The Memoirs of a Survivor (9 page)

Emily tried to ‘nurse’ June. That is to say, she fussed and offered food. But a Ryan doesn’t eat like an ordinary citizen: June nibbled, all fancies and antipathies. Probably she was, as Emily said, suffering from vitamin deficiencies, but she said: ‘That doesn’t make sense to my mind: I never eat any different, do I? But I feel bad inside and everywhere now, don’t I, and I didn’t before.’

So if June were asked to say what ‘it’ was like for her, she would very likely answer: ‘Well, I dunno reely, I feel bad inside and everywhere.’

Perhaps, after all, one has to end by characterizing ‘it’ as a sort of cloud or emanation, but invisible, like the water vapor you know is present in the air of the room you sit in, makes part of the air you know is there when you look out of a window - your eye is traversing air, so your intellect tells you when you look at a sparrow pecking insects off a twig; and you know that the air is part water vapour which at any moment - as a slap of cold air comes in from somewhere else - will condense as mist or fall as rain. ‘It’ was everywhere, in everything, moved in our blood, our minds. ‘It’ was nothing that could be described once and for all, or pinned down, or kept stationary; ‘it’ was an illness, a tiredness, boils; ‘it’ was the pain of watching Emily, a fourteen-year-old girl, locked inside her necessity to - sweep away dead leaves; ‘it’ was the price or unreliability of the electricity supply; the way telephones didn’t work; the migrating tribes of cannibals; was ‘them’ and their antics; ‘it’ was, finally, what you experienced … and was in the space behind the wall, moved the players behind the wall, just as much there as in our ordinary world where one hour followed another and life obeyed the unities, like a certain kind of play.

As that summer ended there was as bad a state of affairs in the space behind the wall as on this side, with us. Or perhaps it was only that I was seeing what went on there more clearly. Instead of entering into a room, or a passageway, where there was a door which opened into other rooms and passages, so that I was within a sense of opportunities and possibilities, but limited always to the next turn of the corridor, the opening of the next door - the sense of plenty, of space always opening out and away kept within a framework of order within which I was placed, as part of it - now it seemed as if a perspective had shifted and I was seeing the sets of rooms from above, or as if I were able to move through them so fast I could visit them all at once and exhaust them. At any rate, the feeling of surprise, of expectancy, had gone, and I could even say that these sets and suites of rooms, until so recently full of alternatives and possibilities, had absorbed into them something of the claustrophobic air of the realm of the ‘personal’ with its rigid necessities. And yet the disorder there had never been so great. Sometimes it seemed to me as if all those rooms had been set up, carefully, correct to the last detail, simply in order to be knocked flat again; as if a vast house had been taken over and decorated to display a hundred different manners, modes, epochs - but quite arbitrarily, not consecutively and in order to give a sense of the growth of one style into another. Set up, perfected - and then knocked flat.

I cannot begin to give an idea of the mess in those rooms. Perhaps I could not go into a room at all, it was so heaped with cracking and splintering furniture. Other rooms had been used, or so they looked, as refuse dumps: stinking piles of rubbish filled them. Some had their furniture neatly set out in them, but the roofs had gone, or the walls gaped. Once I saw in the centre of a formal and rich room - French, Second Empire, as lifeless as if it had been arranged for a museum - the remains of a fire built on a piece of old iron, some sleeping bags left anyhow, a big pot full of cold boiled potatoes near the wall in line with a dozen pairs of boots. I knew the soldiers would come back suddenly, and if I wanted to keep my life I should leave. Already there was a corpse, with dried blood staining the carpet around it.

And yet, with all these evidences of destructiveness, even now I could not move behind the wall without feeling something of the old expectation, hope, even longing. And rightly, for when the anarchy was at its height, and I had almost lost the habit of expecting anything but smashed and dirtied rooms, there was a visit when I found this - I was in a garden between four walls, old brick walls, and there was a fresh, delightful sky above me that I knew was the sky of another world, not ours. This garden did have a few flowers in it, but mostly it had vegetables. There were beds neatly filled with greenery - carrot tops, lettuces, radishes, and there were tomatoes, and gooseberry bushes and ripening melons. Some beds were raked and ready for planting, others had been turned and left open to the sun and the air. It was a place filled with industry, usefulness, hope. I walked there under a fruitful sky, and thought of how people would be fed from this garden. But this wasn’t all, for I became aware that under this garden was another. I was able easily to make my way down into it along a sloping ramp of earth, and there were even steps of, I think, stone. I was down in the lower garden which was immediately under the first, and occupied the same area: the feeling of comfort and security this gave me is really not describable. Nor was this lower garden any less supplied with sun, wind, rain, than the upper one. Here, too, were the tall, warm walls of weathered brick, and the beds in various stages of preparedness and use. There was an exquisite old rose growing on one wall. It was a soft yellow, and its scent was in all the air of the garden. Some pinks and mignonette grew near a sunny old stone: these were the old flowers, rather small, but subtle and individual: all the old cottage flowers were here, among the leeks and the garlics and the mints. There was a gardener. I saw him at the moment I realized I was listening with pleasure to the sound of water running near my feet where there was a channel of earth, with tiny herbs and grasses growing along its edges. Near the wall the channel was of stone, and wider: the gardener was bending over the stone runnel where it came into the garden from outside through a low opening that was green and soft with moss. Around every bed was a stream of clear water, the garden was a network of water channels. And looking up and beyond the wall, I saw that the water came from the mountains four or five miles away. There was snow on them, although it was mid-summer, and this was melted snow-water, very cold, and tasting of the air that blew across the mountains. The gardener turned when I ran towards him to ask if he had news of the person whose presence was so strong in this place, as pervasive as the rose-scent, but he only nodded and turned back to his duties of controlling the flow of water, of seeing that it ran equably among the beds. I looked across at the mountains and at the plain between, where there were villages and large stone houses in gardens, and I thought that what I was looking at was the under-world - and one just as extensive and productive - of the level to which I now had to return. I walked up to the first level again, and saw the old walls warm with evening sunlight, heard water running everywhere though I had not heard it when I stood here before; I took small cautious steps from one solid but moist spot to the next, with the smell of apple-mint coming up from my knees and the sound of bees in my ears. I looked at the food the earth was making, which would keep the next winter safe for us, for the world’s people. Gardens beneath gardens, gardens above gardens: the food-giving surfaces of the earth doubled, trebled, endless - the plenty of it, the richness, the generosity …

And back in my ordinary life I watched June listless in a deep chair, shaking her head with a patient smile at a plate of food being held towards her by Emily.

‘But she has to eat, hasn’t she?’ said Emily to me, sharp with worry, and when the child continued to smile and refuse, Emily whirled about and set the plate down in front of Hugo who, knowing he was being used to demonstrate rejection, as if she were tipping food into a rubbish bin, turned his face away. I saw Emily then, all loving remorse, sit by her neglected slave, and put her face down into his fur, as once she had so often been used to do. I saw how he turned his head a little towards her, despite his intention not to show response, let alone pleasure. Despite himself, he licked her hand a little, with a look on him that a person has when doing something he doesn’t want to do, but can’t stop … and she sat and wept, she wept. There they were, the three of them, June with her malady, whatever it was, the ugly yellow beast in his humility, suffering his heartache, and the fierce young woman. I sat quiet among the three of them, and thought of the gardens that lay one above another so close to us, behind a wall which at this time of the day - it was evening - lay quite blank and with no depth in it, no promise. I thought of what riches there were in store for these creatures and all the others like them; and though it was hard to maintain a knowledge of that other world with its scent and running waters and its many plants while I sat here in this dull, shabby daytime room, the pavement outside seething as usual with its tribal life - I did hold it. I kept it in my mind. I was able to do this. Yes, towards the end it was so; intimations of that life, or lives, became more powerful and frequent in ‘ordinary’ life, as if that place were feeding and sustaining us, and wished us to know it. A wind blew from one place to the other; the air of one place was the air of the other; as I came to the window after an escape into the space behind the wall there would be a moment of doubt, my mind would sway and have to steady itself as I reassured myself that no, what I was looking at was reality, was real life; I was standing foursquare in what everybody would concur was normality.

By the end of that summer there were hundreds of people of all ages on the pavement. Gerald was now only one of a dozen or so leaders. Among them was a middle-aged man -a new development, this. There was also a woman, who led a small band of girls. They were self-consciously and loudly critical of male authority, male organization, as if they had set themselves a duty always to be there commenting on everything the men did. They were a chorus of condemnation. Yet the leader seemed to find it necessary to spend a great deal of energy preventing individuals of her flock from straying off and attaching themselves to the men. This caused a good deal of not always good-natured comment from the men, sometimes from the other women. But the problems and difficulties everyone had to face made this kind of disagreement seem minor. And it was an efficient group, showing great tenderness to each other and to children, always ready with information - still the most important of the commodities - and generous with what food and goods they had.

It was to the women’s group that we lost June.

It happened like this. Emily had again taken to spending most of her days and nights at the other house: duty had taken her back, for messages had come that she was needed. She wanted June to move with her, and June did listen to Emily’s persuasions, agreed with her - but did not go. I began to think that I was to lose Emily, my real charge, for June, and I did not feel any particular responsibility for her. I liked the child, though her listless presence lowered the atmosphere of my home, making me listless, too, and keeping Hugo in a permanent sorrow of jealousy. I was pleased enough when she roused herself to talk to me: for the most part she lay in a corner of the sofa, doing nothing at all. But the truth was, I would have liked her to leave. She asked after Gerald when Emily came flying home to cook a meal of her favourite chips, to make pots of precious tea, to serve her cups half filled with precious sugar: she listened, and asked after this and that person; she liked to gossip. She said to me, to Emily, and doubtless to herself, that she was going, yes, she would go tomorrow. She confronted Emily’s frenzies and anxieties with: ‘I’ll come over tomorrow, yes, I will, Emily’ - but she stayed where she was.

On the pavement Emily was being very energetic. Gerald’s troop was about fifty strong, with the people actually living in his household and the others who had gravitated towards him from the crowds who kept coming in, and in, during the long, hot afternoons.

Emily was always to be seen near Gerald, prominent in her role of adviser, source of information. I now did what I had once been careful to avoid, for fear of upsetting Emily, of disturbing some balance. I crossed the street myself ‘to see what was going on’ - as if I had not been watching what went on for so many months! But this was how all the older citizens described their first, or indeed their subsequent trips to the pavement - described them often, right up to the moment when they put together a blanket, some warm clothes and a little food to leave the city with a tribe passing through, or one taking off from our pavement. I even wondered if perhaps this visit of mine away from my flat to across the street was a sign of an inner intention to leave which I knew nothing about yet. This was so attractive an idea that as soon as it had entered my head it took possession and I had to fight it down. My first trip to the pavement - to stand there, to mill around with the others for an hour or so, was really to hear what it was that Emily, so ably and for so many hours every day, dispensed out there. Well, I was astounded … how often had this girl taken me by surprise! Now I drifted around among this restless, lively, ruthless crowd and saw how everyone, not only those who seemed ready to owe allegiance to Gerald, turned to her for news, information, advice. And she was ready with it. Yes, there were dried apples in such and such a shop in that suburb. No, the bus for a village twenty miles west was not cancelled altogether, it still ran once a week, until December, and there was a trip next Monday at 10 a.m., but you would have to be there in the queue the night before and must be prepared to fight for your place: it would be 
worth it, for it was said there were plentiful supplies of apples and plums. A farmer was coming in by cart every Friday with mutton fat and hides, and could be found at… Big strong horses were for sale, or barter. And yes, there was a house four streets away quite suitable for stabling. As for fodder, that could be procured, but better still, grow it, and for one horse you would need … A variety of chemical devices for cooking and lighting were being constructed tomorrow afternoon at the second floor of the old Plaza Hotel; assistance was needed and would be paid for in the form of the said devices. Wood ash, horse manure, compost would be for sale under the old motorway at Smith Street at 3 p.m. on Sunday. Lessons in making your own wind-generators, to be paid for in food and fuel … air cleansers and purifiers, water cleansers, earth sterilizers … laying fowls and coops for them … knife sharpeners … a man who knew the plan of the underground sewers and the rivers that ran into them was piping water to the surface at … The street between X Road and Y Crescent was growing superb crops of yarrow and colts-foot, and on the corner of Piltdown Way was a patch of potatoes people had planted and then forgotten: they had probably left the city. Emily knew all these things and many more and was much sought-after, by virtue of her energy and her equipment, in that scene like a fair where hundreds of egos clashed and competed and fed each other - Emily, Gerald’s girl. So she was referred to, so spoken of. This surprised me, knowing the state of affairs in that house I had visited. This was yet another emotional, or at least verbal, hangover from the past? A man had a woman, an official woman, like a first wife, even when he virtually ran a harem? … If one could use one old-fashioned term, then why not another? I did try the word out on June: ‘Gerald’s harem,’ I said; and her little face puzzled up at me. She had heard the word, but had not associated it with anything that could come close to her. But yes, she had seen a film, and yes, Gerald had a harem. She, June, was part of it. She even giggled, looking at me with those pale blue eyes that seemed always to be swallow
ing astonishment. There she lay, seeing herself as a harem girl, a little ageing woman with her childish, flat waist, her child’s eyes, her pale hair dragged to one side.