The Night Watch (59 page)

'What's it like? What does it say?'

'I've got it, look.'

He unzipped his jacket and brought out a buff-coloured envelope. Duncan sat on the bed beside him, so that he could see. The papers were addressed to
A
.
J
.
C
.
Planer
; they told him that, in accordance with the National Service Acts, he was called upon for service in the Territorial Army, and was required to present himself in two weeks' time to a Royal Artillery Training Regiment at Shoeburyness. There was information on how he should get there and what he should take; and a postal order for four shillings, in advance of service pay… The pages were stamped all over with dates and numbers-but were creased dreadfully, as if Alec had screwed them up then flattened them out again.

Duncan looked at the creases in horror. 'What have you done to them?'

'It doesn't matter, does it?'

'I don't know. They might- They might use it against you.'

'Use it against me? You sound like my mother! You don't think I'm going to go, do you? I've told you-' Alec took the papers back and, with a gesture of disgust, he crumpled them up and threw them to the floor; then, like a spring recoiling, he pounced on them again, unscrewed them, and tore them right across-even the postal order. 'There!' he said. His face was flushed, and he was shaking.

'Crumbs,' said Duncan, his horror turning to admiration. 'You've done it now, all right!'

'I told you, didn't I?'

'You're a bloody lunatic!'

'I'd rather be a lunatic,' said Alec, tossing his head, 'than do what they want me to do. They're the lunatics. They're making lunatics of everybody else, and no-one's stopping them, everyone's acting as if it's ordinary. As if it's an ordinary thing, that they make a soldier of you, give you a gun.' He got up, and agitatedly smoothed back his already greased-down hair. 'I can't stand it any more. I'm getting out of it, Duncan.'

Duncan stared at him. 'You're not going to register as a conchy?'

Alec snorted. 'I don't mean
that
. That's as bad as the other thing. Having to stand in a room and say your piece, in front of all those strangers? Why should I have to do that? What's it to anybody else, if I won't fight? Anyway,' he added, 'my bloody father would kill me.'

'What do you mean, then?'

Alec put his hand to his mouth and began to bite at his fingers again. He held Duncan's gaze. 'Can't you tell?'

He said it with a sort of suppressed excitement-as if, despite everything, wanting to laugh. Duncan felt his heart seem to shrink in his breast. 'You're not- You're not running away?'

Alec wouldn't answer.

'You can't run away! It's not fair! You can't do it. You haven't got anything with you. You'd need money, you'd need coupons, you'd need to buy food. Where would you go? You're not- You're not going to go to Ireland, are you?' They'd talked, before, about doing that. But they'd talked about doing it together. 'They've got ways of finding you, even in Ireland.'

'I don't care,' said Alec, suddenly furious, 'about fucking Ireland! I don't care what happens to me. I'm not going to go, that's all. Do you know what they do to you?' He turned down the corners of his mouth. 'They do filthy things! Handling you all over, looking at you-up your arse and between your legs. A row of them, Michael Warren said: a row of old men, looking you over. It's disgusting. Old men! It's all right for them. It's all right for my father, and your father. They've had their lives; they want to take our lives from us. They had one war, and now they've made another one. They don't care that we're young. They want to make us old like them. They don't care that it's not our quarrel-'

His voice was rising. 'Stop shouting!' said Duncan.

'They want to kill us!'

'Shut up, can't you!'

Duncan was thinking of the people upstairs, and of his father. His father was deaf as a bloody post; but he had a sort of radar in him, where Alec was concerned… Alec stopped talking. He kept on biting at his fingers, but started pacing around the room. Outside, the sounds of the raid had grown worse-had drawn together into a deep, low throb. The glass in Duncan's window started, very slightly, to vibrate.

'I'm getting out of it,' said Alec again, as he paced. 'I'm getting out. I mean it.'

'You're not running away,' said Duncan firmly. 'It's just not fair.'

'Nothing's fair any more.'

'You can't. You can't leave me in Streatham, with bloody Eddie Parry, and Rodney Mills, and boys like that-'

'I'm getting out. I've had it.'

'You could- Alec!' said Duncan, suddenly excited. 'You could stay here! I could hide you here! I could bring you food and water.'

'Here?' Alec looked around, frowning. 'Where would I hide?'

'You could hide in a cupboard, somewhere like that, I don't know. You'd only have to do it while my dad was here. And then on the nights when Viv was away, you could come out. You could sleep in with me. You could do it, even while Viv was here. She wouldn't mind. She'd help us. You'd be like-like the Count of Monte Cristo!' Duncan thought about it. He thought about making up plates of food-keeping back the meat, the tea and the sugar, from his own ration. He thought about secretly sharing his bed with Alec, every single night…

But Alec looked doubtful. 'I don't know. It would have to be for months and months, wouldn't it? It would have to be till the end of the war. And you'll get your papers, too, next year. You'll get them sooner, if they put the age down. You might get them in July! What would we do then?'

'It's ages till July,' answered Duncan. 'Anything could happen between now and July. We'll probably get blown up, by July!'

Alec shook his head again. 'We won't,' he said bitterly. 'I know we won't. I wish we would! Instead, it's kids and old ladies and babies and stupid people who die-stupid people who don't mind the war. Boys who are too stupid to mind being soldiers, too stupid to see that the war's not their war but a load of government men's… It's not our war, either; we have to suffer in it, though. We have to do the things they tell us. They don't even tell us the truth! They haven't told us about Birmingham. Everybody knows that Birmingham 's been practically burned to the ground. How many other towns and cities are like that? They won't tell us about the weapons Hitler's got, the rockets and gas. Horrible gas, that doesn't kill you but makes your skin come off; gas that does a thing to your brain, to make a sort of robot of you, so that Hitler can take you and turn you into a slave… He's going to put us all in camps, do you know that? He's going to make us work in mines and factories, the men all digging and working machines, the women having babies; he'll make us go to bed with women, one after the other, just to make them pregnant. And all the old men and old ladies he'll just kill. He's done it in Poland. He's probably done it in Belgium and Holland, too. They don't tell us that. It isn't fair! We never wanted to go to war. There ought to be a place for people like us. They ought to let the stupid people fight, and everybody else-everyone who cares about important things, things like the Arts, things like that-they ought to be allowed to go and live somewhere on their own, and to hell with Hitler-'

He kicked at one of Duncan's shoes; then went back to walking about and biting at his hands. He bit madly, moving his hand when one patch of skin or nail was gnawed, and starting on another. His gaze grew fixed, but on nothing. His face had whitened again, and his red-rimmed eyes seemed to blaze like a lunatic's.

Duncan thought of his father again. He imagined what his father would think if he could see Alec like this.
That boy's bloody crackers
, he'd said to Duncan more than once.
That boy needs to grow up
.
He's a waste of bloody time
.
He'll put ideas in your bloody head, that boy will
-

'Stop biting your fingers like that, will you?' he said uneasily. 'You look dotty.'

'Dotty?' hissed Alec. 'I shouldn't be surprised if I go off my bloody head! I got so worked up tonight I thought I was going to be sick. I had to wait for them all to go to sleep. Then I thought there was someone in the house. I could hear men, moving about-footsteps, and whispers. I thought my father had fetched the police.'

Duncan was appalled. 'He wouldn't do that, would he?'

'He might. That's how much he hates me.'

'In the middle of the night?'

'Of course then!' said Alec impatiently. 'That's just when they do come! Don't you know that? It's when you least expect them to-'

Abruptly, they stopped talking. Duncan looked at the door-remembering his mother's illness again; feeling weird again; half-expecting to hear the sound of people creeping about in the hall… What he heard instead was the steady throb of aircraft, the monotonous
crump-crump
of bombs, followed by the slither of soot in the chimney-breast.

He looked back at Alec; and grew more unnerved than ever. For Alec had lowered his hands at last, and seemed suddenly unnaturally calm. He met Duncan's gaze, and made some slightly theatrical gesture-shrugged his narrow shoulders, turned his head, showed his fine, handsome profile.

'This is wasting time,' he said, as if casually.

'What is?' asked Duncan, afraid. 'What do you mean?'

'I told you, didn't I? I'd rather be dead than do what they want me to do. I'd rather die than have them put a gun in my hand and make me shoot some German boy who feels just like I do. I'm getting out. I'm going to do it, before they do it to me.'

'But, do what?' Duncan asked him, stupidly.

Alec made the theatrical gesture again-as if to say, it was nothing to him, one way or the other. 'I'm going to kill myself,' he said.

Duncan stared at him. 'You can't!'

'Why not?'

'You just can't. It's not fair. What- What will your mother think?'

Alec coloured. 'That's her hard luck, isn't it? She shouldn't have married my oaf of a father. He'll be pleased, anyway. He wants to see me dead.'

Duncan wasn't listening. He was thinking it through and growing tearful. He said, 'But, what about me?' His voice sounded strangled. 'It'll be harder on me than on any of them, you know it will! You're my best friend. You can't kill yourself and leave me here.'

'Do it too, then,' said Alec.

He said it quietly. Duncan was wiping his nose on his sleeve, and wasn't sure he'd heard him properly. He said, 'What?'

'Do it too,' said Alec again.

They looked at each other. Alec's face had flushed pinker than ever; he'd drawn back his lips, unguardedly, in a nervous smile, and his crooked teeth were showing. He moved closer to Duncan and put his hands on his shoulders, so that he was facing Duncan squarely, only the length of a curved arm away. He gripped Duncan hard, almost shook him. He looked right into his eyes and said excitedly, 'It'll show them, won't it? Think how it'll look! We can leave a letter, saying why we've done it! We'll be two young people, giving up our lives. It'll get into the papers. It'll get everywhere! It might bloody well stop the war!'

'Do you think it would?' asked Duncan-excited too, suddenly; impressed and flattered; wanting to believe it, but still afraid.

'Why wouldn't it?'

'I don't know. Young people are dying all the time. That hasn't changed anything. Why should it be different with us?'

'You chump,' said Alec, curling his lip, drawing off his hands and moving away. 'If you can't see- If you're not up to it- If you're windy-'

'I didn't say that.'

'-I'll do it on my own.'

'I won't let you do it on your own!' said Duncan. 'I told you, you're not going to leave me.'

Alec came back. 'Help me write the letter, then,' he said, excited again. 'We can write it- Look.' He stooped and picked up one of the torn-off halves of the call-up paper. 'We can write it on the back of this. It'll be symbolic. Give me a pen, will you?'

Duncan 's leather writing-case was on the floor, beside the bed. Automatically, Duncan took a step towards it; then checked himself. He went instead, as if casually, to the mantelpiece, picked up a pencil, and held it out. But Alec wouldn't take it. 'Not that,' he said. 'They'll think a bloody kid wrote it, if I use that! Let me have your fountain pen.'

Duncan blinked and looked away. 'It isn't in here.'

'You bloody liar, I know it is!'

'It's just,' said Duncan, 'if a pen's any good, you're not suppose to let other people use it.'

'You always say that! It doesn't matter now, does it?'

'I don't want you to, that's all. Use the pencil. My sister bought me that pen.'

'She'll be proud of you, then,' said Alec. 'They'll probably put that pen in some sort of frame, after they find us! Think of it like that. Come on, Duncan.'

Duncan hesitated a little longer, then reluctantly unzipped the writing-case and drew out his pen. Alec was always badgering him for a go with this pen, and he took it from Duncan now with obvious relish: making a business of unscrewing the lid, examining the nib, testing the weight of the pen in his hand. He took the writing-case too, then sat down on the edge of the bed with the case on his knee, and he smoothed out the paper, trying to press the creases from it. When he'd got it as flat as he could, he started to write.

'
To whom it may concern
…' He looked at Duncan. 'Shall I put that? Or shall I put,
To Mr Winston Churchill
?'

Duncan thought it over. '
To whom it may concern
sounds better,' he said. 'And it might be to Hitler and Goering and Mussolini then, too.'

'That's true,' said Alec, liking the idea. He thought for a second, sucking at his lip, tapping with the pen against his mouth; and then wrote more. He wrote swiftly, stylishly-like Keats or like Mozart, Duncan thought-dashing the nib with little flourishes across the paper, pausing to frown over what he had put, then writing stylishly again…

When he'd finished, he passed the letter over to Duncan, and gnawed at his knuckle while Duncan read.

To whom it may concern
.
If you are reading this, it means that we, Alec J
.
C
.
Planer and Duncan W
.
Pearce, of Streatham, London, England, have succeeded in our intentions and are no more
.
We do not undertake this deed lightly
.
We know that the country we are about to enter is that “dark, undiscovered one” from which “no traveller returns”
.
But we do what we are about to do on behalf of the Youth of England, and in the name of Liberty, Honesty and Truth
.
We would rather take our own lives freely, than have them stolen from us by the Pedlars of War
.
We ask for one epitaph only, and it is this: that, like the great T
.
E
.
Lawrence, we “drew the tides of men into our hands, and wrote our will across the sky in stars
.
”