The Bone Clocks, Page 39

  She’s irritated by the adjective. “Two tails, now.”

  I flip the coin: tails. Nine out of nine. On the tenth flip, I fumble the catch and the coin goes freewheeling away. I give chase, and only when I draw it out from under a chair and see it’s tails do I realize that I’m kneeling. Holly looks like someone being given the answer to a simple riddle. “Obviously. The coin runs away.”

  As I retake my seat, I don’t quite trust myself to speak.

  “Odds of 1,024 to 1 against a ten-digit sequence, if you’re wondering. We can increase it to 4,096 to 1 with two more throws?”

  “No need.” My voice is tight. I look at Holly Sykes: Who is she? “That kneeling thing. How …”

  “Maybe your brain is mistaking memories for predictions, too.” Holly Sykes looks not at all like a magician whose ambitious trick just went perfectly, but like a tired woman who needs to gain a few pounds. “Oh, Christ, that was a mistake. You’re looking at me in that way.”

  “In what way?”

  “Look, Crispin, can we just forget all of this? I need my bed.”

  • • •

  WE WALK TO the lift lobby without much to say. A pair of terracotta warriors don’t think very much of me, judging from their expressions. “You’ve got a gazillion true believers who’d pay a year of their lives to see what you just showed me,” I tell Holly. “I’m a cynical bastard, as you well know. Why honor me with that private demonstration?”

  Now Holly looks pained. “I hoped you might believe me.”

  “About what? About your Radio People? Rottnest? About—”

  “That evening in Hay-on-Wye, in the signing tent. We were sat a few yards away. I had a strange strong certainty. About you.”

  The lift doors close, and I remember from Zoë’s flirtation with feng shui that lifts are jaws that eat good luck. “Me?”

  “You. And it’s an odd one. And it’s never changed.”

  “Well, what’s it saying about me, for heaven’s sake?”

  She swallows. “ ‘A spider, a spiral, a one-eyed man.’ ”

  I wait for an explanation. None comes. “Meaning?”

  Holly looks cornered. “I have absolutely no idea.”

  “But you usually find out what they mean after, right?”

  “Usually. Eventually. But this is a … slow-cooking certainty.”

  “ ‘A spider, a spiral, a one-eyed man’? What is that? A shopping list? A dance track? A line from a sodding haiku?”

  “Crispin, if I knew, I’d tell you, I swear.”

  “Then it may just be random gobbledegook.”

  Holly agrees too easily. “Probably, yes. Yep. Forget it.”

  An elderly Chinese guy in a pink Lacoste top, fudge-brown slacks, and golf shoes steps out of the lift. Hooked onto his arm is a blond model wearing a négligé sewn of cobwebs and gold coins, extraplanetary makeup, and not a lot else. They go around a corner.

  “Maybe she’s his daughter,” says Holly.

  “What did you mean just then, ‘It’s never changed’?”

  Holly, I expect, regrets having started this. “In Cartagena, at the president’s house, I heard the same certainty. Same words. At Rottnest, too, before I started channeling. And now, if I tune in. I did the coin thing so you might take the spiral-spider-one-eyed-man thing seriously, in case it’s ever …” she shrugs, “… relevant.”

  The lifts hum in their turboshafts. “What’s the use of certainties,” I ask, “that are so sodding uncertain?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Crispin. I’m not a bloody oracle. If I could stop them I would, like a bloody shot!”

  These uncensored stupid words spill out: “You’ve profited from them well enough.”

  Holly looks shocked, hurt, then pissed off, all in under five seconds. “Yes, I wrote The Radio People because stupidly, stupidly, I thought if Jacko’s alive and out there somewhere”—she sweeps an angry hand at the borderless city through the window—“he might read it, or someone who knows him might recognize him and get in touch. Fat bloody chance ’cause he’s probably dead but I had to try. But I endure my certainties. I live despite them. Don’t say I profit from them. Don’t dare bloody say that, Crispin.”

  “Yeah.” I close my eyes. “Look, it came out wrong. I …”

  My crimes, my misdeeds. Where do I sodding begin?

  Then I hear the lift doors close. Great. She’s gone.

  AS I SHAMBLE back to my room, I send a text to Holly to apologize. I’ll phone in the morning after we’ve both had a decent night’s sleep, and we’ll meet for breakfast. I arrive at Room 2929, where I find a black bag hung over my door handle. It’s embroidered with runes in gold thread: a real labor of love. Inside is a book entitled Your Last Chance by Soleil Moore. Never heard of her. Or him. I already know it’s dreck. No real poet would be rude enough to imagine that I’d read unsolicited sonnets, just because of a hand-embroidered bag. How did she find out my room number? We’re in China. Bribes, of course. Not at the Shanghai Mandarin, surely. Ah, who cares? I’m so—soddingly—buggeringly—tired. I just go into my room, dump the book still in its lovely bag into the deep bin with the detritus of the day, empty my grateful bladder, crawl into bed, and sleep opens up like a sink-hole …

  September 17, 2019

  DID YOU EVER ESPY a lonelier signpost, dear reader? North to Festap, east along the Kaldidadur Road, and west to Þingvellir, 23 kilometers. Örvar, I recall, taught me that “Þ” is a voiced “th” as in “lathe.” Twenty-three kilometers on British back roads would be a mere twenty-minute drive, but I left the tourist center at Þingvellir an hour and a half ago. The tarmac road degenerated into a dirt track twisting its way up the escarpment and onto this rocky plateau under gunmetal mountains and churning clouds. On a whim, I pull over, kill the engine of my rented Mitsubishi, and climb up the stony hillock to sit on a boulder. Not a telephone pole, not a power line, not a tree, not a shrub, not a sheep, not a crow, not a fly, just a few tufts of coarse grass and a lone novelist. The valley in The Fall of the House of Usher. A terraforming experiment on a lesser moon of Saturn. A perfect opposite of end-of-summer Madrid, and I wonder how Carmen’s doing, then remind myself that how she’s doing is no longer my business. Driving around Iceland for a week before the Reykjavik Festival was her idea: “The Land of the Sagas! It’ll be a blast, Crispin!” Dutifully I did the research, booked the rooms and the car, and was even reading Njal’s Saga that London evening only eight weeks ago. When the phone went, I knew it was trouble: Holly would call it a “Certainty” with a capital C. My separation from Zoë was long forecast, but Carmen’s declaration of independence came from a clear blue sky. Frantic, hurt, above all fearful, I began arguing that it’s the challenges and routines that make a relationship real but I was soon incoherent as the house seemed to collapse and the sky fell in on top.

  Enough. I had two years of love from a kind woman.

  Cheeseman’s on his third year in hell, and counting.

  SOME TIME LATER, a convoy of 4×4s grinds past, coming back from the Kaldidur Road. I’m still here, sitting on my arse. A bit cold. The tourists watch me through grime-plastered windows, tires spitting stones and kicking up dust. The wind cuffs my ears, my stomach welcomes the tea and … Nothing else. Eerie. I treat the microflora to a bladderful of vintage novelist’s urine. By the signpost a cairn of stones has accumulated over the centuries. Feel free to add a stone and make a wish, Örvar told me, but never remove one, or a spirit could slip out to curse you and your bloodline. The threat isn’t as quaint up here as it sounded down in Reykjavik. The rim of Langjökull Glacier rises whalebone-white behind nearer mountains to the east. The few glaciers I’ve seen previously were grubby toes unworthy of the name—Langjökull is vast … The visible skull of an ice planet smooshed onto earth. Back in Hampstead I read about characters in the sagas getting condemned to outlawry, and imagined a jolly enough Robin-Hood-in-furs setup, but in situ I can see that outlawry Iceland-style was a de facto death sentence. Better push on.
I put my stone on the cairn and notice, at close range, a few coins have been left here too. Down at sea level I wouldn’t be so daft, but I find myself taking my wallet to retrieve a coin or two …

  … and notice that the passport photo of me, Juno, and Anaïs is missing. Impossible. Yet the blank square of leather under the plastic sheath insists the photo is gone.

  How? The photo’s been in there years now, since Zoë gave me the wallet, since our last civilized Christmas as a family. We’d taken the photo a few days earlier, at the photo booth in Notting Hill Tube station. It was just to kill a little time while waiting for Zoë, before we went to the Italian place on Moscow Road. Juno said how she’d heard tribes in the rain forest or wherever believe photography can steal a piece from your soul, and Anaïs said, “Then this picture’s got all three of our souls in it.” I’ve had it ever since. It can’t slip out. I used the wallet at the Þingvellir visitor center to buy postcards and water, and I’d have noticed if the photo was missing then. This isn’t a disaster, but it’s upsetting. That photo’s irreplaceable. It’s got our souls in it. Perhaps it’s in the car, fallen down by the handbrake, or …

  As I scramble down the slope, my phone rings. CALLER UNKNOWN. I take it. “Hello?”

  “Afternoon—Mr. Hershey?”

  “Who’s speaking?”

  “This is Nikki Barrow, Dominic Fitzsimmons’s PA at the Ministry of Justice. The minister has some news regarding Richard Cheeseman, Mr. Hershey—if now’s a convenient time?”

  “Uh—yeah, yes, sure. Please.”

  I’m put on hold—sodding Vangelis’s Chariots of Fire—while I sweat hot and cold. The Friends of Richard Cheeseman had thought our Whitehall ally had forgotten us. My heart’s pounding; this will be either the best news—repatriation—or the worst—an “accident” in prison. Sod it, my phone’s down to eight percent power. Hurry. It goes to seven percent. There’s a burst of “Tell him I’ll be there for the vote at five” in Fitzsimmons’s plummy tones; then it’s “Hi, Crispin, how are you?”

  “Can’t complain, Dominic. You have news, I gather?”

  “I do indeed: Richard’ll be on a flight back to the U.K. on Friday. I had a call from the Colombian ambassador an hour ago—he heard from Bogotá after lunch. And because Richard’s eligible for parole under our system, he ought to be out by Christmas of next year, provided he keeps his nose clean, no tasteless pun intended.”

  I feel a lot of things, but I’ll focus on the positives. “Thank Christ for that. And thank you. How definite is all of this?”

  “Well, barring a major governmental tiff before Friday, it’s very definite. I’ll try to get Richard D-cat status—his mother and sister live in Bradford, so Hatfield may suit—it’s an open prison in South Yorkshire. Paradise regained compared to his current digs. After three months he’ll be eligible for weekend passes.”

  “I can’t tell you how good it is to hear this.”

  “Yep, it’s a decent result. The fact that I knew Richard in Cambridge meant that I kept a close eye on his case, but it also meant my hands were tied. By the same token, keep my name out of any social networking you may do, will you? Say an undersecretary got in touch. I spoke to Richard’s sister five minutes ago and made the same request. Look, got to rush—I’m due at Number Ten. My best to your committee—and top job, Crispin. Richard’s lucky to have had you fighting his corner when nobody else gave a monkey’s toss.”

  WITH MY IPHONE’S last two percent I text my congratulations to Richard’s sister Maggie, who’ll phone Benedict Finch at The Piccadilly Review; Ben’s been handling the media campaign. This is what we’ve fought, connived, plotted, and prayed for, and yet, and yet, my joy’s melting away even as I touch it. I committed an inexcusable wrong against Richard Cheeseman, and nobody knows. “A perjurer,” I tell the Icelandic interior, “and a coward.” A cold wind scuffs the black dust, same as it ever did, as it ever does, as it ever will do. I was going to beg for a wish from the cairn, but the moment passed. I’ll take what luck I get. It’s all I deserve.

  What was I doing when Fitzsimmons called?

  Yes, the photograph. That’s a real pity. More than a pity. Losing the photo feels like losing the children again.

  Down the slope I trudge to the Mitsubishi.

  The photo won’t be there, or anywhere.

  September 19, 2019

  FORTY OR FIFTY BIPEDS EXCLAIM, “Whale!” and “Look!” and “Where?” and “Over there!” in five, six, seven languages, hurry to the port bow and hold up devices at the knobbled oval rising from the cobalt sea. A locomotive huff of steam shoots from the blowhole, which the breeze combs over the shrieking, laughing passengers. An American boy about Anaïs’s age grimaces: “Mommy, I’m dripping in whale boogers!” The parents look so glad. Decades from now they’ll say, “Do you remember that time we went whale watching in Iceland?”

  From my vantage point above the bridge I can see the whale’s whole outline—not a lot shorter than our sixty-foot boat. “This is good, our patience is rewarded at the last minute,” says the grizzled guide in his carefully trodden English. “The whale is a humpback—identifiable by the humps on its back. We saw a number of so-called friendlies in this location on this morning’s tour, so I am happy that one is still hanging out here today …” My mind swims off to questions about how whales choose names for one another; whether flying feels like swimming; if they suffer from unrequited love too; and if they scream when explosive harpoons sink in and go off. Of course they must. The flippers are paler than the rest of its upper body, and as they flap I remember Juno and Anaïs floating on their backs in the swimming pool. “Don’t let go, Daddy!” Standing waist-deep in the shallow end I’d assure them I’d never let them go, not until they asked me to, and their eyes were wide and true with trust.

  Phone, I think at them, in Montreal. Phone Dad. Now.

  I wait. I count from one to ten. Make it twenty. Make it fifty …

  … it’s sodding ringing! My daughters heard me.

  No, actually. The screen reads Hyena Hal. Don’t answer.

  But I have to; it’s about money. “Hal! Crispin here.”

  “Afternoon, Crispin. This signal’s weird; are you on a train?”

  “On a boat, actually. In the mouth of Húsavík Bay.”

  “Húsavík Bay … Which is—let me guess. Alaska?”

  “North coast of Iceland. I’m doing the Reykjavik Festival.”

  “So you are, so you are. Top result regarding Richard Cheeseman, by the way. I heard on Monday morning.”

  “Really? But the government only found out on Tuesday.”

  His moniker notwithstanding, Hal’s laugh isn’t like a hyena’s; it’s a sequence of glottal stops, like the noise a body might make as it falls down wooden stairs into a basement. “Are Juno and Anaïs with you? Iceland’s kid heaven, I’m told.”

  “No. Carmen was supposed to be joining me, but …”

  “Ah, yes, yes. Well, fish in the sea, c’est la vie and pass the ammo—bringing us seamlessly to today’s conference call with Erebus and Bleecker Yard. A frank discussion, resulting in an Action List.”

  Norman Mailer, J. D. Salinger, or even Dr. Aphra Booth would at this juncture toss the phone high into this clear air, and watch it plop into the depths. “Right … Are my advances on the Action List?”

  “Moot Point Numero Uno. They were advances, when you signed the current deal, back in 2004. Fifteen years ago. Erebus and Bleecker Yard’s view is that the new book’s now so overdue, you’re in breach of contract. What were advances are now debts repayable.”

  “Well, that’s just sodding ridiculous. Isn’t it. Isn’t it, Hal?”

  “Legally, I’m afraid, they’re on tried and tested ground.”

  “But they own exclusive rights to the new Crispin Hershey.”

  “Moot Point Numero Dos—and there’s no sugarcoating this one, I’m afraid. Desiccated Embryos sold a cool half-million, yes, but from Red Monkey onwards, your sales have resemble
d a one-winged Cessna. Your name is still known, but your sales are midlist. Once upon a time, the Kingdom of Midlist wasn’t a bad place to earn a living: middling sales, middling advances, puttering along. Alas, the kingdom is no more. Erebus and Bleecker Yard want their money back more than they want the new novel by Crispin Hershey.”

  “But I can’t pay it back, Hal …” Here comes the harpoon, eviscerating my bankability, my self-esteem, my sodding pension. “I—I—I spent it. Years ago. Or Zoë spent it. Or Zoë’s lawyers spent it.”

  “Yes, but they know you own property in Hampstead.”

  “No sodding way! They can’t touch my house!” Disapproving faces look up from the deck—did I shout? “Can they? Hal?”

  “Their lawyers are displaying worrying levels of confidence.”

  “What if I handed in a new novel in … say, ten weeks?”

  “They’re not bluffing, Crispin. They truly aren’t interested.”

  “Then what the sodding hell do we do? Fake my suicide?”

  I meant it as gallows humor, but Hal doesn’t dismiss the option: “First they’d sue your estate, via us; then your insurers would track you down, so unless you sought political asylum in Pyongyang, you’d get three years for fraud. No, your best hope lies in selling the Australian lighthouse novel at Frankfurt for a fat enough sum to pacify Erebus and Bleecker Yard. Nobody’ll pay you a bean up front now, alas. Can you send me the first three chapters?”

  “Right. Well. The new novel has … evolved.”

  Hal, I imagine, mouths a silent profanity. He asks, “Evolved?”

  “For one thing, the story’s now set in Shanghai.”

  “Shanghai around the 1840s? Opium Wars?”

  “More Shanghai in the present day, actually.”

  “Right … I didn’t know you were a Sinologist as well.”

  “World’s oldest culture. Workshop of the World. The Chinese Century. China’s very … now.” Listen to me, Crispin Hershey pitching a book like a kid fresh off a creative-writing course.