The Memoirs of a Survivor

fallen plaster, the corner of a ceiling stained with damp, dirty or damaged walls. Yet it was on that morning when I was beginning to understand how much work needed to be done that I saw, just for the ghost of a second — well, what? But I can hardly say. Perhaps it was more of a feeling than something seen. There was a sweetness, certainly — a welcome, a reassurance. Perhaps I did see a face, or the shadow of one. The face I saw clearly later was familiar to me, but it is possible that that face, seen as everything ended, appears in my memory in this place, this early second visit: it had reflected itself back, needing no more to use as a host or as a mirror than the emotion of sweet longing, which hunger was its proper air. This was the rightful inhabitant of the rooms behind the wall. I had no doubt of it then or later. The exiled inhabitant; for surely she could not live, never could have lived, in that chill empty shell full of dirty and stale air?

When I again knew myself to be standing in my living-room, the cigarette half-burned down, I was left with the conviction of a promise, which did not leave me no matter how difficult things became later, both in my own life, and in these hidden rooms.

***

The child was left with me in this way. I was in the kitchen, and, hearing a sound, went into the living room, and saw a man and a half-grown girl standing there. I did not know either of them, and advanced with the intention of clearing up a mistake. The thought in my mind was that I must have left my front door open. They turned to face me. I remember how I was even then, and at once, struck by the bright hard nervous smile on the girl's face. The man — middleaged, ordinarily dressed, quite unremarkable in every way — said: 'This is the child.' He was already on the way out. He had laid his hand on her shoulder, had smiled and nodded to her, was turning away.

I said: 'But surely…'

'No, there's no mistake. She's your responsibility.'

He was at the door.

'But wait a minute…'

'She is Emily Cartright. Look after her.' And he had gone.

We stood there, the child and I, looking at each other. I remember the room had a wash of sun: it was still morning. I was wondering how the two had got in, but this already seemed irrelevant, since the man had gone. I now ran to the window: a street with a few trees along the pavement, a bus — stop with its familiar queue of people waiting, waiting; and on the wide pavement opposite, underneath the trees there, some children from the Mehta's flat upstairs playing with a ball — dark-skinned boys and girls, all dazzling white shirts, crisp pink and blue dresses, white teeth, gleaming hair. But the man I was looking for — not a sign.

I turned back to the child; but now I took my time over it, and was wondering what to say, how to present myself, how to handle her — all the pathetic little techniques and tricks of our self-definition. She was watching me, carefully, closely: the thought came into my mind that this was the expert assessment of possibilities by a prisoner observing a new jailer. Already my heart was heavy: anxiety! My intelligence was not yet making much of what was happening.

'Emily?' I said tentatively, hoping that she would choose to answer the questions in my mind.

'Emily Mary Cartright,' she said, in a manner that matched her bright impervious voice and smile. Pert? At any rate a hard, an enamelled presence. I was trying to get past, or around it; I was conscious that I was desperately making signals — my smile, gestures — that might perhaps reach something softer and warmer which must be there behind that cold defence of hers.

'Well, will you sit down? Or can I make you something to eat? Some tea? I do have some real tea, but of course…'

'I'd like to see my room please,' she said. And now her eyes were, quite without her knowing it, an appeal, She needed, she needed very much, to know what walls, what shelter, she was going to be able to pull around her, like a blanket, for comfort.

'Well,' I said, 'I haven't thought yet, I don't quite… I must…' Her face seemed to shrivel. But she preserved her bright desperation. 'You see,' I went on, 'I wasn't expecting… let's see now.' She waited. Stubbornly, she waited. She knew that she was to live with me. She knew that her shelter, her four walls, her den, the little space that was hers and which she could creep into was here somewhere. 'There's the spare room,' I said. 'I call it that. But it isn't very…' But I went, and I remember how helplessly and unhappily I did, into the little front lobby, and through it to the spare room.

The flat was on the front of the building, the south side. The living-room took up most of the space: its size was why I had taken the flat. At the end away from the entrance lobby, so that you had to walk through the living- room to get to it, was the kitchen, on the corner of the building. This was quite large, with cupboards and storage space, and was used for eating as well. From the entrance lobby went two doors, one to the living-room, one to the room I called a spare room. This room was connected with the bathroom. My bedroom was on the front of the building, reached from the living-room. The bathroom, lobby, spare room, took up the same space as my bedroom, which was not large. It will be seen that the spare room was very small. It had a small high window. It was stuffy. There was no way of making it attractive. I never used it except for keeping things in or, with apologies, for a friend staying the night.

'I'm sorry that it is so small and dark… perhaps we should…'

'No, no, I don't mind,' she said, in the cool jaunty way which was so much hers; but she was looking at the bed with longing, and I knew she had found her refuge, hers, here it was at last. 'It's lovely,' she said. 'Oh yes, you don't believe me, you don't know what…' But she left the possibility of an explanation of what she had been experiencing, and waited, her whole body expressing how she wanted me to leave.

'And we'll have to share the bathroom,' I said.

'Oh, I'll be ever so tidy,' she assured me. 'I'm really very good, you know, I won't make a mess, I never do.'

I knew that if I were not in this flat, if she did not feel she must behave well, she would be between the blankets, she would already be far away from the world.

'I won't be a tick,' she assured me. 'I must get tidy. I'll be as quick as I can.'

I left her and waited for her in the living-room, first standing by the window looking out, wondering perhaps if fresh surprises were on the way. Then I sat down, rather, I imagine, in the attitude of The Thinker, or some such concentrated pose.

Yes, it was extraordinary. Yes, it was all impossible. But after all, I had accepted the 'impossible'. I lived with it. I had abandoned all expectations of the ordinary for my inner world, my real life in that place. And as for the public, the outer world, it had been a long time since that offered the normal. Gould one perhaps describe that period as 'the ordinariness of the extraordinary?' Well, the reader should have no difficulty here: these words are a description of the times we have lived through. (A description of all life? — probably, but it is not much help to think so.)

But these words convey perfectly the atmosphere of what was happening when Emily was brought to me. While everything, all forms of social organisation, broke up, we lived on, adjusting our lives, as if nothing fundamental was happening. It was amazing how determined, how stubborn, how self-renewing, were the attempts to lead an ordinary life. When nothing, or very little, was left of what we had been used to, had taken for granted even ten years before, we went on talking and behaving as if those old forms were still ours. And indeed, order of the old kind-food, amenities, even luxuries, did exist at higher levels, we all knew that; though of course those who enjoyed these things did not draw attention to themselves. Order could also exist in pockets, of space, of time — through periods of weeks and months or in a particular district. Inside them, people would live and talk and even think as if nothing had changed. When something really bad happened, as when an area got devastated, people might move out for days, or weeks, to stay with relatives or friends, and then move back, perhaps to a looted house, to take up their jobs, their housekeeping — their order. We can get used to anything at all; this is a commonplace, of course, but perhaps you have to live through such a time to see how horribly true it is. There is nothing that people won't try to accommodate into 'ordinary life'. It was precisely this which gave that time its peculiar flavour; the combination of the bizarre, the hectic, the frightening, the threatening, an atmosphere of siege or war — with what was customary, ordinary, even decent.