18

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.

Tonight he’s gigging in Brighton at a pacifist benefit, for free. Back in the Factory once again. It’s no big deal, he reminds himself. But it’s not nothing either. He drives off early, takes the van down the country route, and arrives with enough spare time to walk along the promenade in the dark and practice embouchures and breaths. It won’t be long before he’s on the stage, all brass and fingertips and bulging throat. The audience will not know what to make of him. He doesn’t care. It’s Francine that he’s performing for again. He’s bound to think of her as she was on the night they met, damp, storm-tossed, and slightly drunk in her red coat, sitting in the third row of the gallery.

It’s almost time to play. He turns and heads back to the Factory. The tide is dragging shingle off the beach. The saxman cometh and his head is bursting now with jazz.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JIM CRACE is the author of nine previous novels, including, most recently, The Pesthouse. Being Dead was short-listed for the 1999 Whitbread Fiction Prize and won the U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 2000. In 1997, Quarantine was named the Whitbread Novel of the Year and was short-listed for the Booker Prize. Jim Crace has also received the Whitbread First Novel Prize, the E. M. Forster Award, and the Guardian Fiction Prize. He lives in Birmingham, England.