The Bone Clocks (41 page)

Our very first breakfast as a family.

W
ELSH RAIN GODS PISS
onto the roofs, festival tents, and umbrellas of Hay-on-Wye and also on Crispin Hershey, as he strides along a gutter-noisy lane, into the Old Cinema Bookshop and makes his way down to its deepest bowel, where he rips this week’s
Piccadilly Review
to confetti. Who on God’s festering Earth does that six-foot-wide, corduroy-clad, pubic-bearded, rectal probe Richard Cheeseman think he
is
? I shut my eyes but the words of his review slide by like the breaking news: “I tried my utmost to find something,
anything
, in Crispin Hershey’s long-awaited novel to dilute its trepanning godawfulness.” How
dare
that inflatable semen-stained Bagpuss write that after cosying up to me at the Royal Society of Literature bashes? “In my salad days at Cambridge, I got into a fistfight defending the honor of Hershey’s early masterpiece
Desiccated Embryos
and to this day I wear the scar on my ear as a badge of honor.” Who sponsored Richard Cheeseman’s application for Pen UK?
I
did. I did! And how does he thank me? “To dub
Echo Must Die
‘infantile, flatulent, ghastly drivel’ would be an insult to infants, to flatulence, and to ghasts alike.” I stamp on the magazine’s shredded remains, panting and gasping …

T
RULY, DEAR READER
, I could weep. Kingsley Amis boasted how a bad review might spoil his breakfast, but it bloody wasn’t going to spoil his lunch. Kingsley Amis lived in the pre-Twitter age, when reviewers actually read proofs and thought independently. Nowadays they just Google for a preexisting opinion and, thanks to Richard Cheeseman’s chainsaw massacre, what they’ll read about my
comeback novel is: “So why is
Echo Must Die
such a decomposing hog? One: Hershey is so bent on avoiding cliché that each sentence is as tortured as an American whistleblower. Two: The fantasy subplot clashes so violently with the book’s State of the World pretensions, I cannot bear to look. Three: What surer sign is there that the creative aquifers are dry than a writer creating a writer-character?” Richard Cheeseman has hung a
KICK ME
sign around
Echo Must Die
’s neck, at the very time I need a commercial renaissance. It isn’t the 1990s, when my agent, Hal “the Hyena” Grundy, could pluck a £500K book deal as easily as a plug of mucus from his giant honker. Now is the official Decade of the Death of the Book. I’m hemorrhaging £40K a year on school fees for the girls, and the little pied-à-terre in Montreal’s well-heeled Outremont neighborhood may have put a smile back on Zoë’s face but the expense has rendered me financially mortal for the first time since Hal the Hyena got me my book deal for
Desiccated Embryos
. My iPhone trills. Speak of the devil, it’s a message from Hal.

M
AEVE
M
UNRO, SALTY
captain of BBC2’s flagship arts show, gives a let’s-roll nod to the stage manager. I’m waiting in the wings, miked up. Publicity Girl scrolls through her messages. Stage Manager asks me to check that my mobile is switched off. I check, and find two new messages: one from Qantas air miles and one about garbage collection. In our marital halcyon days, Mrs. Zoë Legrange-Hershey would send
Knock ’em dead
,
Genius
–type texts before my gigs, but these days she doesn’t even ask what country I’m going to. Nothing from the girls, even. Juno will be playing remotely with her schoolfriends—or perverts pretending to be schoolfriends—on Tunnel Town or whatever the latest app is, while Anaïs will be reading a Michael Morpurgo book. Why don’t
I
write kids’ books about
lonely children forging bonds with animals? Because I’ve spent two decades being the Wild Child of British literature, that’s sodding why. In publishing it’s easier to change your body than it is to switch genre.

House lights dim, stage lights brighten, and the audience falls silent. Maeve Munro’s telegenic face shines and her trademark Orcadian lilt fills the tent. “Good evening, I’m Maeve Munro, broadcasting live from the Hay Festival, 2015. Ever since his debut novel
Wanda in Oils
, published while its author was still an undergraduate, Crispin Hershey has earned his stripes as a master stylist and a laser-sharp chronicler of our times. Our most lusted-after gong, the Brittan Prize, has—scandalously—eluded his grasp so far, but many believe that 2015 could finally be his year. With no further ado, reading from
Echo Must Die
, his first novel in five years, please join me and our very proud sponsors FutureNow Bank in welcoming—Crispin Hershey!”

Solid applause. I approach the lectern. A full house. Sodding well ought to be—they already moved me from the six-hundred seater PowerGen Venue to this “more intimate setting.” Editor Oliver sits in the front row with Hyena Hal and his newest client and the Next Hot Young American Thing, Nick Greek. Let silence fall. Rain drums on the marquee roof. Most writers would now thank the audience for coming out on such a bad night, but Hershey treats ’em mean to keep ’em keen and opens
Echo Must Die
at page one.

I clear my throat. “I’ll jump straight in …”

… my last line dispatched, I return to my chair. Swing high, sweet clap-o-meter; not bad for a contingent of securely pensioned metropolitans stuffed with artisanal fudge and organic cider. They guffawed as my protagonist Trevor Upward got duct-taped to the roof of the Eurostar; squirmed when Titus Hurt found a human finger in his Cornish pastie; and thrummed at my dénouement in the Cambridge pub, which flowers into Audenesque rhyme when spoken aloud at festivals. Maeve Munro gives me a cheerful that-went-well
face; I give her a why-wouldn’t-it? face back. Hershey spent his boyhood among thesps, and Dad’s habit of ridiculing my brother and me for garbled diction has borne plump fruit. Dad’s last words, as my memoir recounts, were “It’s ‘whom,’ you baboon, not ‘who’ …”

“To kick off the Q and A,” Maeve Munro addresses the tent, “I have some questions of my own. Then we’ll turn it over to our roving mikes. So, Crispin, on last Friday’s
Newsnight Review
, eminent critic Aphra Booth described
Echo Must Die
as ‘a classic male midlife crisis novel.’ Any response?”

“Oh, I’d say she’s hit the nail on the head,” I take a slow sip of water, “
if
, like Aphra Booth, your notion of ‘reading’ is to skim the back jacket in the green-room loo a minute before going on air.”

My quip earns a fake smile from Maeve Munro, who is often seen wining and whining with Aphra Booth at the Mistletoe Club. “Right … And as for Richard Cheeseman’s rather lackluster review—”

“What christening is complete without a jealous fairy’s curse?”

Laughter; gasps; Twitterstorm ahoy. The
Telegraph
will report the line on page one of their arts section; Richard Cheeseman will get his gay-rights group to give me the Bigot of the Year Award; Hyena Hal will be thinking
Publi$ity
, while Nick Greek, bless, looks puzzled. American writers are so sodding
nice
to each other, hanging out in their Brooklyn lofts and writing each other’s references for professorial chairs. “Let’s move on,” says Maeve Munro, her fluty trill flattening, “while we’re ahead.”

“What makes you think you’re ‘ahead,’ Maeve?”

Little smile: “
Echo Must Die
’s protagonist is, like yourself, a novelist, yet in your memoir
To Be Continued
you dub novels about novelists ‘incestuous.’ Is Trevor Upward a U-turn, or is incest now a more attractive proposition?”

I lean back, smiling, while my interviewer’s fan base expends its
gur-hurs
. “While I’d never lecture a native of the Orkney Islands,
Maeve
, on the subject of incest, I would maintain that
without
shifts in viewpoint, a writer could only write the same novel ad infinitum.
Or end up teaching uncreative writing at a college for the privileged in upstate New York.”

“Yet”—Maeve Munro is duly stung—“a politician who changes his or her mind is called a flip-flopper.”

“F. W. de Klerk changed his mind about Nelson Mandela being a terrorist,” I riff. “Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley changed their minds about violence in Ulster.
I
say, ‘Let’s hear it for the flip-floppers.’ ”

“Let me ask you this. To what degree is Trevor Upward, whose morality is decidedly elastic, modeled upon his maker?”

“Trevor Upward is a misogynist prick who gets ex
act
ly what he deserves on the final page. How,
dear
Maeve, could a royal arse like Trevor Upward”—I flash a smile of mock innocence—“
possibly
be modeled on a man like Crispin Hershey?”

S
MUDGED WOODS AND
Herefordshire hills rear up into a misty twilight. The moist air dabs my brow like a face flannel in business class. I, the Festival Elf, Publicity Girl, and Editor Oliver traverse the wooden walkways over the sodden sod past booths selling gluten-free cupcakes, solar panels, natural sponges, porcelain mermaids, wind chimes tuned to your own chi aura, biodegradable trays of GM-free green curry, eReaders, and hand-stitched Hawaiian quilts. Hershey dons his mask of contempt to ward off unwanted approaches, but a tiny voice is singing in his soul:
They know you, they recognize you, you’re back, you never went away …
 When we reach the signing tables at the bookshop tent, the four of us stop in astonishment. “Hell’s bells, Crispin,” says Editor Oliver, slapping my back.

Festival Elf declares, “Not even Tony Blair got a turnout like this.”

Publicity Girl says, “Wayhay and hurrahs!”

The place is pullulant with punters, cordoned by festival heavies into a snaking queue of Crispin Hershey faithful.
Look on my works, Richard Cheeseman, and despair! They’ll be reprinting
Echo Must Die
by the weekend and a V2 of money is headed straight for the House of Hershey!
Victoriously, I gain my table, sit down, knock back the glass of white wine served by the Festival Elf, unsheathe the Sharpie …

… and realize that all these people are here not for me, God sod it, but for a woman sitting at a table ten feet away. My own queue numbers fifteen. Or ten. More frumpet than crumpet. Editor Oliver has turned the color of elderly chicken slices, so I scowl at Publicity Girl for an explanation. “That’s, um, Holly Sykes.”

Oliver’s color returns. “
That’s
Holly Sykes? Jesus.”

I growl, “Who in the name of buggery is Holey Spikes?”

“Holly Sykes,” says Publicity Girl, falling down the sar-chasm. “She’s written a spiritual memoir called
The Radio People
. On
I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!
Prudence Hanson—the artist—was caught reading it, and sales spiraled into hyperspace. The Hay director arranged a last-minute gig and every seat in the Future-Bank Venue was sold out in forty minutes.”

“Three cheers for the Woodstock of the Mind.” I assess the Sykes woman: skinny, earnest, lined; midforties, black hair, with silvery outriders. She’s kind to her punters: Each one gets a friendly word, which only proves how few books she’s ever signed. Envious? No. If she believes her mystic-mumbo she’s a deluded idiot. If she’s cooked it all up, she’s a snake-oil merchant. What’s to envy?

Publicity Girl asks if I’m ready to start signing. I nod. Festival Elf asks if I want a drink. “No,” I tell him. I won’t be here long. My first punter approaches the table. His crumpled brown suit belonged to his dead father and his teeth are the color of caramel. “I’m your biggest, biggest, biggest fan, Mr. Hershey, and my late mother—”

Kill me now. “A G-and-T,” I tell Festival Elf. “More G than T.”

M
Y LAST PUNTER
, a Volumnia from Coventry, treated me to her book group’s thoughts on
Red Monkey
, which they “quite liked” but found the repetition of the adjectives “sodding” and “buggering” tiresome. Dear reader, Hershey missed not a beat: “So why
choose the buggering book in the first sodding place?” A trio of dealers then descended, wanting a stack of first edition
Desiccated Embryos
signed, thereby increasing their value by five hundred pounds a pop. I asked, “Why should I?” One of the dealers gave me a sob story about driving up from Exeter “special, like, mate, and it’s not like scribbling your name costs you anything,” so I told him that if he paid me 50 percent of the markup on the nail, we’d have a deal.
Mate
. He vanished in a puff of poverty. Next stop is the first-night party at the BritFone Pavilion, where I am to endure a brief audience with Lord and Lady Roger and Suze Brittan. I stand up—and feel … a sniper’s tracer on my forehead. Who’s that? I look around and see Holly Sykes, watching me. She’s probably curious about real writers. I click my fingers at Publicity Girl. “
I
’m a celebrity. Get
me
out of here.”

On our way to the BritFone Pavilion, we pass the smoking tent, sponsored by Win
²
Win: Europe’s premier facilitator of ethically sourced organs for medical transplant. I tell my minders I’ll be along soon, and although Editor Oliver offers to join me I warn him there’s a two-hundred-pound fine for nonsmokers who don’t light up, and he takes the hint. Publicity Girl checks mumsily that I have my lanyard for getting past the bouncers.