Soft

by Rupert Thomson

  ‘What about the source?’ Jimmy said.

  ‘Cheops,’ said Connor.

  Jimmy stared at him. ‘I’m sorry?’

  Connor eased back in his chair. ‘Do you remember the story of the pyramids at Giza? Once they were completed, the Pharaoh had all the slaves who’d been involved in their construction put to death. That way, the design would remain a secret.’ Connor smiled faintly. ‘Let’s just say that I’ve taken equivalent precautions. Figuratively speaking, of course.’

  Lambert, Jimmy thought.

  ‘Hand in hand with any measures I might have taken,’ Connor was saying, ‘are the measures I expect Communications to take – deflecting any attacks the media might be planning, keeping publicity to an absolute minimum.’ His gaze settled on Neil and Debbie. ‘I know I can trust you both to do an effective job on this.’ He paused. ‘It could be a busy week.’

  Debbie muttered something, but Connor ignored her.

  ‘Bowes,’ he said. ‘You haven’t said a word.’

  A new silence began – moment after moment of embarrassment that quickly accumulated, became exquisite.

  ‘Bowes?’ Connor said.

  At last Neil cleared his throat. ‘There’s an old Chinese proverb: “The wisest man lets others speak for him.’”

  Connor stared at Neil for a few seconds, then his shoulders began to shake. ‘That’s good, Bowes. That’s very good. “The wisest man –”’ Connor was laughing.

  The meeting broke up in an atmosphere of surreal good humour. Even Debbie had smiled at the proverb.

  Jimmy followed Neil and Debbie across the boardroom to the door, then he paused, allowing them to go on without him. When they had disappeared round the corner, he turned back. Connor was writing in a small black notebook.

  ‘How much do you know about the source?’ Jimmy asked.

  Connor glanced round. ‘Almost nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s believed to be someone who participated in the programme.’

  ‘So they saw through it, somehow?’

  ‘It would appear so.’

  For the rest of the morning Jimmy worked at his desk, but he found it hard to concentrate. The documents that he was dealing with seemed artificial, hollow. The lines of type were just shapes on a page; they had no meaning. Whenever he looked up, everything around him appeared unnaturally bright and quiet.

  At lunchtime he ran into Neil outside the lifts.

  ‘That proverb,’ he said.

  ‘I made it up.’ Neil looked at his floor. ‘He bought it, though, didn’t he. Bit worrying, that.’

  The doors opened and Jimmy followed Neil into the lift. Once the doors had closed, Neil turned and faced him. ‘What part did you play in all this, Jimmy?’

  ‘It was my idea.’

  The distances between Neil’s features seemed to grow.

  ‘It was only an idea,’ Jimmy said. ‘I mean, I never really thought –’ He cut the sentence short, unsure where it was leading.

  ‘What’s going to happen?’ Neil said.

  Jimmy frowned. ‘It’s hard to say. I imagine he’s been in situations like this before, though.’

  ‘Yes,’ Neil said. ‘I imagine he has.’

  That night Jimmy woke up suddenly, the covers thrown aside, the sweat on his chest already cold. A dream came back to him in its entirety. He had been to dinner with Margaret Thatcher. There were others present, perhaps a dozen in all, the men in evening dress, the women wearing jewels. On the dining-table stood silver candelabras, flower arrangements, bowls of fruit. He sat on Thatcher’s right and for most of the night she had talked to him, talked to him as if she knew him well, as if they were close friends. He could still see her leaning towards him as she spoke, one hand on his wrist for emphasis. That hair, that nose. That voice.

  Thatcher!

  He couldn’t remember what it was that she’d been saying, only that she’d been confiding in him and that her conversation had been littered both with intimate details of her life and with the names of great world leaders. He had to admit that, despite himself, he had been flattered by her attentions, if a little mystified. There had even been a moment when he thought: Should you be telling me all this?

  After dinner he found himself standing in the library. Wing-backed chairs, wood-panelling. Books bound in leather, brown and red and gold. At first he assumed he was alone. But then he realised someone was in the room with him. He turned round, saw Thatcher sitting beside a crackling log fire. She seemed to be asleep, her hands in her lap, her mouth slightly ajar. He approached her, spoke to her. She didn’t answer. He touched her shoulder. She didn’t wake. He shook her gently and her head fell sideways until her chin was resting on her collar-bone. Then he understood. She wasn’t asleep at all. She was dead.

  He moved to the library window, which was tall and had no curtains. The land fell away in front of him. He could see the lights of the city below him and, beyond the lights, an area of darkness which he knew to be the sea. It was late now. One in the morning, maybe two. He stood at the library window and looked out over the city. Thatcher’s dead, he thought, and I’m the only one who knows.

  One arm cushioning his head, he lay in bed, struck by the wealth of detail in the dream, its unusual precision. Then, closing his eyes, he turned over and went back to sleep.

  At half-past seven he woke again. He dressed quickly and drank a black coffee standing in his kitchen. Outside, the sun was veiled in thin white cloud. It would burn off later.

  On his way to the tube he bought a newspaper. Thatcher did not appear to have died during the night. In fact, there was no mention of her on the front page at all. Even so, for the next few hours, he felt as if he had been caught up in extraordinary events, as if he had somehow stumbled into history.

  On Wednesday evening, at nine o’clock, he parked his car in Bridle Lane and then walked north, towards Marshall Street. When he reached the swimming-pool, Karen Paley was leaning against the wall outside, a short flared skirt exposing her bare legs, her hair already dry.

  ‘You got the message, then,’ she said.

  He smiled.

  On Tuesday Bob had called him from the lobby. A package had arrived for him by hand. Things had been so tense that week that Jimmy viewed this unexpected delivery with some suspicion. Could it be a communication from the journalist? Inside the package he found a pair of swimming-goggles – and that was all. What did it mean? Closer examination of the goggles revealed a message written on the inside of the rubber strap you slip over your head: MARSHALL STREET. TOMORROW. 9 P.M.

  He kissed Karen lightly on the cheek, thinking it was strange how erotic even the faintest smell of chlorine had become for him.

  ‘I’m sorry about Saturday,’ he said. ‘There was nothing I could do.’

  ‘That’s all right. A woman came and told me.’

  They walked slowly in the direction of his car. It was another hot night – the temperature still up in the seventies, even after dark. People would be eating in their gardens, sleeping under single sheets. And Lambert in the city somewhere, putting slaves to death. Figuratively speaking, of course.

  ‘How did it go?’ he asked.

  ‘I came second.’

  ‘Out of fifty? That’s pretty good, isn’t it?’

  She sighed. ‘There’s a figure they asked us to do. It’s called the Knight. I can never seem to get it right.’

  ‘What’s so difficult about it?’

  She started to explain and then broke off with a smile. ‘Almost everything,’ she said.

  He didn’t know what she expected from the evening – which, after all, had been her idea this time. He didn’t know what he expected either. He remembered something Simone had said when he told her he had a date with a synchronised swimmer. Well, there have got to be some pretty interesting positions. He smiled to himself. After the hours he’d put in recently, it felt like a release just to be out.

  ‘I’m not really your kind of girl, am I,’ Karen said suddenly.

 
‘Aren’t you?’ Still smiling, he turned to her.

  ‘You’ve only seen me twice,’ she said, ‘and then only for a couple of minutes. You might have made a mistake.’

  He noticed her profile for the first time, and how her top lip curled upwards, back on itself, which made her look both trusting and provocative. He wanted to kiss her.

  ‘You don’t know what I’m like,’ she said. ‘You might be disappointed.’ She paused. ‘You might think I’m boring.’

  ‘Why would I think that?’

  ‘I don’t drink, I don’t smoke. I don’t go to clubs –’

  ‘You can’t,’ he said. ‘Not if you’re doing all that training.’

  ‘There’s something else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well,’ and she hesitated, ‘I’m married.’

  For a moment Jimmy thought he must have misunderstood. ‘You’re married? I thought you said you weren’t with anyone.’

  ‘No, that was you. I said kind of.’ Karen was looking at the pavement as she walked along. ‘He’s always away, my husband. Out of the country. That’s probably what I meant.’ She paused, then said, ‘He’s in securities.’

  They had reached the car, which was parked in the shadows against a wall. Jimmy turned to face Karen. Behind her, there were three tall steel waste-bins, and stacks of cardboard boxes that were stuffed with bubble-wrap and ghostly blocks of polystyrene.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.

  He was thinking about the uncertainty and apprehension he had lived with for the last few days. He was thinking that any difficulties she might place in his way couldn’t possibly compare with those he might soon face at work. A kind of recklessness swept through him, and he put his arms around her waist and drew her towards him. She did not resist. Through her shirt he could feel the thin columns of muscle that ran down the middle of her back. It must have lasted minutes, their first kiss, and they didn’t move from where they stood, the smell of Spraymount coming from a photographic studio nearby, the hollow roar of air-vents overhead. He kneeled in front of her and kissed the skin where it thickened slightly, just above her knees, then moved slowly up the inside of her thighs.

  Once, he looked up. She was leaning against the car, her hands on the bonnet, her head tipped back. From where he was, below her, he could only see her throat, the curve of her chin, and then the sky beyond her, cloudless, almost black. He put his face against her body, breathed her in.

  Not long afterwards she touched his shoulder, and the pressure made him stop what he was doing and glance up at her again. She was looking past him, down the alley. Two men stood on the cobblestones, no more than twenty yards away. One of them was smoking. Slowly Jimmy rose to his feet. Taking Karen by the hand, he led her to the door on the passenger’s side and opened it for her. Then, trying not to hurry, he walked back round the car. The men seemed to have edged closer, though they weren’t actually moving. They were just standing there. Watching.

  Inside the car he fitted the key into the ignition and twisted it. The engine turned over, but didn’t fire.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he murmured. ‘It never starts first time.’

  The fourth time he tried, the engine spluttered, caught. He flicked the headlights on, expecting to see the two men in front of him, lit up, but they had vanished. He looked over his shoulder. They were nowhere to be seen. Puzzled, he drove quickly over the cobbles and then turned right, into Brewer Street. Neon splashed through the car’s interior.

  ‘Where did they go?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see.’ If she was frightened, she didn’t show it.

  ‘How long had they been there?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  At the traffic-lights he turned to look at her.

  ‘You were so calm,’ he said.

  ‘And you.’ She took his left hand and guided it between her legs. But the lights altered and he had to take his hand away, change gear. They were driving south, down Regent Street.

  ‘Let’s go to my house,’ she said.

  He looked at her again. ‘What about your husband?’

  ‘He’s in Japan today.’

  ‘And tomorrow?’

  ‘South Korea,’ she said. ‘Seoul.’

  Down into the tunnel under Hyde Park Corner, white lights along the tiled walls like the dotted line you have to sign on forms if you agree to everything above. A curve to the right, a curve to the left, then up into Knightsbridge, which always seemed dim after the brightness underground. Since Haymarket she had wanted his left hand under her skirt and so far they had been lucky with the lights, green all the way. As they drew level with the Sheraton Tower she came against his fingers, her head pushed backwards, her eyes closed. And she had been giving him directions the whole time: turn left here, stay in the right lane, go straight on …

  They passed a shwarma place – scarlet plastic seating, the fatty glitter of the meat. They were in Kensington now, though he couldn’t have said where exactly. He liked the feeling of suspension – not thinking, just driving: obeying her instructions. He’d almost forgotten they were on their way somewhere and that, sooner or later, they would arrive – or, rather, it had begun to seem irrelevant. A slight disappointment, a kind of nostalgia, rose through him when she touched him lightly on the arm and said, ‘We’re there.’

  He parked on the north side of a narrow, elongated square. Her house was part of a terrace of tall houses, all built out of the same beige brick, their front doors guarded by pillars of dark-pink marble. He followed her up the steps, his eyes on a level with the hem of her skirt, which swayed giddily against the backs of her thighs. She undid three locks, then they were in.

  Once inside the flat he could no longer hear his footsteps. The carpet was deep enough to silence any movement. It was like walking on snow. They moved along a dark passageway towards the back of the house. In the kitchen she switched on a lamp and opened the fridge. She poured a glass of chilled white wine for him and a tumbler of sparkling water for herself, then she led him into the living-room. They lay down on the sofa with the lights out and the TV on. Some cable channel. He watched the flicker of the pictures on her skin, the play of light and shadow hectic, almost tribal …

  After a while he thought he heard a car pull up outside the house. With the TV on, though, he couldn’t be sure. A key could turn in the front door, and then that carpet, deep as snow. Her husband could be standing in the room before they noticed. And even then –

  Japan, he told himself. Korea.

  Later, she asked if he was thirsty.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  She left the sofa and walked naked across the room, her spine shifting in the half-light, a subtle movement that reminded him, just for a moment, of the tail of a kite.

  She returned with a tall glass and handed it to him.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

  She smiled. ‘Guess.’ She fitted her body next to his, her skin cooled by the walk out to the kitchen.

  He brought the glass to his lips and tasted it. Kwench!.

  ‘It’s not bad,’ she said. ‘I’ve been buying it.’

  At some point in the middle of the night he leaned over her and saw that she was staring up into the dark. The whites of her eyes were slightly marbled, like the surface of the moon. He could just hear the sound of her breathing – as delicate as wind in grass, not the tidal ebb and flow of someone sleeping.

  ‘It’s not you, is it?’ he said.

  She stared at him without moving.

  He spoke again. ‘It’s not you who’s going to the papers?’

  ‘What about?’ she said.

  He examined her face for signs that she might be lying, but she only sounded confused and the confusion didn’t seem feigned. It wasn’t her. It couldn’t be. The glass of Kwench! she had offered him was just a glass of Kwench!.

  ‘What is it?’ she whispered. ‘What are you talking about?’

  He lay down, the back of his h
ead fitting into a hollow in the pillow. Above him the darkness was vibrating.

  ‘Jimmy, you’re scaring me.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘it’s nothing. Go back to sleep.’

  In the morning, as she was dressing, she suddenly said, ‘You woke me up last night. Do you remember?’

  He looked at her in the bathroom mirror. She was standing behind him, in the middle of the bedroom, her face tense with wonder at the memory. ‘You asked me all these questions,’ she said.

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yes. You asked me if I’d been to the papers.’

  ‘The newspapers?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ She moved to the chest of drawers and opened it. ‘It was strange. Like you thought I was going to sell them a story or something. You were really worried about it …’

  Still looking at her in the mirror, Jimmy shook his head.

  ‘I must have been dreaming,’ he said.

  Four

  Lists and Boxes

  During the weeks that followed her return from New Orleans Glade slept badly. Most nights, between the hours of two and three, she would hear the phone ringing in the corridor outside her room. She knew who it was. She could imagine him in his apartment in Miami, bright blocks of evening sunlight stacked against the walls, the ocean in the window, tropical, metallic-green. He’d be sitting with one leg thrown casually over the arm of a chair, a joint burning between his fingers. If you loosened his striped tie, then opened the top three buttons of his shirt and slid your hand inside, you’d feel sweat on the surface of his skin, a light, clean sweat, as pure as water …

  At first she found it almost impossible not to answer – and he let the phone ring for a long time too, suspecting, rightly, that she was there. She lay in bed with her eyes wide open, listening. Some nights she counted the number of times the phone rang, and was surprised by his patience, his persistence; she wouldn’t have expected it. Other nights she pretended that it was a just another sound, and that it had no more relevance to her than a clap of thunder or a car-alarm. After a week, not answering became a habit. In the end, though, she had to unplug the phone before she went to bed. Even then, somehow, she could sense him trying to get through. And she knew what he would say if she let him speak to her. He’d say she was weird, changing her flight like that, behind his back, sneaking out of the hotel at dawn. And then not picking up the phone, not communicating. ‘Jesus, Glade, what’s going on? Are you having some kind of breakdown? Are you depressed?’ He’d start using words like ‘shrink’, which she didn’t like (why would someone want to make you smaller?). So what was the point? She missed him, of course she did – the whole inside of her was hollow with the knowledge that he was gone – but she needed to hold on to some initiative of her own, the feeling that she’d had in New Orleans at five-thirty in the morning. The airport, please.