Soft

by Rupert Thomson

  ‘One thing happened, actually,’ she said.

  Tom looked up from a forkful of scrambled eggs, which were now, presumably, wet enough. ‘What was that?’

  ‘You know my cat?’

  Yes, he knew.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it caught fire –’

  ‘Your cat caught fire?’

  ‘Yes. And you know what happened then?’

  Tom was staring.

  ‘We had to put it out,’ she said. ‘Put the cat out.’ She began to laugh. Her tea slopped over, her napkin fell on to the floor. Soon she was laughing uncontrollably, and the sight of Tom’s face, bewildered at first, and then annoyed, made it impossible to stop.

  Towards the middle of that week Glade was at the restaurant, slicing olive bread for lunch, when the phone rang. Betty had been sent out to buy vegetables and ice, and the maitre d’ was upstairs in the office, so Glade answered it herself. It was Charlie, calling from a phone-box in South London. He asked her if the journalist had contacted her. She said he hadn’t. Charlie muttered something under his breath. Then he said, ‘I need to see you. Tonight, if possible.’

  Glade leaned on the bar, looking out into the sunlit street. The glitter of spokes as a bicycle slid past. The heatwave lasting. She suggested the rose garden in Regent’s Park, which was one of her favourite places in the summer. Charlie seemed to approve of the idea.

  ‘The rose garden,’ he said. ‘At half-past seven.’

  Later, as she smoothed butter into small china pots, she couldn’t help thinking that there had been a tightness in Charlie’s voice, a tightness that was unfamiliar. Throughout lunch the strained sound stayed with her. She found it difficult to keep her mind on things. When the woman wearing the gold hoop earrings wanted to know what was in the duck confit soup, she just went blank.

  ‘Confit of duck,’ she began, then faltered.

  ‘Well, obviously,’ the woman snapped.

  Glade had to ask Betty to come over to the table and run through the ingredients for her – cavolo nero, dried haricot beans, carrots, and so on.

  Not long afterwards, there was another awkward moment, this time with the man sitting by the window. He was in his late fifties, early sixties, and dressed conventionally in a dark-blue blazer and grey trousers. When she first saw him, she was sure she knew him; she couldn’t remember how, though, or from where. She must have waited on him recently, she thought. Yes, he was probably a regular. She smiled as she passed his table and asked him how he was, but he looked at her with such detachment, such a complete absence of recognition, that she realised she must have made a mistake. Just then, luckily, a much younger man arrived at the table. The man in the blazer stood up, saying, ‘There you are, James,’ and she was able to slip away, unnoticed.

  At last her shift came to an end. She walked through Soho and over Oxford Street, enjoying the sunshine, the bustle of the crowds. At five-thirty she stopped at a pub on Great Titchfield Street where she ordered a double gin-and-tonic. For the next hour she sat outdoors, allowing all the tension to drain out of her. As she sipped her drink she began to think about Charlie’s friend, the journalist. She found herself imagining an office, with long corridors, fluorescent lights. The smell of radiators that had just been bled: that stifled, gassy air. She saw the journalist hurrying towards a door, which rattled when he knocked on it. He was a small, slightly agitated man, and he was wearing a brown suit with a mustard-yellow cardigan underneath. When he disappeared through the door, closing it quietly behind him, she remained outside, in the corridor, alone.

  She finished her drink and left the pub. Instead of walking north, towards Regent’s Park, she decided to take a roundabout route. Near Portland Place the streets felt still and warm and dead, like rooms in a house that’s been locked up for the summer. She kept going west. On Marylebone High Street she called in at a small supermarket and bought a baguette, some French cheese and a bottle of white wine. As she passed the cooler, she noticed half a dozen bright-orange cans. She opened the door and took out three of them. ‘Kwench it!,’ she muttered, moving up the aisle towards the counter.

  By half-past seven she was crossing the park. There had been no rain for weeks and the grass had a scorched look; it crunched and crackled under her feet like straw. The rose garden seemed green, almost lavish by comparison. She loved the layered fragrance you breathed in there – the way it hypnotised you, slowed you down. You would often see people stoop over a rose and just go still, their heads at a slight angle; they could have been trying to listen to a sound. Then, after a while, they would step back, stare up into the sky, entranced, transformed. Though by August, of course, the scented roses had already bloomed, their petals brown at the edges, as if they had been dipped in coffee.

  She found Charlie sitting on a wooden bench with his hands in his pockets. He smiled at her, but she could see that something was worrying him. It showed in his forehead, which was twisted, and in the paleness of his face. He looked cold, despite the weather.

  She sat on the ground in front of him and unpacked the provisions she had brought with her.

  ‘A feast,’ he exclaimed. But his voice had no life in it; it sounded hollow, bleak.

  ‘What’s the matter, Charlie?’ she asked.

  He sighed. ‘I’m not sure.’

  She passed him the bottle of wine, which he opened with the corkscrew on his Swiss Army penknife. They began to eat. On the next bench along, under an archway that was smothered in voluptuous pink roses, a couple were kissing.

  ‘The journalist,’ Charlie said, then stopped.

  Glade looked round. ‘What about him?’

  ‘He still hasn’t called you, has he.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s what I was afraid of.’ Charlie swallowed some wine from the bottle, then offered it to her. She shook her head. His eyes veered away from her, up into the trees. ‘I can’t get hold of him,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried him at work, at home …’

  Glade frowned. Every time she thought about the journalist she saw a man in a brown suit and a yellow cardigan disappearing through a door. She chewed thoughtfully on a piece of bread. Behind Charlie’s shoulder, the couple were still kissing.

  ‘No one seems to know where he is.’ Charlie reached for the bottle again and drank. ‘You see, if he was away on an assignment, I’d know about it. He would have told me.’ He was staring at the grass now. When he lifted his head, his pupils had dilated. ‘Something’s going on.’

  She smiled. She couldn’t help it.

  ‘I’m serious,’ he said.

  ‘But, Charlie –’

  ‘I want you to be careful, that’s all. Be careful.’

  ‘Careful?’ she said. ‘What of?’

  He peered out into the encroaching darkness. ‘I don’t know.’

  Sometime later, she noticed that the bench the lovers had been sitting on was empty. At the same moment she remembered the man in the restaurant at lunchtime, the man wearing the blazer, and she realised that, although she didn’t actually know him, she had seen him before. It was during the two days she had spent in the sleep clinic. He was one of the researchers who had been standing in the doorway to her cubicle, and who had backed away, startled, when she woke up. No wonder he hadn’t recognised her. She was probably just one of thousands of people that he used in his research.

  She was on the point of telling Charlie about the coincidence when she heard a rumble coming from beneath her, from under the ground. She couldn’t think what it might be. She glanced at Charlie, who seemed equally perplexed. There was a sudden, vicious hiss, and something landed on her. She jumped up, brushing at her dress. It was water. They had turned the sprinkler system on, and water was being flung in great loops from the tops of the rose arbours.

  She had cried out the first time, in shock, but then the water kept landing on her, and it was so cold and violent against her skin, so like being slapped, that she cried out every time it happened. She tried to dodge it, find a place whe
re the sprinklers couldn’t touch her, but the system was too efficient. Each square-inch of grass seemed to be accounted for.

  In the end they had to gather up their things and run across the rose garden and out through the gates on to the road. They stood under a streetlamp, soaked to the skin and out of breath and shivering.

  Then, looking at each other, they began to laugh.

  The Colour of Real Life

  Eight o’clock in the evening, a church bell tolling somewhere far away, across the valley, a shimmer at the limit of her hearing. Tired after the long journey north, Glade leaned on the five-bar gate and yawned. The sun had already fallen behind the hill, but its rays were fanning out against the sky, and the vault of glowing violet above her made her arms look tanned. On the way home from work that week, she had paused outside a house in Notting Hill, its garden lush and secretive, its front room empty but flooded with a warm gold light. As always, a feeling she didn’t understand passed through her. It wasn’t envy. She didn’t want to live in a house like that. No, it was closer to nostalgia. As if there had been a time when that had been her lot. As if she was being allowed a rare glimpse into some distant corner of her memory. Standing on the pavement outside the house it had occurred to her that her father hadn’t called for at least a month. She decided to pay him a visit. She would take food with her and cook for him. He would have no idea she was coming. He would be happy.

  She lifted the stiff iron catch. The gate groaned open. Then, as she set out across the field, she noticed that no lights were showing in the caravan. Her heart quickened. Perhaps he had already gone to bed. Perhaps he was out. She felt a disappointment seep into her. The sky seemed to widen suddenly, expand. She couldn’t imagine where he might be. She knew so little about the life he lived when she wasn’t there. How he passed the time. Who he saw, if anyone. She stood still, the caravan a pale rectangle against the darkness of the hedge. Her eyes drifted upwards to the last lit shreds of cloud, thin red shapes on a mauve ground. They reminded her of the Easter she had spent with him the year before. He had hidden chocolate eggs in the field for her – but he had hidden them too well. By the time she found them, they had been attacked by animals. Some had been devoured completely, so that nothing but a twist of wizened, glittery paper had been left behind.

  She crossed the field, making for the caravan. She could hear her own breathing, fast and shallow, and she knew then that she was hurrying. In that moment she sensed that something had altered. When she turned the door-handle, she was not surprised to find it locked. She peered through the window: it looked the same as always – tidy but cluttered, the contents veiled with a subtle fuzz of dust. At least he hadn’t moved. Was it possible he was trying to call her from the phone-box? Would that be too much of a coincidence? Even now, she thought, he could be trudging back along the road, cursing the fact that he had walked three miles for nothing. Then his eyes would alight on her, sitting on the steps. As if, simply by dialling her number, he had somehow cast a line and reeled her in. She reached into her bag and, taking out a can of Kwench!, opened it and drank. She shivered at the taste, but finished it. Then opened another.

  The sky had faded, the trees had blackened. An hour must have passed. The darkness was beginning to play tricks on her. She saw the gate swing open more than once. She saw figures appear – not just her father, but Charlie, Betty from the restaurant, even Sally James. At last she stood up, walked slowly back across the field. But instead of following the track that led to the road, she turned into the farmyard. Sprigs of Queen Anne’s lace glowed dimly in the hedgerows. She passed silent sheds, the air rich with manure and hay. When she reached the house she hesitated. There was a window next to the back door. Shadows shifted behind the curtains. She had never spoken to Mr Babb, the farmer. She didn’t even know what he looked like. At least someone was in, though.

  An old woman answered the door. She had poor eyesight and thinning hair.

  ‘I’m looking for my father,’ Glade said. ‘He lives in the caravan. Up there.’ She pointed towards the field.

  The woman turned and called over her shoulder. ‘Harry?’

  Glade heard the scrape of chair-legs on a tile floor. The door opened a foot wider and a man in his middle-fifties stood beside the woman, wiping his mouth on the back of his wrist. He had the swollen eyelids of someone who had just been woken out of a deep sleep.

  ‘You Spencer’s daughter?’ he said.

  Glade nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s at the hospital.’

  Her throat hurt suddenly, as if she had been shouting. She felt somebody take her by the arm.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ the woman said.

  She sat Glade at the kitchen table, poured tea into a yellow cup. While Mr Babb finished his supper of cold roast meat and boiled potatoes, she told Glade what she knew. It had happened late on Sunday night. She was walking over to the sheds when she noticed what looked like a piece of washing lying in the field. She thought it must have blown off the line. There had been strong winds out of the north that day. Only when she got up close did she realise that it was Mr Spencer from the caravan.

  ‘If he hadn’t been wearing that white shirt,’ she said, ‘I’d never have seen him.’

  She fetched Mr Babb, who carried Mr Spencer into the house. From there, they called an ambulance. A heart attack, it was. Nothing too serious. Still, they were keeping him in hospital for a few days, just to be on the safe side.

  ‘No one told me,’ Glade said quietly.

  ‘They tried to ring you from the hospital,’ the woman said. ‘They couldn’t get an answer.’

  Glade felt her face flush. She stared at her tea-cup, which was chipped around the rim. Perhaps it, too, had been gnawed by animals.

  ‘There was music playing,’ Mr Babb said suddenly.

  The woman looked up. ‘Music?’

  ‘Don’t you remember? In the field.’

  ‘Flamenco,’ Glade said.

  The farmer and the woman peered in her direction, as if a sudden mist had filled the room and hidden her.

  ‘Flamenco,’ Glade said. ‘It’s Spanish.’

  That night she slept in the caravan. It was too dark to make out any of her father’s possessions, but the pillow smelled of him, a smell that was both dry and sweet, like custard powder. After finishing her tea, she had asked Mr Babb where the hospital was, imagining that she could visit that same evening. The old woman answered first, saying that the hospital was twenty-five miles away. Then Mr Babb shook his head. He thought it was more like thirty. And anyway, he said, visiting hours would already be over. Glade gazed into her empty cup. That sudden heat passed over her again and she felt as if the table was easing out from under her. She scanned the room, looking for something familiar or reliable. The old stone sink, the gun leaning in the corner, the mud-streaked fridge. Her eyes struggled briefly with the curtains and their repeating twists of grey and brown and yellow. Through the half-open door she could see into a dingy corridor, sacks of grain slumped on the floor, the walls and ceiling painted green.

  Mr Babb opened the drawer at the end of the table, sliding it all the way out until the delicate brass handle buried itself in his belly. His fingers moved clumsily among the jumbled contents. At last he produced a ring of grey metal that held keys of every shape and size. He could unlock the caravan for her, he announced. Or if she was worried about sleeping out there all by herself, she was welcome to the spare room. Glade thanked him, saying she would be happy in the caravan. She would feel closer to her father. She hesitated, then asked if she could call the hospital. A meaningful look passed between the farmer and the woman, the air seemed tangled for a moment, then the farmer nodded slowly and rose to his feet. He opened the cupboard behind the kitchen door and took out a plastic bag with Tesco written on one side. Reaching into the bag, he brought out a shiny, pale-pink telephone, an old model with a dial on the front instead of buttons.

  ‘It’s so it doesn’t get dirty,’ the woman
explained. ‘Mr Babb, he just hates dust. Don’t you?’ And she looked up at the farmer who had the phone in his left hand, gripping it from above, with fingers spread, as if it were a tortoise or a crab.

  He didn’t answer her, but wheeled sideways and, stooping abruptly, plugged the lead into a socket in the wall. He placed the phone in front of Glade, his face still flushed from the exertion. The woman told her the number of the hospital and they both watched greedily as she dialled. She spoke to a nurse on her father’s ward. According to the nurse, he was already sleeping. He was comfortable. She could visit in the morning, between ten o’clock and twelve.

  She lay in her father’s bed with the lights out and the curtains drawn. She could feel the darkness all around her like a weight, a presence. It seemed to exert a pressure on the walls, the caravan as fragile as an eggshell in the night’s clenched fist. Sleep would not take her. After an hour she had to light a candle, wedging it upright in an empty whisky bottle that she found beside the bed. What happened, Glade? What happened? Her father’s voice spoke to her from somewhere above, under the roof. She remembered how her mother had smashed a bowl once, bits of china skidding across the floor. And she had shouted too, words with blunt endings, then the kitchen door slammed shut. Her father stood with his head lowered as though his punishment was only just beginning. What happened? She tried to hypnotise herself by staring at the flame. A strong wind swooped down, shook the walls. The world turned to water, hedge and trees and grass hissing like breakers on a pebble beach. Out in the field the journalist stood watch, his face earnest, conscientious, his notebook a white glimmer in his hand. He was wearing the brown suit again, with the yellow cardigan underneath, and in his breast pocket she could see a triangle of folded handkerchief, which was a subtle reference to the mountain, of course, his way of telling her that he was on her side. And suddenly she knew the truth. Charlie was wrong to worry. The journalist would come for her. Maybe not tonight. But he would come. She would talk to him, and he would listen. Everything would be explained. And with that thought the wind rose again, hiding all other sounds, and her breathing deepened and she slept.