Untitled

by Tim Dowling

  ‘So now you’ve changed what the buttons mean?’ I say.

  ‘Please read,’ it says. ‘A personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ I say, kneading the keyboard with my fists. ‘Are you planning to say the entire internet?’ It ignores me and carries on. I go to bed, shutting my office door tightly behind me.

  The next morning the computer is still talking. I try to ignore it and get down to work, but the voice starts saying every letter I type. When I hit the space bar, it says, ‘Space’. After an hour of this, I do what I have to do.

  ‘Help!’ I scream.

  ‘What do you want?’ says the oldest one, who is drifting past the door in his pyjamas, laptop open under his chin.

  ‘Please consider the environment before printing this email,’ says the computer.

  ‘I can’t live like this,’ I say. ‘Make it stop.’

  ‘Command F5,’ says the boy, somehow managing to roll his eyes without peeling them from the screen.

  ‘Voiceover off,’ says the computer.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘That was really beginning to …’ The boy is already gone.

  A morning like any other: I go up to my computer and jab the space bar to make it come to life. Only it doesn’t. I wait a while, trying to determine how much unsaved work lies beyond the black screen. Eventually impatience overrides caution and I turn the computer off and then back on again. Except it doesn’t come back on.

  I breathe in slowly. I tell myself it’s too early to panic over the possibility of catastrophe. I only really care about one thing on my present computer, the aforementioned unsaved work. For the sake of argument, let’s call it a nearly completed book. I do sort of need that. I turn the computer off and on again, but there is not much difference between the two.

  I’m not an idiot. I email the updated document to myself at intervals precisely in case this sort of thing happens. My priority is to find the most recent version and secure it on another computer.

  Except that the most recent email for some reason contains only the first quarter of the document. The newest complete version in my inbox is months old. It turns out I am an idiot after all. Now, I tell myself quietly, you may panic.

  I shriek for the middle one, forcing him from his bed. He comes downstairs, stares into space as I carefully explain the situation so far, taps the space bar, clicks the mouse, and tries a few odd keystroke combinations.

  ‘Dunno,’ he says finally.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  Three days and a dozen helpline calls later, no one in my family is speaking to me. My throat is sore from shouting. My knee and left fist hurt from hours spent pounding one with the other. My children have seen a side of me I have never wanted to show them: panicked, irrational, brimming over with uncontrolled fury. They’ve seen it before, to be fair; just not this many days in a row.

  My hard drive is in the possession of a man in Wandsworth who isn’t returning my calls, possibly because of the tone of my voice in all the messages I keep leaving. My wife rings from the M3, her idea of a safe distance.

  ‘Any luck?’ she asks.

  ‘No,’ I say, trying out a new tone of giddy resignation. ‘My life is ruined, but whatever. That’s cool.’

  ‘Gotta go,’ my wife says.

  ‘Me, too,’ I say. ‘I have another call.’

  It’s Darren from Data Solutions, ringing to let me know that my hard drive is unreadable, and quite possibly blank.

  ‘OK, Darren,’ I say. ‘That’s cool.’

  I hang up and start searching through all my inboxes and outboxes again, trying different keywords. A draft email I’ve never seen before suddenly pops up: a complete, unsent version of the document from five days before.

  ‘I found you,’ I say. Unfortunately I can’t think of anyone to ring who would, at this point, be pleased for me. Not even Darren.

  A week later, I walk into the kitchen to find the oldest one striding back and forth, phone to ear, panting in quiet fury. His bank card has been stolen, thieves have exceeded his overdraft and he’s been cut off mid-call, twice.

  ‘Yes, I’m still here,’ he says. ‘I already … yes, it … wait … can you hear me now?’ He stalks out of the room in search of better reception.

  ‘Remind you of anyone?’ my wife says.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I say.

  There is a bloodcurdling scream from next door and the oldest returns, his face dark purple.

  ‘Holy fucking shitting God!’ he shouts, lifting the phone high over his head. His behaviour is, I must admit, eerily familiar, particularly the way he adjusts his run-up to ensure that, when he finally hurls the phone, it lands softly on the sofa. Then he stomps back out.

  ‘Attractive, isn’t it?’ my wife says.

  I don’t answer, because secretly the boy’s response strikes me as wholly proportionate. I mean, what else are you supposed to do?

  A fortnight later the middle one walks into my office, iPad to nose, to turn the wireless router on and off. He finds me looking intently at a leaflet titled ‘About Your Recovery’.

  ‘From alcohol?’ he asks.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘From data loss.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says.

  ‘What do you mean, “from alcohol?”’ I say.

  The boy shrugs and walks off, pausing only to scrutinize the blinking light on the front of the router on his way out of the door.

  In the weeks since I lost all my data, my computer’s dead hard drive has been on a journey. It’s now in a clean room in Surrey, where people in hairnets and disposable overshoes are awaiting a decision from me. Along with my leaflet, I’ve received a two-page report estimating the likely percentage of my data that can be recovered: most, if not all, but possibly none. The enormous cost, on the other hand, is not an estimate; nor is it refundable, nor does it include VAT.

  My computer has been on a different journey. For an incredibly modest price, it has been fitted with a one-terabyte hard drive and returned to me, blank as new. A certain amount of data has migrated back: 12,000 old emails pinged into my inbox, and all my music purchases reappeared. But otherwise it’s empty. When I turn on my computer in the morning, I feel strangely unencumbered, and correspondingly susceptible to notions of promise. I begin to think that my old data should stay lost.

  My wife, meanwhile, is trying to convince me that recovery is something I should seriously consider, whatever the cost.

  ‘We’re still talking about my hard drive, right?’ I say, jamming an empty wine bottle nose-first into the recycling bin.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘What about all your old documents, things you’ve written?’

  ‘Don’t need it,’ I say. ‘Chances are I’d never look at it again anyway.’

  ‘It’s a legitimate business expense,’ she says, knowing how favourably disposed I am towards language that makes me sound like a businessman.

  ‘Who cares?’ I say. ‘I’m free!’

  Some days later, at an event in Sussex, a strange woman starts showing me pictures of her dog on her phone.

  ‘I have dogs,’ I say, whipping out my own phone in retaliation. As I scroll through to find the most charmingly composed picture of the pair, four years’ worth of memories flash before my eyes: red-eyed holiday snaps; accidental shots of the kitchen door; a blurry, vertiginous pap of Phil Tufnell taken by one of my children; photos of Halloween costumes, snake eggs, a snowman wearing 3D glasses, my new ladder, a patch of lawn ringed by the shoes of fellow party guests … Suddenly all this stuff – this digital information on which so many fragile memories are pinned, and which exists nowhere but on my old, cracked-screen phone – seems terribly important to me. My data is my memory, and I am as anchored as I am imprisoned by it.

  A week later I receive in the post a black box no bigger than a cigarette packet: the contents of my old hard drive. I plug it into my computer and have a look. As far as I can tell, everything is there: half
-finished articles, old invoices, a jpeg of a Mondeo starter motor, the Beach Boys’ Greatest Hits. It would be the work of seconds to transfer the lot to my new, giant hard drive. In the end, I decide to keep it all on the black box, in case I one day feel the need to chuck it into a canal.

  Lessons in primatology 1

  Over the course of a decade of writing about family life, I have from time to time experienced what military strategists might call blowback. It can be subtle: a slight but perceptible decline in my wife’s amusement at being portrayed as a harridan in the national press. One of my children may object to having his words reported in a way that he believes misrepresents him somehow, even after he’s spent the fiver.

  Obviously I regret causing offence or embarrassment – it’s not my primary motivation – but on those occasions when I accidentally overstep the mark, a larger problem presents itself: next week’s deadline. Having pissed my family off this Saturday, how do I write about them the following one? On those difficult occasions I simply opt for a temporary blurring of identities, a minor precaution which protects the sensibilities of all concerned, and rarely undermines the essential truth of what has transpired.

  So, for example, my life partner – let’s call him Sean – might arrive home of an evening with our three adopted ex-research chimps. It’s Friday, we’re both tired, and there is no food in the house.

  ‘One of us,’ Sean says glumly, ‘is going to have to go to Sainsbury’s.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I say sweetly, ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘Oh,’ Sean says, ‘I didn’t expect that.’

  Sean has failed to remember that today is our gay-wedding anniversary, and I have not reminded him. Sean is normally good on dates, because he writes things down, but for some reason he is never able to remember our anniversary. I think he resents the obligation to commemorate a day we both found fairly traumatic. Some years I also forget, but this morning my eye snagged on the date in the newspaper, and I knew it had some significance.

  All day I have been plotting how best to take advantage of this. At first I toyed with the idea of organizing some kind of surprise evening out, until I realized that anything that elaborate might make Sean feel terrible, when I wanted him to feel only mildly derelict. I thought of going out to buy some monstrously expensive present, but Sean is difficult to buy for, possessing both particular tastes and a charming inability to hide his disgust. In any case, I spent all afternoon googling myself and missed the shops.

  A trip to the supermarket suddenly seemed the perfect answer – a card, some cheap flowers and a bottle of champagne – just enough to say that I care, more than you.

  As I unpack the shopping, Sean catches me in the kitchen.

  ‘What are you doing behind there?’ he says. ‘What are you hiding?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What is that? You bought flowers?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, holding them up. ‘But then I thought you might think they were hideous.’

  ‘No, those are nice,’ he says. ‘I like them, thank you.’

  As he takes them from me and goes off in search of a vase, I realize this might be the time to come clean, but I find I am not man enough to relinquish the upper hand. I go upstairs and puzzle over what to write in the card. I want something simple and not overly romantic, maybe something amusing like ‘To a very civil partner’. In the end I just write ‘It’s OK that you forgot’, and stuff it in an envelope marked ‘Sean’.

  A little later, Sean comes in while I am cooking. ‘What’s this?’ he says, picking up the envelope. As he opens it I retrieve the bottle of champagne from the freezer.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ he says. ‘I forgot.’

  ‘I knew you would,’ I say, kissing him gently on the cheek. ‘You always do.’

  ‘You came in with flowers, and still I didn’t get it,’ he says. ‘That’s really bad.’ Our youngest chimp, Kurt, waddles into the room and makes the sign for ‘hungry’.

  ‘Dad fooled me,’ Sean tells him. ‘It was our anniversary, and I forgot.’

  ‘Again,’ I say. Kurt makes the sign for ‘whatever’, helps himself to a banana and leaves. I pour the champagne.

  ‘I notice you got only a half-bottle,’ Sean says.

  ‘I know you don’t really like it,’ I say. ‘It seemed a waste.’ Our middle chimp, Anton, comes in and signs, ‘Can I have some of that?’

  ‘You can have a sip of mine,’ Sean says. ‘I don’t really like it.’

  ‘Just a sip,’ I say. I worry about giving Anton alcohol, because he’s only ten and he can lift a car.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In the beginning, I throw the child a ball. It bounces off his head, and he tips over. His mother comes in to see why he is crying.

  ‘He fell over,’ I say, careful not to look at the spot where the ball has ended up.

  A little later, when the child can walk, I take him outside and kick the ball to him. He tries to kick it back, and he tips over. I pick him up, retreat a short distance with the ball and start again. This carries on for years marked by little discernible progress. In the meantime another son comes along, then another. I bounce balls off their heads in turn.

  Then one day in the park I notice all three of them are performing strange manoeuvres with the ball, little feints and sleights of foot named for the players who first popularized them, players I’ve never heard of because I am American and know nothing about football. I don’t even call it football.

  The children did not exist when these legendary footballers were playing, and yet their celebrated manoeuvres have somehow been passed down to them over my head. My primary feeling is one of relief.

  They introduce me to games I don’t understand; schoolyard versions of football for four or fewer players, with rules that seem designed to work against me. Even though I am larger, I find it difficult to take the ball off them, and the pointless running is exhausting. Eventually I am relegated to permanent goalkeeper, positioned between two piles of coats, piles which I surreptitiously move closer together when no one is looking.

  ‘Dad, come on,’ shouts my son as I let in another goal. ‘You’re being useless.’ He is not teasing me; nor is he crowing. He is furious that my inability to defend is affecting the delicate balance of a one-on-one game between him and his younger brother. He has a much sterner accusation in reserve – that I am not even trying – but he knows me well enough. In my own pathetic way I am doing my best.

  The extent to which a parent is competitive with children depends largely on how competitive you are in the first place. Many dads, including me, have virtually no experience of winning at games until they start thrashing their own tiny children. This is how I finally learned to enjoy ping-pong. You may pretend to yourself that you are teaching them to be good losers, but they are also learning how to be smug and graceless winners. Trust me: when the time comes, they will remember.

  It has always seemed strange to me that children are traditionally introduced to the notion of competition via the cruellest game ever devised by man: Snakes and Ladders. Defeat is often crushing, and because it’s a game of chance there is no plausible way for parents to engineer a less painful outcome. After the second time the children land themselves at the top of a twisting snake you look into their little brimming eyes, even while you’re stepping your own piece up another ladder, and you tell them that it’s nothing to be upset about: this is just how games work. And also, by the way, how life works.

  I was, frankly, quite content to suck at football, relieved to put the complex question of father–son competition behind me as soon as possible, and to step warily into the role of spectator.

  When I was very small, I spent a lot of Sundays in a field watching my father play touch football, a slightly less violent version of American football. One of my earliest memories is of standing on the touchline on a crisp, autumn afternoon, aged about three, and having a motorcycle fall on top of me. The incident left me with a certain ambivalence towards spectatorshi
p. At that point I never imagined I would have children who would one day be forced to watch me play sport. Which is just as well, because this never came to pass.

  Instead, it is Sunday and I am standing on a touchline watching my middle son play football, in one of about twenty matches taking place on an open expanse of ground. I am dressed for the unseasonable weather, but I’m still cold, and I can see I’m going to have to give up my gloves at halftime: the middle one is playing with the ends of his sleeves bunched in his fists.

  I’ve maintained a semi-regular presence at matches across the season, regular enough so that other fathers will occasionally come up and chat, but not so regular that they’ve realized I never have any idea what they’re talking about. One of them approaches and nods when he gets close.

  ‘They’re struggling today,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘It’s really muddy.’

  As I speak, a well-aimed ball adheres to the ground just short of the goal, forcing the keeper to wade out and pull it free. I feel I have made a point worth making.

  ‘A few players missing,’ he says. ‘They’ve had to mix things up. That one, he’s never played at right back.’

  ‘Really? Where does he usually play?’ I ask.

  ‘He’s the keeper,’ he says.

  ‘So who’s that in goal then?’

  ‘The other keeper.’

  ‘Of course,’ I say. ‘This mud. Honestly.’

  At half-time I wander over to another match, where the youngest one is playing and my wife is watching, with the dog sitting beside her. She hands me the lead as I approach. ‘What’s happening over here?’ I say.

  ‘They’ve just started,’ she says. ‘There was a delay because both teams showed up in the same kit, so someone had to go and get bibs.’

  ‘What’s the score?’

  ‘No idea,’ she says.

  ‘It’s two-one,’ says another father, thumbing at his BlackBerry. ‘Just doing my report for the local paper.’

  ‘They’re playing ever so well,’ my wife says. ‘Aren’t they?’