and none had come. The queue had lengthened behind him: shoppers, labourers, schoolboys in uniforms. It was dark. He clasped his hands on his paper and relaxed, finding it restful to be so anonymous, in a bus queue in Deptford, among strangers. There were whispers of complaint about the late bus. He eavesdropped, invisible in the shadow of the bus shelter, glad that nothing was required of him but to listen.
‘What’s that?’
The explosion reached him as a muffled roar, too brief for recollection.
‘Smash-up.’
‘That was no smash-up.’
‘Gas-main.’
‘Look!’
The sky was lit, segments of low cloud touched by fire and given majestic detail, and sparks travelling up in gusts, curling above the rooftops. Now the bus queue broke, and all the people ran across the street in the direction of the flames.
Mr Gawber stayed. He boarded the bus and went to the top deck, paid his fare and folded his paper square to complete the crossword. He clicked his pen, but he did not write. He thought: home, Norah, and tonight Peter Pan. It is the end of my world. He put his fingers to his eyes and tried to stop his tears with his fingers.
26
‘Beautyful. Beautyful.’ Murf was at the window, the firelight from the next road flickering on his face, catching his ear-ring and making his ears seem to twitch. Little Jason joined him, standing on tip-toes, his chin on the sill, shrieking at the flames. ‘Went like anything,’ Murf said to the child. ‘It’s still going beautyful. I wish Brodie was here. That cracked it and all. Look at it go!’
The explosion, a tremendous thud, a shower of bricks and glass, had come as they were having tea. It shook their plates and brought a groan from their own house. And Murf, who had just pushed a fragment of kipper into his mouth, stood up, his cheeks bulging, his eyes popping. He threw down the slice of bread he was holding; he choked, trying to swallow, trying to shout. Hood saw black fingermarks on the breadslice. Murf, still chewing, had started out the door, but Hood restrained him, and so Murf had run upstairs to watch the blaze. Then Jason and Lorna; then Hood.
Eruption: the neighbourhood which had seemed to him a district of empty houses, locked and abandoned, was alive; the streets full of reddened people painted by flames, gathered in little watching groups, driven from their houses like ants roused by heat. An ambulance brayed in Ship Street. It came skidding around the Crescent, its blue lights flashing in all the windows of nearby houses. Deptford itself was alight, but this fire, simulating life, reduced it to theatre, and Hood could not bear to watch.
Lorna said, ‘That’s your house!’
‘Not anymore it ain’t,’ said Murf. He laughed; he was dancing. He lifted Jason to see. ‘Look at the little basket — he likes it and all!’
‘What’s up,’ she said. ‘What the hell is this?’
Murf said, ‘That there’s the booby-prize. Hey, where you going?’
‘Downstairs,’ said Hood.
‘You won’t see nothing from there.’
‘Who says I want to?’
Hood left them and went down to the dining room. The eaters had been put to flight. Panic showed in their leavings. The table was covered by the half-eaten meal, bones, bitten pieces still on forks, greasy glasses, the fingerprinted bread, teethmarks everywhere; and outside, the alarm, the excited shouts.
‘What do you know about this?’ said Lorna entering from the hall.
‘You don’t want me to tell you.’
‘Ron.’ She looked at him strangely. ‘Ron would have said that.’ She pushed at the soiled plates. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to know.’
‘I have to go. A little business.’
‘You’re running out on me. You won’t come back. Like Ron.’
He took her face gently in his hands. He kissed her and said, ‘I’ll be back.’
‘I’m scared,’ she said. ‘You done something.’
Hood said, ‘There’s nothing for you to be scared of. It’s all over. No one’s going to bother you now.’
Her expression — puzzled, fearful — had not changed. She said, ‘Ron,’ and then, ‘I loved him, and sometimes he loved me.’
Murf was on the stairs, clattering. He looked into the room and said, ‘Hey, there’s another ambulance. I want to see who copped it.’
‘Stay here.’
‘There must be more than one.’
‘If you leave this house, don’t come back.’
‘Okay, okay,’ said Murf. ‘I was just wondering.’
‘People live around here. They must know us. Keep that face indoors — and stop smiling.’
‘They’ll find you,’ said Lorna, moving warily, sensing danger. ‘They’ll do you, they’ll hang you, they’ll take you away.’
Murf said, ‘Well, they’ll be on to Mayo, won’t they? It’s her house, ain’t it?’ He lost his certainty and said, hoarsely, ‘She might cough.’
Hood said, ‘I’m going to Kilburn.’
From the train, high on its track, making its circuit through South-wark, the city looked immense, and he realized how miles of it were unknown to him. Most of it was hidden by the obscuring glare of the sodium lamps, the buildings showing as low dark blocks, and the church steeples indistinguishable from the night sky. There was no skyline; the dark was seamless, a tide of stars on a yellow broken sea. Too large to possess, too deep to be destroyed, deaf, inert, unchangeable; the waters had closed in, the mountain had subsided long ago. So the saboteur was proved ignorant, and his every act revealed him as a stranger. He would drown.