N. H. Emmerson, or at least the person who answers the phone, is female and not quite British. Canadian, perhaps. She sounds anxious, not used to evening calls.
“Is Lucy there?” he asks.
“Lucy who?”
“Lucy Emmerson.”
“We are Emmersons, but we haven’t got a Lucy here.”
“Do you have a Lucy in your family?”
“Who is this speaking, please?”
Leonard ends the call rather than answer, rather than be ill-mannered and not reply. He knows he has mishandled it. This time, with N. T. T., he’ll be more subtle. But there is no need. “Lucy’s living with her mum these days,” an older man volunteers at once.
“Is that with Nadia?”
“Correct.”
“Can I check her phone number with you?” Leonard reads out the last remaining number on his list.
“Correct,” the man says again. “Is it Lucy that you want? Say hi from Grandpa Norman, will you, when you speak? Do you take messages?”
“I can.”
“You can tell her that I’m sorry about her bicycle. Some people’ll help themselves to anything these days.”
“Somebody stole her bicycle?”
“Correct.”
Leonard cannot phone at once. His heart is beating and his mouth is dry. He drains the last few drops of now cold tea from the neck of his flask and clears his throat. If it weren’t for Francine, perhaps awake indoors, and maybe even calling out his name to no reply before coming downstairs in her bare feet, hoping to find her husband safe and deaf to the world between his iPod earphones rather than dead on the carpet, he’d leave this final call for fifteen minutes or so. Enough time for a fortifying shot of rum, if they still have any rum. Enough time for deep breaths and embouchures. He dares not risk the fifteen minutes, though. He keys the number at once and lets it ring. He will allow ten tones and then give up. A second and maybe better possibility would be showing up tomorrow at the Zone as agreed and talking then and there to Lucy, explaining to her face to face why her genius is flawed. Yes, that would be less cowardly and less immediate. But Nadia Emmerson answers her house phone at once. Her voice is still familiar and unnervingly attractive, though any trace of adopted Texan has gone.
“Has anybody at this number lost a bike?” Leonard asks, unable to stop himself from disguising his own voice.
“Good heavens, yes. My daughter has. Who’s talking, please?”
Leonard can hear a background voice, the television possibly, except that Nadia is shushing it. “It’s a man about your bike,” she says, off-mike, and to the phone, “Hold on. She’s coming now.” And here is Lucy on the line, teenage-husky and familiar. “Hey,” she says.
“Lucy, listen to me, this is Leonard Lessing,” he whispers. “Pretend to Nadia that someone’s found your bike, okay? Then redial me on this number in the morning, at nine o’clock. Exactly nine o’clock. We have to talk. Tomorrow morning, then. Don’t let me down.”
Leonard lets himself again into a lightless house and undresses in the hall, wincing off his sweater and his shirt. He stows his shoes on the shelf and carries his used clothes upstairs with him for the laundry pile. The floorboards wheeze beneath his feet. It is the second time today that he has stepped naked into the bedroom. Now that his troubles seem at least partially resolved, he is in a celebratory mood. Francine will leave for work tomorrow by half past eight, and by half past nine Leonard will have rescued himself from the madness that has trapped him briefly. He has been tired—the driving and the stress, the alcohol, the lies—but unexpectedly he now feels wide awake and optimistic rather than defeated. Francine has offered him an olive leaf. She’s coiled her fingers round his fingers. She has said “Kiss-kiss.” Perhaps she’s surfacing at last from the hollow of her missing girl, he thinks. I’m here to help, I’m here to cherish her. So he does not put on his snooza shorts but slides under the duvet undressed. He puts his hand on Francine’s hip. She’s not asleep. “Too late,” she says.
5
THERE’S
TIME TO KILL
. It’s Friday morning, hardly light, and Francine is already out of bed and showered. Leonard, woken by the jerk and flap of her towels and then the bluster of a hair dryer, watches her get dressed, side-lit through the gap in the partly drawn curtains. She’s always businesslike and practical on working days: her dyed auburn hair gathered at the nape of her neck in a grip, uncomplicated makeup, and what she calls her regimentals—trousers, cardigan, flat shoes, fabrics and colors that will not show dirt or mark too noticeably with scuffs from children’s shoes or paintbrushes. His wife of nine years now is at her most striking when she isn’t trying, in Leonard’s view. The less trouble she takes, the more beguiling she seems. He recognizes her daughter, Celandine, in her, in the girlish part: the unguardedly expressive wide mouth and the forward chin now lifted for the mirror—which, though Francine is forty-eight years old, suggest a dauntless spirit and an adolescent impudence and temper.
“You’re so alike, you two,” he often said, usually when they were forging truces after arguments. It was an observation neither welcomed. What young woman wants to be the mirror of her mother? What mature woman wants to be considered petulant? But the comparison was inescapable, especially in Celandine’s final months at home, at the beginning of last year. Then, during increasingly merciless and molten rows, their matching chins and mouths leading the assaults, Celandine’s face and voice became alarmingly adult and indistinguishable from her mother’s. They used to call him Cyrus, the Bringer of Peace (though more specifically the bringer of tea), on those occasions, allowing him eventually to broker a ceasefire by putting his arms round both of them and turning them to face each other until they would consent to hug. He suspected they despised him for it. Nevertheless, on occasion Francine would call out theatrically, “Cyrus, Cyrus, can we borrow you for a minute? Come here …” if a quarrel was brewing or if they needed arbitration. It is a pity, everyone agrees, that Cyrus was not on call that weekend when Francine’s and Celandine’s feet and fists took over from their mouths. There might not have been an argument at all, let alone a shocking catfight followed inevitably—given the two women’s stubbornness—by this interminable cold war. He could have stood between the squabbling pair and blocked the blows: Francine’s parental and reproving slap that drew blood (her wedding ring caught her daughter’s cheek), and Celandine’s excessive and intemperate response, followed by her midnight flight and spiteful, shamefaced silence ever since.
Nevertheless, it’s gratifying for Leonard now, as he sits naked in the bed in this half-light watching Francine pull her knee-highs on, to bring to mind again the corresponding figures and smells of the two women in his pacifying embraces. He even attempts to extend his arms, almost involuntarily acting out a reconciliation that now is possible only in a fantasy, though maybe not even then, before being reminded how painful extending his arms can be. His right shoulder is usually at its worst in his waking hours. He can stretch out his good left arm until it’s level with his shoulder, and higher even. But he can hardly lift the damaged one. Cyrus wouldn’t be much good for making peace between Francine and Celandine these days; he could embrace them only one at a time. Leonard reaches out again, tries to make a
T
. His damaged arm sticks and stutters like the hand on a jammed clock. The best time he can semaphore into the mirrors at the bed’s end, with his straight left arm marking the hour and his crooked right straining for the minutes, is 5:45, 5:55. His hour hand is stuck. The pain’s demanding that he stop.
“You okay?” asks Francine, catching him in a mirror.
“Still killing me.” She must be growing bored with his continual aches and pains. “The sound of one hand clapping,” he adds pointlessly, and then, hoping to make light of his condition, demonstrates how clownishly hard it is for him even to put his fingertips together behind his head. “The one-armed man is king.”
“You need more exercise.”
A
T LAST LEONARD HAS THE HOUSE
to himself. He has already, from the pillow, made his resolutions for the day. More exercise, indeed. But first, and shamingly, he has to escape from Lucy Emmerson. He has to free himself from her and revoke his promise. He can, of course—he has considered it—not take her call at all, even though he has demanded it himself. He can just sit and watch the set vibrate. Then, when he does not show up at the airport rendezvous either, she’ll be bound to figure out that Leonard isn’t kismet after all. That should be the end of it. But she might persevere. She is the sort and age to persevere. She’ll not be shaken off so easily. He quantifies the risks: she has his cell phone number but not his unlisted home address. She might make a nuisance of herself by phoning constantly, but surely not by knocking at his door. He has a sudden image of her trawling round the streets of his hometown, certain that she’ll find and recognize his “creepy van.” She daubs it thickly with black paint:
LEONARD LESSING—SCARED TO DEATH
. It is an improbable nightmare but a disconcerting one. No, there is no avoiding it. If Leonard wants to enjoy any peace of mind during the final day of his forties, he must put a stop to Lucy Emmerson at once. Their conversation might be thorny and embarrassing, humiliating even, but hardly as thorny and embarrassing as allowing her mad plot, this not-so-genius idea, to survive a moment more. He’ll take the call. He will be rid of her. Then he can begin to mend his ways. No more bellyaching about his shoulder, he determines. No more frittering the best part of each day. No more wasting his sabbatical. He’ll draw up a plan for the months ahead and for his sixth decade: the walks he’ll take, the meals he’ll cook, the worthy books he’ll read, the music he’ll try to write, the efforts and the sacrifices he’ll make for Francine’s happiness.
It is not yet 9 a.m. Leonard uses the remaining half hour before Lucy’s promised call to shower properly and dress before sitting at the pivoted table in the kitchen with his
Times
online and breakfast plate. The
Rise-Time
show is drawing to a close. He listens to but does not watch the weathercast, some joshing, parting repartee among that morning’s commentariat, and finally the rising headlines for the day: the Balkan Federation elects its president; another water crisis in Australia (“It’s H
2
Oz again!”); new treatment figures suggest that senile dementia has declined by almost 30 percent in the past decade; the death of the last Rolling Stone; Proposition 101. But not a word regarding Maxim Lermontov. Leonard checks the EuroFox channel and one or two of the more serious UK digitals, but discovers nothing. That’s both surprising and suspicious. It has to signify a news blackout under the Home Defenses Act. Such “benign security obstructions” have become more frequent recently, especially with the fast-approaching summit and inevitable disruptions on the streets.
There is, however, a brief, dry summary in the home news columns of the
Times
, under the misspelled strapline “Seige Enters Third Day.” Their correspondent writes: “The named suspect, an American national, is reported to have a record of criminal convictions including arson and motor vehicle theft as well as political ones, both in the United States and in Canada, where he sought and was granted protected residence in 2012 as a ‘citizen by birth.’” Leonard can predict Maxie’s irritation at such accurate reports, can almost hear him protesting in his stagy High Texan with that distinctive Yiddish edge, “I’m Russian, man! Russian out of U.S.A. So what, I wrecked a car or two? So what, I introduced some hellfire to a church ’n’ cindered it? ’N’ I hate to be picky, but it wasn’t arson, it was firebombing! Y’all hear?” Then, in the closing paragraph, Leonard reads, “The armed group are thought to have been under police surveillance since entering the United Kingdom in early July, and although their purposes are unclear, it is not counted in security and intelligence circles as happenstance that their arrival coincides with the upcoming Reconciliation Summit.”
Leonard would have preferred it if Maxie’s apparent “purposes” had been less commendable: unambiguously criminal, perhaps, with psychopathic tendencies, brutally expressed. That would better befit a man who, in Leonard’s opinion and experience, is “purposeless” and deserves little sympathy from liberals, a man who is more intent on turmoil for the sake of turmoil than on turmoil for the sake of change. But as ever, Maxie’s immoderation of action is validated by latching on to a rational and sympathetic cause. No one vaguely progressive, Leonard included, could wish the Reconciliation Summit well. So long as nobody gets injured, any boisterous and dramatic disruption to the week of meetings—even this armed and desperate hostage-taking in Alderbeech—might almost be welcome, might even be counted proportionate, given what one campaign group has already labeled passionately, if not pithily, “the vile offenses of the summit’s detestable guests.” But with Maxie, as Leonard knows too well, there are always injuries. The day is not complete without a bloody nose.
There is, of course, Take to the Curb, a peaceful vigil Leonard can attend himself on Tuesday afternoon, if he’s so concerned, with protesters lining the forty-kilometer route between the airport and the summit venue. It’ll take more than eighty thousand people, standing shoulder to shoulder, if there are to be no gaps, or one third of that if they are prepared to stretch their arms and hang on by their fingertips. But no matter how hard he tries, Leonard cannot imagine himself in line these days. He means to play a part but rarely does. His shoulder isn’t up to it, of course. It’s shaming, actually, to be so disengaged. What will his contribution be, this fist-clenching man who only yesterday claimed he “hasn’t lost the fire,” when the summit and the demonstrations start? Not waving fists, for sure, except in private and at the telescreen. Not waving placards or leafleting. Not even standing silently in line. No, standing back, nursing his shoulder. He’ll be standing back and watching it on-screen, at home, watching all the politics on-screen.