Machines Like Me

He waited for a reply. Miranda was sweeping the floor and had made a small heap, which included Mark’s crusts, by the cooker. Now she knelt to gather the detritus into a dustpan.

She said quietly, ‘Charlie told me. The mother’s a wreck. She smacks him.’

Adam continued. He made his points with delicacy, like a lawyer giving unwelcome advice to a client he couldn’t afford to lose.

‘Granted, but that might not be relevant. Mark probably loves her. And from a legal perspective, in the case of a minor, there comes a point when your hospitality shades into wrongdoing.’

‘Fine with me.’

Mark had gone to stand by Adam’s side and held the fabric of his jeans between forefinger and thumb.

Adam lowered his voice for the boy’s benefit. ‘If you don’t mind, allow me to read to you from the Child Abduction Act of 19—’

With great force, Miranda struck the edge of the tin dustpan against the rim of the pedal dustbin to empty out the sweepings. I was polishing glasses, not minding a rift between my lover and her paramour. The fucking machine was talking sense. Miranda was driven by something other than sense. Perhaps it was beyond Adam to understand her, or to interpret the noise she had made with the dustpan. I listened and watched and dried the glasses, and placed them on their shelf in the cupboard where they had not been in a long time.

Adam continued in his cautious manner.

‘A key word in the Act, along with “abduct”, is “retain”. The police may already be out looking for him. May I—’

‘Adam. That’s enough.’

‘You might like to hear about some relevant cases. In 1969, a Liverpool woman passing an all-night garage came across a little girl who—’

She had gone to where he stood and for an impossible moment I thought she was going to hit him. She spoke firmly into his face, separating out the words. ‘I don’t want or need your advice. Thank you!’

Mark began to cry. Before there was a sound, his rosebud stretched to a downturn. A prolonged falling moan, as of rebuke, was followed by a clucking sound as his collapsed lungs fought for an intake of breath. The inhalation that preceded his wail was also prolonged. The tears were instant. Miranda made a comforting sound and put a hand on the boy’s arm. It was not the right move. The wail rose to a siren shriek. In other circumstances, we might have run from the room to an assembly point. When Adam glanced across at me, I gave a helpless shrug. Mark surely needed his mother. But Adam picked the boy up and settled him on his hip and the crying stopped in seconds. In the gulping aftermath, the little boy stared glassily out at us through spiked eyelashes from a high position. He announced in a clear voice, free of petulance, ‘I want to have a bath. With a boat.’

He had spoken a whole sentence at last and we were relieved. It was an irresistible request. More so with the old boundary markers of class – barf and wiv, and glottal ‘t’s. We would give him everything he wanted. But what boat?

A competition was forming for Mark’s affections.

‘Come on then,’ Miranda said in a lilting, maternal voice. She stretched out her arms to gather him up but he shrank from her and pressed his face into Adam’s chest. Adam looked rigidly ahead, as she called with face-saving cheeriness, ‘Let’s run the bath,’ and led them out and along the corridor to my unappealing bathroom. Seconds later, the rumble of running taps.

I was surprised to find myself alone, as if I had taken for granted a fifth presence in the room, someone I could turn to now to talk about the morning and its parade of emotions. There were fresh cries of distress from the bathroom. Adam hurried back into the kitchen, seized a cereal packet, lifted out its bag, ripped the box apart, flattened it, and in blurred seconds, using some technique he must have copied from a Japanese website, fashioned an origami boat, a barque with a single, billowing mainsail. Then he hurried out and the wailing subsided. The boat was launched.