Machines Like Me

I watched it all, horrified – and guilty. Having thrilled to the sight of the warships filing down the English Channel, despite my opposition to the venture, I was implicated, along with nearly everyone else. Mrs Thatcher came out of 10 Downing Street to make a statement. First she couldn’t speak, then she was tearful, but refused to be helped back inside. Finally, she recovered and, in an untypically small voice, made the famous ‘I take it on my shoulders’ speech. She assumed full responsibility. She would never outlive the shame. She offered her resignation. But the shock to the nation of so many deaths was profound and there was no appetite for heads to roll. If she had to go, so did her entire cabinet, and most of the country. A leader in the Telegraph put it thus: ‘The failure belongs to us all. This is not the occasion for scapegoats.’ A very British process began, reminiscent of the Dunkirk disaster, by which a terrible defeat was transformed into a mournful victory. National unity was all. Six weeks later, 1.5 million people were in Portsmouth to greet the returning ships with their cargoes of corpses, their burned and traumatised passengers. The rest of us watched it on television in horror.

I repeat this well-known history for the benefit of younger readers who won’t be aware of its emotional impact, and because it formed a melancholy background to our three-cornered household. The rent was due and I was concerned by a loss of income. There was no mass purchase of hand-held Union Jacks, champagne consumption was down, and the general economy was in trouble, though pubs and hamburgers went on as before. Miranda was lost to her father’s illness and to the Corn Laws and the historical viciousness of vested interests, their indifference to suffering. Meanwhile, Adam remained under the blanket. Miranda’s delay in starting work on him was in part due to technophobia, if that’s the word for disliking being online and ticking boxes with a mouse. I nagged, and finally she agreed to make a start. A week after the remains of the Task Force returned to port, I set up the laptop on the kitchen table and brought up Adam’s site. It wasn’t necessary to wake him for her to begin. She picked up the cordless mouse, turned it over and stared at its underside with distaste. I made her coffee and went into the bedroom to work.

My portfolio had halved in value. I was supposed to be recouping losses. But the thought of her next door was a distraction. As so often in the mornings, I dwelt on our night before. The misery enveloping the country had made it all the more intense. Then we had talked. She described at length her childhood, an idyll shattered by her mother’s death when she was eight. She wanted to take me to Salisbury and show me the important locations. I took this as a sign of progress but she had yet to suggest a date, and she hadn’t said that she wanted me to meet her father.

I was facing my screen without seeing it. The walls and especially the door were thin. She was making very slow progress. At long intervals, I made out a deliberate click as she registered a choice. The silence between made me tense. Open to experience? Conscientious? Emotionally stable? After an hour I was getting nowhere and decided to go out. I kissed the top of her head as I squeezed past her chair. I left the house and set off towards Clapham.

It was unusually hot for April. The traffic down Clapham High Street was heavy, the pavements were crowded. Everywhere, black ribbons. The idea had crossed from the United States. On lamp posts and doors, in shop windows, on car door handles and aerials, on pushchairs, wheelchairs and bikes. In central London, on official buildings where Union Jacks were at half mast, black ribbons dangled from the flag poles for the 2,920 dead. Black ribbons were worn as armbands and on lapels – I was wearing one myself and so was Miranda. I would find one for Adam. Women and girls and flamboyant men tied them in their hair. The passionate minority who had argued and marched against the invasion wore them too. For public figures, and celebrities, including the royal family, it was hazardous not to wear one – the popular press was keeping watch.