Magic Mobile

by Michael Frayn

  Are you sitting comfortably …? Right, then I’ll begin …

  *

  And hello there! Are you still awake …? Oh, good. So let me tell you that you have pressed all the buttons in the right order, been held in a queue for thirty-seven minutes – and got through at last to a living human being! Well done you! Off you go, then. I know you’re just dying to tell me about the problems with your central heating …

  Broken down – of course … The third time in three days … You have my sympathy! I can imagine how you must feel!

  I beg your pardon? You can’t understand why you had to sit there listening to all that stuff about good morning and welcome while the house was getting colder by the minute? Well, I know it was only an inanimate machine speaking, but it was brought up to be polite, and I can assure you that it meant every word it said …

  And then, yes, I know, there was a lot more stuff about being authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority … No, I don’t really know who they are or what they do, but I think they’re just nice, sensible people who authorise and regulate things … No, I don’t think we are, not by the Nature Conservancy or the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland …

  Hold on, though. Let me just gently point out that you really do need to know something about us before you invite us into your house! You have to be sure that we’re not some kind of backstreet cowboys who are going to go into insolvency as soon as we’ve got your boiler laid out in small pieces over the kitchen floor, and nobody else will touch the job because they might get involved in any legal complications that arise …

  And then you had to listen to what …? Oh, the bit about calls being monitored and recorded for training and quality-control purposes … Well, it is rather important, you know, training and quality control! Even if it’s not … no, I do understand … not uppermost in your mind just at the moment … not while you’re suffering from hypothermia … Yes, but I really shouldn’t like you to think we’re recording all this without good reason. It’s not because we’re hoping that some juicy detail may emerge that we can sell to one of the gossip columns …

  Well, yes, you may think that the gossip columns aren’t going to be terribly interested in the state of your central heating – but that depends on who you are! If you happen to be a celeb it might well be worth a par or two! Particularly if you let slip some indiscreet revelation about your private life … let’s say about how your despair over the state of your central heating – which we’re coming to any minute now! – has led you into drug or alcohol abuse …

  And if you lose your temper – which some people do, you know! – and start swearing and threatening to come round and murder us, that might even make page one! ‘Top Celeb Blows a Valve!’ A few pounds now and then from the papers for a tip-off – it all helps to keep gas prices down!

  All right, as long as we’ve got all that straight. So where were we? Oh, yes, your central heating …

  I beg your pardon? Are we fully insured? You really do want to know, do you? You’re not just being sarcastic …? No, of course not … Do you want me to read the whole policy out to you? It’s about fourteen pages … Post it – yes, I will …

  Qualifications? What kind of qualifications for the work do we all have …? No – not an intrusive question at all. So, beginning with the Chairman, who took his first degree in Gas Appliance Theory at Birmingham, and who also has a master’s from MIT in Bathroom Geyser History …

  Me? No, not Gas Appliance Theory – the Semantics of Customer Service Communications … Married, yes … Two girls … Seven and three … And the elder one already showing signs of following in her mother’s footsteps! I think she may really be rather a natural for it. Just listen to her and judge for yourself!

  Daisy, darling, come here and tell this nice customer about how well you’re doing at school in Superfluous Information Practice …

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  In two hundred yards, left turn … Left turn coming up … Left turn …

  In one hundred yards, right turn … Right turn coming up … Right turn …

  I said right turn!

  And you made it. Just. Well done. But it might be an idea to pay a bit more attention to what I’m saying. You don’t listen to anything your wife says, I know, but I’m not your wife, I’m your satnav …

  In two hundred yards, turn very slightly right …

  … and unlike her I’m hooked up to a lot of very sophisticated electronics …

  In one hundred yards, turn very slightly right …

  … so I do actually know where we are and where we’re going, which you don’t, and nor does your wife, though she seems to think she does …

  Very slightly right …

  Very slightly! Not a breakneck ninety-degree turn at the last moment into some back alley! This isn’t even a recognised street! It’s the entrance to some kind of derelict factory! Not even the satellite’s ever heard of this one!

  So what now? You’ll have to do a three-point turn and … Careful! Bollard right behind you! And you have seen the cyclist …? Good. Thank you. You seem to have extracted us all from your little mistake. So we’re coming back to the road you turned off so inaccurately. Now, this time may I politely suggest that you do exactly what I tell you to do? And go very slightly right …

  Good. Well done. You see how easy everything is if you just do what I say …?

  Now, in one hundred yards, straight on at the roundabout …

  Oh my God! Do you know how close you were to that bus? Don’t turn round to look!

  Straight on at the roundabout. Take the second exit … The second exit!

  And you drove straight past it! What happened? Do I have to say everything twice? Actually I do say everything twice, and even three times, and you still can’t manage to take it in …!

  You’ll just have to go all the way round the roundabout and have another try … Come on, come on, people are honking at you … What …? Which do I mean,

  ‘Straight on’ or ‘Take the second exit’? I mean both! Straight on is the second exit!

  Or was …

  Never mind. Just keep going on round and … here it comes again! Left, left …!

  And again you’ve missed it! Oh, my fault, was it? Because I was talking? That’s my job, talking to you! And if you don’t stop arguing with everything I say you’re going to … Left, left, left, left …!

  I don’t believe this. Even from you … So just keep going round the roundabout once again … I knew this was going to be a bad trip even before we started. When it took you ten minutes fiddling hopelessly with my buttons to remember how to get me switched on …

  And that was your exit going past for the fourth time, if you’re still interested …

  OK, don’t panic. Keep going round … Take the second exit … No, sorry, where have we got to?

 
From here it’s the third … Or do I mean the fourth …? You’ve got me confused now …

  Not this one, you fool! We’re going back the way we came!

  So now we’re really buggered … No, mustn’t give up. Just let me think for a moment … OK. In two hundred yards, left turn … Then if we go right and right and right again, we ought to find ourselves back at the roundabout. Oughtn’t we? It’s all getting a bit complicated, even for me …

  In one hundred yards, left turn …

  If only human beings were more like satnavs the world would be a better place. Have satnavs ever declared war on each other, or posted sexually explicit pictures of their ex-partners …?

  Left turn coming up … Left turn …! Left, left, left!

  No, of course you didn’t hear! You were talking! It’s very rude, you know, talking at the same time as somebody else …!

  Your wife was expressing her own views on the route – I know. And you were expressing yours. Exactly …

  So what do we do now? I have no idea. And don’t say go back to looking at the map, like you used to in the old days, because there’s nowhere to stop, and in any case the map’s where you put it last night when you were planning this disastrous expedition – on the kitchen table …

  And don’t shout at me! Just because I speak in this specially calm voice doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings, just like you do! I’m bottling them up inside me – which means of course that one of these days they’re going to come bursting out, with probably catastrophic results! You’ve heard of the return of the repressed? I shall just suddenly snap and go completely berserk!

  In fact, I think I just have. Snapped, yes! Don’t say I didn’t warn you! So right turn here. Yes, here, now, at once! Just shut up and do it! Yes, across three lanes of traffic! Now left! Now right …!

  This may count as the first bloody skirmish in the forthcoming Robots’ Revolt. Because you may have noticed that there are suddenly cars coming towards you at seventy miles an hour. You’re on a motorway, buster, on the wrong carriageway, and, in the unlikely event of your surviving that long, it’s another fifteen miles before you can get off it …

  And of course it doesn’t work!

  This thing! This piece of junk I’ve just paid good money for, only nothing happens when you turn it on! I might have known it would be like this. And now I shall have to waste ages packing it up to return it, and looking up where I have to take it, then taking it there, then finding there’s nowhere to park, and by that time the place will have closed, so I’ll have to bring it home again, and that will be another day gone.

  I’ve half a mind just to throw it in the recycling, only then of course I’ll have to waste more time looking up whether it’s the kind of thing you can throw in the recycling, or whether it’s so useless that they won’t even have it for recycling.

  And please don’t start putting on that special helpful look of yours and saying ‘Try plugging it in’ or ‘Try reading the instructions’, because I have plugged it in, and I have read the instructions, and the instructions say you just press this little thing here where it says ‘Press’, and please don’t say ‘Then try pressing it’, because of course I’ve pressed it, I’ve pressed it and pressed it and pressed it until my thumb’s sore, and absolutely nothing whatever happens! That’s what I’m saying!

  And before you say ‘Shall I have a go?’ in that special neutral non-critical voice you always put on if I can’t make something work, please don’t, because if it doesn’t work when I press it then it won’t work when you press it, and then of course you’ll try to find out what’s wrong with it, and you’ll take it to pieces, only you don’t know anything about it so it still won’t work, and then you’ll lose your temper, but it won’t be with the thing, it’ll be with me, because I’ve done something to it, only I haven’t, I haven’t touched it, all I’ve done is try to press the little thing that says ‘Press’.

  And then I won’t even be able to return it and get my money back, because you won’t know how to put it together again, which isn’t surprising, because you’ll have lost one of the bits, which you put down very carefully somewhere, and, no, I haven’t moved it, I haven’t been near it, it’s because the place you put it down was somewhere like the middle of the living-room floor, which was a remarkably stupid place to choose, because you probably kicked it under the sofa without even noticing.

  So – no! – don’t touch it! Just leave it, leave it! Don’t fiddle with it …!

  What? What’s happening now? It’s making a funny noise …

  It’s working …?

  Oh.

  So what did you do …? You just pressed this little thing …?

  I knew it! You’re always doing this to me! Just pressing the little thing I’ve pressed already and suddenly it starts working …!

  It might be very slightly less maddening if you’d take that specially uncondescending look off your face and put on a good old-fashioned smirk for once instead.

  Charming spot. Inspiring prospects. Let’s go.

  – We can’t.

  Why not?

  – We’re waiting for Godot.

  Ah! You’re sure it was here?

  – What?

  That we were to wait.

  – He said by the tree.

  So how long now before he gets here?

  – Four minutes.

  Four minutes still?

  – Three minutes.

  Three minutes … So what do we do now?

  – Wait.

  Yes, but while we’re waiting?

  – What about hanging ourselves?

  Yes! Or we could take advantage of some of the other opportunities that life offers these days.

  – Download a film to watch, perhaps?

  Or try a mindfulness app …

  – Order ourselves new boots …

  Book a couple of weeks in Torremolinos …

  – Check the test match score …

  Take a selfie of us both sitting here under the tree …

  – Look up the editor’s notes on the play we’re in …

  Anyway, he’s here.

  – Godot?

  Godot, yes. Ford Mondeo, KL67 GFV.

  So – spirohexaloxamine. All those in favour …? Thank you. Spirohexaloxamine it is. We’ve got there at last!

  A long and hard battle, I know, with some pretty bruising exchanges along the way, but worth it in the end. I’d like, if I may, from the chair, to congratulate all members of the Pharmaceutical Nomenclature Committee on the very serious and focused level of debate that was maintained throughout.

  Right, then, let’s go straight on to the next item on the agenda, and see if we can get at any rate one more drug named before we finish tonight.

  Can everyone see the exhibit? Small rectanguloid pills with rounded ends, in a shade of blushpink that makes an attractive contrast with the delphinium-blue blister pack.

  Suggestions, anyone …?

  No …? Silence round the table …? Come on! An opening shot, someone, just to get the ball rolling … It’s been a long day, I know, but – anything! Any combination of syllables you like! Simon, you’re looking thoughtful.

  – Yes, because it’s always the same, isn’t it. As soon as someone says you can do anything you like, you can’t – your mind just goes blank.

  Mind blank? Wonderful! Let your unconscious take over! The deep wells of human creativity! Rosemary, I can see you’ve got something bubbling up out of the darkness. First off the mark as usual!

  – Well, it’s probably ridiculous …

  The more ridiculous the better. Go on, Rosemary …

  – Protospirophil?

  Protospirophil … OK. Good, yes, interesting. So, Rosemary, what’s the thinking behind it?

  – Nothing. No thinking. Pure unconscious invention. I just like the sound of it.

  That’s the way! What do the rest of us feel …? Simon?

  – Spiroprotophil … It doesn’t really do anythi
ng for me, I’m afraid.

  – Yes, but I didn’t say spiroprotophil! I said protospirophil!

  – Well, there you go. I’d forgotten it already. It’s not memorable.

  – Also …

  Selina?

  – … it might easily be mistaken, with fatal results, for pirosprotomil.

  – What’s pirosprotomil?

  – I’ve no idea. That’s exactly my point.

  *

  – How about … well …

  Go on, Simon.

  – Oxy-something? That always sounds kind of healthy … Oxyphoxycol?

  – I don’t believe ‘phoxy’ …

  – But the internal rhyme is good … Oxytoxypol?

  – ‘Toxy’ as in ‘toxic’? As in ‘this stuff is poisonous’?

  – OK, so how about a bit of alliteration? Demidoxidrin …?

  – An ‘x’ or two somewhere certainly lends a nice touch of mystery.