Emily of course had marked my appearance on the pavement, and was assuming I was ready to migrate. And how attractive it was there with those masses of vigorous people, all so resourceful in the ways of this hand-to-mouth world, so easy and inventive in everything they did. What a relief it would be to throw off, in one movement like a shrug of the shoulders, all the old ways, the old problems — these, once one took a step across the street to join the tribes would dissolve, lose import — ance. Housekeeping now could be just as accurately described as cavekeeping, and was such a piddling, fiddly business. The shell of one's life was a setting for 'every modern convenience'; but inside the shell one bartered and captured and even stole, one burned candles and huddled over fires made of wood split with an axe. And these people, these tribes, were going to turn their backs on it all, and simply take to the roads. Yes, of course they would have to stop somewhere, find an empty village, and take it over; or settle where the farmers that survived would let them, in return for their labour or for acting as private armies. They would have to make for themselves some sort of order again, even if it was no more than that appropriate to outlaws living in and off a forest in the north. Responsibilities and duties there would have to be, and they would harden and stultify, probably very soon. But in the meantime, for weeks, months, perhaps with luck even a year or so, an earlier life of mankind would rule: disciplined, but democratic — when these people were at their best even a child's voice was listened to with respect; all property worries gone; all sexual taboos gone — except for the new ones, but new ones are always more bearable than the old; all problems shared and carried in common. Free. Free, at least from what was left of 'civilisation' and its burdens. Infinitely enviable, infinitely desirable, and how I longed simply to close my home up and go. But how could I? There was Emily. As long as she stayed, I would. I began again to talk tentatively of the Dolgellys, of how we would ask for a shed there and build it up and make it into a home… June as well, of course. For from the frantic anxiety Emily showed, I could see it would not be possible for Emily to be separated from June.
And Hugo? The truth is she did not have time for him, and I was thinking that if he had been what kept her here before, this was not true now.
I believe that he gave up hope altogether during that time when Emily was hardly ever with us, and only flew in to see June. One day I saw him sitting openly at the window, all of his ugly stubbornly yellow self visible to anyone who chose to look. It was a challenge, or indifference. He was seen, of course. Some youngsters crossed the street to look at the yellow animal sitting there, gazing steadily back at them with his cat's eyes. It occurred to me that some of the youngest there, the real children of five or six years old, might never have seen a cat or a dog as a 'pet' to love and make part of a family.
'Oh, he is ugly,' I heard, and saw the children make faces and drift off. No, there would be nothing to help Hugo when the time came for him; no one could say: 'Oh don't kill him, he's such a handsome beast.'
Well… Emily came in one evening and saw the blaze of yellow at the window. Hugo was vividly there, illuminated by a flare from the late sunset, and by the candles. She was shocked, knowing at once why he should have chosen to disobey the instincts of self-protection.
'Hugo,' she said, 'oh my dear Hugo…' He kept his back to her, even when she put her hands on either side of his neck and brought her face down into his fur. He would not soften, and she knew he was saying that she had given him up, and did not care for him.
She coaxed him off the high seat and sat with him on the floor. She began to cry, an irritable, irritating, sniffing sort of weeping that was from exhaustion. I could see that. So could June, who watched without moving. And so could Hugo. He licked her hand at last and lay himself patiently down, saying to her by the way he did this: It is to please you. I don't care to live if you don't care for me.
Now Emily was all conflict, all anxiety. She kept rushing back and forth from my flat to that house, between there and the pavement. June, she had to see June, to bring her the bits of food she liked, to make the gesture of getting her into bed at a decent hour, for, left to herself, June would be in that sofa-corner until four or six in the morning, doing nothing, except perhaps to mark the interior movements of her illness, whatever that might be. And Hugo, she had to make a point" of fussing over Hugo, of loving him. It was as if she had set herself the duty of paying attention to Hugo, measured, like a medicine or a food. And there was myself, the dry old guardian, the mentor — a pull of some sort, I suppose. There were the children, always sending after her if she stayed away from that house for too long. She was worn out; she was cross and sharp and harried and it was a misery to see her at it.