Jim Crace - All That Follows

The journalist turns his body sideways and the camera shifts from him and Maxie to the hostage house. “What is certain,” he adds, a little out of focus, “is that some sort of detonation — a pistol shot, perhaps, though this is disputed — has been heard from inside the house today and that the British police and British authorities are quickly losing patience. So now, this latest development, this secondary, related kidnapping, makes the securing of a speedy and nonviolent resolution all the more urgent and alarming.”

Leonard drops onto his knees and kneels within a meter of the telescreen. His heart is beating far too fast. His throat is dry. But the Australian has gone, and the weather chart is scrolling wind and temperature values for Saturday.

He tries another bank of channels but finds only the briefest summaries and not a mention yet of any secondary, related kidnapping. The home-based networks are still constrained by blackout filters, it would appear. He knows at once he has to phone, though what he’ll say when she picks up is not clear to him. I want to be your online friend because …

Lucy’s number is stored in his handset’s memory from that morning’s conversation. He calls and, still on his knees before the now muted telescreen, counts the ringtones up to eight before the answer service picks up his call and Lucy herself says, “Hi, I’m out of reach right now. Do what you have to do …” Leonard shuts her off. He had better not record a message and reveal himself. But he cannot leave it there. He also has the number for the Emmerson house phone. He keys the number for a second time, and it has hardly rung at all, it has hardly made a sound, before his call is answered by a breathless older man. Leonard knows the voice but cannot place it immediately.

“Is that the Emmersons’?”

“Correct.”

Now Leonard has it. It’s Lucy’s obliging grandfather, the one who provided him with information about the “stolen” bike. Grandpa Norman, wasn’t it? There are urgent voices in the background, distressed, Nadia possibly. Who is it? Is it her? “Shh. I’m listening. Hello, hello.” Leonard presses End and closes down the call.

He is on-screen again. Heart drumming, he locates the same female reporter from the first day of the hostage-taking, togged out in a button-through work suit and with her hair clipped back but now standing outside the Home Security headquarters with “a newly released press statement.” In as motherly a tone as she can muster, she explains that “a seventeen-year-old girl who cannot be named for legal reasons” has been abducted by “a vigilante group” who are threatening what they call equivalence and parity , that is to say that any harm that befalls any of the hostage family will be visited on the abductee. “What my sources can reveal,” she says, stepping toward the camera to impart a confidentiality, “is that police are also keen to talk with Lucy Emmerson, the British daughter of the Canadian suspect who early Thursday identified her father to the security forces as Maxie Lemon.” A sidescreen offers yesterday’s material with yesterday’s relentless rain, a long shot of the security barricades, a group of men in uniform, a solid adolescent girl in a red beret and dark clothes, her back turned to the hostage house, either speaking closely to her cell phone or crying. “Given existing reporting restrictions, we can only suppose …” the reporter begins to add, but Leonard hears what he knows to be — how many times he’s longed to hear that sound — Francine’s little car, parking in the mews outside.

Now he is truly flustered. He’ll be discovered again. His wife has recently developed a heavily tolerant expression whenever she returns from work to catch her husband on the futon, his face lit up by the telescreen. “And so the world goes by,” she’s said on one occasion. “You live in two dimensions, Leonard. Nowadays.” And when he’s argued that “two dimensions are better than the one that most people exist in — they’ve no idea or interest in what’s going on around the world,” her reply has been accurate and devastating, despite the lightness of her voice. That’s when she’s named him a sofa socialist, a television activist, an Internet poodle, a vassal of the silver screen. She’s said, “You’ve no idea what’s going on off-screen , in fact. You’ve no idea what’s going on in your own house.”

“Oh, yes. What’s going on? In your considered view?”

“Nothing, nothing, nothing. Not a thing. The weeks go by and everything’s the same. In my considered view.”

She is right to say these things, of course, to fear what they’ve become — since Celandine. Yes, he’s addicted to the broadcast world and to the great and flat expanses of the Web, no doubt of that. Look how he spends so much of his time compulsively jumping from channel to channel, hopping from Web site to Web site, skipping from station to station, swapping from phone to phone, as if the richness of his life depends on a blizzard of media snow. Look how unnerved he was earlier today at Pepper’s Holt watching the frequency scanner on his van radio shuffle through the stations but unable to locate a signal. How briefly isolated he has felt, and panicky, to find himself with No network provision on his cell phone. He shakes his head, shakes it at himself, in disapproving disbelief. This is a form of slavery. He’s sacrificed the daylight for the screen, and see, the afternoon has disappeared without his noticing. The window glass has flattened with the dusk. If he doesn’t turn the screen off now, he will be caught, red-eyed, red-faced. He will be shamed again.

He’s just in time. Here is Francine’s door key in the lock, and the chirrup greeting of the house alarm, the clatter of her shoes and bags, her work-worn Friday sigh that says, Thank God, I’m home, the squeaking hinges on the toilet door, another sigh. Leonard’s on his feet at once. Not quite caught out. Caught out at what? He hurries to the kitchen, but there’s no time to gather foliage from the patio or find that vase. Francine’s standing at the kitchen door already, removing her grip and pushing her fingers through her hair. Leonard’s blushing, unaccountably.

“What have you done today?” she asks.

“Played a bit of saxophone. Wrote half a song. Went round the park.” He will not mention Swallow / Celandine just yet. Francine must think he’s spent a screen-free day. Besides, in the hour since he discovered the Frazzle-loving girl on the networking site, his confidence that she is almost certainly his stepdaughter has waned. Coincidence is all it is. A dog, a bird, but nothing definite.

“Jog round the park, did you?” Francine indicates his sweatpants and raises an eyebrow.

“Got wet, got changed,” he says.

“I tried to phone, but you were dead.”

Leonard blushes more deeply now. What can he say? That the park has no network provision. She’ll know that isn’t likely. That he’s been out to Pepper’s Holt. “Again?” she’ll ask. “That’s twice this week.”

“I left my cell here, turned off,” he says. “I was only going to the shops. For these.” He hands the autumn mix to her, still wrapped. She smiles. She kisses him. She says, “They’re beautiful.” But there is something missing in her face and in her voice. She sees his gift is incomplete; perhaps, she sees her husband has not given it his usual loving touch.

They do make love before they go out to the restaurant. Francine has decided that they will, they must. She caught him watching her reflection in the mirror this morning, watching her pull on her clothes, put back her hair, apply her lipstick, and she has seen the worry in his face and recognized his steadfast love for her. She knows they have drifted and she blames herself for that. She blames herself for being sharp with him, for parting from him in the morning and at night with dismissive quips like “That was then” and “Too late now” and “You need more exercise.” He brings her breakfast in the morning, doesn’t he? He brings her Florentines. He buys her flowers. She wants to be kinder to him, more giving and more generous, more physical, no matter that she feels as hollow as a shell. She phoned him this afternoon without success to say just this: Tomorrow you’ll be fifty years of age. Let’s make your birthday memorable.