Jim Crace - All That Follows

At first, with her husband at the wheel, Francine travels in silence. She is both burdened and elated. Undecided still. Once they have reached the country roads and there is spasmodic scenery — a nagging, undulating screen of protected hedgerows with vaults and cupolas of more distant woods and hills — she brightens up, sits straighter in her seat, breathes less reprovingly. “I’d better use my cell,” she says, and busies herself calling the eight guests for that evening’s birthday dinner party.

“Tell them you’re not well,” mutters Leonard, instantly regretting it. And, then, “Say that I’m not well.”

Francine’s not the sort to tell a lie. Nor is she the sort to break a confidence. “Something problematic has come up we’ve got to fix at once. We’re driving out of town,” she explains, managing to disguise the tension in her voice. “Don’t ask. It’s too embarrassing.”

“That’ll set their tongues wagging,” Leonard says, but does not add what he’s thinking, that sometimes fibs are best. More considerate, for sure.

Francine, convincingly warm and regretful on the phone, is clipped with him again. “Let them wag. So what?” But at least they’re talking now.

“I’m truly sorry about the dinner party,” Leonard says, a touch too stiffly, after he has spent some minutes planning how best to broker peace with his wife now that he has sulked for long enough.

“It’s not important, is it, now?”

“No, but it was kind of you. As usual.”

“A total waste.”

“It was a thoughtful … thought.”

“There’s presents too. And cards,” she says flatly. “You haven’t even opened them.”

“Who gives a damn about my birthday now, you selfish bloody idiot?” he says, risking the mimicry at her expense. “I’ve got another one next year. In fact, I’ve got one booked every year until I’m a hundred and one.”

“You hope. Not if it’s up to me, you haven’t.”

“Is that a threat?”

“I could’ve throttled you this morning.” At last Francine smiles at him.

“Still want to throttle me?”

“No question, yes, but not while you’re driving. Not while you’re driving my car. Not while I’m in it, anyway.”

“It’s ages since we’ve driven out of town together.”

“More fun than a dinner party, isn’t it? Less work! Less fattening!”

“It is more fun, if me and you are getting on.”

“We’re talking, aren’t we?” She runs her tongue along her bottom lip and looks at him. “And have you told me everything?” Leonard pulls a face. “Deep breaths are called for, don’t you think, Mr. Lessing? Actually, Lessing is the perfect name for you. Lessening. Keeping it moderate and—”

“Yes, yes, I’ve heard ’em all before. From you.”

“Well, have you?”

“What?”

“Told me absolutely everything?”

Leonard laughs. “Show me the man who will tell his wife everything. What is it that you think I ought to tell?”

“The truth might be interesting. The backstory. We’ve got all day.”

“None of it’s interesting , exactly. Let’s put some music on.”

Francine punches him softly in the arm. “I don’t want music now. No, absolutely not. Do what you’re asked for once.”

They sit in silence for some moments more, until they turn off the lorry route and reach open, quieter stretches of road. It isn’t quite the satiated, loving silence they enjoyed at Wilbury’s, but at least they have agreed to a working truce. Leonard reaches out with his good arm and takes his wife’s cool hand. His birthday’s saved, so long as he will talk.

“Now we are sitting comfortably,” Francine says, adopting her schoolteacher voice, “let’s begin at the beginning.”

“All that lousy David Copperfield kinda crap?” Leonard says evasively. He can see where this is heading.

“No, Austin, Texas, Maxie, all that meat.”

“It’ll be embarrassing.” But only if he tells the truth.

“Embarrassing for whom?”

“Well, not for you.”

“So what’s stopping you? Go ahead, embarrass yourself. But no embellishments. This isn’t jazz.”

WHENEVER LEONARD REMEMBERS AUSTIN and all that follows, as he must now for Francine, it is not long before the evening at Gruber’s Old Time BBQ intrudes itself, insists on being dwelled on once again. It seems, and is, an age ago, a time — the end of October 2006—when he is barely thirty-two years old, and as the single surviving heir unseasonably wealthy from the sale of his mother’s house. For the first time in his life, he is able to please himself — free of family ties, unexpectedly sprung from debt, his music training completed, his reputation as (yes, he boasts about himself) both adventurous and reliable onstage, “all styles,” growing. “That’s when we all met up,” he says. “When I was still political.”

Leonard has campaigned with Lucy’s mother, Nadia Emmerson. She is a spirited, tough-minded woman. He dates her once or twice, nothing more romantic than a campaign rally or the cinema. Nevertheless, because she is both lively and provocative, and like-minded too, he cultivates high hopes that eventually — if only he can dare to ask — they might become more than comrades. Their romance thrives in his imagination. When Nadia is there, he doubles his political exertions in order to impress her, phrasemaking excitably at meetings and leafleting with such speed or picketing with such fiery commitment that Perkiss would be proud of him. He even writes a strident piece for brass with Nadia in mind and fantasizes playing it at the head of some great march. But she has already accepted a visiting lectureship in politics at the University of Texas, commencing at the end of August, so their affair is brief and unresolved. “Come out and see me,” she has said more than once, a casual, noncommittal invitation that seems, in her absence, more promising the more he thinks about it. So, with his mother buried, the house finally off his hands, and half promises of session and recording work in New York, he e-mails her — rednadia@engol.com — explaining his misfortune and good luck, and presumes to say that he is missing her and plans on visiting, as she’s suggested.

Her reply is not discouraging. Yes, she has a loft apartment with a spare box room where he can “throw his coat.” And yes, she’ll be pleased to see him too, and catch up with his news. There is work to do in America, she says, ever the activist — wealth disparities need attending to, and then the war, the health-care crisis, the pirate corporations running everything, support for project families and victim neighborhoods. She’s joined Snipers Without Bullets, a local group of “Texan troublemakers.” “We’ve got something monster in the pipeline!!!” she writes. She knows that Leon, as he has taken to calling himself, will want to play his part. She can keep him busy, if he’s up for it. She’ll “welcome his political vitality.” It’s not exactly what he hopes to hear. She doesn’t mention Maxie or even that she isn’t living alone in Austin. She doesn’t mention that the loft is his. But he is there at the airport, on Nadia’s arm, the thickest head of hair in Texas, a handsome exclamation mark among the plumpers waiting at the foot of the exit escalator, and genuinely pleased, he says, to have another British visitor. Leonard tries not to let his disappointment show, but he cannot doubt that Maxie is at best a tiresome complication to his plans and preparations, and to the hopes — and contraceptives — he has packed.

They live in East Austin, between the looping railway track and Seventh Street, in what is a mostly black neighborhood of 1920s shingled bungalows and tarpaper shacks lately designated “cool” by landlords seeking higher white rents or undefended lots on which to build slab houses, McMansions, or “space-maximizing” apartments. Where there are still bungalows with porches, rocking chairs, loud dogs, and wide neglected yards, billboards are promising NEW FUTURE HOMES in “authentic Austin,” with every convenience from granite kitchen counters to poolside Wi-Fi access. “This quarter used to be real Austin,” says Maxie, sounding on early acquaintance to a British ear both hick and hip. High twang. “Now it’s just becomin’ real estate,” though what he introduces disapprovingly as his “residential livin’ unit,” a dull square three-room condo sparsely furnished with thrift-shop bargains, is neither authentic nor cool. “We’re the problem, white folks bustlin’ in,” he adds, with what seems to be conviction. “They oughta kick us out and pull this buildin’ down. They oughta drag us from our beds and murder one of us. That’d scare the yuppies off. I’m recommendin’ it. Works every time. You kiddin’ me? White flight.”