The Bone Clocks

“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 Quinn, and Dominic Fitzsimmons, nice knowing you. Up to a point. There. Now that’s what I call medieval. Did La Fontaine Sainte-Agnиs exist back then? That skinny girl in the mint-green ski suit leaning on the railing, smoking like all French girls smoke—is it on the school curriculum?—let her stay. Every Adam needs an Eve.

·   ·   ·

“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 winner’s bar tab, from dawn till dusk. Takers?”

“Count me out,” says Olly Quinn. “I’m taking the blue run down. I don’t want to end my first day in the clinic.”

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

“Grannies Quinn and Fitz have made their excuses.” Chetwynd-Pitt turns to me. “What about the Lamb of Doom?”

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 winner. No griping, no ifs, a direct race to the bottom, as one Etonian said to the other. We’ll see youpair of delicate woollens”—he looks at Fitzsimmons and Quinn—“back at chez moi.”

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

Me and Chetwynd-Pitt crouch like Winter Olympians.

“Ready, steady— bang!”