The Night Watch (42 page)

Duncan 's father rose, grimly, and put on his hat. Viv looked at Duncan in a way that said,
Well done
.

He said, 'I'm sorry.'

'You ought to be.' They were speaking too softly, now, for their father to hear. 'You're not the only one who's badly off, you know. You might just try thinking about that.'

'I do. It's just-' He couldn't explain it. He said instead, 'Are you really not well?'

She looked away. 'I'm all right. I'm just tired, that's all.'

'Because of the raids?'

'Yes, I expect so.'

He watched her stand and shrug on her coat. Her lavender blouse, with its little pearl buttons, got covered over. Her hair fell forward as she dipped her head, and she tucked it back, behind her ear. He saw again how pale she was beneath her powder.

They weren't allowed to kiss or embrace, but before she moved off she reached her arm across the table and just touched her hand to his.

'Look after yourself, all right?' she said, without smiling, as she drew the hand back.

'I will. Look after yourself, too.'

'I'll try,' she said.

He nodded to his father-wanting to catch his father's eye, but afraid of it, too. He said, 'Goodbye, Dad. I'm sorry, for the silly things I said.'

But perhaps he didn't say it clearly enough. His father turned away while he was still speaking, dipping his head, looking for Viv's arm so that he could link his own with it.

Ten minutes earlier Duncan had almost wanted to strike his face; now he stood with his thighs pressed hard against the table, watching Viv and his father find a place in the crowd of visitors; not wanting to leave the room until his father had left it, in case his father should look back.

But only Viv looked back-just once, very briefly. And a second later Mr Daniels came to Duncan and gave him a push.

'Into the line with you, Pearce. And you, Leddy… All right, you buggers, let's go.'

He took them out of the visiting-room, back to the junction of passages which led to the workshops, and handed them over to Mr Chase. Mr Chase looked wearily at his watch. It was twenty to five. The men from the Basket Shop, he said, could make their way back to it by themselves; one of them was a Redband. As for the others-well, he was fucked if he was going to escort them all the way over to Mailbags One and Two, just for the sake of twenty minutes; he led them back to the hall instead. They walked without speaking: depressed, subdued; all of them, like Duncan, with neatly combed hair and creaseless trousers and clean hands… The hall looked vast with no-one in it. There were so few of them-eight men, only-that when they trudged up the staircases the landings made that chilly, shivering sound that Duncan listened for at night.

Each man went straight into his own cell, as if glad to get in there. Duncan sat on his bunk and put his head in his hands.

He stayed like that for three or four minutes. Then he heard firm, soft footsteps on the landing outside his door, and quickly tried to dry his eyes. But he couldn't do it quickly enough.

'Now, then,' said Mr Mundy gently. 'What's all this?'

That made Duncan cry properly. He covered his face and sobbed into his fingers, his shoulders shaking, making the bed-frame jump. Mr Mundy didn't try to stop him; he didn't come to him, put an arm on his shoulder, anything like that. He simply stood, and waited for the worst of the tears to be over; and then he said, 'There. Had a visit from your dad, haven't you? That's right, I saw the Order. Shook you up a bit, has it?'

Duncan nodded, wiping his face on his coarse prison handkerchief. 'A bit.'

'It always shakes a fellow up, seeing faces from home. Well, put it this way, it's hard to be natural. You go on and cry some more, if that's what you want. It won't trouble me. I've seen harder men than you cry, I can tell you.'

Duncan shook his head. His face felt hot, felt bruised and pulled about, from the contortions of his sobs. 'I'm all right, now,' he said unsteadily.

''Course you are.'

'I just- I make such a mess of things, Mr Mundy. I make such a mess of things, every time.'

His voice was rising. He bit his mouth, drew in his arms and clenched his fists, to keep himself from crying again. When the fit passed and he let himself relax, he felt exhausted. He groaned and rubbed his face.

Mr Mundy stood watching for another moment; then he caught hold of Duncan 's chair and turned it and, slightly awkwardly, with a little sigh of discomfort, sat down. 'Tell you what,' he said, as he did it. 'Have a smoke. Look what I've got here.'

He brought out a packet of Player's cigarettes. He opened it up, and leaned to offer it to Duncan. 'Go on,' he said, giving the cigarettes a shake.

Duncan drew a cigarette out. It seemed as fat as a small cigar compared to the usual prison roll-ups. The tobacco was tight inside its smooth, cool sheath of paper-so nice in his hand, he turned it in his fingers and began to feel better.

'All right, isn't it?' said Mr Mundy, watching him.

'It's lovely,' said Duncan.

'Aren't you going to smoke it?'

'I don't know. I ought to keep it, to take the tobacco out. I could get four or five smokes from this.'

Mr Mundy smiled. He started to sing, in a tuneful old man's voice. '
Five little fagsin a dainty little packet
…' He wrinkled up his nose. 'Smoke it now.'

'Shall I?'

'Go on. I'll keep you company. We can be two chaps, smoking together.'

Duncan laughed. But the laughter came too soon on top of his tears: it caught in his chest and made him tremble. Mr Mundy pretended not to notice. He got out a cigarette for himself, and a box of matches. He held the flame to Duncan first, then drew on it himself. They smoked, for half a minute, in silence. Then Duncan held the cigarette off and said, 'It's making my eyes sting. It's making me giddy! I'm going to faint!'

'Get away with you!' said Mr Mundy, chuckling.

'I am!' said Duncan. He sat back, pretending to swoon. He became like a boy, sometimes, with Mr Mundy… But then he grew serious again. 'God,' he said, 'what a state to be in! Knocked down by one little cigarette!'

He kept his feet on the floor but let himself fall right back, supporting himself on one of his elbows. He wondered where Viv and his father were, now. He tried to picture his father's journey back to Streatham; he couldn't do it. Then he tried to visualise the various rooms of his father's flat. He had, instead, a sudden, violent, vivid image of his father's kitchen on the day he'd last seen it, with the spreading mess of darkening scarlet on the walls and floor-

He sat up again, quickly. Ash fell from his cigarette. He brushed it away, then rubbed his still-aching face and, after a moment, without looking up, said quietly, 'Do you think I'll do all right, Mr Mundy, when I get out?'

Mr Mundy took another puff of his own cigarette. 'Of course you will,' he said comfortably. 'You'll just need time to-well, to find your feet.'

'To find my feet?' Duncan frowned. 'You mean, like a sailor?' He saw himself staggering about on a tilting pavement.

'Like a sailor!' Mr Mundy laughed, tickled by the idea.

'But what will I do, say, for work?'

'You'll be all right.'

'But why should I be?'

'There'll always be jobs for clever young fellows like you. You mark my words.'

It was the sort of thing that Duncan 's father said, that made Duncan want to kill him. But now he bit at one of his fingernails and looked at Mr Mundy across his knuckles and said, 'Do you think so?'

Mr Mundy nodded. 'I've seen all sorts of fellows come through here. They all felt like you, at one time or another. They did just fine.'

'But the sorts of fellows you've seen,' persisted Duncan, 'didn't they probably have wives and children, things like that, to go back home to? Were any of them-frightened, do you think?'

'Frightened?'

'Frightened of what was going to happen to them-how they were going to be-?'

'Now then,' said Mr Mundy again, but more sternly. 'What sort of talk is that? You know what sort it is, don't you?'

Duncan looked away. 'Yes,' he said, after a moment. 'It's letting Error in.'

'That's right. It's the worst thing a boy in your situation can do, to start thinking like that.'

'Yes, I know,' said Duncan. 'It's just- Well, you look so much at walls, in this place. I try to look into the future but that's like a wall, too, I can't see myself getting over it. I try to think of what I'll do, where I'll live. There's my dad's house,'-he saw again that scarlet kitchen-'but my dad's house is only two streets away from-' he lowered his voice, 'from Alec's. Alec, you know, the boy, my friend-? My father used to go down that street to go to work. Now he goes half a mile around it every time, my sister told me. How will it be, if I go back there? I keep thinking about it, Mr Mundy. I keep thinking, if I was to see someone who knew Alec-'

'That boy Alec,' said Mr Mundy firmly, 'was a troubled boy, from everything you've told me. That boy lived in Error, if anybody ever did. He's free of all that now.'

Duncan moved, uncomfortable. 'You said that before. But it never feels like that. If you'd been there-'

'No-one was there,' said Mr Mundy, 'but you. And that's what you might call, your Burden. But I'd lay a pound against a penny Alec is looking at you right now, longing to pluck that Burden from you-saying,
Put it down, chum!
and wishing you could hear him. I'd bet you he is laughing, but also crying: laughing, to be where he is, in the sunshine; crying, because you are still in the dark…'

Duncan nodded-liking the comforting sound of Mr Mundy's voice; liking the quaintness of the words-
pluck
,
Burden
,
Error
,
chum
; but not, in his heart, believing any of it. He wanted to think that Alec was where Mr Mundy described: he tried to imagine him surrounded by sunlight and flowers, smiling… But Alec had never been like that, he'd said it was common to sit about in parks and gardens or go bathing; and he hardly ever really smiled, because his teeth were bad and he was ashamed of them.

Duncan looked up, into Mr Mundy's face. 'It's hard, Mr Mundy,' he said simply.

Mr Mundy didn't answer for a moment. Instead he got slowly to his feet, then came to Duncan 's bunk and sat beside him; and he put his hand-his left hand, with the cigarette in it-on Duncan 's shoulder. He said, in a quiet, confidential tone, 'You think of me, when you get low; and I'll think of you. How's that? You and me are alike, after all: for I shall be out of here next year, just as you will. My date for retirement's coming up, you see; and the idea's as queer to me as it is to you-queerer, perhaps, for you know what they say, that if a prisoner does two years in gaol, then his guard does one… So you think of me, when you get low. And I'll think of you. I'll think of you-well, I won't say, as a father thinks of his son, for I know you've got your own dad to do that; but let's say, as a man might think of his nephew… How about that?'

He held Duncan 's gaze, and patted his shoulder. When a little ash fell from the tip of his cigarette to Duncan 's knee, he reached with his other hand and carefully brushed it away; then let the hand stay there.

'All right?' he asked.

Duncan lowered his gaze. 'Yes,' he answered quietly.

Mr Mundy patted him again. 'Good boy. For you're a special boy-you know that, don't you? You're a very special boy. And things have a way of turning out all right, for special boys like you. You see if they don't.'

He kept his hand on Duncan 's knee for another moment; then gave the knee a squeeze, and got up. The gates, at the end of the hall, had been thrown open: the men were being brought back from the workshops. There was the sound of many footsteps, the rattling of the stairs and iron landings. Mr Chase could be heard calling out: 'Keep moving. Keep moving! Every man to his own cell. Giggs and Hammond, stop pissing about!'

Mr Mundy pinched out his cigarette and put it back into its packet; then, as Duncan watched, he took out two fresh ones, lifted up the corner of Duncan 's pillow and slipped them underneath. He gave Duncan a wink, and patted the pillow smooth, when he'd done it; he was just straightening up when the first of the men began to troop past Duncan 's door. Crawley, Waterman, Giggs, Quigley… Then Fraser appeared. He had his hands in his pockets and was kicking his boots as he walked. He brightened up, however, when he saw Mr Mundy.

'Hello,' he said. 'This is an honour, sir, and no mistake! And do I smell real tobacco? Hello, Pearce. How was your visit? About as much fun as mine, from the look of it. That was a nice trick of Mr Chase's, too-sending us back to the Basket Shop, while you Mailbags got off early.'

Duncan didn't answer. Fraser wasn't listening, anyway. He was looking at Mr Mundy, who was moving past him to the door. 'You're not leaving us, sir?'

'I've got work to do,' said Mr Mundy stiffly. 'My day's not like you men's, that finishes at five.'

'Oh, but give us proper occupations,' said Fraser in his exaggerated way. 'Teach us trades. Pay us real men's wages, instead of the pittances we get now. I'm sure we'd work like billy-oh then! Heavens, you might even find you'd make decent men of us. Imagine a prison doing that!'

Mr Mundy nodded, rather sourly. 'You're clever, son,' he said, as he went out.

'So my father always tells me, Mr Mundy,' Fraser answered. 'So clever I'll cut myself. Hey?'

He started to laugh; and looked at Duncan, as if expecting Duncan to join in.

But Duncan wouldn't meet his gaze. He lay down on his bed, on his side, with his face turned to the wall. And when Fraser said, 'What's the matter with you? Pearce? What the hell's the matter?', he flung back his arm, as if to push him away.

'Shut up, will you?' he said. 'Just fucking well shut up.'

'I'll read my book,' Helen had said, when Kay was leaving. 'I'll listen to the wireless. I'll change into my lovely new pyjamas and go to bed.'And she had meant it. For almost an hour after Kay had gone, she'd stayed on the sofa reading
Frenchman's Creek
. At half-past seven she made more toast; she turned on the radio, caught the start of a play… But the play was rather dull. She listened for ten or fifteen minutes, then tried another programme. Finally she switched the radio off. The flat seemed very silent after that: it was always especially silent in the evenings and at weekends, because of Palmer's, the furniture warehouse, being so shut up and dark. The silence and the stillness sometimes got on Helen's nerves.