The Bone Clocks

CARS AND TRUCKS wallop by, gusting seeds off dandelion clocks, but there’s no one to ask the way to Black Elm Farm. Lacy flowers sway on long stalks as trucks shudder by, and blue butterflies are shaken loose. The tigery orange ones cling tighter. Ed Brubeck’ll be working at the garden center now, dreaming of Italian girls as he lugs bales of peat into customers’ cars. Must think I’m a right moody cow. Or perhaps not. The fact Vinny dumped me is fast becoming exactly that, a fact. Yesterday it was a sawn-off shotgun wound but today it’s more like a monster bruise from an air-rifle pellet. Yes, I trusted Vinny and I loved him, but that doesn’t make me stupid. For the Vinny Costellos of the world, love is bullshit they murmur into your ear to get sex. For girls—me, anyway—sex is what you do on page one to get to the love that’s later on in the book. “I’m well rid of that lechy bastard,” I tell a cow watching me over a gate, and though I don’t feel it yet, I reckon one day I will. Maybe Stella’s done me a favor, in a way, by tearing off Vinny’s nice-guy mask after only five weeks. Vinny’ll get bored of her, sure as eggs is eggs, and when she finds him in bed with another girl it’ll be herdreams of motorbike rides with Vinny that’ll get minced, just like mine were. Then she’ll come crawling back, eyes as red and sore as mine were yesterday, and ask me to forgive her. And I might. Or I might not. Up ahead there’s a roundabout and a cafй.

And the cafй’s open. Things are looking up.

THE CAFЙ’S CALLED Smoky Joe’s Cafй and it’s trying hard to be an American diner off Happy Dayswith tall booths you can’t see into, but it’s a bit of a shit-hole, really. There’s not many customers, most of them glued to the footy on the knackered telly up on the wall. A woman sits by the door, reading the News of the Worldin a cloud of cigarette smoke coming from her pinched nostrils. Buttony eyes, stitched lips, frizzy hair, a face full of old regrets. Over her head is a faded poster of a brown goldfish bowl with two eyes peering out and a caption saying: JEFF’S GOLDFISH HAD DIARRHEA AGAIN. She sizes me up and waves her hand towards the booths, meaning, Sit where you want. “Actually,” I say, “I just wanted to ask if you know how to get to Black Elm Farm.”

She looks up, shrugs, looks back, and breathes smoke.

“It’s here, on Sheppey. I’ve got a job there.”

She returns to her paper and taps her fag.

I decide to phone Mr. Harty: “Is there a pay phone?”

The old moo shakes her head, without looking up.

“Would it be possible just to make a local call using your—”

She glares at me, like I’ve asked her if she sells drugs.

“Well … might anyone else here know Black Elm Farm?” I hold her gaze for long enough to tell her the quickest way to get back to her paper is to help me.

“Peggy!” she bawls, into the kitchen. “Black Elm Farm?”

A clattery voice answers: “Gabriel Harty’s place. Why?”

Her button eyes swivel my way. “Someone’s askin’ …”

Peggy appears: she has a red nose, gerbil cheeks, and a smile like a Nazi interrogator’s. “Off fruit-picking for a few days, is it, pet? It was hops in my day, but hops is all done by machines nowadays. You take the Leysdown road—thataway”—she points left out of the door—“past Eastchurch, then take Old Ferry Lane on the right. On foot, are you, pet?” I nod. “Five or six mile, it is, but that’s a stroll in the park for—”

There’s a godalmighty clatter of tin trays from the kitchen and Peggy hurries back. I deserve a packet of Rothmans now I’ve got what I came in for, so I go to the machine in the main part of the cafй: Ј1.40 for a packet of twenty. Total rip-off, but there’ll be a bunch of new people at the farm so I’ll need a confidence booster. In go the coins before I can argue myself out of it, round goes the knob, plop go the ciggies. Only when I straighten, box of twenty Rothmans in hand, do I see who’s sat behind the machine, bang across the aisle: Stella Yearwood and Vinny Costello.

I duck down, out of sight, wanting to puke. Did they see me just now? No. Stella would’ve said something breezy and poisonous. There’s a gap between the machine and the screen. Stella’s feeding Vinny ice cream across the table. Vinny looks back like a lovesick puppy. She runs the spoon over his lips, leaving dribbly vanilla lipstick. He licks it off. “Give me the strawberry.”

“I didn’t hear the magic word,” says Stella.

Vinny smiles. “Give me the strawberry, please.”