Cloud Atlas

in Los Angeles. Nonetheless, I squeezed myself through the evergreen hedge and pressed my nose up against the unlit, uncurtained dining room window, trying to peer in. That autumn night long ago Ursula had served a blob of grilled cheese on a slice of ham on a breast of chicken. Right there—right here. I could still taste it. I can still taste it as I write these words.

Flash!

The room was lit electric marigold, and in waltzed—backwards, luckily for me—a little witch with red corkscrew curls. “Mummy!” I half-heard, half-lip-read through the glass. “Mummy!” and in came Mummy, with the same corkscrew curls. This being proof enough for me that Ursula’s family had long vacated the house, I backtracked into the shrubbery—but I turned once more and resumed my spying because .?.?. well, because, ahem, je suis un homme solitaire. Mummy was repairing a broken broomstick while the girl sat on the table swinging her legs. An adult werewolf came in and removed his mask, and oddly, though not so oddly I suppose, I recognized him—that current-affairs TV presenter, one of Felix Finch’s tribe. Jeremy Someone, Heathcliff eyebrows, terrier manners, you know the chap. He took some insulation tape from the Welsh dresser drawer and muscled in on the broomstick repair job. Then Grandma entered this domestic frieze, and damn me once, damn me twice, damn me always make it nice, ’twas Ursula. The Ursula. My Ursula.

Behold that spry, elderly lady! In my memory she hadn’t aged a day—what makeup artist had savaged her dewy youth? (The same one who savaged yours, Timbo.) She spoke, and her daughter and granddaughter giggled, yes, giggled, and I giggled too .?.?. What? What did she say? Tell me the joke! She stuffed a red stocking with newspaper balls. A devil’s tail. She attached it to her posterior with a safety pin, and a memory from a university Halloween Ball cracked on the hard rim of my heart and the yolk dribbled out—she’d dressed like a devilette then, too, she’d put on red face paint, we’d kissed all night, just kissed, and in the morning we found a builders’ cafe that sold dirty mugs of strong, milky tea and enough eggs to fill, to kill, the Swiss Army. Toast and hot canned tomatoes. HP Sauce. Be honest, Cavendish, was any other breakfast in your life ever so delectable?

So drunk was I on nostalgia, I ordered myself to leave before I did anything stupid. A nasty voice just a few feet away said this—“Don’t move a muscle or I’ll mackasser you and put you in a stew!”

Shocked? Jet-assisted Vertical Ruddy Takeoff! Luckily my would-be butcherer was not a day older than ten, and his chain saw’s teeth were cardboard, but his bloodied bandages were rather effective. In a low voice, I told him so. He wrinkled his face at me. “Are you Grandma Ursula’s friend?”

“Once upon a time, yes, I was.”

“What have you come to the party as? Where’s your costume?”

Time to leave. I edged back into the evergreen. “This is my costume.”

He picked his nose. “A dead man digged up from the churchyard?”

“Charmed, but no. I’ve come as the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

“But it’s Halloween, not Christmas.”

“No!” I slapped my forehead. “Really?”

“Yeah?.?.?.”

“Then I’m ten months late! This is terrible! I’d better get back before my absence is noticed—and remarked upon!”

The boy did a cartoon kung-fu pose and waved his chain saw at me. “Not so fast, Green Goblin! You’re a trespasser! I’m telling the police of you!”

War. “Tell-tale-tit, are you? Two can play at that game. If you tell on me, I’ll tell my friend the Ghost of Christmas Future where your house is, and do you know what he’ll do to you?”

The wide-eyed shitletto shook his head, shaken and stirred.

“When your family is all tucked up asleep in your snug little beds, he’ll slide into your house through the crack under the door and eat—your— puppy!” The venom in my bile duct pumped fast. “He’ll leave its curly tail under your pillow and you’ll get blamed. Your little friends will all scream, ‘Puppy slayer!’ whenever they see you coming. You’ll grow old and friendless and die, alone, miserably, on Christmas morning half a century from now. So if I were you, I wouldn’t breathe a word to anyone about seeing me.”

I pushed myself through the hedge before he could take it all in. As I was heading back to the station along the pavement, the wind carried his sob: “But I don’t even have a puppy?.?.?.”

I hid behind Private Eye in the health center’s Wellness Cafe, which was doing a fine trade with us maroonees. I half-expected a furious Ursula to turn up with her grandchild and a local bobby. Private lifeboats came to rescue the stockbrokers. Old Father Timothy offers this advice to his younger readers, included for free in the price of this memoir: conduct your life in such a way that, when your train breaks down in the eve of your years, you have a warm, dry car driven by a loved one—or a hired one, it matters not—to take you home.

A venerable coach arrived three Scotches later. Venerable? Ruddy Edwardian. I had to endure chatty students all the way to Cambridge. Boyfriend worries, sadistic lecturers, demonic housemates, reality TV, strewth, I had no idea children of their age were so hyperactive. When I finally reached Cambridge station, I looked for a telephone box to tell Aurora House not to expect me until the following day, but the first two telephones were vandalized (in Cambridge, I ask you!), and only when I got to the third did I look at the address and see that Denholme had neglected to write the number. I found a hotel for commercial travelers next to a launderette. I forget its name, but I knew from its reception that the place was a crock of cat crap, and as usual my first impression was spot on. I was too ruddy whacked to shop around for something nicer, however, and my wallet was too starved. My room had high windows with blinds I couldn’t lower because I am not twelve feet tall. The khaki pellets in the bathtub were indeed mouse droppings, the shower knob came off in my hand, and the hot water was tepid. I fumigated the room with cigar smoke and lay on my bed trying to recall the bedrooms of all my lovers, in order, looking down the mucky telescope of time. Prince Rupert and the Boys failed to stir. I felt strangely unconcerned with the idea of the Hoggins Bros. plundering my flat back in Putney. Must be lean pickings compared to most of their heists, if Knuckle Sandwich is anything to go by. A few nice first editions, but little else of value. My television died the night George Bush II snatched the throne and I haven’t dared replace it. Madame X took back her antiques and heirlooms. I ordered a triple Scotch from room service—damn me if I’d share a bar with a cabal of salesmen boasting about boobs and bonuses. When my treble whiskey finally came it was actually a stingy double, so I said so. The ferrety adolescent just shrugged. No apology, just a shrug. I asked him to lower my blind, but he took one look and huffed, “Can’t reach that!” I gave him a frosty “That will be all, then,” instead of a tip. He broke wind as he left, poisonously. I read more of Half-Lives but fell asleep just after Rufus Sixsmith was found murdered. In a lucid dream I was looking after a little asylum- seeker boy who begged for a go in one of those rides in the corners of supermarkets you put fifty p into. I said, “Oh, all right,” but when the child climbed out he had turned into Nancy Reagan. How could I explain that to his mother?

I woke up in darkness with a mouth like Super Glue. The Mighty Gibbon’s assessment of history—“little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind”—ticker-taped by for no apparent reason. Timothy Cavendish’s time on Earth, in thirteen words. I refought old arguments, then fought arguments that have never even existed. I smoked a cigar until the high windows showed streaks of a watery dawn. I shaved my jowls. A pinched Ulsterwoman downstairs served a choice of burnt or frozen toast with sachets of lipstick-colored jam and unsalted butter. I remembered Jake Balokowsky’s quip about Normandy: Cornwall with something to eat.

Back at the station my woes began afresh when I tried to get a refund on yesterday’s disrupted journey. The ticket-wallah, whose pimples bubbled as I watched, was as intractably dense as his counterpart in King’s Cross. The corporation breeds them from the same stem cell. My blood pressure neared its record. “What do you mean, yesterday’s ticket is now invalid? It’s not my fault my ruddy train broke down!”

“Not our fault neither. SouthNet run the trains. We’re Ticket-Lords, see.”

“Then to whom do I complain?”

“Well, SouthNet Loco are owned by a holding company in Dusseldorf who are owned by that mobile-phone company in Finland, so you’d be best off trying someone in Helsinki. You should thank your lucky stars it wasn’t a