Cloud Atlas

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!

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.”