Soft

by Rupert Thomson

  She found her father in a ward with seven men. When he noticed her, he sat up, smoothing his bedclothes and smiling, as if she was someone he’d been told to please. But she had seen him first, through a gap in the curtains, his face slack and hollow, almost uninhabited, and even now, as she settled on the chair beside the bed, she thought the bones in his forehead showed too clearly through his skin: she could see the edges, the places where they joined.

  ‘Glade,’ he said. Then, turning to include the other men, he said, ‘My daughter.’ The men all came to life suddenly, nodding and smiling at the same time, like puppets.

  ‘Dad,’ she murmured, reproaching him.

  ‘Sorry. They’re not bad fellows, though.’

  She took his hand, and he watched it being taken, as if it didn’t belong to him. ‘How are you?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I’ll live.’ He gave her what was intended to be a jaunty grin, but his eyes seemed frightened.

  ‘Apparently they tried to call me,’ she said. ‘My phone wasn’t working.’

  ‘That’s all right. The Babbs looked after me.’

  She couldn’t bring herself to ask him how he came to be lying in the field. Instead she simply held on to his hand and studied it. As a young girl she used to sit on his lap and learn his hand off by heart. The oval fingernails, the swollen veins. The dark-grey star-shaped mark on his left thumb, which he had always jokingly referred to as his tattoo (a boy had stabbed him with a fountain pen at school).

  ‘I slept in the caravan last night,’ she said.

  ‘Did you? You weren’t scared?’

  She shook her head. ‘I came up yesterday. I wanted to surprise you. I didn’t know,’ and she paused, ‘I didn’t know about all this.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Glade.’

  ‘I was going to cook for you. Look.’ And, dipping a hand into her backpack, she took out half a dozen brown paper bags and tipped their contents on to the bed. She had bought the vegetables the day before, from the market in Portobello Road – tomatoes, squash, courgettes, green peppers, aubergines. Spilled across the hospital blanket, their colours seemed painfully bright, almost unnatural. The colour of real life. She watched him reach out, his fingers glancing weakly off their glossy surfaces. Tears blurred her vision for a moment, but she didn’t think he noticed.

  ‘How did you find me?’ he asked.

  ‘I went to the farmhouse.’ She blinked, then touched an eye with the back of her wrist. ‘They gave me a cup of tea. They were kind.’

  ‘They were kind to me too.’ Her father stared into space, remembering.

  Glade wished she could lighten the atmosphere, make him laugh. ‘You know what?’ she said. ‘They keep their telephone in a plastic bag.’

  ‘Really?’ Her father turned and looked at her. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘It’s so it doesn’t get dusty.’ She paused. ‘They’d really hate it in your caravan.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said vaguely. ‘Ah well …’ His eyes drifted across the wall behind her.

  A nurse appeared. She told Glade that her father ought to rest. Glade gathered up the vegetables and arranged them on the table beside his bed, thinking the splashes of red and green and yellow might cheer him up. Before she left she took his hand again and promised she would come up north as soon as she could. Perhaps she would even give up her job – for a few weeks, anyway. Then she could live with him, take care of him. In the meantime she would ring every day to find out how he was. He was looking at her now and, though his eyes were still unfocused and drained of all colour, she could tell from the faint pressure he exerted on her hand that he had understood, and was grateful.

  When she stepped out of the bus that night she found herself wishing there was somebody to meet her, or smile at her, just smile, or even look, but no one did, and by the time she was standing on the tube platform at Victoria there were tears falling from her eyes. What’s wrong with me? she thought. I’m always crying. At last she felt as if she was being touched, though: fingers running gently down her cheeks, across her lips, over her chin.

  She took the Circle Line to Paddington, then changed. The tube. A Sunday night. Some people drunk, some dozing. She watched a man peer down into a paper bag, then carefully lift out a box. Crammed into the pale-yellow styrofoam was a hamburger, its squat back freckled as a toad’s. The man took hold of it in both hands and turned it this way and that, trying to work out the best angle of approach. His mouth opened wide, his eyes narrowed. He seemed to be cringing, like someone who thought he might be hit. Then he bit down on the bun, releasing a warm, sour odour into the carriage. It occurred to Glade that she had eaten nothing since the hospital – and then only an apple and a piece of stale sponge cake. But she was so tired that her skin hurt. She couldn’t face the shops, not now. Not till the morning. She took her notebook and a pen out of her bag. Began to make a list. Fish fingers, she wrote. She paused and then wrote Hair dye. That was all she could think of. Somewhere just after Royal Oak she fell asleep. She was lucky not to miss her stop.

  By the time she opened her front door, it was ten o’clock. She walked in, and then stood still for a moment. Loud music thickened the air inside the flat; she felt she could hardly breathe. As she reached the top of the stairs she saw Sally walking down the corridor towards her, wearing a pair of high-heeled sandals and a new black-and-white bikini. A suitcase lay in Sally’s bedroom doorway, its lid gaping.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Glade said.

  ‘I’m going on holiday,’ Sally said, ‘to Greece. I thought I told you.’

  Glade shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Two weeks!’ Sally clutched her ribs. ‘I just can’t wait.’

  Glade put her backpack down and stood against the wall, one hand touching her bottom lip. ‘I’ll miss you,’ she murmured.

  If she had said this a week ago, she realised, it wouldn’t have been true. But suddenly it seemed as if nothing could withstand her presence. She only had to think of something and it disappeared. She felt like dynamite, but not powerful.

  ‘I’ll miss you,’ she said again.

  But Sally wasn’t listening. Instead, she lifted her arms away from her sides and, smiling down at her bikini, placed her right leg in front of her left one, the way a model might.

  ‘So what do you think?’ she said.

  Glade walked into her room and shut the door behind her, turning the key in the lock. There was a silence, then she heard Sally try the handle.

  ‘Glade?’

  Glade stood halfway between the door and the window. Her hands had knotted into fists, and they were pressed against her thighs. She hadn’t switched any of the lights on yet; it just did not occur to her. The streetlamp outside the window flooded the room with a bright-orange glow.

  ‘No artificial additives,’ she said.

  She stood in the darkness, listening. The voice was hers, and yet it seemed to come from outside her.

  ‘Just natural,’ she said. ‘All natural.’

  That voice again. Hers.

  ‘What are you doing, Glade?’ Sally tried the door-handle again. ‘Is something wrong?’

  Glade was still facing the window.

  ‘Kwench it!,’ she said in a loud voice.

  And then she smiled.

  Perfect

  On Tuesday morning she was woken by the shrill sound of the phone ringing. She waited to see if Sally answered it, but then remembered that Sally had left for Greece the day before. She stumbled out of bed on to the landing. Sitting on the floor beside the phone, she thought about the building with the corridors and the fluorescent lights. She saw a man in a brown suit hurrying towards her …

  She lifted the receiver slowly towards her ear.

  ‘Glade? Is that you, darling?’

  It was her mother, calling from Spain. Her eyes still half-closed, Glade could see her mother’s swimming-hat, white with blue-and-yellow flowers attached to it, and her mother’s toenails, their scarlet varnish
slightly chipped. She supposed this must be a memory from years ago, when the family drove to Biarritz on holiday.

  ‘I’ve just heard about your father. Should I come over?’ Her mother’s voice was low and smoky, poised on the brink of melodrama.

  ‘There’s no need,’ Glade said.

  ‘Have you seen him? Is he all right?’

  ‘Yes, he’s all right. He’s comfortable.’

  Her mother talked for a while about the stupidity of living in a caravan in the middle of nowhere, especially at his age. Then, abruptly, but seemingly without a join, she brought the conversation round to Gerry and the new apartment. She was beginning to wonder whether it would ever be finished. There was no end to the work that needed doing –

  ‘I saw him on Sunday,’ Glade said, interrupting. ‘In the hospital. He’s comfortable.’

  On the other end of the phone, in Spain, there was a sudden silence, a kind of confusion, and Glade thought of the moment in cartoons when someone runs over the edge of a cliff and on into thin air.

  ‘Yes,’ her mother said, ‘you’ve already told me that.’

  When the phone-call was over, Glade walked down the corridor and into the kitchen. The clock ticking, Sally’s dirty pans still stacked in the sink. A pale megaphone of sunlight on the floor. There was the emptiness, the astonished silence that recent frantic movement leaves behind it. Sally had slept through her wake-up call on Monday morning. She’d only just made it to the plane.

  Sitting at the table, Glade pushed crumbs into a pile with her forefinger. She had dreamed about the house in Norfolk, the house where she had grown up. Her father was sitting in a downstairs room with rows of books behind him, the light tinted green by the ivy growing round the window. His clothes were drenched. She tried to persuade him to change into something dry, but he wouldn’t listen. He was too excited, he kept talking over her. His eyes shone in the gloom and, every time he gestured, drops of water flew from his hands like pieces of glass jewellery. In another dream she was buying Tom a drink in a hotel bar. She paid for the drink, which was pale-pink, a kind of fruit cup, but then she couldn’t seem to find her way back to where he was. She had so many things to do all of a sudden. Time passed, the location changed. She kept remembering that Tom was waiting for her in the bar. He would be wondering where she’d gone. She was still carrying his drink around with her, and she couldn’t help noticing that the ice was beginning to melt …

  Turning in her chair, she opened the fridge and was confronted by twenty-four cans of Kwench!, some stacked upright, others lying on their sides. On the inside of the door she found a half-empty tin of gourmet cat food, three squares of Galaxy milk chocolate wrapped in silver foil and a jar of gherkins. She picked up one of the cans and looked at it. They were holding a competition, closing date August 31st. You had to think of a slogan, no more than fifteen words. Then, in three sentences or less, you had to say why you liked Kwench! so much. If your entry won, you had a choice of prizes. Either you could fly first-class to Los Angeles and stay in a luxury beach house in Orange County for two weeks, with a free car and free passes to Disneyland. Or you could have a swimming-pool built in your own back garden. Based on the Kwench! exclamation mark, the pool divided into two sections: one would be long and deep, for adults; the other – the dot, as it were – would be shallow, ideal for children. The tiles would be orange, of course. Glade shook her head. She wasn’t the kind of person who could dream up slogans. She didn’t think she’d be winning any prizes, not even the Kwench! swimming costumes and beach-bags they were offering to runners-up.

  She ate four gherkins and finished the chocolate, then she opened the can of Kwench!. It didn’t taste good to her. She swallowed two or three mouthfuls and poured the rest into the sink. It hissed as it went down, as though it was angry. She dropped the empty can on the floor, where it lay with several others. Her skin began to prickle, her vision seemed to melt. For a moment she thought she might be sick. She had to stand with her head lowered and her hands flat on the stainless-steel draining-board. She could feel the cool ridges against her palms.

  Later when she felt better, she put the kettle on. Crossing the kitchen to the window, she caught a glimpse of herself in the small mirror above the sink, a blur of colour that was both familiar and strange. She turned back, approached the mirror cautiously, as if it were a person sleeping. The previous evening she had come home after work and dyed her hair. The directions on the packet she had bought said Leave for twenty minutes and then rinse thoroughly, but she hadn’t understood how twenty minutes could possibly be enough, so she had left it on for three and a half hours. There was some staining on her forehead, beside her left ear too, but otherwise she had done a pretty good job.

  ‘At least something’s going right,’ she said.

  She sat down at the table again. Outside, the sky was white and gritty, made up of countless tiny particles, like washing powder. The tick of the clock, the hours stretching ahead of her. There was too much to think about and nothing ever happened. Tears waited behind her eyes. For days, it seemed, she had walked the corridors of the newspaper building. She had looked in every office, but found no one who could help her. She had called and called. The building swallowed every sound. That man in the brown suit – the journalist – where was he? Surely he’d be able to make sense of things?

  Just then the doorbell rang. The first ring short, the second slightly longer. She felt a smile start inside her. There. That would be him now. What perfect timing!

  Five

  Minadew Brakes

  A week had passed since the lunch in Marble Arch and, though his typed instructions mentioned the word urgency more than once, Barker had done nothing. He couldn’t seem to move beyond the words themselves. Several times a day he would consult the document Lambert had handed him in the vain hope that it might mysteriously have altered, some kind of alchemy taking place inside the envelope while he wasn’t looking. By now he knew both pages off by heart, which, ironically, gave the job an air of utter immutability, as if, like a commandment, it had been set in stone.

  He leaned back. The envelope lay on the table, half-hidden by a copy of The History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours. Through the doors of the pub, which stood open to the street, he could see the sun beating down, its harsh light bleaching the colours of buildings, people, cars. Sometimes a middle-aged man in a suit walked past, glancing sideways into the gloom. Sometimes a truck sneezed as it braked for the traffic-lights on Crucifix Lane. Inside the pub, on the TV, a race had just started. Half a dozen men sat at the bar with cigarettes burning in their fingers, their eyes fixed on the screen. Barker drank from his pint, then reached for the envelope. He just couldn’t make any sense of it. This girl – Glade Spencer – she seemed such an unlikely target that he began to wonder whether there hadn’t been some kind of misunderstanding, some mistake. For the hundredth time he stared at her photograph. (After tearing it to pieces on the first day, he had carefully stuck it back together with Sellotape, and she now looked as if she’d been through a car windscreen.) 23 years old, 5′9″, single. A waitress. He couldn’t see the threat in her, no matter how hard he tried.

  ‘Tasty.’

  Barker looked round to see Charlton Williams grinning down at him.

  Charlton pointed at the bar. ‘Same again?’

  ‘Cheers.’

  While Charlton was buying the drinks, Barker slipped the photo and the envelope into his pocket. He didn’t want Charlton finding out about the job, not with his big mouth, and yet at the same time it occurred to him that Charlton might already know. Ray could easily have mentioned it, just casually, his way of telling Charlton that he was still connected, still a player. After all, he must have phoned Charlton to get Barker’s number. You told me Barker was broke, right? Thought I’d help him out, didn’t I. What? Charlton? You still there, mate? I can’t hear you. Barker’s face twitched with irritation at the imagined conversation. Ray and his fucking mobile.

  But Char
lton’s mind seemed to be on other things. As soon as he sat down with the drinks he started going on about some woman who had given him the elbow.

  ‘Shelley,’ he said. ‘You met her, right?’

  Barker nodded. She had walked into the kitchen one morning wearing Charlton’s black silk dressing-gown. Red hair, tall, good bones. A bit of a Marti Caine look about her. She asked Barker for a cigarette. He didn’t have any. ‘Just my luck,’ she muttered, and she had sounded so bitter that he thought she must be talking about something else – the situation she was in, the way her life had gone. She opened a few drawers, he remembered, threw some knives and forks around. Then she went back upstairs.

  ‘Didn’t fuck her, did you?’ Charlton watched him suspiciously across the rim of his glass. He was drinking vodka. His eyes were bleary, his forehead lightly glazed with sweat. He must have had a few already.

  Barker shook his head.

  ‘I took her out to dinner,’ Charlton went on, ‘you know, nice places in the West End. I bought her jewellery – that gold bracelet. We even had a weekend in Paris …’ He gulped at his vodka. ‘I gave her everything, and you know what she said?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re getting too close.’ Charlton sat back. ‘Can you believe that?’ He reached for his drink again, but when his hand closed round the glass, he left it there and stared at it. ‘I thought that’s what women wanted.’ He shook his head, sighed tragically and then stood up. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘North London. Highbury.’

  ‘Give us a lift?’

  ‘Why not?’ Charlton rested a clumsy hand on Barker’s shoulder. ‘Tell you the truth, I could use the company.’

  As they drove through Bermondsey towards the nearest bridge, Charlton told him more about the Paris trip. Oysters, they’d had. Champagne and all. It must’ve set him back five hundred quid. Five hundred minimum. ‘And what’s she say? We’re getting too close. How can you be too close? That’s the whole point, isn’t it?’ He sighed again. ‘Who knows any more?’ he said. ‘Who the fuck knows?’