If you are fatally shot the night before you lead your people in a great triumphal march for freedom, wondered Felicity, what does it feel like? As you watch your own blood seeping, pump by excruciating pump, do you try in vain to squeeze your arteries shut against the tide? Or is it your breath you try to control, each drop of oxygen granting you another few seconds of life, but costing you agony as your tattered lungs heave against the weight of the air pressing down on them? In that moment, do you wish yourself back to a time when you could have chosen another life, an ordinary one, a quieter one? Was there ever such a time, or were you always marked, both for greatness and for suffering?
Felicity carried the last pile of files into the back room of the law office where Claude waited with a box. “This is everything from this week, Claude,” she said.
Claude clapped his hands. “Good. Good.”
“Three more housing complaints.”
“And a criminal case. Black boy caught shoplifting with two white friends who never got charged.”
The building, an abandoned grocer in Shepherd’s Bush, had slowly taken shape to become the Black London Legal Help Society. Neville and Claude had drawn on their vast network to receive help with painting, sanding, knocking down walls, and installing lights. There was no lack of need, and no client was turned away if they could not pay. Whenever Felicity was not in class or a rehearsal, she was at the office performing secretarial and receptionist duties.
Claude described the cases without his usual enthusiasm. He had hummed at a lower frequency since Friday, when their alarm clock had trilled them awake. Claude turned on the radio and Felicity headed to the bathroom, stumbling as she walked. She had been to Cambridge on the train the day before to rehearse Beethoven’s Ninth with her Counterpoint professor, Dr. Wells, who was the guest conductor. They had had a few pints together afterward, and Felicity’s head felt heavy and her tongue dry.
Felicity was supposed to receive her diploma next month, but her marks in Counterpoint were atrocious and had placed her graduation in jeopardy. Her mother had booked a ticket to come to London for the occasion, and Felicity had toyed with the idea of introducing her to Claude. Failing Counterpoint would ruin everything, but Dr. Wells had given her to understand that he could see to it that she didn’t fail. She sat on the edge of the claw-footed bathtub, looking away from the rust spots inside it, and weighed the decision. Mechanical, meaningless sex in exchange for a passing mark, versus an ugly, baying secret lying between herself and Claude.
She went back to the bedroom to find Claude pacing the room, hands on his head, a wild look on his face she hadn’t seen before. For a moment, she thought he had read her thoughts, but then he whirled and said, “Cinnamon, oh my God, come here,” and opened his arms to her. She walked into them, and he said, “Dr. King’s dead!”
At his words, the stars came tumbling out of the sky all at once to fall in a smouldering heap at her feet. Claude’s voice seemed to come from afar. “Shot in Memphis. Oh my God.”
Felicity pulled away to look up at him. “I can’t believe it.”
“This is what they do to us, Felicity. Any Black man who speaks up and tries to make a difference gets killed.” He put his arms around her again. “Someday, that might happen to me.”
Claude organized signs and supplies for the next protest at South Africa House. He had thrown himself into the preparation with grim determination. “We’re protesting them killing King as well as apartheid.”
Felicity’s singing at the protests had led to several newspapers dubbing her the “Nightingale of Trafalgar Square.” One day before Movement class when the instructor was late, Sarah Stilwell said, “So Felicity, you’re singing at anti-apartheid protests now?” Without waiting for a response, she went on, “My uncle lives in South Africa. He says most of the natives like apartheid, apart from the silly ones going abroad and protesting.”
Felicity said, “Pearls of wisdom coming from the chorus?” She was rewarded with a small swell of laughter, as Sarah in four years had not landed even a small role in any of the operas.
On the train, Felicity snuggled close to Claude, but he was far away, on the hotel balcony in Memphis, imagining Dr. King shot and silenced. As they walked across Trafalgar Square, she saw Neville and Gerald standing by the fountain with handfuls of handcuffs and chains cascading through their fingers in a metallic parody of the jetting waters. Claude’s face broke into a broad smile for the first time since hearing the news of the assassination. “Bon jay, Neville, you got them,” he said.
“Are you in, Felicity?” asked Gerald.
“In for what?”
Gerald looked at Claude. “You didn’t tell her?”
Claude shook his head slightly, a secret warning. But Marlene, standing nearby, said, “Felicity wouldn’t want to mess up her hair. Even she can’t flirt her way out of getting arrested.”
“Arrested?” Felicity word casually, but the word struck her like a slap. How could Claude have shut her out of his plans?
Claude said, “We’re going to chain ourselves to the embassy gates, and we’re not leaving voluntarily.”
Felicity gasped. “But you could be there a long time! Won’t it get cold?” An even more dreadful thought seized her. “What if you have to go to the bathroom?”
Marlene looked contemptuously at Felicity. “Soft,” she said.
A tornado of anger rose inside Felicity, sweeping her up in its funnel. She thought of grabbing a chain and being the first one to attach herself to the gates, but then she remembered her audition on Tuesday for the junior company at the Royal Opera House. Philip had told her several times that it was an opportunity that could launch her career.
Claude began helping Neville to untangle the chains and distribute the ominous, clanking lengths. Felicity watched the group head to the embassy gates, as if through a misty window, wrapping the links around their wrists and the iron bars. “Felicity, can you lock us in?” Claude tossed her a big ring of keys.
Figures came rushing out of the building, and Neville said, “Quick, Felicity!” Her mouth dry and her fingers damp, Felicity scrabbled at the hard, cold metal. Each pair of handcuffs clicked like a punctuation point as the wind picked up, tossing a pile of their flyers into the air and launching them across the square. “Put the keys in your bag,” Neville said.
A minute later, the running figures arrived panting at the other side of the gate. “What’s going on here?” demanded a burly blond man with a South African accent.
“Let my people go, you pig!” responded Neville, as the others chanted and rattled their chains against the gate. The man took out a radio and began speaking urgently into it.
“Free Mandela!” shouted Claude, and everyone took up the chant. “Free Mandela! Free Mandela!”
The security guards shook the embassy gates, but they were barricaded on the other side by the weight of the bodies chained to them. Claude motioned with his head for Felicity to come closer, and he begged, “Felicity, do it. Join us. Put on chains to shake off our chains.”
“I can’t, Claude,” she said. “My audition.”
A hood fell across Claude’s eyes. “Is your audition more important than protesting the degradation of your people?” A shining path stretched between him and Felicity, transporting them both back two and a half years to that moment when Claude had chosen to leap into the blazing fire of her desire for him. But the give-and-take between them was no longer enough.
She said, “I do care about it, Claude, but this is my career. What you’re asking isn’t fair.”
“Dr. King gave his life, and you can’t give up one audition?”
“This is my life!” she retorted. She knew as soon as the words flew out of her mouth that they would fall on harsh shores. She watched him turn his head away.
A police siren wailed ever closer, and then police officers swarmed the square. One of the officers shouted into a megaphone as he ran, “Attention! You are trespassing on embassy property. Remove yourselves at once!”
Neville, affixed to the gate, with his arms stretched out like Jesus on the cross, shouted, “Free Mandela! Boycott the South African regime!” His companions shouted and rattled their chains. “We are in chains because they are in chains!”
Two police officers produced bolt cutters. “You are trespassing! Remove yourselves or you will be arrested!”
Felicity saw the light in Claude’s eyes. He wanted to be arrested. He saw glory awaiting him through those prison bars. If the police had any sense, they would ignore the protestors, leave them there until it got dark and at some point, bodily needs and lack of attention would force them to unchain themselves. But in this theatre, this dance, roles must be played and lines spoken.
The police began to cut through the chains, removing handcuffs only to replace them with new ones. As Claude was grabbed, his arms bent behind his back for the ritualistic march to the police vans, Felicity ran behind him, but he wouldn’t look at her. Marlene, stumbling along beside him, wore a grin befitting someone who had just won a trophy. The protestors were loaded into the vans as Neville shouted at everyone to remain silent. The vans pulled away. Felicity was alone. She gathered all the belongings the group had left behind and put them in the cardboard box that had held the flyers. Loose flyers skidded across the concrete and the pigeons pecked at them as they blew up against the fountain. She stepped around the links of chain strewn beside the gate and watched a lone plastic bag attempt, and fail, and try again to rise with the wind.
She lugged the cardboard box home on the Underground, put her key in the lock, and trudged up the stairs alone. She took out the folder with her audition arias for Tuesday and tried to read through them, but she couldn’t focus. She got up and paced back and forth for a while before an idea occurred to her. She ran to her purse and dug through the detritus — old concert programs, lipstick stubs, loose pennies, mints encrusted with lint — until she found the business card she was looking for, its edges grey and blunted. The card she had taken, never thinking this would be the reason she would use it.
He answered on the third ring. “Lindsay Fletcher.”
“Mr. Fletcher!” Felicity said. “I didn’t really think you’d be there on a Sunday!”
“Then why did you phone?” he asked. “And to whom am I speaking?”
“Felicity Alexander. I met you at a hurricane relief concert a couple of years ago.” It was ridiculous. He wouldn’t remember her.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “The Canadian opera singer. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Felicity stumbled through the events of the afternoon, coaxed along by Lindsay. Once the time and place of arrest, Claude’s full name and date of birth had been provided, Lindsay said, “Leave it with me. I’ll find the magistrate on duty and discuss release.”
“Can I pay you next Monday? I’m singing in Cambridge on the weekend. They’ll probably give me a cheque then,” Felicity said.
“Pay me? You don’t have to pay me, Miss Alexander. You’re doing me a favour.”
“How?”
Lindsay gave a short, high laugh. “You’re handing me a client arrested for civil disobedience. Conscientious objectors. The attention my firm will gain from this is worth more than anything you could afford. No offence meant.” His voice grew serious. “But tell me, what are you performing in Cambridge? How is the singing going?”
Felicity would have spoken to Lindsay much longer, just to keep the silence in the house at bay, but he had to go to the police station to free Claude. Talking on the phone had lessened the burning in Felicity’s chest. She rarely made social phone calls as they were outside her budget, but this was an emergency, so she dialled the operator and asked for Will.
“Felicity, how’s practicing?” Will’s phone was on the table by his piano, and she heard him playing chords with his left hand. He didn’t express any surprise at her call.
“Will. Claude got arrested.”
“Arrested? What the hell for?”
“Protesting, at the South African Embassy.”
An arpeggio pinged down the line. “You weren’t there, were you?”
“Yes, but I —”
“Felicity, you have an audition on Tuesday. The most important one of your career. Whatever stupidity your boyfriend’s got himself into is for him to sort out himself. You know what Beethoven said? ‘Sacrifice all the trivialities of social life to your art.’ The great man never lied.” One finger picked out the opening motif of Beethoven’s Fifth in a mocking da-da-da-dum.
There would be no help forthcoming here. “All right, thank you, Will.” She put down the receiver. All her friends were Claude’s friends, and they had all been arrested with him. She had acquaintances at the Guildhall, but no one she was close to besides Will. Aunt Rose, Josiah, and Jack were too far away to be any help, and she had never been able to confide in her mother. She had sacrificed her social life to her relationship with Claude.