The Memoirs of a Survivor Read Free Page B

stood, cigarette in hand, in the mid-morning hour, looking through drifting smoke at the sunlight laid there on the wall, and I thought: Hello! I’ve been through there, of course I have. How did I manage to forget? And again the wall dissolved and I was through. There were more rooms than I had suspected the first time. I had a strong sense of that, though I did not see them all. Nor did I, on that occasion, see the man or the woman in overalls. The rooms were empty. To make them habitable, what work needed to be done! Yes, I could see that it would take weeks, months … I stood there marking fallen plaster, the corner of a ceiling stained with damp, dirty or damaged walls. Yet it was on that morning when I was beginning to understand how much work needed to be done that I saw, just for the ghost of a second - well, what? But I can hardly say. Perhaps it was more of a feeling than something seen. There was a sweetness, certainly - a welcome, a reassurance. Perhaps I did see a face, or the shadow of one. The face I saw clearly later was familiar to me, but it is possible that that face, seen as everything ended, appears in my memory in this place, this early second visit: it had reflected itself back, needing no more to use as a host or as a mirror than the emotion of sweet longing, which hunger was its proper air. This was the rightful inhabitant of the rooms behind the wall. I had no doubt of it then or later. The exiled inhabitant; for surely she could not live, never could have lived, in that chill empty shell full of dirty and stale air?
    When I again knew myself to be standing in my living-room, the cigarette half burned down, I was left with the conviction of a promise, which did not leave me no matter how difficult things became later, both in my own life, and
    in these hidden rooms.
    • • • • •
    The child was left with me in this way. I was in the kitchen, and, hearing a sound, went into the living-room, and saw a man and a half-grown girl standing there. I did not know either of them, and advanced with the intention of clearing up a mistake. The thought in my mind was that I must have left my front door open. They turned to face me. I remember how I was even then, and at once, struck by the bright, hard, nervous smile on the girl’s face. The man -middle-aged, ordinarily dressed, quite unremarkable in every way - said: ‘This is the child.’ He was already on the way out. He had laid his hand on her shoulder, had smiled and nodded to her, was turning away.
    I said: ‘But surely…’
    ‘No, there’s no mistake. She’s your responsibility.’
    He was at the door.
    ‘But wait a minute…’
    ‘She is Emily Cartright. Look after her.’And he had gone.
    We stood there, the child and I, looking at each other. I remember the room had a wash of sun: it was still morning. I was wondering how the two had got in, but this already seemed irrelevant, since the man had gone. I now ran to the window: a street with a few trees along the pavement, a bus-stop with its familiar queue of people waiting, waiting; and on the wide pavement opposite, underneath the trees there, some children from the Mehtas’ flat upstairs playing with a ball - dark-skinned boys and girls, all dazzling white shirts, crisp pink and blue dresses, white teeth, gleaming hair. But the man I was looking for - not a sign.
    I turned back to the child; but now I took my time over it, and was wondering what to say, how to present myself, how to handle her - all the pathetic little techniques and tricks of our self-definition. She was watching me, carefully, closely: the thought came into my mind that this was the expert assessment of possibilities by a prisoner observing a new jailer. Already my heart was heavy: anxiety! My intelligence was not yet making much of what was happening.
    ‘Emily?’ I said tentatively, hoping that she would choose to answer the questions in my mind.
    ‘Emily Mary Cartright,’ she said, in a manner that matched