The Night Watch (43 page)

She sat down again with her book, but found she couldn't settle to it. She tried a magazine; her gaze slid over the words on the page and took nothing in… The idea began to rise in her, that she was wasting time. It was her birthday-her birthday, in wartime. She might never have another! 'You can't expect to have a special day in wartime,' Kay had said that afternoon; but why couldn't you? How long did they have to go on, letting the war spoil everything? They had been patient, all this time. They'd lived in darkness. They'd lived without salt, without scent. They'd fed themselves little scraps of pleasure, like parings of cheese… Now she became aware of the minutes as they passed: she felt them, suddenly, for what they were, as fragments of her life, her youth, that were rushing away like so many drops of water, never to return.

I want to see Julia
, she thought. And then it was exactly as if somebody was seizing her by the shoulders and whispering urgently into her face,
What are you waiting for? Come on!
She threw the magazine down, jumped up, and ran into the bathroom to use the lavatory and comb her hair and redo her make-up; and then she put on her coat and scarf, and the wool tam o'shanter she'd been wearing earlier that day, and went out.

The mews, of course, was perfectly dark, the cobblestones slippery with frost; but she picked her way across it without her torch. From the various pubs on Rathbone Place she could just hear the clink of glass, the buzz of beery voices, the tipsy lilt of a mechanical piano. The sounds made her feel better. It was an ordinary Saturday night. People were out, enjoying themselves. Why shouldn't she be? She wasn't thirty yet… She went along Percy Street, past the blacked-out windows of the cafés and restaurants there. She crossed Tottenham Court Road, and entered the shabby streets of Bloomsbury.

The area was quiet, and she went swiftly; then her foot struck a broken kerb and she almost fell, and after that she forced herself to walk at a sensible pace, and to pick out her way, carefully, with the beam of her torch.

But her heart was racing as though she was running. She kept saying to herself,
This is crazy, Helen!
What on earth would Julia think? She probably wouldn't even be at home. Why should she be? Or she might be writing. She might have visitors. There might be somebody-a friend-

That made her slow her step again. For it hadn't occurred to her, before, that Julia might have a lover. She'd never mentioned anyone; but it would be like her, Helen thought, to keep that sort of thing a secret. Why should she mention something like that to Helen, anyway? What was there between them? They had had tea together that time, outside Marylebone Station. Then they'd wandered around that house in Bryanston Square, practically in silence. After that, they'd met up again and had drinks in a pub; and one sunny lunch-time, a few days before, they had gone into Regent's Park and sat beside the lake…

That was all they had done; and yet it seemed to Helen that with those slight encounters the world had been subtly transformed. She felt connected to Julia now, as if by a slender, quivering thread. She could have closed her eyes and, with a fingertip, touched the exact small point on her breast at which the thread ran delicately into her heart and tugged at it.

She had reached Russell Square Underground Station, and the streets were busier here. She got caught up, briefly, in a little knot of people who'd just come up from the platforms and were standing around rather helplessly, waiting for their eyes to grow used to the darkness.

The sight of them, like the sounds from the Rathbone Place pubs, gave her more confidence. She went on, past the garden of the Foundling Estate; hesitated only once, at the mouth of Mecklenburgh Place; and then pushed on, into the square.

It looked forbidding in the darkness, the flat Georgian houses seeming smooth as well-bred bored blank faces-until she moved, and saw the sky behind the windows, and realised that many of them had been gutted by blast and by fire. She thought she remembered which house was Julia's, though she'd only been here once before. But she was sure that Julia's house was at the end of one of the terraces. She recalled it as having a broken step, that had rocked about under her feet.

She went up the steps of the house she thought she remembered. The steps were cracked, but stayed steady. They might have been mended, she supposed…

She wasn't sure, suddenly, if this house was right. She looked for the bell to Julia's flat: there were four bells there, unmarked, unnamed. Which was the one? She had no idea, so chose one at random. She heard it ring, somewhere in the depths of the building, as if in an empty room; she knew from the sound that it wasn't the right one and, without waiting, pressed another. The ring of this one was less clear, she couldn't gauge the location of it. She thought she heard a movement on the first or second floor; but even as she heard it she said to herself,
It won't be this one, it'll be the next
.-For it was never the second thing, in tales, in spells, it was always the third… But the movement came again. She heard slow, soft-soled footsteps on a staircase. Then the door was opened, and Julia was there.

It took her a moment to recognise Helen, in the darkness, with only the single, shaded bulb of a torch to light her. But when she saw who it was she gripped the edge of the door and said, 'What is it? Is it Kay?'

Has Kay found out?
is what Helen took her to mean; and her heart contracted. Then she realised, horribly, that Julia thought she must have come with bad news. She said quickly, breathlessly, 'No. It's just- I wanted to see you, Julia. I just wanted to see you, that's all.'

Julia didn't answer. The torch lit her face as it must have lit Helen's, making a queer sort of mask of it. Her expression was impossible to read. But after a moment she opened the door wider, and moved back.

'Come in,' she said.

She led the way up a darkened staircase to the second floor. She showed Helen into a tiny hallway, then took her through a curtained doorway into a sitting-room. The light was dim, but seemed bright after the blacked-out street. Helen felt exposed in it, embarassed.

Julia stooped to pick up a pair of kicked-off shoes, a dropped tea-towel, a fallen jacket. She looked distracted, preoccupied: not at all glad, in the ordinary way of gladness, that Helen had come. Her hair was very dark, and curiously flat against her head: when she moved further into the light Helen saw with dismay that it was damp, that she must recently have washed it. Her face was pale, and quite unmade-up. She was wearing unpressed dark flannel trousers, a wide-collared shirt, and a sleeveless sweater. On her feet she had what looked like fishermen's socks, and a pair of red Moroccan slippers.

'Wait here, while I get rid of this lot,' she said, going back out through the curtain with the jacket and the shoes.

Helen stood, nervously, helplessly, and gazed about.

The room was large, warm, untidy, not at all like Kay's neat bachelor flat; but not quite, either, what Helen had been expecting. The walls were bare, and coloured with a patchy red distemper; the carpets were an assortment of overlapping Turkish khelims and imitation rugs. The furniture was very ordinary. There was one large divan couch, covered with mismatched cushions; and a dirty pink velvet chair, with springs and strips of torn hessian showing beneath. The mantelpiece was painted marble. It had an ashtray on it, overflowing with stubs. One of these still smoked: Julia came back, and picked it up and pinched it out.

Helen said, 'You don't mind, do you, that I've come?'

'Of course not.'

'I started to walk. Then I saw where I was. I remembered your house.'

'Did you?'

'Yes. I came here once, ages ago. With Kay. Do you remember? Kay was dropping something off to you-a ticket, or a book, something like that. We didn't come up, you said the place was too untidy. We stood about in the hall, downstairs…
Do
you remember?'

Julia frowned. Then, 'Yes,' she said slowly. 'I think I do.'

They looked at one another, and almost at once looked away, as if in embarassment or perplexity-for it was impossible, Helen found, to imagine a time when calling on Julia with Kay would have been an ordinary thing to do; impossible to think of standing at Kay's side on a doorstep, chatting politely, thinking only how mildly awkward things were, between Julia and Kay… And again she thought, what had happened, since then? Nothing had happened, really.

But if nothing has happened
, she asked herself,
why have I kept that nothing from Kay? Why the hell am I here?

She knew why she was there. She grew afraid.

'Perhaps I should go,' she said, 'after all.'

'You've only just arrived!'

'You've been washing your hair.'

Julia frowned, as if annoyed. 'You've seen wet hair before, haven't you? Don't be idiotic. Sit down, and I'll get you a drink. I have wine! I've had it for weeks, and had no occasion for opening it. It's only Algerian, but still.'

She stooped to open a cupboard and started shifting things about inside it. Helen watched her for a second, then took a step and, nervously, looked around again. She went to a shelf of books and glanced across the titles. They were detective stories, mainly, with gaudy spines. Julia's two published novels sat amongst them:
Death By Degrees
, and
Twenty Mortal Murders
.

She looked from the books to the pictures on the walls, the ornaments on the painted mantelpiece. As awkward and as anxious as she was, she wanted to absorb every little detail, for the sake of what that detail might be able to tell her about Julia.

'Your flat's charming,' she said, conventionally.

'You think so?' Julia closed the cupboard door and straightened up. She had a bottle, a corkscrew, glasses. 'It's mostly my cousin Olga's stuff, not mine.'

'Your cousin Olga's?'

'The flat's my aunt's. I'm living here to keep it from being requisitioned. One of those genteel dodges at which the upper-middle classes so excel. There's only this room and the kitchen; the kitchen serves as a bathroom, too. The loo's down the hall… Really, it's in a dreadful sort of mess. There's no glass in the windows at all: they got broken so often, Olga just gave up. Last summer I had sheets of gauze put in: it was lovely, like living in a tent. Now it's too cold for gauze, I've put in talc boards instead. It's all right at night, with the curtains drawn. But in the daytime, it does tend to get me down. Makes me feel like a tart or something.'

She was screwing the corkscrew into the bottle as she spoke and now, with a little effort, she brought out the cork. She glanced at Helen as she poured the wine, and smiled. 'Aren't you going to take your things off?'

Rather reluctantly, Helen unwound her scarf, took off her hat, and started to unfasten the buttons of her coat. Her dress was the one she'd put on that morning-the Cedric Allen one with the cream lapels, that Kay admired so much. She'd kept it on, she realised now, with the idea of impressing Julia with it; but the sight of Julia herself, with her newly-washed hair and crumpled trousers, her socks and slippers and colourless mouth-and, worse, the air of easy glamour with which she carried all this off-was disconcerting. She drew her arms from the coat clumsily, as if she'd never taken a coat off before in her life. Julia glanced her way again and said, 'I say, what a swell you look! What's the occasion?'

Helen hesitated. Then, 'It's my birthday,' she said.

Julia thought she was joking, and laughed. When she saw that she was serious, her expression softened. 'Helen! Why didn't you tell me? If I'd known-'

'It's nothing,' said Helen. 'Really. It's silly, how like a child the whole thing makes one feel. Everyone conspires in it… Kay gave me an orange,' she added miserably. 'She picked out
Happy Birthday
in the peel.'

Julia handed her a glass of red wine. 'I'm glad she did,' she said. 'I'm glad you feel like a child about it.'

'I wish she hadn't,' said Helen. 'I was awful, today. I was worse than a child. I was-' She couldn't finish. She made some gesture, as if to brush away the memory of her own behaviour.

'Never mind,' said Julia gently. She lifted her glass. 'Here's how. Bung-ho. Cheerio.-And all those other idiotic things people say, that always make me feel I'm about to go off on my last mission… Touch top and bottom, for luck.' They clinked glasses, twice; then drank. The wine was rough, and made them grimace.

They moved apart. Helen cleared a space for herself among the cushions on the divan. Julia perched on the arm of the pink velvet chair, stretching out her legs. Her legs seemed impossibly slender and long, in the flannel trousers; her hips had a fragile, vulnerable look-as if, Helen thought, you could place your two hands upon them and, with a pressing motion, make them snap. She'd picked up the ashtray, and now reached to the mantelpiece for cigarettes and matches. Her sweater rose up as she did it, and her shirt was unbuttoned at the bottom; the tails of it parted, exposing her tense, sallow stomach, her neat navel. Helen looked, then at once looked quickly away.

One of the cushions fell from the divan to the floor. Helen leaned and picked it up again-and realised, as she did it, that it wasn't a cushion but a pillow; that the divan must serve, in this two-roomed flat, as Julia's bed; that every night Julia must stand here, lay down sheets and blankets, take off her clothes… The image was not exactly erotic, for one saw beds, pillows, nightclothes, everywhere, they'd long ago lost their charge of intimacy, of sex. Instead she found it poignant, faintly troubling. She looked again at Julia's handsome, fragile figure and thought,
What is it about Julia? Why is she always so alone?

They were sitting in silence. Helen found she had nothing to say. She gulped down more of her wine, then became aware of noises on the floor above: irregular steps, and creaking boards. She put back her head and looked up.

Julia looked up too. 'My neighbour's a Polish man,' she murmured. 'He's only in London by some sort of fluke. He walks about, like that, for hours. Every piece of news he gets from Warsaw, he says, is worse than the last…'