The Bone Clocks

“Hugo is at Cambridge University, Mariвngela.” Nurse Purvis shivers. “ Cambridge. Not Norwich. Quite different.”

“Pardon, Yugo.” Mariвngela’s puckish Brazilian eyes arouse not only my hopes. “My geography of England, still a bit rubbish.”

“Mariвngela, perhaps you’d bring some coffee to the library for Hugo and the brigadier. I ought to be getting back to Mrs. Bolitho.”

“Of course. It’s been wonderful catching up, Nurse Purvis.”

“Be sure to say goodbye before you leave.” Off she marches.

I ask Mariвngela, “What’s she actually like to work for?”

“We are accustomed to dictators in my continent.”

“Does she sleep at night or plug herself into the mains?”

“Is not a bad boss, if you agree with her always. At the least, she is dependable. At the least, she says what she is thinking, honestly.”

I’d describe Mariвngela as pouty but not vitriolic. “Look, Angel, we both needed some space.”

“ Eight weeks, Yugo. Two letters, two calls, two messages on my answer machine. Ineed contact, not space.” Okay, so she’s between pouty and wronged woman. “You not an expert on what I need.”

Tell her it’s over, Hugo the Wise advises, but Hugo the Horny loves a uniform. “I’m not an expert on you, Mariвngela. Or any other woman. Or myself, even. I had two or three girlfriends before you—but … you’re different. By the end of last summer, the inside of my eyelids was a TV station showing Mariвngela Pinto-Pereira, all day, all night. It freaked me out. The only way I could handle it was space. So often, I nearlyphoned … but … but … I was an inexperienced boy, Angel, not a malicious one.” I open the library door. “Thanks for some great memories, I’m sorry my insensitivity hurt you. Really.”

Her foot’s in the door. Pouty and sultry. “Nurse Purvis ask I bring you and the brigadier coffee. Is still dark, with one sugar?”

“Yes, please. But no Amazonian voodoo stuff that shrivels up testicles, if that’s okay.”

“Sharp knife is better than voodoo.” She scowls. “Milk or Coffee-mate in your coffee, like you drink it at Came-bridge University?”

“White coffee brings me out in a nasty rash.”

“So if— if—I find you real Brazilian coffee, you drink?”

“Mariвngela. Once you’ve tasted the real thing, everything else is a cheap imitation.”

“NEAR THE END now, Brigadier,” I tell the old man, and turn the page. “ ‘But for me all the East is contained in that vision of my youth. It is all on that moment when I opened my young eyes on it. I came upon it from a tussle with the sea—and I was young—and I saw it looking at me. And this is all that is left of it! Only a moment; a moment of strength, of romance, of glamour—of youth!… A flick of sunshine upon a strange shore, the time to remember, the time for a sigh, and—goodbye!—Night—Goodbye …’ ” I slurp lukewarm coffee: Brigadier Philby’s cup remains untouched. The vital, witty man I knew five years ago is one and the same as the wheelchair-bound husk. Back in 1986 he was seventy going on fifty, living in a big old place in Kew with his devoted widowed sister, Mrs. Hatter. The brigadier was an old friend of my headmaster, and although I was supposed to be mowing his lawn while his broken leg recovered, he recognized a kindred spirit and we ended up spending my civics-class hours on poker, cribbage, and blackjack. Even after his leg had healed I’d go round most Thursday evenings. Mrs. Hatter would “fatten me up” and we’d retire to the card table, where he taught me ways to “Entice Lady Luck to drop her bloomers” that not even Toad guesses at. A dapper dresser and quite the ladies’ man in his day, an obsessive philatelist, linguist, and raconteur. After a glass of port he would talk about days in the Special Boat Section in wartime Norway, and later in the Korean War. He insisted I read Conrad and Chekhov, and taught me how to get a fake passport by finding a name in a graveyard and writing off to Somerset House for a birth certificate. I knew this but pretended I didn’t.

Brigadier Philby hardly stirs nowadays. His head sways now and then, like Stevie Wonder’s at the piano, and dandruff gathers in the furrows of his jacket. His shave was done by a male nurse with a mind on other matters and the old man wears an incontinence nappy. A few malformed words escape the brigadier’s mouth from time to time, but he’s otherwise nonverbal. I’ve no idea whether Conrad’s Youthis bringing him the pleasure it used to, or whether it’s a torment to be reminded of happier days. Or perhaps he has no idea what I’m saying, or even who I am.