The Machine

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It was a day, Beth says. Wouldn’t go as far as the good part.

Fancy telling me about it over a glass of wine?

Beth stalls. I was going to do marking, she says. Her bag feels pitifully light for that excuse. I’ve got a bit to catch up on.

You could do it after the wine and get it done twice as fast, Laura says. The looseness you get from wine really helps with your marking, I’ve heard. She persists. Go on. I don’t know anybody else, and this is getting pretty tiresome, being here like this. It’s you and wine, or by myself in the guest house all afternoon, sweating under my dodgy air-conditioner. Her last try. The first round’s on me, she says.

Okay, Beth says. Sure, why not?

They walk down the road away from the school, past the kids. They know what they’re like: smoking, playing up. Across the way, a group of them pull their hoods over their faces and start walking with an affected limp. Beth can hear music from one of their cars. It sounds like drumming. Nothing but the headache of a beat.

They have cars, even here? Why would a teenage boy need a car on the island? asks Laura.

How else are you going to crash one and write it off? Beth replies. That makes Laura laugh. They don’t really talk, because it’s so hot, and then they reach a pub that Beth recognizes but has never been into.

This one? Laura asks. The temperature inside is much lower. They open the door and there’s almost a thin mist from within, as if they’ve opened a freezer, and Beth feels goose-bumps thrum up her arms. They pick a table away from the bar, where it’s quiet, and Laura leaves her bag there with Beth while she goes and orders. Beth watches her talking to the barman, who seems like he’s been asleep – he rubs his face and yawns as she orders, and he fumbles a wine glass as he places it on the bar, nearly smashing it, but Laura catches it before it rolls off the lip – and thinks about how long it’s been since she had a drink out like this. She drank at the Christmas party once, a few years ago, but she never goes out. Not to pubs. Not with her workmates.

Laura comes back with the wine. Went with this, she says, waving the bottle around. It sloshes, nearly up the neck and out. Got the bottle, because it worked out cheaper, if we drink it. She sits down. We’ll drink it, right? She pours them both a glass, filling each well over the recommended-measurement line, and then drinks from hers. Sorry, she says, should’ve made a toast.

You don’t need to, Beth says.

No, I do. Thanks for this. I was getting lonely. Here’s to not being lonely, Laura says. They both raise their glasses and chink them across the table.

How are you getting on? Beth asks.

Fine, Laura says. She tells Beth a story about one of the boys taking his penis out in class, under his desk. She says, You warned me about him as well, and there was I thinking you were insane. Butter wouldn’t melt, I thought, and suddenly … Well, there it is.

Jesus! Beth says.

The rest of the class died laughing. Even the girls.

They try. They’re good kids.

He had his penis out. Doesn’t matter how good a class is, they’re always going to push that one. But I’m enjoying it, the teaching. She smiles. Not the penis. They both laugh. They need something, Laura says. Seems like a lot of them here don’t have faith. Not big on churches or family here, are they? Beth doesn’t answer. She’s not big on either herself, but that isn’t something she can say. It’s not something she can hold against Laura either. The silence pushes Laura to change the subject. So what about you? she asks. She looks at Beth’s hand and points. You’re married?

Beth has to stop herself telling the truth. It’s there, in her mouth. She’s suddenly aware of how much she wants to talk about it. Yes, she says. He’s in the army, so I’m sort of alone a lot.

No sort of about it, Laura says. My dad was in the army. I get that, what it’s like. Selfish, I used to think. Sorry, I mean. You know.

Beth nods. I know, she says. It can be, a bit. She thinks about how many people she’s told the truth to since it happened. Her doctor, the psychiatrist she took herself to when she was having trouble sleeping, after Vic went into the home; a man on the telephone, when she called the helpline for Victims of Vacancy; a man who nagged her insistently once, in the early days, in a bar, practically rubbing himself against her body, taking her to the point of tears and then, from him, remorse. Three people, that’s what a tight secret it is. And here, now, she’s thinking of telling all to a woman who’s nearly a complete stranger.

Kids? Sorry, I shouldn’t pry.

No, Beth replies. No kids. Just me.

Right, so that’s definitely alone then. There’s a hint of something in Laura’s accent, something Irish maybe. Something lilting. Makes everything she says sound somehow vague. How often is he back? she asks.

Not often.

Where have they got him?

Iran, Beth says. He’s out there as one of the last peacekeepers. It’s safest: everybody knows about the chaos that was there, and how many people have died in the last decade. They don’t push when they hear Iran, because it could mean anything. It’s a delicate subject matter to talk about.

How long have you been married?

Eight years, Beth says. She’s met people like Laura before. Lots of questions because they like being interested. Not nosy, just stockpiles of information, immediately involved in the lives of their acquaintances. What about you? Beth asks. Married?

Me, no. Laura says it with the smirk of somebody who’s had this conversation a lot. No no no. I have a boyfriend; Rob. He’s noncommittal and infuriating. No matter how many hints I give him he never picks up on them, or he ignores them and plays dumb. He’s like a trained dog who chooses when he’ll obey. She leans in conspiratorially. Full of promises when there’s a treat in the hand, Laura says. We’ve been together too long now, as well. I think he’s complacent.

You live together?

No. No, I won’t. She pulls a necklace out from the neckline of her shirt. A cross, with a miniature Christ figure draped over it. I’ve told him that we should wait, she says.

Right. And he’s …

He’s stubborn. Laura finishes her glass of wine. She necks the final inch back in one. So is this all there is to do for fun on this bloody island? she asks.

11 (#u5e222e83-e52f-5a8c-b77f-86de843d54d9)

Laura says goodbye to Beth. There’s no thought of this continuing onwards – Beth remembers when that wouldn’t have even been a question, that a pub shutting didn’t mean you had to go to bed and tuck yourself in and end the night – but Laura’s adamant. She’s drunk and swaying, and Beth asks if she can find her way; if she’ll be all right. She’s insistent that she doesn’t need Beth’s help.

I can get home, Laura says, I honestly can. She reaches over and grabs Beth’s shoulders. Beth, she says. Beth. It’s been such fun. We have to do this again.

Laura stumbles off and leaves Beth in the street. She starts home. The walk back takes her ages, as she keeps stopping, leaning against walls. She catches sight of herself in the huge mirrored windows of the porn shop tucked between the kebab house (heaving) and the tiny grocers (which is perpetually empty, and seems to survive only on the occasional sale of a bunch of flowers) and she realizes that she doesn’t look anything like the woman she’s been for the last five years. She’s relaxed, and it’s all over her face. Her posture, even; the comfortable slump of her shoulders. It’s enough to make her cry, and she does, facing the water on the far side, away from the street. She’s never been in one of those shops, but she wonders if they can see out of that mirror: if they’re all watching the strange woman sobbing on the other side of the window.

For the rest of her walk home – which she extends by taking side-streets, by passing back along the front, by stopping and watching the people drinking in the streets, grabbing each other’s arses, chewing each other’s mouths off – she wants to be discovered. She wants everything out in the open. She doesn’t think about Vic for at least half an hour, and when she realizes that, she feels incredible. Magical, even. He’s everything, but that pause … to take it was so freeing. She passes students and parents and colleagues, but they don’t notice her, or they aren’t looking, or they don’t say anything. She doesn’t know which. She’s drunker than she’s been in years, and she can feel it through every inch of her.

Beth opens the front door on her third try. She drops the keys on the mat and bends to pick them up, but her ankle shakes as she does it, so she props herself against the frame with her hands.

Shit, she says. She swats the keys into the flat, and they skirt along the floor, making a noise, scratching the fake wood floorboards as they go, ending by the wall of the living room. She kicks her shoes off after them. Then pulls the door shut as she staggers forward.

I’m home, finally I’m home, she yells, and she puts her bag down, takes her coat off and she marches down the hall, pressing one hand against the wall the entire way. Home is the hunter, she says, which is something that Vic used to say, as a joke.

She opens the door to the bedroom and there it is: the Machine. She kicks the power on and the vibrations start, more acutely than before: she can hear it, feel it coming through the floorboards, the carpets, the walls. She can feel its vibrations through the wallpaper. She says his name, once, quietly, to remind herself of him – of what this is all about – and then walks to the Machine and puts her hands on it, palms out, on either side of the front panel. Its vibration runs all the way through the metal of every panel and part as it readies itself. She paws the screen, which is black, blacker still than the metal body of the thing, and her touch brings it to life.

You’re in there, she says.

Through the scrolling list of dates one leaps out, one that took place on the day after his birthday that first year of his treatment. She wonders. She presses play, and the doctor speaks, a prelude to Vic.

What did you do yesterday?

Beth took me out for a meal. We, uh. She booked a Greek restaurant. We both really like Greek food.

You seem distracted.

No. No. Just, it’s just coming hard today. Difficult for me. Don’t know why.

She pictures him there, struggling to keep it together, and she takes the Crown down from the docking station and nearly puts it on but doesn’t. Instead she rests it on the bed next to her, and she moves her right hand from the screen and down between her legs, pulling up her skirt, and then into her underwear, sliding down. She rubs herself as she sits on the edge of the bed, and then moves her body along the lip of the mattress. She remembers how she used to do this before she knew him, when she was still a girl.

She moves herself to the bed proper, face down, hand back inside her, rubbing, her back arched like a cat caught in a stretch. She gasps, one hand propped against the Machine, the vibrations through every part of her body, through her skeleton, through the other hand as it pushes her forwards.

It’s over as fast as it starts. She sits up and listens.

Do you mind if we begin the process? the doctor asks.

No, sure. Start.

Talk to me about Beth. How did she feel when you were away?

I don’t know, Vic says. Beth’s heard all of these recordings before, back when she was administering the treatments for Vic at home. When – she joked with herself – she went rogue.

Don’t you talk about it?

We did, but I can’t. I mean, she was sad. She cried a lot, near the end.

Do you remember why you came home?

I was, uh. Vic sounds upset, and he breathes through his teeth. Was I sick?

You were sick, yes. The doctor stands up – the noise of the chair legs scraping against the linoleum floor of the hospital – and there’s some tapping in the background. Vic, listen. I’d really like you to lean back and shut your eyes, and listen to something for me.

You don’t want to talk? Because I can keep going, I think. He sounds desperate.

No, not for the moment. Just listen to this, and then we’ll talk afterwards.

There’s a click, and the playback stops. The end of that recording, and the start of the first session where the Machine started filling in the gaps in what it had taken away.

Beth lies back on the bed. The room spins. The light is still on, and the Machine is on, and next to her – she reaches her fingers out – and then in her hand is the Crown. She shuts her eyes. She can’t stay in here, she knows. Her bed is in the next room. And she doesn’t know what she might do.

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She doesn’t hear her alarm. Or she switches it off without realizing, one or the other. Her telephone rings and she answers it, confused, thinking it’s the middle of the night because it’s still so dark; and then she realizes that she’s not in her room. She’s on the spare bed. The blackness is coming from the Machine. It’s on, still; the screen dimmed, but still alight.

Hello? she asks.

It’s Laura, comes the voice on the other end. I’m in reception at work. Are you ill?

No, Beth says, but even as she says it she feels the sick in the back of her throat, rising. Her head pounds. What time is it?

Just gone eight, Laura says. I’ll let them know you’ll be late.

Beth gets out of bed and stands still, trying to hold down whatever’s threatening to work its way out of her. She gently strips, trying to move as little as possible, and then pulls on underwear and a skirt and a shirt. She walks to the fridge and grabs a little bottle of water, and then drinks it as she sits on the loo. Everything’s moving still: she sits there with her eyes shut, the coldness of the water so sharp on her throat it threatens to be her undoing. Eventually she stands up. She braces herself against the wall. She’s just doing too much too quickly, she knows.