Jim Crace - All That Follows

Leonard knows the law. He should not be driving at all: 25 centiliters of wine is the limit and he has drunk three times that volume. And on an empty stomach. He’s risking a suspension. But it is only early evening, not quite dark yet. Random checks are not usually deployed until much later. He will avoid the motorways, however, where there are robot eyes to monitor the vehicles, and return the way he came, on rural routes. First, though, he turns the van round, drives back toward the hostage house, and parks again on the fringes of the mobile village with its circle of incident and rescue vehicles. Something pulls him there, something that he hopes is more than prurience. He is only idling, in both senses. He does not even turn the engine off or get out of the van. Instead, he reaches for his thermos under the passenger seat, where it has rolled and been forgotten during the jazz-fueled journey down. The lime-and-honey-flavored green tea is tepid and cloudy. It is reviving, though, and, he imagines, sobering. If he is stopped and questioned by the police (or Francine, come to that) because his driving or behavior is erratic, his grape-and-tobacco breath will have been partly cleansed and sweetened and might not betray him. Everything he does from now on until the lights go out tonight must help erase the day.

The parking ground is no less busy than it was this morning. Groups of officers come back off shifts, expressionless. Young men and women in uniform swipe their ID fobs at the catering van for their free drinks and sandwiches. Techies in hi-viz jackets fuss and tinker with their aerials and armories, issuing and taking back the beam guns or laser tasers that frontline officers from the National Security Forces are authorized to carry and far too ready to use. The army and police forces do not mix with the rescue services, Leonard notices. Taking lives and saving lives are worlds apart. And they all despise the television crews. They are like playground gangs, keeping to their own kind and unhurriedly sharing their boredom with familiars. So the siege continues. Nothing new has happened this afternoon, he thinks, and is disappointed. Now Leonard understands what has pulled him back onto this open ground, something worse than prurience: it is the hope that the hostage-taking has been ended quickly while he’s been in the pub, not only for the victims’ sake, and not at all for Maxie Lermon’s sake, but for his own well-being.

LEONARD SETS OFF ON THE JOURNEY home in a media-silent van. He needs to stay calm and unruffled, and he has to think. He’s overreached himself, that much is obvious, and he suspects that getting back to safe and level ground will not be trouble-free. This is a tangle from which he knows he has to extricate himself at once. He imagines the conversation he will need to have with Francine, proving something she already knows: that he is foolish and suggestible, that thanks to him Celandine’s old room is being given up to a missing young woman, but not the one his wife is praying for. Kidnapping of any kind is an offense, he tells himself, no matter that the victim is a coconspirator and more accountable than she might seem. The newspapers, the police, will know the truth: here is a “teenage child” who should expect good counsel and a restraining hand from her elders, not help and encouragement. Threatening violence is also an offense, even if the threat is little more than theater and could never produce anything other than blanks. And then there is the lesser crime of wasting police time. No one would blame Lucy for that. She’s too immature, they’d say, to be the ringleader, to be the instigator of such a devious venture. Seventeen-year-olds have limited judgment, and less experience. But a man of almost fifty? How could a man of almost fifty, wittingly and willingly, go along with such a plan and give no thought to any of the consequences? Leonard Lessing … Mister. Lennie. Less … On tenor … You are charged with willful mistreatment of a minor. And conspiracy. How do you plead? No, this is not a good idea at all.

He flicks on the drive-time news and, hoping for too much, waits for an update on the hostages. But he has to listen first to the main items of the day, the forthcoming Reconciliation Summit and the many protests planned, and then a report from Los Angeles predicting a majority yes vote in California’s unofficial Proposition 101, nicknamed Montezuma’s Revenge, calling for the Latino state’s secession from the union. “It is feared,” the correspondent says, “that should these polls prove accurate and the majority embark on forced implementation, then many non-Latino Californians might resist with violence.” Leonard imagines himself and Maxie holed up among the redwoods, comrades in arms, an International Brigade of two. It’s For Whom the Bell Tolls filmed at Big Sur, though whether they would be fighting for or fighting against the rule of the WASPs of America is not clear. Am I the only one, he wonders, the only adult anyway, who has such childish, self-deluding fantasies? Is everyone a reckless hero in their dreams? Is everyone a Mr. Perkiss in their dreams?

Maxie himself is the third item in the newscast. It has been a quiet day for him and everyone involved, the presenter says. Pizzas and fresh fruit have been delivered by “elderly representatives” of the St. John Ambulance Brigade, and police, predicting “a long negotiation,” have established telephone contact with “the group.” Nothing promising. So Leonard turns to music once again: this time some classic Lester Young to fuff and schmooze him back to Francine. But he is too agitated to concentrate on music. And in pain. His frozen shoulder, which he has virtually forgotten while sitting in the pub yard with Lucy, has started to trouble him again. Driving stiffens it, he finds.

It is already eight in the evening when he gets back. It’s too late to eat a meal together, so he has stopped in the district shop near home and bought, as he often does, a box of carob Florentines for his wife. There are no lights on in the house, and this is surprising and a little worrying, though a relief as well. But Francine’s little car is parked in its usual place, charging at the domestic fuel box, and when Leonard steps into the moonlit gloaming of their glass-roofed hall, he can smell cooking and the beat of broadcast music. She’s watching the Maestro channel in the dark, a Verdi opera, but as the telescreen pitches light into the room he can see that her eyes are closed and she is napping, worn out. Her legs are up on a stool, and only one of her slip-on shoes is still hanging from her toes. She has loosened the top buttons of her trousers. And as ever she has taken off her watch—“unwinding,” she calls it — and put it on the arm of the futon, next to a used cup and plate. He lifts the surviving shoe off her foot, carries the crockery into the kitchen, washes it, and then returns to find her sitting up, awake and flushed. He sits down next to her and puts the Florentines on her lap.

“That’s nice,” she says. “Have I been sleeping?”

“Dead to the world.”

“What time is it? When did you get back?”

“I’ve been back quite a while. I let you sleep.” He leans across and kisses her behind the ear.

“You smell of cigarettes.”

“I can’t think why.”

“Well, nor can I. Where did you go?”

“Into the forests, like I said. Pepper’s Holt and up into the birch hursts. They were burning off the bracken. Maybe that’s it.”

“It doesn’t smell like bracken.”

She shakes her head at him and smiles, then takes his hand and wraps her fingers through his, something that she hasn’t done unbidden for far too long. “It’s nice to have you home. I hated coming back and no one here. Kiss-kiss.” She pulls the hair back from her face and turns her head from him, offering the same ear that he kissed before. “I realize we’re having bumpy times,” she says, not facing him, “but … you know I love you more than all the buts. This morning, with the breakfast tray. I didn’t mean to upset you …”