Machines Like Me

So we returned to the question of the someone else I was not seeing, and once she appeared satisfied, we went back to Adam and discussed how we might overcome his resistance to the kill switch. She suggested hiding the charging cables until he was too weak to resist us. I reminded her of his instant origami sailboat. He would improvise a power cable in minutes. My concentration was poor during this exchange. I kept looking at her, hallucinating a glow around her head and shoulders, and thinking about the time when we would be alone, travelling the smooth and rising curve to ecstasy. Even as I was hobbled by a state of continuous sexual arousal, it excited me to be in the same room as a great man. From pre-war meditations on the idea of a universal computing machine, to Bletchley in the early years of the war, to morphogenesis, to his glorious patrician present. The greatest living Englishman, noble and free in his love for another man. In his seniority, dressed with the flamboyance of a rock star, a genius painter, a knighted actor. I could see him only if I turned rudely away from Miranda. I resisted. I distracted myself with the usual list, the buried suspicions, all we had not touched on – the Salisbury court case and the death threat being the most rank. Where was my courage when I lacked the clarity to raise these subjects, when they tormented me while they remained unspoken?

‘You’re not even listening.’

‘I am, I am. You said Adam’s got a screw loose.’

‘I didn’t. Idiot. But happy birthday.’

We raised our glasses again. The Médoc was bottled when Miranda was two years old and my father was moving out of swing into bebop.

The meal was a success, but the bill was a long time coming. While we waited we decided on a parting cognac. The drinks the waiter brought were double measures, on the house. Miranda returned to the business of her father’s illness. The new diagnosis was lymphoma, of a slow-acting kind. He was likely to die with it rather than of it. He had much else to die of. But there was a pill he now took that made him cheerful and assertive – and even more of a handful. Impossible projects filled his thoughts. He wanted to sell the Salisbury house and buy an apartment in New York, in the East Village, not the current one, she suspected, but the Village of his youth. On a rush of self-belief, he had signed a contract to deliver a coffee-table book on the folklore of British birds – a vast project that he could never hope to complete, even with a full-time researcher. On a strange whim, given his views, he had joined a fringe political group dedicated to taking Britain out of the European Union. He was up for election as treasurer at his London club, the Athenaeum. Every day he phoned his daughter with new schemes. Everything I heard made me gloomier about our proposed visit, but I said nothing.

At last we were done and we shrugged on our coats. Miranda preceded me towards the door. Our path between the tables would take us close to Turing’s. As we approached, I saw that apart from a bowl of nuts, hardly touched, the distinguished diners had eaten nothing. They were here to talk and drink. In an ice bucket was a half-bottle of Dutch genever, and on the table were ice cubes in a silver dish and two cut-glass tumblers. I was impressed. Would I be so game at seventy? Turing was facing me directly. The years had lengthened his face, marking out the cheekbones, giving him a keen ferocious look. Many years later I thought I saw the ghost of Alan Turing in the figure of the painter, Lucian Freud. I crossed his path late one night as he came out of the Wolseley in Piccadilly. Same lean fitness in early old age that seemed derived less from healthy living than from a hunger to keep on creating.

The decision was taken for me by the cognac. I approached as millions before me had approached a famous presence in a public place, with outward humility masking the entitlement that genuine admiration confers. Turing glanced up at me, then looked away. Dealing with admirers was Reah’s business. I wasn’t drunk enough to be unembarrassed and I stumbled over the formulaic opener.

‘Really sorry to intrude. I just wanted to express my profound gratitude to you both for your work.’

‘That’s very kind,’ Reah said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Charlie Friend.’

‘Very nice to have met you, Charlie.’

The tense was clear. I came to my point. ‘I read that you have one of these Adams or Eves. I’ve got one too. I wondered if you’ve experienced any sort of problem with …’

I trailed away because I had seen Reah look at Turing, who had firmly shaken his head.

I took out my card and put it on their table. Neither man looked at it. I retreated, muttering my foolish apologies. Miranda was right beside me. She took my hand and as we stepped out into Greek Street she gave a sympathetic squeeze.

*

‘In her loving look,

a whole universe contained.

Love the universe!’