Jim Crace - All That Follows

“Oh, shit. Why not?”

“Well, number one, it’s kidnapping a teenager, and that’s against the law, big-time … she says.”

“But I’m the one that’s up for it. It’s my idea.”

“I told her that. She says you’re just a child. I know, I know. She’s anxious that she’ll be held responsible. Even if it’s not kidnapping exactly. She could be done for wasting police time.”

“That is fucking useless, isn’t it?”

“All right, calm down.”

“I don’t feel calm. I am pissed off.”

“Well, don’t blame me.”

“I’m not pissed off with you.” A pause. “So is she there?”

“Francine?”

“Yes.”

“She’s gone to work.”

“Why all the whispering?”

“I promise you, she isn’t here.” He’s frightened of this girl.

“Call her. Let me speak to her.”

“There isn’t any point.”

“It’s probably a woman thing.”

“How can it be a woman thing? What sort of woman thing?”

“Because you want to bring a girl into your home, Leonard. And set her up in your spare room. Maybe Francine doesn’t like the sound of that. I have to talk to her.”

“Lucy, listen, I can promise you it isn’t that …” He pauses, takes a different tack. He has to stop her even trying to speak to his wife. “But actually, you’re not entirely wrong. Francine’s own daughter ran away — she ran away from that spare room — about eighteen months ago. Spring last year. Okay? April the twenty-fourth. Just nineteen years of age. A girl like you — a girl who wanted to disappear.”

“Where did she go?”

“That’s what I’m telling you. They had a three-month quarrel, then a fight. Just fists. And feet. She packed a bag. She ran away. She disappeared. We know she’s been in touch with some of her mates. So she’s alive, at least. But Francine hasn’t heard a word since then.”

“That’s bad.”

“That’s worse than bad, it’s killing her. That empty bedroom with her daughter’s stuff is all she’s got to give her hope, to keep her sane.” Leonard’s straying into melodrama now. Still whispering. He has to bring it to an end. “You’re right,” he says, raising his voice. “No way she’s going to take a lodger in that room, not even you, not even for a day. Now do you understand? It’s difficult.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m getting it. She’s squashed us flat.”

“I’m sorry, Lucy. I did my best. But she went absolutely mad. We had a row about it. Quite a blazer, actually. There is no reasoning with her now. I’m just as disappointed as you are. I’m furious, in fact. It would have been, well, not exactly fun but …” He can’t locate the word. But he thinks valiant .

“I think it might have made a difference. At least we would have given it a go,” she says, dejected now.

“Yes, possibly. Let’s talk again. I have to run. I hope we’re going to stay in touch. You’ll text me in a day or two, okay? Best not to phone.”

“Don’t worry, Comrade Leonard, Mr. Activist, Mr . Perkiss Number Two, I won’t embarrass you.” But now she has embarrassed him. Leonard flushes, head to toe. She adds, “I guess I should have known it was never going to happen when you wouldn’t cut yourself yesterday, when you wouldn’t shake on it with blood.”

“Now, that’s ridiculous—”

“What’s her name?”

“Whose name?”

“The missing girl.”

“Her name is Celandine Sickert.”

“You’re kidding me. I’d run away.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means deed poll to me.” She’s being petulant, just for the hell of it.

“You’d change your name?” he asks, mostly glad that she has changed the subject.

“ Th elandine T h ickert? That is terrible. Boy, yes, I’d dump that name. Anything with ‘Sick’ in it. And Celandine is pretty bad. It sounds like medicine. But Cel’s okay. Yes, Cel is absolutely radiant.”

“Sorry, Lucy,” he says again. “Out of my hands.”

“Hey, it’s cool.” A sigh of resignation now.

“So that’s it, then? Hey, it’s cool, and on our way?” Job done, thinks Leonard. Time to finish this conversation, before she wounds him any more.

“I guess it is.”

“How do you feel?”

“Not happy. My little bag was packed. My father’s still out there. I’m all fired up. Now what?”

And he can see her all fired up, tough and innocent, her great expanse of hair, her taming red beret, her little bag, waiting with a cigarette among the noonday vehicles parked outside the Zone superstores, the airline traffic deafening, a tough and stocky angel coming to the rescue of her dad.

“It’s for the best,” he says. But he’s already talking to himself. She’s gone. She really is a child.

IT IS ONLY 9:25 A.M. and Leonard has secured the rest of Friday for himself. He sits back on the futon, not certain whether he is feeling less burdened or more. His phone conversation with Lucy, or at least the outcome of it, has not been a mistake. He feels that in his bones. It certainly has simplified his day. He can breathe easy, knowing that there’s nothing ill-advised ahead. This episode is finished with. He’s got away unscathed again. He’s made it back to shore. This is the day, he reminds himself, when he can take charge of his life. He will not fail again today. He will not disappoint himself again today. He lifts his one good fist and clenches it.

The Selmer has not been touched for several weeks. Its case has not even been opened. Leonard lifts the instrument out of its baize-lined mold. Taped inside the case lid is a timeworn gallery of memorabilia: a copy of his Mercury citation; a CD cover (Less Plays Lester) with a pleasing and convincing digital mock-up of Leonard sitting in a 1950s diner with Lester Young at his side; some small family photographs, his sister with his mother, happy days; shots of Francine and Celandine draped around each other at some music festival, more lost and happy days; and, on the flap of a torn cigarette packet, the fading, scribbled telephone number of Francine’s old Brighton flat. She’d put it there herself, that windy and rewarding night of nursery rhymes. “But that was then,” she said.

The saxophone feels heavy in his weakened arm. He has lost muscle tone. His frozen shoulder refers its pain across his back and down as far as the upper finger joints of his right hand. He clamps his jazz-soft Vandoren reed in place, ducks into the neck sling, checks that the spatulas and tone holes are still snugly sealed, and exercises the keys and rods with the usual practice set of unvoiced scales and melodic patterns before licking his lips and gums, lifting the horn to his mouth, and closing on that familiar, comforting rubber mouthpiece. But still he will not make a note. He takes deep breaths and pillows his diaphragm with enough air to support the sound, if and when it comes. He seals a tight, single-lip embouchure around the reed as carefully as a beginner might, judging how best to allow but still constrict a note, readying his tongue, his jaw, his pharynx, larynx, glottis, and his vocal cords, until these two vibrating tubes — the flesh, the brass — are ready to collaborate.

What to play? Not nursery rhymes. That day has passed and dimmed. He tests the sound. Ba-dum. Ba-dum . Four hurried notes. He voices them again. Do it, do it, Davey Davey, do it now . But then he settles for something less agitated, something further from the bone: Simmy Sullivan’s “Midnight at the Lavender.” It’s his graduation piece; it’s his lollipop; he’s played it round the houses, tired it out — on radio, at festivals, solo and in combos. Once — and this is not a happy memory — in Austin, Texas, even. Feel-good music. Schmooze. It ought to be unchallenging. But Leonard wants to test and exercise himself. It is a worry, always was a worry, that his musical daring might, like hearing, eyesight, concentration, sexual potency, continence, be a faculty that degenerates with age. Therefore he shifts up half a tone, toys with the opening four bars, and then returns to flatten it. An awkward sound. He starts again, jettisoning the basic chord progression and introducing vagrant notes. So he drifts away from key and stays away, lick after lick, until — almost out of the blue, though not exactly out of the blues — he finds a route from Sullivan’s favorite Brooklyn bar to Davey Davey, do it now and finishes up with a piece he has arranged before, Shakespeare’s greasy Joan. This is something— Love’s Labour’s Lost and agitated schmooze — that the world or at least the walls of this living room have never heard before— ba-dum ba-dum, doo-wah doo-wah, tu-whit tu-whoo, a merry note —and will never hear again, not quite like that, not quite so desperate and fine, not quite so raw. The tapered lights and shadows of the house seem, at moments such as this, architect-designed for jazz, chambers sloped and angled for the nuances of sound.