The Machine (16 page)

She wakes him for lunch, the session complete, and an extra hour and a half of sleep for both of them, to get over it. He opens his eyes at her. She’s put her face close to his, so that he can’t avoid looking. Her eyes at his.

Come on, she says. It’s time for lunch. Are you hungry?

I think so. She smoothes his hair where the warmth of the Crown has made tufts, like horns.

Come on, she says. We should eat. I’ve made lunch. She helps him to a sitting position, and his head lolls, and he moans. I know it hurts, she says, but it’ll get better. She moves his feet out of the bed and tells him to stand up, and he shuffles forward. Then he puts his feet onto the floor itself, and tests his toes. I’ll help you, she says. She tries to take his weight, but he shifts so much of it back to himself, more than he has before during this process. He treads gently, toe to heel, like a series of pictures of somebody walking, rather than somebody actually doing it. He stumbles, and the weight on his ankles isn’t there. He shakes. Okay, Beth says.

Toilet, he says. So they go there first, and she helps him sit down. He pisses and shits, and then cries when she has to help him clean himself afterwards. He hardly speaks, not really, he doesn’t say that he’s ashamed that she’s doing this, but she can tell. It’s something ingrained and deep inside him. Shame and self-pity and self-hatred and a humiliating desire to do this himself. He knows that there’s something wrong. She wipes him and he rests his face on her arm, her chest, and shoulder, and he sobs. Beth doesn’t mention it afterwards, taking him to the table and sitting him down. There’s an omelette in front of him, softly fried, more scrambled egg than solid.

Can you manage it? Beth asks. He shakes his head, so she feeds him first. He opens his mouth and she slides the egg into it, onto his tongue. He swallows of his own accord. He cries as she feeds him, and tries to manage words.

My head, he says.

I know, she says. Finish lunch. You still remember who I am?

Beth, he tells her.

Okay, she says. You’ll be okay, I promise. Do you know what we’re doing here?

I don’t know, I don’t know. He still resists eye contact. She puts the egg into his mouth: the diazepam she’s crushed up buried somewhere in the butter and cheese that binds the thing together. He swallows and then refuses the next mouthful – turns his head – so Beth tells him that he has to have a drink to wash it all down. He takes it.

She helps him back to the bed before he starts to get drowsier. His increased responsiveness is certainly making this easier, and with each step he takes it feels like he’s taking more and more of his weight. He lies down of his own accord, and he shuts his eyes and smacks his lips.

Do you know what that noise is? Beth asks him. She’s referring to the Machine.

I don’t know, he says through the fug.

It’s okay. Don’t worry. She takes down the Crown and presses the screen.

Laura hammers on the door with the balls of her fists.

This is wrong, she shouts. Beth, you have to listen to me! The neighbours have come out of their flats to watch, because they assume it’s a domestic – and that’s one of the pleasures, for them, of this block’s forecourt, the sheer number of arguments that spill out of the flats and onto the concrete, complete with whatever’s thrown out after the offending party, and usually a crying brood, begging for whichever parent has the greater potential for violence to calm down. They stay standing as Laura continues her tirade. What you’re doing is wrong, Beth. What you’re doing is against everything that we are!

Beth sits on a chair at the dining table as Vic rests. She watches the shadows of Laura’s fists raise and fall on the glass.

Beth, answer the door. Answer the door.

Or what? Beth asks. She doesn’t shout it, but she knows that Laura will hear.

Or I’ll tell people what you’re doing.

It’s not illegal to stay inside your flat. This is a game in which neither of them is going to say it first: Laura in accusing Beth of something that’s barely common knowledge, something that barely exists as a possiblity; and Beth won’t admit any more than she already has. And Vic isn’t here against his will. He was checked out of the clinic, taken by his wife for the summer, a break from the monotony of his care, and he won’t be returned because he’s being changed.

You know what I’m saying, Beth. She hushes her voice to a spat whisper. Let me in and we can talk about this.

This isn’t your business, Beth says. She drinks water and rubs her head where it’s sore – she’s so tired still, and when she closes her eyes all she can see is the Machine, that wave of ever-deep black metal – and takes more ibuprofen. She counts her pills: half the diazepam gone, half the ibuprofen. She’s been using more of them than she anticipated. She’ll have to do another run: late at night, she thinks, when there won’t be people outside, when she can rely on Vic to stay asleep. He’s excellent at that. Sleeping through the night, never waking, never making a peep. That’s something he was good at before he went to war, being able to drop off anywhere, any time. Cars, trains, the hard benches of an airport: he could sleep on them.

You need help, Laura says.

I can handle him.

Beth, you need friends and you need help to see you through times like this.

I’m sorry, Laura.

I don’t know what you’re doing in there, Beth. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but it’s not your husband inside there—

Stop it.

—because he was destroyed, and he cannot now be reconstructed, not from nothing. That isn’t your right. She pauses. Genesis 2:7: the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground, and he breathed life into the man’s nostrils; and the man became alive.

You seemed so normal when we first met. Beth says it to hurt her, and there’s silence for a while, as the slump comes: Laura’s clothes dragging themselves down the door.

I’m not leaving, Laura says. I can help save you, don’t you see?

There’s nothing to save, Beth says. She shuts the door to the Machine’s room again and puts the Crown on Vic’s head. She presses play, and Vic’s voice emerges: so instantly reassuring.

I’m having trouble remembering things, he says.

That’s natural, the doctor says. You had a nasty accident.

Yes. That’s what I’m told.

You don’t remember?

No.

The recording is from after it was all settled: after the majority of the work had been done. From here, they told Beth, it was just cleaning up. From this point onwards, anybody could talk him through it.

And then shouting, coming through the flat.

What’s that voice? Beth, who’s in there with you? Laura beats the front door again, and Beth remembers that the playback is still at full volume, so that she could hear it over the Machine. She wonders why Laura hasn’t heard the Machine itself: supposes that she’s assumed it to be a normal household appliance. She wonders if the neighbours have noticed the vibrations coming through their floors or their ceilings. If the shudders carry through the foundations and supports and make their light fixtures rattle and their carpets hum. Beth, I can hear voices, who’s in there?

Beth opens the door. The voices fill out into the rest of the flat.

I remember being somewhere. The desert? Is that where I had the crash?

What crash is that?

The, ah, the car crash. That’s why I’m here. Speaking to you.

Who are those voices, Beth? Laura sounds desperate. And then Beth unlocks the front door and opens it. The sunlight from outside is brighter than she thought: it’s been a few days – how many? – since she left the flat. Laura’s there, fingering her necklace. Oh my Lord, you’re seeing sense. You’re seeing sense. Beth looks around. Fat neighbour is there, pretending to be hanging out washing across the balcony rail (which they’re banned from doing). The kids stare. Across the way, some of the other families stand on their balconies and watch, because Laura’s voice is shrill and loose and echoes across the courtyard. Below them, a group of youths in the courtyard, standing on the benches and the flower-beds, look up at Beth and Laura. The boy is there: the one with the scar and the bike and the naked leaps into water that he can’t judge the depth of; and he spits onto the floor and stares, and doesn’t stop staring at Beth as she scans the complex.

Go away, Laura. I won’t ask you again.

You need me, Beth. You need comfort and advice.

Just go away. She picks up Laura’s bag from the floor, which is open, spilling with her wallet, a bottle of water, a bag of crisps and a book, and Beth knows what the book is without even having to look. She hurls the bag over the railing towards the youths, who laugh and act like it’s a bomb. Apart from the one with the scar, who doesn’t move.

What? Laura asks, and she turns and starts to run to the stairs as the gang look at the bag’s spilled guts.

Beth slams the door shut behind her. She walks into the bedroom and the recording is still playing, but she speaks over it. She talks to Vic about Laura, and how irritating she is. How she won’t leave them alone. How she – Beth – needs to get out of this place, because it’s all becoming too much. She wonders if he’s becoming more receptive. If, somehow, he can hear her through all the other noise.

Beth watches Vic sleep. It’s dark outside now, and she’s put him through more than she planned: the pills were still having an effect, so she drove on for another hour, risking accidents and fits that didn’t happen. When he’s finished he wakes up for food. He doesn’t say anything until he’s at the table, until his meal is all but done.

What happened to me? he asks.

What do you mean? Beth replies.

I had an accident. I can’t remember things.

Like what? she asks him.

I don’t know. Victor McAdams. I’m a soldier. You’re my wife. Your name is Beth.

Yes.

And there was an accident, I remember that.

You were shot, Beth says.

Shot. I was a soldier.

Yes.

Shot. He raises his hand to his head and rubs the scar on the side, above the burned-in one from the Machine. I was in hospital. He starts to cry. I can’t remember some of this, and I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I am.

Beth can see how close she is. She comforts him, holds him, and he says that he’s tired. She’s got two diazepam left, and they were meant to be for tomorrow, but he starts heaving tears and air, so she pops them from the blister pack and offers them to him.

This is medicine, she says. You should swallow them. She holds the water for him, and it’s a struggle but the tablets settle in and down, and he gulps the rest of the water. They’ll help you sleep, she tells him. She sits with him and they do nothing – no talking, no moving, just her holding him to her – and then she starts to feel his head nod forward. So she tells him that they should go to the bedroom, because he’ll sleep better there.

She gets him to his feet and leads him towards the Machine’s room, but something stops her. The noise: it’s deeper and more present, and something’s wrong in the room. Like the Machine knows that she’s prepared him for the next session, and resents it. Which is insane, she tells herself, because it’s a machine, a thing, and there’s nothing inside it but wires and microchips and hard drives and space for the fans and the dust. But still: the noise sounds worse. Desperate, almost. She tells him to wait for her, and he stands independent in the doorway, leaning against the frame. She unplugs the Machine from the wall. Still there in the background. No respite.

Not tonight, she says. She doesn’t know why she’s talking to it. Why it deserves that from her. She looks back at Vic and pulls the door shut. Not the spare room, she says, come and sleep with me in here.

In bed, he takes his side like it’s ingrained in him to do so, and he slumps into a mattress that has seemingly remembered his shape and his form and the way that he sleeps, and into the pillows that nest around his head. His eyes are shut instantly, and Beth pulls the door shut, leaving the room in darkness and silence. She closes the front door behind her and she’s suddenly out in the wild of the estate. It feels different to her now, as she sees her reflection in the mirrors of people’s windows on the way to the stairwell, and sees her hair unkempt and greasy – has she showered while she’s been making sure that Vic’s body is as clean as it can be? – and her clothes thrown on. This is how she looks, and how Vic will see her. She tells herself that she has to make more of an effort in the future, as he wakes up more. She takes the stairs two at a time, almost jumping downstairs. She hates the blind corner here. She hates that there’s no way of seeing what’s waiting for her at the bottom. And yet she’s never met anybody or been threatened there. It’s just the potential for harm, or surprise. Sometimes that’s more worrying than the harm itself.

The rest of the estate is quiet, so she’s out and onto the road before anybody sees or hears her, and down towards the strip. She has to walk past the takeaways – the smell of the curry place makes her hungry for something that isn’t eggs and tinned spaghetti and frozen slices of bread – and that means joining the crowd outside the kebab shop. She knows that the boy is there before she’s even close enough to make them out as individuals, past their white t-shirts and their football-kit-material shorts and their white trainers and their shaven heads, and she knows that he’ll be the one who comes over to her. She sees them turn as a mass and look at her, and this is when she’s outside the Indian restaurant, and she thinks about walking in and acting like this was her intention all along. But she needs more pills, because she’s so close, and Vic is so close. Another few days of keeping him down and she’ll have him.

The boy – now he’s there, an individual, not like the others, somehow, there’s something worse about him – steps forward and spits at his feet and his head lolls. Left to right, lolling and rolling. He doesn’t make eye contact with her: he fixes his gaze on her chin, or her neck, she can’t tell.

Fuck you looking at, he says. I seen you around, right? His voice is slurred. Again, she can’t work out how old he is. Somewhere between twelve and seventeen. Some vague age that can’t be pinned down.

Beth doesn’t say anything.

No, don’t fucking ignore me. He’s not pushy, physically, staying a few feet back from her. He walks as she does, matching her path, crossing his feet with an almost-grace. Don’t fucking do that, now, missus. His friends laugh. They pick at their teeth and watch her with their heads tilted forward, staring out from under their brows. They open their mouths and smack their lips and rub at their fresh tattoos. Don’t you be fucking doing that, now, because I am not to be ignored. I am not a man you just walk past, eh? You see that?

You’re not a man, Beth says. She regrets it as soon as it’s out there, but there’s something about how long this has been going on. She has to stand up for herself and stop this. He’s only a child, she tells herself.

The fuck you say? They all shift position, falling into a line and arcing around her. Cutting her off. You stand near me and fucking say that again, okay? Okay? Okay? Okay? He repeats the word over and over again, sounding more threatening with each spit of it. His friends smile each time. Beth looks at his hands, and he doesn’t have a weapon, and she hates herself for saying what she did. She thinks about running. She looks for an exit. Okay? he says again. They get closer. Still not looking at her face: instead he stares only at her neck, definitely her neck, she can see, now that he’s closer. She wonders what he’s looking at. If he can see her pulse through her skin, or her throat as she gulps back the warm air that she’s breathing in too quickly. There’s something more predatory about it.

Step the fuck back, all of you, comes a voice from behind. It’s the waiter from the restaurant. No trouble, just step back from her and get your kebabs or whatever, and I won’t have to call the police, will I. Beth sees that he’s holding a cricket bat out in front of him, waving it around. It’s heavier than he expected, clearly, and it’s loose in his grip. One of them could knock it away at any moment; but they don’t. They back up.

You’re looking to have your place busted up, one of the boys from the back says.

No, I’m not. I’m looking to stop you boys getting in trouble with the police. You know that, right? He looks at Beth. Go, he mouths. She turns and runs off, and none of them apart from the boy look at her go, because they’re fixated on the waistcoated restaurateur. She stops around the corner and thinks she’s going to be sick but she isn’t, and instead stands on the spot with her hands on her knees and coughs at the ground. She breathes these heaves, and then leans back and sniffs in the air, and tries to hold it in. She counts down from fifty. It’s not quite enough.

Tesco is bright and painful, and she walks to the pharmacy counter in a slight detour, down past the meat fridges and the cold front that occupies the air alongside them. It isn’t until she’s past them that she sees the railings up at the pharmacy, and the man behind them packing things away.

Please, she says, I didn’t know you were shut.

Nothing I can do, he says.

Please. I’m desperate. He shakes his head. I need to get some painkillers.

Diazepam lady, he says. I remember. You gone through them already?

Yes, Beth says.

For an emergency, you said. To keep them in the cupboard in case of something, right? So there’s been a few emergencies the last week, yeah?

I’ve come out for this, she thinks, and she can feel herself shaking as she grips the counter. She doesn’t know if it’s shock, or nerves, or something residual from the Machine, because it definitely feels the same, vibrations rather than tremors, something inside rather than something muscular.

I know what you’re like, he says. Sort of person you are, I know you.

You don’t, Beth says.

Listen, right, we got a register, and you’re on it now. Because it’s people like you give us nothing but problems – in here, middle of the night, trying to buy this stuff. He glares at her through the railings. Go find a normal dealer, plenty round the estates.

Please, Beth begs.

Said we’re shut. The shutters darken and everything disappears: the background bottles of pills, the cough sweets, the man, everything. Beth’s nails dig into her palms. She turns and heads to the aisle where they sell these things without a prescription, and she finds the fastest-acting pain-relief tablets and scoops up a handful of boxes. At the front counters the security guard wanders along and keeps an eye on her, and the clerks all look at each other and smirk with their eyes. One of them looks down because she can’t stop laughing. It’s a quiet night, and this – probably telephoned through by the pharmacist, to tell them to watch out for her, because this one could be trouble – this is entertainment for them. Like a soap opera.

Twenty-six eighty, the cashier tells Beth. You want a bag? The adjacent cashier smiles and laughs into the hood of her top.

Yes please, Beth says. She can’t do anything, and the cashier flaps the thin bag on top of the piled painkillers. She pays by card and packs them up, and as she leaves, the security guard walks slowly behind her. She thinks that he’s looking for bulges in her pockets.

Outside, she breaks down. She walks around the side of the shop and it overwhelms her: the feeling that this – providing the diazepam – was one small thing that she could have done to help him. She’s carrying on, that’s not even a question. But the diazepam was to have been a gift to him: the ability to make it not hurt, and she’s failed. She sobs in the alley that intersects the supermarket’s delivery road, and she tries to keep it as quiet as possible. The wall is gravelled, pebble-dashed, and she smacks her hand against it. Only once, but it’s hard enough that each stone seems to break the skin, and when she looks at her palm she can see tiny red marks where it’s not quite bleeding. Her headache comes back and courses through her, and she opens one of the packets and takes two of the pills, dry swallowing them. They stick, and she can feel them sitting in her throat. She doesn’t know how to move them, until she gets water.

She walks back to the strip, hoping that the boy and his friends will have gone: but they’re still there, outside the kebab shop. They’re laughing harder than she’s ever heard them laugh. So instead she walks the other way, further down the strip, towards where it becomes the seafront. She finds the sole taxi rank servicing this part of the island. There’s a queue, and she joins it: behind the swaying man who clings to the woman with the smeared mascara. Beth waits, and they shuffle forward as cars drive up and take them away, and finally it’s her turn.

Where to? asks the woman behind the counter.

Beth tells her the address.

That’s no distance. You can walk that.

I’ll pay double, Beth says.

Your money, the woman says, and she shrugs, and she says the address into the radio and the man on the other end sighs. She’s paying double, the woman says.

The car pulls up two minutes later and Beth slumps down in the back seat. They drive back the way that she’s walked – past the pharmacist standing outside Tesco talking to his workmates as they drag on cigarettes, no doubt telling them about the addict who tried to scam him for tranquilizers – and then past the boy, and the youths all duck down to look into the cab but they can’t really see Beth because she turns away from them, so they look at the driver, make noises and shout abuse at him. The one boy isn’t looking where the rest are. His eyes are down, still, Beth’s sure, pointed right at her neck. They all laugh and one throws a half-empty bag of chips at the back of the car, and they laugh again, apart from, Beth is sure, the boy.

Fucking monsters, the driver says. Pardon my language.

No, it’s fine, Beth tells him.

Animals. Don’t know how we’re going to survive, if it’s them lot representing where we’re fucking heading. I’m trying to make a living, and now I probably got to clean chilli sauce off my car before I start tomorrow as well, and what the hell are they doing? Standing there, being wankers.

He pulls over and Beth gives him a ten, and he thanks her when she tells him to keep the change.

Have a safe night, he says. She walks through the estate and runs up the stairwell, and it isn’t until she’s on the tier outside her flat that she sees him: across the way, directly opposite.

The boy.

Is that where he lives? Has he always lived there? He isn’t looking at her. He isn’t looking at anything, she sees: his head slumped over, his eyes shut. He’s waiting for something. Beth fumbles with her keys and jams them into the door, and she can’t get inside and shut it fast enough.

Vic is still asleep. Beth sits by the side of his bed, taking the pills from their packets and crushing them up into a powder, and then trying to work out how much is too much.