Christopher Fowler - Personal Demons

'Not really. The air is much murkier below, it's harder to see and breathe properly, and because of the bars it gets more difficult to stay inside without falling out into space.'

'Mind you,' said Albert, 'that means you can probably get out.'

'Get out? Oh, you can get out whenever you want. You probably never thought about it much before now. Anybody can get out, whenever they're ready to go. Look at this.' The doctor reached through the bars of his cage and pushed against Albert's door with the palm of his hand. 'See, it's not locked. It's never been locked. All you have to do is take a mighty leap into the dark.'

There was a shower of rust, and the iron grille swung wide with a slow painful creak. The space revealed before Albert was awesome, dark and eternal. Albert gingerly moved forward and looked down. There were men and women vertiginously suspended in cages below him as far as he could see, crushed humanity in every direction, all the way back to his childhood and infancy.

He contemplated the scene for a moment.

'It's an awfully long way down, isn't it?' he exclaimed. 'Probably bottomless. Just space forever. Fair makes you dizzy to look.' But Albert could not resist the looking. After a few minutes, though, he nervously reached forward and pulled the cage door shut until it shifted back in place with a firm, satisfying click.

'You can open it any time,' reminded Dr Figgis.

'Out there. The fall – '

'The fall would kill you.'

Albert glanced uncomfortably between his feet. 'I'm sure it would.'

'But while you fall, you'll be completely free.'

Albert considered the idea for a moment, then returned to the rear corner of the cage and rubbed against his bars appreciatively. 'I understand what you're saying,' he told the doctor, despair creeping into his voice, 'but I think on the whole I'm better off staying in here.'

'Now you know who built the cages,' said the doctor, smiling sadly.

'Good Lord In Heaven,' gasped Mr Satardoo, eyeing the great golden lounge clock as he scuttered past it, 'if he cared for us at all he would allow sixty-one minutes in an hour today, just today, and our gratitude for his temporal lassitude would be expressed in renewed endeavour.'

The under-manager's language echoed the convoluted structure of the Delhi civil service, in whose foreign office he had been trained. He had migrated from his native India just after the war and had worked here at the Grand Finale Hotel ever since, longer than most of the house staff, but not so long as the senior housekeeper Mrs Opie, or the septuagenarian manager, General Sullivan.

Mr Satardoo barely slowed his pace as he wheeled into the main hall to inspect his troops.

Before him stood a battalion of chambermaids in crisp monochrome, their caps of fluted white linen seated upon their coiffures like matching baby doves. Beside them a regiment of stiffbacked waiters stood to attention, the diagonal planes of their noses held at exactly forty-five degrees to the icy blue marble floor, their haircuts macassared in perfect geometry, their hooded eyes impossible to catch. The waitresses had their own division, their flared black dresses cut low and short, edged in white to give them the appearance of mischievous angels. Then came a squad of veteran porters as stooped as question marks, their jacket sleeves subtly altered to incorporate an added length of bone caused by lifetimes of lifting great leather cases.

An infantry of bellboys flanked the sides of the sunlit hall, their brass buttons glittering like crocodile eyes, their caps set at an angle that suggested jauntiness without jocularity, disarm without disrespect. Their emerald suits were sectioned with silver piping that ran from collar to spats, a uniform as proudly worn as those of Wellington's men, and much admired by the hotel's female guests, who always watched discreetly as the lads scurried past on their errands.

Mr Satardoo clapped his hands together, and even though the sound was muffled by the white kid gloves he habitually wore, everyone snapped to attention.

The only members of staff not represented in the hall were the cooks, who could not risk leaving the kitchens so close to the hour set aside for luncheon.

'Now,' began Mr Satardoo, 'I want you all to pay careful attention. In a few minutes the Archduke Fernandel Aracino will arrive with his entourage, and it is imperative that he receives the kind of service that a man of his reputation would expect from our hotel. Although it is the first time he has taken a suite here – and of course for every one of our guests who takes a suite it is always the first visit – I want you to make him feel that he is among old friends. Where is Mr Mack?'

'Here, Mr Satardoo.' The little concierge stepped from behind an enormous potted aspidistra and coughed softly into his fist.

'Ah, there you are. I thought perhaps we had lost you in the loamy confines of the foliage.' Mr Satardoo was fond of teasing Mr Mack about his height. The concierge did not mind. He was happy and confident in his job, because he knew that the staff greatly respected him. Even Mr Satardoo would have admitted it, were he not so obsessed with honouring the hierarchy that placed him technically above Mr Mack in the hotel's complex chain of command.

'How long does the Archduke plan to stay with us?' asked Mr Mack.

'As long as it takes, of course.'

'And he has specifically requested the Virginia Woolf Chamber?'

'I am given to understand so.' Five gigantic suites at the top of the hotel were currently available for royal ranks. There was a sixth, but it was permanently reserved for the Princess Arthur of Connaught, in recognition of a great favour once performed by that esteemed house for the hotel's first owner.

Its real name was the Imperial Rex, but the less respectful staff had nicknamed it the Grand Finale Hotel. It had one hundred and fifty rooms, of which forty-seven were themed suites of unrivalled opulence, and like the world's most truly special hotels, it had many more staff than guests. However, the Rex was unlike any other hotel in the world, and for this reason remained hidden from the pages of those glossy volumes listing the finest places to stay. Under certain conditions its bar and restaurant were open to the casual visitor, and its rooms could be booked by families whose tiered generations were well-known to the management. Rooms were occasionally available to newcomers who made it through the deliberately labyrinthine booking procedure, but its special suites were the exclusive province of those who fulfilled more exacting criteria. Despite this seeming elitism the hotel was surprisingly egalitarian in its guest list, and so long as its conditions of stay were followed to the letter, even the poorest struggling artist might eventually be admitted to one of the suites. Its rooms were a different matter; they, and the items on the restaurant menu, remained unpriced, the tacit understanding being that if you had to ask the cost of anything at the Grand Finale, you could not afford it. It was normal for those who booked one of the forty-seven special suites to be served their meals in luxurious privacy. These suites were only full in times of great crisis, after wars, plagues and depressions, and, due to the vicissitudes of modern life, were never entirely empty.

The Rex occupied a rocky bluff overlooking the rolling jade ocean. There was a private beach, and teak-decked motorboats rode the tide in a cave cut into the ivory cliff-face, accessible by a flight of stone steps leading down from the basement. Throughout the years, it remained a dazzling white fortress of taste and calm, with an elegant double bowfront, striped emerald lawns, pergolas and a maze, and garish red and blue flags fluttering brazenly between pyramids of hyacinths all along its battlements. The hotel was simply unique, a home to great joy and sadness. A testimony, Mr Satardoo was fond of saying, to the bravery of the human soul, although there were those who were appalled that such a place should exist at all.