The Memoirs of a Survivor

For instance, on the newscasts and in the papers they would pursue for days the story of a single kidnapped child, taken from its pram perhaps by some poor unhappy woman. The. police would be combing suburbs and the countryside in hundreds, looking for the child, and for the woman, to punish her. But the next news flash would be about the mass deaths of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people. We still believed, wanted to believe, that the first, the concern about the single child, the need to punish the individual criminal, even if it took days and weeks and hundreds of our hard-worked police force to do it, was what really represented us; the second, the catastrophe, was, as such items of news had always been for people not actually in the threatened area, an unfortunate and minor — or at least not crucial — accident, which interrupted the even flow, the development, of civilisation.

This is the sort of thing we accepted as normal. Yet for all of us there were moments when the game we were all agreeing to play simply could not stand up to events: we would be gripped by feelings of unreality, like nausea. Perhaps this feeling, that the ground was dissolving under our feet, was the real enemy… or we believed it to be so. Perhaps our tacit agreement that nothing much, or at least, nothing irrecoverable, was happening, was because for us the enemy was Reality, was to allow ourselves to know what was happening. Perhaps our pretences, everyone's pretences, which in the moments when we felt naked, defenceless, seemed like playacting and absurd, should be regarded as admirable? Or perhaps they were necessary, like the games of children who can make playacting a way of keeping reality a long way from their weaknesses? But increasingly, all the time, one had to defeat the need, simply, to laugh: oh, not a good laughter, far from it. Rather bellows and yells of derision.

For instance again: in the same week as a horde of two hundred or so hooligans had surged through our neighbourhood, leaving a corpse on the pavement across from the street from my windows, leaving smashed windows, looted shops, the remains of bonfires, a group of middleaged women, self-appointed vigilantes were making formal protests to the police about an amateur theatricals group some youngsters had set up. This group had written and put on a play describing the tensions inside an ordinary family living in a block of flats like ours, a family which had taken in half a dozen refugees from the eastern counties. (As long as travellers were with the migrating gangs they were 'hooligans', but when they hived off to find shelter with some family or household they were 'refugees'). A household that had held five people suddenly held twelve, and the resulting frictions led to adultery and an incident where 'a young girl seduced a man old enough to be her grandfather' as the good women indignantly described it. They managed to organise a not — very — well-attended meeting about the 'decay of family life', about 'immorality', about 'sexual indulgence'. This was comic, of course. Unless it was sad. Unless — as I've suggested — it was admirable; a sign of the vitality of the said 'ordinary life' which would in the end defeat chaos, disorder, the malevolence of events.

Or what can one say about the innumerable citizens' groups that came into existence right up to the end, for any ethical or social purpose you could think of: to improve old age pensions, at a time when money was giving way to barter; to supply vitamin tablets to school children; to provide a visiting service for housebound invalids; to arrange formal legal adoption for abandoned children; to forbid the news of any violent or 'unpleasant' event, so as not to 'put ideas into young people's heads'; to reason with the gangs of hooligans as they came through the streets, or alternatively, to birch them; to go around and about the streets, exhorting people 'to restore a sense of decency to their sexual practices'; to agree not to eat the meat of cats and dogs; and so on, and on, and on — there was really no end to it. Farce. Splitting into a hurricane; standing in front of a mirror to touch up one's face or straighten a tie as the house crashes around one; extending the relaxed accommodating hand of the Royal handshake to a barbarian who will certainly bend and take a good bite out of it… these similes come to mind. Analogies were being made then, of course, in the conversations that were our meat and drink, and by the professional comedians.

In such an atmosphere, in a time of such happenings, that an unknown man should arrive in my home with a child, saying she was my responsibility, and then leave without further remark, was not as strange as all that.

When Emily at last came out of her bedroom, having changed her dress and washed from her face what looked like an assault of miserable tears, she said: 'The room will be a bit small for Hugo and me, but it doesn't matter a bit.'

I saw that she had beside her a dog, no a cat. What was it? An animal, at any rate. It was the size of a bulldog, and shaped more like a dog than a cat, but its face was that of a cat.

It was yellow. Its hide was harsh and rough. It had cat's eyes and whiskers. It had a long whip — like tail. An ugly beast. Hugo. She sat herself down carefully in my deep old sofa opposite the fireplace, and the beast got up beside her, and sat there, as close as he could get, and she put her arm about him. She looked at me, from beside the animal's cat face. They both looked at me, Hugo with his green eyes, and Emily with her defensive shrewd hazel eyes.

She was a large child, of about twelve. Not a child, really; but in that half-way place where soon she would be a girl. She would be pretty, at least goodlooking. Well-made: she had small hands and feet, and good limbs that were brown with health and sun. Her hair was dark and straight, parted on one side, held with a clip.

We talked. Or rather, we offered each other little remarks, both waiting for that switch to be turned somewhere which would make our being together easier. While she sat there silent her brooding dark gaze, her mouth with its definite possibilities of humour, her air of patient thoughtful attention made her seem someone I could like very much. But then, just as I was sure she was about to respond in kind to my attempts, my feeling of pleasure in her potentialities, there would come to life in her the vivacious self-presenting little madam — the old-fashioned world was right for her: there was something old-fashioned in her image of herself. Or perhaps it was someone else's idea of her?

She chattered: 'I'm awfully hungry, and so is Hugo. Poor Hugo. He hasn't eaten today. And neither have I, if the truth must be told.'

I made my apologies and hastened out to the shops to buy whatever cat or dog foods I could find for Hugo. It took some time to find a shop which still stocked such things. I was an object of interest to the shop assistant, an animal-lover, who applauded my intention to stand up for my right to keep 'pets' in these days. I also interested one or two of the other customers, and I was careful not to say where I lived, when one asked me, and went home by a misleading route, and made sure I was not being followed. On the way I visited several shops looking for things I usually did not bother with, they were so hard to track down, so expensive. But at last I did find some biscuits and sweets of a quite decent quality — whatever I thought might appeal to a child. I had plenty of dried apples and pears, and stocks of basic foodstuffs. When at last I got back home she was asleep on the sofa, and Hugo was asleep beside her. His yellow face was on her shoulder, her arm was around his neck. On the floor beside her was her little suitcase, as flimsy as a small child's week-end case. It had in it some neatly-folded dresses and a jersey and a pair of jeans. These seemed to be all she owned in the way of clothes. I would not have been surprised to see a teddy or a doll. Instead there was a Bible, a book of photographs of animals, some science fiction paperbacks.

I made as welcoming a meal as I could for both her and Hugo. I woke them with difficulty: they were in the exhausted state that follows relief after long tension. When they had eaten they wanted to go off to bed, though it was still mid-afternoon.

And that was how Emily was left with me.

In those first few days she slept and she slept. Because of this, and because of her invincible obedience, I was unconsciously thinking of her as younger than she was. I sat waiting quietly in my living-room, knowing that she was asleep, exactly as one does with a small child. I did a little mending for her, washed and ironed her clothes. But mostly, I sat and looked at that wall and waited. I could not help thinking that to have a child with me, just as the wall was beginning to open itself up, would be a nuisance, and in fact she and her animal were very much in the way. This made me feel guilty. All kinds of emotions I had not felt for a long time came to life in me again, and I longed simply to walk through the wall and never come back. But this would be irresponsible; it would mean turning my back on my responsibilities.

It was a day or two after Emily came: I was beyond the wall, and I kept opening doors, or turning the comers of long passages to find another room or suite of rooms. Empty. That is, I did not see any one, although the feeling of someone's presence was so strong I even kept turning my head quickly, as if this person could be expected to step out from behind a wall in the few seconds my back had been turned. Empty but inhabited. Empty but furnished… wandering there, between tall white walls, from room to room, I saw that the place was filled with furniture. I knew these sofas, these chairs. But why? From what time in my life did they date? They were not my