Doris Lessing - The Memoirs of a Survivor

In due course, Emily keeled over, lay in a huddle on the floor and, the ritual subsiding into another key altogether, she snuffled and hiccupped like a child and finally went to sleep.

But when she woke up she did not go back to the other house, she did not go out to the pavement. There she sat, coming to terms. And there she would have stayed for good, very likely, if she had not been challenged.

Gerald came over to see her. Yes, he had been in before, and often, for advice. Because his coming was nothing new, we did not know that his problem, our problem, was anything new. And he didn't, at this stage.

He wanted to talk about 'a gang of new kids' for whom he felt a responsibility. They were living in the Underground, coming up in forays for food and supplies. Nothing new about that, either. A lot of people had taken to a subterranean existence, though they were felt to be a bit odd, with so many empty homes and hotels. But they could be actively wanted by the police, or criminal in some way, feeling the Underground to be safer.

These 'kids', then, were living like moles or rats in the earth, and Gerald felt he should do something about it, and he wanted Emily's support and help. He was desperate for her to rouse herself, and to energise him with her belief and her competence.

He was all appeal; Emily all listlessness and distance. The situation was comic enough. Emily, a woman, was sitting there expressing with every bit of her the dry: You want me back, you need me — look at you, a suitor, practically on your knees, but when you have me you don't value me, you take me for granted. And what about the others? Irony inspired her pose and gestures, set a gleam of intelligence that was wholly critical on her eyelids. On his side he knew he was being reproached, and that he certainly must be guilty of something or other, but he had had no idea until this moment of how deeply she felt it, how great his crime must be. He was searching his memory for behaviour which at the time he had committed it he had felt as delinquent, and which he could see now — if he really tried and he was prepared to try — as faulty… is this, perhaps, the primal comic situation?

He stuck it out. So did she. He was like a boy in his torn jersey and worn jeans. A very young man indeed was this brigand, the young chieftain. He looked tired, he looked anxious; he looked as if he needed to put his head on someone's shoulder and be told, There, there! He looked as if he needed a good feed and to have his sleep out for once. Is there any need to describe what happened? Emily smiled at last, drily, and for herself — for he could not see why she smiled, and she would not be disloyal to him in sharing it with me; she roused herself in response to the appeal which he had no idea he was making, the real one, for he went on logically explaining and exhorting. In a short time they were discussing the problems of their household like two young parents. Then off she went with him, and for some days I did not see her, and only by fits and starts did I come to understand the nature of this new problem, and what was so difficult about these particular 'kids'. Not only from Emily, did I learn: when I joined the people on the pavement everybody was talking about them; they were everyone's problem.

A new one. In understanding why this was, we householders had to come to terms with how far we had travelled from that state when we swapped tales and rumours about 'those people out there', about the migrating tribes and gangs. Once, and only a short time ago, to watch — and fearfully — a mob go past our windows was the limit of our descent into anarchy. Once, a few months ago, we had seen these gangs as altogether outside any kind of order. Now we wondered if and when we should join them. But above all the point was that when studied, when understood, their packs and tribes had structure, like those of primitive man or of animals, where in fact a strict order prevails. A short time with people living this sort of life, and one grasped the rules — all unwritten, of course, but one knew what to expect.

And this was precisely where these new children were different. No one knew what to expect. Before, the numerous children without parents attached themselves willingly to families or to other clans or tribes. They were wild and difficult, problematical, heartbreaking; they were not like the children of a stable society: but they could be handled inside the terms of what was known and understood.

Not so this new gang of 'kids'. Gangs, rather: soon we learned that there were others; it was not only in our district that such packs of very young children defined all attempts at assimilation. For they were very young. The oldest were nine, ten. They seemed never to have had parents, never to have known the softening of the family. Some had been born in the underground and abandoned. How had they survived? No one knew. But this was what these children knew how to do. They stole what they needed to live on, which was very little indeed. They wore clothes — just enough. They were… no, they were not like animals who have been licked and purred over, and, like people, have found their way to good behaviour by watching exemplars. They were not a pack either, but an assortment of individuals together only for the sake of the protection in numbers. They had no loyalty to each other, or, if so, a fitful and unpredictable loyalty. They would be hunting in a group one hour, and murdering one of their number the next. They ganged up on each other according to the impulse of the moment. There were no friendships among them, only minute-by-minute alliances, and they seemed to have no memory of what had happened even minutes before. There were thirty or forty in the pack in our neighbourhood, and for the first time I saw people showing the uncontrolled reactions of real panic. They were going to call the police, the army; they would have the children smoked out of the Underground…

A woman from the building I lived in had gone out with some food to see 'if anything could be done for them', and had met a couple on a foray. She had offered them food, which they had eaten then and there, tearing it and snapping and snarling at each other. She had waited, wanting to talk, to offer help, more food, even perhaps homes. They finished the food and went off, without looking at her. She had sat down: it was in an old warehouse near the Underground entrance, where grass and shrubs were growing up through the floor, a place both sheltered and open, so that she could run for it if she had to. And she did have to… as she sat there, she saw that all around her were the children, creeping closer. They had bows and arrows. She, unable to believe, as she put it, 'that they really were past hope' had talked quietly to them, of what she could offer, of what they risked living as they did. She understood, and with real terror, that they did not understand her. No, it was not that they did not understand speech, for they were communicating with each other in words that were recognisable, if only just — they were words, and not grunts and barks and screams. She sat on, knowing that an impulse would be enough to lift a bow up and send an arrow her way. She talked for as long as she could make herself. It was like, she said, talking into a vacuum — it was the most uncanny experience of her life. 'When I looked at them, they were only kids, that was what I couldn't get into my thick head, they were just children… but they are wicked. In the end I got up and left. And the thing that was worst of all was when one of them came running after me and tugged at my skirt. I couldn't believe it. I knew he would have stuck a knife into me as easily. He had his finger in his mouth, and he was pulling at my skirt. He was grinning. It was just an impulse, do you see? He didn't know what he was doing. The next minute there was a yell and they were all after me. I ran, I can tell you, and I only escaped by nipping into that old Park Hotel at the corner and I shook them off by barricading myself into a room on the fourth floor until dark.'