The Night Watch (18 page)

'Well, isn't it a he?'

'No. If you must know, it's a woman.'

He didn't believe her at first. But she could see him, thinking it over. And then he leaned back, nodding, and his expression changed. 'Ah,' he said. 'I see. The wife.'

He said it in such a cynical, knowing sort of way; and his comment was so far from the truth-yet in another way, so near it-that she felt stung. She wondered what Duncan might have told him, about her and Reggie. Her face grew warm. She said, 'It's not- It's not what you're thinking.'

He spread his hands. 'I told you before, I'm a broad-minded bloke.'

'But, it's nothing like that. It's just-'

His eyes were on her. They were blue, still rather knowing but, apart from that, quite guileless; and as she gazed into them it struck her that he was the first person, in what must have been years and years, to whom she'd spoken for more than about a minute without telling some sort of lie… When the café door opened and a couple of boys came in and started joking with the man behind the counter, she said quietly, under cover of their laughter, 'I saw someone here. I saw someone here, the week before last; and I've been hoping to see her again. That's all it is.'

He could tell she was serious. He moved closer to the table again and said, 'A friend?'

She looked down. 'Just a woman. A woman I knew once, when the war was on.'

'And you made an arrangement with her, for tonight?'

'No. I just saw her there, outside the cinema. I've been back, and waited, on different nights. I thought, if I did that-' She grew self-conscious. 'It sounds barmy, doesn't it? I know it does. It
is
barmy. But, you see, when I saw her here, before, I sort of-ran away. Then I wished I hadn't. She was kind to me once. She was terribly kind. She did something for me…'

'You lost touch with her?' Fraser asked, in the little silence which followed. 'That happened all the time in wartime.'

'It wasn't that. I could have found out where she was if I'd wanted to; it would have been easy. But what she'd done for me, you see, made me think of something else, that I didn't want to remember…' She shook her head. 'It's stupid really, because of course I remembered it anyway.'

He didn't press her to tell him more. They sat with the silly-looking cakes between them; he stirred the remains of his cooling coffe as if thinking over her words. Then he said, still rather musingly, 'Wartime is a time of kindness. We all tend to forget. I've worked with people in the past few months, people who've come here from Germany and Poland. Their stories- God! They told me terrible things, atrocious things; things I couldn't believe an ordinary man, in ordinary clothes, in the world I knew, could be telling me… But they told me marvellous things, too. The courage of people, the impossible goodness. I think it was having heard stories like that that made me, when I saw your brother again- I don't know. But he was kind to me, in prison; I can tell you that. Just as it sounds like your friend, this woman, was kind to you.'

Viv said, 'She wasn't even a friend, really. We were strangers.'

'Well, sometimes it's easier to be kinder to strangers than to the people we're closest to… She might have forgotten you, though-have you thought of that? Or she might not want to be reminded. Are you even sure it's her?'

'It's her,' said Viv. 'I know it is. I just know. And yes, perhaps she has forgotten me, and perhaps I oughtn't to bother her. It's just- I can't explain it. It just seems the right thing to do.' She looked at him, suddenly afraid she'd said too much. She wanted to say: 'You won't tell Duncan?' But what would that do, but make yet another secret?-a secret between him and her? You had to trust someone, after all; and perhaps he was right, and it was easiest to trust strangers… So she said nothing. She reached for one of the cakes and began to crumble it up. Then she turned her head, and gazed out into the street-gazed idly, now; not looking for Kay; still sure, in her heart, that she'd had that single chance and lost it.

But even before her gaze had settled a figure came sauntering along the pavement from the direction of Waterloo Bridge: a slim, tall, quite striking figure, not at all like a boy or a middle-aged man, with its hands in its trouser pockets and a cigarette dangling nonchalantly from its lip… Viv moved closer to the window. Fraser saw, and leaned to look too.

'What is it?' he said. 'You haven't seen her? Which one are you looking at? Not the tailored type, with the swagger?'

'Don't!' said Viv, moving back, reaching across the table to pull him back with her. 'She'll see.'

'I thought that was the point! What's the matter with you? Aren't you going to go over?'

She'd lost her nerve. 'I don't know. Shall I?'

'After you've put me through all this?'

'It's so long ago. She'll think I'm crackers.'

'But you want to, don't you?'

'Yes.'

'Go on, then! What are you waiting for?'

Again, it was the youth and the excitement in his blue eyes that made her do it. She got to her feet, and went out of the café; she ran across the street and reached Kay's side just as Kay herself had reached the cinema's swing doors. She took out the ring, in its cloth, from her pocket; and just touched Kay's arm…

It only took a minute or two. It was the easiest thing she'd ever done. But she came back to the café feeling elated. She sat, and smiled and smiled. Fraser watched her, smiling too.

'Did she remember you?'

Viv nodded.

'Was she pleased to see you?'

'I'm not sure. She seemed-different. But I suppose everyone's different from how they were in those days.'

'Will you see her again? Are you glad you did it?'

'Yes,' said Viv. Then she said it again. 'Yes, I'm glad I did it.'

She looked back over at the cinema. There was no sign of Kay now. But her feeling of elation persisted. She felt capable of anything! She finished her coffee, her mind racing. She was thinking of all the things she could do. She could give up her job! She could leave Streatham, take a little flat all to herself! She could call up Reggie! Her heart jumped. She could find a telephone box, right now. She could call him up and tell him- What? That she was through with him, for ever! That she forgave him; but that forgiving wasn't enough… The possibilities made her giddy. Maybe she'd never do any of these things. But oh, how marvellous it was, just to know that she could!

She put down her cup and started to laugh. Fraser laughed, too. But his smile had a frown mixed up in it; and as he looked her over, he shook his head.

'How extraordinarily like your brother you are!' he said.

The house, when Helen got home that night, was empty. She stood in the hall, calling Julia's name-but became aware, even as she was calling, of a sort of deadness to the place. The lights were off; the stove and kettle, up in the kitchen, were quite cold. Her first, wild, idiotic thought was,
Julia's gone
; and she went with a feeling of dread into their bedroom and slowly drew back the wardrobe door, certain that Julia's clothes would have all been cleared away… She did this before she'd taken her own coat off, and when she saw that Julia's clothes were still there; that none of her suitcases was missing; that her hairbrush and jewellery and cosmetics were all still scattered on top the dressing-table, she sat awkwardly down on the bed and shook with relief.

You bloody idiot
, she said to herself, almost laughing.

But then, where
was
Julia? Helen went back to the wardrobe. After a little calculation she worked out that Julia had gone out in one of her smartish dresses and one of her nicer coats. She'd taken her decent-looking bag, as opposed to her scuffed one. She might have gone to visit her parents, Helen thought. She might be out with her literary agent or her publisher.
She might be with Ursula Waring
, said a gnomish voice, from a dark, grubby corner of Helen's mind; but Helen wouldn't listen to that… Julia would be out with her editor or agent; probably her agent had rung up at the last minute, as he often did, and asked her to run into the office and sign some paper-something like that.

If that were the case, of course, Julia would have left a note. Helen got up and took her coat off-quite calm, now-and began to look around the house. She went back to the kitchen. Beside the pantry, hanging up from a nail, they kept a hinged brass hand with scraps of paper clasped in it, for writing lists and messages on; but all the messages gripped in it now were old ones. She searched the floor, in case a scrap of paper had fallen out. She looked on the kitchen counters and shelves and, finding nothing, began to look in all sorts of other, improbable places: in the bathroom, under the cushions on the sofa, in the pockets of one of Julia's cardigans… At last she could feel her searching taking on an edge of panic or compulsion. Again that grubby voice rose inside her-just pointed out to her that here she was, picking her way through bits of dust like an imbecile, when all the time Julia was out with Ursula Waring or some other woman, laughing at the very thought of her-

She had to thrust this voice back down. It was like pressing down the spring of a grinning jack-in-the-box. But she wouldn't give in to thoughts like that. It was seven o'clock, an ordinary evening, and she was hungry. Everything was perfectly all right. Julia had gone out without expecting to be so late. Julia had been delayed, that was all. People got delayed, for God's sake, all the time! She decided to start cooking their dinner. She gathered together the ingredients for a shepherd's pie. She said to herself that by the time the pie had gone into the oven, Julia would be home.

She put the wireless on as she cooked, but kept the volume very low; and all the time that she boiled water, fried the mince, mashed the potato, she stood quite tensely, listening out for the sound of Julia's key being put in to the lock of the door downstairs.

When the dish was ready, she didn't know whether to keep on waiting for Julia or not. She served it up on two plates; she put the plates to keep warm in the oven, and slowly did all the washing-up and the drying. Surely by the time she'd finished that, Julia would be back, and they could sit down and eat together…? By now she was starving. When the washing-up was done she got her plate back out, put it to rest on top of the stove, and began to pick at the potato with a fork. She only meant to eat a morsel or two, just to blunt her hunger; she ended up eating the whole thing-eating it like that, standing up, with her pinnie on, with the steam running down the kitchen window, and the man and the woman, out in the yard, starting up a fresh argument, or a new version of an old one.

'
Work it up your arse!
'

She'd been so long in the bright kitchen, when she went out into the rest of the house she found it gloomy. She moved swiftly from room to room, turning on lights. She went down to the sitting-room and poured herself a glass of gin and water. She sat on the sofa and got out her knitting; she knitted for five or ten minutes. But the wool seemed to catch at her dry fingers. The gin was souring her mood, making her clumsy, unsettling her. She threw the knitting down and got to her feet. She wandered back up to the kitchen-still looking, vaguely, for some sort of note. She reached the bottom of the narrow staircase leading up to Julia's study. The urge came over her to go up there.

There was no reason, she thought, as she climbed the stairs, for feeling self-conscious about it. Julia had never said, for example, that she would prefer it if Helen left her study alone. The subject had never arisen between them; on the contrary, there were times when Julia had gone out to some meeting or other and had telephoned to say, 'I'm sorry Helen, I've been an idiot and left a paper behind. Would you mind running up to my room and fishing it out?' That showed she didn't mind the thought even of Helen going through the drawers of her desk; and certainly, though the drawers had keys to them, the keys were never turned.

Still, there was something furtive, something troubling, about visiting Julia's study when Julia wasn't there. It was like going alone to your parents' bedroom when you were a child: you suspected that things went on there-precise, unguessable things, that were both about you and yet excluded you utterly… So Helen felt, anyway. She'd feel this even while, as now, she was simply standing in the room-not lifting up papers or peering gingerly into unsealed envelopes-just standing still in the middle of the room and looking around.

The room took up almost all of the attic floor. It was dim, quiet, with sloping ceilings-a real writer's garret, she and Julia liked to joke. The walls were a pale shade of olive; the carpet was a genuine Turkey rug, only slightly worn. A desk like a bank-manager's, and a swivel chair, were in front of one of the windows; an aged leather sofa was in front of the other-for Julia wrote in bursts, and in between liked to doze or read. A table at the sofa's end held dirty cups and glasses, a saucer of biscuit crumbs, an ash-tray, ash. The cups and stubs of cigarettes had Julia's lipstick on them. A tumbler had a smudge left by her thumb. Everywhere, in fact, there were bits of Julia-Julia's dark hairs on the sofa cushions and the floor; her kicked-off espadrilles beneath the desk; a clipping of nail beside the waste-paper basket, an eye-lash, powder from her face…

If I were to hear
, Helen said to herself,
that Julia had died today, I'd come in here, in exactly this way, and all this rubbish would be the stuff of tragedy
. As it was, she gazed from thing to thing and felt the chafing within her of a familiar but uneasy mix of emotions: fondness, annoyance, and fear. She thought of the haphazard way in which Julia had used to write, in that studio flat in Mecklenburgh Square she'd been describing to Viv, today, on the fire-escape. She remembered lying on a divan bed while Julia worked at a rickety table by the light of a single candle-her hand, as it rested on the page, seeming to cradle the flame, her palm a mirror, her handsome face lit up… She would come to bed at last, after writing for hours like that, and lie tired-out but sleepless, distracted and remote; Helen would sometimes softly lay a hand on her forehead and seem to be able to feel the words jostling and buzzing about behind it like so many bees. She didn't mind. She almost liked it. Because the novel after all was
only
a novel; the people in it weren't real; it was she, Helen, who was real, she who was able to lie at Julia's side like that and touch her face…