Machines Like Me

In the early afternoon, after Miranda had said her goodbyes to Mark and finished another conversation with Jasmin, she came down to find me. I was at the screen in pointless pursuit of more news, angles, opinions, statements. It turned out she had known as soon as the story broke. She leaned against the door frame, I remained in my seat. Physical proximity would have seemed like disrespect. Our conversation was much like my thoughts, a circular chase around an incomprehensible event – the cruelty of it, the stupidity. People with Irish accents had been attacked in the streets. The crowd outside Parliament had grown so large it was being moved by the police to Trafalgar Square. Mrs Thatcher’s office had released a statement. Was it sincere? We decided it was. Did she write it herself? We couldn’t be sure. ‘Though we disagreed on many fundamentals of policy, I knew him to be a thoroughly kind, decent, honest man of huge intelligence who always wanted the best for his country.’ Whenever our conversation strayed into likely consequences, we felt we were betraying the moment and accepting a world without him. We weren’t ready, and we turned back, although Miranda did say that with Healey we would keep our ‘end-time’ bombs after all. I was hardly a Tory, but I thought I would have been just as shocked if Mrs Thatcher had been in that hotel bed. What horrified me was the ease with which the edifice of public, political life could be shaken apart. Miranda saw it differently. Benn was, she said, in an entirely different league of human being from Margaret Thatcher. But a human being, was my point. A divide was opening up that we preferred to avoid.

So we moved on, after these lamentations, to Mark. She summarised her conversation with the social worker. The route to adoption was difficult and long and Miranda had learned that we were almost two-thirds of the way. Soon, a probation period would begin.

She said, ‘What did you think?’

‘I’m ready.’

She nodded. We had celebrated Mark many times before, his nature, his changes, his past and future. We weren’t about to do that again now. On any other day, we might have gone upstairs to the bedroom. She slouched beautifully in the door frame, dressed in new clothes – a thick white winter shirt, artfully too large, tight black jeans, ankle boots tricked out in silver studs. I reconsidered – perhaps this was a good moment to retreat upstairs. I went over to her and we kissed.

She said, ‘Something’s worrying me. I was reading Mark a fairy story, and there was a beggar, and that word. Alms.’

‘Yes?’

‘I had a horrible thought.’ She was pointing across the room. ‘I think we should look.’

Now the bed was gone, I kept the case in a locked cupboard. As I lifted it out, it was obvious enough by its weight, but I sprang the catches anyway. We stared into a space void of £50-note bundles. I went to the window. He was still out there, on the chair, and had been for an hour and a half. The thick envelope was still on his lap. £97,000. ‘And you kept it in the house!’, I heard an inner voice say.

We hadn’t looked at each other yet. Instead, we looked away, and stood around, wasting time, swearing quietly to ourselves, separately trying to take in the implications. Out of habit, I glanced towards the screen on my desk. The flag was, after all, being lowered to half mast on Buckingham Palace.

We were in too much turmoil to have a sensible discussion about tactics. We simply decided to act. We went next door to the kitchen and called Adam into the house. At the table, Miranda and I were side by side, with Adam facing us. He had brushed his suit, cleaned his shoes and put on a freshly ironed shirt. There was a new touch – a folded handkerchief in his breast pocket. His manner was both solemn and distracted, as though nothing much mattered to him, whatever we said.

‘Where’s the money?’

‘I’ve given it away.’

We didn’t expect him to tell us that he had invested it, or put it in a safer place, but still, with our silence we enacted our profound shock.

‘Meaning what?’

Infuriatingly, he nodded, as though rewarding me for asking the correct question. ‘Last night I put forty per cent in your bank’s safe deposit against your tax liabilities. I’ve written a note to the Revenue laying out all the figures and letting them know to expect it in due course. Don’t worry, you’ll be paying at the old top rate. With the remaining £50,000 I visited various good causes I’d notified in advance.’

He seemed not to notice our amazement and remained pedantically focussed on answering my question in full.