The Night Watch (44 page)

'God,' said Helen. 'This wretched war. Do you really think it's true, what everyone says? That it'll be over soon?'

'Who knows? If the Second Front kicks off, then perhaps. But I'd say we were in it for another year at least.'

'Another year… So I'll be thirty.'

'And I'll be thirty-two.'

'The worst sort of ages, don't you think? If we were twenty, we'd get over it, we'd still be almost young. And if we were forty, we'd be old enough not to mind being older still. But thirty… I'll have gone from youth to middle age. What will I have to look forward to? The Change of Life, I suppose. They say it's worse for childless women… Don't laugh! At least you'll have achieved something, Julia. Your books, I mean.'

Julia drew in her chin, still smiling. 'Them! They're like so many crossword puzzles. I only wrote the first one, you know, as a sort of joke. Then I discovered I was rather good at them. What that reveals about me, I can't imagine. Kay's always said that it's a queer thing to do-writing about murder, just now, while so many people are being murdered all around us.'

This was the second or third time that they had mentioned Kay's name; but they both seemed struck by it, now, in a way they hadn't been before. They sat in silence again. Julia swirled the wine in her glass, gazing fixedly into it like a fortune-teller. Without looking up, and in a different sort of voice, she said, 'I never asked you. What did Kay make of our running into each other like that, that day?'

'She was glad,' said Helen, after a second.

'And she didn't mind us meeting up again? She won't mind your coming round here, tonight?'

Helen sipped her drink and didn't answer. When Julia looked up and caught her gaze, she must have coloured or seemed guilty. Julia frowned. She said, 'You haven't told her?'

Helen shook her head.

'Why not?'

'I don't know.'

'You didn't think it worth mentioning? That's fair enough, I suppose.'

'No, Julia, it wasn't that. Don't be silly.'

Julia laughed. 'What, then? Do you mind my asking? I'm curious. But I'll shut up about it, if you'd rather. If it's something, you know, between you and Kay-'

'It's nothing like that,' said Helen quickly. 'I told you, Kay was pleased to hear we'd met up. She'd be pleased, too, to think we've gone on meeting.'

'Are you sure?'

'Of course I'm sure! She's so very fond of you; and that makes her want me to like you, too. It always has.'

'How big of her.
Do
you like me, Helen?'

'Well, naturally I do.'

'There's no naturally about it.'

'Unnaturally, then,' said Helen, making a face.

'Yet you won't tell Kay?'

Helen moved uncomfortably. She said, 'I ought to have, I know. I wish I had. It's just, sometimes, with Kay-' She stopped. 'It sounds childish, ungracious. It's just, the way Kay is with me-taking such care of me. It makes me long, now and then, to keep things from her, even commonplace, trifling things. Just so that those things can be wholly mine…'

Her heart was fluttering as she spoke: she was afraid that Julia would hear the flutter in her voice. For even as she said all this, and meant it, she knew that it wasn't quite the truth. She was trying to make the whole thing be about something else. She was playing it down, using words like
commonplace
and
childish
. She was trying to pretend that there wasn't that fine, invisible, vibrating thread telling her when Julia moved, when Julia breathed…

Perhaps it worked. Julia smoked her cigarette for a time, looking thoughtful, but without speaking; then she ground the cigarette out and got to her feet. 'Kay wants a wife,' she said. She smiled. 'That sounds like a children's game, doesn't it? Kay wants a wife. She always has. One must be the wife with Kay, or nothing…'

She yawned, as if bored by the idea; then went to the window and drew back the curtain. There were little chinks, Helen could see, in the grey talc boards, and she put her eye to one of these and peered out. 'Don't you hate these evenings?' she said. 'Not knowing if the Warning will sound, and so on? It's like waiting for an execution that might or might not take place.'

'Would you rather I went?' Helen asked.

'God, no! I'm glad you're here. It's much worse when one's alone, don't you think?'

'Yes, much worse. But bad in the shelters, too. Kay always wants me to go over to the one in Rathbone Place; but I can't stand it, it makes me feel trapped. I'd always rather sit and be petrified on my own, than have strangers see me being frightened.'

'Me, too,' said Julia. 'Sometimes I go out, you know. I like it better in the open space.'

'You just go strolling,' Helen asked her, 'in the black-out? Isn't it dangerous?'

Julia shrugged. 'Probably. But then everything's dangerous, just now.' She let the curtain fall and turned back into the room, and reached for her glass.

Helen felt her heart begin to flutter again. It occurred to her that she'd far rather be with Julia outside, in darkness, than in here, in the soft, exposing, intimate light. She said, 'Why don't we go out now, Julia?'

Julia looked at her. 'Now? You mean, for a walk? Would you like to?'

'Yes,' said Helen. She felt the wine inside her suddenly, and started to laugh.

Julia laughed too. Her dark eyes were shining, with excitement and mischief. She began to move more quickly-putting back her head to drink off her wine, then carelessly setting down the glass on the mantelpiece, so that it rang against the painted marble. She looked at the fire, then squatted in front of it and began to shovel ash on

the coke. She did it with the cigarette clamped at the side of her mouth, and with an expression of tremendous concentration and distaste: screwing up her eyes, holding her graceful head at an awkward angle away from the rising grey cloud-like a debutante, Helen thought, on the maid's night off… Then she got up, and dusted off her knees; went back through the curtained doorway for her coat and shoes. She reappeared after a moment in a black double-breasted jacket with polished brass buttons, like a sailor's coat. She stood at the mirror, put on lipstick, powdered her face, turned up her collar. She ran her hands, critically, over her damp head, then drew a soft black corduroy cap from out of a heap of gloves and scarves: pulled it on, and tucked up her hair.

'I shall regret this, later,' she said, 'when my hair has dried at odd angles.' She caught Helen's eye. 'I don't look like Mickey, do I?'

Helen laughed, guiltily. 'Not at all like Mickey.'

'Not like a male impersonator on the stage?'

'More like an actress in a spy-film.'

Julia adjusted the angle of the cap. 'Well, so long as I don't get us arrested for espionage… I tell you what, let's take the rest of that wine.' There was half a bottle left. 'I shan't want it tomorrow, and we've hardly touched it.'

'That really might get us arrested.'

'Don't worry, I've a plan for that.'

She went back to the cupboard, moved things around, and brought out the nightwatchman's bottle that they'd had tea from, in Bryanston Square. She pulled the cork from it, and sniffed it; then carefully filled it up with wine. There was just enough. She stoppered it up again, and put it into her jacket pocket. In her other pocket she put a torch.

'Now you look like a house-breaker,' said Helen, as she buttoned on her own coat.

'But you're forgetting,' said Julia; 'I am a house-breaker, by day. Now, there's just one more thing.' She opened a drawer and took out a sheaf of papers. The papers were thin, the 'flimsy' kind that Helen was issued with at work. They were covered all over with close black handwriting…

'That's not your manuscript?' asked Helen, impressed.

Julia nodded. 'It's a bore, but the bombs make me afraid for it.' She smiled. 'I suppose the wretched thing must be rather more to me than a sort of crossword puzzle, after all. I find I have to carry it about with me wherever I go.' She rolled the papers up and stuffed them into the inside pocket of her coat. She patted the bulge they made. 'Now I feel safe.'

'But, if you get hit?'

'Then I shan't care one way or the other.' She drew on gloves. 'Are you ready?'

She led the way downstairs. As she opened the door she said, 'I hate this bit. Let's close our eyes and count, as we're supposed to'-and so they stood on the step with their faces screwed up, saying, '
One, two, three
…'

'When do we stop?' asked Helen.

'…
twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen
-now!'

They opened their eyes, and blinked.

'Has that made a difference?'

'I don't think so. It's still dark as hell.'

They switched on their torches and went down the steps. Julia's face showed palely, strangely, framed by the lines and angles of her turned-up collar and her cap. She said, 'Which way shall we go?'

'I don't know. You're the veteran at this sort of thing. You choose.'

'All right,' said Julia, suddenly deciding. She took Helen's arm. 'This way.'

They went left into Doughty Street; then left again, into the Gray's Inn Road; and then right, towards Holborn. The roads, even in the short space of time in which Helen had been at Julia's flat, had grown almost empty. There was only the occasional cab or lorry-like creeping black insects, they seemed in the darkness, with gleaming, brittle-looking bodies and louvred, infernal eyes. The pavements, too, were almost clear, and Julia went quickly because of the cold. Helen could feel-as if with disturbing new senses, born of the dark-the weight and pressure of her arm and hand, the nearness of her face, her shoulder, her hip, her thigh, the roll and rhythm of her step…

At what must have been the junction with Clerkenwell Road they turned left. After a little while Julia made them turn again-right, this time. Helen looked around, suddenly confused.

'Where are we?'

' Hatton Garden, I think. Yes, it must be.'

They spoke quietly, for the street seemed deserted.

'Do you know for sure? We won't get lost?'

'How can we get lost?' asked Julia. 'We don't know where we're going… Anyway, you can't get lost in London, even in the black-out and with all the street-signs gone. If you can, you don't deserve to live here. They should make it a kind of exam.'

'If you fail, you get booted out?'

'Exactly. And then,' Julia laughed, 'you must go and live in Brighton.' They turned to the left, went down a short hill. 'Look, this must be the Farringdon Road.'

There were cabs again here, other pedestrians, a feeling of space-but a dreary feel, too, for half of the buildings which lined the street had been damaged and boarded up. Julia led Helen south, towards the river. At a warden's post in one of the arches underneath Holborn Viaduct, a man heard their voices and blew his whistle.

'Those two ladies! They must get themselves a white scarf or a paper, please!'

'All right,' called Helen meekly in reply.

But Julia murmured: 'Suppose we want to be invisible?'

They crossed Ludgate Circus and went on towards the start of the bridge. They saw people going down into the Underground with bags and blankets and pillows, and paused to watch them.

'It gives one a shock, doesn't it,' said Helen quietly, 'to see people doing this, after all this time? I hear the queues still start at four and five o'clock at some of the stations. I couldn't bear to do it, could you?'

'No, I couldn't bear it,' said Julia.

'They've got nowhere else, though. And look, it's all old ladies and men, and children.'

'It's horrible. People being made to live like moles. It's like the Dark Ages. It's worse than that. It's prehistoric.'

There was something elemental, it was true, to the heavily-laden figures, as they made their uncertain way into the dimly-lighted mouth of the Underground. They might have been mendicants or pedlars; refugees from some other, medieval, war-or else, from some war of the future, as imagined by HG Wells or a fanciful writer like that… Then Helen caught snatches of their conversation: '
Head over heels! How we laughed!
'; '
A pound of onions and a saddle of pork
'; '
He said, “It's got fancy teeth
.
” I said, “It ought to have better teeth than I've got, at that price
…
”
'

She pulled at Julia's arm. 'Come on.'

'Where to?'

'The river.'

They walked to the middle of the bridge, then turned off their torches and looked out, westwards. The river ran gleamlessly beneath a starless sky, so black it might have been of treacle or of tar-or else, might not have been a river at all, but a channel, a gash in the earth, impossible to fathom… The sensation of feeling yourself supported at a height above it, by an almost-invisible bridge, was very unnerving. Helen and Julia had unlinked their arms, to lean and peer; now they moved close together again.

But as Helen felt the pressure of Julia's shoulder against her own she remembered, with awful vividness, standing on the quaint little bridge on Hampstead Heath, a few hours before, with Kay. She said quietly, 'Damn.'

'What's the matter?' asked Julia. But she spoke quietly, too: as if she knew what the matter was. And when Helen didn't answer she said, 'Do you want to go back?'

'No,' said Helen, after a little hesitation. 'Do you?'

'No.'

So they were still for another moment, but then started to walk again: back, at first, the way they had come; back to the bottom of Ludgate Hill. But here, without debate, they turned, and headed up towards St Paul 's.

The streets grew quieter again and, once they'd passed under the railway bridge, the mood of the city seemed transformed. There was a sense-for it could not be seen, so much as felt-of exposed ground, unnatural space. The pavements were edged with fences and hoardings, but Helen found her thoughts slipping past the the flimsy panels of wood to the rubble, the burnt and broken things, the uncovered girders and yawning basements and smashed brick, beyond… She and Julia walked without speaking, awed by the strangeness of the place. They stopped at the base of the cathedral steps and Helen looked up, trying to trace the outline of the huge, irregular silhouette against the dark of the sky.