The Machine (18 page)

Beth still doesn’t sleep, even as he does. She lies next to his body and watches the ebb of it. She tries to match his breathing: to draw her own breaths in as Vic takes his, so that there’s some synchronicity, and the noise – which is so alien, more alien even than the distant hum of the Machine from the adjacent room – might somehow fade into a background of her own creation. She counts his breaths, which are naturally slower than hers.

That’s the thing about sleep, she thinks: the body slows down. In sleep, it quietens to an energy-saving crawl. In danger, it becomes hyper-energetic, surging with adrenaline. She wonders what her own body is doing: lying in bed, constantly on the verge of consciousness. If the rest she’s getting is worth anything at all. She counts his breaths to five hundred, and then starts counting down. She makes it nearly halfway before stopping.

At 4 a.m., according to the clock, she gets up and paces the kitchen. She opens the fridge – such a simple pleasure, that burst of cold – and drinks water, then uses the toilet before putting the television on and watching the news. The shallow news cycle in the middle of the night, the same fifteen-minute segments repeated with tweaks, as the stories roll in, and the scrolling texts at the foot of the screen giving real-time updates, suggesting that the newsreaders aren’t even broadcasting live. Beth wonders if they’re asleep as well: tucked under the desks, waiting until a real emergency springs up. She tries sleeping on the sofa but she can’t even begin to shut her eyes. The alarm clocks are all off, because she reasons that Vic needs the sleep. He’s not used to this, she thinks, and that makes her laugh; because what exactly is he used to? He’s used to being nothing, she thinks. He’s used to being a void.

It’s a bad thought, and one that she banishes. She tells herself that she has to remember that he’s here now. She wanted her husband back and here he is. He’s mostly-formed and tweaked and as close to perfect as she can reasonably expect. And he’ll get better. That’s what they say on the forums:

Remember: this is just the start.

The news flicks to a story about the economy, and she realizes all of a sudden how out of touch she is: how little she knows about the state of everything. Outside her flat, everything is carrying on, motoring forward. Inside, it’s just her and Vic and the Machine.

She opens the spare-bedroom door. She’s told Vic that they don’t need it any more. She’s been honest about what happened; about why it’s here.

I bought it so that we could make you better, she said.

Okay, he told her. He didn’t ask anything more than that. He only said, a few hours later, I don’t like it here.

What? she asked.

The Machine. In that room.

Okay, she told him.

Don’t you trust that I’m better?

Of course, she said.

So why do you still have it?

I’ll sell it, she told him. I’ll put it on the forums and sell it. Somebody else will want it, you know. Easy sale. And we can use the money. She blabbered excuses to him, to make him feel better. Now she looks at it, growling at her. Or maybe like a purr. Such a fine line between the two.

I should thank you, she tells it. You gave him back to me. She calls up the screen with her touch, a single stroke of her fingers, and it lights up. She’s left the room light off, and the screen casts its own colours: blue on the far wall, green on the ceiling, white everywhere else. And some black: black light, which she didn’t even know was possible, making parts of the room – corners, nooks – darker than they were even without the screen on. She flicks to the recordings, selects one and presses play. She acts like it’s an accidental choice, but it isn’t. She knows which one.

I know how this goes, Vic’s voice says. What do you want me to talk about, Robert?

I’d like you to tell me your name, like always, the doctor says.

Victor McAdams. He sounds so nervous. Now, in the present day, she can hear the confidence in his voice. That’s what the Machine has embedded of itself: the confidence that this is right. That he is who he is.

Tell me some other things about yourself, Victor. Where do you live, for example?

London.

Oh, whereabouts?

Ealing. Beth remembers their house. Their beautiful house, and their brutal mortgage, and their struggling to keep it. Another life entirely.

Okay. Are you married?

Yeah, Beth. He sounds so happy when he says her name. As if she’s the thing getting him through this, she thinks. That’s what she would like it to be: that she’s what got him through the early days. He did this for her, and their marriage. They spoke about kids. About being old. Elizabeth, Beth, Vic repeats, like he’s trying the names on. The reassurance of repetition. At this point, he still remembered everything. He knew what the Machine was going to do. He repeated her name, Beth thinks, so that he could cling onto it. This is something he never wants to lose, because they were meant to be together.

Beth stops the recording. Maybe she could sleep here, she thinks. On this bed. She peels back the duvet and heaps it on the floor, and she lies down on the sheet that’s been washed countless times since Vic came home to her. Even now it smells of him, of his skin and his sweat. Something about the Machine’s noise is comforting to her. And that makes her uneasy, because it scares her – and she’s right to be scared, she tells herself, something so powerful and confusing right there, with the power that it has. It’s rumbling. Like those planes overhead, when she was a child, and the trains at the bottom of the garden. She shuts her eyes. The smell of the pillows is stale sweat, but again, that means something. In this heat, it’s a smell she’s used to. Nothing off-putting about it.

She shuts her eyes and the room moves with her. As her body turns over – always moving from her back onto one side, then onto the other, once before sleep – so too does the room, it seems. And then there is the noise of the Machine, which starts in one place only and then envelopes her. It’s in the walls and the floors, and the vibrations come up through the foam in the mattress and through the sheet, and through the pillow where it touches the wall. And she can hear the voices: Vic and the doctor talking in the background, in the far distance, so quiet they’re barely there. The pressure on her head, which she’s sure is the Crown, but it can’t be. Because the Crown is still on the dock when she opens her eyes, and the Machine is silent and sleeping, and the room is dark again. It’s getting light outside, which means she’s had barely any sleep: and from the living room she can hear the panting of Vic, press-ups in full flow. Trying to drag his body completely back to being what it used to be. His hair already looks longer, a few days of growth having a nearly transformative effect. Where the darkness of the scruff around his temples has grown, the blackened patches look almost like part of the hairline. As if they’re almost meant to be there.

Beth walks to the doorway and watches him. He turns and smiles at her.

Sleep well? he asks.

Yes, she says.

Vic tells her that he wants some fresh air, and that they should go for a walk, down to the sea.

We should do things together, he says. Beth’s scared of seeing Laura, because she’s had more answering-machine messages left for her: begging and pleading, and telling her that there are other ways to deal with this; having no idea that it’s too late, that Vic is already back. She suggests that they stay inside instead.

We can look for flats, she says.

I don’t even think we should move, Vic says. This place: it’s got a lot of potential.

The flat?

The island. I’ve seen it when I’ve been running. Used to be an amazing place. He doesn’t ask what happened to it, or why she’s there. No inquisition at all, she thinks. He takes everything at face value.

I want to go, Beth says. I’d like a new start.

Well, while we’re here then. He pulls his shoes on, sitting on the chair by the door. Come on. It won’t kill you.

Beth’s terrified that they’ll open the door to Laura, but there’s nobody around – it’s so early, Vic somehow operating on the rigid wake-times he got used to as a soldier – so she takes his hand and leads him through the estate, even though he’s run it a few times now and knows the way out. She takes him down the stairs. It makes a difference, having him with her. She’s not threatened by the blind corner.

As they walk down the path, the whole strip is empty. She’s grateful: the boy is probably still asleep, sleeping off whatever it was that he did last night. The restaurants and takeaway look like they’re dead rather than just closed; and the Tesco – Beth winces as they pass, because she can picture the pharmacist at the front, waving his fist at her as if they’re both in some cartoon, and saying, Get out of here, and don’t come back! – is quiet inside and out. The shutters are up, which means they’re open at least.

I fancy a pastry, Vic says.

Not here, Beth tells him. There’s a place along the front. We can sit down there.

They walk down to the bit of beach and tread along the pebbles. Vic picks up a few stones, the flatter ones, and he goes to the edge where the water is almost still and he winds his arm back. He takes on the stance of a professional, if such a thing exists: a posture that looks ideal, to Beth, somehow absolutely perfect, Adonis-like. He is a work of art, a creation carved from marble and memories. She wonders if the models for those ancient Greek statues would pose, without a break, for the duration of the sculpture’s creation, or if it was done in sessions. The seemingly unimportant parts – the flats of their backs, or the flattened plateau of an inner-thigh – carved out when the muse wasn’t there any more, when the artist was left to his own devices. Vic’s tight arm springs and his fingers splay and the stone fires out at such a flat angle that it’s almost imperceptible for a second, and then it hits the water. It bounces, and again, and then carries on, almost gliding.

Still got it, Vic says.

He throws another, and another, and then one followed so quickly by another that the stones almost dance together, the second ricocheting off the ripples that the first creates.

Jesus, he says. Still got it.

They walk further along the beach, picking their way over the most stable areas: the larger stones that aren’t likely to slip, avoiding the scree closest to the water. Beth threatens to slip on one rock, but Vic catches her. He rights her. They get to where the sand has been placed – hundreds of tonnes of the stuff, brought here by the council to entice people to the beaches when the tourism started to die, the inspiration for hundreds of costly promotional photographs that only helped to sink the island faster – and that lets them get closer to the water. Vic takes his shoes off – he’s not wearing socks – and he paddles.

Freezing.

Should be.

How can people swim in this?

I did. I do.

Really?

Most mornings. It’s always this cold.

But the air’s so hot.

Doesn’t make the water boil. It would be a worry if it did. The cafe is down the way, so Beth tells him she’s going.

No, he says. I’ll go. You stay here. Sun yourself.

Milky white.

Milky white?

That’s what they call a latte, she says.

Milky white it is. She watches him head up the embankment and onto the pavement, and then pulls a lounger – one of those old-style ones, with the different-coloured rubber bands making up the bulk of the bed – and makes sure that the legs are dug in. She sits on the end and watches the water, and she zones out – watching the waves – until she hears the footsteps behind her. Too many for Vic alone. She knows before she turns.

What the fuck is this, the voice of the boy says. She’s here looking at the fucking sea. It’s not going anywhere, love. Beth turns round to look at them. Four of the boys, and two girls with them this time. Bikini tops, shorts, hair cut so short they are almost bald, like the boys, but with length at the back, pulled into ponytails. They’re almost identical, but one is fatter. You going for a swim, love? the boy asks.

Please go away, Beth says.

Fuck’s sake, get her? He laughs. I’m being all fucking nice, and she tells me to go away!

Please, she says.

You can fucking beg for all I care.

My husband is only getting coffees.

They all laugh. So now she’s got a husband, has she? Never seen you with him before, love. What’s he look like?

Like a vibrating plastic cock, one of the girls says. They all laugh.

Yeah, that’s what he looks like. And you sent that to get a coffee did you? What’s he going to do, stir it with the tip? They laugh again: from the back of the pack, the laughing is almost incessant.

He’s a soldier, Beth says.

Coo! They all coo. Sounds like a threat. What’s he going to do? Have my eye out? Beth notices his hands: he’s got a stone in one of them, and his fingers are tight around it. His other hand flexes, in and out, as he breathes. Fist, open. Fist, open. Come on, he says. Tell me what he’s going to do to me.

Beth cries instead. Please, she says, please leave me alone.

They start to back up, because she’s making real noise, huffing breaths in, and spitting them out as sobs. They back up, ten feet, and they start to turn, apart from the boy, who stands firm. He’s not budging. He can smell weakness.

And then Vic shouts from the road. Beth looks up and sees him pelting towards them.

Get back, he shouts. They ignore him as he runs, and screams. What are you all doing? He gets to Beth and puts an arm around her, shielding her as she cries, and he looks at the boy. What the fuck did you say to her?

The boy ignores him. He looks at Beth, and he kisses his teeth, and spits onto the sand.

Another time, he says. As he walks away, Beth sees his fingers open and the stone falls to the sand, patting into it. One of the only stones on this part of the beach, a lump of solid black stone in amongst all the gold. As soon as they’re all out of earshot – on the street, all laughing, all grabbing at each other and heading back towards the estate – Beth starts crying harder, almost hyperventilating as she tries to breathe.

Oh my God Beth, don’t, Vic says. She can’t help it. He rubs her back. Shh, he says. He makes soothing noises and tells her that it will be okay. Come on, he says. Come on.

When she’s pulled herself together she tells him what happened. She can hardly get the words out, her breath still tight and hard to find.

And then I saw you coming, she says.

Yes.

You didn’t get the coffees.

I dropped them when I started running. I can get more.

No, she says. Don’t leave me. Let’s wait here. They sit on the sun lounger, and then Vic leans back.

Can’t even really see the sun under the clouds, and yet this is how hot it gets, he says. He’s making observations on phenomena that the rest of the world’s lived with for five years. It’s crazy.

What would you have done? Beth asks him.

With what?

With that boy.

I told him to get off you.

Would you have done more? Would you have hit him?

If I had to. How old is he?

He’s done this before.

What?

Lots of times. He’s made me so scared. Beth says the words, and thinks how weak she sounds to herself. That’s living here, and being alone, and being so nervous all the time. And, she briefly thinks, the Machine. Something about it.

How many times?

I don’t know. Five. Maybe.

Threatened you like this? He turns to face her fully, and he puts his hands on her arms. He actually threatened you? Why didn’t you tell me?

I thought we would leave, and I would never see him again.

You won’t. He does this again, I’ll beat the shit out of him.

I don’t even know how old he is.

If he’s old enough to scare you he’s old enough to be scared.

I don’t want you getting into trouble.

I won’t. I’ll just scare the little shit. There’s something about the way he says it that suggests he’s lying. He stands up. Come on, he says, let’s get home. Get you a cup of tea. He looks in the direction that the boy and his friends went. Come on. He helps Beth to her feet and they start to walk. He sets the pace, and they tread faster, and soon he’s pulling her along. He wants to see them again, but they don’t; and then they get onto the road, and the kids are nowhere.

As they pass the shops and the side roads he looks down all of them, and he almost snarls at strangers who might, from a distance, be the boy. They get past the Tesco – Do we need anything? Vic asks, desperate to go inside and see if the boy is lurking in the booze aisles, but Beth pulls him back and tells him that they’ve got everything they need – and the takeaways, and then they’re on the hill back to the estate when Beth hears the boy. She looks down to the point where they leap into the water, and they’re all there. All of them, four boys, two girls, all stripped down to their underwear.

Fucking jump, the boy yells.

That’s him, Vic says. That’s him, isn’t it?

Leave it, please, Beth says. She looks down and sees the boy looking at her.

Cunt, he shouts, and he leaps off the edge backwards, facing them. Cunt, he yells again mid-air, and the word trails down as he plunges, and his friends laugh before following him, one by one. Each one smacks into the water.

Please leave it, Beth says. Vic picks up a rock – two handed, bigger than his fist, something heavy – and he leans back and then hurls it into the water. What are you doing? Beth screams, but they hear it splash, and voices laughing. He missed. Vic breathes deeply, and his shoulders move up and down, regular with his breathing.

I’ll fucking kill him, Vic says. He kicks the ground with his trainered foot, and kicks it again and again. Rocks fly, and he starts smacking the wall with his open palm, over and over again, and Beth has to step in to stop him, putting her hands around his hand and holding it, but she’s not strong enough, so he crushes her hand into the wall. It doesn’t break any bones, but the pain is extraordinary, and she staggers backwards. Vic notices and stops everything, freezes, and it’s like his face changes: the rage gone, replaced by total concern. Oh Jesus, he says, oh my God are you all right?

I’m fine, she says.

Let’s get back. I’m so sorry. He goes first until the stairwell, and then stands back and almost ushers her up the stairs, and then he offers to open the door but she wants to prove that her hand is okay, so she struggles with the keys and unlocks their front door. He goes in first and stands by the sofa, guiding her to sit down. Ice, he says, and he goes to the fridge and then holds a bag of frozen peas onto her hand. He looks at her hand as if he knows what he’s looking for – Beth assumes he’s seen a lot of broken bones in war – and reassures her. It’ll be fine, he says. That’ll heal up nicely. He sits on the other sofa. I don’t know what happened, he says. I don’t know what came over me.

You got angry.

I got angry before, didn’t I? When I got back from war.

Yes, Beth says. Her head murders, the pain actually worse than the pain in her hand. Can you get me headache tablets? And some water?

Oh sure, he says. I hit you, he says as he opens the fridge. On the arm, right? And that’s why you threatened to leave me. He pops the tablets from their plastic-foil beds. I remember that.

Yes.

It doesn’t mean anything. It’s not like it’s that bad, not like it was. I’m not the same person.

No. Beth wonders what the gaps were filled with. If they diluted the temper he had before, or maybe added to it. He hands her the tablets, which she throws into her mouth, and then the bottle, cap already unscrewed for her. Thank you, she says. And then she leans back, turns her whole body onto the sofa. I’m tired, she says.

Okay, he tells her. You rest.

Okay.

She shuts her eyes and listens as he walks around the flat. He opens cupboards and closes them, and then rifles through the clothes, taking the rest of his out of the vacuum-packed bags and putting them onto hangers, and then adding them to the rails in the bedroom wardrobe. He talks to her, even though he thinks that she isn’t listening.

I’m going to put the rest of the stuff into the spare bedroom, he says. He opens that door, and the noise of the Machine is back. As if it could be forgotten about. You said you’d sell this thing, he says, and even going into the room he sounds nervous. The Machine is the only thing that can do that to him. Maybe he’s worried that this can all be undone, Beth thinks. That I could turn around and wipe him, as easily as I made him. He moves the bags anyway.

Beth sleeps. She drifts off, worrying about what will happen. Because he hit her before, but never like that; not with that fury.