David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

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!