The Memoirs of a Survivor

Hugo turned himself, placing himself between Emily, whom he would defend, and the door. He looked at me, suggesting I should put myself between her and the window: of course it was Emily who must be defended.

The scuffling and whispering went on. There were some blows on the door. More scuffles. Then a burst of sound — shouts, and feet rushing away. What had happened? We did not know. Perhaps Gerald had heard of what they were doing, and had come to stop them. Perhaps they had simply changed their minds.

And next day some of the children, with Gerald, came down to us and we spent a pleasant time together… I can say it, I can write it. But I cannot convey the normality of it, the ordinariness of sitting there, chatting, sharing food, of looking into a childish face and thinking: Well, well, it might have been you who planned to stick a knife into me last night!

And so it all went on.

We did not leave. If someone had asked: Do you mean to say that you two people are staying here, in danger, instead of leaving the city for the country where things are safe or safer, because of that animal, that ugly, bristly old beast there — you are prepared to die yourselves of hunger or cold or of being murdered, simply because of that beast! — then we would have said: Of course not, we are not so absurd, we put human beings where they belong, higher than beasts, to be saved at all costs. Animals must be sacrificed for humans, that is right and proper and we will do it too, just like everybody else.

But it was not a question of Hugo any longer.

The question was, where would we be going? To what? There was silence from out there, the places so many people had set off to reach. Silence and cold… no word ever came back, no one turned up again on our pavements and reported: 'I've come back from the north, from the west, and I ran into so and so and he said…'

No, all we could see when we looked up and out were the low packed clouds of that winter hurrying towards us: dark cloud, dark cold cloud. For it snowed. The snow came down, the snow was up to our windowsills. And of all those people who had left, the multitudes, what had happened to them? They might as well have walked off the edge of a flat world… On the radios, or occasionally from the loudspeaker of an official car — which, seen from our windows seemed like the relic of a dead epoch, came news from the east: yes, it seemed that there was life of a sort down there still. A few people even farmed, grew crops, made lives. 'Down there' — 'out there' — we did hear of these places, they were alive for us. And where we were was alive; the old city, near-empty as it was, held people, animals, and plants which grew and grew, taking over streets, pavements, the ground floors of buildings, forcing cracks in tarmac, racing up walls… life. When the spring came, what a burst of green life there would be, and the animals breeding and eating and flourishing.

But north and west, no. Nothing but cold and silence. We did not want to leave. And with whom? Emily, myself, and our beast — should we go by ourselves? There were no tribes leaving, no tribes even forming, and when we looked from our windows there was no one out there on the pavements. We were left in the cold dark of that interminable winter. Oh, it was so dark, it was such a low thick dark. All around us, the black tall towers stood up out of the snow that heaped around their bases, higher every day. No lights in those buildings now, nothing; and if a windowpane glinted in the long black nights, then it was from the moon, exposed momentarily between one hurrying cloud and another.

One afternoon, about an hour before the light went, Emily was by the window looking out, and she exclaimed: 'Oh no, no, no!' I joined her, and saw Gerald out there on the deep clean snow, high under stark branches. He wore his brave coat, but it was open, as if he did not care about the dreadful cold; he had nothing on his head, and he was moving about as if he were quite alone in the city and no one could see him. He was revisiting the scenes — so very recent, after all — of his triumphs, when he was lord of the pavement, chieftain of the gathering tribes? He looked about him at the exquisite crisp snow, up at the sky where low clouds were bringing dark inwards from the west, at the black trees touched up with white; he stood for minutes at a time, quite passive, staring, in thought or in abstraction. And Emily watched, and I could feel the fever of her anxiety rising. By now the three of us were there, watching Gerald; and of course other people were at their windows watching too. He had no weapons. His ungloved hands were in his pockets, or hung at his sides. He looked quite indifferent, had disarmed himself and did not care.

Then a small object hurtled past him, like a speeding bird. He gave a rapid indifferent glance at the building and stayed where he was. There followed a small shower of stones: from the windows above us catapults were being trained on him, perhaps worse than catapults. A stone hit his shoulder: it might have hit his face, or even an eye. Now he deliberately turned and faced the building, and we saw he was presenting himself as a target. He let his hands fall loose at his sides, and he stood quietly there, not smiling, but unworried, unalarmed, waiting, his eyes steadily on something or somebody in windows probably a story up from us.

'Oh no,' said Emily again; and in a moment she had pulled around her shoulders a shawl, like a peasant woman, and she was out of the flat and I saw her running across the street. Hugo's breath was coming in anxious little whines, and his nose was misting the windowpane. I put my hand on his neck and he quieted a little. Emily had slid her arm under Gerald's, and was talking to him, coaxing him off that pavement and across the road towards us. There was a fusillade of stones, bits of metal, offal, rubbish. Blood appeared on Gerald's temple, and a stone, landing in Emily's middle, caused her to stagger back. Gerald, brought to life by the danger to her, now sheltered her with his arm, and he was bringing her in to the building. Above I could hear the children shouting and calling out, and their chant: 'I am the king of the castle…' The stamping and chanting went on above us, as Gerald and Emily arrived in the room where Hugo and I waited for them. Gerald was white and there was a deep gash on his forehead, which Emily bathed and fussed over. And he made her look to see if the stone had hurt her much: there Was a bruise, no worse.

Emily made him sit by the fire, and sat by him, and rubbed his hands between hers.

He was very low, depressed. 'But they are just little kids,' he said again, looking at Emily, at me, at Hugo. 'That's all they are.' His face was all incredulity and pain: I don't know what it was in Gerald that could not — could not even now — bear what those children had become. I do know that it was deep in him, fundamental; and to give them up was to abandon — so he felt — the best part of himself.

'Do you know something, Em? — the little one, Denis, he's four years old, yes, he is. Do you know him, do you know the one I mean? He was down here with a me a few days back — the little one, with the cheeky face.'

'Yes, I do remember, but Gerald, you do have to accept…'

'Four,' he persisted, 'four. That's all. I worked it out from something he said. He was born the year the first lot of travellers came through this area. Yet he goes out with the others, he is as tough as the others. Did you know he was on that job — you know, the one that night?'

'A murder?' I asked, since Emily did not say anything, but went on rubbing his cold hands.

'Yes, well — but it was murder, I suppose. He was there. When I came back that night, I lost my temper, I was as sick as I could be. I said to them… and then one of them said that Denis had done it, he was the first to let go with what he'd got — a stone, I think. He was the first, and then after him, the others — four years old. And when I came back into the flat, do you know, the dead man was there, and they were all… and Denis was there, as large as life among them, taking his part — it's not their fault, how can it be their fault? How can you blame a kid of four?'

'No one is blaming them,' said Emily softly. Her eyes were bright, and her face was pale, and she was sitting by Gerald as if standing guard, protecting him, as if she had rescued him and now would not let go.

'No, but if no one saves them either, then that's the same as blaming them, isn't it? Isn't it?' he appealed to me;

We sat on through the long night, waiting. Of course we were expecting an attack, a visit, an embassy — something. Above us, in the great empty building there was no sound. And all that following day it snowed, and was dark and cold. We sat and waited, and nothing happened.

I knew that Emily was expecting Gerald to visit the top part of the building, to find out what went on. She was meaning to dissuade him. But he did not go; and all he said was, after some days: 'Well, perhaps they've moved somewhere else.'

'And the animals?' said Emily, fierce, thinking of those poor beasts up there.

He raised his head and looked at her and gave that short laugh which means someone has made an end to something in thought: a decision, but it is a decision beset with irony, or with conflict. 'If I go up there, well, I might be pulled back in again — and that's no good. And as for the animals, they have to take their chance like everyone