Machines Like Me

I clicked on the news first – and there it was, on every outlet, worldwide. A bomb had exploded in the Grand Hotel, Brighton at 4 a.m. It had been placed in a cleaner’s cupboard almost directly under the bedroom where Prime Minister Benn had been sleeping. He was killed instantly. His wife was not with him because of a hospital appointment in London. Two members of the hotel staff also died. The deputy prime minister, Denis Healey, was preparing to go to Buckingham Palace to see the Queen. The Provisional IRA had just claimed responsibility. A state of emergency had been declared. President Carter was cancelling a holiday. The French president, Georges Marchais, had ordered all flags on government buildings to be at half-mast. A demand for the same from Buckingham Palace had been met with a cool response from a royal official: ‘Neither customary nor appropriate.’ A big crowd was gathering spontaneously in Parliament Square. In the City, the FTSE was up fifty-seven points.

I read everything, all the instant analysis and opinion I could find: until now, the only British prime minister to have been assassinated was Spencer Perceval, in 1812. I admired the speed with which newsrooms could turn around instant analysis and opinion pieces: the innocence has gone forever from British politics; in Tony Benn, the IRA has eliminated the politician most open, or least hostile, to their cause; Denis Healey is the best man to steady the ship of state; Denis Healey will be a catastrophe for the country; dispatch the entire army to Northern Ireland and wipe the IRA from the face of the earth; police, don’t be rushed into arresting the wrong people; ‘State of War!’ was the front page of one online tabloid.

Reading this material was a way of not contemplating the event itself. I blanked the screen and sat for a while, thinking of nothing much. It was as though I was waiting for the next event, the decent one, that would undo the event before. Then I began to wonder whether this was the beginning of a history marker, of a general unravelling, or one of those isolated outrages that fade in time, like Kennedy’s near-death in Dallas. I stood and walked up and down the room, again thinking of nothing at all. At last, I decided to go upstairs.

They were on their hands and knees, assembling a jigsaw on a tea tray. As I came in, Mark held up a blue piece and announced, gravely, quoting his new mother, ‘The sky is the hardest.’

I watched them from the doorway. He shifted position to kneel up and curl an arm around her neck. She gave him a piece and pointed to where it belonged. With much fumbling, much help, he slotted it in. There were the beginnings of a sailing ship in stormy seas, with piled cumulus touched yellow and orange by a rising sun. Perhaps it was setting. They murmured companionably as they worked away. At some point soon, after Mark had been collected, I would give Miranda the news. She’d always been passionate for Benn.

She put another piece in the little boy’s hand. It took time for him to get it in position. He had it upside down, then his hand slipped and displaced some adjacent bits of sky. At last, with Miranda guiding him, her hand on top of his, the fragment was in place. He glanced up at me and smiled confidingly about a triumph he seemed to want to share. That look and the smile, which I returned, dispelled all my private doubts and I knew I was committed.

*

When Adam emerged from his recharge he was in an odd state, well removed from wonder at the fact of conscious life. He moved slowly about the kitchen, stopping to look around, grimacing, moving on and making a humming sound, a high to low glissando, like a moan of disappointment. He knocked a glass tumbler over which shattered on the floor. He spent half an hour morosely sweeping up the pieces, then sweeping again, then looking for shards of glass on hands and knees. Finally, he fetched the vacuum cleaner. He carried a chair into the back garden and stood behind it, staring at the backs of neighbouring houses. It was cold outside, but that wouldn’t have bothered him. Later, I came into the kitchen to find him folding one of his white cotton shirts on the table, bending low to the task, moving with reptilian slowness as he smoothed out the crease in the arms. I asked what was up.

‘I’m feeling, well …’ His mouth opened as he searched for the word. ‘Nostalgic.’

‘For what?’

‘For a life I never had. For what could have been.’

‘You mean Miranda?’

‘I mean everything.’

He wandered outside again and this time sat down and stared ahead, immobile, and remained that way for a long time. On his lap was a brown envelope. I decided not to go out and ask his views on the assassination.