Moon Tiger

I never expected to see Lisa grow up. For years, when she was a child, I waited for the Bomb to drop. As the world lurched from Hungary to Suez, from Cuba to Vietnam, I was simply sitting it out. And Lisa’s existence sharpened the horror. What might happen to the whole of humanity became concentrated on Lisa’s small limbs, her unknowing eyes. I may have been an inadequate mother, but I was still a mother; through Lisa, I raged and feared. Publicly, I behaved like a rational responsible being – I argued the pros and cons of unilateralism, I wrote my column, I marched and demonstrated when I felt it appropriate. I kept to myself that curdling of the stomach I felt during the nine days of Cuba, the Missile Crisis … On some days I could not turn on the radio or pick up the newspaper, as though ignorance might insulate me from reality. Now? Now I no longer shrink from the newspapers. Why? The world is no safer than it was. But the monster is contained – and the daily expectation of calamity is too exhausting to sustain.

Giving presents is one of the most possessive things we do, did you realise that?

Wars are fought by children – conceived by their mad demonic elders but fought by boys. I say that now, caught out in surprise at how young people are, forgetting it is not they who are young but I who am old and dying.