many of them – were to be seen in our city. Or they could be the sons and daughters of ordinary people. Seen together, they were instantly unmistakable. Why? No, not only that a mass of young people in these days could mean nothing else. They had relinquished individuality, that was the point, individual judgement and responsibility, and this showed in a hundred ways, not least by one’s instinctive reaction in an encounter with them, which was always a sharp apprehension, for one knew that in a confrontation – if it came to that – there would be a pack judgement. They could not stand being alone for long; the mass was their home, their place of self-recognition. They were like dogs coming together in a park or a waste place. The sweet doggie belonging to the matron (her smart voluminous coiffure a defence against the fear visible in her pet, whose coat is an old lady’s thin curls showing the aged pink scalp but sheltered by a home-knitted scarlet wool coat); the great Afghan, made to range forty miles a day without feeling it, shut it into his little house, his little garden; the mongrel, bred from survivors; the spaniel, by nature a hunting dog – all these dear family companions, Togo and Bonzo and Fluff and Wolf, having sniffed each other’s bums and established precedence, off they go, a pack, a unit … this description is true of course of any group of people of any age anywhere, if their roles are not already defined for them in an institution. The gangs of ‘kids’ were only showing the way to their elders, who soon copied them; a ‘pack of youngsters’ nearly always, and increasingly, included older people, even families, but the label remained. That is how people spoke of the moving hordes – this last word at least was accurate before the end, when it seemed as if a whole population was on the move.
On this afternoon, with the trees above them heavy and full, the sun making a festival – it was September, and still warm – the pack settled down on the pavement, building a big fire and arranging their possessions in a heap with a guard stationed by it: two young boys armed with heavy sticks. The whole area had emptied, as always happened. The police were not to be seen; the authorities could not cope with this problem and did not want to: they were happy to be rid of these gangs who were in the process of taking elsewhere the problems they raised. Every ground-floor window for miles around was closed and the curtains drawn, but faces could be seen packing all the higher windows of the blocks around us. The young people stood around the fire in groups, and some couples had their arms around each other. A girl played a guitar. The smell of roasting meat was strong, and no one liked to think too much about it. I wondered if Hugo was safe. I had not become fond of this animal, but I was worried for Emily’s sake. Then I realised she was not in the living-room or the kitchen. I knocked on her bedroom door, and opened it: the piled stuffy nest of bedclothes she crept into for shelter against the world was there, but she was not, and Hugo was not. I remembered that in the mass of young people was a young girl in tight jeans and a pink shirt who was like Emily. But it had been Emily, and now, from the window, I watched her. She stood near the fire, a bottle in her hand, laughing, one of the gang, the crowd, the team, the pack. Standing close against her legs, fearful for himself, was the yellow animal: he had been hidden by the press of the crowd. I saw she was shouting, arguing. She retreated, her hand on Hugo’s head. Slowly she backed away, and then turned and ran, the animal bounding beside her: to see him thus even momentarily was a painful reminder of his power, his capacity, his range, now feebled by the little rooms that held his life and his movements. A great shout of raucous laughter went up from the young people; and from this it was evident they had been teasing her about Hugo. They had not really intended to kill him; they had been pretending that they would; she had believed them. All this meant they had not considered her as one of themselves, even potentially. Yet there were children as young as she among them. She had not challenged them as a child, no; but as a young girl, an equal – that must have been it, and they had not accepted her. All this came into my mind, had been reasoned out by me, by the time she came into the living-room, white, trembling, terrified. She sat down on the floor and put her arms around her Hugo, and hugged him close, swaying a little, back and forth, saying, or singing, or sobbing: ‘Oh no, no, no, dear Hugo, I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, I wouldn’t let them, don’t be so frightened.’ For he trembled as much as she did. He had his head on her shoulder, in their usual way of mutual comfort at such times.
But, in a moment, seeing I was there and that I had understood her rejection by the adult group she had challenged, she went red, she became angry. She pushed Hugo away and stood up, her face struggling for control. She became smiling and hard, and she laughed and said: ‘They are quite fun really, I don’t see why people say such nasty things about them.’ She went to the window to watch them out there lifting the bottles to their mouths, passing around hunks of food as they shared their meal. Emily was subdued: perhaps she was even afraid, wondering how she could have gone out to them at all. Yet every one of us, the hundreds of people at our windows, knew that, watching them, we were examining our own possibilities, our future.
Soon, without looking at me, Emily pushed Hugo into her bedroom and shut the door, and she was off out of the flat and across the road again. Now the light of the fire made a tight bright space under the singeing trees. All the lower windows were dark but reflected the blaze or a cold gleam of light from a half-moon that stood between two towers of flats. The upper windows were full of heads outlined against varying kinds and degrees of light. But some of the ordinary citizens had already joined the young people, curious to find out where they had come from, where they were going; Emily was not the only one. I must confess that I had more than once visited an encampment for an evening. Not in this part of the town: no, I was fearful of my neighbours, of their condemnation, but I had seen faces I knew from my own neighbourhood: we were all doing the same, from the same calculation.
I was not fearful for what might happen to Emily if she behaved sensibly. If she did not then I planned to cross the street and rescue her. I watched all night. Sometimes I was able to see her, sometimes not. Most of the time she was with a group of boys younger than the rest. She was the only girl, and she did behave foolishly, challenging them, asserting herself. But they were all drunk, and she was only one of the many ingredients of their intoxication.
There were people lying asleep on the pavement, their heads on a bundled sweater or on their forearms. They slept uncaring while the others milled about. This careless sleep, confident that the others would not tread on them, that they would be protected, said more than anything could about the kind of toughness these youngsters had acquired, the trust they had for each other. But general sleep was not what had been planned. The fire had died down. It would soon be morning. I saw that they were all gathering to move on. I had a bad half hour, wondering if Emily would leave with them. But after some embraces, loud and ribald, like the embraces and the jesting of tarts and soldiers when a regiment is moving off, and after she had run along beside them on the pavement for a few yards, she came slowly back – no, not to me, I knew better than to think that, but to Hugo. As she came in her face was visible for a moment in the light from the corridor, a lonely sorrowful face, and not at all the face of a child. But by the time she had reached the living-room the mask was on. ‘That was a nice evening, say what you like,’ she remarked. I had not said anything, and I said nothing now. ‘Apart from eating people, they are very nice, I think,’ she said, with an exaggerated yawn. ‘And do they eat people?’ ‘Well, I didn’t ask, but I’d expect so, wouldn’t you?’ She opened the door to her little room, and Hugo came out, his green eyes watchful on her face, and she said to him: ‘It’s all right, I haven’t done anything you wouldn’t have done, I promise you.’ And with this unhappy remark, and a hard little laugh, she went off, saying over her shoulder: ‘I could do worse than go off with them one of these days, that’s what I think. They enjoy themselves, at least.’
Well, I preferred that good night to many others we had exchanged when at ten o’clock she would cry, ‘Oh, it’s my bedtime, off I go’ – and a dutiful good night kiss hung between us, a ghost, like the invisible white gloves of Professor White.
It happened that during that early autumn, day after day, fresh gangs came through. And, day after day, Emily was with them. She did not ask if she could. And I wasn’t going to forbid her, for I knew she would not obey me. I had no authority. She was not my child. We avoided a confrontation. She was there whenever the pavements opposite were crowded
