The Night Watch (10 page)

When he came back she said, 'Stay here'; and she went herself to a clump of bushes, drew up her skirt, pushed down her knickers and got into a squat. 'Watch out for nettles!' he called after her; but he called it vaguely, he didn't see where she had gone and couldn't see her once she'd stooped. She watched him bending at the car's wing-mirror, combing his hair. She watched him rinsing out the beakers in the stream. Then she looked at her hand. The spunk on her fingers had dried as fine as pretty lace; she rubbed at it, and it became plain white flakes that drifted to the ground and were lost.

He had to be home by seven o'clock, and it was already half-past four. They strolled to the little bridge again, and stood looking down into the water. They wandered back to the ruined mill; he picked up a piece of broken glass and cut their initials into the plaster, alongside the dirty messages.
RN
,
VP
, and a heart with an arrow.

But when he'd thrown the glass away, he looked at his watch.

'Better get going, I suppose.'

They went back to the car. She shook out the rug, and he folded it up and put it away, with the beakers, in the boot. Where the rug had been there was a square of flattened grass. It seemed a shame, in so lovely a place: she went over it, kicking the grass back up.

The car had been sitting in the sun all this time. She climbed in, and almost burnt her leg on the hot leather seat. Reggie got in beside her and gave her his handkerchief-spread it out beneath the crook of her knees, to keep her from burning.

When he had done it, he bent forward and kissed her thigh. She touched his head: the dark, oiled curls; the white scalp showing palely through. She looked at the lush green clearing again and said softly, 'I wish we could stay here.'

He let his head drop until it was resting in her lap. 'So do I,' he said. The words were muffled. He twisted round, to meet her gaze. 'You know- You know I hate it, don't you? You know, if I could have done it differently-? All of it, I mean.'

She nodded. There was nothing to say, that they hadn't said before. He kept his head in her lap a moment longer, then kissed her thigh again and straightened up. He turned the key, and the engine rumbled into life. It seemed horribly loud, in the silence-just as the silence had seemed weird and wrong to them when they'd first arrived.

He turned the car, drove slowly back up the bumping track, and rejoined the road they'd come out on; they went past the cheese-coloured cottage without slowing down, then picked up the main road to London. The traffic was much heavier now. People were coming back, like them, from afternoons out. The speeding cars were noisy. The sun was in front of them, making them squint: every so often they'd make a turn, or pass through trees, and lose it for a minute; then it would reappear, bigger than before, pink and swollen and low in the sky.

The sun, and the warmth, and perhaps the gin that she had drunk, made Viv feel dozy. She put her head against Reggie's shoulder and closed her eyes. He rubbed his cheek against her hair again, sometimes turning his head to kiss her. They sang together, sleepily, old-fashioned songs-'I Can't Give You Anything But Love', and 'Bye Bye Blackbird'.

No-one here can love or understand me
.

Oh what hard luck stories they all hand me!

Make my bed and light the light,

I'll arrive late tonight
.

Blackbird, bye bye
.

When they reached the outskirts of London, she yawned and reluctantly straightened up. She got out her compact and powdered her face, redid her lipstick. The traffic seemed worse than ever, suddenly. Reggie tried a different route, through Poplar and Shadwell, but that was bad too. Finally they got caught in a jam at Tower Hill. She saw him looking at his watch, and said, 'Let me out here.' But he kept saying, 'Just give it a second.' He hated to give way to other drivers. 'If that little twerp in front would just- Christ! It's blokes like him who-'

The car moved forward. Then they got in another jam on Fleet Street, going into the Strand. He looked for a way to get out of it, but the side-streets were blocked by drivers with the same idea. He beat his fingers on the steering-wheel, saying, 'Damn, damn.' He looked at his watch again.

Viv sat tensely, catching his mood, shrinking down a little in her seat in case someone should spot her; but thinking of the place in the woods still, not wanting to give it up yet: the mill, the stream and bridge, the hush of it.
It ain't Piccadilly
… Reggie had brushed out the car before they'd started back, getting out all the petals and bits of grass that had been shaken in from the hedges. He'd nudged at the butterfly with his fingers until it had quivered and fluttered away.

She turned her head and looked into the lighted windows of shops, at the boxes of mocked-up chocolates and fruits, at the perfume bottles and liquor bottles-the same kind of coloured water doing, probably, for 'Nights of Parma' and 'Irish Malt'. The car inched forward. They drew near a cinema, the Tivoli. There were people outside it, queuing for tickets, and she gazed rather wistfully across them, at the girls and their boyfriends, the husbands and wives. The cinema had coloured lights on it, and the lights seemed to shine more luridly, more luminously, for shining in the twilight rather than the dark. She saw odd little disconnected details: the glint of an earring, the gleam of a man's hair, the sparkle of crystal in the paving-stones.

Then Reggie braked and tooted his horn. Someone had sauntered across the road in front of him and moved casually on. He threw up his hands. 'Don't mind me, mister, will you? Jesus Christ!' He followed the sauntering figure with his gaze, looking disgusted; but then his face changed. The figure, in stepping on to the pavement, must have given something away. Reggie started to laugh. 'My mistake,' he said, nudging Viv. 'What do you think of that? It's not a mister, it's a miss.'

Viv turned to look-and saw Kay, in a jacket and trousers. She was drawing a cigarette from a case and, with a stylish, idle gesture, tapping it lightly against the silver before raising it to her lip…

'What the hell's the matter?' asked Reggie in amazement.

For Viv had cried out. Her stomach had contracted as if she'd been struck in it. She put up a hand to hide her face and, ducking further down in her seat, said to Reggie with awful urgency: 'Go on. Drive on!'

He gaped at her. 'What's the matter?'

'Just drive on, can't you? Please!'

'Drive on? Have you gone barmy?'

The way ahead was still jammed with cars. Viv moved about as if tormented. She looked back, towards Fleet Street. She said desperately, 'Go that way, can't you?'

'Which way?'

'The way we came.'

'The way we came? Are you-?' But now she'd actually grabbed the steering-wheel. 'Jesus!' said Reggie, pushing her hand away. 'All right. All right!' He looked over his shoulder and began, laboriously, to turn the car. The car behind gave a blast of its horn. The drivers heading for Ludgate Circus gazed at him as if he was a lunatic. He worked the gears, sweating and cursing, and slowly edged the car round.

Viv kept her head down; but looked back once. Kay had joined the line of people outside the cinema: she was holding a lighter to her cigarette, and the flame of it, springing up, through the twilight, lit her fingers and her face…
Hush, Vivien
, Viv remembered her saying. The memory was stark, after all this time-stark and terrible-the grip of her hand, the closeness of her mouth.
Vivien, hush
.

'Thank God for that!' said Reggie, when they were inching forwards again in the other direction. 'Talk about not drawing attention to ourselves. What on earth was all that for? Are you all right?'

She didn't answer. She'd felt the grinding of the gears, the lurching forwards and backwards of the car, in what seemed to be all her muscles and bones. She folded her arms across herself, as if to hold herself together.

'What is it?' asked Reggie.

'I saw someone I knew,' she said at last; 'that's all.'

'Someone you knew? Who was it?'

'Just someone.'

'Just someone. Well, I expect they got a bloody good look at you and me, too. Hell, Viv…'

He went grumbling on. She didn't listen. He stopped the car at last in some street near Blackfriars Bridge; she said she'd take a bus from there, and he didn't argue. He pulled up in a quiet-looking spot, and drew her to him so that they could kiss; afterwards he borrowed her handkerchief again and wiped his mouth. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, too, and, 'What a trip!' he said-as if the afternoon had been some sort of disaster; as if he'd forgotten, already, the stream and the ruined mill, the initials on the wall… She didn't care. The feel of his hand on her arm, of his lips against her mouth, was suddenly frightful. She wanted to get home, be on her own, away from him.

But as she opened her door he reached for her again. He'd put his hand into a pocket in the dashboard and was bringing something out. It turned out to be two tins of meat: one beef, and one pork.

She was so distracted, she started to take them. She opened her bag to put them away. But then something seemed to give way inside her, and she was suddenly furious. She pushed them back at him. 'I don't want them!' she said. 'Take them- Give them to your wife!'

The tins fell, and bounced from the seat. 'Viv!' said Reggie, astonished, hurt. 'Don't be like that! What have I done? What the hell's the matter? Viv!'

She got out, closed the door and walked away. He leaned across the seat and wound down the window, still calling her name-still saying, in amazement, 'What's the matter? What have I done? What-?' Then his voice began to grow hard-not so much, she thought, with anger, as with simple weariness. 'What the hell have I done, now?'

She didn't look back. She turned a corner, and the words faded. After that he must have started the engine again and driven off. She joined a queue at a bus-stop, and waited ten minutes for a bus; and he didn't come after her.

When she got home, she found the flat full of people. Her sister Pamela had come round, with her husband, Howard, and their three little boys. They'd come to bring Viv's father some tea. Pamela had warmed it up on the stove, and the narrow kitchen was stuffy and hot. There was washing draped on the laundry rack, hoisted up but dangling almost to the floor; Pamela must have done that, too. The wireless was on full-blast. Howard was sitting on the kitchen table. The two eldest boys were charging about, and Viv's father had the baby in his lap.

'Nice day?' asked Pamela. She was drying her hands, working the towel into the creases between her fingers. She looked Viv over. 'You've caught the sun. All right for some.'

Viv went to the sink and peered into her father's shaving mirror. Her face was pink and white, blotchy. She drew forward her hair. 'It was hot,' she said. 'Hello, Dad.'

'All right, love? How was your picnic?'

'It was OK. How's things, Howard?'

'All right, Viv. Doing our best, aren't we? How d'you like this weather? I tell you-'

Howard could never stop talking. The two boys were the same. They had things to show her: noisy little pop-guns; they put in the corks and fired them off. Her father followed the words on everybody's mouths-nodding, smiling, moving his own lips slightly; for he was awfully deaf. The baby was struggling in his arms, reaching for the pop-guns, wanting to get down. When Viv drew close her father held him out to her, glad to give him up. 'He wants you, love.'

But she shook her head. 'He's too big, that one. He weighs a ton.'

'Give him here,' said Pamela. 'Maurice- Howard, don't just bloody well sit there-!'

The racket was terrible. Viv said she was going to go and take her shoes and stockings off. She went into her bedroom and closed the door.

For a second she just stood, not knowing what to do with herself-thinking that she might start crying, be ill… But she couldn't start crying with her dad and her sister in the other room. She sat on the bed, then lay down with her hands on her stomach; lying down, however, made her feel worse. She sat up again. She got to her feet. She couldn't shake off the shock of it, the upset of it.

Hush, Vivien
.

She took a step; then tilted her head, hearing a noise above the muffled din of the radio, thinking it might be Pamela or one of the boys, in the hall. But the noise turned out to be nothing. She stood undecided, for almost a minute, biting her hand…

Then she went quickly to her wardrobe and drew back its door.

The wardrobe was filled with bits of rubbish. There were some of Duncan 's old school-clothes there, hanging up beside her dresses; there were even two or three ancient frocks of her mother's, that her father had never wanted to throw away. Above the rail was a shelf, where she kept her sweaters. Behind the sweaters were photograph albums, old autograph books, old diaries, things like that.

She tilted her head, listening again for footsteps in the hall; then she reached into the shadows behind the albums and brought out a little tobacco tin. She brought it out as naturally as if she reached for it every day, when in fact she'd placed it there three years before and hadn't looked at it since. She'd pressed the lid down very tightly then, and now the joints in her wrists and fingers felt weak. She had to get a coin, and prise away at it with that. And when the lid was loosened she hesitated again-still listening out, anxiously, in case someone should come.

Then she drew the lid off.

Inside the tin was a small parcel of cloth. Inside the parcel of cloth was a ring: a plain gold ring, quite aged, and marked with dents and little scratches. She took it up, held it for a second in the palm of her hand; then slipped it on her finger and covered her eyes.

At ten to six, when the men who ran the candle-making machines turned off the pumps, the sudden silence in the factory made your ears ring. It was like coming out of water. The girls at Duncan 's bench took it as a signal to start getting ready to go home: they got out their lipsticks and their compacts and things like that. The older women started rolling cigarettes. Len took a comb from his trouser pocket and ran it through his hair. He wore his hair a bit spivvily, swept back behind his ears. When he put the comb away he caught Duncan 's eye, and leaned forward.