“What have you done today?” she asks.
“Played a bit of saxophone. Wrote half a song. Went round the park.” He will not mention Swallow / Celandine just yet. Francine must think he’s spent a screen-free day. Besides, in the hour since he discovered the Frazzle-loving girl on the networking site, his confidence that she is almost certainly his stepdaughter has waned. Coincidence is all it is. A dog, a bird, but nothing definite.
“Jog round the park, did you?” Francine indicates his sweatpants and raises an eyebrow.
“Got wet, got changed,” he says.
“I tried to phone, but you were dead.”
Leonard blushes more deeply now. What can he say? That the park has no network provision. She’ll know that isn’t likely. That he’s been out to Pepper’s Holt. “Again?” she’ll ask. “That’s twice this week.”
“I left my cell here, turned off,” he says. “I was only going to the shops. For these.” He hands the autumn mix to her, still wrapped. She smiles. She kisses him. She says, “They’re beautiful.” But there is something missing in her face and in her voice. She sees his gift is incomplete; perhaps, she sees her husband has not given it his usual loving touch.
They do make love before they go out to the restaurant. Francine has decided that they will, they must. She caught him watching her reflection in the mirror this morning, watching her pull on her clothes, put back her hair, apply her lipstick, and she has seen the worry in his face and recognized his steadfast love for her. She knows they have drifted and she blames herself for that. She blames herself for being sharp with him, for parting from him in the morning and at night with dismissive quips like “That was then” and “Too late now” and “You need more exercise.” He brings her breakfast in the morning, doesn’t he? He brings her Florentines. He buys her flowers. She wants to be kinder to him, more giving and more generous, more physical, no matter that she feels as hollow as a shell. She phoned him this afternoon without success to say just this: Tomorrow you’ll be fifty years of age. Let’s make your birthday memorable.
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.
8
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.
“Why’s that?” asks Francine.
“Mrs. Lessing?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
They’ve come for Francine, Leonard thinks. It’s all to do with her. His body blushes with relief, a little guiltily. What has she done? Or what has happened at her school? A kid’s been hurt, perhaps. Didn’t she mention some incident the other day? A broken arm? Then, suspecting worse, his body blushes cold again. Three officers—and now he sees another one in uniform standing at the outer gate—is quite a force. Something personal and certainly more tragic than a broken arm must have happened for so weighty a response. It’s Celandine, he thinks. There’s no one else. And as he thinks it, Francine thinks the same. She almost sinks onto the ground; her face is instantly as white and crumpled as her nightie. “Is it Celandine?” she says, talking to the older men. “Has something happened to our girl?”
“Who’s Celandine?” the NADA agent asks.
“My daughter. Celandine Sickert.”
“How old’s she?”
“She’s only twenty.”
“Is she at home?”
“She went away … last year.”
“Where is she now?” His tone is browbeating.
“Do
you
know where she is?”
He does not even shake his head, but turns to his two colleagues and says, “So let’s get on with it.”
“Get on with what?” Leonard feels he ought to speak, and firmly. These are Franco’s men. “This is not acceptable,” he says, with as much dignity as a shivering man in his underclothes can display. “This is a family home. My wife has not done anything, I’m sure. Make a proper appointment if you must. You could at least have wiped your feet. In fact, you ought to take your shoes off at the door like any other visitors.” He wags a finger at the costly floor timbers—British cherrywood—and shakes his head, though there’s not a mark on them.
“This is not a social call,” the young one says.
“It certainly is not.”
“Can we suggest you pop into your living room, the pair of you, and give us twenty minutes?” the Scotsman says, attempting a smile but already spreading his arms and herding them toward the door of the teleroom. “Sit there.” He points toward the futon. “We’ll not be long. If all is well.”
“Can we at least dress ourselves?”
“No, sir. Stay exactly where you are.”
“I’m cold.” Leonard regrets admitting it at once. It has made him sound too timorous and frail.
Foolish fragile feeble flimsy frail
, he thinks.
The Scotsman puts a reassuring, warning hand on Leonard’s upper arm. Bare skin. “We’ll not be long,” he promises.
“I also have a shoulder condition.” Leonard winces at the policeman’s touch, more from embarrassment and cold than any honest pain.
They are not long. But they are noisy. Francine and Leonard listen to the thump of feet on the floorboards above, the unlocking of cupboards and the slamming of doors, the rolling open of drawers. They hear the scrabble of a dog, and finally see it, a rangy, heavy-hipped Alsatian, with its handler, first on the patio, picking up the scent of cats, and then tugging on its lead toward the little outbuilding and the garbage trolleys. The Scotsman has not left the room. He’s minding them, but he has the good manners not to stare directly at them as they sit, with four bare knees, four bare arms, and their nightclothes. He does, though, study Francine, watching her reflection in the window glass. He can smell, as Leonard can, the sleep on her, the loose ends of the perfume she used the night before. He has every reason to admire her legs and hair. He does not turn when she and her husband start whispering. “I’ll ask you not to talk. Just yet. If you don’t mind,” he says, and then adds—requiring no reply and not inferring any approval either—“Interesting place you’ve got.” By interesting, he means eccentric and suspicious.
Within thirty minutes they are done. The policeman with the local accent puts his head round the living room door and tells his colleague, “Not a sign. We’re clean,” and Francine and Leonard are thanked for their patience and asked to go upstairs—without a minder—and to dress. “What’s going on?” they ask each other, as soon as they are out of earshot and pulling on the first clothes they can find in their disordered bedroom.