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.”
Ernie’s plan was a high-risk sequence of toppling dominoes. “Any escape strategy,” he lectured, “must be more ingenious than your guards.” It was ingenious, not to say audacious, but if any domino failed to trigger the next, instant exposure would bring dire results, especially if Ernie’s macabre theory of enforced medication was in fact true. Looking back, I am amazed at myself for agreeing to go along with it. My gratitude that my friends were talking to me again, and my desperation to get out of Aurora House—alive—muted my natural prudence, I can only suppose.
December 28 was chosen because Ernie had learnt from Deirdre that Mrs. Judd was staying in Hull for nieces and pantomimes. “Intelligence groundwork.” Ernie tapped his nose. I would have preferred Withers or the Noakes harpy to be off the scene, but Withers only left to visit his mother in Robin Hood’s Bay in August, and Ernie considered Mrs. Judd was the most levelheaded of our jailers and thus the most dangerous.
D-Day. I reported to Ernie’s room thirty minutes after the Undead were put to bed at ten o’clock. “Last chance to back out if you don’t think you can hack it,” the artful Scot told me.
“I’ve never backed out of anything in my life,” I replied, lying through my decaying teeth. Ernie unscrewed the ventilation unit and removed Deirdre’s mobile telephone from its hiding place. “You’ve got the poshest voice,” he had informed me, when allocating our various roles, “and bullshitting on telephones is how you make your living.” I entered Johns Hotchkiss’s number, obtained by Ernie from Mrs. Hotchkiss’s phone book months earlier.
It was answered with a sleepy “Whatizzit?”
“Ah, yes, Mr. Hotchkiss?”
“Speaking. You are?”
Reader, you would have been proud of me. “Dr. Conway, Aurora House. I’m covering for Dr. Upward.”
“Jesus, has something happened to Mother?”
“I’m afraid so, Mr. Hotchkiss. You must steel yourself. I don’t think she’ll make it to the morning.”
“Oh! Oh?”
A woman in the background demanded, “Who is it, Johns?”
“Jesus! Really?”
“Really.”
“But what’s … wrong with her?”
“Severe pleurisy.”
“Pleurisy?”
Perhaps my empathy with the role outpaced my expertise, by a whisker. “Healey’s pleurisy is never impossible in women your mother’s age, Mr. Hotchkiss. Look, I’ll go over my diagnosis once you’re here. Your mother is asking for you. I’ve got her on twenty mgs of, uh, morphadin-50, so she isn’t in any pain. Odd thing is, she keeps talking about jewelry. Over and over, she’s saying, ’I must tell Johns, I must tell Johns …’ Does that make any sense to you?”
The moment of truth.
He bit! “My God. Are you positive? Can she remember where she put it?”
The background woman said, “What? What?”
“She seem
s terribly distressed that these jewels stay in the family.”
“Of course, of course, but where are they, Doctor? Where is she saying she stashed them?”
“Look, I have to get back to her room, Mr. Hotchkiss. I’ll meet you in Reception at Aurora House…. When?”
“Ask her where—no, tell her—tell Mummy to—Look, Doctor—er—”
“Er … Conway! Conway.”
“Dr. Conway, can you hold your phone against my mother’s mouth?”
“I’m a doctor, not a telephone club. Come yourself. Then she can tell you.”
“Tell her—just hang on till we get there, for God’s sake. Tell her—Pipkins loves her very much. I’ll be over … half an hour.”
The end of the beginning. Ernie zipped his bag. “Nice work. Keep the phone, in case he calls back.”
Domino two had me standing sentinel in Mr. Meeks’s room watching through the crack in the door. Due to his advanced state of decay, our loyal boiler room mascot wasn’t in on the great escape, but his room was opposite mine, and he understood “Shush!” At a quarter past ten Ernie went to Reception to announce my death to Nurse Noakes. This domino could fall in unwelcome directions. (Our discussions over whom the corpse and whither the messenger had been lengthy: Veronica’s death would require a drama beyond Ernie’s powers not to arouse our shrew’s suspicion; Ernie’s death, reported by Veronica, was ruled out by her tendency to lapse into melodrama; both Ernie’s and Veronica’s rooms were bordered by sentient Undead who might throw a spanner in our works. My room, however, was in the old school wing, and my only neighbor was Mr. Meeks.) The big unknown lay in Nurse Noakes’s personal loathing for me. Would she rush to see her enemy fallen, to stick a hatpin in my neck to check I was truly dead? Or celebrate in style first?
Footsteps. A knock on my door. Nurse Noakes, sniffing the bait. Domino three was teetering, but already deviations were creeping in. Ernie was supposed to have accompanied her as far as the door of my death chamber. She must have rushed on ahead. From my hiding place I saw the predator peering in. She switched on the lights. The classic plot staple of pillows under the blankets, more realistic than you’d think, lured her in. I dashed across the corridor and yanked the door shut. From this point on, the third domino depended on lock mechanisms—the external latch was a stiff, rotary affair, and before I had it turned Noakes was hauling the door open again—her foot levered against the doorframe—her demonic strength uprooting my biceps and tearing my wrists. Victory, I knew, would not be mine.
So I took a big risk and abruptly released the handle. The door flew open, and the witch soared across the room. Before she could charge at the door again I had it shut and locked. A Titus Andronicus catalog of threats beat at the door. They haunt my nightmares still. Ernie came puffing up with a hammer and some three-inch nails. He nailed the door to its frame and left the huntress snarling in a prison cell of her own invention.
Down in Reception, domino four was bleeping blue murder on the main gate intercom machine. Veronica knew what button to press. “I’ve been bloody bleeping this bloody thing for ten bloody minutes while Mother is bloody fading away!” Johns Hotchkiss was upset. “What the f*** are you people playing at?”
“I had to help Dr. Conway restrain your mother, Mr. Hotchkiss.”
“Restrain her? For pleurisy?”
Veronica pressed the open switch, and across the grounds the gate, we hoped, swung wide. (I preempt the letter-writing reader who may demand to know why we hadn’t used this very switch to make a run for it by explaining that the gate closed automatically after forty seconds; that the reception desk was ordinarily manned; and that wintry miles of moorland lay beyond.) Through the freezing mist, the screech of tires grew louder. Ernie hid in the back office, and I greeted the Range Rover on the outside steps. Johns Hotchkiss’s wife was in the driving seat.
“How is she?” demanded Hotchkiss, striding over.
“Still with us, Mr. Hotchkiss, still asking for you.”
“Thank Christ. You’re this Conway?”
I wanted to head off more medical questions. “No, the doctor’s with your mother, I just work here.”
“I’ve never seen you.”
“My daughter is an assistant nurse here, actually, but because of the staffing shortage and emergency with your mother I’m out of retirement to man the front desk. Hence the delay in getting the main gate open.”
His wife slammed the car door. “Johns! Hello? It’s below freezing out here and your mother is dying. Can we sort out lapses in protocol later?”
Veronica had appeared in a spangly nightcap. “Mr. Hotchkiss? We’ve met on several occasions. Your mother is my dearest friend here. Do hurry to her, please. She’s in her own room. The doctor thought it too dangerous to move her.”
Johns Hotchkiss half-smelt a rat, but how could he accuse this dear old biddy of deceit and conspiracy? His wife harried and hauled him down the corridor.
I was in a driving seat again. Ernie hoisted his arthritic cara and an unreasonable number of hatboxes into the back, then jumped into the passenger seat. I hadn’t replaced the car after Madame X left, and the intervening years did not fall away as I had hoped. Ruddy hell, which pedal was which? Accelerator, brake, clutch, mirror, signal, maneuver. I reached for the key in the ignition. “What are you waiting for?” asked Ernie.
My fingers insisted there was no key.
“Hurry, Tim, hurry!”
“No key. No ruddy key.”
“He always leaves it in the ignition!”
My fingers insisted there was no key. “His wife was driving! She took the keys! The ruddy female took the keys in with her! Sweet Saint Ruddy Jude, what do we do now?”
Ernie looked on the dashboard, in the glove compartment, on the floor.
“Can’t you hot-wire it?” My voice was desperate.
“Don’t be soft!” he shouted back, scrabbling through the ashtray.
Domino five was Super-Glued vertical. “Excuse me,” said Veronica.
“Look under the sun flap!”
“Nothing here but a ruddy ruddy ruddy—”
“Excuse me,” said Veronica. “Is this a car key?”
Ernie and I turned, howled, “No-oooooo,” in stereo at the Yale key. We howled again as we saw Withers running down the nightlit corridor from the dining room annex, with two Hotchkisses close behind.
“Oh,” said Veronica. “This fat one fell out, too …”
We watched as Withers reached Reception. He looked through the glass straight at me, transmitting a mental image of a Rottweiler savaging a doll sewn in the shape of Timothy Langland Cavendish, aged sixty-five and three-quarters. Ernie locked all the doors, but what good would that do us?
“How about this one?” Was Veronica dangling a car key in front of my nose? With a Range Rover logo on it.
Ernie and I howled, “Yeeeeee-sss!”
Withers flung open the front door and leapt down the steps.
My fingers fumbled and dropped the key.
Withers flew head-over-arse on a frozen puddle.
I banged my head on the steering wheel and the horn sounded.
Withers was pulling at the locked door. My fingers scrabbled as indoor fireworks of pain flashed in my skull. Johns Hotchkiss was screaming, “Get your bony carcasses out of my car or I’ll sue—Dammit, I’ll sue anyway!” Withers banged my window with a club, no, it was his fist; the wife’s gemstone ring scratched the glass; the key somehow slid home into the ignition; the engine roared into life; the dashboard lit up with fairy lights; Chet Baker was singing “Let’s Get Lost”; Withers was hanging on to the door and banging; the Hotchkisses crouched in my headlamps like El Greco sinners; I put the Range Rover into first, but it shunted rather than moved because the hand brake was on; Aurora House lit up like the Close Encounters UFO; I flung away the sensation of having lived through this very moment many times before; I released the hand brake, bumped Withers; moved up to second; the Hotchkisses were not drowning but wavin
g and there they went and we had lift-off!
I drove round the pond, away from the gates, because Mrs. Hotchkiss had left the Range Rover pointing that way. I checked the mirror—Withers and the Hotchkisses were sprinting after us like ruddy commandos. “I’m going to lure them away from the gates,” I blurted to Ernie, “to give you time to pick the lock. How long will you need? I reckon you’ll have forty-five seconds.”
Ernie hadn’t heard me.
“How long will you need to pick the lock?”
“You’ll have to ram the gates.”
“What?”
“Nice big Range Rover at fifty miles per hour should do the trick.”
“What? You said you could pick the lock in your sleep!”
“A state-of-the-art electric thing? No way!”
“I wouldn’t have locked up Noakes and stolen a car if I’d known you couldn’t pick the lock!”
“Aye, exactly, you’re nesh, so you needed encouragement.”
“Encouragement?” I yelled, scared, desperate, furious in equal thirds. The car tore through a shrubbery and the shrubbery tore back.
“How terribly thrilling!” exclaimed Veronica.
Ernie spoke as if discussing a DIY puzzler. “So long as the center pole isn’t sunk deep, the gates’ll just fly apart on impact.”
“And if it is sunk deep?”
Veronica revealed a manic streak. “Then we’ll fly apart on impact! So, foot to the floor, Mr. Cavendish!”
The gates flew at us, ten, eight, six car lengths away. Dad spoke from my pelvic floor. “Do you have any inkling of the trouble you’re in, boy?” So I obeyed my father, yes, I obeyed him and I slammed on the brakes. Mum hissed in my ear: “Sod it, our Timbo, what have you got to lose?” The thought that I had slammed not the brakes but the accelerator was the last—two car lengths, one, wham!
The vertical bars became diagonal ones.
The gates flew off their hinges.
My heart bungee-jumped from throat to bowel, back again, back again, and the Range Rover skidded all over the road, I gripped my intestines shut with all my might, the brakes screeched but I kept her out of the ditches, engine still running, windscreen still intact.
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