Machines Like Me

I slumped in the kitchen armchair with a mug of tea. I didn’t yet dare confide my feelings to Miranda. I had to admit it, at that moment I resented her, especially her old habit of secrecy. I had been bounced or bullied or lovingly blackmailed into parenthood. I would have to tell her, but not now. An argument was bound to follow, and I didn’t have the strength. I brooded on a fork in the path of our lives, the directions we might take: a bad but passing moment, common to all lovers, which we would talk ourselves through, find and seal a solution with a round of grateful lovemaking. Or: withdrawing, we would each go too far and, like inept trapezists, slip out of each other’s grasp and fall, and as we nursed our injuries, slowly become strangers. I surveyed these possibilities dispassionately. Even a third path didn’t trouble me much: I would lose her, regret it bitterly and never get her back, however hard I tried.

I was disposed to let events slide past me in frictionless silence. The day had been long and intense. I’d been taken for a robot, had my proposal of marriage accepted, volunteered for instant fatherhood, learned of self-destruction among one-quarter of Adam’s conspecifics, and witnessed the physical effects of moral revulsion. None of it impressed me now. What did were smaller things – the heaviness in my eyelids, my comfort in a half-pint of tea, in preference to a large Scotch.

Becoming a parent. It was not that I could claim to be too busy, pressured or ambitious. Mine was the opposite problem. I had nothing of my own to defend against a child. His existence would obliterate mine. He’d had a vile beginning, he’d need a lot of care, he was bound to be difficult. I hadn’t yet started my life, which was marginal, in fact, childish. My existence was an empty space. To fill it with parenting would be an evasion. I had older women friends who had got pregnant when nothing else was working out. They never regretted it, but once the children were growing up, nothing else happened beyond, say, a poorly paid part-time job, or setting up a book group, or learning holiday Italian. Whereas the women who were already doctors or teachers or running a business were deflected for a while, then went back and pressed on. The men weren’t even deflected. But I had nothing to press on with. What I needed was the strength of mind to refuse Miranda’s proposal. To agree to it would be cowardice, a dereliction of my duty to a larger purpose, assuming I could find one. I needed to be responsible, not cowardly. But I couldn’t confront her now, not when my eyes were closed, perhaps not for a week or two. I couldn’t trust my own judgement. I tipped back in the chair and saw the road from Salisbury spooling towards me, and white lines flashing under the car. I fell asleep with my forefinger looped through the handle of my empty cup. As I plunged down, I dreamed of echoing voices clashing and merging in angry parliamentary debate in a near-empty chamber.

When I woke it was to the sound and smell of dinner cooking. Miranda had her back to me. She must have known I was awake, for she turned and came towards me with two flutes of champagne. We kissed and touched glasses. In my refreshed state, I saw her beauty as if for the first time – the fine, pale brown hair, the elfin chin, the mirthfully narrowed grey-blue eyes. The matter between us still loomed, but what luck, to have dodged a retraction and a row. At least for now. She squeezed into the armchair beside me and we talked about our plans for Mark. I pushed aside my concerns in order to enjoy the happy moment. Now I learned that Miranda had been to Elgin Crescent with Mark. We would live together there as a family. Wonderful. Assuming the process of fostering and adoption could be completed within nine months, a good local primary school in Ladbroke Grove had a place for ‘our son’ – I struggled with the phrase, but I remained outwardly pleased. She told me that the adoption people had been unhappy with her living arrangements. A one-bedroom flat was not sufficient. Here was the plan: we should remove the outer doors to our flats and make the hall our shared space. We could decorate and carpet it. We needn’t trouble the landlord. When it was time to move to the new place, we would put everything back. We would convert her kitchen into a bedroom for Mark. No need for disruptive plumbing. We would cover the cooker, sink and work surfaces with boards that we could drape with colourful fabrics. The kitchen table could be folded away and stored in her – ‘our’ – bedroom. Our lives would be one and, of course, I liked all this, it was exciting. I joined in.