The Night Watch (57 page)

She was just putting the comb back into her bag when someone knocked at the door. She took one last look in the mirror and called, 'All right!'

The knock came again, louder than before.

'All right! Just a sec!'

Then the handle was tried. She heard a voice, a man's voice, trying to force itself into a whisper. 'Miss! Open up, will you?'

'God!' she said to herself. She could only suppose it was one of the Canadians, larking about. Or it might, at a pinch, be the father of the horse-mad girl… But when she drew back the bolt and opened the door, a hand came around it to keep her from shutting it again; and she recognised the short black hairs on its fingers. Then came his khaki sleeve, his shoulder, his unshaven chin and bloodshot eye.

'Miss,' he said. He'd taken off his cap. 'Do me a favour, will you? The guard's on his way. I've lost my ticket and he'll give me hell-'

'I'm just coming out,' she said, 'if you'll let me.'

He shook his head. Now he was keeping her from opening the door, as well as from closing it. He said, 'I've seen this bloke and, honest to God, he's a tartar. I heard him earlier on, tearing a strip off some poor devil who had the wrong sort of warrant. If he knocks and hears my voice, he'll still want his ticket.'

'Well, what do you want me to do about it?'

'Can't you just let me in till he's gone past?'

She looked at him in amazement. 'In here, with me?'

'Just till he's gone by. And when he knocks, you can slip your ticket under the door… Please, miss. It's a thing girls do for servicemen all the time.'

'I'll bet it is. Not this girl, though.'

'Come on, I'm begging you. I'm in an awful squeeze. I've got compassionate leave, only forty-eight hours. I've spent half of that already, freezing my- Well, freezing my feet off, on Swindon station. If he throws me out I'm done for. Be a sport. It's not my fault. I had the ticket in my hand and put it down for half a minute. I think some Navy boy saw me do it-'

'A minute ago you said you'd lost it.'

He touched his hair distractedly. 'Lost it, had it pinched, what's the difference? I've been dodging up and down this train like a ruddy lunatic, in and out of lavatories all the way. All I'm looking for is someone tender-hearted to give me a bit of a break. It'll be no skin off your nose, will it? You can trust me, I swear to God. I'm not-' He stopped and drew back his head; then his face reappeared, he gave a hiss-'Here he comes!'-and before she could do anything about it he had made a scuffling rush into the lavatory, bundling her back into it in the process. He shot the bolt and stood with his ear at the crack of the door-frame, his lower lip caught between his teeth.

Viv said, 'If you think-!'

He put his finger to his mouth: 'Shh!' He still had his ear pressed to the door-frame, and now began moving his head up and down it-like a doctor, desperately trying to find a heartbeat in the bosom of a dying man.

Then there was a smart, authoritative
tap-tap-tap!
on the door that made him jump as though he'd been shot.

'
All tickets, please!
'

The soldier looked at Viv and grimaced dreadfully. He went through a mad sort of pantomime, pretending to take a ticket from his pocket, stoop, and shove it under the door.

'All tickets!' the guard called again.

'This lavatory's taken!' Viv cried at last. Her voice was flustered, silly-sounding.

'I know it's taken,' came the reply from the corridor. 'I need to see your ticket please, miss.'

'Can't you see it later?'

'I need to see it now, please.'

'Just- Just a minute.'

What could she do? She couldn't open the door, the guard would take one look at the soldier and think the worst… So she got out her ticket, and, 'Move over,' she hissed, flapping her hand furiously. The soldier took a step away from the door so that she could stoop and slip the ticket under it. She bent her legs self-consciously-aware of the smallness of the space they were in; aware that she was making it smaller, by stooping; feeling, in fact, her thigh pass against his knee, so that the wool of her skirt clung momentarily to the khaki of his trousers.

Her ticket lay flat in the shadow of the door for a second and then, as if through some weird agency of its own, gave a quiver and slid away. There was a moment's suspense. She stayed awkwardly squatting, and didn't look up. But at last, 'Very good, miss!' came the call. The ticket was returned, with a neat little hole punched out of it; and the guard moved on.

She stood up, stepped back, put her ticket into her bag and snapped closed its clasp.

'Happy now?'

The soldier was wiping his forehead with his sleeve. 'Miss,' he said, 'you're an angel! The sort of girl, I swear to God, who restores a fellow's faith in life. The sort of girl the songs are written for.'

'Well, you can write one now,' she said, moving forward, 'and sing it to yourself.'

'What?' He put his arm across the door. 'You can't go yet. Suppose the ticket fellow comes back? Give it another minute, at least. Look-' He put his hand to his jacket pocket and brought out a crumpled packet of Woodbines. 'Just keep me company for the length of a smoke, that's all I ask. Give him time to get down to First Class. I swear to God, if you knew the journey I've had, the hoops I've had to jump through-'

'That's your look-out.'

He started to smile. 'You'll be helping the war-effort. Think of it that way.'

'How many girls have you used that line on?'

'You're the first. I swear!'

'The first today, you mean.'

But now he was almost grinning. His lips parted and she saw his teeth. Rather distracting teeth, they were: very straight and very even and white, and seeming to be whiter against the stubble of his chin. They made the rest of his face good-looking, suddenly. She noticed the hazel of his eyes, the thick black lashes. His hair was dark, darker even than her own; he'd tried to flatten it down with Brylcreem but individual locks were pulling against the grease, lifting back into curls.

His uniform, however, looked as though he'd slept in it. The jacket was stained and badly-fitting. The trouser legs were creased in horizontal bands like stretched-out concertinas. But he held out the packet of Woodbines, imploringly; and she pictured her own empty narrow seat in the crowded compartment: the Navy man making passes, the asthmatic WAAF, the horse-mad girl.

'All right,' she said at last. 'Give me a cigarette, just for a minute. I must want my head read, though!'

He smiled more broadly, in relief. His teeth were more distracting than ever, she thought, when seen all together like that… He lit a match for her, from a match-book, and she moved forward to the flame; but then she moved back and stood guardedly, with one arm folded across herself, the wrist of it propping up the elbow of the other, and the heel of her foot pressed tight to the wall, a brace against the lurching of the train. It was hard to ignore the presence of the porcelain lavatory-over which, after all, she'd recently stooped with her bottom bared. Then again, like everyone else she'd had to get used to sharing odd spaces with strangers recently. On another train journey, two months before, a raid had started up and all the passengers had had to get down on the floor. She'd had to lie for forty minutes with her face more or less in a man's lap; he'd been awfully embarassed…

This man, at least, seemed quite at his ease. He leaned on the counter which held the basin and started to yawn. The yawn became a low sort of yodelling groan, and when that was finished he put his cigarette between his lips and rubbed his face-rubbed it in that vigorous, unselfconscious way with which men always handled their own faces, and girls never did.

Then the train began to slow. Viv looked anxiously at the window. 'That's not Paddington, is it?'

'Paddington!' he said. 'Christ, I wish it was!' He leaned to the blind and drew it back a little and tried to look out; but it was impossible to see anything. 'God knows where we are,' he said. 'Just past Didcot, I should say.-There we go.' He'd almost staggered. 'They're throwing in a fun-fair ride, for free.'

The train had run quickly for a moment, then abruptly slowed; now it was moving with a series of jolts. He and Viv bounced about like jumping beans. Viv put out her arms, looking for hand-holds. It was impossible not to smile. The soldier shook his head, too, in disbelief. 'Has it been like this all the way? Where did you get on?'

After a little show of reluctance, she told him: Taunton. She'd been to visit her sister and her baby; they'd gone down there, she said, away from the bombs… He listened, nodding.

' Taunton,' he said. 'I went there once. Nice couple of pubs as I recall. One called The Ring-ever drink there? Landlord-' he made fists of his hands-'used to box. Little chap, but with a great squashed nose. Keeps a pair of gloves in a glass case on the counter… Boy!' He sighed and folded his arms, as the train ran more smoothly. 'What I wouldn't give to be there now! A glass of Black and White at my elbow, roaring fire in the grate… You haven't got any whisky on you, by any chance?'

'Whisky!' she said. 'No, I haven't.'

'All right, don't be like that about it! You'd be surprised how much liquor does get carried around in lady's purses, in my experience. Girls like to drink it, I suppose, against the bombs… You wouldn't need that, of course, with nerves like yours.'

'Nerves like mine?'

'I saw your hand when you put your ticket away. Steady as a rock. You'd make a good spy.' He narrowed his eyes and looked her over. 'You might be a spy, come to that. A lady-spy, like Mata Hari.'

She said, 'You'd better watch your step, then.'

'But for all you know,' he went on, 'I might be a spy, too. Or, not a spy, but the chap the spies are after. Isn't there always one of those? Some poor sap who's got a secret message on him, because he's accidentally put on another bloke's boots, or picked up another bloke's umbrella? And he and the girl always end up tied to a chair, with the sort of knot that looks like it was done by a bad boy scout.'

He laughed to himself, liking the idea-
liking the sound of his own voice
, she thought, conventionally; though the fact was, it was a nice voice, and she found she rather liked it, too… 'How would you feel,' he went on, 'about being tied to a chair with me?-I'm only asking out of interest, by the way. I'm not shooting you a line, or anything like that.'

'No?'

'Oh, no. I like to get to know a girl a little, before I start shooting lines at her.'

She drew on her cigarette. 'Suppose she won't let you get to know her?'

'Oh, but there are a thousand little things a fellow can find out about a girl, just by looking at her… Take you, for example.' He nodded to her hand. 'You're not married. That means you're smart. I like smartness in a woman… Fingernails rather long, so you're not on the land or in a factory.' He dropped his gaze, and worked slowly back up. 'Legs too nice to put in trousers. Figure too good to hide you away in some back-room job… I'd say you were secretary to some bigwig-Admiral of the Fleet, something like that. Am I close?'

She shook her head. 'Nowhere near. I'm a common typist, that's all.'

'A typist. Ah… Yes, that fits. Where have they got you? Some government racket or other?'

'Just something in London.'

'Just something in London, I see… And, what's your name? Or is that hush-hush, too?'

She hesitated, but only for a moment; then thought,
Where's the harm?
and told him. He nodded, thinking it over, looking into her face. 'Vivien,' he said at last. 'Yes, it suits you.'

'Does it?'

'It's a name for a glamour girl, isn't it? Wasn't there a Lady Vivien, or someone like that? In King Arthur's times? I used to know all those stories when I was a kid; I've forgotten them now… Anyway,' he leaned forward to shake her hand, 'my name's Reggie. Reggie Nigri.-Yes, I know, I know, it's lousy. And I've been stuck with it all my life. The boys at school used to call me “Nigger”; now the fellows at camp call me “Musso”. Work that one out if you can… My old grandad came over from Naples. You should see the pictures! He had a moustache out to here, a waistcoat, a handkerchief round his neck; all he needed was the monkey. He sold hokey-pokey from a cart in the street. I've got second cousins twice removed-or something like that-who are fighting, now, for the other team, in Italy. They're probably just about as keen on this ruddy war as I am… Have you got any brothers, Vivien?-You don't mind me calling you Vivien? I'd call you Miss Pearce, but it sounds old-fashioned in times like these.-Have you got any brothers?'

Viv nodded. 'Just one.'

'Older, or younger?'

'Younger,' she said. 'Seventeen.'

'Seventeen! I bet he loves all this, doesn't he? Can't wait to join up?'

She thought of Duncan. 'Well-'

'I would too, if I was his age. Instead- I'm nearly thirty, and look at me. Two years ago I was selling motor cars in Maida Vale, and doing very nicely. Then the war starts up and, bingo, that's the end of that. I got a bit of work with a pal of mine for a while, in the costume jewellery trade; that wasn't too bad. Now I'm stuck in a ruddy OCTU in Wales, being taught which end of a rifle the bullets are supposed to come out. I've been there four months, and I swear to God it's rained every day. It's all right for our CO, he stays in a hotel. I'm living in a hut with a tin roof on it…'

He went on like this, telling her about his duties at the camp, the hopeless squaddies he was billeted with, the hopeless pubs and hotel bars, the hopeless weather… He made her laugh. The boys she met, of her own age, were full of the war: they wanted to talk about types of aeroplane and ship; about Army bets and Navy quarrels. He was past all that. He was past boasting. He yawned and rubbed his eyes again, and his very tiredness seemed appealing somehow. She liked the grown-up, casual way he'd said 'when I was a kid'. She liked the way he'd said her name; that he'd thought it over and said it suited her. She liked it that he knew about King Arthur. She liked the fact, after all, that his uniform didn't fit him. She pictured him in an ordinary jacket, a shirt and tie, a vest. She looked again at his monkey-like hands and imagined the rest of him: swarthy, stocky, with swirls of hair on his chest, his shoulders, his buttocks and legs-