Cloud Atlas

  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 Düsseldorf 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 derailment. Get a lot of those, these days.”

  Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage. A feisty stagger was needed to reach the next train before it left—only to find it had been canceled! But, “luckily,” the train before mine was so late that it still hadn’t departed. All the seats were taken, and I had to squeeze into a three-inch slot. I lost my balance when the train pulled away, but a human crumple zone buffered my fall. We stayed like that, half fallen. The Diagonal People.

  Cambridge outskirts are all science parks now. Ursula and I went punting below that quaint bridge, where those Biotech Space Age cuboids now sit cloning humans for shady Koreans. Oh, aging is ruddy unbearable! The I’s we were yearn to breathe the world’s air again, but can they ever break out from these calcified cocoons? Oh, can they hell.

  Witchy trees bent before the enormous sky. Our train had made an unscheduled and unexplained stop on a blasted heath, for how long, I do not recall. My watch was stuck in the middle of last night. (I miss my Ingersoll, even today.) My fellow passengers’ features melted into forms that were half familiar: an estate agent behind me, yacking on his mobile telephone, I could swear he was my sixth-form hockey captain; the grim woman two seats ahead, reading A Moveable Feast, isn’t she that Inland Revenue gorgon who gave me such a grilling a few years ago?

  Finally the couplings whimpered and the train limped off at a slow haul to another country station whose flaky name board read “Adlestrop.” A voice with a bad cold announced: “Centrallo Trains regrets that due to a braking-systems failure this train will make a brief stop at this—sneeze—station. Passengers are directed to alight here … and wait for a substitute train.” My fellow travelers gasped, groaned, swore, shook their heads. “Centrallo Trains apologizes for any—sneeze—inconvenience this may cause, and assures you we are working hard to restore our normal excellent standard of—huge sneeze—service. Gi’ us a tissue, John.”

  Fact: rolling stock in this country is built in Hamburg or somewhere, and when the German engineers test British-bound trains, they use imported lengths of our buggered, privatized tracks because the decently maintained European rails won’t provide accurate testing conditions. Who really won the ruddy war? I should have fled the Hogginses up the Great North Road on a ruddy pogo stick.

  I elbowed my way into the grubby café, bought a pie that tasted of shoe polish and a pot of tea with cork crumbs floating in it, and eavesdropped on a pair of Shetland pony breeders. Despondency makes one hanker after lives one never led. Why have you given your life to books, TC? Dull, dull, dull! The memoirs are bad enough, but all that ruddy fiction! Hero goes on a journey, stranger comes to town, somebody wants something, they get it or they don’t, will is pitted against will. “Admire me, for I am a metaphor.”

  I groped my way to the ammonia-smelling gents’, where a joker had stolen the bulb. I had just unzipped myself when a voice arose from the shadows. “Hey, mistah, got a light or sumfink?” Steadying my cardiac arrest, I fumbled for my lighter. The flame conjured a Rastafarian in Holbein embers, just a few inches away, a cigar held in his thick lips. “Fanks,” whispered my black Virgil, inclining his head to bring the tip into the flame.

  “You’re, erm, most welcome, quite,” I said.

  His wide, flat nose twitched. “So, where you heading, man?”

  My hand checked my wallet was still there. “Hull …” A witless fib ran wild. “To return a novel. To a librarian who works there. A very famous poet. At the university. It’s in my bag. It’s called Half-Lives.” The Rastafarian’s cigar smelt of compost. I can never guess what they’re really thinking. Not that I’ve ever really known any. I’m not a racialist, but I do believe the ingredients in so-called melting pots take generations to melt. “Mistah,” the Rastafarian told me, “you need”—and I flinched—”some o’ this.” I obeyed his offer and sucked on his turd-thick cigar.

  Ruddy hell! “What is this stuff?”

  He made a noise like a didgeridoo at the root of his throat. “That don’t grow in Marlboro Country.” My head enlarged itself by a magnitude of many hundreds, Alice-style, and became a multistory car park wherein dwelt a thousand and one operatic Citroëns. “My word, you can say that again,” mouthed the Man Formerly Known as Tim Cavendish.

  Next thing I remember, I was on the train again, wondering who had walled up my compartment with moss-stained bricks. “We’re ready for you now, Mr. Cavendish,” a bald, spectacled coot told me. Nobody was there, or anywhere. Only a cleaner, making his way down the vacant train, putting litter into a sack. I lowered myself onto the platform. The cold sank its fangs into my exposed neck and frisked me for uninsulated patches. Back in King’s Cross? No, this was wintriest Gdansk. In a panic I realized I didn’t have my bag and umbrella. I climbed aboard and retrieved them from the luggage rack. My muscles seemed to have atrophied in my sleep. Outside, a baggage cart passed, driven by a Modigliani. Where in hell was this place?

  “Yurrin Hulpal,” the Modigliani answered.

  Arabic? My brain proposed the following: a Eurostar train had stopped at Adlestrop, I had boarded and slept all the way to Istanbul Central. Addled brain. I needed a clear sign, in English.

  WELCOME TO HULL.

  Praise be, my journey was nearly over. When had I last been this far north? Never, that’s when. I gulped cold air to stub out a sudden urge to throw up—that’s right, Tim, drink it down. The offended stomach supplies pictures of the cause of its discomfort, and the Rastafarian’s cigar flashed before me. The station was painted in all blacks. I rounded a corner and found two luminous clock faces hung above the exit, but clocks in disagreement are worse than no clock at all. No watcher at the gates wanted to see my exorbitantly priced ticket, and I felt cheated. Out front a curb crawler prowled here, a window blinked there, music waxed and waned from a pub across the bypass. “Spare change?” asked, no, demanded, no, accused, a miserable dog in a blanket. His master’s nose, eyebrows, and lips were so pierced with ironmongery that a powerful electromagnet would have shredded his face in a single pass. What do these people do at airport metal detectors? “Got any change?” I saw myself as he saw me, a frail old giffer in a friendless late city. The dog rose, scenting vulnerability. An invisible guardian took my elbow and led me to a taxi rank.

  The taxi seemed to have been going round the same roundabout for a miniature eternity. A howling singer on the radio strummed a song about how everything that dies someday comes back. (Heaven forfend—remember the Monkey’s Paw!) The driver’s head was far, far too big for his shoulders, he must have had that Elephant
Man disease, but when he turned round I made out his turban. He was bemoaning his clientele. “Always they say, ‘Bet it ain’t this cold where you’re from, eh?’ and always I say, ‘Dead wrong, mate. You’ve obviously never visited Manchester in February.’ ”

  “You do know the way to Aurora House, don’t you?” I asked, and the Sikh said, “Look, we’ve arrived already.” The narrow driveway ended at an imposing Edwardian residence of indeterminate size. “Sick teen-squid Zachary.”

  “I don’t know anyone of that name.”

  He looked at me, puzzled, then repeated, “Sixteen—quid—exactly.”

  “Oh. Yes.” My wallet was not in my trouser pockets, or my jacket pocket. Or my shirt pocket. Nor did it reappear in my trouser pockets. The awful truth smacked my face. “I’ve been ruddy robbed!”

  “I resent the insinuation. My taxi has a municipal meter.”

  “No, you don’t understand, my wallet’s been stolen.”

  “Oh, then I understand.” Good, he understands. “I understand very well!” The wrath of the subcontinent swarmed in the dark. “You’re thinking, That curry muncher knows whose side the fuzz’ll take.”

  “Nonsense!” I protested. “Look, I’ve got coins, change, yes, a pocketful of change … here … yes, thank God! Yes, I think I’ve got it …”

  He counted his ducats. “Tip?”

  “Take it.” I had emptied all the shrapnel into his other hand and scrambled outside, straight into a ditch. From my accident-victim’s-eye view I saw the taxi speed away, and I suffered a disagreeable flashback to my Greenwich mugging. It wasn’t the watch or even the bruises or the shock that had scarred me so. It was that I was a man who had once faced down and bested a quartet of Arab ragamuffins in Aden, but in the girls’ eyes I was … old, merely old. Not behaving the way an old man should—invisible, silent, and scared—was, itself, sufficient provocation.

  I scaled the ramp up to the imposing glass doors. The reception area glowed grail gold. I knocked, and a woman who could have been cast for the stage musical of Florence Nightingale smiled at me. I felt like someone had waved a magic wand and said, “Cavendish, all your troubles are over!”

  Florence let me in. “Welcome to Aurora House, Mr. Cavendish!”

  “Oh, thank you, thank you. Today has been too ruddy awful for words.”

  An angel incarnate. “The main thing is you’ve arrived safely now.”

  “Look, there is a slight fiscal embarrassment I should mention at this time. You see, on my way here—”

  “All you need to worry about now is getting a good night’s sleep. Everything is taken care of. Just sign here and I can show you to your room. It’s a nice quiet one overlooking the garden. You’ll love it.”

  Moist-eyed with gratitude, I followed her to my sanctuary. The hotel was modern, spotless, with very soft lighting in the sleepy corridors. I recognized aromas from my childhood but couldn’t quite identify them. Up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire. My room was simple, its sheets crisp and clean, with towels ready on the heated rail. “Will you be all right from now, Mr. Cavendish?”

  “Bliss, my dear.”

  “Sweet dreams, then.” I knew they would be. I took a quick shower, slipped into my jimjams, and cleaned my teeth. My bed was firm but comfy as beaches in Tahiti. The Hoggins Horrors were east of the Horn, I was scot-free, and Denny, dearest Denholme, was footing my bill. Brother in need, brother indeed. Sirens sang in my marshmallow pillows. In the morning life would begin afresh, afresh, afresh. This time round I would do everything right.

  “In the morning.” Fate is fond of booby-trapping those three little words. I awoke to discover a not-so-young woman with a pageboy haircut rifling through my personal effects like a bargain hunter. “What the ruddy hell are you doing in my room, you pilfering warty sow?” I half-roared, half-wheezed.

  The female put down my jacket without guilt. “Because you are new I will not have you eat soap powder. This time. Be warned. I do not stand for offensive language in Aurora House. Not from anyone. And I never make idle threats, Mr. Cavendish. Never.”

  A robber reprimanding his victim for bad language! “I’ll ruddy well talk to you how I ruddy well like, you stinking ruddy thief! Make me eat soap powder? I’d like to see you try! Let’s call Hotel Security! Let’s call the police! You ask about offensive language, and I’ll ask about breaking, entry, and theft!”

  She came over to my bed and slapped me hard across the chops.

  I was so shocked I just fell back onto my pillow.

  “A disappointing start. I am Mrs. Noakes. You do not wish to cross me.”

  Was this some sort of a kinky S & M hotel? Had a madwoman broken into my room after learning my name from the hotel register?

  “Smoking is discouraged here. I will have to confiscate these cigars. The lighter is far too dangerous for you to play with. And what, pray, are these?” She dangled my keys.

  “Keys. What do you think they are?”

  “Keys go walkies! Let’s give them to Mrs. Judd for safekeeping, shall we?”

  “Let’s not give them to anyone, you crazy dragon! You strike me! You rob me! What kind of ruddy hotel hires thieves for chambermaids?”

  The creature stuffed her booty into a little burglar’s bag. “No more valuables to be taken care of?”

  “Put those items back! Now! Or I’ll have your job, I swear it!”

  “I’ll take that as a no. Breakfast is eight sharp. Boiled eggs with toast soldiers today. None for the tardy.”

  I got dressed the moment she was gone, and looked for the phone. There wasn’t one. After a very quick wash—my bathroom had been designed for disabled people, it was all rounded edges and fitted with handrails—I hurried to Reception, determined to have due justice. I had acquired a limp but was unsure how. I was lost. Baroque music lilted in identical chair-lined corridors. A leprous gnome gripped my wrist and showed me a jar of hazelnut butter. “If you want to take this home, I’ll jolly well tell you why I don’t.”

  “You’ve mistaken me for someone else.” I scraped the creature’s hand off mine and passed through a dining room area where the guests were seated in rows and waitresses were bringing bowls in from the kitchen.

  What was so odd?

  The youngest guests were in their seventies. The oldest guests were three hundred plus. Was it the week after the schools went back?

  I had it. You probably spotted it pages ago, dear Reader.

  Aurora House was a nursing home for the elderly.

  That ruddy brother of mine! This was his idea of a joke!

  Mrs. Judd and her Oil of Olay smile were manning Reception. “Hello, Mr. Cavendish. Feeling super this morning?”

  “Yes. No. An absurd misunderstanding has occurred.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “It most certainly is a fact. I checked in last night believing Aurora House was a hotel. My brother made the booking, you see. But … oh, it’s his idea of a practical joke. Not in the least bit funny. His contemptible ruse only ‘worked’ because a Rastafarian gave me a puff of a sinister cigar in Adlestrop, and also, the ruddy stem-cell twins who sold me my ticket here, they wore me out so. But listen. You have a bigger problem closer to home—some demented bitch called Noakes is running about the place impersonating a chambermaid. She’s probably riddled with Alzheimer’s, but yowie, she’s got a slap on her. She stole my keys! Now, in a go-go bar in Phuket, that’d be par for the course, but in an old wrecks’ home in Hull? You’d get closed down if I was an inspector, you know.”

  Mrs. Judd’s smile was now battery acid.

  “I want my keys back,” she made me say. “Right away.”

  “Aurora House is your home now, Mr. Cavendish. Your signature authorizes us to apply compliancy. And I’d get out of the habit of referring to my sister in those tones.”

  “Compliancy? Signature? Sister?”

  “The custody document you signed last night. Your residency papers.”

  “No, no, no. That was the h
otel registry! Never mind, it’s all academic. I’ll be on my way after breakfast. Make that before breakfast, I smelt the slops! My, this will make a heck of a dinner-party story. Once I’ve strangled my brother. Bill him, by the way. Only I must insist on having my keys returned. And you’d better call me a cab.”

  “Most of our guests get cold feet on their first mornings.”

  “My feet are quite warm, but I haven’t made myself clear. If you don’t—”

  “Mr. Cavendish, why don’t you eat your breakfast first and—”

  “Keys!”

  “We have your written permission to hold your valuables in the office safe.”

  “Then I must speak with the management.”

  “That would be my sister, Nurse Noakes.”

  “Noakes? Management?”

  “Nurse Noakes.”

  “Then I must speak with the board of governors, or the owner.”