Cloud Atlas

  Ernie concluded, “Us elderly are the modern lepers. That’s the truth of it.”

  I objected: “I’m no outcast! I have my own publishing house, and I need to get back to work, and I don’t expect you to believe me, but I am being confined here against my will.”

  Ernie and Veronica exchanged a glance in their secret language.

  “You are a publisher? Or you were, Mr. Cavendish?”

  “Am. My office is in Haymarket.”

  “Then what,” queried Ernie reasonably, “are you doing here?”

  Now, that was the question. I recounted my unlikely yarn to date. Ernie and Veronica listened the way sane, attentive adults do. Mr. Meeks nodded off. I got as far as my stroke, when a yelling outside interrupted me. I assumed one of the Undead was having a fit, but a look through the crack showed the driver of the Jupiter red Range Rover shouting into his mobile phone. “Why bother?” Frustration twisted his face. “She’s in the clouds! She thinks it’s 1966! … No, she’s not faking it. Would you wet your knickers for kicks? … No, she didn’t. She thought I was her first husband. She said she didn’t have any sons … You’re telling me it’s Oedipal…. Yes, I described it again. Three times…. In detail, yes. Come and have a go yourself if you think you can do better…. Well, she never cared for me either. But bring perfume…. No, for you. She reeks…. What else would she reek of? … Of course they do, but it’s hard to keep up, it just … trickles out all the time.” He mounted his Range Rover and roared off down the drive. Sprinting after it and nipping through the gates before they swung shut did cross my mind, then I reminded myself of my age. Anyway, the surveillance camera would spot me, and Withers would pick me up before I could flag anyone down.

  “Mrs. Hotchkiss’s son,” Veronica said. “She was a sweet soul, but her son, ooh, no. You don’t own half the hamburger franchises in Leeds and Sheffield by being nice. Not a family short of a bob or two.”

  A mini-Denholme. “Well, at least he visits her.”

  “And here’s why.” An attractive, wicked gleam illuminated the old lady. “When Mrs. Hotchkiss got wind of his plan to pack her off to Aurora House, she crammed every last family gem into a shoe box and buried it. Now she can’t remember where, or she can remember but isn’t saying.”

  Ernie divided up the last drops of malt. “What gets my goat about him is how he leaves his keys in the ignition. Every time. He’d never do that out in the real world. But we’re so decrepit, so harmless, that he doesn’t even have to be careful when he visits.”

  I judged it poor form to ask Ernie why he had noticed a thing like that. He had never spoken an unnecessary word in his life.

  I visited the boiler room on a daily basis. The whiskey supply was erratic, but not so the company. Mr. Meeks’s role was that of a black Labrador in a long-lived marriage, after the kids have left home. Ernie could spin wry observations about his life and times and Aurora House folklore, but his de facto spouse could converse on most topics under the sun. Veronica maintained a vast collection of not-quite-stars’ autographed photographs. She was widely read enough to appreciate my literary wit but not so widely read that she knew my sources. I like that in a woman. I could say things to her like “The most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid” and, safe in her ignorance of J. D. Salinger, I felt witty, charming, and yes, even youthful. I felt Ernie watching me as I showed off, but what the heck? I thought. A man may flirt.

  Veronica and Ernie were survivors. They warned me about the dangers of Aurora House: how its pong of urine and disinfectant, the Undead Shuffle, Noakes’s spite, the catering redefine the concept of “ordinary.” Once any tyranny becomes accepted as ordinary, according to Veronica, its victory is assured.

  Thanks to her, I ruddy well bucked my ideas up. I clipped my nasal hair and borrowed some shoe polish from Ernie. “Shine your shoes every night,” my old man used to say, “and you’re as good as anyone.” Looking back, I see that Ernie tolerated my posturing because he knew Veronica was only humoring me. Ernie had never read a work of fiction in his life—”Always a radio man, me”—but watching him coax the Victorian boiler system into life one more time, I always felt shallow. It’s true, reading too many novels makes you go blind.

  I cooked up my first escape plan—one so simple it hardly warrants the name—alone. It needed will and a modicum of courage, but not brains. A nocturnal telephone call from the phone in Nurse Noakes’s office to the answering machine of Cavendish Publishing. An SOS for Mrs. Latham, whose rugger-bugger nephew drives a mighty Ford Capri. They arrive at Aurora House; after threats and remonstrances I get in; nevvy drives off. That’s all. On the night of December 15 (I think), I woke myself up in the early hours, put on my dressing gown, and let myself into the dim corridor. (My door had been left unlocked since I began playing possum.) No sound but snores and plumbing. I thought of Hilary V. Hush’s Luisa Rey creeping around Swannekke B. (Behold my bifocals.) Reception looked empty, but I crawled below the level of the desk commando style and hoisted myself back to the vertical—no mean feat. Noakes’s office light was off. I tried the door handle, and yes, it gave. In I slipped. Just enough light came in through the crack to see. I picked up the receiver and dialed the number of Cavendish Publishing. I did not get through to my answering machine.

  “You cannot make the call as dialed. Replace the handset, check the number, and try again.”

  Desolation. I assumed the worst, that the Hogginses had torched the place so badly that even the telephones had melted. I tried once more, in vain. The only other telephone number I could reconstruct since my stroke was my next, and last, resort. After five or six tense rings Georgette, my sister-in-law, answered in the kittenish pout I knew, Lordy, Lordy, I knew. “It’s gone bedtime, Aston.”

  “Georgette, it’s me, Timbo. Put Denny on, will you?”

  “Aston? What’s wrong with you?”

  “It isn’t Aston, Georgette! It’s Timbo!”

  “Put Aston back on, then!”

  “I don’t know Aston! Listen, you must get me Denny.”

  “Denny can’t come to the phone right now.”

  Georgette’s grip on her rocker was never exactly firm, but she sounded buckarooed over the rainbow. “Are you drunk?”

  “Only if it’s a nice wine bar with a good cellar. I can’t abide pubs.”

  “No, listen, it’s Timbo, your brother-in-law! I’ve got to speak to Denholme.”

  “You sound like Timbo. Timbo? Is that you?”

  “Yes, Georgette, it’s me, and if this is a—”

  “Rather rum of you not to turn up at your own brother’s funeral. That’s what the whole family thought.”

  The floor spun. “What?”

  “We knew about your various tiffs, but I mean—”

  I fell. “Georgette, you just said Denny is dead. Did you mean to say it?”

  “Of course I did! D’you think I’m bloody doolally?”

  “Tell me once more.” I lost my voice. “Is—Denny—dead?”

  “D’you think I’d make something like this up?”

  Nurse Noakes’s chair creaked with treachery and torture. “How, Georgette, for Christ’s sake, how?”

  “Who are you? It’s the middle of the night! Who is this, anyway? Aston, is this you?”

  I had a cramp in my throat. “Timbo.”

  “Well, what clammy stone have you been hiding under?”

  “Look, Georgette. How did Denny”—saying made it more so—”pass away?”

  “Feeding his priceless carp. I was spreading duckling pâté on crackers for supper. When I went to fetch Denny he was floating in the pond, facedown. He may have been there a day or so, I wasn’t his babysitter, you know. Dixie had told him to cut back on the salt, strokes run in his family. Look, stop hogging this line and put Aston on.”

  “Listen, who’s there now? With you?”

  “Just Denny.”

  “But Denny’s dead!”

  “I
know that! He’s been in the fishpond for absolutely … weeks, now. How am I supposed to get him out? Listen, Timbo, be a dear, bring me a hamper or something from Fortnum and Mason’s, will you? I ate all the crackers, and all the thrushes ate the crumbs, so now I’ve got nothing to eat but fish food and Cumberland sauce. Aston hasn’t called back since he borrowed Denny’s art collection to show his evaluator friend, and that was … days ago, weeks rather. The gas people have stopped the supply and …”

  My eyes stung with light.

  The doorway filled with Withers. “You again.”

  I flipped. “My brother has died! Dead, do you understand? Stone Ruddy Dead! My sister-in-law’s bonkers, and she doesn’t know what to do! This is a family emergency! If you have a Christian bone in your ruddy body you’ll help me sort this out this godawful ruddy mess!”

  Dear Reader, Withers saw only a hysterical inmate making nuisance calls after midnight. He shoved a chair from his path with his foot. I cried into the phone: “Georgette, listen to me, I’m trapped in a ruddy madhouse hellhole called Aurora House in Hull, you’ve got that? Aurora House in Hull, and for Christ’s sake, get anybody there to come up and rescue—”

  A giant finger cut my line. Its nail was gammy and bruised.

  Nurse Noakes walloped the breakfast gong to declare hostilities open. “Friends, we have clasped a thief to our bosom.” A hush fell over the assembled Undead.

  A desiccated walnut banged his spoon. “The Ay-rabs know what to do with ’em, Nurse! No light-fingered Freddies in Saudi, eh? Friday afternoons in the mosque car parks, chop! Eh? Eh?”

  “A rotten apple is in our barrel.” I swear, it was Gresham Boys’ School again, sixty years on. The same shredded wheat disintegrating in the same bowl of milk. “Cavendish!” Nurse Noakes’s voice vibrated like a pennywhistle. “Stand!” The heads of those semianimate autopsies in mildewed tweeds and colorless blouses swiveled my way. If I responded like a victim, I would seal my own sentence.

  It was hard to care. I had not slept a wink all night. Denny was dead. Turned to carps, most likely. “Oh, for God’s sake, woman, get some proportion in your life. The Crown Jewels are still safe in the Tower! All I did was make one crucial telephone call. If Aurora House had a cybercafe I would willingly have sent an e-mail! I didn’t want to wake anyone up, so I used my initiative and borrowed the telephone. My profoundest apologies. I’ll pay for the call.”

  “Oh, pay you shall. Residents, what do we do to Rotten Apples?”

  Gwendolin Bendincks rose and pointed her finger. “Shame on you!”

  Warlock-Williams seconded the motion. “Shame on you!”

  One by one those Undead sentient enough to follow the plot joined in. “Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!” Mr. Meeks conducted the chorus like Herbert von Karajan. I poured my tea, but a wooden ruler knocked the cup from my hands.

  Nurse Noakes spat electrical sparks: “Don’t dare look away while you’re being shamed!”

  The chorus died the death, except for one or two stragglers.

  My knuckles whimpered. Anger and pain focused my wits like a zazen beating stick. “I doubt the kindly Mr. Withers told you, but it transpires my brother Denholme is dead. Yes, stone dead. Call him yourself, if you won’t believe me. Indeed, I beg you to call him. My sister-in-law is not a well woman, and she needs help with funeral arrangements.”

  “How could you know your brother had died before you broke into my office?”

  A crafty double nelson. Her crucifix toying inspired me. “Saint Peter.”

  Big Bad Frown. “What about him?”

  “In a dream he told me that Denholme recently passed to the Other Side. ’Phone your sister-in-law,’ he said. ’She needs your help.’ I told him using the telephone was against Aurora House rules, but Saint Peter assured me that Nurse Noakes was a God-fearing Catholic who wouldn’t mock such an explanation.”

  La Duca was actually halted in her tracks by this balderdash. (“Know thine Enemy” trumps “Know thyself.”) Noakes ran through the alternatives: was I a dangerous deviant; harmless delusional; realpolitikster; Petrine visionary? “Our rules in Aurora House are for everyone’s benefit.”

  Time to consolidate my gains. “How true that is.”

  “I shall have a chat with the Lord. In the meantime”—she addressed the dining room—”Mr. Cavendish is on probation. This episode is not gone and not forgotten.”

  After my modest victory I played patience (the card game, not the virtue, never that) in the lounge, something I had not done since my ill-starred Tintagel honeymoon with Madame X. (The place was a dive. All crumbling council houses and joss-stick shops.) Patience’s design flaw became obvious for the first time in my life: the outcome is decided not during the course of play but when the cards are shuffled, before the game even begins. How pointless is that?

  The point is that it lets your mind go elsewhere. Elsewhere was not rosy. Denholme had died some time ago, but I was still in Aurora House. I dealt myself a new worst-case scenario, one where Denholme sets up a standing order from one of his tricky-dicky accounts to pay for my residency in Aurora House, out of kindness or malice. Denholme dies. My flight from the Hogginses was classified, so nobody knows I’m here. The standing order survives its maker. Mrs. Latham tells the police I was last seen going to a loan shark. Detective Plod conjectures I had been turned down by my lender of the last resort and had Done a Eurostar. So, six weeks later, nobody is looking for me, not even the Hogginses.

  Ernie and Veronica came up to my table. “I used that telephone to check the cricket scores.” Ernie was in ill humor. “Now it’ll be locked up at nights.”

  “Black ten on red jack,” advised Veronica. “Never mind, Ernie.”

  Ernie ignored her. “Noakes’ll be looking to lynch you now.”

  “What can she do? Take away my shredded wheat?”

  “She’ll Mickey Finn your food! Like the last time.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Remember the last time you crossed her?”

  “When?”

  “The morning of your conveniently timed stroke was when.”

  “Are you saying my stroke was … induced?”

  Ernie made an extremely irritating “wakey, wakey!” face.

  “Oh, pish and tosh! My father died of a stroke, my brother probably died of one. Print your own reality if you must, Ernest, but leave Veronica and me out of it.”

  Ernie glowered. (Lars, lower the lighting.) “Aye. You think you’re so damn clever, but you’re nothing but a hoity-toity southern wazzock!”

  “Better a wazzock, whatever one of those is, than a quitter.” I knew I was going to regret that.

  “A quitter? Me? Call me that just once more. Go on.”

  “Quitter.” (Oh, Imp of the Perverse! Why do I let you speak for me?) “What I think is this. You’ve given up on the real world outside this prison because it intimidates you. Seeing someone else escape would make you uncomfortable with your taste in deathbeds. That’s why you’re throwing this tantrum now.”

  The Gas Ring of Ernie flared. “Where I stop isn’t for you to pass judgments on, Timothy Cavendish!” (A Scot can turn a perfectly decent name into a head-butt.) “You couldn’t escape from a garden center!”

  “If you’ve got a foolproof plan, let’s hear it.”

  Veronica attempted to mediate. “Boys!”

  Ernie’s blood was up. “Foolproof depends on the size of the fool.”

  “Witty homily, that.” My sarcasm disgusted me. “You must be a genius in Scotland.”

  “No, in Scotland a genius is an Englishman who gets himself accidentally imprisoned in a retirement home.”

  Veronica gathered my scattered cards. “Do either of you know clock patience? You have to add cards up to fifteen?”

  “We’re leaving, Veronica,” growled Ernie.

  “No,” I snapped and stood up, wanting to avoid Veronica having to choose between us, for my sake. “I’m leaving.”
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  I vowed not to visit the boiler room until I received an apology. So I didn’t go that afternoon, or the next, or the next.

  Ernie refused to meet my eye all Christmas week. Veronica gave me sorry smiles in passing, but her loyalties were clear. In hindsight, I am stupefied. What was I thinking? Jeopardizing my only friendships with sulks! I’ve always been a gifted sulker, which explains a lot. Sulkers binge on lonely fantasies. Fantasies about the Hotel Chelsea on West Twenty-third Street, about knocking on a certain door. It opens, and Miss Hilary V. Hush is very pleased to see me, her nightshirt hangs loose, she is as innocent as Kylie Minogue but as she-wolfish as Mrs. Robinson. “I’ve flown round the world to find you,” I say. She pours a whiskey from the minibar. “Mature. Mellow. Malty.” That naughty she-husky then draws me to her unmade bed, where I search for the fount of eternal youth.

  Half-Lives, Part II sits on a shelf above the bed. I read the manuscript, suspended in the postorgasmic Dead Sea, while Hilary takes a shower. The second half is even better than the first, but the Master will teach his Acolyte how to make it superb. Hilary dedicates the novel to me, wins the Pulitzer, and confesses at her acceptance speech that she owes everything to her agent, friend, and in many ways, father.

  Sweet fantasy. Cancer for the cure.

  Christmas Eve at Aurora House was a lukewarm dish. I strolled out (a privilege bartered through the offices of Gwendolin Bendincks) to the gates for a glimpse of the outside world. I gripped the iron gate and looked through the bars. (Visual irony, Lars. Casablanca.) My vision roamed the moor, rested on a burial mound, an abandoned sheep pen, hovered on a Norman church yielding to Druidic elements at last, skipped to a power station, skimmed the ink-stained Sea of the Danes to the Humber bridge, tracked a warplane over corrugated fields. Poor England. Too much history for its acreage. Years grow inwards here, like my toenails. The surveillance camera watched me. It had all the time in the world. I considered ending my sulk with Ernie Blacksmith, if only to hear a civil Merry Christmas from Veronica.

  No. To hell with ’em both.