The Memoirs of a Survivor

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.

***

One afternoon I returned from a news-gathering excursion, and found my rooms had been disturbed, and in exactly the same way as the place behind the wall might be disturbed by the 'poltergeist', or anarchic principle. This was my thought as I stood there looking at a chair overturned, books spilled on the floor. There was a general disorder, an emptiness, and above all, an alien feel to the place. Then, one by one, specific lacks and absences became evident. Supplies of food had gone, stocks of valuable cereals, tinned goods, dried fruits: candles, skins, polythene sheeting — the obvious things. Very well, then — thieves had broken in, and I was lucky it had not happened before. But then I saw that possessions only retrospectively valuable were missing: a television set unused for months, a tape recorder, electric lamps, a food mixer. The city had warehouses full of electric contrivances no longer useful for anything, and I began to think that these thieves were freakish or silly. I saw that Hugo lay stretched in his place along the outer wall; he had not been disturbed by the intruders. This was strange, and no sooner had I become convinced of the inexplicable nature of this robbery, than the sound of voices I knew well took me to the window. There I stood to watch a little procession of the goods being brought back again. On a dozen heads, children's heads, were balanced the television, sacks of fuel and food, all sorts of bags and boxes. The faces became visible, brown and white and black, when they tilted up in response to Emily's voice: 'There now, we're too late!' — meaning that I was back and stood at the window watching. I saw Emily coming behind the others. She was in charge: supervising, looking responsible, annoyed — officious. I had not seen her in this role before, this was a new Emily to me. June was there too, beside Emily. I knew all these faces — the children were from Gerald's household.

In a moment, boxes, bundles and cases were filing into my living-room, the children beneath them. When the floor was covered with what had been taken, the children began to edge out again, looking at Emily but never at me: I might as well have been invisible.

'And now say you're sorry,' she ordered.

They smiled, the feeble awkward smile that goes with: Oh how she does go on! They were obeying Emily, but she was found overbearing: those embarrassed, affectionate smiles were not the first she had wrung out of them, I could see. I became even more curious about her role in that other house.

'No, come on,' said Emily. 'It's the least you can do.'

June's thin shoulders shrugged, and she said: 'We are sorry. But we have brought them back, haven't we?' My attempt to transcribe this is: 'Aow, w'srry, 't wiv brung'm beck, ivnt wee?'

In this effort of speech was the energy of frustration: this child, like others formed by our old time which above all had been verbal, to do with words, the exchange of them, the use of them, had been excluded from all that richness. We (meaning the educated) had never found a way of sharing that plenty with the lower reaches of our society. Even in two women standing on a street's edge bartering their few sentences of gossip had been the explosive effort of frustration: the deprived, thinned speech of the poor had always had somewhere in it the energy of a resentment (unconscious perhaps, but there) fed by the knowledge of skills and ease just beyond them, and whose place in their talk was taken by the constant repetition of the phrases — like crutches — 'you know?' and