The Night Watch (38 page)

Duncan said nothing. The song went on.

Though we're apart, I can't forget you
.

I bless the hour that I first met you-

Abruptly, another voice broke across it. This one was deep, tuneless, lusty.

Give me a girl with eyes of blue,

Who likes it if you don't but prefers it if you do!

Someone cheered. Fraser said, in a tone of disbelief, 'Who the hell is that, now?'

Duncan tilted his head, to listen. 'I don't know. Maybe Atkin?'

Atkin, like Giggs, was a deserter. The song sounded like something a serviceman would sing.

Give me a girl with eyes of black,

Who likes it on her belly but prefers it on her back!

'Cause I'll be seeing you again, when you
-

Miller was still going. For almost a minute the two songs ran bizarrely together; then Miller gave in. His voice trailed away. '
You wanker!
' he yelled. There were more cheers. Atkin's voice-or whoever's it was-grew louder, lustier. He must have been cupping his hands around his mouth and bellowing like a bull.

Give me a girl with hair of brown,

Who likes it going up but prefers it coming down!

Give me a girl with hair of red,

Who likes it in the hand but prefers it in the bed!

Give me a –

But then the 'Raiders Past' siren started up. Atkin turned his song into a whoop. Men on every landing joined in, drumming with their fists on their walls, their window-frames, their beds. Only Giggs was disappointed.

'
Come back, you gobshites!
' he called, hoarsely. '
Come back, you German cunts! You forgot D Hall! You forgot D Hall!
'

'
Get down out of those fucking windows!
' roared someone out in the yard, and there was the rapid
crunch
,
crunch
of boots on cinders, as the officers emerged from their shelter and started heading towards the prison. From all along the hall, then, there came the thump and scrape of tables: the men were leaping down from their windows, hurling themselves back into their bunks… In another minute, the electric lights were switched on. Mr Browning and Mr Chase came pounding up the stairs and started racing down the landings, hammering on doors, flinging open spy-holes: '
Pacey! Wright! Malone, you little shit
-
If I catch any of you fuckers out of your beds, the whole lot of you'll be banged up from now till Christmas, do you hear?
'

Fraser turned his face into his pillow, groaning and cursing against the light. Duncan drew up his blanket over his eyes. Their door was thumped, but the racing footsteps went past. They faded for a moment; stopped; grew loud, then faded again. Duncan had a sense of Mr Browning and Mr Chase turning snarling about, thwarted and furious, like dogs on chains… '
You shit-cakes!
' one of them cried, for show. '
I'm warning you-!
'

They paced back and forth along the landings for another minute or two; eventually, however, they tramped down the stairs. In another moment, with a little
phut
, the lights in the cells were switched off again.

Duncan quickly put down his blanket and moved his head to the edge of his pillow. He liked the moment when the current was cut. He liked to see the bulb in the ceiling. For the light faded slowly, and for three or four seconds, if you watched for it, you could make out the filament inside the glass, a curl of wire that turned from white to furious amber, to burning red, to delicate pink; and then, when the cell was dark, you could still see the yellow blur of it inside your eye.

A man gave a whistle, quietly. Someone shouted to Atkin. He wanted Atkin to carry on singing. He wanted to know about the girl whose hair was yellow-what did she like? What about her? He called it twice, three times; but Atkin wouldn't answer. The matey, mischievous feeling that had gripped them all, ten minutes before, was losing its hold. The silence was deepening, growing daunting, and to try to break into it, now, was to make it seem worse… For after all, thought Duncan, you could sing or bellow as much as you liked; it was only a way of putting off this moment-this moment that always, finally, came-when the loneliness of the prison night rose up about you, like water in a sinking boat.

He could still hear the words of the songs, however-just as he'd still been able to see the glowing filament in the bulb against the darkness of his own eyelids.
Give me a girl
, he could hear in his head.
Give me a girl
, and
I'll be seeing you
, over and over.

Perhaps Fraser could hear it, too. He changed his pose, rolled on to his back, kept fidgeting. Now that the place was so quiet, when he passed his hand across the stubble on his chin-when he rubbed his eye, even, with his knuckle-Duncan heard it… He blew out his breath.

'Damn,' he said, very softly. 'I wish I had a girl, Pearce, right now. Just an ordinary girl. Not the kind of girls I used to meet-the brainy types.' He laughed, and the frame of the bunks gave a shiver. 'God,' he said, 'isn't that a phrase to freeze a man's blood? “A brainy girl”.' He put on a voice. '“You'd like my friend, she's ever so brainy.” As if that's what one wants them for…' He laughed again-a sort of snigger, this time, too low to make the bed-frame jump. 'Yes,' he said, 'just an ordinary little girl is what I'd like right now. She wouldn't have to be pretty. Sometimes the pretty ones are no good-do you know what I mean? They think too much of themselves; they don't want to mess their hair up, smudge their lips. I wish I had a plain, stout, stupid girl. A plain, stout, stupid, grateful girl… Do you know what I'd do with her, Pearce?'

He wasn't talking to Duncan, really; he was talking to the darkness, to himself. He might have been murmuring in his sleep… But the effect was more intimate, somehow, than if he'd been whispering into Duncan 's ear. Duncan opened his eyes and gazed into the perfect, velvety blackness of the cell. There was a depthlessness to it that was so queer and unnerving, he put up his hand. He wanted to remind himself of the distance between his and Fraser's bunk: he'd begun to feel as though Fraser was nearer than he ought to have been; and he was very aware of his own body as a sort of duplication or echo of the one above… When his fingers found the criss-crossed wire underside of Fraser's bed, he kept them there. He said, 'Don't think about it. Go to sleep.'

'No, but seriously,' Fraser went on, 'do you know what I'd do? I'd have her, fully clothed. I wouldn't take off a stitch. I'd only loosen a button or two at the back of her dress-and I'd undo her brassière, while I was about it-and then I'd draw the dress and the brassière down to her elbows and get my fingers on to her chest. I'd give her a pinch. I might pull her about a bit-there wouldn't be a thing she could do if I did, for the dress-do you see?-the dress would be pinning her arms to her sides… And when I'd finished with her chest, I'd push up her skirt. I'd push it right up to her waist. I'd keep the knickers on her, but they'd be that silky, flimsy kind that you can work your way about, work your way up…' The words tailed away. When he spoke again, his voice had changed, was bare and not at all boastful. 'I had a girl like that, once. I've never forgotten it. She wasn't a beauty.'

He fell silent. Then, 'Damn,' he said softly again. 'Damn, damn.' And he moved about, so that the wires supporting his mattress flexed and tightened, and Duncan quickly drew back his fingers. He had rolled on to his side, Duncan thought; but though he lay still, there was a tension to him-something charged and furtive, as if he might be holding his breath, calculating. And when he moved again, to draw up the blanket, the movement seemed false, seemed stagey: as if it was being made, elaborately, to conceal another, more secret…

He had put his hand, Duncan knew, to his cock; and after another moment he began, with a subtle, even motion, to stroke it.

It was a thing men did all the time, in prison. They made a joke of it, a sport of it, a boast of it; Duncan had once shared a cell with a boy who had done it, not even at night, with a blanket to cover him, but during the day, obscenely. He had learned to turn his head from it-just as he'd learned to turn his head from the sight and sound and smell of other men belching, farting, pissing, shitting into pots… Now, however, in the utter darkness of the cell, and in the queer, uneasy atmosphere raised by Miller's and Atkin's singing, he found himself horribly aware of the stealthy, helpless, purposeful, half-ashamed motion of Fraser's hand. For a moment or two he kept quite still, not wanting to betray the fact that he was awake. Then he found that his stillness only made his senses more acute: he could hear the slight thickening, now, of Fraser's breath; he could smell him as he sweated; he could even catch, he thought, the faint, wet, regular sound-like a ticking watch-of the tip of Fraser's cock being rhythmically uncovered… He couldn't help it. He felt his own cock give a twitch and begin to grow hard. He lay another minute, perfectly still save for that gathering and tightening of flesh between his legs; then he made the same sort of stealthy, stagey movements that Fraser had: pulled up the blanket over himself, slid his hand into his pyjamas, and took the base of his cock in his fist.

But his other hand, he raised. He found the wires of Fraser's bed again and just touched them with his knuckles, lightly at first; then he caught the tension in them, the hectic little jolts and quivers they were giving in response to the regular jog-jog-jog of Fraser's fist… He worked one of his fingers about them-clinging to them, almost, with the tip of that one finger; bracing himself against them, as he tugged with his other hand at his cock.

He was aware, after a minute or so of this, of Fraser giving a shudder, and of the wires beneath his mattress growing still; but he couldn't have stopped his own hand, then, for anything, and a moment later his own spunk rushed: he felt the travelling and bursting of it as if it were hot and scalded him. He thought he made a sound, as it came; it might just have been the roaring of the blood through his ears… But when the roaring died, there was only the silence: the awful, abashing stillness of the prison night. It was like emerging from some sort of fit, a spell of madness; he thought of what he'd just done and imagined himself pounding, gasping, plucking at Fraser's bunk like some kind of beast.

Only after a minute did Fraser move. There was the rustle of bed-clothes, and Duncan guessed he was wiping spunk from himself with his sheet. But the rustling went on, the movement became tense, almost savage; finally, Fraser struck his pillow.

'Damn this place,' he said, as he did it, 'for turning us all into schoolboys! Do you hear me, Pearce? I suppose you liked that. Did you, Pearce? Hey?'

'No,' said Duncan at last-but his mouth was dry, and his tongue caught against his palate. The word came out as a sort of whisper.

Then he flinched. The bed-frame had rocked, and something warm and light had struck him, in the face. He put up his hand, and felt a sticky kind of wetness on his cheek. Fraser must have leaned over the edge of the bunk and flicked spunk at him.

'You liked it all right,' said Fraser bitterly. His voice was close, for a moment. Then he moved back beneath his blanket. 'You liked it all right, you blasted bugger.'

4

'Goodness,' said Helen, opening her eyes. 'What's this?'

'Happy birthday, darling,' said Kay, putting down a tray at the side of the bed, and leaning to kiss her.

Helen's face was dry and warm and smooth, quite beautiful; her hair had frizzed up a little, like a sleepy child's. She lay for a moment, blinking, then pushed herself higher in the bed and drew up the pillow to the small of her back. She did it clumsily, still not quite awake; and when she yawned, she put her hands to her face and worked her fingers into the corners of her eyes, to remove the crumbs of sleep from them. Her eyes were slightly puffed.

'You don't mind that I've woken you?' asked Kay. It was a Saturday, still early, and she had worked the night before; but she'd been up for an hour and was already dressed, in a pair of tailored slacks and a jersey. 'I couldn't bear to wait any longer. Look, here.'

She brought the tray to Helen's lap. There was a spray of paper flowers in a vase, china pots and cups, an upturned bowl on a plate; and the pink box, with the silk bow, containing the satin pyjamas.

Helen went from item to item, politely, slightly self-conscious. 'What beautiful flowers. What a lovely box!' She looked as though she was struggling to wake up, be charmed and excited…
I should have let her sleep
, Kay thought.

But then she lifted the lids of the china pots. 'Jam,' she said, 'and
coffee
!' That was better. 'Oh, Kay!'

'It's real coffee,' said Kay. 'And, look here.'

She nudged the upturned bowl, and Helen picked it up. Underneath, on a paper doily, was an orange. Kay had worked on it for half an hour with the point of a vegetable knife, carving HAPPY BIRTHDAY into the peel.

Helen smiled properly, her dry lips parting over her small white teeth. 'It's wonderful.'

'The R's a bit ropey.'

'Not at all.' She took the orange up and held it to her nose. 'Where did you get it?'

'Oh,' said Kay vaguely. 'I coshed a small child for it, in the black-out.' She poured out coffee. 'Open your gift.'

'In a minute,' said Helen. 'I must pee first. Hold the tray, will you?'

She kicked off the blankets and ran to the bathroom. Kay drew the bed-covers back up so that the mattress should stay warm. Heat rose from the bed, even as she did it-rose palpably, against her face, like steam or smoke. She sat with the tray on her lap, and rearranged the flowers, admired the orange-fretting, slightly, over that crooked R…

'What a fright I looked!' said Helen, laughing, coming back. 'Like Struwwelpeter.' She had washed her face and brushed her teeth and tried to calm her cloud of hair.

'Don't be silly,' said Kay. 'Come here.' She put out her hand; Helen took it, and let herself be drawn into a kiss. Her mouth was chill, from the cold water.