The Night Watch (33 page)

Helen turned her head, and met her look. She said, 'You're tight.'

'I belive I am. Here's a thought. Get tight too.'

'Get tight, for forty-five minutes with you? Then have to sleep it off all by myself?'

'Come over to the station with us when we go,' said Kay. She raised and lowered her eyebrows. 'I'll show you the back of my ambulance.'

'You nit,' said Helen, laughing. 'What on earth's the matter with you?'

'I'm in love, that's all.'

'I say, you two,' said Binkie loudly, handing Helen a glass. 'If I'd known this was going to turn into a petting-session, I might not have come. Stop making wallflowers of Mickey and me, will you?'

'We were just being friendly,' said Kay. 'I might get my head blown off later on. I've got to make the most of my lips while I still have them.'

'I've got to make the most of mine, then,' said Binkie, raising her glass. 'Here's how.'

At six o'clock they heard the wireless starting up on the barge next door: they opened the doors, to listen to the news. Then a programme of dance-music came on; it was too cold to keep the doors open, but Mickey slid back a window so that they could still hear the music a little, mixed up with the buzz and splutter of passing engines, the bumping of the boats. The song was a slow one. Kay kept her arm around Helen's waist, still lightly stroking and smoothing it, while Mickey and Binkie chatted on. The heat from the stove, and the gin in her cocktail, had made her dozy.

Then Helen moved forward, to reach for her drink again; and when she sat back, she turned and caught Kay's eye, a little awkwardly.

'Who do you think I saw today?' she said.

'I don't know. Who?'

'A friend of yours. Julia.'

Kay stared at her. 'Julia?' she said. 'Julia Standing?'

'Yes.'

'You mean, you saw her in the street?'

'No,' said Helen. 'That is, yes. But then we had a cup of tea together, from a van near my office. She'd been to a house nearby-you know, that job she has, with her father?'

'Yes, of course,' said Kay slowly.

She was trying to push away the mix of feelings that the sound of Julia's name always conjured up in her. She said to herself, as she always did,
Don't be silly
.
It was nothing
.
It was too long ago
. But it wasn't nothing, she knew that… She tried to picture Helen and Julia together: she saw Helen, with her round child's face, her untidy hair and chapped lips; and Julia, smooth and self-possessed as a cool dark gem… She said, 'Was it all right?'

Helen laughed, self-conscious. 'Yes. Why shouldn't it have been?'

'I don't know.'

But Binkie had heard. She knew Julia too, but only very slightly. 'Is that Julia Standing you're talking about?'

'Yes,' said Kay, reluctantly. 'Helen saw her today.'

'Did you, Helen? How is she? Still looking as though she's spent the entire war eating
steak tartare
and drinking glasses and glasses of milk?'

Helen blinked. 'Well,' she said, 'I suppose so.'

'She's so frightfully handsome, isn't she? But- I don't know. I've always found looks like hers rather chilling, somehow. What do you think, Mickey?'

'She's all right,' said Mickey shortly-glancing at Kay; knowing more than Binkie.

But Binkie went on. 'Is she still doing that thing of hers, Helen-going over bombed houses?'

'Yes,' said Helen.

Mickey picked up her drink and narrowed her eyes. 'She ought,' she murmured, 'to try pulling somebody out from underneath one, some time.'

Kay laughed. Helen lifted her own drink again, as if not trusting herself to answer. Binkie said to Mickey, 'Dear girl, talking of pulling out bodies-did you hear what happened to the crew over at Station 89? Jerry struck a cemetary and hit the graves. Half of the coffins were blown wide open-'

Kay drew Helen close again. 'I don't know, I'm sure,' she said very quietly, 'why one's chums should like each other, just because they
are
one's chums; and yet one expects them to, somehow.'

Helen said, without looking up, 'Julia's the vivid kind of person people either like or don't like, I suppose. And Mickey's loyal to you, of course.'

'Yes, perhaps that's it.'

'It was only a cup of tea. Julia was perfectly nice about it.'

'Well, good,' said Kay, smiling.

'I don't expect we'll do it again.'

Kay kissed her cheek. She said, 'I hope you do.'

Helen looked at her. 'Do you?'

'Of course,' said Kay-thinking, actually, that she rather hoped they wouldn't, since the whole idiotic situation clearly made Helen so uneasy…

But Helen laughed, and kissed her back-not uneasy, suddenly, at all.

'You darling,' she said.

3

'Miss Giniver,' said Miss Chisholm, putting her head around Helen's door, 'there's a lady to see you.'

It was a week or so later. Helen was fastening papers together with a clip, and didn't look up. 'Does she have an appointment?'

'She asked in particular for you.'

'Did she? Blast.' This was what came of giving out your name too freely. 'Where is she?'

'She said she wouldn't come in, as she's rather shabby.'

'Well, she can hardly be too shabby to come in here. Tell her we're not fussy. She must make an appointment, though.'

Miss Chisholm came further into the room and held out a folded piece of paper. 'She wanted me to give you this,' she said, with a hint of disapproval. 'I told her we weren't in the habit of accepting personal post.'

Helen took the note. It was addressed to
Miss Helen Giniver
, in a hand she didn't recognise, and there was a dirty thumb-print on it. She opened it up. It said:
Are you free for lunch? I have tea, and rabbit-meat sandwiches!What do you say? Don't worry, if not
.
But I'll be outside for the next ten minutes
.

And it was signed,
Julia
.

Helen saw the signature first, and her heart gave an astonishing sort of fillip in her breast, like a leaping fish. She was horribly aware of Miss Chisholm, watching. She closed the paper smartly back up.

'Thank you, Miss Chisholm,' she said, as she ran her thumb-nail along the fold. 'It's just a friend of mine. I'll- I'll go out to her, when I've finished here.'

She slipped the note under a pile of other papers and picked up a pen, as if meaning to write. But as soon as she heard Miss Chisholm going back to her desk in the outer office, she put the pen down. She unlocked a drawer in her own desk and took out her handbag, to tidy her hair, put on powder and lipstick.

Then she squinted at herself in the mirror of her compact. A woman could always tell, she thought, when a girl had just done her face; she didn't want Miss Chisholm to notice-worse, she didn't want Julia to think she had put on make-up especially for her. So she got out her handkerchief and tried to wipe some of the powder away. She drew in her lips and bit repeatedly at the cloth, to blot off the lipstick. She slightly disarranged her hair.
Now
, she thought,
I look like I've been in some sort of tussle
-

For God's sake! What did it matter? It was only Julia. She put the make-up away, got her coat and hat and scarf; went lightly past Miss Chisholm's desk and out along the Town Hall corridors to the lobby and the street.

Julia was standing in front of one of the grey stone lions. She had on her dungarees and her denim jacket again, but this time, instead of a turban, her hair was tied up in a scarf. She had her hands looped around the strap of a leather stachel, slung over her shoulder, and she was gazing at nothing, rocking slightly from foot to foot. But when she heard the swinging back of the bomb-proofed doors she looked round and smiled. And at the sight of her smile, Helen's heart gave another absurd lurch-a twitch, or wriggle, that was almost painful.

But she spoke calmly. 'Hello, Julia. What a nice surprise.'

'Is it?' asked Julia. ' I thought that, since I know where you work now…' She looked up at the sky, which was clouded and grey. 'I was hoping for a sunny day, like last time. It's pretty chilly, isn't it? I thought- But tell me, if this sounds like a lousy idea. I've been working so long among ruins, on my own, I've forgotten all the social niceties. But I thought you might like to come and look at the house I've pitched up in, in Bryanston Square-see what I've been up to. The place has been empty for months, I'm sure no-one would mind.'

'But, I'd love to,' said Helen.

'Really?'

'Yes!'

'All right,' said Julia, smiling again. 'I won't take your arm, as I'm so filthy; but this way is nicest.'

She led Helen along the Marylebone Road, and soon made a turn into quieter streets. 'Was that the famous Miss Chisholm,' she said as they went, 'who took my note? I see what you mean about those pursed lips. She looked at me as though she thought I had designs on the office safe!'

'She looks at me like that,' said Helen.

Julia laughed. 'She ought to have seen this.' She opened her satchel and brought out an enormous bunch of keys, each with a tattered label attached. She held it up and shook it like a gaoler. 'What do you think? I got these from the local warden. I've been in and out of half the houses around here. Marylebone has no more secrets from me. You'd think people would have got used to the sight of me ferreting around-but, no. A couple of days ago someone saw me having trouble with a lock, and called the police. She said an “obviously foreign-looking” woman was trying to force her way into a house. I don't know if she took me for a Nazi, or a vagrant refugee. The police were pretty decent about it. Do you think I look foreign?'

She had been sorting through the keys, but raised her head as she asked this. Helen looked into her face, then looked away.

'It's your dark colouring, I suppose.'

'Yes, I suppose so. I should be all right, anyway, now you're with me. You've those English flower looks, haven't you? No-one could mistake you for anything but an Ally.-Here we are. The place we want is just over there.'

She took Helen to the door of a grim, tall, dilapidated house, and put one of her keys into its lock. A stream of dust fell from the lintel as she pushed the door open, and Helen went gingerly inside. She was met at once by a bitter, damp smell, like that of old washcloths.

'That's just from rain,' said Julia, as she closed the door and fiddled with the latch. 'The roof's been hit, and most of the windows blasted out. Sorry it's so dark. The electricity's off, of course. Go through that doorway over there, it's a little lighter.'

Helen moved across the hall and found herself at the entrance to a sitting-room, cast in a sort of flat twilight by a partly-shuttered window. For a moment, until her eyes had grown used to the gloom, the room looked almost all right; then she began to see more clearly, and stepped forward, saying, 'Oh! What an awful shame! This lovely furniture!'-for there was a carpet on the floor, and a handsome sofa and chairs, and a footstool, a table-all of it dusty, and heavily marked by flying glass and fallen plaster, or else damp, the wood with a bloom on it and beginning to swell. 'And the chandelier!' she cried softly, looking up.

'Yes, watch your step,' said Julia, coming to her and touching her arm. 'Half the lustres have fallen and smashed.'

'I thought, from what you'd said, that the place would be quite empty. Why on earth don't the people who own it come back, and fix it up, or take these things away?'

'They think there's no point, I suppose,' said Julia, 'since it's half-way wrecked already. The woman's probably holed up with relatives in the country. The husband might be fighting; he might even be dead.'

'But these lovely things!' said Helen again. She thought of the men and women who came into her office. 'Somebody else could live here, surely? I see so many people with absolutely nothing.'

Julia tapped with her knuckles against the wall. 'The place isn't sound. Another close hit, and it may collapse. It probably will. That's why my father and I are in here. We're recording ghosts, you see, really…'

Helen moved slowly across the room, looking in dismay from one spoiled handsome thing to another. She went to a set of high double doors and carefully pulled them ajar. The room beyond was just as wretched as this one-its window smashed, its velvet curtains marked with rain, spots on the floor where birds had dirtied, soot and cinders blasted from the hearth. She took a step, and something crunched beneath her shoe-a piece of burnt-out coke. It left a smudge of black on the carpet. She looked back at Julia and said, 'I'm afraid to keep going. It doesn't seem right.'

'You get used to that, don't worry. I've been tramping up and down the stairs for weeks and not given it a thought.'

'You're absolutely sure there's no-one here? No-one like the old lady you told me about last week? And no-one's likely to come back?'

'No-one,' said Julia. 'My father may put his head in later, that's all. I've left the door unlocked for him.' She held out her hand, in a beckoning gesture. 'Come downstairs, and you can see what he and I have been doing.'

She went back into the hall, and Helen followed her down a set of unlit stairs to a basement room, where she had laid out, on a trestle table in the light of a barred but broken window, various plans and elevations of the houses of the square. She showed Helen how she was marking the damage-the symbols she was using, the system of measurement, things like that.

'It's looks very technical,' said Helen, impressed.

But Julia answered, 'It's probably no more technical than the kind of thing you're used to doing at that office of yours-balancing books, filling in forms and whatnot. I'm utterly useless at things like that. I should hate, too, to have to deal with people coming in and out, wanting things; I don't know how you bear it. This suits me because it's so solitary, so silent.'

'You don't find it lonely?'

'Sometimes. I'm used to it, though. The author's temperament, and all that…' She stretched. 'Shall we eat? Let's go through to the next room. It's cold, but not so damp as upstairs.'