Coincidence and ‘The White Room’

2016. Instructions from my writing group: Take the opening of a favourite book and fundamentally change it.

I relished the challenge especially when a scene sprang to mind. It featured a description of a photograph, taken in the 1920’s, of an upper-class family seated around a table in the hall of their baronial manor house. With exquisite ease, in less than half a page, the narrator of the story provided the reader with detailed character traits, along with a foreshadowing of the future. Memorable, engaging, it remained in my memory since first reading it over forty years ago. It is the opening of ‘The Pursuit of Love’, by Nancy Mitford.

I worked on my piece, moving the family scene forward nearly two centuries. Keen to alter the mood, I chose cold disregard for relationships, the location no longer a lived-in hall with a huge fireplace, but a room devoid of comfort. Never entirely satisfied it functioned as a stand-alone piece, it languished in my writing files, unpublished, unshared, with the occasional re-read that led nowhere.

Fast forward to 2020. A good friend gives me a recommendation for a TV program recently aired in the UK  – The Pursuit of Love. She has no idea it’s one of my favourite books, nor that it spawned a parallel narrative. I dig it out, intrigued by the coincidence and hopeful I can give it a final polish. For your reading pleasure, I offer, ‘The White Room’.

‘If you have an interest in the technological developments and ethics of the early twenty-second century, I suggest requesting a video clip of Female:256 and her children, on your personal viewing device. She is sitting in a white, featureless room save for a three-dimensional image that hangs behind the glass desk, displaying a perfectly arranged family, in a perfectly lavish home, in a climatically perfect location. Don’t be distracted: the image is not a representation of her life and family. It is window dressing, a mirage to hide the truth that this woman is a slave.

Female:256 looks barely older than her children. Her hair is blond and lustrous, her skin smooth and dewy. Both arms are outstretched on the table with each hand covering, but not holding, the respective hand of her identical daughters, who sit on either side. All three are motionless, wearing white, tight-fitting unitards, reminiscent of dancers or gymnasts from a bygone era. If not for their faces and hands, their images would melt into the sterile backdrop. The lifeless tableau is stiff. They stare ahead, with wide eyes and passive faces.

A soft click and hissing sound emanates off screen. Female:256 turns her head slowly and evenly towards the source. The only sign that she recognises the newcomer comes by way of a series of rapid eye blinks. A second woman appears, wearing a dark red unitard that proclaims her role as a child-rearer – a euphemistic term for a government worker who removes children from their mothers at eight years of age, training them to become ‘productive members of society’. The burst of colour routinely snatches my attention, yet I find I am always drawn back to the desolate faces of the family group. What will they make of the visitor? Will they react to the new presence?

The red woman comes to a halt behind the table. The mother draws her hands into her lap and the two girls rise simultaneously, turn and walk off screen. There is no wave or signal of farewell from any party. Female:256 remains inert and central, the smiling faces of the family in the background image behind her, providing the only contrast and diversion.

The video ends with no words spoken or gestures realised, a discomforting reality of that grim era. It is the world of humanoid-machine chimeras: human-born beings augmented with technology that rendered communication unnecessary. The scheme provided homo sapiens a better set of servants than those they had developed with carbon, steel and microchips alone. 

All chimera mothers were videoed as they faced the challenges of their lives: in the case of Female:256, the permanent removal of her children into a rigid and cruel educational program that would force her offspring into bondage. The lack of reaction would have been positively regarded, a sign she could be trusted with a new pregnancy. In the meantime, she would have been returned to lifelong servitude in the beautiful home, with the beautiful family.’

It’s bleak, horrifying, isn’t it? In addition, I struggle to generate an ending that satisfies. Did homo sapiens develop slaves with even more inhumanity? Did thy revert to robotics? Was there a renaissance? A period of enlightenment? I could never decide. Even with new eyes, I feared it would forever remain in draft form.

Weeks later, I receive another recommendation, this time for a novel called ‘Klara and the Sun’. It too is set in a future world, inhabited by Artificial Friends. Enchanted and deeply moved by the protagonist’s story, I wonder what message the universe is sending me and marvel at the way our lives are littered with strange and wonderful cross pathways. I ponder the name of Klara’s creator – Kazuo Ishiguro, Nobel prize winner. Perhaps my instincts are right, after all - my dabble into a dystopian future needs to stay firmly hidden!

Copyright © Diane Clarke 2021

Go to my Journal page for a review of ‘Klara and the Sun’ by Kazuo Ishiguro. In future weeks, I’ll offer a review of, ‘The Pursuit of Love’, by Nancy Mitford.