FOUR
Miranda went to the stove and prepared coffee. While her back was still turned she said gaily, ‘Charlie. You’re being ridiculous.’
‘Am I?’
‘Hostile.’
‘So?’
She brought two cups and a jug of milk to the table. She was swift and loose in her movements. If I hadn’t been there she might have been singing to herself. There was a scent of lemon about her hands. I thought she was about to touch my shoulder and I tensed, but she moved away again to the other side of the room. After a moment she said with some delicacy, ‘You heard us last night.’
‘I heard you.’
‘And you’re upset.’
I didn’t reply.
‘You shouldn’t be.’
I shrugged.
She said, ‘If I’d gone to bed with a vibrator would you be feeling the same?’
‘He’s not a vibrator.’
She brought the coffee to the table and sat down close to me. She was being kindly, concerned, in effect casting me as the sulking child, trying to make me forget that she was ten years my junior. What was passing between us was our most intimate exchange so far. Hostile? She had never before referred to any mood state of mine.
She said, ‘He has as much consciousness as one.’
‘Vibrators don’t have opinions. They don’t weed the garden. He looks like a man. Another man.’
‘D’you know, when he has an erection—’
‘I don’t want to hear about it.’
‘He told me. His cock fills with distilled water. From a reservoir in his right buttock.’
This was comforting but I was determined to be cool. ‘That’s what all men say.’
She laughed. I had never seen her so light and free. ‘I’m trying to remind you. He’s a fucking machine.’
A fucking machine.
‘It was gross, Miranda. If I humped an inflatable sex doll you’d feel the same.’
‘I wouldn’t get tragic about it. I wouldn’t think you were having an affair.’
‘But you are. It’ll happen again.’ I hadn’t intended to concede that possibility. It was a rhetorical parry, a cue for her to contradict me. But I was somewhat provoked by ‘tragic’.
I said, ‘If I was ripping a sex doll apart with a knife, you’d be right to be worried.’
‘I don’t see the connection.’
‘The issue isn’t Adam’s state of mind. It’s yours.’
‘Oh, in that case…’ She turned towards Adam, lifted his lifeless hand an inch or so above the table and let it drop. ‘Suppose I told you that I love him. My ideal man. Brilliant lover, textbook technique, inexhaustible. Never hurt by anything I say or do. Considerate, obedient even, and knowledgeable, good conversation. Strong as a dray horse. Great with the housework. His breath smells like the back of a warm TV set, but I can live with—’
‘OK. Enough.’
Her sarcasm, a novel register, was delivered with much variation of pitch. I thought the performance was mean in spirit. For all I knew, she was hiding the truth in plain sight. She patted Adam’s wrist as she smiled at me. In triumph or by way of apology, I couldn’t tell. I was bound to suspect that a night of exceptional sex was the cause of this taunting, airy-headed manner. She was harder than ever to read. I wondered if I could break with her completely. Take back Adam as my own, retrieve the spare charging cable from upstairs, restore Miranda to her role as neighbour and friend, distant friend. In the manner of thought, the idea was no more than a spark of irritation. The notion that immediately followed was that I could never be free of her and would never want to be – most of the time. Here she was beside me, close enough for me to feel her summer-morning body warmth. Beautiful, pale-skinned, smooth, in bridal white, gazing on me again with affectionate concern now that her teasing was done. The look was new. It could be – this was an encouraging thought – that a clever device had performed a service, loosening Miranda’s warmer feelings.
Arguing with the person you love is its own peculiar torment. The self divides against itself. Love slugs it out with its Freudian opposite. And if death wins and love dies, who gives a damn? You do, which enrages you and makes you more reckless yet. There’s intrinsic exhaustion too. Both know, or think they know, that a reconciliation must happen, though it could take days, even weeks. The moment, when it comes, will be sweet and promises great tenderness and ecstasy. So why not make up now, take the shortcut, spare yourselves the effortful rage? Neither of you can. You’re on a slide, you’ve lost control of your feelings, and of your future too. The effort will be compounded so that eventually, every unkind word must be unsaid at five times cost. Reciprocally, extending forgiveness will require a feat of selfless concentration.
It was a long while since I’d indulged such irresistible folly. Miranda and I were not yet rowing, we were parrying, getting close, and I would be the one to get us started. With all this tactical coolness and her sarcasm and now her friendly concern, I felt bottled up. I badly wanted to shout. Atavistic masculinity urged it. My faithless lover, brazen, with another man, within my hearing. It should have been simple. It wasn’t my origins, social or geographical, that held me back. Only modern logic. Perhaps she was right, Adam didn’t qualify, he wasn’t a man. Persona non grata. He was a bipedal vibrator and I was the very latest in cuckolds. To justify my rage I needed to convince myself that he had agency, motivation, subjective feelings, self-awareness – the entire package, including treachery, betrayal, deviousness. Machine consciousness – was it possible? That old question. I opted for Alan Turing’s protocol. Its beauty and simplicity never appealed to me more than it did now. The Master came to my rescue.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘If he looks and sounds and behaves like a person, then as far as I’m concerned, that’s what he is. I make the same assumption about you. About everybody. We all do. You fucked him. I’m angry. I’m amazed you’re surprised. If that’s what you really are.’
Saying the word ‘angry’ made me raise my voice in anger. I felt a surge of exquisite release. We were getting started.
But she clung for the moment to a defensive mode. ‘I was curious,’ she said. ‘I wanted to know what it would be like.’
Curiosity, the forbidden fruit, condemned by God, and Marcus Aurelius, and St Augustine.
‘There must be hundreds of men you’re curious about.’
That did it. I had crossed the line. She pushed her chair back with a noisy scrape. Her pallor darkened. Her pulse was up. I had got what I ridiculously wanted.
She said, ‘You were keen on an Eve. Why was that? What were you wanting with an Eve? Tell the truth Charlie.’
‘I wasn’t bothered either way.’
‘You were disappointed. You should’ve let Adam fuck you. I could see you wanted it. But you’re too uptight.’
It had taken all of my twenties to learn from women combatants that in a full-on row it was not necessary to respond to the last thing said. Generally, it was best not to. In an attacking move, ignore bishop or castle. Logic and straight lines were out. Best to rely on the knight.
I said, ‘It must have occurred to you last night, lying under a plastic robot, screaming your head off, that it’s the human factor you hate.’
She said, ‘You just told me he’s human.’
‘But you think he’s a dildo. Nothing too complicated. That’s what turns you on.’
She knew a knight’s move too. ‘You fancy yourself as a lover.’
I waited.
‘You’re a narcissist. You think making a woman come is an achievement. Your achievement.’
‘With you it is.’ That was nonsense.