The Memoirs of a Survivor

***

After some days when I had not seen Emily at all, I went to Gerald's house through streets which were disordered, as always, but seemed much cleaner. It was as if an excess of dirtiness and mess had erupted everywhere, but then winds, or at least movements of air, had taken some of it away. I saw no one during this walk.

I half expected to find that efforts had been made towards restoring the vegetable garden. No. It was wrecked and trampled, and some chickens were at work in it. A dog was creeping towards them under the bushes. This was so rare a sight that I had to stop and look. Not one dog, but a pack of dogs, and they were creeping on all sides towards the pecking chickens. I cannot tell you how uneasy this made me: there was something enormous waiting to burst in on me, some real movement and change in our situation: dogs! a pack of dogs, eleven or twelve of them, what could it possibly mean? And, watching them, my prickling skin and the cold sweat on my forehead told me I was afraid, and had good reason to be: the dogs could choose me instead of the chickens. I went as fast as I could inside the house. Which was clean and empty. Ascending through the house I was listening for life in the rooms off the landings — nothing. At the top of the house a closed door. I knocked and Emily opened it a crack — saw it was me, and let me in, shutting it fast again and bolting it. She was dressed in furs, trousers of rabbit or cat, a fur jacket, a grey fur cap pulled low over her face. She looked like a pantomime cat. But pale, and sorrowful. Where was Gerald?

She returned to a nest she had made for herself on the floor, of fur rugs and fur cushions. The room smelled like a den from the furs, but sniffing, trying it out, I realised that otherwise the air was fresh and sharp, and that I was breathing it in great gasps. Emily made a place for me in the rugs, and I sat and covered myself. It was very cold: no heating here. We sat quietly together — breathing.

She said: 'Now that the air outside has become impossible to breathe, I spend as much time as I can here.'

And I understood it was true: this was a moment when someone said something which crystallised into fact intimations only partly grasped that had been pointing towards on obvious conclusion… in this case, it was that the air we breathed had indeed become hard on our lungs, had been getting fouler and thicker for a long time. We had become used to it, were adapting: I, like everyone else, had been taking short reluctant breaths, as if rationing what we took into our lungs, our systems, could also ration the poisons — what poisons? But who could know, or say! This was 'it', again, in a new form — 'it', perhaps, in its original form?

Sitting in that room, whose floor was all covered with furs for lying and reclining, a room in which there was nothing to do but to lie, or to sit, I realised that I was — happy simply to be there, and breathe. Which I did, for a long time, while my head cleared and my spirits lightened. I looked out through clean polythene at a thick sky turbulent with clouds that held snow; I watched the light changing on the wall. From time to time Emily and I smiled at each other. It was very quiet everywhere. There came at one point a violent cackling and snarling from the garden, but we did not move. It ceased. Silence again. We sat on, without moving, just breathing.

There were machines in the room: one hanging from the ceiling, another on the floor, one nailed to a wall. These were for purifying the air, and they worked by sending out streams of electrons, negative ions-people had used them for some time; just as no one would dream of using water from the taps unless it had passed through one of the many types of water purifier. Air and water, water and air, the basics of our substance, the elements we swim in, move in, of which we are formed and reformed, continuously, perpetually recreated and renewed… for how long had we had to distrust them, evade them, treat them as possible enemies?

'You should take some machines home with you,' she said. 'There's a room full of them.'

'Gerald?'

'Yes, he went to a warehouse. There's a room of them under this one. But I'll help you carry them. How can you live in that filthy air?' and she said this in the way one does bring something out one has wanted to say, but has kept back.

She was smiling — and reproachful.

'Are you coming back…' — I hesitated to say 'home', but she said: 'Yes, I'll come home with you.'

'Hugo will be pleased,' I said, not meaning any reproach, but her eyes filled and she reddened.

'Why are you able to come now?' I asked, risking it; but she simply shook her head, meaning: I'll answer in a moment… And she did, when she had taken herself into control.

'There's no point in my staying here now.'

'Gerald has gone?'

'I don't know where he is. Not since he brought the machines.'

'He is making a new gang for himself?'

'Trying to.'

When she was on her feet, rolling up furs into big bundles to take with us, laying out others in which to wrap machines, there was a knock, and Emily went to see who it was. No, not Gerald, but a couple of children. At the sight of children, I was afraid. And I realised 'in a flash' — another one! that I, that everybody, had come to see all children as, simply, terrifying. Even before the arrival of the 'poor little kids' this had been true.

These two, dirty, bright-faced, sharp, wary, sat on the fur — floor, apart from us, and apart from each other. Each held a heavy stick, with a nail-studded knob, ready for use against us, and against each other.

'Thought I'd get a breath of fresh air,' said one, a redheaded boy, all milky skin and charming freckles. The other, a fair, angelic little girl, said, for herself: 'Yes, I wanted some fresh air.'

They sat and breathed and watched while we, keeping an eye on them, went on with the rolling and packing.

'Where are you going?' asked the girl.

'Tell Gerald he knows where to find me.'

This gave me too much food for thought for me to absorb at once.

These children were part of Gerald's new gang? Were they not members of the gang of children from the Underground? If this was true, then… perhaps that gang was only lethal as a unit, but the individuals were savable, and Gerald had been right? When our packs were ready, we left, the children coming with us; but they left us on seeing the butcher's yard that was the garden: feathers everywhere, bits of flesh, a dead dog. The children were cutting up the dog as we left, squatting on either side of the carcass, at work with sharp bits of steel.

We returned through streets which I pointed out to Emily as being, surely? less filthy — and noted her small checked reaction. Streets which had no one in them, not a soul apart from ourselves — I commented on this too, and heard her sigh. She was being patient with me.

In the lobby of the building we lived in, a great vase that had held flowers was lying in fragments outside the lift. There was a dead rat among the rubbish. As Emily took the animal by the tail to throw it out into the street, Professor White, Mrs White, and Janet, came along the corridor we jointly used. They had so far retained old ways that it was possible to say at once they were dressed for travelling — coats, scarves, suitcases. Seeing them thus, all three together, was a reminder of that other world or stratum of society, above ours, where people still presented themselves through clothes or belongings, for occasions. The Whites, as if nothing had happened to our world, were off on a journey, and Janet was saying: 'Oh quick, do let's go, let's go Mummy, Daddy, it's so horrid being here when there's no one left.' Click — there it was again, the few words flung out, emitted as if by the atmosphere itself, by 'it', summing up a new state of affairs that had not yet got itself summed up — or at least, not by me. I saw Emily's shrewd little glance at me, and she even instinctively moved a step closer, in a maternal gesture of protection for what might be a moment of weakness. I stood silent, watching the Whites fuss and arrange, seeing my past, our pasts: it looked comic. It was comic. We always had been ridiculous, little, self-important animals, acting our roles, playing our parts… it was not pretty, watching the Whites, and seeing oneself. And then we all said goodbye, quite in the old style: it was nice to know you, I hope we'll meet again, all that kind of thing, as if nothing much was happening. They had discovered that a coach was going out of the city that afternoon, ten miles to the north, on some kind of official business. Not for the use of ordinary citizens, but they had bribed and urged their way into being on this coach, which would set them down a mile from the airport, with their luggage. An official flight was scheduled for the extreme north this afternoon: again, while no ordinary person could ever get on such a flight, the head of a department and his family might just manage it, if they had the money — astronomical, of course, not for fares, but again, for bribes. What bartering and promises and threats and appeals must have gone into this journey, what a fearful effort — and all of it entirely in the new style, our new mode, that of survival, of surviving at all costs — but not a trace of this showed in their manner: Goodbye, goodbye, it was nice to have you both as neighbours, see you soon perhaps, yes I do hope so, goodbye, pleasant journey.

We went into my flat, and from the windows watched them walk down the street carrying their heavy cases.

The rooms next to mine would be empty now. Empty… it occurred to me that I had been seeing very few people around in the lobby, the corridors. What had happened to the market? I asked Emily and she shrugged, clearly feeling that I ought to know. I left my flat again, and went to the janitor's room down the passage. 'In case of emergency, apply to Flat 7, 5th Floor.' The way the notice hung there crooked, the silence from behind the door, told me that he and his family had gone off, had left: that notice might have been there for weeks. But I went to the lift, which did sometimes work, and pressed the bell. The machine shifted somewhere above, and I waited on, pressing and peering, but the lift did not come, so I used the stairs, up and up, floor after floor empty, with no liveliness of trading and bartering anywhere. The traders, the buyers, the goods, all were gone, and there was nobody in Flat 7, on the 5th floor, but at the top of the building, near the roof, I saw some youngsters feeding horses with pitchforks of hay, and I retreated, not wanting to be seen, since some of those at work there were young children. I crept down that passage, passing more rooms that held animals: a goat's head peered around a door, a pair of kingly lambs stood at the end of a corridor, and there was a shovelling and scraping from somewhere close and the smell of pigs. I tried the roof itself: up here was a flourishing market garden, with vegetables and herbs of all kinds, a polythene greenhouse, rabbits in cages, and a family, mother, father and three children, hard at work. They gave me the look of that time: Who are you? Friend? Enemy? — and waited, their implements held ready to use as weapons. Down I went again to the floor beneath and a child froze into a dark corner — he had been following me. His teeth were bared in a vindictive but calculated grin. I mean that the animosity was calculated, measured, so as to scare me. I could imagine him with a looking glass he had picked up in some corner, practising a variety of horrible expressions. I was indeed frightened: his hand, (like Emily's these days!) was held close to his chest, where the handle of a knife showed. I thought I knew his face, believed — he was red-haired and the right size — he was one of the urchins who had visited Emily that same day. But of course I made no appeal on such sentimental grounds as acquaintance, but glared back, and moved my right hand threateningly to where my — non-existent — knife was. He held his ground, and I walked on past him down the passage, looking into rooms, feeling him creep behind me, but at a good distance. I saw Gerald. He was sitting on heaps of furs surrounded by children — they were the 'Underground gang' and they were living in 'my' building. This gave me a real shock, and I went downstairs, boldly passing the little boy, who was keeping up his business of scowling and threatening. Down, down, and into my flat, which after all I had seen seemed a strange little place of order, of old-fashioned amenities, of warmth. Emily had made up a fire, and was sitting next to it, opposite Hugo. They were looking at each other, not touching, looking long and quiet at each other. The girl entirely wrapped in furs, so it was hard to tell where her own glossy hair began and ended, and the poor beast, with his rough and yellow hide — Beauty and her Beast, in this guise, but Beauty was so close to her Beast now, wrapped in beast's clothing, as sharp and wary as a beast, surviving as one. Yes, Beauty had been brought down, brought very low… I had a bad moment, watching the two there, thinking how very near we were to running and scurrying like rats along tunnels — but saw that the fire was solid and glowing, the air-machines we had brought were all at work, and the curtains had been drawn, with old blankets pinned over them. The air here was good, and clean, and I could feel my real self coming alive in it, but first I again left the flat and went out on the pavement. Dusk was coming down. Only a few people were on the gathering-place. They loitered there with a lost uncertain look: so many tribes had left, and these were the laggards. How dark everything was! Usually, as dusk came down, hundreds of candle flames seemed to float up and down and along the great buildings: people at their windows, looking down, and the rooms behind them shadowy in candlelight. But now, this evening, there were a few little glimmers high up in the darkness. From my windows nothing at all, yet my rooms were still alive: it was not possible now to tell from lights at windows who was in the building. No lights in the streets, only a thick heavy dark, the glow of a cigarette on the pavement, otherwise nothing. I found that I was standing there visualising the dark face of the building and a single candle flame — mine — alive in it. So things had been recently. Anyone passing would have known that here, alone, undefended, was a single person, or a single family. I had been crazy. Emily's little checked reactions of impatience or concern were understandable, understood. And, often enough, in the glow of that single flame must have been visible the patient watching outline of Hugo: yes, it was just as well she had come home — this time, or so it seemed, to look after me, not the other way around.

I went back into the flat. Emily had gone to bed. Hugo had not gone with her. Pride: and of course she would have understood it. He lay in front of the fire like any domestic beast, nose to the warmth, his green eyes watchful and open. I put my hand out to him and he allowed me a little tremor of his tail. I sat on for a long time, as the fire burned down, and listened to the absolute silence of the building. Yet above me was a farmyard, were animals, were the lethal children, was an old friend, Gerald: I went to bed, wrapping my head as peasants and simple people may do, against thoughts of danger, leaving just my face free — and woke next morning to find no water in the taps.

The building, as a machine, was dead.

That morning Gerald came down with two of the children, Redhair and a little black girl. He brought offerings of wine — for he had found an old wine merchant half-looted; and some blankets. Also, some food. Emily made the five of us some food, a porridge of some kind, with meat in it: it was good, and comforting.

Gerald wanted us to move to the top floor, where it would be easy for him to fix up a wind machine, one of the little windmills: we would have enough power to heat water, when we could get it. I said nothing, let Emily do the talking, make choices. She said no, it would be better to stay down here: she did not look at me as she said this, and it slowly came into me the reason was that up at the top of the building we would be more vulnerable to attack: we could not run away easily up there, whereas here it would be a question of jumping out of a window. This was why she said 'no' to his offer of a 'a large flat, really Emily, very big, and full of all sorts of food and stuff. And I could fix it up with power in a day — couldn't we…?' he appealed to the children, who nodded and grinned. They sat on either side of him, those little things, about seven or eight years old: they were his, his creatures; he had made himself theirs; he had his gang, his tribe… but at the cost of doing what they wanted, serving them.

What he wanted was to have her back. He wanted her to go up with him, to live with him, as queen, or chief lady, or brigand's woman, among the children, his gang. And she did not want this; she most definitely did not. Not that she said it, but it was clear. And the children, sharp-eyed and alert, knew what the issue was. It was hard to know what they felt-there were none of the familiar signals to tell us. Their eyes turned from Emily to Gerald, from Gerald to Emily: they were wondering if Emily, like Gerald, could become one of them, kill with them, fight with them? Or they were thinking that she was pretty and nice and it would be pleasant to have her around with them? They saw her, or felt her, as filling the place of their mothers — if they remembered mothers, a family, at all? They were thinking that they should kill her, because of Gerald's, their possession's, love of her? Who could say?

Their eating habits were disgusting. Gerald said Use a spoon, look, like this… no, don't throw it on the floor! — in a way that showed that in his own rooms, his own cave, he no longer bothered with such niceties. His glance at Emily said that if she would be there with them, she could influence and civilise… but it was all no use, and the three, the man and the two little children, went off at midday, They would bring us fresh meat tomorrow: a sheep was going to be killed. He would come and see Emily soon: he spoke to her, it was Emily's place now. My flat was Emily's, and I was her elderly attendant. Well, why not?

She was silent when he had gone, and then Hugo came and sat with his face on her knee: he was saying: I can see that you have really chosen me at last, me against him, me instead of all the others!

It was funny and pathetic; but she flashed me glances that I was not to laugh: it was she who suppressed smiles, bit her lips, breathed deep to hold down laughter. She fussed and caressed: 'Dear Hugo, dear, dear Hugo…' I noted, and watched. I was seeing a mature woman, a woman who has had her fill of everything, but is still being asked from, demanded of, persuaded into giving: such a woman is generous indeed, her coffers and wells are always full and being given out. She loves — oh yes, but somewhere in her is a deadly weariness. She has known it all, and doesn't want any more — but what can she do? She knows herself — the eyes of men and boys say so — as a source — if she is not this, then she is nothing. So she still thinks; she has not yet shed that delusion. She gives. She gives. But with this weariness held in check and concealed… so she stroked her Hugo's head, made love to his ears, whispered affectionate nonsense to him. Over his head her eyes met mine: they were the eyes of a mature woman of about thirty-five, or forty… she would never willingly suffer any of it again. Like the jaded woman of our dead civilisation, she knew love like a fever, to be suffered, to be lived through: 'falling in love' was an illness to be endured, a trap which might lead her to betray her own nature, her good sense, and her real purposes. It was not a door to anything but itself: not a key to living. It was a state, a condition, sufficient unto itself, almost independent of its object… 'being in love'. If she had spoken of it, she would have spoken of it so, as I've written. But she did not want to talk. She exuded her weariness, her willingness to give out if absolutely necessary, to give without belief. Gerald, whom she had adored, the 'first love' of tradition; for whom she had waited, suffered, lain awake at nights — Gerald, her lover, now needed and wanted her, having worked through the cycle of his needs, but she no longer had the energy to rise and meet him.

When, later that day, Gerald came down again, alone, in an attempt to persuade her to return with him, she did talk to him. She talked and he listened. She told him what had happened to him, for he did not know.

After the community he had built up in his house had been broken up by the gang of 'kids' from the Underground, and when he had seen that none of his own household would return, he had put all his effort into getting Emily to stay with him, to make a new household. He had returned to the pave — ment, to attract the nucleus of a new tribe. But this did not happen, it had not happened. Why? Perhaps it was believed that he was in contact with the dangerous children, or that any new community he formed must attract them; perhaps the fact he had shown openly that he was prepared to settle for one woman, for Emily, instead of being free in his choices, bestowing favours on whoever he found in his bed, put off the girls — whatever law it was that operated, the result was that Gerald, formerly a young prince, perhaps the most regarded of all the young men on the pavement, found himself unfollowed, merely one of the youngsters who had to attach himself to a leader in order to survive… Gerald listened to all this, thoughtful, attentive, disagreeing with nothing Emily was saying.

'And then you decided it was better to have the children than to have nothing, or to be patient and wait. You simply had to have a gang at all costs. And you went back to them and took them over. But they have taken you over — can't you see? I bet you have to do exactly what they want, don't you? I am sure you never can stop them doing anything they want? And you have to go along with whatever it is?'

But now he had retreated, was not prepared to take this, could not listen.

'But they are just little kids,' he said. 'Isn't it better for them that they have me? I get them food and things. I look after them.'

'They had food and things before,' Emily said drily.

Too dry… he saw her as critical of him — that, and nothing more. There was no affection for him — so he felt it. Off he went, and did not come again for some days.

We were organising our life, our rooms.

We were supplied with clean air at the cost of sitting and turning a handle to recharge batteries from time to time. It was warm: Emily went out with an axe and returned with great bundles of wood. And, just as I was thinking that the shortage of water would drive us to the roads, there was a clop-clopping outside, and a donkey cart made its appearance, loaded with plastic buckets of water, wooden buckets, metal buckets.

'Wa-a-a-ter! Wa-a-a-ter!' — the old cry sounded through our damp northern streets. Two girls of about eleven were selling the stuff, or rather, bartering. I went out with containers, and saw other people coming from the various blocks of flats around us. Not many, not more than fifty or so in all. I bought water dearly: the little girls had learned to be hard, to shake their heads and shrug at the prospect that people would do without water. For two buckets of good water — we were at least allowed to taste it before buying, I paid a sheepskin.

And then Gerald appeared, with about twenty of his gang — came with containers of every sort. Of course, there were all those animals up there, they needed water: but in a moment the gang had taken the water, simply grabbed it: they did not pay. I found myself shouting at Gerald that it was their livelihood, the little girls' — but he took no notice. I think he did not hear me. He stood on the alert, all vigilance, his eyes coldly assessing, while his children lifted down the buckets and ran off into the building with them, while the sellers complained, and the people who had come to buy water and had not yet been served, stood shouting and screaming. Then Gerald and the children had gone and it was my turn to be robbed. I stood with two filled buckets, and one of the men from the block of flats opposite held out his hand, lowering his head to glare into my eyes, baring his teeth. I handed over one bucket and ran indoors with the other. Emily had been watching through the window. She seemed sad. Also irritated: I could see the words she would use to scold Gerald forming in her mind.

A dish of clean water was put down for Hugo and he drank and drank. He stood beside the empty dish, head lowered: we filled it again, and he drank… a third of the bucket went in this way, and in our minds was the same thought — Hugo's, as well as ours. Emily sat by him and put her arms around him in the old way: he was not to worry or grieve, she would protect him, no one would attack him; he would have water if she had to go without or if I did…

When the water sellers came a couple of days later, they had men guarding the water with guns, and we bought in orderly queues. Gerald and his gang were not there. A woman in the queue said that 'that rotten lot' had opened up the Fleet River, and had started selling water on their own account. It was true, and for us, Hugo, Emily and me, a good turn of events, for Gerald brought us down a bucket of water every day and sometimes more.

'Well, we had to do it, we have to keep our animals watered, don't we?'

From the defensiveness of this, we knew that some hard battle had been fought. With the authorities? With other people using that source? — for of course old wells and springs had been opened everywhere over the city. If with the authorities, then how was it that Gerald and the children had won? — they must have done, to be able to reach and tap the supply.

'Well,' said Gerald, 'they haven't got enough troops to keep an eye on everything, have they? Most of them have gone, haven't they? I mean, there are more of us than there are of them, now…