Appliance Page 2

  ‘They’ll sort that out. It’ll be instant. You mark my words.’ Mr Pearson took a hunk of bread and began to butter it, waving his knife from time to time to conduct his thoughts more precisely. ‘And not spoons. No. I’m thinking it’ll be iron and steel and crude oil and suchlike. Raw materials. Things it takes months to deliver from abroad with conventional shipping. Once they’ve put the cabling down, that is. Ocean floor stuff. That’ll take a good while, no doubt. A lot of work involved in that sort of operation. But it’ll be worth it. Far cheaper in the long run.’

  ‘And it’ll put all the regular companies out of business, too. All the ship-builders, the engineers, the able seamen. All out of work. In an instant. Like lightning. Not much of a future for them.’

  ‘Not true. Not true at all.’ Mr Pearson pointed the tip of his knife with intent, pausing the discourse as he chewed and swallowed a large mouthful. ‘For one thing, they’ll still be in service for all those other goods. All those items that can’t be sent via the new method. Complicated goods, you know, like electrical devices, or luxury foodstuffs. Not to mention people themselves. They’ll still need to get around. And secondly, even if the shipping industry does, as you quite rightly suggest it might, become defunct, well then, all those workers can join this new industry. Plenty of jobs there, I’d imagine. Monitoring systems. Laying more cables. That sort of thing. One door closes, another opens. That’s the way of things. That’s progress.’

  The knocking began again behind them. Mrs Pearson tensed with the suddenness of it and very nearly choked. Her husband waved the disturbance away in the manner of an expert thoroughly accustomed to the machine’s workings.

  ‘Reanalysis. That’s all. It’ll do that at intervals. Things change, you see. On a molecular level. From moment to moment. It’ll reassess the object and recheck its sums or whatnot, and then it’ll be all up to date when it’s ready at last to send, when they’re all set to receive it their end.’

  ‘And how about us?’ Mrs Pearson took a careful sip of water. ‘How are we expected to benefit from this fabulous invention? How is someone like you, in Personnel, going to profit from this new and improved world?’

  ‘Why, as consumers, of course. It’s not just about industry. We’re the ones who benefit at the end of the day. Things will be cheaper. More convenient. One day spoons, another day whole cars. Maybe. Delivered straight from factory floor to our front door. Or to the front drive, rather. Or to the nearest place with one of these machines installed. That’s got to be cheaper, and less bother, and all-round-better, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘It all sounds that much more expensive if you ask me. Just more money being wasted. All rather unnecessary.’ Mrs Pearson stood with her empty plate and glass and moved to the sink. ‘All those many miles of wiring needing to be laid. All the new machinery. That’s bound to bump the cost of goods up, not lower it.’ She tilted her head. ‘Or who knows, maybe on balance it’ll all just stay the same. Pricewise, I mean. That’s the usual way of things. Nothing ever really changes. Comparatively speaking.’

  She didn’t like the noise, the knocking and sucking and gurgling, but already she was able to ignore it; like having workmen digging up the road, right outside the house, one soon regarded it as mere background noise. But when the knocking from the machine stopped and she sensed that the light had changed, silently, serenely, from amber to red, her own demeanour rapidly shifted, and she placed her dishes quickly in the sink and clamped both hands over her ears and shut her eyes. Mr Pearson quickly followed her example, and they both stayed that way, stiff, awaiting the horrible ripping noise that, when it came, would surely make them want to throw back up what they’d just swallowed down.

  It felt even worse than the first time. Even though they’d been expecting it. Even with their ears covered. They felt a sudden tug, brief but very strong. That same ripping, clawing noise now yanked at their insides. It dragged them fractionally in the direction of the machine.

  Tentatively they opened their eyes. The light on top of the unit was green once again. Mr Pearson swayed from his seat, trying to move in a way that suggested he found movement easy. He went to check the chamber. It was entirely empty. Nothing to be seen but the tight array of glass bulbs. It was like a magic trick. No route in, no route out. Now you see it, now you don’t.

  ‘It’s a big enough machine.’ Mrs Pearson was pressing the flat of both hands to her belly. She didn’t quite straighten to her full height as she came over to stand beside her husband, to peer with him into the empty chamber. ‘There could be a hidden panel. Those bulbs could open like a trapdoor and down the spoon goes. Held just out of sight. Then close the door and pop, up it comes again.’

  Mr Pearson reached in a hand and stroked the floor and walls of the chamber. The glass bumps of the bulbs seemed preternaturally smooth to his probing fingertips. They were slippery and cool and he was surprised not to find his hand wet as he withdrew it.

  ‘They seem pretty firmly set. Pretty tightly packed.’

  ‘And that spoon was just a little thing. Look at the size of that cable. It’s nothing special to get a spoon through there.’ Mrs Pearson undid her apron strings and folded the stained white cotton neatly in her hands. ‘Must be some sort of vacuum tube system. You know, pneumatics or suchlike. Like they have in them fancy banks. All that knocking, that’s just building up the pressure, and then—fwoop—off it goes. Just like that. Very clever, I’m sure, but nothing new, and it won’t catch on.’

  Mr Pearson nodded slowly. He wasn’t altogether listening. He was rocking the open door on its thick hinges. He was trying to get a sense of the weight of it. He was looking to see what fine wiring connected the door to the main unit.

  Mrs Pearson left him to it.

  ‘Well, I’m certainly not waiting for them to send more spoons.’ She placed the folded apron on the table beside the remnants of their small supper. ‘And I really hope they don’t. Not tonight.’ She glanced at the unwashed dishes in the sink. ‘All that knocking and throbbing and screeching. I’ll be lucky to get a wink of sleep.’ She took a deep breath and headed for the hallway. ‘Just mind that you pull the door to when you come up.’ And she was gone.

  Mr Pearson stood for a moment alone. The machine before him was silent. With his wife out of the room he could now appreciate just how utterly silent the machine was. Even a refrigerator would hum quietly, but this thing had no such background buzz, not even from the glowing green lamp. It made Mr Pearson’s own nasal breathing sound coarse. The door as he swung it gently shut gave nothing back to his hand, no sense of friction in the hinges, not until the glass bulbs came in contact with one another, at which there was a brief moment of resistance and that fine high-pitched creak as they rubbed, before the magnetic strip around the door sucked itself shut to the frame with a small soft thud.

  Mr Pearson put his hands in his pockets and walked backwards a few steps, not wanting to take his eyes off the machine, not just yet, in case something happened, something unusual.

  But nothing happened. The green light remained lit. The machine remained silent. And soon Mr Pearson turned about and, slouching, followed his wife upstairs to bed.

  ¶

  There was the cool blue dark of the kitchen and the soft yellow light from the streetlamp coming in through the cracks of the window’s slatted blinds. There was the dull heavy presence of the machine standing ready and the small steady glow of its amber bulb above.

  There was a sound of slow creaking. There was a gentle thumping, deep and soft and hesitant. There was a shuffling, a fumbling in the dimness, and the kitchen door, still ajar, swung slowly inwards.

  The blurry shadowy shape of Mrs Pearson stood in the doorway, the thin yellow light faintly edging her worn white nightgown. She stood hugging herself. She reached out a bare foot and pressed her big toe against the thick length of cable that snaked in through the doorway. Its rubber was soft and warm. It gave a little under her touch.

  She padded to the sink,
her naked feet making small sticky noises on the cool linoleum floor. She crouched low, her knees together, opened the cupboard door and, reaching in under the sink, slid out a long canvas toolbag. She stood and the bag sagged at either end as the weight of metal it held shifted.

  There were no sounds in the road outside. The whole street was asleep. But the machine with its amber light imposed its ever-readiness on the room. At the low wall socket behind it Mrs Pearson put her hand to the small brown plug. It felt hot. The wire too was hot. She switched off the current and watched as, a second or so later, the amber light on top of the unit faded into the kitchen’s blueness. Mrs Pearson wriggled the plug from its socket, just to be certain, and laid it silently upon the floor.

  Feeling around in the toolbag she found a long black rubber torch. She pointed it at her feet before turning it on. It was startling in its brightness and she put her splayed fingers over its end to filter the beam before shining it over the lower part of the machine, searching for screws. There were eight on the nearside panel and she rummaged again in the toolbag for the screwdriver that would fit them best, before angling the torch beam onto the machine’s front edge and setting to work.

  The screws were set flush to the metal. They were done up very tight. But Mrs Pearson was determined. She gritted her teeth till her jaw ached. She gripped the screwdriver so hard her knuckles whitened, and she twisted with all her might till with a small metallic creak the first screwhead was suddenly loosened. Gently she unwound it till it fell into her palm.

  She had six screws out, neatly arranged on the floor beside her so she could be sure in what order to put them back, when she realised that her little shuffles and grunts of exertion weren’t the only night noises in the kitchen. Another shadow was standing in the doorway, watching her. Glancing up from the small bright cone of torchlight Mrs Pearson’s eyes took a moment to readjust before she could make out the pale stripes of her husband’s pyjamas.

  The two stood staring at each other for a while across the darkness. Then Mr Pearson came into the room. He was wearing old leather slippers and his tread fell very soft on the kitchen floor. He stood looking down at his wife. The torch beam spread its light over the scene, giving long sharp shadows to the neat arrangement of screws, showing the clear gap where the machine’s side panel had part-sprung away from the body.

  Mr Pearson held out his hand. Mrs Pearson put the screwdriver she’d been holding into his palm. Mr Pearson gripped it firmly then applied the screwdriver’s tip to one of the last two upper screws, and began to twist. Mrs Pearson found another screwdriver for herself and joined her husband in the work.

  They were very careful in not letting the panel fall when at length they’d got it free. Together they caught its sudden weight and together they rested it up against the kitchen wall. They shone the torch deep into the machine.

  At first they couldn’t be sure what they were seeing. The movement of the torch as its light shifted through the interior gave the sense that something in there was alive. It looked like a lot of bright red worms, all writhing over one another, seething in a great mass. Of course it was no more than wires. Thousands of fine red wires. There was not much else to be seen, just a narrow central column and several flat hanging panels, like vanes in a radiator, or like thin wooden frames in a beehive. Out of these panels flowed the wires, all of them overlapping and tangling, connecting this with that, and that with something else. It was like a hugely complicated switchboard. Shining the torch in closer they could see that each tiny connection point on the boards had a minuscule code, printed onto the metal in fine white type.

  Mr Pearson pushed the head of the torch in deeper, angling the beam upwards. Just more switchboards. More wiring. He wondered if the number of wires related to the number of spawn-like bulbs there were in the upper hollow of the unit. Or perhaps it would be that number squared. Perhaps cubed. At a small cry from his wife he quickly withdrew the torch. He shone it on her hands.

  She had pricked her fingertip. The mounting points for the wires were very sharp. One bright bead of blood was slowly blooming from her skin.

  Hurriedly the two of them lifted the side panel up against the machine and screwed it firmly back in place. They wiped down all the surfaces they’d touched, first with a wrung-out dishcloth, then a tea towel. Lastly the small brown plug was put back in the wall socket.

  They held their breath as they switched on the power. A few seconds later the amber light once again began to glow.

  Mr and Mrs Pearson breathed out as one. Toolbag and torch were hastily hidden away.

  Together the pair shuffled back upstairs to bed.

  ¶

  Mr Pearson was out fetching the Saturday papers when men from the institute arrived the following morning to collect their prototype. They hardly spoke to Mrs Pearson other than in asking, politely, to be allowed in.

  There seemed to be no special shut-down procedure. The wall socket was turned off, the wire was wound up, the cable was uncoupled, the machine was wheeled out and into the waiting van. The driver tipped his cap to Mrs Pearson and she watched them drive away.

  Back in her kitchen she stared for a moment at the spot on which the machine had stood all through the night. There were four deep indentations, arranged in a tidy square, from where it had pressed its bulk into the lino.

  From her pocket Mrs Pearson removed a short length of fine red wire. It was tipped at either end with sharp brass connectors. She examined it closely, turning it slowly between her fingers before laying it to one side on the kitchen table, as now she began to clear the breakfast things.

  2. One Way

  EMMA LEANED from the cab window as her colleague Krištof slow-steered their lorry down the wide quiet roads of the residential estate. Stefan, sitting between them, was supposed to be watching the opposite side of the road to Emma, but he was rolling cigarettes from a tin on his lap. The problem with any removals job was always the same, not in locating the house itself but in locating the nearest connection box to it.

  Emma’s recent phone call with the client had been unusually tiresome but she’d maintained her patience as the woman on the end of the line had left the phone hanging then shuffled on her coat and stepped out the front door to wander down the road in search of the sort of box Emma had described.

  These boxes were painted a neutral grey and despite their size were easily ignorable, near invisible to all but the most astute of passers-by. Few would remember their installation, or what they had replaced. It was the sort of street object that had somehow always been present.

  ‘There!’ Emma pointed straight ahead through the windscreen. ‘Between—well, behind those two brown cars. Looks like you can pull in alright just beyond them.’

  Krištof neither increased his speed nor nodded in acknowledgement of the sighting. Perhaps he too had seen the box and had simply not said. Perhaps he resented Emma’s eagerness, her efficiency, her need always to point out the obvious. The trip so far had been much like this: Emma trying her best to be engaging and the two men sitting beside her mostly mute, talking only when an answer was unavoidable, and only then with the simplest of phrasings.

  Emma squinted hard at the numbers of the houses as they passed.

  ‘Yes, this looks about right. She should be just around the next corner. Can probably get away with—just a single reel, wouldn’t you say?’

  She’d made her question deliberately direct but again there was no response from the two men. Perhaps they didn’t like to speak without being certain. Perhaps they were silently calculating the distance as they drove. Emma pretended she hadn’t wanted a response anyway. Putting her canteen to her lips she sat back and gazed out her open window.

  It was a hot day. Hardly a breath of wind outside. Now that they’d slowed there was no longer any blowthrough into the cab. The heat coming in from the windscreen was thick and oppressive. The houses they passed were all of the same style: small, red, detached, with perfectly flat, perfectly rectang
ular front lawns and narrow driveways bordered by low uneven walls of rough grey stone.

  Ahead they saw someone sitting in the very centre of one of these lawns, alone, on a foldable garden-chair, her face hidden beneath a large pale floppy-brimmed hat. The figure stood as the vehicle approached. An elderly lady, tall but stooped, who, without signalling the lorry, turned now, folded up her chair, and carried it back into her house.

  Krištof parked with the tail of the lorry as close in to the driveway as he could get it and Emma, leaving the two men to their duties, headed across the scorched yellow lawn to the front door. The lady was gone but the door was still wide open, with only the inner fly screen left across. Emma knocked on the glass of the nearest window.

  ‘Mrs Carter?’ Emma heard no answer from within, but she continued her introduction anyway. ‘We’re the removal firm you hired. I hope we’ve not arrived too early.’ She didn’t herself believe that being early qualified as an inconvenience but it was better to pre-empt any such criticism. ‘Mrs—Carter?’ There seemed to be movement in the darkness of the house, though no one was coming any further forward and Emma cupped her eyes to see better through the fly screen’s mesh. ‘It’ll take a while for the chaps to set up, but if I could get a quick look at what you’ve got, at how you’ve arranged things, at doorways and suchlike, well then, that would—at least—Mrs Carter?’

  The movement inside the house came closer. The fly screen was swung open and there the old lady stood, tall and gaunt, in a beige summer dress and worn white cardigan, her large brown eyes looking down at her visitor in a manner both dissatisfied and resigned. The sun-hat had been taken off, revealing wiry black hair pulled tight into a bun, and only very lightly streaked with grey.

  ‘Emma.’ Emma held out her hand, smiling broadly, determinedly.

  The elderly lady allowed her own hand to be held and shaken but she did not return the grip and stared out beyond Emma to the lorry, to the two men unspooling a thick black cable along the pavement, stopping every few yards to kick it close in to the wall and dropping low wooden ramps over it where it spanned open driveways.