Jim Crace - All That Follows

Francine rests her face against her husband’s shoulder. “Is that the poorly one?” she asks. Her voice is husky and a little strained, as it often is by Friday evening, at the end of a week of speaking loudly and firmly to a nursery class. “Let me rub your poorly shoulder. Let me rub it better.” She’s talking to a four-year-old.

Leonard has not recognized what she intends for him, not yet. He thinks, She’s acting tired, she looks and sounds exhausted. Perhaps she won’t be pleased that he has presumed to book a table at Wilbury’s and would rather take it easy at home, read, have an early night. Perhaps he ought to phone and cancel, then she can rest and he can waste another evening chasing bulletins, up till late, alone with the telescreen and his anxieties, enslaved, while Francine sleeps upstairs with hers.

Today’s events have panicked him. He’s trembling. But Francine thinks his trembling is caused by her. She nuzzles him. She turns her mouth to his. Soon their different troubles have been largely set aside for a short while, while she unbuckles him and he unfastens her and, fused at the chin and nose, they negotiate a stumbling way into the darkened living room and fall onto the futon, where finally — it’s been too many weeks — they satisfy a less-than-childish fantasy that does not require a passion for the Spanish Civil War. They imagine making love while they are doing it. They cast themselves as lovers in a film, a hero and a heroine. And no, she’s not too tired when it is over to shower quickly, blow-dry her hair, and apply — while Leonard, who has fixed their tonic aperitifs, watches from the bedroom chair — more lively makeup than that morning’s and a splash of scent. She selects an outfit that she knows pleases him, a boxy emerald jacket and a straight black skirt. At once she looks less businesslike and less child-resistant than she did on her return from work. She finds a flattering silk scarf and tries out jewelry, turning to her husband and then the mirror for approval.

“Well?” she asks, giving a twirl, like a teenager.

“You always look beautiful,” he says.

“Oh, yes? That’s the tonic talking.”

“I’ve only had a sip.”

“It only takes a sip at our age. Come on, then, you — let’s stagger down to dinner. I’m starving. I could eat a plate of wood.”

“Would that be medium or bleu , madam?”

They walk the kilometer to Wilbury’s arm in arm. A decent autumn night, with stars. They’ll do their best when they are seated at their corner table in the restaurant, intimate and slightly drunk, waiting for their vegetarian options to be plated and brought out, to put a brave face on their worlds, their private, inner, hidden worlds, not to express or share how anxious they are still, or why. So this Friday finishes, and Leonard’s decade finishes, at peace, an anxious, loving, troubled, transitory peace.

LEONARD LESSING IS FIFTY YEARS OLD AT LAST. As usual on a Saturday, he is the first to wake, but even he has slept much later than usual. It is a minute or two before nine. His stomach at once feels bloated with worry, but that is not unusual lately; this waking anxiety from dreams he cannot quite recall can last all day. He’s used to it. The first heavy thought that burdens him consciously is that he has not yet discovered any details of Lucy’s “kidnapping.” The second, troubling in its own way, is that today is his birthday and that he will be obliged to socialize. There will be plans for him. Plans and traps. A dinner party, probably. He’ll be too unsettled to entertain or be entertaining unless he tidies up his life a bit. If he’s quick he can be downstairs in time to watch the news headlines and also check his mailbox for any reply from the girl he dare not think of as anyone but Swallow. He will need to be careful not to disturb Francine. If he is heavy on the mattress or tugs the duvet too carelessly, she will wake, and then she will want him to stay where he is so that she, for once, can prepare breakfast for him in bed. She can be the waitress. He can be the guest. And then she’ll want to sit with him while he drinks his tea and opens the presents and cards she will have wrapped for him. Possibly they will make love again. High days and holidays, and anniversaries.

Leonard rolls over, transferring his weight as gently as he can, and slips quietly out of bed. The floor and air are wintry. Beyond the curtains, the sky is still dull, but the patio and garden show lustrous and satiny. The first frost of the year. But Leonard does not rummage for a sweater or a dressing gown. He steals out of the room, bare-chested and wearing only his snooza shorts, wraps a towel around his shoulders, and descends into the hall, where there are already several birthday cards waiting on the mat, together with circulars, and leaflets for a takeaway. Just at the moment when he stoops to gather them, a shadow falls across the door window. Someone rings the bell and, just for good measure, raps the knocker too. He expects it is a birthday delivery of some kind. But when he straightens with a handful of letters and leaflets and reaches for the lock handle, he sees at once through the brittled glass that there are several people standing on his porch. Large men. Instead of opening and answering, he goes into the little dressing room where he and Francine keep their bikes and coats, kneels on the floor, and pulls back one slat of the blind a centimeter or so.

Three men at least. Not anyone he knows by sight. There might be others farther along the path, hidden by the shrubbery. Certainly there’s movement. Shapes and shadows. Probably they are salesmen of some kind, cold-callers or political canvassers, or, given the numbers, some evangelical church group, and he will be required to stand on his front mat, half clothed and shivering, and account for his energy and Internet preferences, or his party and voting affiliations, or his expectations of paradise. If he stays still and out of sight for a minute or so, then surely they will take the hint and go away.

Leonard sits with his back to the wall, his head below the sill. He can’t be seen, he’s sure of it. This is a tried and tested hiding place that over the years has saved him from encounters with tiresome neighbors, charity volunteers, and unexpected friends. He’s becoming homophobic, Francine says: “Homo sapiens , that is.” He flexes his shoulders and neck. He studies his naked toes. He runs a finger down the front forks of his street bike and promises himself that he will ride it more often, just as soon as his shoulder repairs. The doorbell rings again, more heavily, and someone is rapping with keys or a metal pen on the dressing room window. Evidently Leonard’s flipping of the blind was noticed. The callers know his name as well. One of the men has his forehead pressed against the pane and is repeating, “Mr. Lessing, sir, please come to the door.”

Reluctantly, Leonard starts to stand. He knows that practiced tone of voice. But Francine is in the hall before him, barefoot, in her crumpled linen nightie, and is already pulling at the lock before she spots her husband rising to his feet. “What on earth—?” she says, though Leonard is not clear if that is aimed at him — his cowering, his seminakedness — or at their visitors, who, once the lock is sprung, are pushing back the door and, unlike the most determined salesmen, canvassers, or evangelists, entering the hall uninvited. And without wiping their feet. The first of them, a casually dressed man in his early thirties with a two-day growth of reddish beard, holds up his ID fob. “NADA,” he says, the misleadingly feminine and cozy — unless you’re Spanish — acronym for the National Defense Agency, not quite the police, not quite the SAS. The second and the third are older men, plump and neat and, it is clear at once, more polite, though both are evidently carrying handguns under their jackets. They could be brothers, except that one has a local accent and the other is a Scotsman. They show their own IDs — regular police officers — and hold up a printed document with the house address written out in heavy ink at the top. It’s a search and entry warrant, they explain.