Soft (28 page)

Mr Babb opened the drawer at the end of the table, sliding it all the way out until the delicate brass handle buried itself
in his belly. His fingers moved clumsily among the jumbled contents. At last he produced a ring of grey metal that held keys of every shape and size. He could unlock the caravan for her, he announced. Or if she was worried about sleeping out there all by herself, she was welcome to the spare room. Glade thanked him, saying she would be happy in the caravan. She would feel closer to her father. She hesitated, then asked if she could call the hospital. A meaningful look passed between the farmer and the woman, the air seemed tangled for a moment, then the farmer nodded slowly and rose to his feet. He opened the cupboard behind the kitchen door and took out a plastic bag with Tesco written on one side. Reaching into the bag, he brought out a shiny, pale-pink telephone, an old model with a dial on the front instead of buttons.

‘It's so it doesn't get dirty,' the woman explained. ‘Mr Babb, he just hates dust. Don't you?' And she looked up at the farmer who had the phone in his left hand, gripping it from above, with fingers spread, as if it were a tortoise or a crab.

He didn't answer her, but wheeled sideways and, stooping abruptly, plugged the lead into a socket in the wall. He placed the phone in front of Glade, his face still flushed from the exertion. The woman told her the number of the hospital and they both watched greedily as she dialled. She spoke to a nurse on her father's ward. According to the nurse, he was already sleeping. He was comfortable. She could visit in the morning, between ten o'clock and twelve.

She lay in her father's bed with the lights out and the curtains drawn. She could feel the darkness all around her like a weight, a presence. It seemed to exert a pressure on the walls, the caravan as fragile as an eggshell in the night's clenched fist. Sleep would not take her. After an hour she had to light a candle, wedging it upright in an empty whisky bottle that she found beside the bed.
What happened, Glade? What happened?
Her father's voice spoke to her from somewhere above, under the roof. She remembered how her mother had
smashed a bowl once, bits of china skidding across the floor. And she had shouted too, words with blunt endings, then the kitchen door slammed shut. Her father stood with his head lowered as though his punishment was only just beginning.
What happened?
She tried to hypnotise herself by staring at the flame. A strong wind swooped down, shook the walls. The world turned to water, hedge and trees and grass hissing like breakers on a pebble beach. Out in the field the journalist stood watch, his face earnest, conscientious, his notebook a white glimmer in his hand. He was wearing the brown suit again, with the yellow cardigan underneath, and in his breast pocket she could see a triangle of folded handkerchief, which was a subtle reference to the mountain, of course, his way of telling her that he was on her side. And suddenly she knew the truth. Charlie was wrong to worry. The journalist would come for her. Maybe not tonight. But he would come. She would talk to him, and he would listen. Everything would be explained. And with that thought the wind rose again, hiding all other sounds, and her breathing deepened and she slept.

She found her father in a ward with seven men. When he noticed her, he sat up, smoothing his bedclothes and smiling, as if she was someone he'd been told to please. But she had seen him first, through a gap in the curtains, his face slack and hollow, almost uninhabited, and even now, as she settled on the chair beside the bed, she thought the bones in his forehead showed too clearly through his skin: she could see the edges, the places where they joined.

‘Glade,' he said. Then, turning to include the other men, he said, ‘My daughter.' The men all came to life suddenly, nodding and smiling at the same time, like puppets.

‘Dad,' she murmured, reproaching him.

‘Sorry. They're not bad fellows, though.'

She took his hand, and he watched it being taken, as if it didn't belong to him. ‘How are you?' she said.

‘Oh, I'll live.' He gave her what was intended to be a jaunty grin, but his eyes seemed frightened.

‘Apparently they tried to call me,' she said. ‘My phone wasn't working.'

‘That's all right. The Babbs looked after me.'

She couldn't bring herself to ask him how he came to be lying in the field. Instead she simply held on to his hand and studied it. As a young girl she used to sit on his lap and learn his hand off by heart. The oval fingernails, the swollen veins. The dark-grey star-shaped mark on his left thumb, which he had always jokingly referred to as his tattoo (a boy had stabbed him with a fountain pen at school).

‘I slept in the caravan last night,' she said.

‘Did you? You weren't scared?'

She shook her head. ‘I came up yesterday. I wanted to surprise you. I didn't know,' and she paused, ‘I didn't know about all this.'

‘I'm sorry, Glade.'

‘I was going to cook for you. Look.' And, dipping a hand into her backpack, she took out half a dozen brown paper bags and tipped their contents on to the bed. She had bought the vegetables the day before, from the market in Portobello Road – tomatoes, squash, courgettes, green peppers, aubergines. Spilled across the hospital blanket, their colours seemed painfully bright, almost unnatural. The colour of real life. She watched him reach out, his fingers glancing weakly off their glossy surfaces. Tears blurred her vision for a moment, but she didn't think he noticed.

‘How did you find me?' he asked.

‘I went to the farmhouse.' She blinked, then touched an eye with the back of her wrist. ‘They gave me a cup of tea. They were kind.'

‘They were kind to me too.' Her father stared into space, remembering.

Glade wished she could lighten the atmosphere, make him
laugh. ‘You know what?' she said. ‘They keep their telephone in a plastic bag.'

‘Really?' Her father turned and looked at her. ‘I didn't know that.'

‘It's so it doesn't get dusty.' She paused. ‘They'd really hate it in your caravan.'

‘I suppose so,' he said vaguely. ‘Ah well …' His eyes drifted across the wall behind her.

A nurse appeared. She told Glade that her father ought to rest. Glade gathered up the vegetables and arranged them on the table beside his bed, thinking the splashes of red and green and yellow might cheer him up. Before she left she took his hand again and promised she would come up north as soon as she could. Perhaps she would even give up her job – for a few weeks, anyway. Then she could live with him, take care of him. In the meantime she would ring every day to find out how he was. He was looking at her now and, though his eyes were still unfocused and drained of all colour, she could tell from the faint pressure he exerted on her hand that he had understood, and was grateful.

When she stepped out of the bus that night she found herself wishing there was somebody to meet her, or smile at her, just smile, or even look, but no one did, and by the time she was standing on the tube platform at Victoria there were tears falling from her eyes. What's wrong with me? she thought. I'm always crying. At last she felt as if she was being touched, though: fingers running gently down her cheeks, across her lips, over her chin.

She took the Circle Line to Paddington, then changed. The tube. A Sunday night. Some people drunk, some dozing. She watched a man peer down into a paper bag, then carefully lift out a box. Crammed into the pale-yellow styrofoam was a hamburger, its squat back freckled as a toad's. The man took hold of it in both hands and turned it this way and that,
trying to work out the best angle of approach. His mouth opened wide, his eyes narrowed. He seemed to be cringing, like someone who thought he might be hit. Then he bit down on the bun, releasing a warm, sour odour into the carriage. It occurred to Glade that she had eaten nothing since the hospital – and then only an apple and a piece of stale sponge cake. But she was so tired that her skin hurt. She couldn't face the shops, not now. Not till the morning. She took her notebook and a pen out of her bag. Began to make a list.
Fish fingers,
she wrote. She paused and then wrote
Hair dye.
That was all she could think of. Somewhere just after Royal Oak she fell asleep. She was lucky not to miss her stop.

By the time she opened her front door, it was ten o'clock. She walked in, and then stood still for a moment. Loud music thickened the air inside the flat; she felt she could hardly breathe. As she reached the top of the stairs she saw Sally walking down the corridor towards her, wearing a pair of high-heeled sandals and a new black-and-white bikini. A suitcase lay in Sally's bedroom doorway, its lid gaping.

‘What's happening?' Glade said.

‘I'm going on holiday,' Sally said, ‘to Greece. I thought I told you.'

Glade shook her head. ‘I don't think so.'

‘Two weeks!' Sally clutched her ribs. ‘I just can't wait.'

Glade put her backpack down and stood against the wall, one hand touching her bottom lip. ‘I'll miss you,' she murmured.

If she had said this a week ago, she realised, it wouldn't have been true. But suddenly it seemed as if nothing could withstand her presence. She only had to think of something and it disappeared. She felt like dynamite, but not powerful.

‘I'll miss you,' she said again.

But Sally wasn't listening. Instead, she lifted her arms away from her sides and, smiling down at her bikini, placed her right leg in front of her left one, the way a model might.

‘So what do you think?' she said.

Glade walked into her room and shut the door behind her, turning the key in the lock. There was a silence, then she heard Sally try the handle.

‘Glade?'

Glade stood halfway between the door and the window. Her hands had knotted into fists, and they were pressed against her thighs. She hadn't switched any of the lights on yet; it just did not occur to her. The streetlamp outside the window flooded the room with a bright-orange glow.

‘No artificial additives,' she said.

She stood in the darkness, listening. The voice was hers, and yet it seemed to come from outside her.

‘Just natural,' she said. ‘All natural.'

That voice again. Hers.

‘What are you doing, Glade?' Sally tried the door-handle again. ‘Is something wrong?'

Glade was still facing the window.

‘Kwench it!,' she said in a loud voice.

And then she smiled.

On Tuesday morning she was woken by the shrill sound of the phone ringing. She waited to see if Sally answered it, but then remembered that Sally had left for Greece the day before. She stumbled out of bed on to the landing. Sitting on the floor beside the phone, she thought about the building with the corridors and the fluorescent lights. She saw a man in a brown suit hurrying towards her …

She lifted the receiver slowly towards her ear.

‘Glade? Is that you, darling?'

It was her mother, calling from Spain. Her eyes still half-closed, Glade could see her mother's swimming-hat, white with blue-and-yellow flowers attached to it, and her mother's toenails, their scarlet varnish slightly chipped. She supposed this must be a memory from years ago, when the family drove to Biarritz on holiday.

‘I've just heard about your father. Should I come over?' Her mother's voice was low and smoky, poised on the brink of melodrama.

‘There's no need,' Glade said.

‘Have you seen him? Is he all right?'

‘Yes, he's all right. He's comfortable.'

Her mother talked for a while about the stupidity of living in a caravan in the middle of nowhere, especially at his age. Then, abruptly, but seemingly without a join, she brought the conversation round to Gerry and the new apartment. She was
beginning to wonder whether it would ever be finished. There was no end to the work that needed doing –

‘I saw him on Sunday,' Glade said, interrupting. ‘In the hospital. He's comfortable.'

On the other end of the phone, in Spain, there was a sudden silence, a kind of confusion, and Glade thought of the moment in cartoons when someone runs over the edge of a cliff and on into thin air.

‘Yes,' her mother said, ‘you've already told me that.'

When the phone-call was over, Glade walked down the corridor and into the kitchen. The clock ticking, Sally's dirty pans still stacked in the sink. A pale megaphone of sunlight on the floor. There was the emptiness, the astonished silence that recent frantic movement leaves behind it. Sally had slept through her wake-up call on Monday morning. She'd only just made it to the plane.

Sitting at the table, Glade pushed crumbs into a pile with her forefinger. She had dreamed about the house in Norfolk, the house where she had grown up. Her father was sitting in a downstairs room with rows of books behind him, the light tinted green by the ivy growing round the window. His clothes were drenched. She tried to persuade him to change into something dry, but he wouldn't listen. He was too excited, he kept talking over her. His eyes shone in the gloom and, every time he gestured, drops of water flew from his hands like pieces of glass jewellery. In another dream she was buying Tom a drink in a hotel bar. She paid for the drink, which was pale-pink, a kind of fruit cup, but then she couldn't seem to find her way back to where he was. She had so many things to do all of a sudden. Time passed, the location changed. She kept remembering that Tom was waiting for her in the bar. He would be wondering where she'd gone. She was still carrying his drink around with her, and she couldn't help noticing that the ice was beginning to melt …

Turning in her chair, she opened the fridge and was confronted by twenty-four cans of Kwench!, some stacked upright, others lying on their sides. On the inside of the door she found a half-empty tin of gourmet cat food, three squares of Galaxy milk chocolate wrapped in silver foil and a jar of gherkins. She picked up one of the cans and looked at it. They were holding a competition, closing date August 31st. You had to think of a slogan, no more than fifteen words. Then, in three sentences or less, you had to say why you liked Kwench! so much. If your entry won, you had a choice of prizes. Either you could fly first-class to Los Angeles and stay in a luxury beach house in Orange County for two weeks, with a free car and free passes to Disneyland. Or you could have a swimming-pool built in your own back garden. Based on the Kwench! exclamation mark, the pool divided into two sections: one would be long and deep, for adults; the other – the dot, as it were – would be shallow, ideal for children. The tiles would be orange, of course. Glade shook her head. She wasn't the kind of person who could dream up slogans. She didn't think she'd be winning any prizes, not even the Kwench! swimming costumes and beach-bags they were offering to runners-up.