I hadn’t expected her to accept my offer. When she did, it occurred to me that I might well be shooting myself in the foot – after all, the last thing I wanted was to give her the opportunity to start going out with someone else. I could, I suppose, have asked her out myself. But I was afraid that if I pushed things too fast, she might not be ready and that would undo everything. After all, it was still only a matter of months since she had split up with Pete. I told myself that I had to be patient. I needed to wait for some kind of sign from her that she was ready to look beyond him towards a new relationship. When the sign eventually came though, it wasn’t quite what I had been hoping for.
It must have been the third or fourth time that I had agreed to baby-sit for Kay. Jonah answered the door.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said, sounding less then thrilled. “Mum’s still getting ready.” He scuttled back into the living room. I consoled myself with the thought that at least he hadn’t shot me in the back of head, like the first time we had met. I followed him into the front room.
Jonah had been playing a video game, which he had paused in order to open the door to me. He was just about to resume playing when I said, in a clumsy attempt to lighten the general mood:
“So, what are we watching tonight then?” It had become part of our established routine that Jonah would be allowed to watch a film before going to bed.
“2001: A Space Odyssey,” he replied, sounding slightly irritated that I was trying to engage him in conversation when all he wanted was to get back to playing his game.
I was surprised. So far it had been mostly action movies – the kind of thing you’d expect a boy of Jonah’s age to go for. My recollection of 2001 was that there were some quite spectacular visuals and striking imagery - but it was ponderously slow and certainly wasn’t what film critics of a tabloid disposition would describe as a “non-stop all-action rollercoaster of a movie.” It was more like Waiting for Godot, only with better special effects.
“I hope you’re not expecting it to be like Star Wars,” I said.
“Of course not,” said Jonah, crossly. “I’ve seen it before, loads of times. I used to watch it with my Dad. It’s his favourite film.”
It seemed that my attempt to engage him in polite conversation had merely confirmed to him what a complete idiot he had for a babysitter. This was puzzling, because we had got on reasonably well on previous occasions. Although most of the time had been spent watching whatever film he had chosen that evening, he had seemed quite happy to chat to me. I had even started to hope that he might actually like me. I wondered where all the sudden hostility had come from.
Before I could dig an even deeper hole for myself, Kay appeared. She was wearing one of those “little black number” dresses and was obviously preparing to go somewhere fairly smart.
“You look great,” I said, although it came out a little half-heartedly. I didn’t mean it to come out that way – it was just that I had suddenly started to wonder why she was dressed up to the nines this evening, when on previous occasions she had not made quite so much of an effort.
She smiled and beckoned me into the kitchen, her heels clacking on the tiled floor as we entered. She pushed the door shut.
“I don’t want Jonah to hear us,” she explained, lowering her voice. “I’m going out on a date tonight. I’m being taken to some posh restaurant I wouldn’t normally set foot in.”
My initial reaction was that this was a complete disaster. I had waited too long - and now she had met someone else. All the hopes that I had entertained for the past few months had come to nothing.
When I didn’t say anything, Kay must have thought that I disapproved, because she added:
“Look, I know Pete was your friend, but he hasn’t been in touch for over three months now – and well, I can’t just sit around indefinitely waiting for him to return. Assuming of course that I would have him back – which is a pretty big assumption. I mean, by the end, things were pretty bad between us. And I really can’t believe that he hasn’t been in touch with Jonah all this time. The poor kid just doesn’t know what to think. Neither do I, to be honest.”
I knew I had to come up with an explanation for my less than ecstatic reaction to her news. For a brief moment, I wondered if I should tell her the truth. But what if she just laughed at me? I needed more time to absorb this development and work out what to do next. So I decided to play along with her mistaken belief that I was somehow aggrieved on behalf of Pete.
“I’m sorry, I was just a bit shocked, that’s all,” I said. “I don’t blame you for losing patience with Pete. I suppose I’d been hoping that at some point, Pete was going to get back in touch. So when you said you were going out on a date, it really brought it home to me that maybe he’s not coming back anytime soon. Anyway,” I continued, trying to shift the focus away from my reaction and satisfy my own burning curiosity at the same time, “who’s the lucky chap?”
“He’s a barrister, apparently. I’ve never met him before. It’s a blind date. One of my friends arranged it. She thought it would be a good way to, you know, test the waters to see if I’m ready to get back into the dating game.
“God, I could really do with a drink,” she said, turning to uncork a half-drunk bottle of wine on the counter. “Do you want one?”
I nodded. She brought out two glasses and began to pour.
“I’ve been fretting about this evening all day,” she went on. “It’s so long since I’ve been on a proper date, I’m not sure I can remember what you’re supposed to do. All the stuff with Alan was different because we already knew each other from work. I mean, once I married Pete, I pretty much consigned my entire store of knowledge on these matters to the dustbin – I never thought I would need it again. And to be honest, it was a relief not to have to worry all the time about what impression you’re making on people or how good you look. You would not believe how long it’s taken me to get ready for tonight.”
“Well, for someone who claims not to know what they’re doing, you look pretty good to me,” I said, hoping that this time my compliment sounded more like I actually meant it. “But I’m not sure I can offer much in the way of expert advice on the dating game. I’m hardly a great success in that field.”
“But you must’ve been on some dates more recently then me,” she replied, smiling at me. “Come on, don’t be coy.”
The honest answer to this was that, ever since meeting Pete, I had focussed all my attention on the possibility of a reconciliation with Kay. But I was spared the embarrassment of having to answer her by the sound of a car horn from the street outside.
“Oh, that’ll be the taxi,” she said, taking one last gulp from her wineglass. “I’d better be off.”
“Good luck!” I called after her, although I fervently hoped that she would not hit it off with her blind date. I heard her telling Jonah to behave himself and to go to bed at a sensible time. Then the door slammed and she was gone.
I wandered back into the front room with my glass of wine. Jonah had switched off his video game and was getting ready to watch the film. He seemed to have cheered up a bit. Maybe it was something that Kay had said to him before she left.
“My Dad says this is the best science fiction movie ever made,” he announced, as he fast-forwarded through the legal notices at the start.
I didn’t respond. I was hoping that the film would give me an opportunity to be alone with my thoughts for a while, so I was no longer as keen to engage him in conversation. Jonah seemed to sense this and we started to watch the film.
Now that I had more time to think about the idea of Kay going out on a date, it occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t such bad news after all. First of all, it was a blind date – so there had to be a reasonable prospect that nothing would come of it. But the really positive thing was that it suggested that she was ready to look beyond Pete to another relationship. So in that respect, it was exactly what I had been waiting for – a sign that it might be OK for me to take the next step. It just hadn’t happened in the way that I had expected.
The film had now moved on to a series of static, earth-bound shots of an arid, rocky landscape. This was followed by some footage of apes grubbing around in the dirt, apparently looking for edible roots. After a minute or two, Jonah turned to me and said:
“Do you mind if we fast forward through this bit? It’s a bit boring.”
I said that was fine by me, so we whizzed through the remainder of the opening sequence, where the apes are prompted to use animal bones as tools after an encounter with a strange alien monolith.
My mind wandered back to the subject of Kay. What if she hit it off with this mysterious barrister who was taking her out? A picture came into my head of Kay having dinner with a dominating Alpha Male, tearing the flesh from his chicken bone with his teeth and then casually tossing it on the floor, where a waiter would creep up submissively on all fours to clear it away. As this was clearly ludicrous, I lurched to the other extreme, imagining instead that Kay was dining with an über-civilised Renaissance Man, whose urbane wit, sophistication and fascinating range of outside interests could not fail to sweep her off her feet.
Jonah stopped fast-forwarding when we got to the section where one of the apes tosses his bone victoriously into the air – at which point the film jumps thousands of years into the future to show a sleek, futuristic-looking space shuttle travelling gracefully towards a giant rotating space station, to the accompaniment of The Blue Danube waltz.
“This bit’s really cool,” he said. I forced myself to concentrate on the film and not to think about what how Kay might be getting on with her date.
Considering that it had been made in the 1960s, I thought the sets and the special effects held up pretty well, especially in comparison with more recent computer-generated imagery. When we got to a shot of the interior of the shuttle, Jonah pressed the “freeze-frame” button and pointed to a pen rotating slowly in mid-air, next to one of the passenger’s seats.
“See that?” he asked. “My Dad says most films about space aren’t very realistic because they have people walking around normally in spaceships, when actually they should be floating because there’s no gravity. But this film shows what it would really be like in space.”
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say to this, so I just nodded approvingly. Once the shuttle had docked in the space station, Jonah started to fast-forward again.
Watching it in this piecemeal fashion, I was surprised by how little the film relied on dialogue. It could almost have been a silent movie. The “character” with the most to say for itself was HAL, the on-board super-computer. In comparison, the astronauts seemed bored and lacking in any real dynamism, subservient to the giant piece of technology in which they were travelling. HAL seemed to be responsible for so much of the ship’s operation that you were left wondering why the astronauts were there.
Despite my attempts to concentrate on the film, my thoughts kept wandering back to the subject of Kay. I told myself that even if Kay’s date had gone well, the important thing was not to give up. However perfect this prospective suitor might appear to be, however HAL-like in his multifarious abilities, he was bound to have some minor but catastrophic flaw; all I needed was the determination to hang on in there, like the one surviving astronaut in 2001, until the flaw manifested itself and I could ride to the rescue. I pictured myself striding manfully into the restaurant where they were having dinner and offering Kay my arm. Her date would protest feebly, like HAL in the scene where he gets deactivated, but would only be able to watch helplessly as we walked off together into the sunset.
The end of the film was as confusing as I remembered it being the first time I had watched it. Bowman, the only surviving astronaut, flies his escape pod into another monolith orbiting Jupiter. After lots of weird psychedelic imagery (which I was more than content for Jonah to fast forward) he finds himself in what looks like a hotel room, getting progressively older. The final image is of what appears to be his rebirth as some kind of cosmic embryo – but I had never been sure what it was supposed to be.
When the film was over, I decided to confess my ignorance to Jonah. “I’ve never really understood the ending. What do you think is meant to happen in that last bit?”
“Well, my Dad says it’s really all about the Singularity,” he said.
“What’s the Singularity?”
“Haven’t you heard of it?”
I shrugged. I vaguely remembered Kay having said something about it, but it wasn’t something I had ever discussed with Pete.
Jonah shook his head disapprovingly. “Look, it’s really quite simple. You can understand graphs, can’t you?” I nodded. He picked up a notepad from the coffee table and started to draw.
“This graph is meant to show how quickly computers are getting better. If they got better by the same amount every year, the line on the graph would go up in a straight line – like this.”
The line he had drawn headed off diagonally, like the right half of a letter “V”.
“But every two years computers become twice as powerful as they were before – so the amount they improve by is getting bigger and bigger all the time. That means the line on the graph actually goes up in a steep curve like this.”
He proceeded to add a further line to the graph, which curved upwards, like the right half of a letter “U”.
“Now, when the curve gets nearly vertical,” he added, pointing at the top of the line he had just drawn, “that’s when the Singularity happens.”
“Umm….I’m not sure I understand,” I said, feeling rather stupid for not being quicker on the uptake, since Jonah clearly thought it was blindingly obvious.
“Well, it’s the point where computers will be so clever that we’ll be able to sort of live inside them. It’s the next stage of human evolution, like what happens to the astronaut at the end of 2001. The alien thing changes him into a being of pure information.”
All this was delivered with a mixture of utter conviction and casualness, as if these were eternal, self-evident truths. But his graph reminded me of projections by financial advisers, which were usually accompanied by sobering reminders that in the real world, the value of your investment could go down as well as up.
“I didn’t know your Dad was so interested in all this stuff,” I said, feeling that it was probably better to shift the focus of the discussion.
“Yeah, we talked about it a lot. He thinks it’s going to happen quite soon, probably in the next twenty years or so.”
“That’s pretty fast. What do you think about it?”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s right. He’s read loads of books about it and spent ages looking into it.”
“Sometimes grown-ups get things wrong though. I mean, the people that made 2001 obviously thought that we’d be living on the moon by now and that we’d have computers that could talk just like human beings – but we haven’t managed to do those things yet.”
I was annoyed at myself for making this observation. It was the sort of thing I would have said to Pete. It didn’t seem to fair to engage in that kind of debate with a ten year old. But Jonah seemed to take it in his stride.
“I suppose so,” he replied. “But Dad told me that even if it took longer than twenty years, he was sure that the Singularity would happen while I’m alive.” He gave me a sharp look. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I don’t really know much about it, to be honest,” I said. “But it’s an interesting idea – and I liked your way of explaining it, using the graph. It sounds like just the kind of thing your Dad would have been interested in. He often came round to talk to me about things like that. I used to enjoy arguing with him – and although he sometimes got annoyed with me, I think he quite enjoyed it too.”
“I wish my Dad was here now. He’d be able to explain it much better than me. I can’t talk to my Mum about it. She gets really cross if I start talking about stuff like that.” He paused, then asked: “Do you know who Mum’s going out with tonight?”
“I think she’s just meeting a friend,” I said, cautiously.
“That’s what she told you, is it?” He shook his head. “I know she’s meeting some bloke. She thinks I don’t know, but I heard her talking to one of her friends about it.” He looked down at the carpet.
I was starting to feel a bit out of my depth. “Look, I’m sure your Mum will talk to you about it when she’s ready,” I said. “It’s difficult for her right now because your Dad hasn’t been in touch.”
“What does she know about it?” he asked, with surprising vehemence. “There could be loads of reasons why he hasn’t been in touch. She never gives him a chance.”
Now I really did feel out of my depth. I decided to take the easy way out: “Gosh, is that the time?” I said, looking at my watch. “I really think it’s time you were in bed, young man. I promised your Mum that I wouldn’t let you stay up too late.”
Reluctantly, Jonah took himself off upstairs, leaving me to flick aimlessly through the TV channels whilst I waited for Kay to return. I couldn’t settle to watching anything. It all seemed depressingly trivial.
Fortunately I did not have long to wait. Kay got back just after eleven o’clock, earlier than I had expected.
“So, how did it go?” I asked, with as much offhandedness as I could muster.
“Well, the food was really good,” she replied. “And we had a nice bottle of wine.”
“That bad, eh?” Having steeled myself for the worst, I felt an enormous sense of relief. It turned out that Kay’s barrister was a bit too fond of the sound of his own voice for her liking.
“He spent about half an hour regaling me with tales of how he’d won this case or that case. Or how he’d smooth-talked some judge into getting exactly what he wanted - against all the odds of course. So then I tried to get him to talk about something other than work. But he just went on and on about his ex-wife – what a total bitch she was, how she didn’t understand him, how she was turning his kids against him, that sort of thing.
“Finally, it seemed to dawn on him that he hadn’t really asked me anything, so I ended up telling him a bit about the situation with Pete. I hadn’t meant to, because it seemed a bit much for a first date – I mean, it’s all a bit weird with Pete just disappearing like that and I thought he might think I was a bit weird as well. But after everything he’d told me about his divorce and so on, I felt that I couldn’t very well just talk about the weather or something. And by that stage of the evening, I didn’t really care if he thought I was weird too.
“To be to fair to him, he seemed genuinely interested and was quite sympathetic about the whole thing. But it was almost too much, like he’d switched into cross-examination mode. There were lots of questions like ‘Had I noticed anything peculiar about his behaviour on the night in question?’ It was all starting to get a bit intense for a first meeting, so eventually I just changed the subject. But like I said, the food was very good – you should try that restaurant yourself sometime.”
“So do you think you’ll see him again?”
“I shouldn’t think so. Well, I think he wanted to - but I said that I needed some time to think about it. It felt a bit rude to come right out and say ‘no, I never want to see you again in my life.’ But I insisted on paying half the bill, so I think he probably got the message.
“In a way, I’m glad it didn’t work out,” she continued. “I was thinking about it in the taxi on the way back. At first I thought, what a waste of an evening. But actually, I think it’s helped me realise that I don’t have to put my entire life on hold just because Pete’s done a disappearing act – the sky won’t fall in if I go out on the odd date now and again.”
We talked a bit about the prospects of Pete getting back in touch. Kay had been in contact with the police several times, but as there was nothing that seemed to indicate any foul play, there was a limit to what they could do. As one policeman had told her: “Sometimes people just want to start all over again, from scratch. If they don’t want to be found, there’s not much we can do to help. And even if we do find them, it may be that all we can tell you is that they’re still alive and they’re OK. If they don’t even want you to know that, there’s nothing we can do. It’s a free world, I’m afraid.”
She had also registered his details with various missing persons organisations. They had put his photo on their websites together with brief details of when and where he was last seen and so on. But as Kay said:
“When I first went onto these sites I thought, ‘what a brilliant idea.’ And I’m sure Pete would’ve thought so too – to him it would have been yet another example of how the web can solve anything. But the trouble is, who actually looks at these sites? It’s probably just other people with missing relatives. What you really want is for all these faces to be put up on giant billboards or printed onto the labels of milk cartons and cereal packets, so everyone could see them – out there in the real world. That way, there might be half a chance that someone would actually recognise one of these people. But I suppose adverts for cars or washing powder pay better.”
She said she had been amazed – and depressed - by the sheer number of people registered on these sites. In the end, she thought the sites were more a source of comfort than anything else. They made you feel that at least you were doing something about it and also that you weren’t on your own – that there were lots of other people out there with the same problem.
“At first I blamed myself,” she said. “I kept going over the last row we had. I’d pretty much convinced myself that it was all my own fault. But when you see all those other people out there who’ve reported someone missing, you realise that it isn’t some unique problem entirely of your own making – it happens all the time, to thousands of people. I mean, maybe I was a bit hard on Pete when I told him he had to leave – but I didn’t tell him that he had to disappear off the face of the earth. He was the one that decided to do that.
“It’s Jonah that I’m most worried about,” she continued. “I can take the fact that Pete doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. But it makes me so angry that he hasn’t got in touch with Jonah. It’s so selfish. And so unlike him – I mean, he and Jonah were always really close. It’s made me wonder if he’s actually still alive. But I don’t see him as the suicidal type. I’m sure he’s still around. I think he’s just got so wrapped up in all these ideas about the future that he can’t live in the present any more.”
I was pleased that Kay felt able to open up to me like this. As we talked, I wondered if it might be the time to make my move – that the contrast between her fairly disastrous evening out and our relaxed conversation might provide the perfect opportunity. But I worried about pushing things too fast. And despite what Kay had said about not putting her life on hold because of Pete’s disappearance, the uncertainty over his whereabouts was still a problem. Until it was resolved in some way, I felt that it would be difficult for her to look beyond it towards the possibility of a new relationship.
It was quite late by the time I got home. I couldn’t sleep; I kept thinking about Kay and where things might go from here. Eventually, I got out of bed and switched on the computer. It didn’t take long to find Pete’s details on one of the websites Kay had mentioned – there he was, smiling away, in a snapshot with Jonah (whose face had been blanked out), with brief details of when he was last seen.
But as Kay had observed, his was just one among hundreds and hundreds of faces. For some reason, this hadn’t really sunk in while we were talking about him and I had maintained a mental image of Pete as a tiny Bowman-like figure, cut adrift from his spacecraft, utterly alone in the vastness of space. Seeing all the other faces on the website, I realised that there were thousands of other tiny, space-suited figures drifting in the darkness, millions of miles from home.
No doubt some of them were victims of circumstance, but it seemed to me that at least some must have taken a conscious decision to cut all ties with people that they knew. I wondered what motivated them to do that. At the time, I was inclined to agree with Kay that Pete’s disappearance (assuming it was deliberate) was an incomprehensibly selfish act. Looking back on it now though, I can see the attraction of being able to start all over again, free from the constraints of the past, the future suddenly appearing to be full of opportunity and potential. Maybe that was what appealed to him, at least at the beginning.
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