Rupert Thomson - Soft

When the two days came to an end, she found she didn’t want to go. She had slept through both nights with no trouble at all, through most of the intervening day as well. Sleeping was curiously addictive. You were part of the world, but not in it, and somehow that seemed just right. It seemed enough. She remembered that her muscles felt as if they’d spread out inside her body. They had the laziness of old elastic; she hardly had the strength to leave. But the nurse was firm with her. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘you don’t want to make a habit of it.’ Yes, I do, Glade thought. I do.

Half an hour later, standing on a pavement in North London, she was astonished by the movement, the urgency — the sheer speed of things. That man with the belly, for instance, elbowing his way on to a bus. And what about that girl in the brown leather jacket? She was walking so fast and chewing gum so fiercely, you could almost believe that her mouth was the motor that was driving her along. Glade wanted to take each of them by the arm and ask them what was so important. Within a day or two, of course, this feeling faded and, out on the street, she probably looked no different to anybody else. She bought the dress she needed, and a pair of shoes to go with it. Her ticket arrived by Federal Express. Exactly one week after leaving the sleep laboratory, she was boarding a plane to New Orleans.

She lay in the bath and tried to bring back something else from those two days, but nothing came to her. Outside, far below, she could hear cars’ horns, a tune played on a whistle, the stutter of a pneumatic drill …

She woke suddenly, uncertain of her whereabouts. The water was cold, but she was used to that. She often fell asleep in the bath. (Now why hadn’t that been one of the questions on the form? If you are in the bath, how likely are you to fall asleep? She would have given that a 3.) Looking down, she noticed her knees. Then she knew where she was. Then she knew.

She climbed out of the bath and wrapped herself in a towel. A bad headache lurked nearby. She could feel it above her like a weight, suspended, but only by the flimsiest of threads. It could fall at any moment. She found her painkillers and swallowed two with water from the tap. As she passed the mirror she caught a glimpse of a tall, pale girl with smudges under her eyes and stringy hair. She walked to the window. The sun had lifted high into the sky, and the river had changed colour. She thought it must be about eleven.

Opening the bathroom door, she peered out. Tom was still asleep. She dried herself and put on a clean T-shirt and a pair of knickers, then she crept across the room and, lifting the covers, slipped into the bed. After waiting for a few minutes, she eased towards him, fitting her body to his, until she could feel the shape of him against her, his shoulderblades, his bottom, the backs of his knees, even his heels. Breathing him in, the salt-water smell of him, she dropped into a deep sleep.

She woke once. He was on the phone, his back to her.

‘When’s the wedding?’ she murmured.

He didn’t appear to have heard.

She lifted her head. ‘The wedding,’ she said. ‘Is it today?’

He covered the receiver with one hand and looked at her over his shoulder ‘Tomorrow,’ he said.

She settled back into the pillows, fell asleep again.

When she woke up for the second time, it was almost dark and Tom had gone. She looked for a note, then shook her head, remembering. Tom never left notes. People who kill themselves, they leave notes . That was what he’d said once. Such a strange thing to come out with. Something like that would never have occurred to her. But now, every time she wrote a note, she thought of it. He’d told her something else that day, during the same conversation. ‘I don’t commit anything to paper unless it’s absolutely necessary.’ He paused and then he said, ‘I’m a lawyer.’ And it was true. He never did. He didn’t write letters. He’d never even sent her a postcard. If he wanted to contact her, he phoned — or his personal assistant phoned. She wasn’t even sure what his handwriting looked like. She’d only seen his signature, on credit-card slips. He was always signing those.

She sat up and switched on the light beside the bed. She could never tell how long he’d be gone. Sometimes he just went out for air. But he was also quite capable of going to a bar or a restaurant or a cinema without her. Then it could be hours before he returned. Once, when they were in Miami, he flew to New York and back, and she never even knew. ‘It was a meeting,’ he said later. ‘Kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing.’

She picked up the remote and turned on the TV. It took her five minutes to make the Video Checkout Facility disappear. Then she channel-hopped until she found an old black-and-white film, the women in shiny, tight-fitting dresses that almost touched the floor, the men in dinner jackets, black bow-ties. Everybody in the film talked very fast, and almost everything they said was funny. She wondered if there were really people like that; if there were, she hoped she would come back as one. While she was watching TV, she happened to notice her face in the mirror that hung on the wall directly opposite the bed. She was smiling. She realised she’d been smiling the whole time.

As soon as the film was over, she became aware that she was hungry. When was the last time she had eaten? Twenty-four hours ago, in the Café Roma. She looked through the hotel information booklet for a menu, then she called Room Service. This was something she had learned from Tom, and the novelty of it still delighted her. She ordered a bowl of oatmeal with honey, some wheat toast and a glass of milk.

‘In fact,’ she said, ‘make that two glasses.’

It was almost midnight when Tom came in. He had changed into jeans, a black shirt and a pair of snakeskin boots with Cuban heels. She’d never met anyone in London who dressed like him. She thought he looked good, though.

‘It’s dark in here,’ he said.

She moved her tray of empty plates and glasses on to the floor. He turned two lamps on and sat down on the edge of the bed, facing away from her. He ran both hands through his hair, then he picked up the phone and started dialling. She watched him as he talked. Odd phrases reached her, meaning nothing. She could only see parts of him from where she lay — his hair cut short at the base of his neck, almost razored, his shirt stretching tightly across the muscles of his back, his right hand gripping the receiver low down, near the mouthpiece. He had such strength in his hands. In his body altogether. When they were making love, he would sometimes hold her down so hard that she had bruises on her upper arms for days, bruises the shape of fingers, thumbs.

He was on the phone for a long time. In the end she stopped watching him and watched the TV instead. They were showing a Western — the old-fashioned kind, with wagon-trains and Apaches. When, at last, Tom finished, he put his feet up on the bed and sat beside her, with his back against the headboard.

‘What’s this?’ he said after a while.

‘I don’t know. A film.’

‘This all you’ve been doing? Watching TV?’

She looked at him. ‘I ate something.’

He didn’t take his eyes off the screen.

‘What about you?’ she said. ‘What did you do?’

‘I went out. Saw some people.’

‘Friends?’

He nodded.

She looked away. This was a typical conversation. He would trap her into questions and answers, and the answers told her nothing. And she knew there was a limit to the number of questions she could ask; if she kept on at him, he would only lose his temper. She knew something else as well: there would be no more sex. Often, with Tom, it happened once, on the first night. After that, it just didn’t come up. He would lie on his back under the covers in his white vest and his boxer shorts, silent and withdrawn, untouchable — at times like that she imagined a veil stretched over him, a veil she couldn’t penetrate, still less remove — or he would turn on to his side, facing away from her, a few strands of hair showing, an ear too, perhaps. She watched a spear thump into the chest of a man wearing a dark-blue jacket. His eyes closed and he fell backwards, both hands clutching at the shaft as if it was precious to him, as if he couldn’t bear to part with it. The Indians were riding their horses over the fallen wagons now, the makeshift barricades. They always did that, didn’t they.