Текст книги "The Bone Clocks"

“A ROBIN.” Mum points through the patio windows at the garden, clogged with frozen slush. “There, on the handle of the spade.”

“He looks freshly arrived off a Christmas card,” says Nigel.

Dad munches broccoli. “What’s my spade doing out of the shed?”

“My fault,” I say. “I was filling the coal scuttle. I’ll put it back after. Though, first, I’ll put Alex’s plate to keep warm: Hot gossip and true love shouldn’t mean cold lunches.” I take my older brother’s plate to the new wood-burning oven and put it inside with a pan lid over it. “Hell’s bells, Mum. You could fit a witch in here.”

“If it had wheels,” says Nigel, “it’d be an Austin Metro.”

“Now that,” crap cars are one of Dad’s loves, “was a pile of.”

“What a pity you’ll miss Aunt Helena at New Year,” Mum tells me.

“It is.” I sit back down and resume my lunch. “Give her my love.”

“Right,” says Nigel. “Like you’d rather be stuck in Richmond over New Year than skiing in Switzerland. You’re mega-jammy, Hugo.”

“How many times have I told you?” says Dad. “It’s not—”

“What you know but who you know,” says Nigel. “Nine thousand, six hundred, and eight, including just now.”

“That’s why getting to a brand-name university matters,” says Dad. “To network with future big fish and not future small-fry.”

“I forgot to mention,” remembers Mum. “Julia’s covered herself in glory—again. She’s won a scholarship to study human-rights law, in Montreal.”

I’ve always had a thing for my cousin Julia, and the thought of covering her in anything is Byronically diverting.

“Lucky she takes after your side of the family, Alice,” says Dad, a dour reference to my ex-uncle Michael’s divorce ten years ago, complete with secretary and love child. “What’s Jason studying again?”

“Something psycho-linguisticky,” says Mum, “at Lancaster.”

Dad frowns. “Why do I associate him with forestry?”

“He wanted to be a forester when he was a kid,” I say.

“But now he’s settled on being a speech therapist,” says Mum.

“A st-st-stuttering sp-sp-speech therapist,” says Nigel.

I grind peppercorns over my mashed pumpkin. “Not grown-up and not clever, Nige. A stammer has to be the best possible qualification for a speech therapist. Don’t you think?”

Nigel does a guess-so face in lieu of admitting I’m right.

Mum sips her wine. “This wine is divine, Hugo.”

“Divine’s the word for Montrachet seventy-eight,” says Dad. “You shouldn’t be spending your money on us, Hugo. Really.”

“I budget carefully, Dad. The office-drone work I do at the solicitor’s adds up. And after everything you’ve done for me down the years, I ought to be able to stand you a bottle of decent plonk.”

“But we’d hate to think of you going short,” says Mum.

“ Oryour studies suffering,” adds Dad, “because of your job.”

“So just let us know,” says Mum, “if money’s tight. Promise?”

“I’ll come cap in hand, if that ever looks likely. Promise.”

“ Mymoney’s tight,” says Nigel, hopefully.

“You’re not living out in the big bad world.” Dad frowns at the clock. “Speaking of which, I only hope Alex’s frдulein’s parents know she’s calling England. It’s the middle of the day.”

“They’re Germans, Dad,” says Nigel. “Big fat Deutschmarks.”

“You say that, but reunification is going to cost the earth. My clients in Frankfurt are veryjumpy about the fallout.”

Mum slices a roasted potato. “What’s Alex told you about Suzanne, Hugo?”

“Not a word.” With my knife and fork I slide trout flesh off its bones. “Sibling rivalry, remember.”

“But you and Alex are the firmest of friends, these days.”

“As long as,” says Nigel, “no one utters those six deadly words, ‘Anyone fancy a game of Monopoly?’ ”

I look hurt. “Is it myfault if I can’t seem to lose?”

Nigel snorts. “Just ’cause no one knows howyou cheat—”

“Mum, Dad, you heard that hurtful, baseless aspersion.”

“—isn’t proof you don’tcheat.” Nigel wags his knife. My baby brother lost his virginity this autumn: chess magazines and Atari console out, the KLF and grooming products in. “Anyway, Iknow three things about Suzanne, using my powers of deduction. If she finds Alex attractive, then ( a) she’s blind as a bat, ( b) she’s used to dealing with toddlers, and ( c) she has no sense of smell.”

Enter the Alex: “Who’s got no sense of smell?”

“Fetch Firstborn’s dinner from the oven,” I order Nigel, “or I’ll rat you out and you’ll deserve it.” Nigel obeys, sheepishly enough.

“So how’s Suzanne?” asks Mum. “All well in Hamburg?”

“Yeah, fine.” Alex sits down. He’s a brother of few words.

“She’s a pharmacology student, you said?” states Mum.

Alex spears a brain of cauliflower from the dish. “Uh-huh.”

“And will we be meeting her at some point, do you think?”

“Hard to say,” says Alex, and I think of my own poor dear Mariвngela’s vain hopes.

Nigel puts Alex’s lunch in front of our elder brother.

“What I can’t get over,” says Dad, “is how distances have shrunk. Girlfriends in Germany, ski trips to the Alps, courses in Montreal: This is all normal nowadays. The first time I left England was to go to Rome, when I was about your age, Hugo. None of my mates had evergone so far. A pal and I got the Dover-Calais ferry, hitched a ride down to Marseille, then across to Turin, then Rome. Took us six days. It felt like the edge of the known world.”

Nigel asks, “Did the wheels come off the mail coach, Dad?”

“Funny. I didn’t go back to Rome until two years ago, when New York decided to hold the European AGM there. Off we all jetted in time for a late lunch, a few supervisions, schmoozing until midnight, then the next day we were back in London in time for—”

We hear the phone ring, back in the living room. “It’s for one of you boys,” Mum declares. “Bound to be.”

Nigel skids down the hall and into the living room; my trout gazes up with a disappointed eye. A few moments later, Nigel’s back. “Hugo, that was a Diana on the phone for you—Diana Spinster, Spankser, Spencer, didn’t quite catch it. She said you could pop over to the palace while her husband’s touring the Commonwealth … Something about Tantric plumbing? She said you’d understand.”

“There’s this operation, little brother. It would help that one-track mind of yours. Vets do it cheaply.”

“Who wason the phone, Nigel?” asks Mum. “Before you forget.”

“Mrs. Purvis at the Riverside Villas. She said to tell Hugo that the brigadier’s feeling better today, and if he’d still like to visit this afternoon, he’d be welcome to call between three and five o’clock.”

“Great. If you’re sure you can spare me, Dad …”

“Go go go. Your mother and I are very proud of how you still go to read to the brigadier, aren’t we, Alice?”

Mum says, “Very.”

“Thanks,” I shrug awkwardly, “but Brigadier Philby was so brilliant when I went to see him for my civics class at Dulwich, and so full of stories. It’s the least I can do.”

“Oh, God.” Nigel groans. “Someone’s locked me up inside an episode of Little House on the Prairie.”

“Then let me offer you a way out,” says Dad. “If Hugo’s visiting the brigadier, you can help me collect the tree.”

Nigel looks aghast. “But Jasper Farley and I are going to Tottenham Court Road this afternoon!”

“What for?” Alex loads his fork. “All you do is slobber over hi-fi gear and synthesizers you can’t afford.”

We hear a small crash out on the patio. From the corner of my eye I see a flash of black. A toppled flower pot skitters across the patio, the spade tips over, and the black flash turns into a cat with a robin in its mouth. The bird’s wings are flapping. “Oh.” Mum recoils. “That’s horrible. Can’t we do something? The cat looks so pleased with itself.”

“It’s called survival of the fittest,” says Alex.

“Why don’t I lower the blinds?” asks Nigel.

“Better let nature take its course, darling,” says Dad.

I get up and go out through the back door. The cold air shocks my skin as I go, “Shoo, shoo!” to the cat. The feline hunter leaps onto the garden shed. It watches me. Its tail sashays. The mangled bird is twitching in the black cat’s mouth.

I hear the boomy scrape of an airplane.

A twig snaps. I am intensely alive.

“ACCORDING TO MY husband,” Nurse Purvis steams along moppable carpet to the library of Riverside Villas, “the youth of today are either scroungers-on-benefits, queers, or I’m-all-right-Jacks.” The smell of pine-scented disinfectant stings my nostrils. “But as long as Great Britain breeds fine young men of your cut, Hugo, Ifor one say we shan’t be collapsing into barbarism any time soon, mmm?”

“Please, Nurse Purvis, my head won’t fit through the library door.” We turn the corner and find a resident clinging to the handrail. She’s frowning at the wintry garden, as if she’s left something out there. A string of drool connects her lower lip to her spearmint-green cardigan.

“Standards, Mrs. Bolitho,” says the nurse, hipping out a tissue from her sleeve. “What do we watch? Our standards, mmm?” She scoops up the saliva stalactite and deposits the tissue in the bin. “You’ll remember Hugo, Mrs. Bolitho—the brigadier’s young friend.”

Mrs. Bolitho turns her head; I think of my trout at lunch.

“Great to see you again, Mrs. Bolitho,” I say cheerfully.

“Say hello to Hugo, Mrs. Bolitho. Hugo’s a guest.”

She looks from me to Nurse Purvis and whimpers.

“What’s that? Chitty Chitty Bang Bangis on the television, in the lounge. The flying car. Why don’t we go and join them, mmm?”

A fox’s head watches us from the wall with a faint smile.

“Stay here,” Nurse Purvis tells Mrs. Bolitho, “while I take Hugo to the library. Then we’ll go to the residents’ room together.”

I wish Mrs. Bolitho a Merry Christmas but the chances are low.

“She has four sons,” Nurse Purvis leads me on, “all with a London post code, but they never visit. You’d think old age was a criminal offense, not a destination we’re all heading to.”

I consider airing my theory that our culture’s coping strategy towards death is to bury it under consumerism and Sansara, that the Riverside Villas of the world are screens that enable this self-deception, and that the elderly areguilty: guilty of proving to us that our willful myopia about death is exactly that.

But, no, let’s not complicate Nurse Purvis’s opinion of me. We reach the library where my guide continues sotto voce: “I know you won’t be put out, Hugo, if the brigadier doesn’t recognize you.”

“Not at all. Does he still suffer from the postage stamp … delusion?”

“It rears its head from time to time, yes. Oh, here’s Mariвngela—Mariвngela!”

Mariвngela approaches with a stack of neatly folded bed linen. “Yugo! Nurse Purvis, she told me you visit today. How is Norwitch?”

“Hugo is at Cambridge University, Mariвngela.” Nurse Purvis shivers. “ Cambridge. Not Norwich. Quite different.”

“Pardon, Yugo.” Mariвngela’s puckish Brazilian eyes arouse not only my hopes. “My geography of England, still a bit rubbish.”

“Mariвngela, perhaps you’d bring some coffee to the library for Hugo and the brigadier. I ought to be getting back to Mrs. Bolitho.”

“Of course. It’s been wonderful catching up, Nurse Purvis.”

“Be sure to say goodbye before you leave.” Off she marches.

I ask Mariвngela, “What’s she actually like to work for?”

“We are accustomed to dictators in my continent.”

“Does she sleep at night or plug herself into the mains?”

“Is not a bad boss, if you agree with her always. At the least, she is dependable. At the least, she says what she is thinking, honestly.”

I’d describe Mariвngela as pouty but not vitriolic. “Look, Angel, we both needed some space.”

“ Eight weeks, Yugo. Two letters, two calls, two messages on my answer machine. Ineed contact, not space.” Okay, so she’s between pouty and wronged woman. “You not an expert on what I need.”

Tell her it’s over, Hugo the Wise advises, but Hugo the Horny loves a uniform. “I’m not an expert on you, Mariвngela. Or any other woman. Or myself, even. I had two or three girlfriends before you—but … you’re different. By the end of last summer, the inside of my eyelids was a TV station showing Mariвngela Pinto-Pereira, all day, all night. It freaked me out. The only way I could handle it was space. So often, I nearlyphoned … but … but … I was an inexperienced boy, Angel, not a malicious one.” I open the library door. “Thanks for some great memories, I’m sorry my insensitivity hurt you. Really.”

Her foot’s in the door. Pouty and sultry. “Nurse Purvis ask I bring you and the brigadier coffee. Is still dark, with one sugar?”

“Yes, please. But no Amazonian voodoo stuff that shrivels up testicles, if that’s okay.”

“Sharp knife is better than voodoo.” She scowls. “Milk or Coffee-mate in your coffee, like you drink it at Came-bridge University?”

“White coffee brings me out in a nasty rash.”

“So if– if—I find you real Brazilian coffee, you drink?”

“Mariвngela. Once you’ve tasted the real thing, everything else is a cheap imitation.”

“NEAR THE END now, Brigadier,” I tell the old man, and turn the page. “ ‘But for me all the East is contained in that vision of my youth. It is all on that moment when I opened my young eyes on it. I came upon it from a tussle with the sea—and I was young—and I saw it looking at me. And this is all that is left of it! Only a moment; a moment of strength, of romance, of glamour—of youth!… A flick of sunshine upon a strange shore, the time to remember, the time for a sigh, and—goodbye!—Night—Goodbye …’ ” I slurp lukewarm coffee: Brigadier Philby’s cup remains untouched. The vital, witty man I knew five years ago is one and the same as the wheelchair-bound husk. Back in 1986 he was seventy going on fifty, living in a big old place in Kew with his devoted widowed sister, Mrs. Hatter. The brigadier was an old friend of my headmaster, and although I was supposed to be mowing his lawn while his broken leg recovered, he recognized a kindred spirit and we ended up spending my civics-class hours on poker, cribbage, and blackjack. Even after his leg had healed I’d go round most Thursday evenings. Mrs. Hatter would “fatten me up” and we’d retire to the card table, where he taught me ways to “Entice Lady Luck to drop her bloomers” that not even Toad guesses at. A dapper dresser and quite the ladies’ man in his day, an obsessive philatelist, linguist, and raconteur. After a glass of port he would talk about days in the Special Boat Section in wartime Norway, and later in the Korean War. He insisted I read Conrad and Chekhov, and taught me how to get a fake passport by finding a name in a graveyard and writing off to Somerset House for a birth certificate. I knew this but pretended I didn’t.

Brigadier Philby hardly stirs nowadays. His head sways now and then, like Stevie Wonder’s at the piano, and dandruff gathers in the furrows of his jacket. His shave was done by a male nurse with a mind on other matters and the old man wears an incontinence nappy. A few malformed words escape the brigadier’s mouth from time to time, but he’s otherwise nonverbal. I’ve no idea whether Conrad’s Youthis bringing him the pleasure it used to, or whether it’s a torment to be reminded of happier days. Or perhaps he has no idea what I’m saying, or even who I am.

Still. Mariвngela says that the best way to work with dementia is to act as if the person you knew is still inside the wreckage. If you’re wrong, and the person you knew is gone, then no damage is done but the standards of care stay high; if you’re right, and the person you knew is still bricked up inside, then you are the lifeline. “On to the final page, now, Brigadier. ‘By all that’s wonderful it is the sea, I believe, the sea itself—or is it youth alone? Who can tell? But you here—you all had something out of life: money, love—whatever one gets on shore—and, tell me, wasn’t that the best time, that time we were young at sea; young and had nothing, on the sea that gives nothing, except hard knocks—and sometimes a chance to feel your strength—that only—what you all regret?’ ”

Something flutters in the brigadier’s throat.

A sigh? Or just air, strumming vocal cords?

Through a gap in the trees at the end of the garden I see the Thames, silver and gunmetal.

A five-man boat flits from left to right. Blink and you miss it.

The flat-capped gardener gathers leaves with a rake.

Last paragraph in the dying light: “ ‘And we all nodded at him: the man of finance, the man of accounts, the man of law, we all nodded at him over the polished table that like a still sheet of brown water reflected our faces, lined, wrinkled; our faces marked by toil, by deceptions, by success, by love. Our weary eyes looking still, looking always, looking anxiously for something out of life, that while it is expected is already gone—has passed unseen, in a sigh, in a flash—together with the youth, with the strength, with the romance of illusions.’ ”

I shut the book, and put on the lamp. My watch says 4:15. I rise, and draw the curtains. “Well, sir.” It feels like I’m addressing an empty room. “I shouldn’t tire you out too much, I guess.”

Unexpectedly, the brigadier’s face tautens with alertness and his mouth opens, and although his voice is ghostly and stroke-slurred, I can discern his words: “My … bloody … stamps …”

“Brigadier Philby—it’s Hugo, sir. Hugo Lamb.”

His shaky hand tries to clutch my sleeve. “Police …”

“Which stamps, Brigadier? Which do you mean?”

“Small … fortune …” Intelligence enters his eyes and, for a moment, I think he’s ready to fire off an accusation, but the moment goes. In the corridor outside, a trolley squeaks by. The brigadier I knew has left his bombed-out face, leaving me alone with the clock, shelves of handsome books nobody ever reads, and one certainty: that whatever I do with my life, however much power, wealth, experience, knowledge, or beauty I’ll accrue, I, too, will end up like this vulnerable old man. When I look at Brigadier Reginald Philby, I’m looking down time’s telescope at myself.

MARIВNGELA’S DREAM-CATCHER SWINGS when I biff it, and I find my lover’s crucifix among her boingy curls. I hold the Son of God in my mouth, and imagine him dissolving on my tongue. Sex may be the antidote to death but it offers life everlasting only to the species, not the individual. On the CD player, Ella Fitzgerald forgets the words to “Mac the Knife” one broiling night in Berlin over forty summers ago. A District Line train rumbles down below. Mariвngela kisses the fleshy underside of my forearm, then bites, hard. “Ow,” I complain, enjoying the pain. “Is that Portuguese for ‘the Earth moved for me, my lord and master, how was it for you?’ ”

“Is Portuguese for ‘I hate you, you liar, you cheat, you monster, psycho, pervert, go to rot in the hell, you son of the bitch.’ ”

My erect bishop is unburying itself; the anticipation makes us both laugh, which squishes me out prematurely. I rescue the condom before its gluey viscera stains her purple sheets, and wrap it in a tissue shroud. Coupling is frenzy; decoupling is farce. Mariвngela squirms around to face me and I wonder why women are uglier once they’re unpeeled, encrusted, and had. She sits up and sips some water from the glass guarded by Jesus of Rio. “You want?” She brings the glass to my lips. Mariвngela guides my hand over her heart: Love love love love love love love, it beats.

Ah, I should have listened to Hugo the Wise …

·   ·   ·

“YUGO, WHEN CAN I meet your family?”

I’m putting on my boxers. I’d like a shower, but the Aston Martin dealership is closing soon so I need to hurry. “Why do you want to meet my family?”

“Is normal I want. We see each other six months now. June twenty-first, when you come here first. Tomorrow is December twenty-first.”

God, an anniversary counter. “Let’s go for a meal to celebrate, Angel, but let’s leave my family out of it, hey?”

“I wantmeet your parents, your brothers …”

Right: Mum, Dad, Nigel, Alex; may I present Mari в ngela. She hails from a nondescript suburb of Rio, works at Riverside House as a geriatric nurse, and after visiting Brigadier Philby, I shag her scarlet. So: What’s for dinner?I find my T-shirt down the side of her bed. “I don’t really take girlfriends home, to be honest.”

“So, I will be number one. Is very nice.”

“Separate areas of my life”—jeans, zip, belt—“I keep separate.”

“I am your girlfriend, not an ‘area.’ You shamed of me?”

What a sweet stab at emotional blackmail. “You know I’m not.”

Mariвngela’s brain knows she should let this drop, but her heart has seized the wheel. “So, you shamed of your family?”

“No more than an average middle son of three.”

“Then … you shamed I am too older than you?”

“You’re twenty-six, Angel. That’s hardly old.”

“So … I am not white enough for your parents?”

I button up my Paul Smith shirt. “Not a factor.”

“So for why I cannot meet my boyfriend’s family?”

Sock one, sock two. “We’re just … not at that stage.”

“Is bool-shit, Yugo. In relationships, you share more than just bodies, yes? When you in Cambridge, drinking shit coffee with all the PhD white girls, I don’t sit here, praying you call, waiting for letters. No. One guy is consultant at private clinic, he ask for date at Japanese restaurant in Mayfair. My friends say, ‘You crazy to say no!’ But I say no—for you.”

I try not to smile at her amateurishness.

“So what am I for? Just for sex when you on vacation?”

Okay, my coat’s over by the door, ditto cowboy boots; she’s still naked as a snowman and no weapons within easy reach. “You’re a friend, Mariвngela. Today you’re an intimate friend. But do I want to introduce you to my parents? No. Move in with you? No. Plan a future, fold laundry with you, get a cat? No.”

Another train passes below the window and cue crying scene: a scene as old as hominids and tear glands. It’s happening all over Planet Earth, right now, in all the languages there are. Mariвngela wipes her face and looks away, and the Olly Quinns of the world sink to their knees, promising to make things right. I put on my coat and boots. She notices and the tears stop. “You are leaving? Now?”

“If this is our big goodbye, Angel, why prolong the agony?”

Hurt to hatred in five seconds. “Sai da minha frente! Vai pra puta que pariu!”

Good. It’s a cleaner ending if she hates me. With one foot over her threshold, I tell her, “If that consultant of yours wants lessons on Mariвngela Pinto-Pereira, tell him I’ll give him a few pointers.”

One murderous scowl, one flash of muscular arm, and one glimpse of prime Brazilian breast later, Jesus of Rio is hurtling my way at meteor velocity; I react with a tenth of a second to spare, and Jesus hits the door and turns into a thousand plaster hailstones.

THE SIX O’CLOCK gloom promises snow. I put on my possum-hair hat. All’s well in Richmond’s prosperous backstreets. House owners draw curtains on middle-class rooms lined with books, hung with art, lit by Christmas trees. I make my short detour via Red Lion Street. The girl at reception in the Aston Martin dealership has curves as pert as the cars’ but facially she’s an out-and-out ET. She’s gossiping on the phone as I stroll by—I give her a curt your-boss-is-expecting-me nod and cross the showroom floor to the open door of VINCENT COSTELLO, SALES TEAM. The occupant looks to be in his early thirties, has a gelled mullet, an off-the-peg suit from a mid-range high-street outfitter, and is making a dog’s dinner of wrapping a big box of Scalextric. “Hi,” he says to me. “Can I help you?” Jack-the-lad accent, east London; a photo of him and a little boy on his desk, but no mummy and no wedding ring.