The Memoirs of a Survivor

***

And if everyone had gone, what were we — Emily and Hugo and I — doing here?

But we no longer thought about leaving, not seriously. We might talk a little about the Dolgellys, or say: Well, one of these days we really ought to be thinking…

Air, water, food, warmth — we had them all. Things were easier now than for a long time. There was less stress, less danger. And even the few people who were still lodged in the cracks and crevices of this great city kept leaving, leaving…

I watched a tribe go off as the autumn ended and winter came down. The last tribe, at least from our pavements. It was like all the others I had seen go, but better equipped, and typical of the caravans from our particular area: now, comparing notes, it seems that each neighbourhood had its peculiarities of travel, even styles! Yes, I can use that word… how quickly customs and habits do grow up! I remember hearing someone say, and this was quite in the early days of the departing tribes: 'Where is the shoe leather? We always have a supply of shoe leather.'

Perhaps it would be of interest if I described this late departure in more detail.

It was cold that morning. A low sky moved fast from west to east, a dark, pouring sea. The air was thick, and hard to breathe although there was a wind stirring and rolling drifts of the snow crumbs that lightly surfaced road and pavements. The ground seemed fluid. The tall buildings all around showed sharp and dark, or disappeared in snow flurries and cloud.

About fifty people had gathered, all rolled tightly into their furs. At the front were two young men with the two guns they owned prominently in evidence. Behind them came four more, with bows and arrows, sticks, knives. Then came a cart converted from a motor car: everything taken off down to wheel level, and boards laid over these to make a surface. The cart was being drawn by a horse, and on it was piled bundles of clothes and equipment, three small children, and hay for the horse. The older children were expected to walk.

Behind this cart walked the women and children, and behind them came another cart, and in the yokes were two youths. On this cart was a large version of the old hay box: a wooden container, insulated and padded, into which could be fitted pots which, taken off the boil just before the start of a journey, would go on simmering inside their nests and be ready to provide a meal at its end. After this second cart came a third, an old milk cart carrying food supplies: grains, dried vegetables, concentrates and so on. And a fourth cart, drawn by a donkey. It was arranged in cages. There were some laying hens. There were rabbits, not for eating, but for breeding: a dozen or so impregnated does. This last cart had a special guard of four armed boys.

It was the horse and the donkey that distinguished this caravan: our part of the city was known for its draft animals. Why we developed this speciality I don't know. Perhaps it was because there were riding stables in the old days, and these developed into breeding establishments when there was a need. Even our little common had horses on it — under heavy guard night and day, of course.

Usually, when a column of people left for the journey north or west, people came out of the buildings to say goodbye, to wish them well, to send messages to friends and relatives who had gone on ahead. That morning only four people came. I and Hugo sat quietly in our window watching, as the tribe arranged itself and left, without fuss or farewells. Very different this departure from earlier ones, which had been so boisterous and gay. These people were subdued, seemed apprehensive, made themselves small and inconspicuous inside their furs: this caravan of theirs would make rich booty.

Emily did not even watch.

At the very last moment Gerald came out with half a dozen of the children, and they stood on the pavement until the last cart with its cackling load had gone out of sight beyond the church at the comer. Gerald turned then, and led his flock back inside the building. He saw me and nodded, but without smiling. He looked strained — as well he might. Even to see that band of infant savages was enough to make one's stomach muscles tighten in anxiety. And he lived among them, day and night: I believe he had run out with them to stop them attacking the loaded carts.

That night there was a knock on the door, and four of the children stood there: they were wild-eyed and excited. Emily simply shut the door on them and locked it. Then she put heavy chairs against it. A scuffling and whispering — the footsteps retreated.

Emily looked at me, and mouthed over Hugo's head — it took me a few moments to work it out: Roast Hugo.

'Or roast Emily,' I said.

A few minutes later we heard screams coming from along the street, then the sound of many rushing feet, and children's shrill voices in triumph — all the sounds of a raid, a crime. We pushed aside our heavy curtains and were in time to see, through a glimmer from the snow that was being lit by a small moon, Gerald's gang, but without Gerald, dragging something up the front steps. It looked like a body. It need not have been anything of the kind, could have been a sack or a bundle. But the suspicion was there, and strong enough to make us believe it.

We sat on through the night quietly by our fire, waiting, listening.

There was nothing to prevent one or all of us becoming victims at any moment.

Nothing. Not the fact that Gerald, by himself or with a selection of the children, or even some of the children by themselves, might come down to visit us in the most normal way in the world. They brought us gifts. They brought flour and dried milk and eggs; sheets of polythene, cellotape, nails, tools of all kinds. They gave us fur rugs, coal, seeds, candles. They brought… the city around was almost empty, and all one had to do was to walk into unguarded buildings and warehouses and take what one fancied. But most of what was there were things no one would ever use again or want to: things that, in a few years time, if some survivor found them, he would have to ask: What on earth could this have been for?

As these children did already. You would see them squatting down over a pile of greeting cards, a pink nylon fluted lampshade, a polystyrene garden dwarf, a book or a record, turning them over and over: What was this for? What did they do with it?

But these visits, these gifts, did not mean that in another mood, on another occasion, they would not kill. And because of a whim, a fancy, an impulse.

Inconsequence…

Inconsequence again, as with the departure of little June. We sat there and brooded about it, talked about it, listening — far above our heads there was the neigh of a horse, and sheep baa-ing; birds whirled up past our windows on their way to the top of the building where there were the pickings of a farmyard for the effort of hopping through a broken window, was a vegetable garden, and even some trees. Inconsequence, a new thing in human psychology. New? Well, if it had always been there, it had been well channelled, disciplined, socialised. Or we had become so used to the ways we saw it shown that we did not recognise it.

Once, not long ago, if a man or woman shook you by the hand, offered you gifts, you would have reason to expect that he, she, would not kill you at the next meeting because the idea had just that moment come into his head… this sounds, as usual, on the edge of farce. But farce depends on the normal, the usual, the standard. Without the norm, which is the source of farce, that particular form of laughter dries up.

I remembered June, when she first robbed my flat and I asked Emily: 'But why me?' The reply was: Because you are here, she knows you. Even: Because you are a friend.

We could believe that the children from upstairs might come down one night and kill us because we were their friends. They knew us.

One night, very late, sitting around the fire as it burned low, we heard voices outside the door and outside the window. We did not move or look for weapons. The three of us exchanged looks — it cannot be said that they were amused, no: we did not have so much philosophy, but I do claim these glances were of the order of humour. That morning we had given food to some of those brats who were outside now. We had sat eating with them. Are you warm enough? Have another piece of bread. Would you like some more soup?

We could not protect ourselves against so many: thirty or more in all, whispering beyond the door, below the window. And Gerald? No, that we could not believe. He was asleep, or away on some expedition.