Machines Like Me

Ten minutes later, I was in the armchair in the kitchen, observing Mark. Just below the worn armrest was a long tear in the leather into which I often shoved old newspapers, in part to dispose of them, but also in the vague hope they would substitute for the vanished stuffing. Mark was counting as he pulled them out, one by one. He unfolded them and spread them across the carpet. Miranda was at the table, deep in a hushed phone call with Jasmin. Mark was smoothing out each paper with a careful swimming motion of both hands, pressing it onto the floorboards and addressing it in a murmur.

‘Number eight. Now you go here and don’t move … nine … you stay here … ten …’

Mark was much changed. He was an inch or so taller, the ginger-blond hair was long and thick and centre-parted. He was dressed in the uniform of an adult world citizen – jeans, sweater, trainers. The baby plumpness was going from his face, which was longer now, with a watchfulness in his gaze that may have derived from the upheavals in his life. The eyes were a deep green, the skin of porcelain smoothness and pallor. A perfect Celt.

Soon, all the events of the previous months were at my feet. Falkland warships burning, Mrs Thatcher with raised hand at a Party Conference, President Carter in an embrace after a major speech. I wasn’t sure whether Mark’s counting game was a way of saying hello, of sidling up to me. I sat patiently and waited.

Finally, he stood and went to the table and retrieved a carton of chocolate dessert and a spoon and came back to me. He stood with an elbow resting on my knee, fiddling with the edge of tinfoil he needed to remove.

He looked up. ‘It’s a bit tricky.’

‘Would you like me to help?’

‘I can do it easily but not today so you have to.’ The accent was still the generalised cockney of London and its surrounds, but there was another element, some undertones inflecting the vowels. Something of Miranda’s, I thought. He put the carton in my hands. I opened it for him and handed it back.

I said, ‘Do you want to sit at the table to eat it?’

He patted the arm of my chair. I helped him up and he sat, perched above me, spooning the chocolate into his mouth. When a dollop fell on my knee, he glanced down and murmured an untroubled ‘Oops.’

As soon as he was done, he handed spoon and carton to me and said, ‘Where’s that man?’

‘Which man?’

‘With the funny nose.’

‘That’s what I was wondering. He went for a walk last night and hasn’t come back.’

‘When he should be in bed.’

‘Exactly.’

Mark spoke directly into my growing concern. Adam often took long walks, but never overnight. If Mark hadn’t been there, I might have been pacing the room, waiting for Miranda to finish on the phone so that we could fret together.

I said, ‘What’s in your suitcase?’

It was on the floor by Miranda’s feet, a pale blue case, with stickers of monsters and superheroes.

He looked to the ceiling, took a theatrical deep breath and counted off on his fingers. ‘Two dresses, one green, one white, my crown, one two three books, my recorder and my secret box.’

‘What’s in the secret box?’

‘Um, secret coins and the toenail from a dinosaur.’

‘I’ve never seen a dinosaur’s toenail.’

‘No,’ he agreed pleasantly. ‘You haven’t.’

‘Do you want to show me?’

He pointed straight at Miranda. It was a change of subject. ‘She’s going to be my new mummy.’

‘What do you think about that?’

‘You’re going to be the daddy.’

What he thought was not a question he could respond to.

He said quietly, ‘Dinosaurs are all extinct anyway.’

‘I agree.’

‘They’re all dead. They can’t come back.’

I heard the uncertainty in his voice. I said, ‘They absolutely can’t come back.’

He gave me a serious look. ‘Nothing comes back.’

I got halfway through my therapeutically supportive, kindly reply. What I was starting to say was, ‘The past is extinct,’ when he interrupted me with a shout, but a happy one.

‘I don’t like sitting on this chair!’

I went to help him down but he leapt with a shriek onto the floor, into a crouching position, and then he jumped and crouched again, shouting, ‘I’m a frog! A frog!’

He was hopping across the floor as a very loud frog when two things happened at once. Miranda came off the phone and told Mark to keep his noise down. At the same time, the door opened and Adam was before us. The room fell silent. Mark scurried for Miranda’s hand.

I knew that depleted look. Otherwise, Adam looked, as ever, well groomed in white shirt and dark suit.

‘Are you all right?’ I said.

‘I’m so sorry if you’ve been anxious, but I …’ He came forward to near where Miranda was, ducked down to retrieve the cable and with a lunging motion, pulled his shirt clear and shoved the socket into his stomach and fell onto one of the hard kitchen chairs with a moan of relief.

Miranda stood up from the table and went to stand with her back to the stove. Mark followed her closely, with his head turned towards Adam.

She said, ‘We were beginning to worry about you.’