The Night Watch (19 page)

She moved closer to Julia's desk. It was, like everything of Julia's, untidy, the blotting-paper over-inked, a pot of treasury-tags upturned, a heap of papers mixed with dirty handkerchiefs and envelopes, dried apple peel and tape. In the middle of it all was one of Julia's cheap blue Century notebooks.
Sicken 2
, she had put on its cover: it held her plans for the novel she was working on now, a novel set in a nursing-home and called
Sicken and So Die
… Helen had come up with that title. She knew all the ins and outs of the complicated plot. She opened the book and looked inside it, and the apparently cryptic jottings-
Inspector B to Maidstone – check RT
, and
Nurse Pringle – syrup, not needle!!
-made perfect sense to her. There was nothing here that she didn't understand. It was all as ordinary and as familiar to her as her own lopsided face.

Why, then, did Julia seem to recede from her, the closer she drew to objects like this? And where the hell was Julia now? She opened the notebook again and began to look more desperately through its pages, as if searching for clues. She picked up an inky handkerchief and shook it out. She looked beneath the blotting-pad. She opened drawers. She lifted a paper, an envelope, a book-

Underneath the book was the
Radio Times
from a fortnight before, folded open at the article about Julia.

URSULA WARING introduces Julia Standing's thrilling new novel-

And there, of course, was the little photograph. Julia had gone to a Mayfair man to have it done, and Helen had gone with her, 'for the fun of it'… The afternoon had been no fun at all. Helen had felt like a dowdy schoolgirl accompanying a good-looking friend to the hairdresser's-holding Julia's bag while the man made her pose and move about; having to watch while he smartened her hair, tilted her jaw, took her hands in his, the better to place them… The finished pictures were flattering, though Julia pretended not to like them; they made her look glamorous-but not glamourous, Helen thought, in the way she really, effortlessly was-as she lounged about the flat, say, in her unironed trousers and patched shirts. They made her look
marriagable
; Helen didn't know if there was any better term. And she had thought, in great dismay, of all the ordinary people who must have picked up the
Radio Times
and opened it at Julia's face and said to themselves, idly and admiringly, 'What a handsome woman!' She'd pictured them as so many grubby fingers, rubbing down the image on a coin; or as quarrelling birds, pecking at Julia, taking her away, crumb by crumb…

She had been secretly glad when that issue had gone out of date and been replaced by another. Now, however, she looked at the magazine-at Julia's picture, at Ursula Waring's name-and all the old anxiety rose up in her as if fresh. She got into a squat, and closed her eyes, and bowed her head until her brow met the edge of Julia's desk; she moved her face so that the edge ground into her and hurt her.
I'd suffer more pain than this
, she thought as she did it,
to be sure of Julia!
She thought of the things she'd readily give up-the tip of a finger, a toe, a day from the end of her life. She thought there ought to be a system-a sort of medieval system-whereby people could earn the things they passionately wanted by being flogged or branded or cut. She almost wished that Julia had failed. She thought the words:
I wish she'd failed!
What a little shit she must be! How the hell had she got to this place?-this place where she wished things like that on Julia?
But it's only
, she said wretchedly to herself,
because I love her
-

As she said the words, she heard the rattling of Julia's key in the lock of their front door. She scrambled to her feet, switched off the light and dashed downstairs; she went into the kitchen and pretended to be doing something at the sink-turning on the tap, filling a glass with water and emptying it out again. She didn't look round. She was thinking,
Don't make a fuss
.
Everything's all right
.
Be perfectly natural
.
Be quite calm
.

Then Julia came to her, and kissed her; and she smelt wine and cigarette smoke on Julia's mouth, and saw the bright, flushed, pleased expression on her face. And then her heart-for all that she was trying so desperately to hold back its jaws-her heart shut tight inside her, like a trap.

Julia said, 'Darling! I'm so sorry.'

Helen spoke coldly. 'What are you sorry for?'

'It's so late! I meant to be back hours ago. I had no idea.'

'Where have you been?'

Julia turned away. She said lightly, 'I've been with Ursula, that's all. She invited me over for afternoon tea. Somehow, you know how it is, the tea turned into supper-'

'Afternoon tea?'

'Yes,' said Julia. She was heading back into the hall, taking off her coat and hat.

'That's not like you, to cut into your working day like that.'

'Well, I'd got heaps done earlier on. I worked like a demon, from nine until four! When Ursula rang, I thought-'

'I called you at ten to two. Were you working then?'

Julia didn't answer for a moment. She said at last, from out in the hall, 'Ten to two? How very precise. I suppose I must have been.'

'You don't remember the phone ringing?'

'Probably I was downstairs.'

Helen went out to her. 'You heard Ursula Waring's ring, though.'

Julia was tidying her hair at the hall mirror. She said, as if patiently, 'Helen, don't do this.' She turned and looked, frowning, into Helen's face. 'What's the matter with your forehead? It's all red. Look, here.'

She came to Helen, her hand outstretched. Helen hit the hand away. 'I had no idea where the hell you were! Couldn't you have left me a note, even?'

'I didn't think to leave a note. One doesn't suppose, when one goes out to lunch-'

Helen pounced. 'To lunch? Not afternoon tea, then, after all?'

Julia's flushed cheeks grew pinker. She put down her head and moved past Helen into the bedroom. 'I just said
lunch
as an example. For God's sake!'

'I don't believe you,' said Helen, following her in. 'I think you've been out with Ursula Waring all day.' No reply. 'Well, have you?'

Julia had gone to the dressing-table and was getting herself a cigarette. Catching Helen's bullying tone, she paused with the cigarette at her lips, and narrowed her eyes, and shook her head, as if in distaste and disbelief. She said, 'Did this sort of thing seem flattering, once? Did it, ever?' She turned, struck a match and coolly lit the cigarette. When she turned back, her face had changed, become set, as if carved from coloured marble or a length of blemishless wood. She took the cigarette from her mouth and said, in a level, warning tone: '
Don't
, Helen.'

'Don't what?' asked Helen, as if amazed. But a part of her, too, was cringing from the words, utterly shamed by the monster she was making of herself. 'Don't what, Julia?'

'Don't start on all this- Christ! I'm not hanging around in here to listen to this.' She pushed her way past Helen and went back into the kitchen.

Helen went after her. 'You're not hanging around, you mean, to let me catch you out in a lie. There's a supper for you, but I don't suppose you'll need it. I suppose Ursula Waring took you to some chic restaurant. Full of BBC types, I expect. How jolly for you. I had to have dinner all on my own. I stood right here, at the bloody oven, and ate it with my apron on.'

The look of distaste reappeared on Julia's face; but she laughed, too. She said, 'Well, why for God's sake did you do that?'

Helen didn't know. It seemed absurd to her, now. If only she could laugh along with Julia. If only she could say,
Oh Julia, what a fool I'm being!
She felt like a person fallen overboard from a ship. She looked at Julia smoking her cigarette, putting the kettle on to boil: it was like seeing people doing ordinary things, strolling, sipping drinks, on the ship's deck. There was still time, she thought, to put up her hand, to call out,
Help!
There was still time, and the ship would turn for her and she would be saved…

But she didn't call; and in another moment there was no time at all, the ship had accelerated away and she was alone and helpless in a flat grey disc of sea. She started to thrash. She started to bluster. She spoke in a mad sort of hiss. It was all right for Julia, she said. Julia did just as she pleased. If Julia supposed Helen didn't know what she got up to, behind Helen's back, while Helen was at work- If Julia thought she could make a fool of her- Helen had known, from the moment she'd got home, that Julia was out with Ursula Waring! Did Julia imagine-? And so on. She'd pushed away that grubby, grinning jack-in-the-box, earlier on. Now it had sprung up again and its voice had become her own.

Julia, meanwhile, moved stonily around the kitchen, making tea. 'No, Helen,' she said, wearily, from time to time, 'that's not how it was,' and, 'Don't be ridiculous, Helen.'

'When was it arranged, anyway?' Helen asked now.

'God! What?'

'This
tryst
of yours, with Ursula Waring.'

'
Tryst
-! She called me up, some time this morning. Does it matter?'

'Apparently it does matter, if you have to go creeping and sneaking about. If you have to
lie
to me-'

'Well, what do you expect?' cried Julia, losing her temper at last, putting down her cup so that the tea spilled. 'It's because I know you'll behave like this! You twist everything so. You expect me to be guilty. It makes me appear to be guilty, even- Christ! Even to myself!' She lowered her voice, mindful, even in her anger, of the couple downstairs. She went on, 'If every time I meet some woman, make a friend- God! I got a call, the other day, from Daphne Rees. She asked me to have lunch with her-just an ordinary lunch!-and I said no, I was too busy; because I knew what
you
'd imagine. Phyllis Langdale wrote to me a month ago. No, you didn't know that, did you? She said how nice it had been to meet us both, at Caroline's supper-party. I thought of writing back and telling her what hell you'd given me over it in the taxi home! What a letter
that
would have made! “Dear Phyllis, I'd love to have drinks with you some time, but you see the thing is my girlfriend's what they call a jealous type. If you were married, or extremely ugly, or some sort of cripple, I dare say things would be different. But a single even vaguely attractive woman-my dear, I couldn't risk it! Never mind if the girl's not queer; apparently I'm so irrestistible that if she's not a raving Lesbian when she sits down with me for a gin and French, she will be when she stands up again!”'

'Shut up,' said Helen. 'You're making me out to be a fool! I'm not a fool. I know what you're like, how you are. I've seen you, with women-'

'You think I'm interested in other women?' Julia laughed. 'Christ, if only!'

Helen looked at her. 'What does that mean?'

Julia turned her head. 'Nothing. Nothing, Helen… It always amazes me, that's all, that it should be you who has this fucking-this fucking fixation. Is there something about affairs? Is it like-I don't know-Catholicism? One only spots the other Romans when one's practised it oneself?'

She met Helen's gaze, and looked away again. They stood in silence for a moment. Then, 'Work it up your arse,' said Helen. She turned, and went back downstairs to the sitting-room.

She spoke quietly, and walked calmly; but the violence of her feelings appalled her. She couldn't sit, she couldn't be still. She drank the rest of her gin and water, and poured herself another glassful. She lit herself a cigarette-but put it out almost at once. She stood at the mantelpiece, trembling; she was afraid that, at any second, she might go shrieking and whirling about the house, pulling books from their shelves, ripping up cushions. She thought she could easily take hold of the hair on her own head and start tearing it out. If someone had handed her a knife, she would have jabbed it into herself.

After a minute she heard Julia going up to her study and closing its door. Then there was silence. What was she doing? What could she be doing, that she needed to close the door on it like that? She might be using the telephone… The more Helen thought about it, the more certain she began to feel that that was what Julia was doing. She was calling up Ursula Waring-calling her up to complain, to laugh, to make some fresh arrangement to meet… It was terrible, thought Helen, not to know! She couldn't bear it. She went with diabolical stealth to the bottom of the stairs, and held her breath, trying to hear…

Then she caught sight of herself in the hall mirror: saw her flushed, contorted face; and felt filled with disgust. The disgust was worse than anything. She put up a hand to cover her eyes, and went back into the sitting-room. She didn't think of going up to Julia. It seemed natural to her, now, that Julia should loathe her, should want to turn away from her; she loathed herself, she wished she could turn away from her own skin. She felt utterly trapped, suffocated. She stood for a moment not knowing what to do with herself, then went to the window and put back the curtain. She looked at the the street, the garden, the houses with their peeling stucco façades. She saw a world of devious things out to trick and mock her. A man and a woman walked by, hand in hand, smiling: it seemed to her that they must have a secret, to safety and ease and trust, that she had lost.

She sat, and switched off the lamp. Down in the basement the man, the woman and their daughter called out, from room to room; the girl started playing a recorder, going over and over the same halting nursery tune. There was no sound from the rooms upstairs until, at ten o'clock or so, Julia's door was opened and she went quietly down to the kitchen. Helen followed her movements with horrible distinctness: heard her pass back and forth from the kitchen to the bedroom; saw her come down to use the lavatory, go to the bathroom, wash her face; saw her go up again to the bedroom, switching off the lights behind her as she went; heard her moving across the creaking bedroom floor as she took off her clothes and got into bed… She didn't attempt to speak to Helen, or come to the sitting-room at all, and Helen didn't call out. The bedroom door was pushed to, but not closed: the light from the reading-lamp showed in the stair-well for a quarter of an hour, and then was extinguished.