Machines Like Me

In the park there were probably 100,000 between us and the main stage. It was my choice to get to the back. Stretching far ahead of us was a carpet of flesh for the Provisional IRA to shred with a ball-bearing bomb. There were several worthy speeches before Benn’s. Tiny distant figures blasted us with their thoughts through a powerful PA system. We were all against the poll tax. A famous pop singer came on stage to huge applause. I had never heard of him. Nor of the girl on tiptoe at the mic, a nationally adored teenager from a TV soap. But I had heard of Bob Geldof. This was what it meant to be over thirty.

Finally, after seventy-five minutes, a loud voice from somewhere declaimed, ‘Please give a big welcome to the next prime minister of Great Britain!’

To the sound of the Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’, the hero strode out. He raised both arms and there was uproar. Even from where I was, I could make out a thoughtful man in brown tweed jacket and tie, rather bemused by his elevation. He took his unlit pipe from his jacket pocket, probably out of habit, and there was another roar of delight from the crowd. I glanced across at Adam. He too was thoughtful, neither for nor against anything, but intent on recording it all.

It sounded to me as though Benn was reluctant to whip up such a vast crowd. He called out uncertainly, ‘Do we want the poll tax?’ ‘No!’ the crowd thundered. ‘Do we want a Labour government?’ ‘Yes!’ came the even louder reply. He sounded more comfortable once he started laying out his argument. The speech was simpler than the one I’d heard in Trafalgar Square and more effective. He proposed a fairer, racially harmonious, decentralised, technologically sophisticated Britain ‘fit for the late twentieth century’, a kind and decent place where private schools were merged with the state system, university education was opened up to the working class, housing and the best healthcare were available to all, where the energy sector was taken back into public ownership and the City was not deregulated, as proposed, and where workers sat on company boards, the rich paid their dues and the cycle of inherited privilege was broken.

All well and good, and no surprises. The speech was long, partly because each of Benn’s proposals was met with reverential applause. Since I’d never heard Adam express an interest in politics, I nudged him and asked him what he thought so far.

He said, ‘We should make your fortune before the top rate of tax goes back to eighty-three per cent.’

Was this comic cynicism? I looked at him and couldn’t tell. The speech went on and my attention began to wander. I’d often noticed in large crowds that, however rapt the audience, there were always people on the move, returning or wandering away, threading through in different directions, intent on some other business, a train, a lavatory, a fit of boredom or disapproval. Where we stood was on ground that rose slightly towards an oak tree behind us. We had a good view. Some people were moving nearer the front. The crowd in our immediate area had begun to thin out to reveal a quantity of litter trodden into the softened ground. I happened to glance at Adam and saw that his gaze was not directed at the stage but away to his left. A well-dressed woman, in her fifties, I guessed, rather gaunt, with hair severely drawn back, using a cane to steady herself on the muddy grass, was coming diagonally towards us. Then I noticed the young woman at her side, her daughter perhaps. They approached at a slow pace. The young woman’s hand hovered near her mother’s elbow to steady her. I glanced at Adam again and saw an expression, hard to identify at first – astonishment was my first thought. He was transfixed as the two came nearer.

The young woman saw Adam and stopped. They were staring hard at each other. The woman with the cane was irritated at being held up and plucked at her daughter’s sleeve. Adam made a sound, a smothered gasp. When I looked again at the couple, I understood. The younger one was pale and pretty in an unusual way, a clever variation on a theme. The woman with the cane hadn’t grasped what was happening. She wanted to get on her way and gave an irritable command to her young companion. In her, there was no mistaking the line of that nose, or the blue eyes flecked with tiny black rods. Not a daughter at all, but Eve, Adam’s sister, one of thirteen.

I thought it was my responsibility to make some kind of contact with her. The couple were no more than twenty feet away. I raised a hand and called out ridiculously, ‘I say …’ and started to go towards them. They might not have heard; my words could have been lost to Benn’s speech. I felt Adam’s hand on my shoulder.

He said softly, ‘Please don’t.’

I looked again at Eve. She was a beautiful unhappy girl. The face was pale, with an expression of pleading and misery as she continued to stare at her twin.

‘Go on,’ I whispered. ‘Talk to her.’