Rupert Thomson - Soft

‘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 Charlton’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?’

Crossing the river, Charlton was quiet for a few moments. Then he turned to Barker. ‘What about you?’

‘What about me?’

‘You got someone, have you?’ Charlton’s eyes flicked from the road to Barker’s face and back again.

Barker didn’t answer.

‘You’re getting laid, though, right?’ Charlton chuckled. ‘I saw that picture you were looking at.’ He tried to reach into Barker’s jacket pocket, but Barker pushed his hand away. The Ford Sierra swerved. Someone in the next lane used their horn.

Charlton leaned out of his window. ‘Wanker,’ he shouted. Back inside again, he said, ‘That girl, though, she was tasty.’ He gave Barker a sly look. ‘How do you do it, Barker? What’s the secret?’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Barker said, folding his arms.

‘Is that right?’ Charlton sent the car slithering into a roundabout, narrowly missing two men on bicycles. ‘Got to hand it to you, Barker. She can’t be more than, what, twenty-one?’

As they drove northwards through the City’s dark, deserted streets, Charlton turned to him again. ‘I almost forgot. I’ve been asked to give you notice.’

Barker turned slowly and looked at him. ‘Notice?’

‘On the flat.’

Barker didn’t know what to say. His eyes moved beyond Charlton’s face to the buildings flowing in blurred shapes behind him.

‘I told you six months, remember? And they’re giving you two months to get out. Two months — that’s generous.’ Charlton sounded much less drunk all of a sudden.

In that moment Barker knew he should have seen this whole thing coming. Only the week before, Charlton had called, asking him to supervise the installation of a video doorphone. At the time Barker had thought nothing of it. It was just a new security gadget; probably Charlton had got some kind of deal on the hardware. In retrospect, of course, he should have realised that it was being fitted with tenants in mind. A company let, most likely: the papers were full of stories about business people moving to new premises south of the river. Staring at Charlton’s pale lips, his jigsaw hair, Barker could have bludgeoned him to death right there, in the car. He had transformed that flat. He had cleaned it, painted it. He had made it his own. And now it was being taken from him. Every time he put something together, life dismantled it. He turned and stared out of the window. Nothing was his. Nothing ever had been. They were waiting at a set of traffic-lights. Across the pavement stood an office block built out of glass and marble. It seemed to Barker that the building was very far away, that the gap between the building and the place where he was sitting was unbridgeable. To his surprise, he found his anger had burned off. The tension that made it possible had snapped inside him. Like a clutch that no longer functions. You press it, expecting resistance, and your foot goes straight to the floor. You can’t change gear.

‘You’ve had a pretty good run,’ Charlton was telling him. ‘Seven months, it will have been, rent-free —’

Barker couldn’t listen to any more. ‘Could you drop me here?’

‘Here?’ Charlton peered through the windscreen. ‘You sure?’

He pulled over. Barker opened the door and stepped out. The city swirled around him like stirred liquid. A sudden smell of chips. He saw that they had stopped on Pentonville Road, about halfway up the hill. The cafés and arcades of King’s Cross lay to his right, five minutes’ walk away. King’s Cross. The Hammersmith & City line. All in all, it was strangely convenient. It might almost have been planned.

Charlton shouted something about Monday week. But Barker didn’t listen, didn’t answer. As he watched the silver Sierra veer out into the traffic he thought of Jill. Standing on the pavement, he said her name out loud. Jill. He had thought of her often during the past few days. Jill in a black dress with white dots on it, climbing awkwardly out of a car. Jill huddled on the floor, her bra-strap showing. It was always Jill, never any of the others. She was like somebody who had died, but hadn’t gone. She had the eerie clarity, the presence, of a ghost who cannot rest. There was something that still needed to be done, and only he could do it. The responsibility was his.

On reaching the railway station he took an escalator down into the tube. He passed the figures of the homeless, the jobless, placards fastened round their necks like bitter parodies of jewellery. That was him now. That was him. The tiled tunnels echoed with the sound of people hurrying. He had a sense of panic, desperation. Everything was closing in. He stood on the platform, tried to keep his mind empty. He stared at the map on the wall, counting the number of stops from King’s Cross to Latimer Road.