David Mitchell - The Bone Clocks

I feel like smoking, but I munch a carrot stick instead. “How did he account for the three missing decades?”

“He said he was kidnapped by Soviet sailors who needed a cabin boy, then taken to Irkutsk to avoid a Cold War incident. Yeah, I know. Brendan’s bullshit detector was buzzing, so he shuftied me over and asked, ‘Recognize me, Jacko?’ The guy hesitated, then burst out, ‘Daddy!’ End of call. The last ‘Jacko’ we interviewed was Bangladeshi, but the imperialists at the British embassy in Dhaka refused to believe he was my brother. Would I send ten thousand pounds and sponsor his visa application? We called it a day after that. If Jacko’s alive, if he reads the book, if he wants to locate us, he’ll find a way.”

“Were you still working at the homeless center all this time?”

“I quit before I went to Cartagena. A shame — I loved the job, and I think I was good at it — but if you’re chairing a fund-raising meeting the same day a six-figure royalty payment slips into your bank account, you can’t pretend nothing’s changed. More ‘Jackos’ were trying their luck at the office, and my phone was hacked. I’m still involved with homeless charities at a patron level, but I had to get Aoife out of London to a nice sleepy backwater like Rye. So I thought. Did I ever tell you about the Great Illuminati Brawl?”

“You tell me less about your life than you think. The Illuminati: as in the lizard aliens who enslave humanity via beta-blocking mind waves beamed from their secret moonbase?”

“That’s them. One fine April morning, two groups of conspiracy theorists hide in my shrubbery. Christ knows how it started — a stray remark on Twitter, probably. So, the two groups realize they’re not alone, each group convinces itself that the other group are the Illuminati’s agents. With me so far? Stop smirking; they kicked the crap out of each other. The police were up in a jiffy. After that I had to put up a security fence and CCTV. Me , f’Chrissakes, holed up like an investment banker! But what choice did I have? Next time the loonies might not be hell-bent on defending me but attacking me. So while the contractor was in, I went out to Australia, which was when Aoife and I met you on Rottnest.” She pads over to draw the curtain on the night harbor. “Beware of asking people to question what’s real and what isn’t. They may reach conclusions you didn’t see coming.”

In the street two dogs bark furiously, then stop.

“If you don’t publish again, the loonies’ll move on.”

“This is true,” says Holly, looking evasive.

“ Are you working on another book?”

Now she looks cornered. “Only a few stories.”

I feel envious and pleased. “That’s brilliant. Your publishers will be doing backflips down the corridors.”

“There’s no guarantee anyone’ll read it. They’re stories based on people I knew at the center. Not a psychic in sight.”

“Right now, The Collected Shopping Lists of Holly Sykes would go straight to number one on preorders alone.”

“Well, we’ll see. But that’s what I’ve been doing here all summer. Reykjavik’s a good place to work. Iceland’s like Ireland; being famous here’s nothing special.”

By chance our fingertips are almost touching. Holly notices at the same instant, and we pull our hands back onto our laps. I try to come up with a joke I can turn this micro-embarrassment into, but nothing springs to mind. “I’ll call you a taxi, Crisp. It’s gone midnight.”

“No way is it that late.” I check my phone: 00:10. “Sodding hell, it’s tomorrow already.”

“So it is! What time’s your flight to London?”

“Nine-thirty, but can I ask you two last things?”

“Anything,” she says. “Almost.”

“Am I still ‘the spiral, the spider, the one-eyed man’?”

“You want me to check?”

Like an atheist wanting to be prayed for, I nod.

As she did in Shanghai, Holly touches the spot on her forehead and lets her eyelids almost close. What a great face she has but … it shouldn’t be that gray, or stretched. My eyes wander to her pendant. It’s a labyrinth. Some symbolic mind-body-spirit thing, I guess. From Ed?

“Yes.” Holly opens her eyes. “Same as ever.”

A possible drunk laughs maniacally outside. “Will I ever know what that means? That’s not my second question.”

“Some day, yes. Let me know when you know.”

“I promise.” The second question’s harder because one answer to it scares me very much: “Holly, you’re not ill, are you?”

She reacts with surprise but not denial. She looks away.

“Oh, sod it.” I want to unask my question. “Forgive me, it’s not—”

“Cancer of the gall bladder.” Holly attempts a smile. “Trust me to choose a nice rare one, eh?”

I can’t even attempt a smile. “What’s the prognosis?”

Holly wears the expression of someone discussing a tiresome inconvenience. “Too late for surgery — it’s spread to my liver and … um, yeah, it’s all over the shop. My oncologist in London gives me a — a—a five to ten percent chance of being here this time next year.” Her voice croaks. “Not the odds I’d choose. With chemo and drugs the odds improve, up to twenty percent, maybe, but … do I want to spend a few extra months puking in bin-liners? That’s the other reason I’ve been here in Iceland all summer, shadowing poor Aoife, like, y’know, whatsisface from Macbeth .”

“Banquo. Aoife knows, then?”

Holly nods. “Brendan, Sharon, their kids, my mother, and Örvar too — I’m hoping he’ll help Aoife when, y’know. When I can’t. But nobody else knows. ’Cept you. People get so maudlin. I have to spend what energy I’ve got cheering them up. I wasn’t going to tell you either but … you asked. Sorry to put a downer on a lovely evening.”

I see her, and see Crispin Hershey through her eyes, and perhaps she sees Holly Sykes through mine. Suddenly it’s later. Holly and I are standing by the table, hugging goodbye. It isn’t an erotic hug. Truly it isn’t, dear reader. I’d know.

It’s this: As long I’m holding her, nothing bad can happen.

• • •

THE TAXI DRIVER has earlobes full of metalwork and just says, “Okay,” when I tell him the name of my hotel. I wave goodbye until I can’t see Holly anymore. I’ve arranged to go to Rye before Christmas, so I’ll just ignore this unpleasant premonition that I’ll never see her again. The radio’s tuned to a classical-music station and I recognize Maria Callas singing “Casta Diva” from Bellini’s Norma— Dad used it in the model-airplane scene in Battleship Hill . For a moment I forget where I am. I switch on my iPhone to text Holly, to thank her for the evening, and as I’m writing it, a message from Carmen gets relayed through. She sent it while I was delivering my lecture earlier. It has no text: it’s just an image of … a blizzard?

A blizzard at night through a windscreen?

I tilt my head and rotate the phone.

Mashed-up asteroids? No.

It’s an ultrasound scan.

Of Carmen’s womb.

With a tenant in it.

THE KEY by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki: That’s the one. But having found the title in my cupboard-under-the-stairs of once-read books, the mind of Crispin Hershey drifts away from Devon Kim-Ashkenazy’s novel-in-progress ( Across the Wide Ocean , three generations of abused women from Pusan to Brooklyn). I know it’s happening, but I feel powerless to stop it. Up, up, and away my mind rises, through the ceiling tiles and roofing slates, over the bunker where the English Department has been temporarily housed since 1978. Espy the theater’s curvaceous roof by Frank Gehry; skim over Lego-like accommodation blocks; circle the Gothic chapel from Lincoln’s era; tumble amid the glass-and-steel science buildings; up to the president’s house, red-bricked, gabled, ivy-veined; through the lych-gate to the cemetery, where Blithewood College lifers turn into trees at the speed of worms and roots, and up the highest tree of all, spirals Hershey’s absent mind, known only unto squirrels and crows; the Hudson River stately winds between the Catskills’ pigeon-toes; a train’s revealed, a train’s obscured, a quote around a broken cup, “I like to see it lap the miles and lick the valleys up.” GoogleEarthlike soars his mind, through clouds where snowstorms brew; New York State has dropped away, and Massachusetts flew, and Newfoundland is ice-entombed and Rockall gull-beshatten, where no eye sees the lightning flash its momentary pattern …