Cloud Atlas

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.”

Ernie hadn’t heard me.

“How long will you need to pick the lock?”

“You’ll have to ram the gates.”

“What?”

“Nice big Range Rover at fifty miles per hour should do the trick.”

“What? You said you could pick the lock in your sleep!”

“A state-of-the-art electric thing? No way!”

“I wouldn’t have locked up Noakes and stolen a car if I’d known you couldn’t pick the lock!”

“Aye, exactly, you’re nesh, so you needed encouragement.”

“Encouragement?” I yelled, scared, desperate, furious in equal thirds. The car tore through a shrubbery and the shrubbery tore back.

“How terribly thrilling!” exclaimed Veronica.

Ernie spoke as if discussing a DIY puzzler. “So long as the center pole isn’t sunk deep, the gates’ll just fly apart on impact.”

“And if it is sunk deep?”

Veronica revealed a manic streak. “Then we’ll fly apart on impact! So, foot to the floor, Mr. Cavendish!”

The gates flew at us, ten, eight, six car lengths away. Dad spoke from my pelvic floor. “Do you have any inkling of the trouble you’re in, boy?” So I obeyed my father, yes, I obeyed him and I slammed on the brakes. Mum hissed in my ear: “Sod it, our Timbo, what have you got to lose?” The thought that I had slammed not the brakes but the accelerator was the last—two car lengths, one, wham!

The vertical bars became diagonal ones.

The gates flew off their hinges.

My heart bungee-jumped from throat to bowel, back again, back again, and the Range Rover skidded all over the road, I gripped my intestines shut with all my might, the brakes screeched but I kept her out of the ditches, engine still running, windscreen still intact.

Dead stop.

Fog thickened and thinned in the headlight beams.

“We’re proud of you,” Veronica said, “aren’t we, Ernest?”

“Aye, pet, that we are!” Ernie slapped my back. I heard Withers barking doom and ire, close behind. Ernie wound down the window and howled back at Aurora House: “Waaaaaaazzzzzzoooooo-cccccckkk!” I touched the accelerator again. The tires scuffed gravel, the engine flowered, and Aurora House disappeared into the night. Ruddy hell, when your parents die they move in with you.

“Road map?” Ernie was ferreting through the glove compartment. His finds so far included sunglasses and