The Bone Clocks

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

“HERE 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 Immaculйe 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 “Immaculйe 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 Mariвngela 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.

December 29

HERE AN ALP, THERE AN ALP, 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 Tsatй, 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-Agnиs, 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 t й l й cabinesbringing 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 Qui

·   ·   ·

“WHAT SAY WE add a dash of glory to this run?” Rufus Chetwynd-Pitt lifts his Ј180 Sno-Fox ski goggles. “The three losers can pick up the wi

“Count me out,” says Olly Qui

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

“Gra

Chetwynd-Pitt is a better skier than the rest of us, here or anywhere else, and at Sainte-Agnиs 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 someonehas 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 wi

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

Me and Chetwynd-Pitt crouch like Winter Olympians.

“Ready, steady— bang!”

BY 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 t й l й cabinepylon. 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 tu