Soft by Rupert Thomson Read Free Book Online

the barber’s sparing use of words seemed in character, along with his neatness and his punctuality. One morning, though, as clouds lowered over the rooftops and rain slanted across the window of the shop, Higgs started telling Barker about his years in the Air Force. He had served as a navigator in Lancaster bombers, he said. He had flown over Germany, more than twenty missions. His stammer, that was when it started.
    Although he was interested, Barker didn’t understand why Higgs had suddenly decided to talk to him, and it was another half an hour before it became clear. That morning, as he walked to work, Higgs had been attacked by three white youths, and he was feeling furious and bitter and disappointed. After all, he said, and Barker could sense that he found it distasteful having to resort to a cliché, he’d probably done more for the country than they’d ever done, and yet, there they were, telling him that he was useless.
    â€˜You’re not hurt?’ Barker said.
    Higgs shook his head. ‘No.’
    â€˜My father was in the Navy,’ Barker said. ‘Destroyers.’
    He told Higgs a story his father had often told him when he was young. One night in 1942 – this was during the time of the convoys – Frank Dodds had been swept overboard by a freak wave. Only one man noticed, and that man had managed to raise the alarm. Frank Dodds survived.
    â€˜It was December in the North Atlantic,’ Barker said. ‘You didn’t last long in that water.’
    Higgs watched him from a chair by the window. Though it was dark in the shop, neither of the two men had bothered to turn the lights on. From outside, the place probably looked closed.
    â€˜I’m going to tell you something,’ Barker said, surprising himself a little with the announcement, ‘something I don’t tell many people. It’s about my name.’
    â€˜I w-wondered about that.’
    â€˜But you never said anything. Some people, they think they’re clever. They like to crack jokes.’
    Higgs shrugged, as if jokes held little interest for him.
    â€˜I was lucky,’ Barker said. ‘I could have been called Jocelyn.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s what my father always said whenever I gave him a hard time about my name. My two brothers, they’ve got ordinary names, but I was the oldest, I was named after the man who saved my father, the man who saw him fall into the water. Jocelyn Barker.’
    Higgs scratched his white hair with one long finger. ‘I think your father m-made the right decision.’
    Barker laughed at that, and Higgs laughed with him, and the rain fell steadily outside, a constant murmur under their conversation.
    â€˜He was a hairdresser,’ Barker mentioned later.
    â€˜Your father was a hairdresser?’
    â€˜That’s how I learned.’
    Higgs smiled to himself, as if Barker was only confirming something that he had known all along, or guessed, and then the bell above the door jangled and a man in a grey raincoat walked in, cursing the bloody weather and shaking the water off his clothes.
    The days passed evenly, without excitement, without disaster. Barker would leave his flat at eight-thirty every morning, returning at six o’clock at night. Though he now lived further from the shop, he chose to walk to work. It took half an hour, but he felt it did him good. And besides, he had grown fondof the streets; he liked the way their names gave you clues as to their history, the fact that you could turn a corner and smell rope or cinnamon or tea. Most days, he crossed the river at the Tower. He noticed how the buildings seemed to crouch and huddle to the east of Tower Bridge, and how the sky seemed to widen, to expand. There was the sudden feeling of being close to an estuary, a foretaste of the sea. The sight of HMS
Belfast
moored against the south bank never failed to remind him of his father. He thought Frank Dodds would