Machines Like Me

‘I mean it literally. I now know that she had a hand in shaping my personality. She must have had a plan. This is what she chose. I swear I’ll keep my promise to you, but I can’t help loving her. I don’t want to stop. As Schopenhauer said about free will, you can choose whatever you desire, but you’re not free to choose your desires. I also know that it was your idea to let her have a hand in making me what I am. Ultimately, responsibility for the situation rests with you.’

The situation? Now it was my turn to lean back from the table. I slumped in my chair and for a minute I withdrew into thoughts of myself and Miranda. I too had no choice in love. I thought of the relevant section in the user’s handbook. There were pages I had skimmed of tables, one spectrum after another on a scale of one to ten. The sort of person I like or I adore or I love or cannot resist. While she and I were settling into our nightly routine, she was fashioning a man who was bound to love her. Some self-knowledge would have been required, some setting in motion. She would not need to love this man, this figurine, in return. As with Adam, so with me. She had wrapped us in a common fate.

I got up from the table and crossed the room to the window. The south-westerly wind was still hurling the downpour across the garden fences, against the pane. The bucket on the floor was near to overflowing. I picked it up and emptied it into the kitchen sink. The water was gin-clear, as trout fishermen say. The solution too was clear, at least in the immediate term. Time to be gained for reflection. I went back to the window with the bucket. I bent down and set it in place. I was about to do the sensible thing. I approached the table and as I passed behind Adam, I reached for the special place low on his neck. My knuckles brushed against his skin. As I positioned my forefinger, he turned in his chair and his right hand rose up to encircle my wrist. The grip was ferocious. As it grew tighter, I dropped to my knees and concentrated on denying him the satisfaction of the slightest murmur of pain, even when I heard something snap.

Adam heard it too and was instantly apologetic. He let go of me. ‘Charlie, I believe I’ve broken something. I really didn’t mean to. I’m truly sorry. Are you in a lot of pain? But please, I don’t want you or Miranda ever to touch that place again.’

I discovered the next morning, after a five-hour wait and an X-ray in the local Accident and Emergency department, that an important bone in my wrist was compromised. It was a messy break, a partly displaced scaphoid fracture, and it would take months to heal.

FIVE

When I got back from the hospital, an hour after lunch, Miranda was waiting for me. She intercepted me in the hall by her front door. We’d already been talking on the phone while I waited to be treated and I had a lot more to say, and I had some questions too. But she led me upstairs to her bedroom and there my words died in my throat. I relaxed into her concern for me. I was encased in plaster from elbow to wrist. While we made love, I protected my arm with a pillow. We passed into the sublime. At least for a while, she was personal, as well as inventive, she was solicitous, and joyous, and so was I. It was me she was with, not any capable man. I didn’t dare threaten with questions the novel and exalted feelings that passed between us. I couldn’t bring myself to ask her about Peter Gorringe, or about what she had told the court, or tell her what I had already discovered about the case while sitting in Accident and Emergency. I didn’t ask her whether she knew that Adam was ‘in love’ with her, or whether she had intended to dispose him to be so. I didn’t want to refer to the coolness between us after I’d mentioned marriage in Holy Trinity Church. How could I when at one point she pressed my face between her palms and looked into my eyes and shook her head, as if in wonder?

Afterwards, I remained silent on these subjects because I greedily thought that within the half-hour we would be going back to her bed, even though she was pulling away from me again as we drank coffee in her kitchen. I was happy to believe that all questions and tensions would be settled later. We talked now in a businesslike way, first about Mark. We agreed to try to find out what was happening to him. She was concerned about Adam. She thought I should take him back to the shop for a check-up. She still held to her plan for the three of us to drive to Salisbury to visit her father. I didn’t say that the prospect of us packed into my small car, spending the entire day covering for Adam and being polite to a difficult, dying man, had no appeal. I was keen to want whatever she wanted.