Rupert Thomson - Soft

They had reached the car, which was parked in the shadows against a wall. Jimmy turned to face Karen. Behind her, there were three tall steel waste-bins, and stacks of cardboard boxes that were stuffed with bubble-wrap and ghostly blocks of polystyrene.

‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.

He was thinking about the uncertainty and apprehension he had lived with for the last few days. He was thinking that any difficulties she might place in his way couldn’t possibly compare with those he might soon face at work. A kind of recklessness swept through him, and he put his arms around her waist and drew her towards him. She did not resist. Through her shirt he could feel the thin columns of muscle that ran down the middle of her back. It must have lasted minutes, their first kiss, and they didn’t move from where they stood, the smell of Spraymount coming from a photographic studio nearby, the hollow roar of air-vents overhead. He kneeled in front of her and kissed the skin where it thickened slightly, just above her knees, then moved slowly up the inside of her thighs.

Once, he looked up. She was leaning against the car, her hands on the bonnet, her head tipped back. From where he was, below her, he could only see her throat, the curve of her chin, and then the sky beyond her, cloudless, almost black. He put his face against her body, breathed her in.

Not long afterwards she touched his shoulder, and the pressure made him stop what he was doing and glance up at her again. She was looking past him, down the alley. Two men stood on the cobblestones, no more than twenty yards away. One of them was smoking. Slowly Jimmy rose to his feet. Taking Karen by the hand, he led her to the door on the passenger’s side and opened it for her. Then, trying not to hurry, he walked back round the car. The men seemed to have edged closer, though they weren’t actually moving. They were just standing there. Watching.

Inside the car he fitted the key into the ignition and twisted it. The engine turned over, but didn’t fire.

‘It’s all right,’ he murmured. ‘It never starts first time.’

The fourth time he tried, the engine spluttered, caught. He flicked the headlights on, expecting to see the two men in front of him, lit up, but they had vanished. He looked over his shoulder. They were nowhere to be seen. Puzzled, he drove quickly over the cobbles and then turned right, into Brewer Street. Neon splashed through the car’s interior.

‘Where did they go?’ he said.

‘I don’t know. I didn’t see.’ If she was frightened, she didn’t show it.

‘How long had they been there?’

‘I don’t know.’

At the traffic-lights he turned to look at her.

‘You were so calm,’ he said.

‘And you.’ She took his left hand and guided it between her legs. But the lights altered and he had to take his hand away, change gear. They were driving south, down Regent Street.

‘Let’s go to my house,’ she said.

He looked at her again. ‘What about your husband?’

‘He’s in Japan today.’

‘And tomorrow?’

‘South Korea,’ she said. ‘Seoul.’

Down into the tunnel under Hyde Park Corner, white lights along the tiled walls like the dotted line you have to sign on forms if you agree to everything above. A curve to the right, a curve to the left, then up into Knightsbridge, which always seemed dim after the brightness underground. Since Haymarket she had wanted his left hand under her skirt and so far they had been lucky with the lights, green all the way. As they drew level with the Sheraton Tower she came against his fingers, her head pushed backwards, her eyes closed. And she had been giving him directions the whole time: turn left here, stay in the right lane, go straight on …

They passed a shwarma place — scarlet plastic seating, the fatty glitter of the meat. They were in Kensington now, though he couldn’t have said where exactly. He liked the feeling of suspension — not thinking, just driving: obeying her instructions. He’d almost forgotten they were on their way somewhere and that, sooner or later, they would arrive — or, rather, it had begun to seem irrelevant. A slight disappointment, a kind of nostalgia, rose through him when she touched him lightly on the arm and said, ‘We’re there.’

He parked on the north side of a narrow, elongated square. Her house was part of a terrace of tall houses, all built out of the same beige brick, their front doors guarded by pillars of dark-pink marble. He followed her up the steps, his eyes on a level with the hem of her skirt, which swayed giddily against the backs of her thighs. She undid three locks, then they were in.

Once inside the flat he could no longer hear his footsteps. The carpet was deep enough to silence any movement. It was like walking on snow. They moved along a dark passageway towards the back of the house. In the kitchen she switched on a lamp and opened the fridge. She poured a glass of chilled white wine for him and a tumbler of sparkling water for herself, then she led him into the living-room. They lay down on the sofa with the lights out and the TV on. Some cable channel. He watched the flicker of the pictures on her skin, the play of light and shadow hectic, almost tribal …

After a while he thought he heard a car pull up outside the house. With the TV on, though, he couldn’t be sure. A key could turn in the front door, and then that carpet, deep as snow. Her husband could be standing in the room before they noticed. And even then –

Japan, he told himself. Korea.

Later, she asked if he was thirsty.

‘Yes,’ he said.

She left the sofa and walked naked across the room, her spine shifting in the half-light, a subtle movement that reminded him, just for a moment, of the tail of a kite.

She returned with a tall glass and handed it to him.

‘What’s this?’ he asked.

She smiled. ‘Guess.’ She fitted her body next to his, her skin cooled by the walk out to the kitchen.

He brought the glass to his lips and tasted it. Kwench!.

‘It’s not bad,’ she said. ‘I’ve been buying it.’

At some point in the middle of the night he leaned over her and saw that she was staring up into the dark. The whites of her eyes were slightly marbled, like the surface of the moon. He could just hear the sound of her breathing — as delicate as wind in grass, not the tidal ebb and flow of someone sleeping.

‘It’s not you, is it?’ he said.

She stared at him without moving.

He spoke again. ‘It’s not you who’s going to the papers?’

‘What about?’ she said.

He examined her face for signs that she might be lying, but she only sounded confused and the confusion didn’t seem feigned. It wasn’t her. It couldn’t be. The glass of Kwench! she had offered him was just a glass of Kwench!.

‘What is it?’ she whispered. ‘What are you talking about?’

He lay down, the back of his head fitting into a hollow in the pillow. Above him the darkness was vibrating.

‘Jimmy, you’re scaring me.’

‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘it’s nothing. Go back to sleep.’

In the morning, as she was dressing, she suddenly said, ‘You woke me up last night. Do you remember?’

He looked at her in the bathroom mirror. She was standing behind him, in the middle of the bedroom, her face tense with wonder at the memory. ‘You asked me all these questions,’ she said.

‘Did I?’

‘Yes. You asked me if I’d been to the papers.’

‘The newspapers?’

‘I suppose so.’ She moved to the chest of drawers and opened it. ‘It was strange. Like you thought I was going to sell them a story or something. You were really worried about it …’

Still looking at her in the mirror, Jimmy shook his head.