Jim Crace - All That Follows

“Well, that was obvious.”

“It was?”

“I think I frightened you.”

“I think you did.”

“It didn’t matter anyway. At least you didn’t let on and spoil it all. Except to Mum. And that was good. I hated seeing her at that press conference where she couldn’t even speak and looking, you know, so destroyed … You took a risk …”

Leonard’s smiling now, a touch awkwardly. “What else was I supposed to do? Mothers and daughters. It’s … umbilical. I know the score, more than anyone.”

“But it was absolutely radiant to see you being such a maniac when Dad was marched away. Those guys were terrified of you.”

“You think?”

“Took three of them to bring you down. I thought I must be dreaming. I couldn’t believe it was you. I played it over and over again, slo-mo, freeze frame. I recognized your little cap.”

Leonard taps his head.

“Everybody’s watching it. You’re the man right now. That bit where you were strolling off as if you couldn’t give a damn. They’re shouting out. They’ve got their red sights all over your back. It’s Dead Man Walking. And you’re, like, cucumber . Everybody wants to get your music now. All the downloads have been jammed. Did you know that?”

“I heard.”

“You can already buy a poster of that photograph. Under the jackboot. And there’s a T-shirt on the Web.”

“I heard that too. I won’t be getting one.”

“You ought to, though. A souvenir. You look like Che. You saw the film? That final photograph.”

“Except not dead.”

“No, not quite dead. What were you hoping to do?”

“What when?”

“When you were running up to Dad.”

I wasn’t hoping to do anything, he thinks. I was just hurrying, but hurrying forward for a change, heading for the lights instead of for the shadows. I only wanted to be seen. I wanted to be recognized. By Maxim Lermontov. To show my face to him.

“A bit of solidarity,” he says. “No more than that.”

“No pastarán.”

“Exactly so.”

Leonard and Lucy reach the vigil just in time and at a point, in the forty-kilometer route that the premiers and presidents will follow, where it is possible to step up to the very edge of the road. The plan is that at exactly 2 p.m. everybody will link hands and Take to the Curb on only one side of the road to form an unbroken, silent, disapproving line between the airport exit (by the Zone superstores, in fact) and the summit gates. Someone has done the adding-up: if the average span of two arms spread wide is about a meter and a half, completion of the vigil line will require about twenty-seven thousand participants. On a Sunday those numbers might be easily achieved, but on a Tuesday afternoon it is bound to be more difficult. Sympathizers have to work or be at school or be at home. Thank goodness that no rain has been forecast. The weather is being supportive of the cause. Nevertheless, the worry remains that there will be gaps in the line, especially in the long, remote, out-of-town stretches at both ends of the route, where the only guaranteed demonstrators will be those in their own vehicles or those bused in by the cleverly acronymed CARS, or Coalition Against the Reconciliation Summit.

Certainly, though, there are enough demonstrators on the section of road where Leonard and Lucy have finished up. At the moment everyone is hanging back, away from the curb, not wanting to dilute the drama of the link by standing in place before the moment comes. It is pleasing to witness such diversity, in sex and age and race, that is. It’s odd too to see so many smiling, self-approving faces. Unlike the usual street throngs, where pedestrians are impatient, rushed, ill at ease, harassed, aggressive, fearful, this crowd seems to have a single expression, a mixture of satisfaction and longing. It is an expression that intensifies, a little before the hour, when the groups of policemen gathered in the central reservation spread out in pairs and take up their stations in the nearside gutters of the road, facing the crowds. A moment later the last civilian vehicles — a couple of slow hybrids and, ironically but to cheers, a World Food delivery truck — pass by and the familiar roar of traffic ends. The route is clear, and there is brief silence until the marshals, counting down the seconds, put their playground whistles to their lips and play their single notes. The hour has arrived for Taking to the Curb.

Lucy and Leonard step forward with the rest. It is a scrum at first, but soon thins out, though not enough, as people jockey for a place. Unk and his very nearly goddaughter grip each other’s hand. He takes her left; she takes his right; and then they reach out for their nearest comrades in the line. Leonard finds a man about his own age. They nod and smile at each other, acknowledging the embarrassment and in doing so dispersing it. Lucy’s neighbor is a tall, pregnant woman in a blue cord coat and garden boots. Her rings clack with Lucy’s bracelet as the two link up. There are too many people. Nobody has to stretch their arms. Their shoulders cannot help but touch, competing for a place in line. Many demonstrators need to turn sideways if they want to poke a toe out into the carriageway.

Slowly, imperceptibly, as the minutes pass and the cavalcades of heads of state progress beyond the airport, the pack of participants around Lucy and Leonard starts to tug apart. The gaps between them widen. Their arms begin to lift. Their chests, which have been cramped, expand. It is as if they’re being pulled from both far ends by some force that is as strong and out of sight as gravity. It feels like falling. In all those places on the route where numbers are not so high as here, the CARS supporters are reaching out with their fingertips, dragging their companions after them, in order to close the gaps. And every gap that’s closed beyond the town is marked by widened arms in town. At last — it seems to take an age — there is a sudden settling. The pressure’s off. The final fingertips have touched. The hands have found a decent grip. No one needs telling that the line is complete, that all forty kilometers are now linked up. Everyone can feel it running through them, the kind of fizzing static that generates a shiver in the spine. Now no one dares or even wants to scratch his nose or reach into his pockets when his cell phone sounds. Leonard does not even mind his shoulder pain. His arms have never stretched this far before. He waits with twenty-seven thousand at his side, all hand in hand and ready for the hum of motorbikes and limousines.

FRANCINE IS SLEEPING DEEPLY through the night, no longer waiting to be called, no longer sitting up in bed abruptly woken by a silent phone. She has a daughter now. They talk. They meet. They do their best. Life’s not perfect, but it’s better than it was. She and Nadia stay in touch once in a while — a birthday card, a text, a scrap of news. Lucy and Swallow exchanged an e-mail each and meant to meet in town when they had the time, but time is short when you are young. It’s hard enough to stay in touch with people that you’ve loved.

And as for Leonard Lessing, he is well. Every dawn renews his hope and courage, he still finds. Each day provides a further chance to love his wife and make love to his saxophone. He leaves his instrument case open on the futon downstairs, ready to resume his long affair with music. He is composing and he is practicing again, determined to recapture any confidence he’s lost. “Lennie’s back in town,” his agent says, amazed to find that his client has attracted so many new, young fans so late in life, and so many offers of work. Next week he’s in the studio, recording his latest haul of tunes. He has accepted concert dates. He’s doing Desert Island Discs . He’s working on the sound track for a film.