12

THE EMMERSONS LIVE IN THE SORT of digital Smarthouse designed to satisfy both fashion and environment—slot-in, prefabricated components but cottage-styled and then overbrightened and individualized with pastel StucoLux. They have the corner unit in a block of eight, with gazebo doors, dormered upper floors, an integrated glazed atrium at the back shared with neighbors, a wall-mounted carbon scrubber, and light-seeking energy scanners whirring on the roofs. Their StucoLux is beryl green. The building could be in any new development in almost any temperate city in Europe or New England, apart from the show of tended British evergreens breaking up the architectural lines of the suburban mews in which it stands.

Leonard is surprised: he has envisaged an ill-kept, narrow terrace house with peeling timber and cats, something batty or subversive, behind the times. Francine is disappointed; these increasingly ubiquitous Compact Intelligent Households are not cheap to buy or rent or run, so why choose one? Both expected the house to be more spirited than this bland and voguish eco-pod, and more in keeping with the hot-headed Sniper and the willful, sparky daughter described during the drive south in Leonard’s scrupulously selective account of his few days in Austin. “I like the sound of Nadia,” was all Francine offered, when he was finished and inviting her lenient response. She kept any thoughts on Comrades Gorky and Trotsky to herself, only nodding at her husband’s familiar frailties. She laughed out loud three times: when someone threw the dime at Mr. Sinister, when Laura Bush was floored, and when Leonard pissed on his own shoe.

They have left the Buzz in the local shopping precinct, recharging at a fuel unit in the rooftop car park, and walked the last five hundred meters not quite arm in arm but shoulder to shoulder. When they reach the Emmersons’ block, they do take hold of each other, though, posing as a blandly contented couple, unhurried and companionable, simply walking down the street and going about their errands. At first there is no evidence of any police or security services outside the house, but the residential parking spaces are all occupied, and in a side road opposite two photographers are sitting on the bonnets of their cars, waiting for some “show.”

“Let’s ring her bell,” says Francine at once. “Why ever not?” Leonard hasn’t seen her look so energized or so amused for months.

“I can’t do that. What if she isn’t on her own?”

“You can’t. I can. She won’t know me. I can always say I’ve got the wrong address. Walk on. I’ll catch you up.” She pushes him in the ribs, halfway between an impatient shove and a playful prod. “Buck up, Leon. Ain’t we the warriors?”

Leonard’s heart is racing as he continues up the mews. “I can’t do that” is one of those phrases that Francine has often teased him about. He knows he should at least have gone up to the door with his wife, or, better, volunteered to ring the bell himself, alone. He could pull his scarf and collar up. He’d not be recognized. It’s too late now, however. What’s the point of beating himself up about it on his birthday? He’s already been beaten up enough today and, on present evidence, can expect to be teased and prodded for many hours more. Even so, he cannot help pretending, as he walks along the street while Francine takes the risks, that he has volunteered and that he is alone on Nadia’s step, where he is recognized by her at once, though his face is masked. For a moment Leonard has her standing at her door in the same pajamas she wore in Texas on the day the Bushes came to town.

This Nadia, this one who knows him straightaway, is not the Red Nadia of old, plucky, stocky, and attractive, and, like her daughter, just a little mad; nor is she the hardly recognizable plump, sobbing mother from this morning’s news; nor the sofa socialist of Lucy’s description. She is Leonard’s own creation, but idealized and updated over time. She has matured into handsome middle age but, like Francine, is still strident and exciting. He has visualized making love to her countless times, because he never did make love to her at all. She is unfinished business. She is his road not taken, as it were. Mostly, when they are having sex in his imagination, they are fugitives, holed up in the woods or sharing floorboards in some radical squat, passionate and breathless, waiting for the timbers of the door to splinter or the wail of sirens to bring their loving to a halt. He has also sometimes—too often to admit—thought of her dressed up for the Capitol. She’s at her sexiest, as he remembers it. She’s put on lipstick for a change. She has a brooch. She has heeled shoes. Her linen pantsuit hugs her bottom well. A fiery, pregnant woman deliciously disguised. They’re waiting for the first lady to say child. And when she does say child, both Nadia and Leonard will be on their feet and heading for the podium. Yes, both of them. Now it isn’t Laura Bush who’s bumping heads with her, it isn’t Laura Bush who takes hold of though does not tug her hair, but Comrade Leon Lessing. They will have a future in each other’s arms. Ten pairs of hands take hold of him. Ten pairs of hands are pulling him. But all those Secret Service men and Texan Volunteers will not have the strength to drag him free, until Francine catches up with him and he must shake away the thought.

As it turns out, Nadia is at home but not alone. The door is answered by an officer in uniform. “Ah!” Francine lets her mouth fall loose and arches her eyebrows, faking her surprise. “Is this the right address?”

“Depends. Who are you looking for?”

“Ms. Sickert. Celandine,” she says instinctively. “My daughter’s place.”

He shakes his head. “Wrong house, I think. I’ll ask.” He turns away from the front door to reveal a woman—Nadia—standing at the dark end of the hallway, her face scumbled by shadow, her shoulders down. What had she hoped for when the doorbell sounded? “Anyone you know called Sickert Celandine—”

“Celandine Sickert,” Francine corrects him, automatically, and looks directly at Nadia, offering a smile to the woman. A smile of solidarity, of course. She knows exactly what it means to be fearful for a daughter, how the throat and heart are gripped by some keen torturer every time there is a caller at the door, or the trill of incoming e-mail, or someone on the phone, how the shoulders mass and sag, how the shadows gather round, how even talking is at times such a punishing and heavy task that it is easier just to shake your head than say, “Nobody of that name is here.” Just naming Celandine out loud, as Francine has just done, is painful still, even after eighteen months of getting used to it. Three syllables of pain. At once the memories stack up: that final, shocking, violent clash, that unsigned farewell note (“Dear Family, I’m moving out & moving on. No need to be in touch. X”), the early days of constant hope and bursting into tears and being practical, topping up her daughter’s phone until the number was discontinued, the weekly text messages she sends, the no-replies, the e-mails that are blocked or failed, and then the months of nagging dreams in which Celandine herself is blocked or failed or discontinued. She is floating facedown in a canal, or padlocked in a room, or working on the streets, strung out and pale, or—hard to swallow, this—she’s safe and well and happy in her life. No need for Mummy now. Or Unk.

“What names again?” asks Nadia, stepping forward and peering over the policeman’s epaulettes at the stranger on her step.

“Celandine Sickert?”

“No.”

Later there is better luck, although it does not seem so immediately. After killing an hour over coffee and more questions about Nadia and Maxie at the local Starters, Leonard and Francine are walking toward the Emmersons’ front door for the third and, they have determined, final time. They have a plan. If all is clear, Leonard will distract the photographers with some bogus query while Francine delivers an envelope marked “Nadia/Personal,” containing the unsigned note that she has written spikily with her left hand on the back of a Starters coaster: “Lucy safe. With friends. Not kidnapped. Teenage escapade. Tell nobody. DO NOT WORRY.” But in the event there is no need for any note. Much to the relief of the now four waiting photographers, Nadia Emmerson, dressed in a gratifyingly adventurous multicolored overcoat, steps out of her front door and gets into a silver citicar driven by a heavily built police minder, out of uniform. The uniformed officer that Francine spoke to earlier takes up sentry duty outside the house. He pops a sweet into his mouth. He looks as if he means to make it last.

“That’s it, then, I suppose,” Leonard says, both disappointed and relieved that the note is now undeliverable and that, for the time being, Nadia Emmerson is out of reach. He’s done his best; it’s not his fault—the usual chorus line. “It is my birthday, after all,” he reminds Francine. “What do you say we find ourselves a country pub, with a restaurant?”

“We could.”

Back at the rooftop car park, though, while Leonard is disconnecting the charger leads and settling the bill with his fob, Francine spots the silver citicar again, parked two spaces forward. The officer is sitting with the window down and with his in-screen switched on, tuned too loudly to a football channel, and muttering fan rant to himself. It’s midafternoon on a Saturday. The football season’s hot-ting up, and here’s an opportunity. He’s on duty, but he doesn’t have to miss the match.

“She’s only gone shopping, wants to take her mind off things,” Francine says, clapping her hands with satisfaction. “And she’s on her own. How lucky’s that? Her ape would rather sit up here and watch the game than do his job. Thank heavens for slackers.”

“What now?”

“Come on. We’ll sleuth her down,” she says, clearly enjoying herself.

There is no immediate sign of Nadia’s loudly colored overcoat in the avenues of the ground-floor concourse, so Leonard and Francine separate. She takes all the shops and cafés in the southern wing, at a dash, in what must seem a familiar panic to passing women. She’s just another scatty shopper who has left a bag behind or misplaced a child. He strides north with measured steps, peering into or briefly entering shops but trying not to draw attention to himself. There’ll be security cameras and precinct guards. Despite his care, he’s breathless soon, and sweating. He searches amongst the shelves of a B&N bookshop, not quite expecting he’ll discover his old comrade indulging her passions in “Politics and History,” but being logical and thorough. Now he’s squeezing between the aisles of a pharmacy, his shoulders brushing customers and, embarrassingly, toppling rows of shampoos and conditioners. He’s in the Java Café lounge, turning on his heels and scanning every circle of sofas for a glimpse of Nadia. He’s checking an energy advice agency—no luck—and then crossing the concourse toward a food store. He does not even reach the automatic doors. Francine is here. She grabs his coat. “Got her,” she says triumphantly.

“Show me.”

“Not me. You’re going on your own. This is something you must do.”

“Where is she, then?”

“In Maven’s, treating herself to a pair of pants.”

“Not underpants?” Leonard puts his hand to his brow. He can’t be expected to approach her on his own while she’s buying underclothes. He wants to say, “I can’t do that.”

“No, trouser pants. You idiot.” Francine shakes her head dramatically. She adds, “Are you afraid of everything, including clothes? Just go.” She pushes him. She’s pushed her husband quite a lot today.

This Maven’s department store is just like every other Maven’s in the country: cluttered, cheerful, cheap, and understaffed, with an overriding smell of cardboard and cloth and an unbroken sound track of music, offers, and announcements. As usual, Male Box is to the right of the doors, close enough to the entrance for men to find easily and be tempted to buy before they are tempted to bolt. Women shoppers are expected to be more focused and even to prefer to go beyond the menswear, kitchenware, bedding, and electronics sections to the more private carousels and racks of women’s clothes at the back end of the store. The deeper Leonard ventures, trying to look purposeful, the less purposeful he feels. He’s not rehearsed. He’s not decided what to say. But when he reaches the far end and quickly prowls all corners of the section, there is no sign of Nadia. He’s looking for her coat. She might be carrying it by now or might have hung it up somewhere. So now he prowls again, looking for a face to recognize.

She comes out of the changing rooms just ahead of him, wearing her coat and carrying two pairs of trousers over her forearm and another pair on a hanger. It’s easy, then. He’s walked straight into her. Now that he sees her in the flesh, even from behind, he can recognize Lucy in her: that boxy build and pale, scrubbed skin. Her height. Her walk, even. It seems just hours ago, rather than days, that he has been clipping this woman’s daughter’s heels with just the same uncertainty, plucking up courage in his yellow beach cap to blurt out, “I knew your father” at her back. This time he just says, “Nadia.” She is either too deep in thought to hear him or she has simply buried Leonard’s greeting in the noisy mayhem of the store. He tries again, closer but more lightly: “Hi, Nadia.” It’s as if he is a familiar neighbor. No big deal. Certainly that is what she takes him for. “Oh, hi,” she says. “How’s it going?”

“You don’t recognize me, do you?”

“I know the voice.”

“We spoke the other night. On Thursday night.”

“Where did we speak?” She looks about her, uneasy now, but reassured by the nearness of a pair of women in the next aisle and a shop assistant at the till.

“On the phone.”

She shakes her head and tucks her chin. She’s doesn’t know what he means.

“I phoned about the bike. Your daughter’s bike.”

She’s thinking now and making fast connections. She looks at him again, steps back a pace, looks round to check that she can get away if need be, glances at his hair, then looks down at his hands. “Leon … Lessing?”

“That’s me.”

“I’ve told the police.”

“I know you’ve told the police. I’ve spoken to the police.”

“I have a policeman with me now.”

“He’s on the roof, watching the match. He won’t trouble us.”

She backs away a further step. One more step and she’ll be out of reach. He stretches out to hold her arm or sleeve. But she’s too quick, and getting angry now.

“Jesus, Lennie. Is that what you call yourself these days? What is going on? What do you want?” She edges round behind a display of skirts.

“I want you to know that Lucy is all right. She’s safe. She’s not been kidnapped. Not at all.”

Nadia has dropped the trousers and has her cell out before he notices. He has no choice but to dart forward and take hold of her wrist, making her let go of the phone. It clatters to the floor. She calls, angry and alarmed, but nobody comes to help. The two women shoppers look up and exchange grimaces. A man and wife are arguing, that’s all. Husbands are a pain, especially in shops. Men are bullies, all of them.

“You have to trust me, Nadia.” His mouth is a centimeter from her ear. He can smell her hair and perfume. He’s tugged his damaged shoulder far too hard in seizing her, and it is hurting considerably. “Don’t phone the police, not now. Stay quiet, stay still, and I’ll explain it all.” For reasons he can’t understand, except to normalize this encounter and to flatter her, he adds, “You haven’t changed a bit. It’s eighteen years. I’d recognize you anywhere.” He waits for her to say the same to him, to say that he appears much less than fifty years of age, to say that she’s followed his jazz career for years and it’s “brave stuff.” But her look is hostile still, and fearful. She seems in pain. He lets go of her wrist, realizing far too late that he is gripping it too tightly. What must she think of him? He’s shocked and trembling. He’s never frightened anyone before. He steps away, well out of reach. “Sorry, Nadia.” She rubs her wrist, shakes her head at him contemptuously, then rescues her cell, picks up the trousers, and drapes them over the end of a rack.

“Let me say one thing. It’s going to make you feel okay,” he says.

“So talk. So make me feel okay. You better had. Where’s my Lucy? Tell me that.” She retreats a little further into the racks of clothes. Leonard can see she is ready to make a dash for it.

“Let’s find a safer place,” he says.

Leonard explains almost everything in the cafeteria on the first floor above Maven’s. He tells Nadia Emmerson that he does not know where her Lucy is, but he’s certain what she’s done and why. She listens as he lists it all: the yellow cap, the red beret, the beer, the wine, the cigarettes, the promises he made, the rendezvous, the phone calls and the stolen bike, that morning’s raid on his house.

“How old are you?”

“I’m fifty. Today.”

“And Lucy? Remind me. How old is she?”

“She’s seventeen,” he says, almost inaudibly.

“Exactly so. Just seventeen. So which of you, do you suppose, should have put an end to this before it happened? You should have called the police at once. You should have found me. Shouldn’t you? She’s just a girl who wants to be a heroine. What were you thinking of?”

“I thought I’d be a heroine as well.”

She looks at him and shakes her head. Her mood has softened now. Lennie Less, the heroine. “Well, she’s headstrong, that’s for sure.”

“You were once.”

“We all were once. But we grow up.”

“Maxie hasn’t grown up. Evidently.”

“Maxie is just a pot of bile. That’s all there is to him. He never really meant to make the world a better place. He only ever wanted to throw punches. Well, you saw that yourself.”

“He never hit me, actually.”

“Aren’t you the lucky one? Indeedy-doo-wa, Comrade Leon walks away unscathed. Remember that?”

Leonard cannot pretend he is not startled. That exact and shaming phrase has not been heard for eighteen years; nor, evidently, has it been forgotten or forgiven. “You weren’t the lucky one, I take it?” he asks, attempting to disguise the cause of his surprise.

“You never knew? You could have guessed. He hit me plenty of times. Oh, well—”

“That’s Politics and History.”

“That’s love, I guess. The only trouble was, he and I both loved the same person. And now he’s back in town.”

“And armed.”

“This is a nightmare, isn’t it? I knew it would be the moment I saw him and his hair standing on my step in August. Maxie doesn’t make social calls. There’s always, you know, some upheaval planned. Lucy wouldn’t listen to me, of course. Big mess she’s made of it.”

“Disastrous, I know.”

“Great help you’ve been. Some ally. So what’s new?” She’s prompting him to say something about that final day in Austin, Leonard realizes. She said then, before he set off for the Capitol, “You have the right, a duty even, to speak your mind. That’s what alliance means.” He let her down in Texas. He’s let her down again.

“I’ve never had a head for heights,” he says, spreading his hands to surrender an apology. “Or fights.”

“Well, that’s the truth. Ever the invertebrate.”

“What are you thinking now?” Leonard wants to move their conversation away from bruising territory. Decaf? Invertebrate? This is a consensus he would prefer not to explore.

“I think I’m feeling mightily relieved. No thanks to you. Well, hardly any thanks to you. Quite honestly, I couldn’t trust you less right now. Lennie Less.” She laughs at him.

“I mean, what do you think you’ll do?”

“It’s not your business, is it? Except you’ll have to talk to someone and own up to your lack of brains.”

“Not yet.”

“Yes, at once. Upstairs. I want you talking to my cop. And I want my daughter back with me by teatime. Otherwise. Well, otherwise, the shame is yours.” Nadia pauses for a moment, an eye flicker, no more. “Shame, shame, shame. Remember that, Comrade Leon? Ring any bells? I’ve not forgotten it. Nor the fourteen months I served for it. Malicious damage, public disorder, and assault. Lucy is a prison kid. Did you know that?” She offers him a nod, and then—seeing how appalled he looks—the stiffest of smiles. She’s still attractive, sparky too, he thinks, surprised that he can rescue any comfort from the jaws of this defeat. She stands and turns to collect her scarf and bag from the back of her chair. “A nightmare, yes. Don’t make it worse,” she says. “Do yourself a favor. Go to the police at once. Before I start to yell.”

Now that Nadia is no longer looking at him directly, Leonard dares to touch her lightly on her upper arm. “What if—”

“I’ve heard enough. Don’t try to wheedle me.” She shakes him off.

“I wasn’t wheedling. It’s just …” He pauses, choosing his words carefully. He has got to get this right. “I was telling Lucy how you …” He was going to say, used to be a militant. But used to be is a loaded phrase. “What a firebrand you are. Really headstrong, like we said. I have to tell you that Lucy said she’s never seen that part of you. I think she’d like to see that part of you. What daughter wouldn’t?”

“What are you now, a family counselor?”

“Sorry,” Leonard says, not meaning it. He can see by the flutter of her eyes that what he says is reaching her. “What if …” he asks again. What if her daughter has had a truly genius idea? What if Lucy is correct, that believing his rediscovered child is in tit-for-tat danger might stop Maxie hurting anyone, including himself, might bring the Alderbeech siege to a bloodless end? “Could you live with not giving it a chance?”

“Nobody wants bloodshed,” she says distractedly. Nobody except Maxie, that is. Bluedsched.

“So here’s my thought, Nadia: keep Lucy’s secret for a while. No one need ever know. Give her till Monday, say. Let her be the little heroine while she’s young enough to care. Be her comrade here. The firebrand mum. That’s what she wants.”

She shakes her head. She’s wavering but not enough. “Who are you to say what Lucy wants?”

He almost answers that he is her unofficial godfather. If it weren’t for him and the thousand dollars, “twelve hundred, tops,” that he wouldn’t loan Maxie, none of this might have happened. Instead, he says, “It’s my birthday, Nadia. Today.”

“You said.”

“So just for old times’ sake—”

“Ha! What old times?”

“Allow me this. Allow your daughter this. One final thing. One final favor, please.”

“Allow you what?”

“I want you to meet my wife. Francine.”

“Why would I ever want to meet your wife?”

“Because if you two meet, you’re bound to trust me more.”