“Right. Well. The new novel has … evolved.”

Hal, I imagine, mouths a silent profanity. He asks, “Evolved?”

“For one thing, the story’s now set in Shanghai.”

“Shanghai around the 1840s? Opium Wars?”

“More Shanghai in the present day, actually.”

“Right … I didn’t know you were a Sinologist as well.”

“World’s oldest culture. Workshop of the World. The Chinese Century. China’s very …  now.” Listen to me, Crispin Hershey pitching a book like a kid fresh off a creative-writing course.

“Where does the Australian lighthouse fit in?”

I take a deep breath. And another. “It doesn’t.”

Hal, I am fairly sure, is miming shooting himself.

“But this one’s got legs, Hal. A jet-lagged businessman has the mother of all breakdowns in a labyrinthine hotel in Shanghai, encounters a minister, a CEO, a cleaner, a psychic woman who hears voices”—gabbling garbling—“think Solarismeets Noam Chomsky via The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Add a dash of Twin Peaks …”

Hal is pouring himself a whisky and soda: Hear it fizz? His voice is flat and accusative: “Crispin. Are you trying to tell me that you’re writing a fantasy novel?”

“Me? Never! Or it’s only one-third fantasy. Half, at most.”

“A book can’t be a half fantasy any more than a woman can be half pregnant. How many pages have you got?”

“Oh, it’s humming along really well. About a hundred.”

“Crispin. This is me. How many pages have you got?”

How does he alwaysknow? “Thirty—but the rest is all mapped out, I swear.”

Hal the Hyena exhales a sawtoothed groan. “Shitting Nora.”

THE WHALE’S TAIL lifts. Water streams off the striated flukes. “All tail flukes are unique,” the guide is saying, “and researchers can recognize individuals from their patterns. Now we watch the whale dive …” The flukes slice into the water, and the visitor from another realm is gone. The passengers stare as if a friend’s gone for good. I stare as if I squandered my one and only close encounter with a cetacean on a shitty business call. The American family pass round a box of cupcakes, and the caring way they make sure they’ve all had one injects me with fifty milliliters of distilled envy. Why didn’tI invite Juno and Anaпs along on this trip, so mykids would have lifelong memories of being with their dad in Iceland, too? The boat’s engines growl into life, and the vessel turns back towards Hъsavнk. The town’s a mile away beneath a brooding fell. Harbor buildings, a fish-processing plant, a few restaurants and hotels, a wedding-cake church, one department store, steeply gabled houses painted all the shades of the color chart, WiFi masts, and whatever else 2,376 Icelanders need to get from one year to the next. One last time I look north between the muscled walls of the bay, towards the Arctic Ocean, where somewhere the whale is circling in its dark skies.

September 20, 2019

HALFWAY ALONG OUR JOURNEY to life’s end I found myself astray in a dark wood. This fork in the path, these slender birches, that mossy boulder tilted upwards, like a troll’s head. Finding oneself astray in any wood is a feat in Iceland, where even scraggy copses are rare. Zoл never let me navigate in our pre-satnav era; she said it was safer to drive with the road atlas on her lap. My tourist map of Бsbyrgi isn’t any help; the mile-wide, horseshoe-shaped, forested ravine sinks beneath the surrounding land to a hundred-meter rock face, where a river dawdles in pools … But where am I in it? The river’s vowels and the trees’ consonants speak a not-quite-foreign language.

Minutes pass unnoticed as I gaze, transfixed, at the comings and goings of ants on a twig. Richard Cheeseman’s sitting between a policeman and a consular official, somewhere over the Atlantic. I remember him griping at Cartagena that the festival hadn’t flown him business class, but after three years in the Penitenciarнa Central, even the Group 4 van from Heathrow up to Yorkshire is going to feel like a trip in a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow.

A blundering wind scatters yellowed leaves …

… and I find one, dear reader, between my tongue and the roof of my mouth. Look. A little birch leaf. Sodding extraordinary. The wind’s sharp fingers snatch away the evidence. Willows stand aside to reveal the towering rock slab in the center of Бsbyrgi … Perfect for snagging the anchor of a cloud-sailed longboat, or for a mothership from Epsilon Eridani to dock alongside. A torch-through-a-sheet sun. Hal sensed my China book would be a pile of crap, and he’s right. One six-day trip to Shanghai and Beijing, and I think I can rival Nick Greek’s knowledge of the place—what in buggery’s name was I thinking? Let me write about an Icelandic road trip; a running man; backflashes galore; and slowly disclose what it is he’s running from. Bring him to Бsbyrgi; mention how the ravine was formed by a slammed-down hoof of Odin’s horse. Mention how it’s the Parliament of the Hidden Folk. Have him stare at the rock faces until the rock’s faces stare back. Breathe deep the resinous tang of the spruces. Let him meet a ghost from his past. Hear the bird, luring me in, ever deeper ever tighter circles. Where are you? There. On the toadstool-frilled tree stump.

“It’s a wren,” said Mum, turning to go.

AT MY TENTH birthday party, pass-the-parcel descended into a battle royale of half nelsons and Chinese burns. My father buggered off, leaving Mum and Nina the housekeeper to conduct riot control until Mr. Chimes the Magician showed up. Mr. Chimes was an alcoholic thesp-on-the-skids, whose real name was Arthur Hoare, upon whom Dad had taken pity. His halitosis could have melted plastic. From his magic hat, at the count of three, he produced Hermes the Magic Hamster, but Hermes had been flattened seriously enough to produce death, blood, feces, and innards. My classmates shrieked with disgust and joy. Mr. Chimes laid the rodent’s mangled corpse in an ashtray and said: “ ‘For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.’ Boys.” Mr. Chimes packed up his props. “John Donne lied, the bastard.” Kells Tufton then announced he’d swallowed one of my miniature lead figurines, so Mum had to drive him to hospital. Nina was left in charge, a less-than-ideal arrangement, as she spoke little English and had suffered from bouts of depression ever since the Argentine junta’s men had thrown her siblings from a helicopter over the South Atlantic. My classmates knew nothing and cared less about juntas and played the we’ll-repeat-what-you-say game until Nina locked herself in the third-floor flat where Dad normally wrote his screenplays. Now the blood-dimmed tide was truly loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence was drowned—until a boy called Mervyn climbed a twelve-shelved bookcase and brought it down on himself. Nina dialed 999. The paramedic said Mervyn needed immediate attention, so Nina went off with the ambulance, leaving me to explain to our classmates’ parents that our Pembridge Place house was as bereft of adults as all but the last two pages of Lord of the Flies. Mum and Nina got home after eight P.M. Dad got home much later. Voices were raised. Doors were slammed. The following morning I was awoken by the snarl of Dad’s Jaguar XJS in the garage beneath my room. Off he went to Shepperton Studios—he was editing Ganymede 5at the time. I was eating Shredded Wheat over my comic 2000 ADwhen I heard Mum lugging a suitcase down the stairs. She told me she still loved me and Phoebe, but that our father had broken too many promises, so she was taking a break. She said, “This one might be permanent.” As my Shredded Wheat turned to mush, she spoke of how her swinging sixties had been a blur of morning sickness, washing nappies, wringing snot from Dad’s handkerchiefs, and doing unpaid donkey work for Hershey Pictures; how she had turned a blind eye to Dad’s “entanglements” with actresses, makeup girls, and secretaries; and how, when she was pregnant with Phoebe, Dad had promised to write and shoot a film just for her. Her role would be complex, subtle, and showcase her talent as an actress. Dad and his co-writer had completed the script, Domenico and the Queen of Spain, a few weeks before. Mum was to play Princess Maria Barbara, who became the titular queen. Now, this much we all knew. What I didn’t know was that the day before, while anarchy reigned at Pembridge Place, the head of Transcontinental Pictures had phoned Dad and put Raquel Welch on the line. Miss Welch had read the script, she said, considered it a work of genius, and would play Maria Barbara. Had Dad explained that his wife, who had sacrificed her own acting career for the family, was to play the role? No. He had said, “Raquel, it’s all yours.” The doorbell rang and it was Mum’s brother, my uncle Bob, come to pick her up. Mum said I’d learn betrayals came in various shapes and sizes, but to betray someone’s dream is the unforgivable one. A bird hopped onto the foaming lilac outside. Its throat quivered; notes rose and fell out. As long as it kept singing and I kept staring, I told myself, I wouldn’t start crying.