Cloud Atlas

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.”

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