David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

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 waving 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.”