Love and Robotics (67 page)

“She was a rare lass. Your grandfather had conniptions but there was nothing he could do. I loved her."

“When did he mellow?”

“When he held Gussy. Of course you spoilt it -” Alfred had been sick all over him - “but he was gaga over you two.”

“She was the one?”

“Alfie, if you love anyone the way I loved your mum, hold onto them. Love’s worth fighting for.”

He wasn’t surprised when Gussy stepped from a hired vix the next morning. What sent him reeling was Ken scrambling out after her. “What the -” he began.

“Who the devil’s this?” Lord Arthur asked.

“This is Ken,” Gussy beamed.

“I’m sorry for your loss, your lordship,” Ken said.

Lord Arthur peered down his crooked nose. “So am I.” It was the most he ever said to him.

That afternoon they held a council of war. Lord Arthur had holed himself up with his man of business. Alfred wasted no time in seizing Gussy and Ken and pulling them into the billiard room. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

A moment’s silence. He clicked the balls back and forth.

“Well, we -” Ken said.

“We thought -” from Gussy. Glaring at the table, “Stop that!”

“Any reason why you’re pretending to be love’s young dream? He’s known I’m gay for years.”

Ken leaned out of the window. “You tell him.”

“We think it’s better if we keep up the story we’re a couple.”

“What?” He tried to read Ken’s reflection, blurred by the pane. “You’re joking.”

“Do I look like a comedian?”

“What are you frightened of? Am I too much of a dickhead to be seen with?”

“No!” Gussy cried. “Well -” Ken said.

“Think of a reason fast.”

Ken’s face was unhealthy grey. “I want you both.”

“That’s the most depraved thing I’ve heard. Do you honestly think I’ll touch you if you’re porking my sister?”

“It’s not like that -”

“How do we settle this? Flip a coin?”

“Alfie, shut your trap and listen.”

Ken extended a long thin arm and draped it over his shoulder. “You know I love you. But I need Gussy as my major domo.”

“Are you
sure
this has nothing to do with sex? I’ll try most things once, but incest? No thanks.”

“Nothing whatsoever.”

As he twisted to look at Gussy he caught her grimace. She wasn’t ecstatic either, but what could she do? Have Ken as a friend or risk losing him?

It wasn’t until later he understood what such a sacrifice meant.

Finals came and went. Alfred earned a Second with scant effort. Of course Gussy’s marks were in the stratosphere. She was showered with grants for this, fellowships for that. She turned them all down. “Ken and I are going to build robots.”

Any objections were dismissed. “I’ve made up my mind, don’t go on,” she said. Ken was even worse. “They may laugh now, but history will vindicate us.”

Graduation was in autumn. Photo calls around the moat, flinging caps into the air, posing on the Founder’s statue. “I’m starting a theatre company,” Derkins said. “Want to join?”

Alfred had no idea what he was going to do. Go back in the army, he supposed.

Only Lord Arthur didn’t ask. They’d grown closer since Lady Constance’s death, an intimacy without words. He trembled more than Alfred remembered, walking with a stick. He treated them to dinner. Ken and Gussy told stories about the characters in their department while Lord Arthur fell asleep in his roast.

Alfred escorted his dad to the vix, holding his umbrella. “Thanks for coming.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Alfie?”

“Yes?”

“Ken’s not who I had in mind for you, but if he makes you happy -”

The vix rumbled away. Nanny had sized up the situation immediately, but he’d thought his father was blind to such undercurrents. What had he guessed?

There was no way of knowing, since that was the last time he saw him alive.

Gussy was abroad, trying to win funding for her research. Ken decreed that since he had nowhere to go, they should spend the week in bed. On the fourth day the call came.

“Get that.”

“You get it.”

Muffled, “I’ve got my mouth full.”

“I’ll make breakfast.”

“Is that a promise?” Ken stalked to the tube. “Roth 62? Oh, hello Lulu. What can I do for you?”

Watching him, Alfred knew.

“I see. Um, Alf?”

He shook his head and curled into a ball.

Ken did everything he could during Alfred’s bereavement. He drove him to Chimera and helped him through the funeral. For once he didn’t care what people thought, openly sharing his room.

It didn’t help Alfred’s feelings were so complicated. He’d felt able to grieve for his mother. With his dad there was an awkward cramp, underscored by guilt. “Was it suicide?” he asked the night he arrived.

Nanny wouldn’t meet his eye. “Well -”

“Yes or no.”

“He didn’t
technically
end his life, but he gave up.”

“Gave up?” he repeated. “When there’s me, Gussy, all this?”

Tradition demanded they kept the casket open so the village could pay its respects. Alfred hated the thing in the shrine. It didn’t look like his dad, more like a dummy in his clothes. Even that wasn’t the worst part. It was when the new minister, a shiny, bespectacled nerd, said ‘Lord Langton.’ Alfred peered around, even looked at the deceased, before he realised he meant him. Ken stopped him from taking a swing at him.

“I’m not Lord Langton, alright? Once this is over, I’m going back in the force.”

It might have been this altercation, might have been the body starting to smell, but the funeral was brought forward a day. Alfred didn’t know how he was going to cope until he found a pound of rowr under his bed. He smoked it and had a long slug of whisky.

He couldn’t remember a thing. He came to hours later, splashed with earth up a tree. It was the beginning of his legend: Lord Rusty, the maniacal Earl of Langton.

He couldn’t wriggle out of it. As the female first born, Gussy should have taken the title, but she refused. She was founding a new science, and what was he
doing? To his surprise he found he liked being Earl. He was actually good at it.

Gussy and Ken cordoned off the north wing. Bar the occasional explosion and shout of “I rule!”, you forgot they were there. Prototypes whizzed around Chimera - they stumbled about three days before blowing up. One, Henry, proved more tenacious.

“Are people really going to give you funding?” Alfred asked.

“Haven’t you seen how many visitors we have?”

There
were
greater numbers of scientists flitting in and out. Toothy women with bifocals, men with comb overs. They sauntered down Philosophers’ Walk comparing theories. One of the men brought a female friend. Alfred had never seen anyone so beautiful or bored. Brassy curls, piercing eyes, a husky, sardonic voice. He went over to her.

“If you’re going to talk about robotics, spare me the sodding details,” she said.

“I can tell you where there’s a terrific bottle of brandy if you want to help empty it.”

She clutched his arm.“I don’t know who you are, but thank gods you exist.”

“Alfred Wilding.”

“Vita Alconbury.”

One bottle became five. They talked long after everyone else had gone. She was only seven years older but had seen far more of life. She smoked, drank and swore like a trooper.

“Now my divorce has come through, I’ll do whatever the hell I like.”

“And what’s that?”

“Adventure!”

“I could get behind that. A club of adventurers, going wherever their fancy takes them.”

He’d been ignoring the hand on his thigh. Now it drifted towards his groin. He laid it on the cushion beside her. “What about your boyfriend?”

“I was going to chuck him anyway.”

“Spoken for. His name’s Ken.”

“Why are all the best men woofters?”

“Rest assured, if I have a mid life crisis, I’ll have it with you.”

The more he thought about it, the more Alfred liked the idea of the Adventurers. He got in touch with anyone who might be interested. It so happened that Vita’s network of friends included Lewis Sinclair. He thought it was fabulous and appointed himself President.

The night after the first meeting, Lewis lingered in the library. Alfred confessed his boyhood idolatry. The great man’s eyes narrowed. Once during the cheese and wine, he caught Lewis giving him
that
look. Surely not!

Drinking together, a hand brushed his cheek. He thought about turning Lewis down, but Ken had been so distant lately. What was sauce for the goose -

They say you should never meet your heroes. Whoever said that had never had their hero suck them off against a grandmother clock.

The Adventurers’ Club had begun in earnest.

That year Henry, rebranded
My Robot Buddy,
took off. Families bought them as pet substitutes, lonely children had them for friends. The jingle played incessantly.

“He’s so great, he’s so funny

My one and only Robot Buddy!”

Which didn’t even rhyme.

Uncle Bloom offered his services as patent lawyer. Alfred wished he’d kept his mouth shut, for it was in his office Gussy met Lucas.

He hated him on sight. He supposed Lucas was handsome, though he looked like a vampire that had shrunk in the wash. He had Gussy’s word for it that he was charming. But he always gave the impression of pricing everything he saw. He called the underlings at his office ‘slaves’, coughed if anybody smoked and continually asked Alfred when he was going to get a ‘proper’ job. “The army’s our nation’s solution for the unemployable,” he’d say. Arrogant gobshite.

For a man in his thirties he was queerly juvenile. He showered Gussy with extravagant presents, whisked her away for a romantic weekend when they had only been dating a month.

“Don’t let her get knocked up,” Alfred begged the universe.

The gods must have been looking the other way. She returned not only pregnant but wearing an engagement ring like a tumour.

“Do you love him?” Alfred asked that evening.

Gussy considered. “I like him. He looks after me.”

“Is that enough?”

“I’m not falling in love again. You only get hurt.”

The wedding was a farce. The bride kept rushing off to be sick. Nanny couldn’t stop crying. Ken showed up drunk as they began their vows, banging on the door and reminding Gussy they were soul mates. Best man duties discharged, Alfred went in search of him. He lay on their bed with an evil hangover.

“There are better ways of making a point.”

“Can’t she see what a turd he is?”

“I don’t like him either -”

“She should’ve married me.”

“Oh, other than the fact you’re a ginormous poof and you’re with me?”

“I didn’t mean -”

“Sort your head out. If you love me, stay. Otherwise, there’s the door.”

Ken broke down. He didn’t know what he’d do without him, why did he put up with him -

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

Alfred forgave him, but it was never forgotten.

The next few years were busy. Alfred travelled the globe, busting drug cartels, finding kidnapped heirs, rumbling slave trading on the Igi Strip. He was the Queen’s bodyguard on her jubilee tour, foiling an assassination plot. Chimera was always waiting for him, never so dear as after an absence.

Gussy hadn’t been idle. Previously she’d given birth to a whiny scrap called Marcus; now she produced a daughter. When Alfred came home from the jubilee, travel stained and knackered, Gussy placed a carrot topped bundle in his arms. “Her name’s Gwyneth.”

It was love at first sight. He fed her, played with her, carted her around in Nanny’s pram. He hated baby talk so spoke to her like a human being. “She doesn’t understand, you know,” Lucas said.

Their relationship, never easy, had blossomed into outright animosity. Lucas was convinced Gussy and Ken were having an affair and crept around flinging doors open. He hated gays so Alfred was the butt of many a snide remark. When Gussy teased him about youthful indiscretions, he sniped, “Is there a single man in a ten mile radius you haven’t slept with?”

“Don’t think so. If you find one, let me know immediately.”

No one else paid Gwyn attention. Lucas regarded children as status symbols and had no gift with them. Gussy was too busy. The mantle of ‘uncle’ sat uneasily upon Ken. “Augusta, your brats have infiltrated my lab,” he’d yawn. “Redistribute them.”

Gwyn grew up lanky and prone to rages. She was expelled from three schools for “starting fights.” She’d only finished them. Gussy didn’t approve of Alfred’s methods - teaching her a swearword from every language, letting her drive, buying her first pint aged ten - but she was bright and fiercely independent. “She idolises you,” Gussy warned.