Jim Crace - All That Follows

Leonard and Francine walk twice across the street, hoping perhaps to catch some sign of life inside the house, but see nothing to detain them any longer.

“It looks more interesting on the television,” Leonard says. He feels he needs to apologize, as if somehow the scene’s lack of energy is his responsibility. “What do you suppose is going on in there?”

“They’re watching television,” Francine says. “That’s how it works. That’s the deal. We watch them, and they watch themselves. It doesn’t happen on the street. It only happens on the screen.” Leonard nods but does not meet her eye. She’s said as much before to him, and meant it as a criticism. She thinks he watches television far too much, that the remote console is well named. He is consoled by it; he is unreachable.

“I’ll mend my ways,” he says, though that is what he always says. He rarely acts on it. He cannot pretend to share his wife’s gadget nausea or sympathize with her refusal to engage with any of the bloatware he has downloaded to their systems.

“But now let’s wend our ways.” She’s evidently in a punning, merry frame of mind. Her time with Nadia has cheered her up, illogically. Their hearts have been emptied and their troubles have been shared. They’ve promised that they’ll stay in touch. They have agreed, as Leonard thought they would — his wife’s persuasive when she wants to be; she will have swept Nadia’s qualms aside — that Lucy should be allowed, until Monday anyway, to enjoy her adventure, unbetrayed, and that Celandine is bound to show up safe and well in her own good time. Both women leave the cafeteria less burdened. Excited, even.

“Back home?” says Leonard.

“No, let’s break the mold for once. It’s your birthday, isn’t it? I haven’t even kissed you yet.” She pecks his chin. “Let’s find a pub or restaurant. Let’s have champagne.”

It is the second time that Leonard walks the streets between the hostage house and the suburb’s row of shops with its one restaurant (not open yet) and the same pub — the Woodsman — that he and Lucy visited two days ago. They do not go into the yard. No need for that. They are no longer smokers. Instead, they find a table in what is called the Parlor Bar & Bistro, where there is waitress service and a sundown menu of appetizers. They order poppy bread and olive dip, vegetable wedges, fried garlic and haloumi, and a whole bottle of champagne. They are the only customers. It’s intimate: table lamps and easy chairs, a corner, dusk. They drink and talk and reminisce self-consciously.

“You realize I didn’t mean half that stuff this morning,” Francine says.

“What stuff?”

“You know …” She beams at him. “‘You selfish bloody idiot.’ That stuff.”

“So what half did you mean?”

“None of it — well, hardly none of it. I only mean it at the time. It doesn’t last.”

It lasts for me, thinks Leonard, not quite managing a beam in return. “Decaf!” he says eventually. “That got to me. It sounds like impotent . In all its ways. And cowardly.”

“I didn’t mean you’re always cowardly … no, take that back.” She pegs her mouth playfully. “I’ll be careful. Timid is the better word.”

“Depends who’s saying it and who’s accused of it. Timid ’s not a word I like that much, to tell the truth.”

“Squeamish , then.”

“Oh, this is so much fun when you’re being more careful! Squeamish , am I now? Hell, Frankie. Get out the thesaurus, why don’t you? How about inhibited … repressed— ”

“You have a point. I’m teasing you.”

“You’re bullying me?”

“It’s good for you. You know it is. No, what I’m saying is … sometimes I think it’s just as well I’m here to bully you, because if I wasn’t breathing down your neck some of the time—”

“And prodding me.”

“And prodding you, then you’d just sit back and Google your life away. Admit it, you’re a screen slave, Leonard. I prefer it when …” She hesitates, wanting to strike a loving, hopeful note before it’s too late. She loves him, after all. And she is in a brighter mood than she has been in for months. For eighteen months. (Nadia has cheered her up. That daughter talk. That safe and well.) It’s time to end hostilities.

“You prefer it when what?” he asks.

“When we have fun.” Fun , as Leonard knows, is one of Francine’s favorite words, but one she hasn’t used much recently. It is her greatest compliment, to say that someone has been fun. “I’m going to hold my tongue from now on and be all sweetness and light, the perfect loving wife on hubby’s fiftieth. Because everything has started to turn out well today, hasn’t it?” she says, almost in her classroom voice. “I shouldn’t admit to this, I’m being bad, but it’s the truth. Dodging those awful goons back home. The drive down. Hunting Nadia in the shopping mall. Meeting one of your old flames—”

“Let’s not exaggerate.”

“Going to the hostage house. Drinking bubbly here. It’s been enormous fun. And you’ve been bouncy, haven’t you? We’re always better together, don’t you think, when you show a bit of swing?”

“Like on gigs, you mean?” Her glass is empty. He looks down at the bottle. Almost empty too.

“No, not only with the saxophone. That was mean of me. Let’s see …” Now, here’s an opportunity. “Remember that ECM Jazz Gala in Budapest about six years ago?”

“I do.” They had sex every night. “We made love every night.”

“Do you remember flying out?”

He does. He’s never been that scared since. The gales were so turbulent across the runway that the pilot was forced to abort his landing a meter from the ground and toil into the storm again. They had to circle, jettisoning fuel in cyclone winds, for forty more minutes before being cleared to try again. Leonard’s terror was so excessive that it rendered him powerless, motionless, expressionless, and mute, hardly able to breathe, let alone scream. He still remembers with unnerving clarity how the luggage lockers in the cabin all dropped open in one deafening clunk and how the coats and cases stowed above their heads dislodged and fell into the aisles. Outside, beyond the streaming window glass, the skyline of Budapest tossed and seesawed like a ship.

“I was absolutely sick with fear,” Francine says. “But you were totally calm. And comforting. Boy, you hardly raised a sweat. The only one on board. I thought you were so cool that day. And hot! That’s why we tumbled into bed so much.”

“Not quite the Mile High Club.”

“Now there’s a thought.” Francine wraps her hands around her champagne glass and stares into it, smiling self-consciously. “Truth or dare,” she says finally. “Did you make love to Nadia? With Nadia?”

“When?”

“Not in Maven’s, obviously.”

“In Texas?”

“Yes.”

“The answer’s no.”

“Before that, then?”

“Not exactly.”

“You go blotchy when you’re lying, Leonard.”

“I’m blushing because I’m telling the truth. Because the answer’s no again. Another failure. We exchanged slogans but no fluids.”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you had. She must have been dramatic then. She still looks good. Don’t you think? Leonard, look at me. I’m asking you.”

It is the alcohol. They’re giggling, like people half their age, and Francine is reaching out to hold his hand across the table, not in the way she reached out for Nadia’s, stroking it to comfort her, but flirtingly, meshing her fingers between Leonard’s and lacing her legs round his below the tabletop.