Soft

by Rupert Thomson

  This was the way Charlie got sometimes, especially if he was talking about the government. His mouth would tense and straighten, his eyes would glitter between their lids.

  ‘Don’t worry, Charlie,’ she said, as if it was his secret she was keeping, not her own. ‘I won’t tell a soul.’

  White China

  Charlie opened a small plastic container that had once held tic tac mints and emptied the contents on to his palm. His fingers curled protectively around three white pills. ‘I thought we could do it this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Just talk. Relax.’

  Glade peered at the pills. ‘Is that ecstasy?’

  Charlie nodded.

  ‘I’ve only done it once before,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe you should start with a half.’ He broke one of the pills in two and gave it to her.

  She looked at him for a moment, grinned, then swallowed it, washing it down with a mouthful of slightly dusty water from the bedside table.

  He had arrived on her doorstep at midday. When he appeared like that, without phoning first, without any warning, it usually meant that he thought she was in trouble, or needed looking after. But he would never refer to it directly.

  They sat on the floor in her bedroom with the window open and the red silk curtains closed. Outside, in the street, a warm breeze was blowing and, every now and then, the curtains hollowed as they were drawn into the gap, which made her think of belly dancers. The only light in the room came from four white candles that stood in a cluster on the mantelpiece above the fireplace.

  ‘If anyone comes to the door,’ she said, ‘I’m not going to answer it.’

  Charlie agreed. ‘We’re out.’

  She lay back on a heap of cushions, her hands behind her head. She could hear the hedge moving below her window; it sounded like somebody flicking through the pages of a book. The curtains were the same colour as your eyelids when you shut your eyes and stare into the sun. She was noticing everything in detail – in part, she thought, because she was curious, on edge, waiting for the drug to take effect. The smell of cut grass drifted into the room.

  Summer.

  Suddenly she felt as if she was being lifted towards the ceiling, not straight upwards, but in a kind of slow curve. She looked at the floor. She hadn’t moved.

  ‘I think it’s starting,’ she said.

  Charlie looked up. ‘I can’t feel anything.’

  He opened his tin of Old Holborn and took out a packet of Rizlas. She watched him peel a single Rizla from the packet and begin to fill it with tobacco. She was glad the Rizlas were green. If they had been the orange type she would have had to put them in her ORANGE (JULY) box. She wondered how many ORANGE boxes she would do in her life. Say she lived to be eighty. How many boxes would there be by then? Her lips moved silently. About seven hundred. She looked round the room. It didn’t seem as if seven hundred boxes would fit. She would have to move. And another thing. She’d have to start writing the year on the top of each box, otherwise she’d get them all mixed up.

  She thought of her notebook. There was something she liked in it, something recent. She leaned forwards and pulled it out from under the bed. She showed Charlie her entry for the previous Thursday. Only one entry for the entire day. Betty.

  Charlie looked at her quizzically.

  ‘Betty’s a new waitress at the restaurant,’ Glade said. ‘She’s got orange hair, masses of it. She’s from New Zealand.’ She paused. ‘I was working lunch that day and the sun was shining through the window and every time I looked round, the only thing I could see was Betty’s hair.’ She paused again, remembering. ‘It was like watching a fire move round a room.’

  Charlie was staring at his shoe, and his mouth had stretched into a wide smile.

  ‘The walls are changing shape,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That happens.’

  She stood up slowly, walked towards the door. Her legs felt solid, but artificial, as if they were made of the same thing all the way through. Some kind of plastic, perhaps. Or fibreglass. It seemed like an adventure, just to be moving. She opened the bedroom door and looked out into the corridor.

  ‘Long way to the kitchen,’ she said.

  She heard Charlie murmur, ‘You want me to go?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Then she changed her mind. ‘No, it’s all right.’ The corridor seemed to slope downwards and then bend sharply to the right, though she knew that, in reality, it was both straight and level. At the end, where the kitchen should have been, everything was white and fuzzy, everything was glowing …

  She left the room, walked halfway down the corridor. The gradient seemed steeper now, and she had to use the muscles in the front of her thighs to stop herself from breaking into a run. The white glow had intensified. She could have been a saint about to receive a vision: there was the same sense of suspended time, uncertain space. She thought she had better stay where she was – for a while, at least. She didn’t think she could make it all the way to the kitchen. And besides, she could no longer remember what she was going there for.

  She looked over her shoulder. It was uphill to the bedroom, quite a climb; it tired her, just thinking about it. As she stood in the corridor, looking back towards her bedroom, she became aware that there was somebody outside the house. From where she was standing she could look down the stairs, one steep flight to the ground floor. The door to the flat was open – she must have forgotten to shut it when she let Charlie in – and she could see the turquoise carpet in the hallway and the white front door beyond. If she lowered her head a fraction she could see the top half of the door, with its two narrow panes of frosted glass. Part of that frosted glass had darkened. Someone was out there, on the other side.

  As she moved backwards, feeling the cool wall against the palms of her hands, against her shoulderblades, she saw the letter-box downstairs begin to open. She stood in the shadows, her body motionless, her breathing shallow. A stranger’s eyes were staring into the house. Had he heard her walking down the corridor? Was he looking up the stairs? What if he could see her feet? She listened for a sound from him, but heard nothing. The house ticked and creaked. At least she heard the flap of the letter-box drop back into place.

  She wasn’t sure how long she waited before she left the safety of the wall and made her way back up the corridor again. It must have been at least ten minutes – enough time, she thought, for that dark shape to vanish from behind the glass. In the bedroom nothing had changed. Red silk curtains, candles burning. Charlie Moore and his Old Holborn tin …

  ‘I’m not going out there again,’ she said.

  Charlie looked up at her. His face had slackened, like the face of someone who has been through a long illness. His eyes were a strange colour, somewhere between fawn and grey. The colour of raincoats.

  ‘How do you feel?’ he said.

  ‘Fine.’ She lowered herself on to the cushions. ‘There was somebody at the door.’

  ‘It’s all right. He’s gone.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was big.’ Charlie was turning a lighter on the palm of his hand. ‘He was wearing one of those nylon bomber jackets.’

  ‘Big?’ She couldn’t think who it might have been.

  ‘Maybe he had the wrong house,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Maybe.’ She was still trying to think. ‘He looked through the letter-box.’

  Charlie put a roll-up in his mouth and lit it. ‘Did he see you?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  A silence fell, broken only by the distant jangling of a burglar alarm. She was beginning to find it difficult to talk. The air had thickened, like fog; the corners of the room were disappearing.

  ‘That journalist,’ Charlie said after a while. ‘Have you spoken to him yet?’

  ‘Journalist?’

  ‘That friend of mine. I wanted him to look into the soft drink you were telling me about.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Apparently he’s been trying to call
you.’

  ‘The phone’s been unplugged. Tom …’

  Charlie nodded. ‘Maybe I should give him your number at work.’

  Glade was quiet for a moment. ‘The man who came to the door,’ she said slowly, ‘you think that was him?’

  ‘No. He doesn’t know where you live.’ Charlie paused. ‘He told me he was having trouble getting anywhere. The company that makes Kwench! is American, and the people who work there, they have to sign a contract when they’re hired. They have to promise not to say anything that reflects badly on the organisation. It’s like an oath of allegiance.’ Charlie turned to look at her. ‘He thinks they’ve been doing something illegal.’

  ‘Really?’ she said. ‘What?’

  ‘He wouldn’t go into it. He wants to see you, though. He’s got all kinds of questions.’

  Glade undid her skirt and took it off, then climbed on to her bed and slid between the sheets. ‘I’m not going to sleep,’ she said. ‘I’m just going to lie down for a bit. You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t mind.’

  ‘You can lie here too, if you like.’

  Charlie thought about it. He put his cigarette in the ashtray and unlaced his boots. He half-sat, half-lay down next to her, on the outside of the covers, with his shoulders propped against the headboard.

  ‘Feels good,’ she said, ‘doesn’t it.’

  He nodded.

  They lay side by side, the window open, the red silk curtains billowing. They were quiet for what might have been an hour. The room felt timeless, though. Cocooned. As if it were actually a capsule floating somewhere high up in the dark.

  ‘Glade? Are you awake?’

  ‘Yes. I just couldn’t speak, that’s all.’

  Later, she noticed a flickering to her left and turned, thinking it must be some new effect the drug was having on her. But it was Giacometti, her cat. He had climbed up on to the mantelpiece and, having eased himself between the chimney-breast and the four candles, a gap of only a few inches, he was staring down at her, his eyes round and yellow, utterly expressionless. She found it inexplicable, miraculous, that he should be so calm. Because he had caught fire. The whole of his left side was burning, and yet he didn’t seem to care, or even notice. He just stood on the mantelpiece, looking down at her. She reached across, touched Charlie on the shoulder.

  ‘The cat’s on fire,’ she said.

  Charlie leapt off the bed. After lying still for such a long time, Glade had almost forgotten that movement existed. She had certainly forgotten it was possible to move so fast. Just watching Charlie cross the room left her feeling curiously breathless.

  Giacometti was watching too. He watched as Charlie used the flat of his hand to pat out the flames. He didn’t move, though. Smoke lifted towards the ceiling, and the room filled with the acrid smell of burnt hair. Still he didn’t move. Only when Charlie had stepped back to the bed and was sitting on the edge of it did Giacometti drop softly to the floor, like snow falling off a roof, and make his way towards the rug that lay under the window. Once there, he began to lick one of his front paws, each stroke of his tongue measured and leisurely, preoccupied. He didn’t seem to be hurt at all, nor did he seem to think that anything unusual had happened. He showed no interest in the patch on his left side that had been blackened by the flames. Perhaps, in the end, it had been a protest of some kind, a protest that had had the desired effect. Perhaps he was merely satisfied.

  On Sunday afternoon, when Glade came home from work, she walked in through the door to see Sally standing at the top of the stairs with the phone. Sally held one hand over the receiver and mouthed the words It’s him.

  ‘Who?’ Glade said.

  Sally rolled her eyes. Tom.

  ‘I’m not here.’

  ‘I told him you just got in.’

  When Glade stared at her in disbelief, Sally whispered, ‘I thought the two of you were talking again.’

  Sighing, Glade climbed the stairs.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Sally said, her voice hardening. She sounded wounded suddenly, even angry, as if it was all Glade’s fault, somehow.

  Glade took the phone from her and sat down on the floor with her back against the wall. Tom. More than two months had passed since the weekend in New Orleans, but she still didn’t feel ready to speak to him. Holding the receiver on her lap, she stared through the doorway ahead of her, into the living-room. The gas fire with its thin, metal bars twisted out of shape, the threadbare carpet, the junk-shop photographs of strangers peering dismally from behind their dusty glass. She saw it the way Tom must have seen it when he first visited – as an untended place, squalid, almost derelict. Cautiously, she brought the receiver to her ear. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Glade! Jesus, is that you?’ His voice, which she had forgotten – or rather, deliberately not thought about. There was warmth in it, sunlight. A kind of safety. ‘I’ve been trying to call you,’ he was saying. ‘Has your phone been out of order or something?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know? How can you not know, Glade?’

  She struggled to find words. ‘I’ve been busy.’

  It wasn’t true.

  ‘That painting you gave me,’ Tom was saying. ‘I hung it in the bedroom.’

  She nodded. Yes, the painting.

  ‘It looks good,’ he said.

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘You know,’ Tom said, ‘I’d like it if we could see each other.’

  Suddenly she had to concentrate. ‘I thought we weren’t supposed to do that,’ she said carefully, as if repeating lines she had learned. ‘I thought we agreed.’

  ‘Glade,’ he said, ‘don’t take everything so seriously.’

  It was then that she noticed the lack of echo on the line. There was no hollowness at all, in fact, and no delay – none of the usual difficulty of talking across an ocean. Her neck felt hot and damp; she lifted her hair away from it with her free hand.

  ‘Where are you?’ she said.

  ‘I’m in London.’ He told her the name of his hotel. ‘I was thinking of coming over.’

  She had to put him off. Quick. What would he say?

  ‘I’ve got rather a lot on at the moment …’

  ‘It’s almost one in the morning, Glade.’

  ‘I told you. I’m really busy.’ She waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. ‘Maybe tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘I’m leaving tomorrow.’

  ‘What about breakfast?’

  ‘Breakfast?’ Tom laughed humourlessly. ‘Jesus, Glade. OK.’ He gave her his room number, telling her to be there no later than nine.

  After Glade had hung up, Sally appeared in the kitchen doorway, a cigarette held vertically just to one side of her mouth.

  ‘That was great,’ she said.

  ‘Was it?’

  Sally nodded. ‘You handled it really well.’

  Glade wasn’t so sure. She suddenly felt sorry for Tom, all alone in his five-star luxury hotel in Knightsbridge.

  ‘That colour doesn’t suit you.’

  Glade glanced down at her orange silk shirt.

  ‘It doesn’t suit you at all.’ Tom tilted his head on one side, as if objectively appraising her. ‘Maybe if you had a tan …’

  ‘I like it,’ she said quietly.

  Tom shook his head. ‘It’s not you.’

  When Glade arrived at the hotel that morning she had asked reception to call Tom and tell him that she was downstairs in the restaurant. This was Sally’s idea. Don’t go to his room, she said. You know what’ll happen if you do. And get someone from reception to call him. If you call him yourself, he’ll make you change your mind. For once, Glade was grateful for the advice: she hadn’t wanted to go to Tom’s room, but she would never have been able to think of a way round it, not on her own.

  It had upset Tom to have his plans altered, as she had suspected it might. He was frowning when he walked up to the table, and he had been frowning ever since. H
e had attacked the waiter for bringing him scrambled eggs that were too dry. ‘I asked for wet eggs. Wet. Do you know what that word means? In my country it means moist, damp. It means runny. These eggs are fucking dry.’ The waiter was bowing, blinking, murmuring apologies, his eyes dazed and slightly watery as if he might, at any moment, burst into tears. ‘The coffee’s weak as well. How does anyone wake up over here drinking shit like this? Maybe they never do. Jesus.’ All this in a normal voice, but with an edge to it. As a waitress herself, Glade had sometimes come across people who behaved like Tom. They frightened her. She stared at her plate until he had finished, stared at it as if it interested her, when actually all she was thinking was white china, white china. She wondered if a harmless question might change his mood. She lifted her head. ‘So what did you want to see me about?’

  Tom leaned back in his chair and fixed her with a long, sardonic look. ‘I just wanted to see you, Glade. It wasn’t about anything.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She read the menu again, even though they were already eating. When she asked for Kwench! with her breakfast, Tom had looked at her, shaken his head and said, ‘Now she’s going Mexican on me.’ She hadn’t understood what he meant by that. It was irrelevant, anyway, because they didn’t have Kwench!. She had ordered tea instead.

  ‘So what have you been doing with yourself?’ Tom reached for a piece of toast, examined it.

  ‘Nothing really,’ she said. ‘Just working.’

  He began to talk about a case he had been involved in recently, something to do with tax fraud on an unimaginable scale.

  ‘What about that man,’ Glade said, interrupting, ‘the one you found in Venezuela?’

  ‘Colombia.’ Tom smiled. ‘He got life.’

  In her head Glade instantly released the man. She watched him emerge from a small door in a high grey wall, walk out into dazzling American light. When he was at a safe distance, the prison blew up behind him. She saw flames leap into the sky.