Machines Like Me

I said, ‘It’s called mirroring. You get it from people in the early stages of dementia. Without adequate memory, all they know is the last thing they heard and they say it back. A computer program was devised long ago. It uses a mirroring effect or it asks a simple question and gives an appearance of intelligence. Very basic piece of code, very effective. For me, it kicks in automatically. Usually in situations where I have insufficient data.’

‘Data … You poor bastard … Well, well.’ Maxfield let his head fall back so his gaze was towards the ceiling. He thought for a good while. At last he said, ‘That’s not a future I can face. Or need to.’

I stood and went over to him, picked up his pillows and tucked them in where they had been, against his thighs. I said, ‘If you’ll excuse me. I’m running rather low. I need to recharge and my cable’s downstairs in the kitchen.’

The rumbling sound from beneath his chair suddenly ceased.

‘That’s fine, Charlie. You go and plug yourself in.’ His voice was kindly and slow, his head remained tilted back, his eyes were closing. ‘I’ll stay here. I’m suddenly feeling rather weary.’

*

I had missed nothing. The tour hadn’t happened. Adam was sitting at the kitchen table listening to Christine describe a holiday in Poland while she cleared up the lunch. They didn’t notice me as I paused in the doorway. I turned away to cross the hall and opened the nearest door. I was in a large sitting room – more books, paintings, lamps, rugs. There were French windows onto the garden and as I approached I saw that one of them was ajar. Miranda was on the far side of a mown lawn, with her back to me, standing still, looking in the direction of an old, partly dead apple tree, much of whose fruit was rotting on the ground. The early afternoon light was grey and bright, the air was warm, and damp after the recent rain. There was a heavy scent of other fruits left to wasps and birds. I was standing at the head of a short run of mottled York stone steps. The garden was twice the width of the house and very long, perhaps 200 or 300 yards. I wondered if it ran all the way to the River Avon, like some did in Salisbury. If I’d been alone, I would have gone straight down to look. The idea of a river prompted in me a notion of freedom. From what exactly, I didn’t know. I went down the steps, deliberately scuffing my heels to let her know I was there.

If she heard me, she didn’t turn. When I was standing beside her, she put her hand in mine and indicated with a nod.

‘Just under there. We called it the palace.’

We walked over to it. Round the base of the apple tree were nettles and a few straggling hollyhocks still in flower. No traces of a camp.

‘We had an old carpet, cushions, books, special emergency supplies of lemonade, chocolate biscuits.’

We went further down, passing a patch enclosed by hurdles where gooseberry and blackcurrant plants were choked by nettles and goosegrass, then, a tiny orchard and more forgotten fruit, and beyond, behind a picket fence, what must once have been a cut-flower garden.

When she asked, I told her that Maxfield was asleep.

‘How did you two get on?’

‘We talked about beauty.’

‘He’ll sleep for hours.’

By a brick and cast-iron greenhouse with mossy windows there was a water butt and a stone trough. Below it, she showed me a dark, wet place where they used to hunt for crested newts. There were none now. Wrong time of year. We walked on and I thought I could smell the river. I pictured a ruined boathouse and a sunken punt. We came past a potting shed by brick compost bins that stood empty. There were three willows ahead of us and my hopes for the Avon rose. We ducked through the wet branches onto a second lawn, also recently mowed and surrounded on two sides by shrubbery. The garden ended in an orange brick wall with crumbling mortar pointing, and pleached fruit trees that had become detached and run wild. Along the wall was a wooden bench facing back towards the house, though the view did not extend past the willows.

This was where we sat in silence for several minutes, still holding hands.

Then she said, ‘The last time we came here was to talk about what happened. Again. In those days before I went off to France, that was all we could talk about. What he did, what she felt, how her parents must never know. And all around us here was the history of our lives together, our childhoods, our teenage years, exams. We used to come and revise here, test each other. We had a portable radio and we argued about pop songs. We drank a bottle of wine once. We smoked some hash and hated it. We were both sick, right over there. When we were thirteen, we showed each other our breasts. We used to practise handstands and cartwheels on the grass.’

She went silent again. I squeezed her hand and waited.

Then she said, ‘I still have to tell myself, really remind myself, that she’s never coming back. And I’m beginning to realise …’ She hesitated. ‘… that I’ll never get over it. And I never want to.’