There were seventy-three of us left. We were on an island which had been inhabited not long before. A dozen or so stone cottages remained, in quite good repair. There were sheep on the island, and some cattle. Both were very wild. We spent the first day getting our things off the boat when the tides made that possible. We thought the boat would break up, but it did not. It was jammed tight in the rocks. The island is about fifty miles long by twelve. We think it is off the west coast of Ireland. We do not know its name.
First, the problems of physical survival.
Warmth has remained the worst. We had good warm clothes and blankets-fifteen years ago. We have husbanded our sheep, and have made good sheepskin clothes; but fuel is always short. The island is covered by a low scrubby vegetation which makes poor fuel. We use dried seaweed and driftwood. But we burn fires for warmth only in the worst of winter cold and as a result we are hardy. Some of the old people died of cold in the first winters.
Or perhaps it was from the radiation. We lost another thirty people from undiagnosed diseases in the first three years. One of them was our doctor. They were all to do with bleeding-bleeding from the mouth, nose, eyes, anus, vagina, ears. Or skin became as if leprous and flesh fell away. Or people got dreadful headaches like migraine, but they didn’t go away like migraine. So they couldn’t stand it and killed themselves. From the start the people who got ill went away from the healthy to the other end of the island where they built huts of stone and lived out their time together.
A few went mad. But our experience did not make it easy for us to say that anyone was mad. We had to tie up one woman who tried to kill others. We tied her with ropes. Then she became sane and we released her. For the years till she died we had to tie her like an animal for weeks at a time and feed her like a baby. When she felt it coming on she would come and ask to be tied. We do not know what this disease is. Lynda would know, or someone like her with experience of mental hospitals.
Food has not been a problem. We luckily had seeds with us. One of us brought seeds ‘just in case’. They were the best thing we had, except for the warm clothes. We kill and eat the sheep also the cattle, but sparingly. We have milk for the children. We catch fish. We have tamed and bred a variety of duck.
We have built many more stone houses, in three separate places. We use clay mixed with some sand and crushed gulls’ eggs for mortar.
We have sometimes joked that a tourist of twenty years ago looking for the unspoiled life might spend days with us before noticing that perhaps there was something odd about us after all! We have all the necessities. But how long before the bad time was it possible for there to be a community without a dog. a cat, a donkey; without goats, horses, mules; without a canary in a cage, without tobacco, or sweets or sugar or tea or coffee?
Perhaps our hypothetical visitor in love with the unspoiled life might swallow all this, but what would he make of there being no radio, no motor car, no bicycle, no motor bike, no typewriter. I suppose there must have been communities without electricity for lighting, stoves and refrigerators? But none I am sure without oil. We use candles made from sheep’s fat for lighting, and soap made of fat and sand.
We have one lack which we regard as unlucky: after all, there might very well have been bees, but we have never found any. Some of us older ones crave for sweetness; the younger ones know ‘sweet’ from the taste of parsnips and beetroot, a taste among many. They suck bits of salt-encrusted rock. We explain to them the food on a modern table, machines, mass-produced clothes, traffic, skyscrapers and methods of war. We talk about libraries, recite poems and tell them stories from the countries of the world, describe orchestras, operas, ballet, a formal ball with dancing. They listen, gravely, taking it all in, knowing one day they will have to fit themselves to such things. Meanwhile they wear sheepskins or garments made out of old blankets; they have oxhide hand-cobbled shoes; their food is what stone-age men ate. And it is cooked on open hearths in aluminium cooking pots taken from the boat, prepared with the implements of a modern kitchen.
It is these children I want to tell you about.
When we arrived we had half a dozen babies, infants, two of them without parents, a dozen growing children, half parentless, some young adults who soon coupled off, as well as the middle-aged or old. Even the babies we came with are nearly grown-up: they are pairing off. They are seventeen, eighteen, and they take the bad taste out of one’s mouth that is still there from the grown-up babies of our dead civilization. Or perhaps these children would be better off if they stayed here? Considering the small total number of people we landed with, we have given birth to a lot of children. And none of them have died. They are very healthy. Or we think they are. We don’t know. Remember that we have no way of interpreting some of our facts. We have no geiger counters, no methods at all of measuring fall-out or possible pollution of sea and land. We haven’t got so much as a rain gauge or a thermometer or a barometer; we only know that some insects like wet, others dry, clouds have certain habits, and birds migrate at certain seasons. Just as we see that among insects and birds and fish there are an awful lot of abnormalities. That is, it’s how we older ones see it. The young ones look at it differently: that kind of bird is sometimes like this and sometimes like that. When a new baby is born we stand and wait for the first glimpse of it, and when it comes in the shape of the old print it is as if we had hauled something alive and safe out of a holocaust. We have had no surprises so far. That is no physical shocks: limbs, eyes, noses, have been in the right place.
I saw yesterday a girl of sixteen expecting her first baby kneel on a stretch of sand to look at a washed-up fish. The fish was as it were double-no, not a Siamese twin-fish. It was one fish enclosed in another fish, the enclosing shape being of a finer subtler transparency, and it was hard to say whether the imprisoned fish was dying because of being shut in the embracing fish, or whether the delicate outer fish found its inner burden too much for it and so was dying.
But for all we know such fish may now be the ordinary inhabitants of other oceans where they flourish and only have to die if they stray into our cold northern waters … you think I’m joking perhaps? Remember that when we began our stay here Britain’s air and waters were newly poisoned, and the seas around her coasts. Remember that the disasters along the American eastern seaboard were new. We did not know how badly the world had hurt itself. We still don’t know. We have only our senses to rely on. And among us are only mediocre seers and listeners. At first when we listened in (and this was true for months and months after the disaster) it was to a screeching, wailing, howling bedlam of sound as if all humanity begged for mercy and help. And it is still too easy to plug into this band now. We had no idea, still don’t know, if the event in Britain had triggered off more wars elsewhere, and if perhaps there were now more than two sick areas. We did not know if we could trust the air that blew over us, the seas that surrounded us. For weeks, for months, we were cramped in a state of only just controlled terror, with each breath a possible murderer-saved from panic only because we had so much to do to keep ourselves fed and warmed.
There are small streams on the island. We watched them for the state of their fish and their birds. We kept watch on the sea. Nothing happened. Yet we knew that while the winds blew nearly always from south-west and west towards east and north-east across the British Isles, it would not be long before the winds must mix whatever radioactivity there was into everybody’s breath. We all watched our health, minute to minute, the health of our children, the new births. Many people died-then these first deaths stopped, so we believed that they were from the actual immersion in the atmosphere at the time of the explosions.
While they were still dying, we saw one day that all the coast on the west and south-west was heaped with dead and dying fish and seals. We did not allow one drop of sea water to touch any one of us after that, nor did we eat fish or touch seawood or go near the edges of the sea until one day some children watching from a point that looked over the western
sea came running to say that some seals were playing there.
During that year we hit the depths of our fear, a lowering depression which made it hard for us not to simply walk into that deadly sea and let ourselves drown there. But it was also during that year when we became aware of a sweet high loveliness somewhere, like a flute played only just within hearing. We all felt it. We talked about it, thinìdng it was a sign that we must be dying. It was as if all the air was washed with a bright promise. Of what, love? Joy? It was as if the face of the world’s horror could be turned around to show the smile of an angel. It was during this year that many of us walking alone or in groups along the cliffs or beside the inland streams met and talked to people who were not of our company, nor like any people we had known-though some of us had dreamed of them. It was as if the veil between this world and another had worn so thin that earth people and people from the sun could walk together and be companions. When this time which so terrible and so marvellous had gone by some of us began to wonder if we had suffered from a mass hallucination. But we knew we had not. It was from that time, because of what we were told, that we took heart and held on to our belief in a future for our race.
And, from that time, we put aside thoughts of being rescued. We knew that there wasn’t much prospect of it, but now we actively did not want it. We knew that aircraft flew over Britain to see if that silent chamelhouse was coming to life again-how? Trees putting out shapes of leaf and fruit no one has ever seen? Toads the size of bulldogs? Dwarf or giant children born from despairing poisoned matings as Britain died? Crystals breeding from the sides of mountains and moving like men? We sometimes saw these aircraft flying across the sky to the south. We knew that ships passed not far off: we saw their smoke.
But there was no reason why anyone should come to our island. On maps it would probably be marked as once inhabited and now deserted. Quite possibly the stone huts we found dated from some outpost in the last war. If an aeroplane did fly over it, they wouldn’t see anything unless they most particularly looked, and flew low to do it. Smoke comes from our chimneys for three months in the depths of the cold when there is usually a low thin cloud. Our cooking is done communally and economically once a day. We wear sheepskins and move among whitish-grey rocks on a greyish earth. If a man were to be seen in a patch of green oats or among the vegetables, he would look like a stone or a sheep.
If we wished to be rescued I dare say we could be: we could bum all our reserves of fuel to make smoke signals. Or I could talk definitely instead of vaguely to a man with whom I have a clear connection in Canada. He’s a trapper, and his life not far off ours. I suppose that’s why I can pick him up easily. But we have decided to bring our children up away from what is going on in the world. We regard every year as a year of grace, which will make them stronger and keep them safe and away from the people who would like to harm them. Also we were told that there would be people ready to look after them when we are rescued.
Some of them are very vulnerable: that is, if the world is still as it was?
You’ll remember that half a century ago now, when you were a child, a novel was written about some children bora all the same time with above-normal capacities? Where this author made a mistake was, imagining children being bora the same as each other, with the same powers, communicating through exactly the same channels.
Our children, particularly those born later, grow more and more diverse. If an organism is shocked by a dose of sudden radiation (as they used to bombard atoms in the laboratories with neutrons to change their structure) then perhaps it may become ill and bleed, turn idiot, or develop in any one of a number of unknown ways?
Three of our little ones are idiots. Or we think they are. They look normal enough, and they sleep and eat well. But they don’t talk, at six years old. Yet it seems that they communicate with each other. They go off together quietly, sit in the sun, play with pebbles or with flowers and are content-in silence. When the time comes for them to rejoin their own families they do, without complaint. But it seems that their families-all of us-are strangers to them. They don’t much want to be with us. They aren’t deaf, or dumb-they know words. We think they are subnormal, but who can tell?
Then there are some who ‘hear’ as none of us or any of those we worked with-even Lynda-could. When they were tiny they often seemed to be listening to music. Once or twice I caught a fragment through them. They would lie and smile, listening. Later they tuned into the noises of terror and misery that are so loud now, and they cried, frightened. Later they began asking for explanations. It was then we realized that before the Catastrophe all human children were introduced as soon as they understood anything at all, to the fact that they were born into a world of murderous animals. But they were broken in gently, corrupted bit by bit. But our children can’t understand. It is not true that small children want to hurt each other, that they naturally behave as grown-up people do. They have to be taught to do it. Or the children here do not. It is so rare for them to hurt or fight that one small boy, who was ‘born different’ (their phrase), was always off by himself away from the others because they would not let him behave as he wanted. He grew up with grown-ups: we see him as a throw-back. The children regarded him as some sort of unfortunate born with the need to quarrel, as if he might have had a hare-lip.
Another group of children, when they were tiny, used to shut their eyes tight and laugh, and did not want to open them again. They were watching the pictures on their lids. This capacity faded as they grew older, but not entirely. Between the years of six or seven and twelve or so, these capacities seem to go into abeyance. But they come back if not discouraged. I wonder how many small children in the old days had this capacity but lost it because they were laughed out of it or punished for ‘telling lies’?
The children who ‘see’ and the children who ‘hear’ tend to stay in their separate groups when they are very small. Later they come together and share what they have. Some have both, but one thing tends to be stronger than another.
I merely record these things. I am not explaining or defining. It is possible that everything I say about these children is true only for this time on this island. It is a place with a rare fine air, a ‘high’ air, if I can use that word. Sometimes it seems that inside ordinary light shimmers another kind of brilliance, but very subtle and delicate. And the texture of our lives, eating, sleeping, being together, has a note in it that can’t be quite caught, as if we were all of us a half-tone or a bridging chord in some symphony being played out of earshot with icebergs and forests and mountains for instruments. There is a transparency, a crystalline gleam.
It is the children who have it, who are sensitive to it-being with them means we have to be quick and sensitive ourselves, as far as we can be … yet these children were for some time brought up with not even books or means to learn writing.
But when they do leave here and come back to ordinary life, they will have learned enough reading and writing, because of acquisitions we made about four years ago, not to seem ill-equipped with ordinarily educated people-if they still exist.
I said the boat was rammed between rocks. It began to break up in the winters’ storms. As it broke, we took off the machinery and the timbers. There were three men with us who knew how to build a small boat out of the big one. But it was very simple, good for not much more than rowing around the coast. In a spell of fine weather that looked as if it would last two men went south-east to where we saw clouds rising out of the sea, as if over a piece of land. While they were gone we had a fire burning day and night on a high place to guide them back; they had no instruments, these were all broken. They found an island. They think it is about eighty or a hundred miles away. Again, it had been inhabited, but this time it looked as if people had fled from it at the time of the Catastrophe, for there were all kinds of furniture and goods in the houses. The name of this island is Huig-we have never heard of it. There was a tiny shop, which was also a post office. In it were pencils and pa
per. There were magazines too, and some books, but the books were not worth bringing back. They did not touch things like sugar and jam and tea, for fear of contamination. There were radios in some of the houses, but they did not work. Bicycles, a motor bike, a typewriter-in the end they decided against all these, for there were no supplies for them. In the end they brought back only some plates and cutlery, some potatoes that had gone wild, for we had never had potatoes, a great lack; and some chickens which were wild but were healthy. There were a few clothes, like jackets and sweaters, but not much clothing had been left.
These they filled the boat with and set off back north-west, on a flat blue sea. It did not stay flat. They came streaking back with a hard wind behind their tiny sail which had not been made for more than a light breeze. They only just managed to land on our beach near where we had the fire burning. They, and we, had had an hour or two when we thought they would be swept past our island and out towards the Arctic. We have talked about trying again one summer in good weather, and perhaps using Huig as a base for a further expedition. But we haven’t yet.
So we have taught the children (not the three who may be sub-, or super-normal) to read and write. They are arts that seem useless to them. We tell them they must learn for when they return to ordinary life. They ask what they can get by reading. Remember that magazines came back on the boat from Huig, and which although we were excited when we saw them, we wanted to hide from the children: we were ashamed. And the children were polite about them. I’ve left what we call ‘the new children’ until the end. There are seven of them, and they are between four and five. We didn’t see at once that they were extraordinary. On the contrary, they are superlatively ordinary, if I can put it like that. They spoke, walked, played, as normal children do. They all both ‘see’ and ‘hear’. These being qualities we understand, we can recognize them: but what qualities do they have which we don’t know anything about? There are three girls and four boys. One little boy is black, the first child of the child that was left in my care on that day when we were waiting to be rescued. One is brown, we think perhaps Moorish or Arab, or with something of the sort in his heredity: one of his parents is Portuguese. There are three flaxen-haired babes and two brown-eyed with light brown hair.
The Four-Gated City Page 81