David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

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 seems 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.”