And then, suddenly, it was all over.
It was solved: June left.
She got herself out of the sofa one day and was on the pavement again. Why? I don't know. I never knew what moved June. At any rate, in the afternoons she was again with the crowds out there. She did not seem to be more part of one group than another: her flat, pale, effaced little person was to be seen as much in the other clans as in the one that Gerald held together. She was seen, but only once or twice, in the women's group. And then the women's group had gone and June had gone with them.
And yes, we did not believe it, did not even, at first, know what had happened. June was not in my flat. She was not on the pavement. She was not in Gerald's house. Emily ran frantically about, asking questions. At that point she was stunned. June had left, just like that, without even leaving a message? Yes, that's what it looked like: she had been heard to say, so someone reported, that she felt like moving on.
It was this business of June's not having said goodbye, of not leaving a message, that Emily could not swallow. June had not given any indication at all? — we talked it over, the crumbs we had between us, and at last we were able to offer to the situation the fact that June had said on the day she left: 'Well, ta, I'll be seeing you around, I expect.' But she had not directed this particularly, to Emily or to me. How could we have understood this was her farewell before going away for good?
It was the inconsequence of the act that shocked. June did not believe we were worth the effort of saying goodbye? She had not said a real goodbye because she thought we would stop her? No, we could not believe that was it: she would have stayed as readily as she had left. The shocking truth was that June did not feel she was worth the effort: her leaving us, she must have felt, was of no importance. In spite of the fact that Emily was so devoted, and anxious and loving? Yes, in spite of that. June did not value herself. Love, devotion, effort, could only pour into her, a jug without a bottom, and then pour out, leaving no trace. She deserved nothing, was owed nothing, could not really be loved and therefore could not be missed. So she had gone. Probably one of the women had been kind to her, and to this little glow of affection June had responded, as she had to Emily's. She had gone because she could leave one day as well as another. It did not matter, she did not matter. At last we agreed that the energetic and virile woman who led that band had captured the listless June with her energy, at a time when Emily did not have enough to go around.
Emily could not take it in.
And then, she began to cry. At first the violent shocked tears, the working face and blank staring eyes of a child, which express only: What, is this happening to me! It's impossible! It isn't fair! — Floods of tears, noisy sobs, exclamations of anger and disgust, but all the time the as it were painted eyes, untouched: Me, it is me sitting here, to whom this frightful injustice has occurred… a great fuss and a noise and a crying out, this kind of tears, but hardly intolerable, not painful, not a woman's tears…
Which came next.
Emily, eyes shut, her hands on her thighs, rocked herself back and forth and from side to side, and she was weeping as a woman weeps, which is to say as if the earth were bleeding. I nearly said as if the earth had decided to have a good cry — but it would be dishonest to take the edge off it. Listening, I certainly would not have been able to do less than pay homage to the rock-bottom quality of the act of crying as a grown woman cries.
Who else can cry like that? Not an old woman. The tears of old age can be miserable, can be abject, as bad as anything you like. But they are tears that know better than to demand justice, they have learned too much, they do not have that abysmal quality as of blood ebbing away. A small child can cry as if all the lonely misery of the universe is his alone — it is not the pain in a woman's crying that is the point, no, it is finality of the acceptance of a wrong. So it was, is now and must ever be, say those closed oozing eyes, the rocking body, the grief. Grief — yes, an act of mourning, that's it. Some enemy has been faced, has been tackled, but a battle has been lost, all the chips are down, everything is spent, nothing is left, nothing can be expected… yes, in spite of myself, every word I put down is on the edge of farce, somewhere there is a yell of laughter — just as there is when a woman cries in precisely that way. For, in life, there is often a yell of laughter, which is every bit as intolerable as the tears. I sat there, I went on sitting, watching Emily the eternal woman at her task of weeping. I wished I could go away, knowing it would make no difference to her whether I was there or not. I would have liked to give her something, comfort, friendly arms — a nice cup of tea? (Which in due time I would offer.) No, I had to listen. To grief, to the expression of the intolerable. What on earth, the observer has to ask — husband, lover, mother, friend, even someone who has at some point wept those tears herself, but particularly, of course, husband or lover, 'What in the name of God can you possibly have expected of me, of life, that you can now cry like that? Can't you see that it is impossible, you are impossible, no one could ever have been promised enough to make such tears even feasible… can't you see that?' But it is no use. The blinded eyes stare through you, they are seeing some ancient enemy which is, thank heavens, not yourself. No, it is Life or Fate or Destiny, some such force which has struck that woman to the heart, and for ever will she sit, rocking in her archaic and dreadful grief, and the sobs which are being torn out of her are one of the pillars on which everything has to rest. Nothing less could justify them.
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?