by Ian Mcewan
We would find out for ourselves how long it would take Mark to forgive Miranda her long absence from his life. I felt oddly calm about the prospect – and confident. I owed something. Beyond my own concerns. A clear, clean purpose, to bring Mark back to that look he gave me across the jigsaw, to that carefree arm looped around Miranda’s neck, back to the generous space where he would dance again. From nowhere there came to me the image of a coin I once held in my hand, the Fields Medal, the highest distinction in mathematics, and the inscription, attributed to Archimedes. The translation read, ‘Rise above yourself and grasp the world.’
A minute passed before I realised that I was looking into the lab where the stainless-steel tables were. It seemed a long time since I’d been there. In another life. I stood, paused, then, rejecting all thoughts of authority and permission, stepped in and approached. The long room, with its exposed industrial ceiling ducts and cables, remained fluorescent lit and was deserted but for a lab assistant busy at the far end. From the streets below came the sound of distant sirens and a repeated chant, hard to make out. Someone or something must go. I walked slowly, soundlessly, across the polished floor. Adam remained as he had been, lying on his back. His power line had been removed from his abdomen and trailed on the floor. The Charlie Parker head had gone and I was glad. I didn’t want to be in the line of that gaze.
I stood by Adam’s side, and rested my hand on his lapel, above the stilled heart. Good cloth, was my irrelevant thought. I leaned over the table and looked down into the sightless cloudy green eyes. I had no particular intentions. Sometimes, the body knows, ahead of the mind, what to do. I suppose I thought it was right to forgive him, despite the harm he had done to Mark, in the hope that he or the inheritor of his memories would forgive Miranda and me our terrible deed. Hesitating several seconds, I lowered my face over his and kissed his soft, all-too-human lips. I imagined some warmth in the flesh, and his hand coming up to touch my arm, as if to keep me there. I straightened and stood by the steel table, reluctant to leave. The streets below were suddenly silent. Above my head, the systems of the modern building murmured and growled like a living beast. My exhaustion welled up and my eyes closed briefly. In a moment of synaesthesia, jumbled phrases, scattered impulses of love and regret, became cascading curtains of coloured light that collapsed and folded then vanished. I wasn’t too embarrassed to speak out loud to the dead to give shape and definition to my guilt. But I said nothing. The matter was too contorted. The next phase of my life, surely the most demanding, was already beginning. And I had lingered too long. Any moment, Turing would come out of his office to find me and damn me further. I turned away from Adam and walked the length of the lab at a pace without looking back. I ran along the empty corridor, found the emergency stairs, took them two at a time down into the street and set off on my journey southwards across London towards my troubled home.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am deeply grateful to all those who gave their time to an early draft of this novel: Annalena McAfee, Tim Garton Ash, Galen Strawson, Ray Dolan, Richard Eyre, Peter Straus, Dan Franklin, Nan Talese, Jaco and Elizabeth Groot, Louise Dennys, Ray and Kathy Neinstein, Ana Fletcher and David Milner. I make an exclusive claim to any remaining errors. I’m indebted to a long conversation with Demis Hassabis (b.1976) and to Andrew Hodges’ magisterial biography of Alan Turing (d.1954).
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Copyright © Ian McEwan 2019
Mannequins reproduced with kind permission of Rootstein Display Mannequins
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The quotation on p.110 is from the song ‘Teddy Bear’s Picnic’, written by Jimmy Kennedy
First published in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape in 2019
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781473567795
