The Memoirs of a Survivor

  I’d like to very much,’ I said, having consulted Emily with my eyes. She was smiling: it was the smile of a mother or a guardian.

  But first Emily had to prepare herself: she emerged in due time from the bathroom, her hair newly washed and combed down, her clothes neat, her breasts outlined in blue cotton, cheeks soft and fresh and smelling of soap - a tidy package of a girl, all ready to present herself to her responsibilities, to Gerald. But her eyes were sombre, defensive, worried, and there beside her was June the child, and her face was laid open and absolutely undefended in a trustful smile at Emily the woman - her friend.

  We walked, the three of us, through streets dirty and as usual littered with paper, cans, every kind of debris. It would be necessary to pass a tall hotel built in tourism’s last fling, and I was watching to see the route Emily would choose: every individual picked out a careful way between hazards in these streets, and one could tell a good deal about a person’s nature by whether she chose to go past a dubious building, taking a chance she might be seen from it as prey or a target, or move into another street altogether; by whether she boldly called greetings into defended gardens or walked past quickly with an averted face. Emily went direct, walking carelessly through all the rubbish. Not for the first time I marvelled at the different standards for in and out of doors: inside her home, Emily was as pernickety as a little cat, but outside she seemed not to see what she walked through.

  The hotel had been taken over by squatters long ago: another obsolete word. But all kinds of people lived there, although as a machine the place was useless, like all the complicated buildings which had depended on technicalities.

  Looking up the tall shaft, today outlined against an over-hot and dusty sky, it showed ragged and patched, like lace: windows had been smashed or blown in. Yet the upper parts of it bristled everywhere with devices. Outside one window would be a whirr of light - someone had rigged up a little windmill for catching wind and turning it into power for hot water or lighting. Outside others were slanting discs held out on what looked from down in the street like spider webs: these were solar snares of various kinds. And among these up-to-the-minute contraptions danced and dangled coloured washing held out into the air on timeless string and wood.

  Up there it looked gay and even frivolous, with the blue sky as backdrop; down here rubbish was banked up all around the building, with pathways cleared through it to the doors. The smell - but I’ll ignore that, as Emily and June seemed able to do so easily.

  Recently I had gone into the building, had gone up to the very top: there I stood, looking down over the city which -I suppose not surprisingly - did not look so very different than it did in the years before the machines stopped working. I had gazed down and fancied myself back in time: all of us did this a great deal, matching and comparing, balancing facts in our minds to make them fit, to orient ourselves against them. The present was so remarkable and dreamlike that to accommodate it meant this process had to be used: It was like that, was it? Yes, it was like that, but now … As I stood up there, thinking that there was one thing missing, an aeroplane, a jet rising up or descending to the airport and dominating the sky, I heard a soft droning, a bee’s sound, no louder, and there it was - a plane. A little one, like a grasshopper, painted bright red, all alone in the empty sky where once so many great machines had filled our lives with noise. There it was, a survivor, holding perhaps the police or the army or high officials off to some conference somewhere to talk, talk, talk and pass resolutions about our situation, the sad plight of people everywhere in the world - it was pretty to look at, it lifted the spirits, to see that little thing glittering up there in emptiness, off to some place which no one looking up at it could get near these days except in imagination.

  I had walked slowly down through the erstwhile hotel, exploring, examining. I had been reminded of a new township built for African labourers outside a large mine in Africa that I saw in the after all not-so-long-ago days when the continents were close together, were a day’s journey away. The township covered acres, had been built all at one time, and was made of thousands of identical little ‘houses’, each consisting of a room and a small kitchen, a lavatory with a wash-basin. But in one house you would see the pattern of tribal village life brought to the town almost unchanged: a fire burned in the centre of the brick floor, a roll of blankets stood in a corner, and two saucepans and a mug in another. In the next ‘house’ a scene of Victorian respectability: a sideboard, dining table, a bed, all in hideous varnish, with a dozen crocheted articles for ornament, and a picture of Royalty on the wall opposite the entrance so that the Queen, in full military regalia, and the observer could exchange glances of approval over this interior. In between these extremes was every variation and compromise: well, that was what this hotel had become, it was a set of vertical streets, in which you could find everything, from a respectably clean family making jokes about conditions in England before the advent of proper sewage disposal and carrying chamber pots and pails down flight after flight of stairs to the one lavatory that still worked, to people living, eating, sleeping on the floor, who burned fuel on a sheet of asbestos and pissed out of the window - a faint spray descending from the heavens these days need not mean imminent rain or condensing steam.

  From the possibility of which event I wanted to hurry on and away, instead of standing there, among rubbish, gazing up; particularly as I could see through the windows of the ground floor a couple of young men with guns: they guarded the building, or part of it, or just their own room, or rooms - who knew? But June, seeing them, exclaimed and called out and looked pleased - in a way she had of being pleased, as if every little event offered her undeserved riches of pleasure. With an apology to Emily for keeping her waiting (my presence she had the greatest difficulty in remembering at all), in she went, while we two, Emily and I, stood there in a cloud of flies, watching a scene through a window of June being embraced and embracing - one of the two young men had visited in the Ryan house, which meant he had been almost part of the family. Now he gave her a dozen pigeons: the guns were air-guns; the pigeons would come back - they had flown off as we arrived - and settle again over the rubbish where they had been feeding. We left, carrying the dead birds which would do for the household’s next meal, hearing the silken whirring of many wings, and the pop, pop, pop of the air-guns.

  We crossed some old railway lines, flourishing now with plants, some of which Emily pulled up, as she passed, for medicine and flavourings. Soon we were at the side of the house. Yes, I had walked past it, out of curiosity, in my walks, but had never wanted to go in, fearing as always to encroach on Emily. Again June waved at a youth standing behind ground-floor shutters that were half open because of the heat, and again some weapon or other was put aside. We entered into a room which was very bare and clean - this struck me first of all, for I had not shed old associations with ‘the Ryans’. No furniture at all, but .there were curtains, and the shutters were scrubbed and whole, and mats and mattresses were rolled and stood along the walls. I was being taken from room to room on a rapid tour, while I looked for the communal rooms - dining-room, sitting-room, and so on. There was a long room for eating, with trestles and benches, everything scrubbed bare; but otherwise each room was self-sufficient as a workroom or as a home. We opened door after door on groups of children sitting on mattresses which were also beds; they were talking, or engaged on some task, and on the walls were hanging clothes and belongings. It could be seen that natural affinities and alliances had made, were making, of this community a series of smaller groups.

  There was a kitchen, a large room where half of the floor had been covered with asbestos sheets and then corrugated iron sheets, where fires of whatever fuel was available could burn. There was a fire burning now, and a meal being prepared by two youngsters who, when they saw it was Emily, stood aside to let her taste and examine: it was a stew, made of meat substitute with potatoes. She said it was good, but what about a few herbs, and offered them the handf
uls she had gathered off the railway lines. And here were some pigeons: they could pluck them if they liked, or otherwise find somebody who would like an extra task - no, she, Emily, would find someone and send them to do it.

  I understood now what I had half noticed before: the way the children reacted when they saw Emily: this was how people respond to Authority. And now, because she had criticized the stew, a boy knelt and chopped the greenstuff on a board with a piece of sharpened steel: he had been given an order, or so he felt, and was obeying her.

  Emily’s eyes were on me: she wanted to know what I had seen, what I made of it, what I was thinking. She looked so worried that June instinctively put her hand into Emily’s and smiled at her - all this was such a sharp little presentation of a situation that I did not avoid it by pretending I had noticed nothing.

  Only a few days before Emily had come in late from this household, and had said to me: ‘It is impossible not to have a pecking order. No matter how you try not to.’ And she had been not far off tears, and a little girl’s tears at that.

  And I said: ‘You aren’t the first person to have that difficulty!’

  ‘Yes, but it isn’t what we meant, what we planned. Gerald and I talked it over, right at the start, it was all discussed, there wasn’t going to be any of that old nonsense, people in charge telling people what to do, all that horrible stuff.’

  I had said to her: ‘Everybody has been taught to find a place in a structure - that as a first lesson. To obey. Isn’t that so? And so that is what everybody does.’

  ‘But most of these children have never had any education at all.’

  She was all indignation and incredulity. A grown-up - a very grown-up and responsible - question she was asking: after all, it is one that most adults never ask. But what had confronted me there had been a young girl in whose eyes kept appearing - only to be driven down, fought down - the needs of a child for reassurance, the sullen reproach against circumstances of a very young person, not an adult at all.

  ‘It starts when you are born,’ I said. ‘She’s a good girl. She’s a bad girl. Have you been a good girl today? I hear you’ve been a bad girl. Oh she’s so good, such a good child … don’t you remember?’ She had stared at me; she had not really heard. ‘It’s all false, it’s got to do with nothing real, but we are all in it all our lives - you’re a good little girl, you’re a bad little girl. “Do as I tell you and I’ll tell you you are good.” It’s a trap and we are all in it.’

  ‘We decided it wasn’t going to happen,’ she said.

  ‘Well,’ I had said, ‘you don’t get a democracy, by passing resolutions or thinking democracy is an attractive idea. And that’s what we have always done. On the one hand “you’re a good little girl, a bad little girl”, and institutions and hierarchies and a place in the pecking order, and on the other passing resolutions about democracy, or saying how democratic we are. So there is no reason for you to feel so bad about it. All that has happened is what always happens.’

  She had got to her feet: she was angry, confused, impatient with me.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘We had everything so that we could make a new start. There was no need for it to get like it’s got. That’s the point, I’m afraid.’ And she had gone off to the kitchen, to get away from the subject.

  And now she was standing in the kitchen of her, or Gerald’s, household, angry, confused, resentful.

  That child hurrying over his task, not looking up because the overseer still stood there and might criticize - this humiliated her. ‘But why,’ she whispered, staring at me, really - I could see - wanting an answer, an explanation. And June stood smiling there beside her, not understanding, but gazing in pity at her poor friend who was so upset.

  ‘Oh all right, never mind I’ said Emily at last, turning away from me, June, the scene and going out, but asking as she went: ‘Where’s Gerald? He said he would he here.’

  ‘He went with Maureen to the market,’ said one of the children.

  ‘He didn’t leave a message?’

  ‘He said we must tell you that we must have our heads done today.’

  ‘Oh he did, did he!’ But then, already relieved of her distress, she said: ‘Right, tell everyone to get to the hall.’ And she led the way to the garden.

  It was a fine garden in every way, planned, prepared, organized, full of good things all for use - potatoes, leeks, onions, cabbages, the lot - and not a weed or a flower in sight. Some children were at work there, and as they saw Emily they quickened their pace of work.

  Suddenly she exclaimed: ‘Oh, no, no, I said the spinach should be left until next week, it’s being over-picked.’ A child of about seven quite openly grimaced at June - it was that face which is made to say: Who does she think she is, bossing us? - that absolutely routine reaction, to be observed in one form or another anywhere there are groups, hierarchies, institutions. In short, everywhere. But Emily saw it, suffered, and softened her voice: “But I did say leave it, didn’t I? Can’t you see for yourself? The leaves are still tiny.’

  ‘I’ll show Pat,’ said June, quickly.

  ‘It doesn’t matter really,’ said Emily.

  Before we left the garden Emily had again to exclaim and explain: wood ash from the fires to control fly on the cabbages had been laid too close around the stems. ‘Can’t you see? said Emily to the child, a black child this time, who stood rigid in front of her, his face agonized with the effort of taking this criticism, when he felt he was doing so well. ‘It shouldn’t be close to the stem, you should make a circle like this…’ And she knelt down on the damp soil and trickled ash out of a plastic bag around the cabbage stem.

  She did it neatly and quickly, she was so expert; and the child sighed and looked at June, who put her arm around him. When Emily looked up from her task with the ash, she saw the two children, one in the protective embrace of the other, allied against her, the boss. She went scarlet, and said: ‘I’m sorry if I spoke sharply, I didn’t mean to.’ At which both children, disengaging themselves from each other, fell in on either side of her and went, distressed by her distress, through the paths of that exemplary garden, towards the house. I followed, forgotten. The black child had put his hand on Emily’s forearm; June had hold of her other hand; Emily was walking blind between them, and I” knew this was because her eyes were full of tears.

  At the back door she went ahead by herself, the black child following. June fell back to be with me. She smiled at me, really seeing me for this one time: her shy, open, defenceless smile offered me her inadequacy, her deprivation - her history. At the same time her eyes asked that I should not criticize Emily, for she could not bear Emily to be disliked.

  In the hall, or dining-room, the trestles had bowls of water set all along them that smelled of a strong herb; there were fine combs and bits of old cloth. Beside the trestles stood the children, and the older ones, with Emily, began to comb through the scalps presented to them.

  Emily had forgotten me. Then she saw me and called: ‘Would you like to stay and eat with us?’

  But I could see she did not want me to.

  I had scarcely turned to take myself off when I heard her anxiety ring out: ‘Did Gerald say when he would be back? Did Maureen say anything? Surely he said something about how long they would be,?’

  Back in my home, I saw, through the window, Gerald arriving on the pavement with a girl, presumably Maureen, and he stood surrounded as usual with the younger children, some from his household, some not. He probably saw his loitering there for hours at a time as a function. I sup pose it was. Collecting information, as we all had to; attracting new recruits for his household - but he had more applicants than he could take in; simply showing himself, displaying his qualities among the four or five other young men who were the natural leaders - was this the equivalent of a male going out to hunt while the women kept themselves busy at home? I entertained these thoughts as I stood with Hugo beside me, watching the young man in his brigand’s outfit prominent among th
e people there, with so many young girls hanging about, catching his eye, waiting to talk to him … old thoughts, about stale social patterns. Yet one had them, they did not die. Just as the old patterns kept repeating themselves, reforming themselves even when events seemed to license any experiment or deviation or mutation, so did the old thoughts, which matched the patterns. I kept hearing Emily’s shrill, over-pressured voice: ‘Where’s Gerald, where is he?’ as she stood in her woman’s place, combing nits and lice out of the younger children’s heads, while Gerald was probably planning some expedition to capture supplies from somewhere, for no one could say of him that he was unresourceful or lazy.