The Bone Clocks

ME, RICHARD CHEESEMAN, Dominic Fitzsimmons, Olly Quinn, and Jonny Penhaligon clunk our glasses and bottles in the roar and slosh of the Buried Bishop, across the cobbled lane behind Humber College’s west gate. The place is heaving: Tomorrow the Christmas exodus begins, and we’re lucky to have found a table in the furthest nook. I hole-in-one my Kilmagoon Special Reserve, and the fat Scotch slug scorches a trail from tonsils to stomach. Here, it gets to work on the knot of gut-worry I’ve been suffering from since my zone-out in the chapel earlier. I’ve been rationalizing. It’s been a tiring month with essays and deadlines; Mariвngela keeps leaving those nagging messages; and I’ve endured two all-nighters at Toad’s in the last week to tenderize Jonny Penhaligon. Losing track of time isn’t proof of a brain tumor; it’s hardly as if I keeled over, or found myself wandering among the chimneys of the college, naked. I lost track of time while sitting in the finest Late Gothic church in the country, meditating upon a Rubens masterpiece—surroundings designed to transport you. Olly Quinn puts down his half-drunk pint and suppresses a belch. “So, did you solve the mystery of How Ronald Reagan Accidentally Won the Cold War, Lamb?”

I can barely hear him: The Humber College Young Conservatives in the next room are howling along to Cliff Richard’s probably immortal Christmas hit “Mistletoe and Wine.” “Done, dusted, and slipped under Professor Dewey’s door.”

“Don’t know how you’ve stuck at politics for three years.” Richard Cheeseman wipes Guinness foam from his Young Hemingway beard. “I’d rather circumcize myself with a cheese grater.”

“Too bad you missed dinner,” Fitzsimmons tells me. “Pudding was the last of Jonny’s Narnian weed. We couldn’t very well let Mrs. Mop find it during her end-of-term clean-up, assume it was a turd nugget, and chuck it out with Jonny’s gluey copies of Scouting Ahoy!” Jonny Penhaligon, still draining his bitter, gives Fitzsimmons the finger; his knobbly Adam’s apple bobs up and down. Idly, I imagine slicing it with a razor. Fitzsimmons sniffs and asks Cheeseman, “Where’s your leather-trousered friend from the Mysterious Orient?”

Cheeseman glances at his watch. “Thirty thousand feet over Siberia, turning back into an upstanding Confucian eldest son. Why would I risk my reputation on being seen with a gang of notorious heterosexuals if Sek was still in town? I’m a fully converted rice queen. Crash us a cancer-stick, Fitz; I could bloody murder a fag, as I delight in telling Americans.”

“You don’t need to light up in here.” Olly Quinn is our pet nonsmoker. “Just breathe in.”

“Weren’t you giving up?” Fitzsimmons passes Cheeseman his box of Dunhills; Penhaligon and I take one too.

“Tomorrow, tomorrow,” says Cheeseman. “Your Hermann Gцring lighter, Jonny, if you’d be so kind? I adore its frisson of evil.”

Penhaligon produces his Third Reich lighter. It’s genuine, obtained by his uncle in Dresden, and these fat boys fetch three thousand pounds at auction. “Where’s RCP tonight?”

“The future Lord Rufus Chetwynd-Pitt,” answers Fitzsimmons, “is scoring drugs. Pity for him it’s not an academic discipline.”

“It’s a recession-proof sector of the economy,” I note.

“This time next year,” Olly Quinn picks at the label of his nonalcoholic lager, “we’ll all be out in the real world, earning a living.”

“Can’t bloody wait,” says Fitzsimmons, stroking his chin cleft. “I despise being poor.”

“My heart bleeds.” Richard Cheeseman holds his ciggie in the corner of his mouth а la Serge Gainsbourg. “People see your parents’ twenty-roomed mansion in the Cotswolds, your Porsche, your Versace gear and jump to allthe wrong conclusions.”

“It’s my parents’ loot,” says Fitzsimmons. “It’s only fair that I have my ownobscene bonus to squander.”

“Daddy’s still sorting you a job in the City?” asks Cheeseman, then frowns as Fitzsimmons brushes the shoulders of Cheeseman’s tweed jacket. “What are you doing?”

“Flicking the chips off your shoulders, our Richard.”

“They’re superglued on,” I tell Fitzsimmons. “And don’t knock nepotism, Cheeseman; my well-connected uncles all agree, nepotism made this country what it is today.”

Cheeseman blows smoke my way. “When you’re a burned-out ex-Citibank analyst having your Lamborghini repossessed and your third wife’s lawyer’s got your nuts under a judge’s gavel, you’ll be sorry.”

“Right,” I say, “and the Ghost of Christmas Future sees Richard Cheeseman working on a charity project for Bogotб street-children.”