Soft

by Rupert Thomson

  Before he could decide, her train slid into the station. Flashes of her through the moving windows, her face in profile as she glanced sideways, along the platform. Sweating, he lifted his eyes to the roof, as if in supplication. The leaves darkening against the glass. The leaves. In that moment he decided to let her go. There was no need to cross the footbridge and follow her on to the westbound train. There was no hurry. After all, he knew where she lived, knew where she worked. He could find her any time he wanted. The document he had received from Lambert was his guarantee. And now a coincidence had brought that document to life. It was a good sign – but it was no more than that. Only someone who was desperate would act on it. As her train pulled out of the station, he saw her hunting through her bag for something, one hand lifting simultaneously to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her slightly protruding right ear.

  For a few moments he felt an urge simply to be close to her – to travel on the next train going in the same direction, to cover the same ground. But then, just as abruptly, the urge faded. To people watching him rush from one platform to the other, he would look like someone who had got things wrong. They’d think he was a tourist, a stupid foreigner. No, he would take the train he’d been intending to take all along, the train that was now due in one minute. As for the coincidence, he had no need of it, no use for it. He could afford to squander it. Far more professional, he thought, to act as if nothing had happened. And besides, wouldn’t there be a kind of excitement in taking the eastbound train and feeling the city expand between them as they travelled in completely opposite directions?

  The tube slid out of the station, swaying slightly, and entered the darkness of a tunnel. He heard Jill’s voice on the phone. Maybe we could spend Sunday together … He had met her at a party in Saltash, empty cider bottles lined up along the bottom of the walls. The following week, he had called her, asked her out. She told him she would like to catch the ferry to Mount Edgcumbe. It seemed strange to her, she said, but she had never been there – at least, not since she was a child. They agreed to meet at ten-thirty in the café on Admiral’s Hard, a narrow street that doubled as a landing slip, its smooth cobbles running downhill, right into the water.

  They ate breakfast in the café – poached eggs, hot buttered toast, mugs of strong tea. He noticed that she had an appetite, and he approved of that. Through the window he could see racks of seaweed on the cobbles, abandoned halfway up the street by the outgoing tide.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, leaning towards him.

  He nodded. He had finished work at two-thirty the night before and then he had played a few frames of snooker with Ray Peacock. He hadn’t got to bed till four.

  ‘You’re tired.’ She looked down. ‘We should have met up later. In the afternoon. I didn’t think.’

  ‘Jill,’ he said, and put his hand on hers.

  She looked at him across the table, the colour in her eyes seeming to heighten and bleach at the same time, as if, in touching her, he’d had some chemical effect.

  He hadn’t known her well at that point. He still thought she was one thing when really she was something else entirely. The first time they saw each other, at the party, she’d had a few drinks. Also, she was a sumptuous woman, with full breasts, wide hips and heavy thighs, which only added to the impression he had formed, that she was bold and confident. How could she not be, he had thought, with a body like that? He couldn’t have been more wrong, of course. It had taken him months to realise how shy she was, how many doubts she carried round with her. For example: she could stand outside a clothes shop for twenty minutes before she found the courage to go in – or sometimes, after twenty minutes, she would simply lose her nerve and turn away.

  After breakfast they took the ferry to Cremyll, a short ride across the River Tamar. He followed her to a white wooden bench at the back of the boat. As the engines surged and the ferry slid away from the stone jetty, Jill turned her face into the sunlight, closed her eyes and sighed. Sitting beside her, he admired her black hair falling to her shoulders and the strong white column of her throat.

  ‘Beautiful today,’ she murmured.

  When she opened her eyes again, she saw that he had been watching her and she looked away quickly, pretending to take an interest in the naval buildings that occupied the waterfront.

  A stretch of densely wooded coastline, Mount Edgcumbe was surrounded on three sides by water, which gave it the feeling of an island. On landing, they visited the gift shop first, then wandered idly through the formal gardens, past fountains and summerhouses, emerging at last on to a wide gravel path that ran along the edge of the park. They sat on the sea wall, its stone heated by the sun. It was hard to believe it was September. Behind them, an ilex hedge rose twenty feet into the air, its sides shaved flat by some meticulous gardener. From a distance it appeared to have cracks in it, like certain kinds of cheese or marble.

  Later, outside a temple, they met a man with wild white hair who told them he was a photographer. He was taking pictures of the trees, he said, his voice oddly eager. They nodded, though they didn’t understand why he might be doing that, and they were too lazy to ask. In the end, he hurried on ahead of them, muttering something about the light. They followed the path, which took them up a hill, past clumps of pink and blue hydrangea, then through a wood and up again into a high meadow. The grass was coarse and windswept, faded by its long exposure to the elements. Several cedars spread their stark, flat branches against the sky. Breathing hard from the climb, they rested by a ruined tower that had a view over Plymouth Sound. They watched ships ease past Drake Island and into the docks. As they stood there, leaning on the crumbling, ivy-covered masonry, clouds filled the sky to the west. By the time they began to walk again, the sun had vanished and a soft drizzle was falling. The cedars suddenly looked black.

  ‘I was hoping we could get to Minadew Brakes.’ Jill opened the leaflet she had bought from the shop and showed it to him on the map. They were less than halfway there.

  They walked on, across the bare hillside, into the woods. Gradually the drizzle turned to rain, and soon it was so heavy that they could hardly hear each other speak. Though the overhanging trees formed a kind of roof above the footpath, they were still getting drenched. They had no choice but to retrace their steps. He saw the disappointment rise into her face, making it look crooked.

  ‘Another time,’ he said. Though he suspected even then that it would never happen.

  ‘Minadew. It means black stone, they think.’ The crash of the rain, her voice almost lost in it.

  Under a beech tree, with big drops bursting through the leaves, he put his arms round her and kissed her. She pressed her body into his until he could feel the whole shape of her against him. He found a place where the ground wasn’t too wet and spread his coat for her. She lay down, skirt plastered to her thighs, eyes glowing with a strange, astonished light. He lay beside her, half on top of her. Under her clothes her body was as warm as bread just taken from the oven.

  ‘I haven’t got anything,’ he said after a while.

  She reached sideways into her bag and handed him a Durex. He looked at it, surprised. This was the beginning of the eighties, before AIDS was talked about in England. You hardly ever saw a woman with a condom.

  ‘I never carried one with me before,’ she said. ‘Only today.’

  He believed her, and was flattered.

  While they were lying together on the ground, he saw the photographer hurry past, his wild hair flattened against his head, his tripod wrapped in green plastic so that it resembled a piece of light artillery.

  A Sunday, years ago. Her beauty.

  And now the very different beauty of a girl he’d seen only once in his life. A girl whose picture he carried everywhere with him, like a man in love.

  A girl who didn’t even know that he existed.

  He walked out of London Bridge Station and turned right, then right again, into the street that ran under the railway. The sun shone into the
tunnel, an almost rancid light, revealing dust and filth. A young woman hurried towards him along the narrow pavement, her shadow thrown down in front of her like a joker that would trump whatever card he played. He supposed she must be frightened by the sight of him – his dark clothes, his scar. She didn’t look at him as he stepped into the gutter to let her pass. He noticed she was muttering under her breath. Prayers. So nothing happened to her.

  In the daylight on the far side of the tunnel he stood still for a moment, his eyes adjusting. Late afternoon, the sun dropping in a clear blue sky. He moved on, through a housing estate. Block A, Block B. The screams of children from an open first-floor window, a cat slithering beneath a fence.

  The shortcut home.

  Update Yourself

  Barker had opened the window in the lounge so he could listen to the rain landing in the back yard three floors down. After the weeks of hot dry weather, it sounded unfamiliar, exotic. The TV was on, some comedy show. He was only half-watching, his mind elsewhere. He almost didn’t hear the front door. It was late, after eleven. In Plymouth people often called round on the off chance that you might be in. Not in London, though. Then he remembered Pentonville Road in the bright sunshine and Charlton shouting something about Monday week. He couldn’t face the idea of Charlton. He wasn’t in the mood.

  Reaching for the remote, he pressed MUTE. He watched a comedian lift his eyebrows, round his mouth into an O, then smile smugly. The door buzzed again. Barker switched the TV off, walked out into the corridor and picked up the entryphone. The small screen flickered on – a grainy picture, black-and-white. The man from the Lebanese restaurant appeared. Lambert, as he called himself. Well, perhaps it wasn’t such a surprise. In a way, Barker supposed he must have been expecting it. Two men stood in the background, only parts of them visible. Shoulders. An ear. Hair. He remembered what Andy, the man who had fitted the entryphone, had said. There’s only two kinds of people who go in for them. Rich people, and people like you. And then he’d said, No disrespect or nothing.

  ‘Dodds?’

  Lambert was standing too close to the camera. The sides of his face sloped away into the darkness. He looked like a fish. Or a plane.

  ‘Are you there, Dodds?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’d like a word with you. A chat.’

  ‘There are three of you.’

  ‘Well, I’d hardly come down here alone, would I. Not to this neck of the woods.’ Lambert smiled, which looked awful, horrific. His mouth bent backwards at the corners. No chin. ‘I just want to have a little chat with you,’ he was saying. ‘Show you a video.’

  ‘What video?’

  Lambert held up a cassette. ‘I thought you might be interested. I thought it might help.’

  Barker stood back, thinking.

  ‘It’d be nice if you let us in now,’ Lambert said. ‘We’re getting wet out here.’

  Barker pressed the entry buzzer and watched the top of the men’s heads as they passed beneath the camera’s steady gaze. Then just darkness, the crackle of the rain. He had about a minute and a half before they knocked on the door. He walked into the kitchen and opened the drawer where he kept his cutlery. He didn’t like the kind of people who used knives. Still, this was no time to get precious. He heard three pairs of feet on the stairs. He went to the front door, the knife in his left sleeve, its blade lying flush against the inside of his wrist. Though he had known something like this was going to happen, he hadn’t bothered to prepare for it. He wondered how bad it was going to be.

  When he opened the door, Lambert was staring at the floor. Two men stood behind him, running their hands through their hair, shaking the water off their coats.

  ‘Sorry to keep you standing outside like that.’ Barker listened to his voice. He didn’t sound sorry. ‘I have to be careful.’

  ‘Don’t we all, Barker,’ Lambert said.

  The three men moved past him, into the flat.

  ‘The lounge is on your left,’ Barker said, closing the door.

  He followed them into the room. They were already sitting down, Lambert in the armchair by the gas fire, the other two on the sofa. All three seemed oddly comfortable, at home. They were staring into the fire, as if it had been lit, and Barker could suddenly imagine winter – the curtains drawn, a row of small mauve flames.

  ‘Anyone fancy a beer?’ he said.

  Lambert looked up, but didn’t say anything. The other two didn’t react at all.

  Barker fetched himself a beer from the kitchen. When he returned to the lounge, nothing had changed. The air smelled strongly of wet cloth.

  ‘So what’s the video?’ he said. ‘New release?’

  Lambert leaned forwards, his elbows on his knees. ‘We have a problem,’ he said.

  Barker waited.

  ‘It’s been two weeks and nothing’s happened. Two weeks since you received the envelope –’

  ‘I’m working on it.’ Barker lifted the beer bottle to his mouth and drank. It occurred to him that he was holding a weapon in his hand. He wondered if it had occurred to Lambert.

  ‘You read the material?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘There was talk of urgency, if I remember rightly.’

  Barker nodded.

  ‘Two weeks,’ and Lambert looked up and a gap opened between his hands.

  ‘There was also talk of being discreet,’ Barker said, ‘if I remember rightly.’

  He sensed something flash through Lambert, invisible but lethal, like electricity in water: the suspicion that he was being taken too lightly, that he was being mocked. In future, Lambert would be easier to remember. For the first time Barker was worried. He knew what kind of situation he was in. Usually you only saw a man like Lambert once. Twice was almost unheard of. And certainly there would never be a third encounter.

  ‘She went up north,’ he said, in his own defence. ‘It took me by surprise.’

  On Saturday morning he had followed Glade to Victoria Coach Station, of all places, and he had stood in the queue while she paid for a ticket to Blackburn. When he tried to buy a ticket for the same bus, they told him it was full. There would be another bus in two hours’ time, they said – but that was no use to him, of course, no use whatsoever. He had been forced to watch from the shadows as the bus lurched past him, the girl out of reach, maybe for ever, her face sealed behind a sheet of tinted glass.

  ‘Is she back now?’ Lambert asked.

  Barker nodded. ‘She came back yesterday.’

  ‘You’ve got twenty-four hours.’

  Lambert rose out of his chair and walked over to the video. At the same moment, one of the men on the sofa took out a pearl-handled penknife, opened the blade and started carving something into the surface of Barker’s coffee table.

  ‘Zero, isn’t it,’ Lambert said, ‘for videos?’

  ‘Not on that machine,’ Barker said. ‘It’s eight on that machine.’

  ‘Old, is it?’

  Barker nodded.

  ‘You ought to modernise,’ Lambert said, ‘update yourself.’

  He pushed the cassette into the slot, then picked up the video remote. When he was sitting on his chair again, he held it out in front of him and pressed 8. The man who wasn’t carving the table loosened his coat and leaned his head back, his eyes fixed on the TV.

  The screen flickered, flared white, then a room appeared. Yellow-and-orange-striped paper on the walls. No carpet, just bare boards. Half of a window visible. There seemed to be a council estate outside; Barker could just make out a block of flats, some dusty trees. Sitting on the floor, with both hands chained to a radiator, was a man of about forty. Black side-whiskers, a squashy nose. He reminded Barker of one of the men who worked in the salvage yard on Tower Bridge Road. The sound quality was poor, but Barker could still hear the man’s voice. Pleading.

  ‘… there’s no need for this … no fucking need …’

  Probably it was not for him to say.

  A second man stepped in
to the picture. He was dressed in jeans and a grey sweatshirt, and he wore a visor over his face, the kind of visor welders wear. Barker heard a sudden roaring sound, controlled but fierce. At first he couldn’t make any sense of it. Then he saw the man’s hand holding a blowtorch, the cone of hot blue flame.

  ‘Funny thing is, his name’s Burns,’ Lambert said. ‘He’s from –’ He paused and looked across at the man who was carving Barker’s table. ‘Where’s he from?’

  ‘Aberdeen,’ the man said without looking up.

  Barker watched Burns adjust the flame until it was small and sharp. The roar it was making had intensified. The man chained to the radiator was shaking his head from side to side like a dog with a jersey. He was still talking, but it didn’t sound like language any more. And now Burns leaned down, aiming the tip of the flame at the man’s right hand. The skin seemed to shrink. Then it blackened and began to bubble. The man was screaming, his face twisting away from the camera. A vein stood out on his neck, thick as a middle finger. Barker thought of Bruce Springsteen. He was all right, Bruce Springsteen. That song about it being dark on the edge of town, that was a good song. Sometimes, as the man screamed, he ran out of breath. His mouth still hung open, though. Drool spilling from the corners, spilling down his chin.

  ‘He used to be a snooker player,’ Lambert said. ‘Quite good, he was. Quite well known.’ He spoke to the man with the penknife again. ‘Beat Hurricane Higgins once, didn’t he?’

  The man nodded. Then, bending low, he blew some loose wood shavings off the table. So far he had completed three characters: a 2, a 4 and an H.

  In the video the Scotsman was facing the camera, asking what he was supposed to do next. Should he do an eye, for instance? Barker didn’t hear the answer.

  Two hands reached into the picture and began to undo the man’s trousers. The man was shouting in a high-pitched voice that no longer seemed to belong to him. Somebody was explaining that this wasn’t torture, it was punishment, and that, because it was punishment, there was no way round it. It had to be gone through, had to be endured. Barker had the feeling that it was Lambert who was doing the talking. The voice had the same anonymous sound to it, the same instantly forgettable quality. By now, the man’s trousers and underpants had been removed. His T-shirt was pulled up into his armpits, revealing a pot belly and a thin dark trail of hair. The camera closed in slowly until the man’s head filled the screen.