The Bone Clocks (20 page)

“Shitting hell, Jonny. That’s quite a bucketful.”

“I know. We’d agreed to scrap the pot limit, and there were three of us bidding up and up, and nobody was backing down. Rinty only had two pairs, and Bryce Clegg looked at my flush and said, ‘Shafted by the Pirate again,’ but as I scooped up the pot he added, ‘Unless I’ve got—oh, what is this? A full house.’ And he had. Three queens, two aces. I should have gone then, wish to
Christ
I had. I was still two grand up. But I’d lost two grand and I thought it was just a blip, that if I kept my nerve I’d win it all back.
Fortune favors the brave
, I thought.
One more hand, it’ll turn around …
 Toad asked me if I wanted to drop out a couple of times, but … by then I was … I was …” Penhaligon’s voice wobbles, “… ten thousand down.”

“Wow, Jonny. Them’s grown-up numbers.”

“So, yeah, we carried on, and my losses piled up, and I didn’t know why the King’s College bells were ringing in the middle of the night, but Toad opened up the curtains and it was daylight. Toad said his casino was closing for the holidays. He offered to scramble eggs for us, but I wasn’t hungry …”

“You win a few,” I console him, “you lose a few. That’s poker.”

“No, Hugo, you don’t get it. Eusebio took a hammering, but I took a … a pulverizing, and when Toad wrote down what I owe, it’s”—a strangled whisper—“
fifteen thousand, two hundred
. Toad said he’ll round it down to fifteen in the interest of nice round numbers, but …”

“Your sense of honor brings out the best in Toad,” I assure him, peering through the blue velvet curtain. It’s a cold, dark indigo,
streetlight-amber night out. “He knows he’s not dealing with an underclass scuzzball with a can’t-pay-won’t-pay attitude.”

Penhaligon sighs. “That’s the awkward thing, you see.”

I act puzzled. “To be honest, I don’t quite see, no.”

“Fifteen thousand pounds is … is quite a lot. A shit of a lot.”

“For a financial mortal like myself, sure—but not for old Cornish aristocracy, surely?”

“I don’t actually have that much in … my main account.”

“Oh.
Right
. Right! Look, I’ve known Toad since I got to Cambridge and, I promise you, there’s nothing to worry about.”

Penhaligon croaks a hope-tortured “Really?”

“Toad’s cool. Tell him that, with the banks closed over Christmas, you can’t transfer what you owe until the New Year. He knows that a Penhaligon’s word is his bond.”

Here it comes: “But I don’t have fifteen thousand pounds.”

Take a dramatic pause, add a dollop of confusion and a pinch of disbelief. “You mean … you don’t have the money … 
anywhere
?”

“Well … no. Not at present. If I could, I would, but—”

“Jonny. Stop. Jonny, these are your debts.
I
vouched for you. To Toad. I said, ‘He’s a Penhaligon,’ and that was that. Enough said.”

“Just because your ancestors were admirals and you live in a listed building, that doesn’t make you a billionaire! Courtard’s Bank owns Trevadoe House, not us!”

“Okay,
okay
. Just ask your mother to write you out a check.”

“For a poker debt? Are you mad? She’d refuse point-blank. Look, what could Toad actually
do
if, y’know … that fifteen thousand …”

“No no no no no. Toad’s a friendly chap but he’s a businessman, and business trumps friendly chap–ness. Please. Pay.”

“But it’s only a poker game. It’s not like … a legal contract.”

“Debt’s debt, Jonny. Toad believes you owe him this money, and I’m afraid I do too, and if you refuse to honor your debt, I’m afraid the gloves would come off. He wouldn’t put a horse’s head in your bed, but he’d involve your family and Humber College, which, by the by, would take a dim view of its good name being dragged through the gutter press.”

Penhaligon hears his future, and it sounds like a bottle-bank heaved off the roof of a multistory car park. “Oh, shit. Shit.
Shit
.”

“One possibility
does
occur to me—but, no, forget it.”

“Right now, I’d consider anything. Anything.”

“No, forget it. I already know what the answer would be.”

“Spit it out, Hugo.”

Persuasion is not about force; it’s about showing a person a door, and making him or her desperate to open it. “That old sports car of yours, Jonny. An Alfa Romeo, is it?”

“It’s a 1969 vintage Aston Martin Coda, but—sell it?”

“Unthinkable, I know. Better just to grovel at your mother’s feet.”

“But … the car was Dad’s. He left it to me.
I
love it. How could I explain away a missing Aston Martin?”

“You’re an inventive man, Jonny. Tell your family you’d prefer to liquidate your assets and put them in a steady offshore bond issue than tear up and down Devon and Cornwall in a sports car, even if it was your father’s. Look—this just occurs to me now—there’s a dealer in vintage cars here in Richmond.
Very
discreet. I
could
pop round before he closes for Christmas, and ask what sort of numbers we’re talking.”

A shuddered sigh from the chilblained toe of England.

“I guess that’s a no,” I say. “Sorry, Jonny, I wish I could—”

“No, okay. Okay. Go and see him. Please.”

“And do you want to tell Toad what’s happening or—”

“Could you call him? I—I don’t think I … I don’t …”

“Leave everything to me. A friend in need.”

I
DIAL
T
OAD
’
S
number from memory. His answering machine clicks on after a single ring. “Pirate’s selling. I’m off to the Alps after Boxing Day, but see you in Cambridge in January. Merry Christmas.” I hang up and let my eye travel over the bespoke bookshelves, the TV, Dad’s drinks cabinet, Mum’s blown-glass light fittings, the old map of Richmond-upon-Thames, the photographs of Brian, Alice, Alex, Hugo, and Nigel Lamb at a range of ages and
stages. Their chatter reaches me like voices echoing down speaking tubes from another world.

“All fine and dandy, Hugo?” Dad appears in the doorway. “Welcome back, by the way.”

“Hi, Dad. That was Jonny, a friend from Humber. Wanted to check next term’s reading list for economics.”

“Commendably organized. Well, I left a bottle of cognac in the boot of the car, so I’m just popping out to—”

“Don’t, Dad—it’s
freezing
out and you’ve still got a bit of a cold. My coat’s there on the peg, let me fetch it.”

“H
ERE WE ARE
again,” says a man, who appears as I shut the rear door of Dad’s BMW, “in the bleak midwinter.” I damn nearly drop the cognac. He’s bundled in an anorak, and shadow from his hood, thrown by the streetlight, is covering his face. He’s only a few paces from the pavement, but definitely on our drive.

“Can I help you?” I’d meant to sound firmer.

“We wonder.” He lowers his hood and when I recognize the begging Yeti from Piccadilly Circus, the bottle of cognac slips from my grip and thumps onto my foot.

All I say is, “
You?
I …” My breath hangs white.

All he says is, “So it seems.”

My voice is a croak. “Why—why did you follow me?”

He looks up at my parents’ house, like a potential buyer. The Yeti’s hands are in his pockets. There’s room for a knife.

“I’ve got no more money to give you, if that’s what—”

“I didn’t come all this way for banknotes, Hugo.”

I think back; I’m sure I didn’t tell him my name. Why would I have done? “How do you know my name?”

“We’ve known it for a couple of years, now.” His underclass accent’s vanished without trace, I notice, and his diction’s clear.

I peer at his face. An ex-classmate? “Who are you?”

The Yeti scratches his greasy head; he’s got gloves with the fingerends snipped off. “If you mean ‘Who is the owner of this body?’
then, frankly, who cares? He grew up near Gloucester, has head lice, a heroin addiction, and a topical autoimmune virus. If you mean, ‘With whom am I speaking?’ then the answer is Immaculée Constantin, with whom you discussed the nature of power not very long ago. I know you remember me.”

I take a step back; Dad’s BMW’s exhaust pipe pokes my calf. The Yeti of Piccadilly couldn’t have even pronounced “Immaculée Constantin.” “A setup. She prepped you, what to say, but how …”

“How could she have known which homeless beggar you would pay your alms to today? Impossible. And how could she know about Marcus Anyder? Think larger. Redraw what is possible.”

In the next street along a car alarm goes off. “The security services. You’re both—both part of … of …”

“Of a government conspiracy? Well, I suppose it’s larger, but where does paranoia stop? Perhaps Brian and Alice Lamb are agents. Might Mariângela and Nurse Purvis be in on it? Maybe Brigadier Philby isn’t as gaga as he appears. Paranoia is so all-consuming.”

This is real. Look at the Yeti’s footprints in the crusty snow. Smell his mulchy odor of sick and alcohol. Feel the cold biting my lips. You can’t hallucinate these things. “What do you want?”

“To germinate the seed.”

We stare at each other. He smells of greasy biscuit. “Look,” I say, “I don’t know what’s happening here, or why she sent you, or why you’d pretend to be her … But Ms. Constantin needs to know she’s made a mistake.”

“What species of mistake have I made, exactly?” asks the Yeti.

“I don’t want this. I’m not what you think I am. I just want a quiet Christmas and a quiet life with—”

“We know you better than that, Hugo Lamb. We know you better than you do.” The Yeti makes a final amused grunt, turns, and walks down the drive. He tosses a “Merry Christmas” over his shoulder, and then he’s gone.

H
ERE AN
A
LP, THERE AN
A
LP
, everywhere an Alp-Alp. Torn, castellated, blue-white, lilac-white, white-white, scarred by rock faces, fuzzed by snowy woods … I’ve visited Chetwynd-Pitt’s chalet often enough now to know the peaks’ names: the fanglike Grande Dent de Veisivi; across the valley, Sasseneire, La Pointe du Tsaté, and Pointe de Bricola; and behind me, Palanche de la Cretta, taking up most of the sky. I drink in two lungfuls of iced atmosphere and airbrush modernity from all I survey. That airplane in the evening sunlight: gone. The lights of La Fontaine Sainte-Agnès, six hundred meters below: off. The chalets, bell tower, steep-roofed houses, not unlike a little wooden village I had as a kid: erased. The hulking Chemeville station—a seventies concrete turd—with its rip-off coffee shop and its discus-shaped platform where we four Humberites stand: demolished. The
télécabines
bringing up us skiers and the chair lifts going on up to the summit of Palanche de la Cretta: gone in a
pfff
! The forty or fifty or sixty skiers skiing downhill on the meandering blue run or the far steeper black route:
What skiers? I see no skiers
. Rufus Chetwynd-Pitt, Olly Quinn, and Dominic Fitzsimmons, nice knowing you. Up to a point. There. Now that’s what I call medieval. Did La Fontaine Sainte-Agnès exist back then? That skinny girl in the mint-green ski suit leaning on the railing, smoking like all French girls smoke—is it on the school curriculum?—let her stay. Every Adam needs an Eve.

•   •   •

“W
HAT SAY WE
add a dash of glory to this run?” Rufus Chetwynd-Pitt lifts his £180 Sno-Fox ski goggles. “The three losers can pick up the winner’s bar tab, from dawn till dusk. Takers?”

“Count me out,” says Olly Quinn. “I’m taking the blue run down. I don’t want to end my first day in the clinic.”

“Hardly a fair contest,” says Dominic Fitzsimmons. “You’ve skied here more often than you’ve siphoned your python.”

“Grannies Quinn and Fitz have made their excuses.” Chetwynd-Pitt turns to me. “What about the Lamb of Doom?”

Chetwynd-Pitt is a better skier than the rest of us, here or anywhere else, and at Sainte-Agnès nightlife prices the “dash of glory” will cost me dearly, but I mime spitting on my palms. “May the best man win, Rufus.” My logic is sound. If he wins the race, he’ll bet more rashly at pool later, but if he takes a tumble and loses, he’ll bet even more rashly later to restore his alpha-male credentials.

Chetwynd-Pitt grins and pulls down his Sno-Foxes. “Glad
someone
has his balls stitched on. Fitz, you’re our starter.” We go to the top of the run, where Chetwynd-Pitt draws a notional starting line in the dirty snow with his pole. “First to the giant fluffy snowman at the end of the black run is the winner. No griping, no ifs, a direct race to the bottom, as one Etonian said to the other. We’ll see
you
pair of delicate woollens”—he looks at Fitzsimmons and Quinn—“back at chez moi.”

“Under starter’s orders, then …” declares Fitzsimmons.

Me and Chetwynd-Pitt crouch like Winter Olympians.

“Ready, steady—
bang
!”

B
Y THE TIME
I’ve settled into my crouch Chetwynd-Pitt is a snowball lob ahead. We barrel it down the first stretch, passing a wedge of Spanish kids who have chosen the middle of the run for a group photo. The run divides into two—blue to the right, black over a sharp lip to the left. Chetwynd-Pitt takes the latter and I follow,
grunting at my poor landing a few meters later, but at least I stay upright. The old snow here is glassy but fast and my skis sound like knives being sharpened. I’m accelerating, but so is my opponent’s black-and-orange-Lycra-clad arse as it passes the
télécabine
pylon. The run curves into the upper wood and the gradient steepens. At thirty, thirty-five, forty klicks an hour, the air scours my cheeks. The four of us zigzagged down this section this morning, but now Chetwynd-Pitt’s taking it straight as a javelin—up to forty-five, fifty kph—as fast as I’ve ever gone on skis, my calves and thighs are aching, and the rushing air’s howling in my ear canals. An unseen but vicious bump launches me for three, five, eight meters … I nearly lose it on landing, but just maintain my balance. Fall at this speed and your only protection against multiple breakages is blind luck. Chetwynd-Pitt disappears around a deep bend up ahead, fifteen seconds before I hit it, misjudging its sharpness and whipping through the overhanging claws of fir trees before wrenching myself back onto the piste. Here come the slalomlike snake-curves: I watch Chetwynd-Pitt weaving in and out of eyeshot; try to follow his angles of incidence; duck on reflex as crows bowl up the tunnel of branches. Suddenly out of the woods, I shoot onto the slower strip between a sheer flank of rock and a neck-breaking drop. Yellow diamond signs with skulls and crossbones warn you away from the edge. My rival slows down a little and glances back … He’s stick-man-distant now, passing the Lonesome Pine on its finger of rock—the halfway point. Four or five minutes in now, surely. I straighten up to rest my stomach muscles and glimpse the town in its hollow below—see the Christmas-tree lights, in the plaza? My bastard goggles are starting to fog up, even though the salesgirl swore they wouldn’t. Chetwynd-Pitt is already entering the lower woods, so I thrust with my poles as far as the Lonesome Pine, then settle back into my racing crouch. Soon I’m up to forty-five, fifty kph again, and I should ease off but the wind in my ears will speak if I dare to go faster, and the lower woods smother me and the tunnel’s a blur and it’s fifty-five, sixty, and I’m flying over a ridge with a savage dip beyond, and the ground’s fallen away … And I soar
like a stoner archangel … This freedom is eternal for as long as it lasts … Why are my feet level with my chin?