Cloud Atlas (20 page)

Knuckle Sandwich
was actually a well-written, gutsy fictional memoir. Culture vultures discussed its sociopolitical subtexts first on late-night shows, then on breakfast TV. Neo-Nazis bought it for its generous lashings of violence. Worcestershire housewives bought it because it was a damn fine read. Homosexuals bought it out of tribal loyalty. It shifted ninety thousand, yes,
ninety thousand
copies in four months, and yes, I am
still
talking hardcover. The feature film should be in production as I write. At the Frankfurt Book love-in I was feted by people who until then had never so much as paused to scrape me off their shoes. That odious label “Vanity Publisher” became “Creative Financier.” Translation rights fell like territories in the final round of Risk. The American publishers, glory glory Hallelujah, they
loved
the Limey-Aristo-Gets-Comeuppance-from-Downtrodden-Gaelic-Son hook, and a transatlantic auction skyrocketed the advance to giddy heights. I, yes, I, had exclusive rights to this platinum goose with a bad case of the trots! Money entered my cavernously empty accounts like the North Sea through a Dutch dike. My “personal banking consultant,” a spiv named Elliot McCluskie, sent me a Christmas card photo of his Midwich Cuckoo offspring. The primates on the Groucho Club door greeted me with a “Pleasant evening, Mr. Cavendish,” instead of an “Oy, you got to be signed in by a member!” When I announced that I would be handling the paperback release myself, the Sundays’ book pages ran pieces depicting Cavendish Publishing as a dynamic, white-hot player in a cloud of decrepit gas giants. I even made the
FT
.

Was it any wonder Mrs. Latham and I were overstretched—just a smidge—on the bookkeeping front?

Success intoxicates rookies in the blink of an eye. I got business cards printed up: Cavendish-Redux, Publishers of Cutting-Edge Fiction. Well, I thought, why
not
sell publications instead of publication? Why
not
become the serious publisher that the world lauded me as?

Alackaday! Those dinky little cards were the red flag waved at the Bull of Fate. At the first rumor that Tim Cavendish was flush, my saber-toothed meerkat creditors bounded into my office. As ever, I left the gnostic algebra of what to pay whom and when to my priceless Mrs. Latham. So it was, I was mentally
and
financially underprepared when my midnight callers visited, nearly a year after the Felix Finch Night. I confess that since Madame X left me (my cuckold was a dentist, I shall reveal the truth no matter how painful) Housekeeping Anarchy had reigned o’er my Putney domicile (oh, very well, the bastard was a German), so my porcelain throne has long been my de facto office seat. A decent Cognac sits under the ball-gowned lavatory-roll cover, and I leave the door open so I can hear the kitchen radio.

The night in question, I had put aside my perpetual lavatory read,
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
, because of all the manuscripts (inedible green tomatoes) submitted to Cavendish-Redux, my new stable of champions. I suppose it was about eleven o’clock when I heard my front door being interfered with. Skinhead munchkins mug-or-treating?

Cherry knockers? The wind?

Next thing I knew, the door flew in off its ruddy hinges! I was thinking al-Qaeda, I was thinking ball lightning, but no. Down the hallway tramped what seemed like an entire rugby team, though my intruders numbered only three. (You’ll notice, I am always attacked in threes.) “Timothy,” pronounced the gargoyliest, “Cavendish, I presume. Caught with your cacks down.”

“My business hours are eleven to two, gentlemen,” Bogart would have said, “with a three-hour break for lunch. Kindly leave.” All I could do was blurt, “Oy! My door! My ruddy door!”

Thug Two lit a cigarette. “We visited Dermot today. He’s a bit frustrated. Who wouldn’t be?”

The pieces fell into place. I fell into pieces. “Dermot’s brothers!” (I’d read all about them in Dermot’s book. Eddie, Mozza, Jarvis.)

Hot ash burnt my thigh, and I lost track of which face uttered what. It was a Francis Bacon triptych come to life.
“Knuckle Sandwich
is doing nicely, by the looks of things.”

“Piles of it in the airport bookshops.”

“You must at least of
suspected
we’d come calling.”

“A man of your business acumen.”

The London Irish unnerve me at the best of times. “Boys, boys. Dermot signed a copyright-transfer contract. Look, look, it’s industry standard, I have a copy in my briefcase here …” I did indeed have the document to hand. “Clause eighteen, about copyright … means
Knuckle Sandwich
, legally, is … er …” It wasn’t easy to tell them this with my briefs around my ankles. “Er, legally the property of Cavendish Publishing.”

Jarvis Hoggins scanned the contract for a moment but tore it up when it proved longer than his concentration span. “Dermot signed this f*****g pants when his book was just a f*****g hobby.”

“A present to our sick old mam, God rest her soul.”

“A souvenir of Dad’s heyday.”

“Dermot never signed no f*****g contract for the event of the f*****g season.”

“We paid your printer, Mr. Sprat, a little visit. He went through the economics for us.”

Contract confetti showered. Mozza was close enough for me to smell his dinner. “Quite a hill of Hoggins Bros.’ cash you’ve raked in, it seems.”

“I’m sure we can agree on a, um, um, funds flowchart, which will—”

Eddie cut in: “Let’s make it three.”

I feigned a wince. “Three thousand pounds? Boys, I don’t think—”

“Don’t be a silly billy.” Mozza pinched my cheek. “Three—o’— clock. Tomorrow afternoon. Your office.”

I had no choice. “Perhaps we might … er … moot a provisional sum to conclude this meeting, as a basis for … ongoing negotiation.”

“Okeydokey. What sum did we
moot
earlier, Mozza?”

“Fifty K sounded reasonable.”

My cry of pain was unfeigned. “Fifty thousand
pounds?”

“For starters.”

My intestines bubbled, toiled and troubled. “Do you really think I keep that kind of money lying around in shoe boxes?” I pitched my voice for Dirty Harry, but it was more Lisping Baggins.

“I hope you keep it lying around somewhere, Grandpops.”

“Cash.”

“No bollocks. No checks.”

“No promises. No deferments.”

“Old-fashioned money. A shoe box will do fine.”

“Gentlemen, I’m happy to pay a negotiated consideration, but the law—”

Jarvis whistled through his teeth. “Will the law help a man of your years bounce back from multiple spinal fractures, Timothy?”

Eddie: “Men of your age don’t bounce. They splat.”

I fought with all my might, but my sphincter was no longer my own and a cannonade fired off. Amusement or condescension I could have borne, but my tormentors’ pity signified my abject defeat. The toilet chain was pulled.

“Three o’clock.” Cavendish-Redux went down the pan. Out trooped the thugs, over my prostrate door. Eddie turned for a last word. “Dermot did a nice little paragraph in his book. On loan defaulters.”

I refer the curious reader to
this page
of Knuckle Sandwich
, available from your local bookshop. Not on a full stomach.

Outside my Haymarket office suite taxis inched and sprinted. Inside my inner sanctum, Mrs. Latham’s Nefertiti earrings (a gift from me to mark her tenth year with Cavendish Publishing, I found them in a British Museum Gift Shop bargain bin) jingled as she shook her head, no, no, no. “And I am telling
you
, Mr. Cavendish, that I cannot find you fifty thousand pounds by three o’clock this afternoon. I cannot find you five thousand pounds. Every
Knuckle Sandwich
penny has already been Hoovered up by long-standing debts.”

“Doesn’t anybody owe
us
money?”

“I always keep on top of the invoicing, Mr. Cavendish, do I not?”

Desperation makes me wheedle. “This is the age of ready credit!”

“This is the age of credit
limits
, Mr. Cavendish.”

I retired to my office, poured myself a whiskey, and slooshed down my dicky-ticker pills before tracing Captain Cook’s last voyage on my antique globe. Mrs. Latham brought in the mail and left without a word. Bills, junk, moral muggings from charity fund-raisers, and a package addressed “FAO The Visionary Editor of
Knuckle Sandwich,”
containing a MS titled
Half-Lives
—lousy name for a work of fiction—and subtitled
The First Luisa Rey Mystery
. Lousier and lousier. Its lady author, one dubiously named Hilary V. Hush, began her covering letter with the following: “When I was nine my mom took me to Lourdes to pray for my bed-wetting to be cured. Imagine my surprise when not Saint Bernadette but Alain-Fournier appeared in a vision that night.”

Nutcase ahoy. I threw the letter away into my “Urgent Business” tray and switched on my spanking new fat-gigabyte computer for a game of Minesweeper. After getting blown up twice I telephoned Sotheby’s to offer Charles Dickens’s own, original, authentic writing desk for auction with a reserve price of sixty thousand. A charming evaluator named Kirpal Singh commiserated that the novelist’s desk was already accounted for by the Dickens House museum and hoped I’d not been fleeced too painfully. I confess, I do lose track of my little elaborations. Next I called Elliot McCluskie and asked after his delightful kiddies. “Fine, thank you.” He asked after my delightful business. I asked for a loan of eighty thousand pounds. He began with a thoughtful “Right …” I lowered my ceiling to sixty. Elliot pointed out that my performance-linked credit stream still had a twelve-month flow horizon before resizing could be feasibly optioned. Oh, I miss the days when they’d laugh like a hyena, tell you to go to hell, and hang up. I traced Magellan’s voyage across my globe and longed for a century when a fresh beginning was no further than the next clipper out of Dept-ford. My pride already in tatters, I gave Madame X a bell. She was having her
A.M
. soak. I explained the gravity of my situation. She laughed like a hyena, told me to go to hell, and hung up. I spun my globe. I spun my globe.

Mrs. Latham eyeballed me like a hawk watching a bunny as I stepped outside. “No, not a loan shark, Mr. Cavendish. It just isn’t worth it.”

“Never fear, Mrs. Latham, I’m just going to pay a call on the one man in this world who believes in me, fair weather or foul.” In the lift I reminded my reflection, “Blood is thicker than water,” before spiking my palm on the spoke of my telescopic umbrella.

“Oh, Satan’s gonads, not you. Look, just get lost and leave us in peace.” My brother glared across his swimming pool as I stepped down his patio. Denholme’s never swum in his pool, as far as I know, but he does all the chlorinating and whatnot every week just the same, even in blustery drizzle. He trawled for leaves with a big net on a pole. “I’m not lending you a ruddy farthing until you pay back the last lot. Why must
I
forever be giving
you
handouts? No. Don’t answer.” Denholme scooped a fistful of soggy leaves from the net. “Just get back in your taxi and bugger off. I’ll only ask you nicely once.”

“How’s Georgette?” I brushed aphids off his shriveled rose petals.

“Georgette’s going bonkers surely and steadily, not that you ever evince an ounce of genuine interest when you don’t want money.”

I watched a worm return to soil and wished I was it. “Denny, I’ve had a minor run-in with the wrong sort. If I can’t get my hands on sixty thousand pounds, I’m going to take an awful beating.”

“Get them to video it for us.”

“I’m not joking, Denholme.”

“Nor am I! So, you’re shoddy at being duplicitous. What of it? Why is this my problem?”

“We’re brothers! Don’t you have a conscience?”

“I sat on the board of a merchant bank for thirty years.”

An amputated sycamore tree shed once green foliage like desperate men shed once steadfast resolutions. “Help, Denny. Please. Thirty grand would be a start.”

I had pushed too hard. “Damn it to hell, Tim, my bank
crashed!
We were bled dry by those bloodsuckers at Lloyd’s! The days when I had that kind of spondulics at my beck and call are gone, gone, gone! Our house is mortgaged, twice over! I’m the mighty fallen, you’re the minuscule fallen. Anyway, you’ve got this ruddy book flying out of every bookshop in the known world!”

My face said what I had no words for.

“Oh, Christ, you idiot. What’s the repayment schedule?”

I looked at my watch. “Three o’clock this afternoon.”

“Forget it.” Denholme put down his net. “File for bankruptcy. Reynard’ll do the papers for you, he’s a good man. A hard bullet to bite, I should know, but it’ll get your creditors off your back. The law is clear—”

“Law? The only experience
my
creditors have of the law is squatting over a can in an overcrowded cell.”

“Then go to ground.”

“These people are very,
very
well connected with the ground.”

“Not beyond the M25 they aren’t, I bet. Stay with friends.”

Friends? I crossed off those to whom I owed money, the dead, the disappeared-down-time’s-rabbit-hole, and I was left with …

Denholme made his final offer. “I can’t lend you money. I don’t have any. But I’m owed a favor or two by a comfortable place where you could possibly lie low for a while.”

Temple of the Rat King. Ark of the Soot God. Sphincter of Hades. Yes, King’s Cross Station, where, according to
Knuckle Sandwich
, a blow job costs only five quid—any of the furthest-left three cubicles in the men’s lavvy downstairs, twenty-four hours a day. I called Mrs. Latham to explain I would be in Prague for a three-week meeting with Václav Havel, a lie whose consequences stuck with me like herpes. Mrs. Latham wished me bon voyage. She could handle the Hogginses. Mrs. Latham could handle the Ten Plagues of Egypt. I don’t deserve her, I know it. I often wonder why she’s stayed at Cavendish Publishing. It isn’t for what I pay her.