by Jim Crace
On the left is Leon Lessing, the nation’s most nervous militant, on the evening before AmBush, and only a half hour or so before the restroom beating. He has a decent head of hair but nothing lush. He’s not an especially handsome young man, not least because his eyes are small and fearful: fearful of the meat spread out in front of him, fearful of the company, fearful of the day ahead and the undertakings he has given. Leonard has not noticed this before, but the fat man who beat him in the restroom hallway is hazily discernible in the upper background, pictured from the shoulders down, a mist of cloth and flesh. Leonard closes in and sharpens. Now he can just make out some of the darker lettering on the Texan’s shirt: “Bar and Grill.” It could be the title of a tune.
Leonard restores the Gruber’s image to its full dimensions, sending T-shirt Man into the bleary background again, and pans across to the right and the second portrait of himself, the one snatched from this morning’s newscasts and Web sites. Here he’s fifty years and one day old but, despite the pressure of the combat boot and gun, not betraying any fear, not revealing any of the dread that was his foremost feeling at the time. He seems fierce, and triumphant. His eyes are wide open; his mouth is slightly parted. He doesn’t quite resemble himself. The photograph, his photograph, is deceiving, Leonard knows, but it is thrilling too. It looks as arty and theatrical as a cinema still. He is mythologized by it. Already he can imagine the image on a music download file. Sax Warrior, perhaps, with Lennie “the Lion” Lessing and the Warrior Quartet. He’ll compose some stirring tunes for it. Jazz for Militants. Riffs for Radicals. Improvising for a Better World. He’s tapping out a clothy rhythm on his chest.
It is even more thrilling when, a moment later, Leonard finally discovers the video clip. It has only just been cleared and returned to screen after an hour’s embargo. As a paste-over explains, the faces of the NSF operatives have been obscured “to comply with security and operational guidelines.” Leonard’s face has not been touched. Here, in these moving and more expressive images, the resemblance is more accurate. He’s recognizable enough to have been named at last. Someone—a jazz nerd, probably, or a neighbor—must have spotted him. He gets down on his knees, hardly comprehending what he’s seeing, and studies the screen just within his focus range. He can almost feel the fizzy heat of broadcast on his forehead and cheeks. Certainly his whole body flushes hot with a kind of tumbling displacement, the deepest déjà vu. It is as if his dreams were filmed. He watches it again.
The news video must have been shot, he realizes, from under the entry porch of the press marquee, where he faked such convincing cigarette smoke this morning. The lens is shielded from the weather but the heavy rain is visible nevertheless, smudging the outline of the houses. The wind is flapping canvas, just in the shot. The segment scans across the street and settles on the hostage house for a few seconds before a commotion can be heard off-camera. Several voices shout at once: “Stay where you are,” “Get down, arms out,” and “On your knees.” The framing lurches for a moment—crews and journalists running forward have pushed the cameraman aside—but he steadies quickly and clamps his focus on Leonard again—no mistaking him—moving deliberately but calmly toward the waste ground. Red lights are dancing on his coat. His yellow cap is jaunty on his head. He does not look nervous in the least, just walking catlike from the hips. He manages five steps before three men in combats with pixilated faces burst into the shot, like killers from a wildlife film, like hunting dogs. Their duty sticks are drawn. They pounce on him and knock him to the ground with what seems like redundant violence, exactly as the NSF command knew it would. The camera follows Leonard to the ground. Their feet and arms are going in and out. The spoken commentary mentions something about “suspensions,” then Leonard is identified again as “the jazz composer and cult musician”—he’s pleased with that—and not displeased and not entirely surprised when it is suggested he is “a known associate of the Final Warning faction.” He summons up the Clip Save menu on the screen and sends the video to his Austin file. “Bravissimo,” he says.
Leonard is exceptionally tired all of a sudden. It has been a surprising and dramatic Sunday. The drama of it is catching up with him. He stretches, rubs his shoulder, rubs his face—he still hasn’t shaved or washed, or changed his clothes—rubs his shoulder again. It hurts even more than usual, but it is less troubling. He welcomes it. Overnight, his rotor cuff disorder has ceased being an older man’s condition, a sign of the body losing tone and strength and seizing up in premature rigor mortis. Now it has a stirring narrative. It is a young man’s injury, a war wound in a way, his scar of opposition to the Reconciliation Summit, a twin of Mr. Perkiss’s shattered, noble arm. He can carry it with pride. It’s something that the NSF has done to him: “You must have seen the video.” He lifts his right arm as high as he can. Yes, the pain is worse. His movement is more restricted than it has ever been. He turns his ouch of pain into an unexaggerated yawn.
Leonard is still on his knees gazing at the telescreen when Francine calls, leaning over the banister in her clean nightclothes, to let him know that finally she has recovered—and is hungry. Hasn’t he promised her a brunch in bed when she wakes up, she asks, or has she dreamed it? He thinks for a moment, incorrectly, that he can hear her coming downstairs, that she will catch him out again, praying at the screen, the surfing serf, that she will see the press photographs and the video before he has a chance to prepare her and explain. “I’m bringing it. Go back to bed,” he shouts. She’s happy to.
Brunch will be a mushroom omelette and grilled tomatoes with finger toast. He’ll halve a grapefruit and loosen the segments with a curved knife. He’ll make a pot of tea. He’ll take great pains to lay her tray attractively, to decorate the plate, to make it clear that he’s taking care of her. He’ll carry the bag of gifts and cards upstairs with him and sit on the end of the bed to open them. She’s bound to sing “Happy Birthday,” as she always does, in that pretty voice with which she entertains and educates her kids. It’s been the strangest week, he thinks, adding the smell of eggs to the kitchen’s residue of strangers’ nicotine. A farce. Too much of a farce, maybe, to justify how smug he feels, how pleased he is with his new public image. Who knows what Francine will make of it? She hasn’t got an inkling yet. He will try not to exaggerate in his account. Nothing he has done has really made a difference, after all. She could think that, given what has happened since, he might as well have simply picked up the phone Wednesday night and done his duty as a citizen, a compliant and dreary citizen who’s never dreamed of Catalonia.
The omelette is ready and on the plate when Leonard lifts the bag of gifts and looks inside. What he sees is startling. Another Sunday shock. He has to steady himself on the kitchen worktop and look again. No, he has not imagined it: one of the envelopes inside is marked with a single word, written in a familiar hand with one of Francine’s blue wax crayons. The word is Unk. He pushes back the flap—it isn’t sealed—and pulls out the card. She’s taken an old family photograph from the album in the living room—a picture of the three of them and Frazzle the terrier, labeled “Norfolk, Summer 2017”—and mounted it on an oblong of thin board. Everyone in it is smiling. Even Frazzle has a phlegmy grin. Leonard turns the card over. She has written on the back in capitals and in the style of texts: “HAPPY 50 BDAY—UNKX. ALL OK—VERY SOZ 2 MISS YOU ALL. GOT YR MESSAGE FROM MY FRIENDSHIP BOX. CAME HOME. MUST GO TODAY.” No signature but underneath, and written more conventionally, there is a further message: “I Saw You on the News This Morning. Absolutely Star,” and then a name—Swallow—a row of kisses, and a cell phone number.
Leonard goes upstairs as quietly as he can—that’s not difficult; he’s weightless now—and leaves the brunch tray and the canvas bag on the landing table. He wants to find one extra piece of evidence in Celandine’s old room before he breaks the news to her mother. Nothing that has happened in Alderbeech can outbid this. He must be certain, though, that the birthday card is not some mighty hoax. He is almost
too nervous to enter. He stands at the door and peers inside. Yes, her room does now seem to have her touch to it, her lack of touch, perhaps, her untidiness and negligence.
He picks up the towel from the attic floor. It’s damp. It has been used today. It must be damp from her. He feels the bed, not really expecting any warmth to have endured, though on a day like this nothing is impossible. But when he bends to sniff the sheets, he picks up on her smell at once. He’s heard it said that our recollections of smell are the last ones to degrade. They outlast visual memories. They outlive sound. What he has not expected is the sudden weight of tears that smelling Celandine rushes to his eyes. It is still the odor of a sweet and fiery teenager, augmented by the smell of shower gel and pajamas, of being young and coming home a bit shamefaced, the scent of Francine once removed, an overwhelming flood of fragrances. He’s crying now for everything, not just for Celandine, not only for her mother either, but also for the strange and bumpy ride he’s had all week, and for the shortfalls in his life, and for the children of his own he never had, his mother and his sister and his sister’s child; he’s crying for Lucy Emmerson and even Maxim Lermontov, and for the music, cool and blue, and for the roads less traveled, and for the waste.
The sobs are brief, too heavy to last long. Leonard is laughing soon, once he’s cleared his eyes and settled his breathing. Not burglars, then. Not the return of the raiding party after all. He sees it now, sees the front door opening. Celandine comes home with her house keys and turns off the alarm, glad the code has not been changed. She is both disappointed and relieved that there is no one home to argue with, no one there demanding to be hugged and kissed, no dreadful scene. She’s worried, though. She’s never seen such a mess and mayhem before, not in this house. It must be burglars, she thinks, or some dreadful fight. She pauses for a moment and she listens. But, as her mother would want her to, she battles to stay calm. Everything will be explained. So she settles into a familiar routine. Can it really be eighteen months since she was here, smoking cigarettes downstairs with the extractor on in the kitchen, the only place that it’s allowed? She makes herself some coffee and she fixes a meal, disappointed by the unexciting choices in the freezer. And—this is typical—she sits up into the night and watches television. Mum and Unk will return any minute, she thinks, come back a little tipsy from their birthday treat, to find the mess and then to discover their mislaid Celandine, as large as life, at home. “Don’t blame me for the mess,” she practices to say. “It’s not my fault—for once.” But finally she goes upstairs to sleep in her own bed. When she wakes this Sunday morning, she comes downstairs and—as she has done countless times since she was a kid and too frightened of the sloping attic shadows of her own room to stay another second there—waits under the low, carved lintel of her mother’s bedroom door, listening for signs of life, waiting for the invitation to climb in. Eventually she looks into the room to find that the bed is empty still. Again she sits downstairs, her stomach in a knot. She is no longer calm. She’s learned from Unk that unease is not always inappropriate. She fears the worst while waiting for the local bulletin on the News Channel and, God forbid, reports of car crashes or restaurant fires or shootings. The clatter of the circulars and papers falling on the hall mat lifts her spirits for a moment. They’re home at last—except they’re not. Her anxiety is deepening. She wishes she’d never come. But seeing Unk in the Alderbeech video provides, once she’s adjusted to the shock, some comfort and a kind of explanation. Unk’s on the news and he’s alive, at least. She’s free to go. Or else she’s too shaken by her fears to stay. And so she collects her little backpack and is relieved to leave the house again. She’s made the first move in the peace process in this small Reconciliation Summit of her own. She’s left a contact number in the birthday card. Now it’s up to them to act on it. She picks up the newspapers from the mat, puts them in the wicker bowl, and, not bothering to set the house alarm, steps outside into the street and her own self-regulating life.
Leonard ought to phone his stepchild straightaway. He suspects he ought to phone before he speaks to Francine, just to make sure that it’s really not a dream. It still feels like a dream. Instead, he sends a text to the number Celandine has given. He is not being cowardly (tomorrow, Monday, is a working day, and he can then start finally to be a braver man) but being level-headed. It’s hard to resurrect an argument by text. Text’s far too slow for angry repartee. It’s good for brokering a truce. His message is: “THANX CELANDINE, THANX SWALLOW. AT LAST. ITS BEEN TOO LONG. MUST TALK 2 MUM 2 DAY. UNK X.”
Leonard backs into the bedroom, self-conscious and attentive with the tray. He knows the omelette must be almost cold. Francine is already sitting up, her table light on, her reading glasses perched appealingly on the tip of her nose.
“You’re looking very happy with yourself,” she says. “You need a shave, of course. But otherwise …”
His smile is loose and unconditional. He can’t contain it. “Mushroom omelette, ma’am.” He puts the tray across her lap, pulls back the curtains to reveal a brightening sky, but not enough sunlight to slant and cast across the bed. He does not stay to watch her eat or to see her find the envelope and birthday card tucked between her saucer and her cup and weighed flat with a silver spoon. He leaves the room and starts to go downstairs, not hurrying. He plumps his lips and parps a short phrase to himself, a new melodic phrase that he must jot down while he remembers it. He attempts some variations and embellishments, but silently. With every step and every note, he expects to hear his Francine crying out. Then he will go back to the room with his loose smile again. They will embrace and—almost, almost—it will be an end and—nearly, nearly—a beginning. The house is shimmering.
17
LUCY EMMERSON HAS KEPT HER PROMISES. She’s sent a music file to Leonard’s handset. Davey Davey, Do It Now, the Jo Bond song. And she has hacked her hair short, a badger cut. She looks like Maria played by Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls, Leonard thinks. She’s boyish and defiant. They sit exactly where they sat before, on the wooden bench behind the Woodsman, below the first-floor room where he and Francine made love on Saturday. She’s smoking still, but these are manufactured cigarettes today. They look unwieldy and self-conscious compared to her self-rolled skinnies.
“It was such a hum, you know, to watch it all kick off on the TV,” she says. “Didn’t you just love the name we chose? SOFA. How radiant was that? I really fooled them, didn’t I? I think it made the difference. To Dad, I mean.”
“What difference?” Leonard does not mean to sound combative, but for a moment he is tempted to own up. Or is it boast? Perhaps she ought to know he’s informed on her. After all, it’s only because of his timely betrayal that the police felt confident enough to storm the house, assured that there’d be no costly quid pro quo. But who would benefit from owning up? Not Lucy. She’s more than happy to believe that her genius has worked.
“A lot of difference,” she says. “No, really. Mighty-mighty major much.” Her self-confidence is unassailable.
“Like what? I mean … I wanna know, is all.” He’s talking Texan now.
“So, for a start, like …” She hesitates, holds up a hand, and spreads her fingers to count off the differences she’s made. “No one was hurt because of him. And that’s maybe—well, probably—because he was bearing me in mind.”
“Protecting your eye and tooth.”
“My dad had hostages, but he didn’t fire a shot. Not one. Except, you know, to make a point. A warning shot … when they were chasing him. He didn’t fire a single shot at anybody. The family walked out of there unscathed.” Leonard raises an eyebrow. Unscathed is not a word he always likes to hear. “Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking,” she continues. “Only unscathed physically. Really shaken up inside, of course. Did you hear, though? The man said they’d all been treated really well, you know, like it was almost fun, a break from work and school. The woman even put on weight, she reckons.”
“All
that sitting around, I suppose.”
“All those pizzas!”
“And you? What difference has it made to you?”
“To us? To me and Dad?”
He nods. That isn’t what he means.
“I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know once I’ve been and visited. If he’ll let me visit him. See what he says. I tell myself he’s where he has to be. It’s not my fault. It worked out for the best. For everyone.”
“And you specifically? You could have ended up inside. Conspiracy. Wasting police time. Wasting taxpayers’ money.”
“I could have shared a cell with Dad. Back to prison for his gal. I was born inside, you know? I’m quite a lag.”
“Be serious. Admit that it was risky, at least.”
Now it’s her turn to raise an eyebrow. She mimes a yawn. “I’m seventeen! This is the sort of thing that daughters do.”
“You might have been fined. You’d not be laughing then.”
“Well, I suppose. But yes, it’s weird. They only read me the riot act. It wasn’t even scary. Mum could’ve done worse. She has done worse.”
“And that was it?”
“They issued me with an official police caution. Like a school certificate. Passed with distinction, entrance-level conspiracy. I’m going to frame it and hang it on my wall.” Her smile seems to have doubled in width since she cut her hair. “I might kidnap myself again and go for degree-level conspiracy. Disappearing is a piece of cake, and fun. Ask Celandine.”
