Rupert Thomson - Soft

‘That’s in Hessle, isn’t it,’ the driver said, ‘out near the bridge?’

Barker nodded. ‘I think that’s the one.’

He glanced at Glade, but she didn’t seem to be listening. She sat quietly beside him, examining her hands as the lights passed over them. For the first time he noticed that she wore no jewellery, not even a ring, and thought it odd, a girl who looked like her.

They drove through the city centre — bleak, dark streets that reminded him of his entire life. He saw chip shops, night-clubs. He saw girls standing in a chilly cluster outside a pub. Their snow-washed jeans, their blow-dried hair. He saw the spaces between streetlamps, between buildings, the places where fights started. He thought of the sounds that fists and bottles make. A police car glided by, white with an orange stripe along the side, like something from the fish-tank in that restaurant.

Then all the buildings disappeared, just strips of scrub grass at the edge of the road, hedges looming dimly. In the distance, high in the darkness, he could see a string of orange lights that signalled the presence of a bypass or a motorway …

They stopped in a yard that was deserted except for a few cars parked in a row against a low brick wall. Barker climbed out first, Glade waiting on the gravel while he paid. She was clutching her elbows and shivering a little. He could hear voices and laughter in the pub behind her. He could have done with another drink, but he just couldn’t risk it. No, they’d been to all the public places they were going to. His heart seemed to lurch against his ribs. He wetted his lips.

‘So we’re not going to the pub?’ Glade said.

He turned and stared at her. It wouldn’t have surprised him to find out she could read his mind. She had the kind of eyes psychics have. She had the same strangely vacant manner. Maybe that was why she’d been so calm when she saw him standing on the doorstep. Maybe she had seen him coming.

But suddenly she altered her approach. ‘I thought you told the driver we were going to the pub.’

‘And I thought you couldn’t hear anything,’ he said. ‘All that hissing in your ears.’

‘Fizzing.’ She scraped at the gravel with the edge of her boot. ‘It comes and goes.’

‘That’s convenient.’

‘So we’re not having a drink?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

He let his breath out fast in sheer exasperation and walked away from her, fists clenched. He could feel the veins pulsing on the backs of his hands. He let his head drop back, stared up into the sky. There was nothing there. No moon, no stars. No God. Just air, September air. The slightly bitter smell of leaves.

He faced the girl again.

‘Have you taken a look at yourself?’ he said.

Her eyes widened. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Maybe we could go,’ he said. ‘Maybe it wouldn’t be a problem, if you weren’t acting so fucking mad.’

‘I’m not mad.’

‘No?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Ask Charlie.’

Charlie again.

‘You know Charlie,’ she said. ‘He’s a friend of yours. He sent you.’ She looked over towards the pub. ‘Maybe they’ve got a phone in there. Maybe it takes coins.’

Thinking she might be mocking him, he felt a sudden anger flash through him. Like lightning, it lit up the dark places for a moment. He didn’t like what he saw. Slowly he walked back to where she stood. She didn’t flinch. Staring down into her face, he could find no trace of guile or deception. No trace of fear either. It didn’t mean she wasn’t guilty, of course. Perhaps it simply hadn’t crossed her mind that he could hurt her.

He took a step backwards and pushed his hands into his pockets. ‘We’re not going to the pub,’ he said, ‘and that’s the end of it.’

‘But I’m thirsty —’

‘So you want me to buy you six more cans and watch you throwing up again. Is that it?’

She was looking at the ground. The wind moved her hair against her cheek; in the darkness of the car-park it seemed to have regained its natural colour.

‘I am thirsty, though,’ she said in a quiet voice.

He took her firmly by the arm and led her away from the pub. This time she didn’t resist.

‘You’re supposed to be helping me,’ she said.

He chose not to speak. Though he wasn’t thirsty, his throat felt dry.

‘All these things I don’t understand,’ she said, ‘you’re supposed to be explaining them to me …’

She was staring straight ahead, her face pale and glowing.

‘And afterwards,’ she said, ‘everything will make sense. Everything will be all right.’ She turned to look at him. ‘That’s why you’re here.’

He had to stop listening to her.

They walked along an unlit road until they reached a dual carriageway. Streetlamps stretched away in a long, lazy curve. The tall grey poles had stooping necks like creatures from another world, the slightly oval lights arranged in pairs like eyes. An unearthly landscape. And in the distance, above the trees, he could see some red lights, six in all. He felt the skin tighten at the back of his neck.

The bridge.

Glade was muttering again, words that had no meaning for him. He asked her how she felt. She didn’t answer. He hadn’t really expected her to. There was a sense in which they were both now talking to themselves. He wondered if this hadn’t been true of them all along.

You never came for me. I thought you’d come.

His mind drifted back to Jill, as if she was its natural resting-place. She had always doubted him, feeling she loved him more than he loved her. He remembered one of the first times they slept together and how she had touched the tattoo on his chest, lightly, with just her fingertips. She must have meant a lot to you. From his point of view, the tattoo looked like a number — 317537 — and he thought there was something fitting about that: his feelings for Leslie had, for a while, at least, imprisoned him. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know what I was doing in those days. Had one too many drinks, got a tattoo.’ He shook his head. Jill lay back against the pillows. If he had said yes, she would have been upset. Saying no, though, that upset her too, of course. He had married Leslie and now, a few years later, she meant nothing. He had shown Jill a flaw in his character — a lack of constancy, almost a fickleness; he had shown her what he was incapable of. And anyway, she didn’t believe him. There are certain women who always think they’re less than the woman who came before, and you can’t tell them any different. It’s in the eye of the beholder. Like beauty, or anorexia.

The day Jill was taken into the clinic for her abortion, Barker had walked along the promenade that looks out over Plymouth Sound. The sea lay below him, sluggish, pale-green. The sky was heaped with clouds the colour of charcoal and lead. It had rained earlier and, once, just for a few seconds, a shaft of sunlight reached from beneath the clouds and turned the wet path into a sheet of gleaming metal. Looking westwards, Barker was almost blinded. Down on the seafront he noticed a car parked at an angle to the pavement. Two teenage boys sat inside, sharing a cigarette. Music thudded from the open window. Closer to him, on the promenade, a man stood beside a wooden bench, a pair of binoculars dangling on a leather strap around his neck. Then the clouds covered the sun again and the promenade was cold and windswept suddenly and Barker was alone. An old man with binoculars and him — and that was it. He remembered the feeling of walking, his feet on the path, his breath snatched by the wind, but he couldn’t remember a single thing that he had thought. Perhaps he had thought nothing.

A car flashed by, a rush of air.