Cloud Atlas (52 page)

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.”

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.

“Reverend Rooney!” He had a sherry in one hand, and I tied up the other with a mince pie. Behind the Christmas tree, fairy lights pinkened our complexions. “I have a teeny-weeny favor to beg.”

“What might that be, Mr. Cavendish?” No comedy vicar, he. Reverend Rooney was a Career Cleric, the spitting image of a tax-evading Welsh picture framer I once crossed swords with in Hereford, but that is another story.

“I’d like you to pop a Christmas card in the post for me, Reverend.”

“Is that all? Surely if you asked Nurse Noakes she’d see to it for you?”

So the hag had got to him, too.

“Nurse Noakes and I don’t always see eye to eye regarding communications with the outside world.”

“Christmas is a wonderful time for bridging the spaces between us.”

“Christmas is a wonderful time for letting snoozing dogs snooze, Vicar. But I do so want my sister to know I’m thinking of her over our Lord’s Birthday. Nurse Noakes may have mentioned the death of my dear brother?”

“Terribly sad.” He knew about the Saint Peter affair all right. “I’m sorry.”

I produced the card from my jacket pocket. “I’ve addressed it to ’The Caregiver,’ just to make sure my Yuletide greetings do get through. She’s not all”—I tapped my head—
“there
, I’m sorry to say. Here, let me slip it into your cassock pouch …” He squirmed, but I had him cornered. “I’m so blessed, Vicar, to have friends I can trust. Thank you,
thank you
, from the bottom of my heart.”

Simple, effective, subtle, you sly old fox TC. By New Year’s Day, Aurora House would wake to find me gone, like Zorro.

Ursula invites me into the wardrobe. “You haven’t aged a day, Timbo, and neither has
this
snaky fellow!” Her furry fawn rubs up against my Narnian-sized lamppost and mothballs … but then, as ever, I awoke, my swollen appendage as welcome as a swollen appendix, and as useful. Six o’clock. The heating systems composed works in the style of John Cage. Chilblains burned my toe knuckles. I thought about Christmases gone, so many more gone than lay ahead.

How many more mornings did I have to endure?

“Courage, TC. A spanking red post-office train is taking your letter south to Mother London. Its cluster bombs will be released on impact, to the police, to the social welfare people, to Mrs. Latham c/o the old Haymarket address. You’ll be out of here in a jiffy.” My imagination described those belated Christmas presents I would celebrate my freedom with. Cigars, vintage whiskey, a dalliance with Little Miss Muffet on her ninety pence per minute line. Why stop there? A return match to Thailand with Guy the Guy and Captain Viagra?

I noticed a misshapen woolen sock hanging from the mantelpiece. It hadn’t been there when I had turned out the light. Who could have crept in without waking me? Ernie calling a Christmas truce? Who else? Good old Ernie! Shuddering happily in my flannel pajamas, I retrieved the stocking and brought it back to bed. It was very light. I turned it inside out, and a blizzard of torn paper came out. My handwriting, my words, my phrases!

My letter!

My salvation, ripped up. I beat my breast, gnashed my hair, tore my teeth, I injured my wrist by pounding my mattress. Reverend Ruddy Rooney Rot in Hell! Nurse Noakes, that bigoted bitch! She had stood over me like the Angel of Death, as I slept! Merry Ruddy Christmas, Mr. Cavendish!

I succumbed. Late-fifteenth-century verb, Old
French succomber
or Latin
succumbere
, but a basic necessity of the human condition, especially mine. I succumbed to the bovine care assistants. I succumbed to the gift tag: “To Mr. Cavendish from your new pals—many more Aurora House Christingles to come!” I succumbed to my gift: the Wonders of Nature two-months-to-a-page calendar. (Date of death not included.) I succumbed to the rubber turkey, the synthetic stuffing, the bitter Brussels sprouts; to the bangless cracker (mustn’t induce heart attacks, bad for business), its midget’s paper crown, its snonky bazoo, its clean joke (Barman: “What’ll it be?” Skeleton: “Pint and a mop, please.”). I succumbed to the soap-opera specials, spiced with extra Christmas violence; to Queenie’s speech from the grave. Coming back from a pee, I met Nurse Noakes, and succumbed to her triumphal “Season’s greetings, Mr. Cavendish!”

A history program on BBC2 that afternoon showed old footage shot in Ypres in 1919. That hellish mockery of a once fair town was my own soul.

Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides … I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life’s voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn’t I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.

I made it to Boxing Day because I was too miserable to hang myself. I lie. I made it to Boxing Day because I was too cowardly to hang myself. Lunch was a turkey broth (with crunchy lentils), enlivened only by a search for Deirdre’s (the androgynous automaton) misplaced mobile phone. The zombies enjoyed thinking where it could be (down sides of sofas), places it probably wasn’t (the Christmas tree), and places it couldn’t possibly be (Mrs. Birkin’s bedpan). I found myself tapping at the boiler room door, like a repentant puppy.

Ernie stood over a washing machine in pieces on newspapers. “Look who it isn’t.”

“Merry Boxing Day, Mr. Cavendish”—Veronica beamed, in a Romanov fur hat. She had a fat book of poetry propped on her lap. “Come in, do.”

“Been a day or two,” I understated, awkwardly.

“I
know!”
exclaimed Mr. Meeks. “I
know!”

Ernie still radiated disdain.

“Er … can I come in, Ernie?”

He hoisted then dropped his chin a few degrees to show it was all the same to him. He was taking apart the boiler again, tiny silver screws in his chunky, oily digits. He wasn’t making it easy for me. “Ernie,” I finally said, “sorry about the other day.”

“Aye.”

“If you don’t get me out of here … I’ll lose my mind.”

He disassembled a component I couldn’t even name. “Aye.”

Mr. Meeks rocked himself to and fro.

“So … what do you say?”

He lowered himself onto a bag of fertilizer. “Oh, don’t be soft.”

I don’t believe I had smiled since the Frankfurt Book Fair. My face hurt.

Veronica corrected her flirty-flirty hat. “Tell him about our fee, Ernest.”

“Anything, anything.” I never meant it more. “What’s your price?”

Ernie made me wait until every last screwdriver was back in his tool bag. “Veronica and I have decided to venture forth to pastures new.” He nodded in the direction of the gate. “Up north. I’ve got an old friend who’ll see us right. So, you’ll be taking us with you.”

I hadn’t seen that coming, but who cared? “Fine, fine. Delighted.”

“Settled, then. D-Day is two days from now.”

“So soon? You’ve already got a plan?”

The Scot sniffed, unscrewed his thermos, and poured pungent black tea into its cap. “You could say as much, aye.”