Machines Like Me

In fact, I didn’t like it at all and wondered whether it would have been clever in Miranda’s sense to have said so. She set about asking her father a set of routine questions about his various pains, his medication, the hospital food, an elusive specialist, a new sleeping pill. It was hypnotic, listening to her, the sweetly dutiful daughter. Her voice was sensible and loving. She reached over and brushed back fine strands of hair where they floated across his forehead. He answered her like an obedient schoolboy. When one of her questions prompted a memory of some frustration or medical incompetence and he became restive, she soothed him and stroked his arm. This invalid catechism soothed me too, my love for Miranda swelled. It had been a long drive, the thick sweet sherry was a balm. Perhaps I liked it after all. My eyes closed and it was an effort to open them again. I did so just in time to hear Maxfield Blacke’s question. He was no longer the querulous valetudinarian. His question was barked out like a command.

‘So! What books have you been reading lately?’

There was no worse question he could have asked me. I read my screen – mostly newspapers, or I drifted around the sites, scientific, cultural, political, and general blogs. The evening before, I’d been absorbed by an article in an electronics trade journal. I had no habit with books. As my days raced by, I found no space within them to be in an armchair, idly turning pages. I would have made something up, but my mind was empty. The last book in my hand was one of Miranda’s Corn Law histories. I read the title on the spine and passed it back to her. I’d forgotten nothing, for there was nothing to remember. I thought it might be radically clever to say so to Maxfield, but Adam came to my rescue.

‘I’ve been reading the essays of Sir William Cornwallis.’

‘Ah him,’ said Maxfield. ‘The English Montaigne. Not much cop.’

‘He was unlucky, wedged between Montaigne and Shakespeare.’

‘A plagiarist, I’d say.’

Adam said smoothly, ‘In the eruption of a secular self in early modern times, I’d say he earns a place. He didn’t read much French. He must have known Florio’s Montaigne translation as well as a version that’s now lost. As for Florio, he knew Ben Jonson, so there’s a good chance he met Shakespeare.’

‘And,’ said Maxfield, for his competitive dander was up, ‘Shakespeare raided Montaigne for Hamlet.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Adam contradicted his host too carelessly, I thought. ‘The textual evidence is thin. If you want to go that route, I’d say The Tempest was a better bet. Gonzalo.’

‘Ah! Nice Gonzalo, the hopeless would-be governor. “No kind of traffic would I admit, no name of magistrate.” Then something something, “Contract, succession, bourn, bound of something something, vineyard, none.”’

Adam continued fluently. ‘“No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil: no occupation, all men idle, all.”’

‘And in Montaigne?’

‘By way of Florio he says the savages “hath no kind of traffic” and he says, “no name of magistrate”, then “no occupation but idle”, and then, “no use of wine, corn, or metal”.’

Maxfield said, ‘All men idle – that’s what we want. That Bill Shakespeare was a bloody thief.’

‘The best of thieves,’ said Adam.

‘You’re a Shakespeare scholar.’

Adam shook his head. ‘You asked me what I’d been reading.’

Maxfield was in a sudden, extravagant mood. He turned to his daughter. ‘I like him. He’ll do!’

I felt a touch of proprietorial pride in Adam, but mostly I was aware that so far, by implication, I wouldn’t do.

Christine reappeared to tell us that our lunch was set out in the dining room. Maxfield said, ‘Go and fill your plates and come back. It’ll break my neck to get out of this chair. I’m not eating.’

He waved away Miranda’s objections. As she and I were leaving the room, Adam said he wasn’t hungry either.

Next door, we were alone in a gloomy dining room – oak-panelled, with oil paintings of pale serious men in ruffs.

I said, ‘I’m not making much of an impression.’

‘Nonsense. He adores you. But you need some time alone together.’

We returned with the cold cuts and salad we had brought, which we balanced on our knees. Christine poured the wine I had chosen. Maxfield’s glass was in his hand and already empty. This was his lunch. I didn’t like to drink at this time of day, but he was watching me closely as the housekeeper presented the tray and I thought I’d appear dull to refuse. The conversation we had interrupted continued. Once again, I had no point of access to it.

‘What I’m telling you is what he said.’ Maxfield’s tone was edging towards his irritable mode. ‘It’s a famous poem with a plain sexual meaning and no one gets it. She’s lying on the bed, she’s welcoming him and ready, he’s hanging back, and then he’s on her …’

‘Daddy!’

‘But he’s not up to the job. A no-show. What does it say? “Quick-eyed love, observing me grow slack from my first entrance in, drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning if I lacked anything.”’