The Memoirs of a Survivor

***

What happened next was June.

One afternoon, when Emily had been home with me and Hugo a full day and a night, had not gone at all to the communal household, a little girl came to the door asking for her. I say 'a little girl' conscious of the absurdity of the phrase with its associations of freshness and promise. But after all, she was one: a very thin child, with strong prominent bones. Her eyes were pale blue. She had pale hair that looked dirty hanging to her shoulders and half-hiding an appealing little face. She was small for her age, could have been eight or nine, but was in fact eleven. In other words she was two years younger than Emily, who was a young woman and loved — precariously — by the king, Gerald. But her breasts were stubby little points, and her body altogether in the chrysalis stage.

'Where is Emily?' she demanded. Her voice — but I shall only say that it was at the extreme away from 'good English', the norm once used for announcements, news, or by officialdom. I could hardly understand her, her accent was so degraded. I am not talking about the words she used, which were always sharp enough when one had uncoded them, were stubborn and strong attempts to lay hold of meanings and ideas every bit as clear and good as those expressed in tutored speech. The peremptoriness of the 'Where is Emily?' was not from rudeness; but because of the effort she had to put into it, the determination to be understood and to be led to Emily, or that Emily should be brought out to her. It was, too, because she was a person who had not been brought up to believe she had rights. Yet she set herself towards goals, she wanted things and achieved them: she would reach her Emily without the help of words, skills, manners — without rights.

'She's here,' I said. 'And please come in.'

She followed me, stiff with the determination that had got her here. Her eyes were everywhere, and the thought came into my mind that she was pricing what she saw. Or, rather, valuing, since 'pricing' was somewhat out-of-date.

When she saw Emily, today a languid suffering young woman on a chair by the window, her two bare feet set side by side side on her attendant yellow beast, the child's face lit with a heartbreakingly sweet smile all confidence and love, and she ran forward, forgetting herself. And Emily, seeing her, smiled and forgot her troubles — love-troubles and goodness knows what else, and the two girls went into the tiny room that was Emily's. Two girls in a young girls' friendship, despite one being already a woman, and one still a child, with a child's face and body. But not, as I discovered, with a child's imaginings, for she was in love with Gerald. And, after having suffered jealousy because of the favourite Emily, by turns hating and denigrating her or feverishly and slavishly admiring her, now she was her sister in sorrow when Gerald was being loved, served, by another girl, or girls.

It was morning when she came; and at lunchtime the two emerged from the bedroom and Emily asked with her unfailing visitor's manners: 'If you don't mind, I would like to ask June to have a sandwich or something.'

Later in the day the two tired of the stuffy room, and came into the living-room, and sat on the floor on either side of Hugo and talked while they patted and petted him. June was wanting advice and information on all kinds of practical matters, and particularly about the garden, which was Emily's responsibility, since Emily understood about all that kind of thing.

She did? I knew nothing of this in Emily, who with me had not showed the slightest interest in such matters, not even in the potted plants.

I sat listening to their talk, reconstructing from it the life of their community… how very odd it was that all over our cities, side by side with citizens who still used electric light, drew water for which they had paid from taps, expected their rubbish to be collected, were these houses which were as if the technological revolution had never occurred at all. The big house fifteen minutes' walk away had been an old people's home. It had large grounds. Shrubs and flowerbeds had been cleared and now there were only vegetables. There was even a little shed in which a few fowls were kept — another illegality that went on everywhere, and to which the authorities turned a blind eye. The household bought — or acquired in some way — flour, dried legumes, honey. But they were about to get a hive of bees. They also bought the substitutes 'chicken' and 'beef and 'lamb' and concocted the usual unappetising meals with them. Unappetising only to some: there were plenty of young people who had eaten nothing else in their lives, and who now preferred the substitute to the real thing. As I've said, we learn to like what we get.

The place was a conglomeration of little workshops: they made soap and candles and wove materials and dyed them; they cured leather; they dried and preserved food; they reconstructed and made furniture.

And so they all lived, Gerald's gang, thirty of them now, with pressure always on them to expand, since so many people wanted to join them and had to be refused: there was no space.

It was not that I was surprised to learn of all this. I had heard it all before in various forms. For instance, there had been a community of young adults and small children not far away where even the water system and sewage had broken down. They had made a privy in the garden, a pit with a packing-case over it, and a can of ashes for the smell and the flies. They bought water from the door, or tapped the mains as they could, and cadged baths from friends: there was a time when my bathroom was being used by them. But that group drifted off somewhere. All over our city were these pockets of life reverting to the primitive, the hand-to-mouth. Part of a house… then the whole house… a group of houses… a street… an area of streets. People looking down from a high building saw how these nucleii of barbarism took hold and spread. At first the observers were all sharp hostility and fear. They made the sounds of disapproval, of rectitude, but they were in fact learning as they, the still fortunate, watched these savages from whose every finger sprouted new skills and talents. In some parts of the city whole suburbs had reverted. Miles of people, all growing their potatoes and onions and carrots and cabbages and setting guard on them day and night, raising chickens and ducks, making their sewage into compost, buying or selling water, using empty rooms or an empty house to breed rabbits or even a pig-people no longer in neat little families, but huddled together in groups and clans whose structure evolved under the pressures of necessity. At night such an area withdrew itself into a dangerous obscurity where no one dared go, with its spare or absent street lighting, its potholed pavements and rutted streets, the windows showing the minuscule flickering of candles or the shallow glow of some improvised light on a wall or a ceiling. Even in the daytime, to walk there seeing wary faces half-visible behind shutters, knowing that bows and arrows, catapults, or even guns were held trained for use on you if you transgressed — such an expedition was like a foray into enemy territory, or into the past of the human race.

Yet even at that late stage, there was a level of our society which managed to live as if nothing much was happening — nothing irreparable. The ruling class — but that was a dead phrase, so they said; very well then, the kind of person who ran things, administered, sat on councils and committees, made decisions. Talked. The bureaucracy. An international bureaucracy. But when has it not been true? — that the section of a society which gets the most out of it maintains in itself, and for as long as it can in others, an illusion of security, permanence, order.

It seems to me that this has something to do, at bottom, with conscience, a vestigial organ in humanity which still demands that there should be some sort of justice or equity; feels that it is intolerable (this is felt by most people, somewhere, or at least occasionally) that some people do well while others starve and fail. This is the most powerful of mechanisms for, to begin with, the maintaining of a society, and then its undermining, its rotting, its collapse… yes of course this is not new, has been going on throughout history, very likely and as far as we know. Has there been a time in our country when the ruling class was not living inside its glass bell of respectability or of wealth, shutting its eyes to what went on outside? Could there be any real difference when this 'ruling class' used words like justice, fair play, equity, order, or even socialism? — used them, might even have believed in them, or believed in them for a time; but meanwhile everything fell to pieces while still, as always, the administrators lived cushioned against the worst, trying to talk away, wish away, legislate away, the worst — for to admit that it was happening was to admit themselves useless, admit the extra security they enjoyed was theft and not payment for services rendered…

And yet in a way everybody played a part in this conspiracy that nothing much was happening — or that it was happening, but one day things would go into reverse and hey presto! back we would be in the good old days. Which, though? That was a matter of temperament: if you have nothing, you are free to choose among dreams and fantasies. I fancied a rather elegant sort of feudalism — without wars of course, or injustice. Emily, having never experienced or suffered it, would have liked the Age of Affluence back again.

I played the game of complicity like everyone else. I renewed my lease during this period and it was for seven years: of course I knew that we didn't have anything like that time left. I remember a discussion with Emily and June about replacing our curtains. Emily wanted some muslin curtains in yellow that she had seen in some exchange-shop. I argued in favour of a thicker material, to keep out noise. June agreed with Emily: muslin, if properly lined — and there was a stall that sold nothing but old lining materials only two miles away — hung well, and was warm. After all, thicker material, supposedly warmer, hung so stiffly that draughts could get in around the edges… yes, but once this thick material had been washed, it would lose its stiffness:… this was the sort of conversation we were all capable of having; we might spend days or weeks on a decision. Real decisions, necessary ones, such as that electricity would have to be given up altogether, were likely to be made with a minimum of discussion; they were forced on us — it was that summer that I arranged for my electricity to be disconnected. Just before June's visit, in fact. Her first visit: soon she was coming every day, and usually found us in discussions about lighting and heating. She told us that there was a man in a small town about twelve miles away selling devices of the sort once used for camping. No, they were not the same devices, but he had evolved all kinds of new ones: she had seen some, we should get them too. She and Emily discussed it, decided not to make the expedition by themselves, and asked Gerald to go with them. Off they went and came back late one afternoon loaded with every kind of gadget and trick for light and heat. And here was Gerald, in my living-room. From near by this young chieftain was not so formidable; he seemed harassed, he was even forlorn — his continual glances towards Emily had anxiety in them, and he spent all the time he was there asking her for advice about this or about that… she gave it, she was really extraordinarily practical and sensible. I was seeing something of their relationship — I mean, the one beneath that other perhaps less powerful bond which was evident and on the surface, and to which Emily was responding: beyond this almost conventional business of girl in love with boss of the gang, one saw a very young man, overburdened and over-responsible and unsure, asking for support, even tenderness. He had gone off with Emily and June to 'help carry supplies in for Emily and her friend for the winter', but this was not only kindheartedness — he had plenty of that — but a way of saying to Emily that he needed her back in his household. A payment, perhaps; a bribe, if you want to be cynical. She was dallying with going back. Robustly tired after the long walk carrying such a load, looking flushed and sunburned and pretty, she coquetted with him, made herself scarce and difficult. As for June, not yet able to play this game, she was quiet, watching, very much excluded. Emily, feeling power over Gerald, was using it; she stretched, and luxuriated in her body, and played with Hugo's head and ears and smiled at Gerald… yes, she would go back with him to his house, since he so much wanted it, wanted her. And after an hour or so of it, off they went, the three of them, Emily and Gerald first, June tagging on behind. Parents and a child was what it looked like — what it felt like, I guessed, at least to June.

And now I suppose it must be asked and answered why Emily did not choose to be a chieftainess, a leader on her own account? Well, why not? Yes, I did ask myself this, of course. The attitudes of women towards themselves and to men, the standards women had set up for themselves, the gallantry of their fight for equality, the decades — long and very painful questioning of their roles, their functions — all this makes it difficult for me now to say, simply, that Emily was in love. Why did she not have her own band, her own houseful of brave foragers and pilferers, of makers and bakers and growers of their own food? Why was it not she of whom it was said: 'There was that house, it was standing empty, Emily has got a gang together and they've moved in. Yes, it's very good there, let's see if she will let us come too.'

There was nothing to stop her. No law, written or unwritten, said she should not, and her capacities and talents were every bit as varied as Gerald's or anybody else's. But she did not. I don't think it occurred to her.

The trouble was, she did love Gerald; and this longing for him, for his attention and his notice, the need to be the one who sustained and comforted him, who connected him with the earth, who held him steady in her common sense and her warmth — this need drained her of the initiative she would need to be a leader of a commune. She wanted no more than to be the leader of the commune's woman. His only woman, of course.

This is a history, after all, and I hope a truthful one.