Rupert Thomson - Soft

‘Hundreds of years ago. The time of the Romans.’ He looked out. ‘One book I read, it said a squirrel could travel from one end of the country to the other without touching the ground once.’

‘Really?’

‘That’s how it was. Back then.’

‘It must have been nice.’

He turned to her again, and saw that she was crying.

‘Sometimes I see things,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if they’re there or not. Sometimes there are sounds. I don’t know why.’ The tears spilled down her face in fast, thin lines. ‘It’s like the drinks.’ With one trembling hand, she reached for an empty can. ‘I don’t want to drink it, I really don’t. It makes me ill.’

She was crying harder now. He sat opposite her, his hands resting on the table. He didn’t think he could touch her again. His wrist still remembered the weight of her breast. He could feel the place without even looking at it. Like a burn.

‘Glade,’ he said quietly, uselessly.

The crying shook her whole body.

‘Is everything all right?’

A conductor had appeared at Barker’s elbow. He was a man in his sixties, with veins glowing in his nose like tiny purple filaments. Barker saw that he was different to the woman on the tube. He wasn’t the interfering kind. He only wanted to know if he could help.

‘She’s just upset,’ Barker said. ‘She’ll be all right in a minute.’

‘In that case, perhaps I could see your tickets …’

The old man sounded tentative, almost apologetic, and Barker thought he knew why. For most of his life Barker had looked like someone who was travelling without a ticket. And if you asked him for it, he would swear at you. Or threaten you. Or maybe he’d take out a Stanley knife, start slashing seats. He handed the two Super Savers to the old man, who punched holes in them and handed them back.

‘Change at Doncaster,’ the old man said and, touching the peak of his hat, he moved on down the train.

When Barker stepped on to the platform at Hull two hours later, he thought he could smell the North Sea, a mixture of rotting kelp, crab claws, and discharge from the trawlers. A man in a donkey jacket was sweeping the floor of the station, his broom-strokes slow and regular, as if he was trying to hypnotise himself. Two porters stood outside an empty waiting-room, their uniforms ill-fitting, and shiny at the cuffs and elbows. A group of teenagers leaned against the soft-drinks machine, one chewing his thumbnail, another sucking hard on the last half-inch of a cigarette.

Barker took Glade by the arm and led her through the barrier and out towards the exit, following a sign that said TAXIS. As they passed a bank of pay-phones, Glade hung back.

‘I need to make a call,’ she said.

‘Not now,’ Barker said.

She looked at her watch. ‘I should ring the restaurant and tell them I’m not coming in. I should ring the hospital as well …’

‘What hospital?’

‘My father. He’s in hospital.’

Barker shook his head. ‘We haven’t got time.’

‘It won’t take long. I know what they’re going to say, anyway —’

‘So why bother?’ He hauled on her arm, but she was still resisting.

‘I’d like to talk to Charlie, then.’

‘Who’s Charlie?’

‘Charlie,’ she said. ‘He’s a friend of yours.’

Barker hesitated, but only for a second. ‘I told you. There’s no time.’ He hauled on her arm again. ‘Maybe later,’ he said, just to keep her quiet.

They had to wait in a queue for a taxi. The air in Hull was damp and sticky, and Barker felt a prickle of irritation. Every few seconds Glade glanced over her shoulder at the row of phones.

‘There would have been time,’ she murmured.

‘Those phones don’t take money,’ he said. ‘You need a card.’

She looked at him suspiciously.

‘Was that true,’ she said, ‘all that about the squirrels?’

She waited until a taxi had pulled up to the kerb, then she told him she was hungry. She had eaten nothing all day, she said, only two gherkins and a piece of chocolate. He looked at her hard to see if she was lying and decided she wasn’t. Actually, now he thought about it, it wasn’t such a bad idea. He could eat something himself — and certainly he could use a couple of beers. Also, if he went along with her in this, then maybe she’d forget about the phone.

In the taxi he leaned forwards and asked the driver to take them to a restaurant, somewhere quiet.

‘Everything’s quiet this time of day,’ the driver said.

Ten minutes later they stopped outside a restaurant that had a gloomy fudge-brown glass façade. The something Tandoori. It was cheap, the driver said, but it was good. Or so he’d heard.

Six-thirty was striking as they walked in. A dozen empty tables, their white cloths spotless, undisturbed. Barker stood inside the doorway, hesitating. He could hear the hum of the air-conditioning, the jaunty bubble of the fish-tank on the bar. Suddenly, from nowhere, an Indian man sprang eagerly towards him, eyes gleaming, and, just for a moment, Barker felt the urge to defend himself, to sweep the Indian aside with one effortless, poetic movement of his arm. In his mind he saw the man fly backwards through the air, land silently among the glittering cutlery and artificial flowers. Ray would have been proud.

‘Anywhere,’ Barker said, ‘right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He ushered Glade towards a table in the corner. As soon as she was sitting down she opened her menu, her lips moving as she read through the list of dishes, her face stained green and purple by the coloured spotlights set into the ceiling. A waiter asked them what they’d like to drink. Barker ordered a pint of lager. Glade wanted Kwench! but the waiter didn’t have any. She had to settle for water.

‘Don’t you ever drink?’ Barker asked her.

She thought about the question for a moment. ‘Sometimes,’ she said. ‘If I’m happy.’

Barker looked down at the tablecloth. It seemed he either knew too much or too little. Their conversation always faltered.

The waiter appeared with a pad and took their orders.

‘This is a nice place,’ Glade said, smiling up at him.

The waiter bowed.

She turned to Barker. ‘Thanks for bringing me.’

He could think of nothing to say. Instead, he watched the ugly, melancholy fish drift through the weeds inside their tank. A woman’s voice wailed from a speaker above his head. He supposed they called that singing. When he looked at Glade again, she had lifted the silk flower out of its cheap metal vase and was examining the petals.

‘I thought you were going to ask me questions,’ she said.

He tried to keep his face expressionless.

‘There must be things you want to know.’

‘Things I want to know,’ he repeated thoughtfully, and nodded.

She looked at him with a faint smile. ‘I suppose you don’t want to hurry it,’ she said. ‘You’ve probably got your own methods.’ She lowered her eyes, gazed at the flower she was holding. ‘Do you remember things in your head,’ she said, raising her eyes to his again, ‘or do you take notes?’

‘In my head,’ he said.

She nodded. ‘I haven’t seen you writing anything.’ She paused. ‘Unless you do it behind my back …’ and her smile widened, becoming mischievous, almost seductive. When she looked at him like that, he had to empty his mind of everything except the plan.

Their food came. Though she had told him she was hungry, she ate very little. She picked at her curry, searching through it with her fork, as if she was looking for something she had lost. When they had both finished, Barker asked the waiter to order a taxi. In less than five minutes a white car was pulling up outside. Barker paid the bill, then followed Glade out on to the pavement. He opened the door for her and watched her climb into the back. Once he was sitting beside her, he gave the driver the name of a pub.