The Bone Clocks (43 page)

H
ERSHEY IS
not
going to vomit. Did Hershey not pass this broken gate earlier? A hunchback tree, a brook that won’t shut up, the puddle reflecting the BritFone holo-logo, the acid reek of cowshit. Hershey is
not
drunk. Just well oiled. Why am I here? “So far up his own arse he can see daylight.” Gulp it down. The pavilion was a bottomless pit. The mascarpone trifle was ill-advised. “That wasn’t Crispin Hershey, was it?” My shortcut across the car park back to my comfy room at the Coach and Horses has trapped me in a Möbius loop of Land Rovers, Touaregs, and slurping hoofed-up mud. I thought I saw Archbishop Desmond Tutu and I followed him to ask about something that seemed important at the time but it turned out not to be him anyway. So why am I here, dear reader? Because I need to keep my author profile high. Because the £500,000 advance that Hyena Hal extracted for
Echo Must Die
is gone—half to the Inland Revenue, a quarter to the mortgage, a quarter to negative equity. Because if I’m not a writer, what am I? “Anything new in the pipeline, Mr. Hershey? My wife and I adored
Desiccated Embryos
.” Because of Nick sodding Greek and the Young Ones, eyeing my place in the throne room of English Literature. Oh, rum, sodomy, and the lash: Mount Vomit is ready to erupt; let us now kneel before the Lord of the Gastric Spasm and all pay homage …

P
LAZA DE LA
A
DUANA IS THROBBING
with Cartagenans holding their iPhones aloft. Plaza de la Aduana is roofed by a tropical twilight of Fanta Orange and oily amethyst. Plaza de la Aduana is oscillating to the cod-ska chorus of “Exocets for Breakfast” by Damon MacNish and the Sinking Ship. Up on his balcony, Crispin Hershey taps ash into his champagne glass and remembers a sexual encounter to the music of
She Blew Out the Candle
—the Sinking Ship’s debut album—around the time of his twenty-first birthday, when the images of Morrissey, Che Guevara, and Damon MacNish surveyed a million student bedrooms. The second album was less well received—bagpipes and electric guitars usually end in tears—and the follow-up’s follow-up bombed. MacNish would have returned to his career in pizza delivery had he not resurrected himself as a celebrity campaigner for AIDS, for Sarajevo, for the Nepalese minority in the Kingdom of Bhutan, for any cause at all, as far as I could see. World leaders eagerly submitted themselves to two minutes of MacNish while the cameras rolled. Winner of Sexiest Scot of the Year for three years running, tabloid interest in his regularly rotating girlfriends, a steady trickle of okay but mojoless albums, an ethical clothing brand, and two BBC seasons of
Damon MacNish’s Five Continents
kept the Glaswegian’s star well lit until the last decade, and even today “Saint Nish” remains in demand at festivals, where he delivers a polished Q&A by day and a tour through his old hits by night—for a mere $25,000 plus business-class travel and five-star accommodation, I understand.

I slap a mosquito against my cheek. The little bastards are the
price for this delicious warmth. Zoë and the girls were due to join me here—I’d even bought the (nonrefundable) tickets—but then the shitstorm blew up about Zoë’s earth-mother marriage counselor. £250+VAT for an hour of platitudes about mutual respect? “No,” I told Zoë, “and, as we all know, no means no.”

Zoë opened fire with every weapon known to woman.

Yes
, the porcelain mermaid
was
launched from my hand. But had it been
aimed
at her, it would not have missed. Therefore I didn’t mean to hurt her. Zoë, by now too hysterical to follow this simple logic, packed her Louis Vuitton bags and left with Lori the hairy au pair to pick up Anaïs and Juno from school, thence to her old friend’s pad in Putney. Which was mysteriously available at zero notice. Crispin was supposed to proffer promises to mend his ways, but he preferred to watch
No Country for Old Men
with the volume up really loud. The following day, I wrote a story about a gang of feral youths who roam the near future, siphoning oil tanks of lardy earth mothers. It’s one of my best. Zoë phoned that evening and told me she “needed space—perhaps a fortnight”; the subtext being, dear reader,
If you apologize grovelingly enough, I may come back
. I suggested that she take a month and hung up. Lori brought Juno and Anaïs to visit last Sunday. I was expecting tears and emotional blackmail, but Juno told me her mother had described me as impossible to live with, and Anaïs asked if she could have a pony if we got divorced, because when Germaine Bigham’s parents got divorced she got a pony. It rained all day, so I ordered in pizza. We played Mario Carts. John Cheever has a short story called “The Season of Divorce.” It’s one of his best.

“S
TILL PUTS ON
a decent show, don’t he, f’ra fella his age?” Kenny Bloke offers me a smoke as Damon MacNish windmills through “Corduroy Skirts Are a Crime Against Humanity.” “I saw the lads in Fremantle, back in … eighty-six? Fackin’ A.” Kenny Bloke’s in his late fifties, sports ironmongery in his ear, and is a Noongar
elder, according to the festival bumf. I observe how Damon MacNish and many of his contemporaries have turned into their own tribute bands, which must be a peculiar and postmodern fate. Kenny Bloke taps ash into the geraniums. “MacNish’s sitting pretty compared to a lot of them, I reckon. Guess who was playing at Busselton Park not so long ago? Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Remember them? Not a massive turnout, I’m afraid, but they’ve got pensions and kids to put through college, same as everyone. Us writers get spared that, at least, eh? Farewell tours on the nostalgia circuit.”

I probe this not-necessarily-true remark.
Echo Must Die
cleared twenty thousand in the U.K. and the same in the States. Respectable …

… -ish, but for the new Crispin Hershey novel, disappointing. Time was I’d shift a hundred thousand units in both territories, no questions asked. Hyena Hal talks about eBook downloads reconfiguring the old paradigm, but I know exactly why my “return to form” novel failed to sell—Richard Cheeseman’s Rottweilering. That one sodding review declared open season on the Wild Child of British Letters, and by the time the Brittan Prize longlist was announced,
Echo Must Die
was better known as
The One Richard Cheeseman Hilariously Shafted
. I scan the spacious ballroom behind us. Still no sign of him, but he won’t resist the tug of coffee-skinned Latino butlers for long.

“Did you look around the old quarter today?” asks Kenny Bloke.

“Yes, it’s pretty in a UNESCO way. If a touch unreal.”

The Australian grunts. “My taxi driver told me how the FARC people and the intelligence services needed a place for a holiday, so Cartagena’s their de facto demilitarized zone.” He accepts one of my cigarettes. “Don’t tell the missus—she thinks I’ve given up.”

“Your secret’s safe. I doubt I’ll be coming to …?”

“Katanning. Western Australia. Bottom-left corner. Compared to this”—Kenny Bloke gestures at the Latin Baroque glory—“it’s a dingo’s arse. But my people are buried there, from way, way back, and I wouldn’t want to leave my roots.”

“Rootlessness,” I opine, “is the twenty-first-century norm.”

“You’re not wrong and that’s why we’re in the shit we’re in, mate. If you belong nowhere, why give a tinker’s toss about anywhere?”

Damon MacNish’s drummer whacks out a solo and the sea of Latino youth below makes me feel WASPish and old. Friday, ten
P.M.
in London, no school tomorrow. Juno and Anaïs are handling my and Zoë’s trial separation with suspicious maturity. Surely I deserve a few teary episodes. Has Zoë been readying them for a bust-up? My old mucker Ewan Rice told me
his
first wife had sought legal advice six months before the D-word, hence her cool million-quid settlement. When had the rot set in for me and Zoë? Was it there at the very beginning, hiding like a cancer cell, on Zoë’s father’s yacht, Aegean sea light playing on the cabin ceiling, an empty wine bottle rolling oh-ever-so-gently on the cabin floor, this way and that, this way and that? We’d been celebrating Hal the Hyena’s text to say the auction for
Desiccated Embryos
had reached £750,000 and was
still
climbing. Zoë said, “Don’t panic, Crisp, but I’d like to spend my life with you.” This way and that … This way and that …

“Swim for it!” I want to shout at that moronic Romeo. Before you know it, she’ll “study” for an online PhD in crystal healing and call you narrow-minded if you dare wonder aloud where the science is. She’ll stop greeting you in the hallway when you get home. Her powers of accusation will
stupefy
you, young Romeo. If the au pair’s lazy, it’s your fault for vetoing the Polish troglodyte. If the piano teacher’s too strict, you should have found a huggier one. If Zoë is unfulfilled, it’s your fault for depriving her of the imperative to earn a living. Sex? Ha. “Stop pressuring me, Crispin.” “I’m not pressuring you, Zoë, I’m just asking when?” “Sometime.” “When
is
‘Sometime’?” “Stop
pressuring
me, Crispin!” Men marry women hoping they’ll never change. Women marry men hoping they will. Both parties are disappointed, and meanwhile Romeo on the yacht kisses his soon-to-be-fiancée and murmurs, “Let’s get hitched, Miss Legrange.”

The drum solo ends and Damon MacNish bounds up to the
mike, does a “One-two-three-five” and the Sinking Ship strike up “Disco in a Minefield.” I let my cigarette drop into an imaginary lake of gasoline and turn the plaza into a Doomsday
whooosh, k’bammm! Ommmmmm …

I recognize a very familiar voice, mere feet away.

“So I told him,” Richard Cheeseman is saying, “ ‘Uh, no, Hillary—I don’t have a libretto of my own to show you, because I flush
my
shit down the toilet!’ ” Balding, midforties, round, and bearded. Hershey squeezes through the bodies and brings his hand down on the critic’s shoulder, like a wheel clamp. “Richard Cheeseman, as I live and breathe, you hairy old sodomite!
How
are you?”

Cheeseman recognizes me and spills his cocktail.

“Oh dear,” I emote, “all over your purple espadrilles, too.”

Cheeseman smiles, like a man about to have his jaw ripped from his skull, which is what I’ve long dreamt of doing. “Crisp!”

Don’t “Crisp” me, you wormfuck
. “The stiletto I brought to skewer your cerebellum got seized at Heathrow, so you’re in the clear.” Those in the literary know are gravitating our way like sharks to a sinking cruise ship. “But my, oh,
my
,” I dab Cheeseman’s arm with a handy napkin, “you gave my last book a shitty review.
Didn’t
you?”

Cheeseman hisses through his rictus grin. “Did I?” Up go his hands in a jokey surrender. “Candidly?
What
I wrote, or
how
some intern slapped it about, I no longer recall—but if it caused you any offense—any offense at all!—I apologize.”

I could stop here, but Destiny demands a vengeance more epic, and who am I to deny Destiny? I address the onlookers. “Let’s get this out in the open. When Richard’s review of
Echo Must Die
appeared, many people asked, ‘How did it feel, to read that?’ For a while, my answer was ‘How does it feel to have acid flung in your face?’ Then, however, I began to think about Richard’s motives. To a lesser writer, one could attribute the motive of envy, but Richard is himself a novelist of growing stature and a motive of petty malice didn’t wash. No.
I
believe that Richard Cheeseman cares deeply about literature, and feels duty-bound to tell the truth as he sees it.
So you know what? Bravo for Richard. He misappraised my last novel, but this man”—again, I clasp his shoulder in its ruffled shirt—“is a bulwark against the rising tide of arselickery that passes for lit crit. Let the record show I harbor not a gram of animus towards him—provided he brings us both a
huge
mojito and
pronto
, you scurrilous, scabby hack.”

Smiles! Applause! Cheeseman and I do a mongrel mix of a handshake and a high-five. “You got me back, though, Crisp,” his sweaty forehead shines, “with your jealous-fairy line at Hay-on-Wye—look, I’ll go and get those mojitos.”

“I’ll be on the balcony,” I tell him, “where the air’s a little cooler.” Then I’m mobbed by a dollop of nobodies who seriously suppose I’d bother to remember their names and faces. They praise my noble fair-mindedness. I respond nobly and fair-mindedly. Crispin Hershey’s magnanimity will be reported and retweeted and so it will become the truth. From across the plaza, through the balcony doors, we hear Damon MacNish bellowing: “Te amo, Cartagena!”

A
FTER THE FINAL
encore, the VIPs and writers are driven to the president’s villa in a convoy of about twenty bombproof 4×4 limousines. Police sirens brush aside the riffraff and traffic lights are ignored as we levitate through nocturnal Cartagena. My traveling companions are a Bhutanese playwright, who speaks no English, and two Bulgarian filmmakers, who appear to be swapping a string of disgusting but funny limericks in their own language. Through the smoked-glass window of the limousine I watch a nighttime market, an anarchic bus station, sweat-stained apartment blocks, street cafés, hawkers selling cigarettes from trays strapped to their lean torsos. Global capitalism does not appear to have been kind to the owners of these impassive faces. I wonder what these working-class Colombians make of us? Where do they sleep, what do they eat, of what do they dream? Each of the American-built armored limousines surely costs more than a lifetime’s earnings for these street vendors. I don’t know. If a short, unfit British novelist in his late
forties were ejected onto the roadside in one of these neighborhoods, I would not fancy his chances.

The presidential villa lies beyond a military training school, and security is rigorous. The party is al fresco in the villa’s tasteful and floodlit gardens, where drinks are served and vol-au-vents circulated by crisply ironed staff, and a jazz combo is doing a Stan Getz thing. The swimming pool is lined with candles, and I cannot see it without imagining an assassinated politician floating facedown in it. Several ambassadors are holding court in huddles, reminding me of circles of boys in a playground. The British one’s about somewhere. He’s younger than me. Now the Foreign Office has gone all meritocratic our diplomats have lost their larger-than-life Graham Greeneness, and are of less novelistic use. The view across the bay is impressive, with its slapdash South American shorefronts erased by the night, and a baroque moon floats aloft a fecund, one might say spermy, Milky Way. The president himself is in Washington drawing down more U.S. tax dollars for the “War on Drugs”—one more push!—but his Harvard-educated wife and orthodontically majestic sons are busy winning hearts and minds for the family business. Piggishly, he admits, Crispin Hershey wonders whether there’s an offshore prison where ugly Colombian women are incarcerated, because I don’t recall seeing one since I arrived. Would I, dear reader, should I, were the opportunity to present itself? My wedding ring is six thousand miles away in the drawer where my rarely opened box of marital condoms is hurtling past its use-by date. If I am less married than at any point since my wedding day it is Zoë’s doing, not mine—as is abundantly clear to any halfway-objective witness. In fact, if she were an employer and I her employee, I would have strong grounds for suing her for constructive dismissal. Look at how atrociously she and her family ostracized me during the Christmas holidays. Even three months later, on my third glass of champers, gazing at the Southern Cross and warmed by a balmy 20 degrees Celsius, I shudder …