The Night Watch (39 page)

She got back into bed, and Kay sat beside her. They drank the coffee, ate toast and jam.

'Have your orange,' said Kay.

Helen turned it in her hands. 'Shall I? It seems a shame. I ought to keep it.'

'What for? Go on.'

So Helen broke the skin, and peeled the orange, and divided it into pigs. Kay took one, but said that she must eat the rest herself. The fruit was slightly sour, and dry-the segments tore too easily. But the sensation of them yielding up their juice upon the tongue was glorious.

'Now open your present,' said Kay impatiently, when the orange was finished.

Helen bit her lip. 'I hardly dare. Such a beautiful box!' She picked it up, self-conscious again. She held it beside her ear, and playfully shook it. When she began, very gingerly, to ease off the lid, Kay laughed at her.

'Just pull it right off!'

'I don't want to spoil it.'

'It doesn't matter.'

'No,' said Helen. 'It's too pretty.-Oh!' She looked startled. She'd removed the lid at last and, the box being tilted against her knees, the folds of paper inside had parted and the pyjama-suit, like quicksilver, had come tumbling fluidly out. She gazed at it for a moment without moving; then, as if reluctantly, she caught hold of the jacket and lifted it up. 'Oh, Kay.' She was blushing.

'Do you like it?'

'It's beautiful. Too beautiful! It must have cost a fortune! Where ever did you get it?'

Kay smiled and wouldn't answer. She took a sleeve of the jacket and held it up. 'Do you see the buttons, look?'

'Yes.'

'They're bone. Here on the sleeve, too?'

Helen held the satin to her face, and closed her eyes.

'The colour suits you,' said Kay. And then, when Helen didn't answer: 'You do like it, really?'

'Darling, of course. But- I don't deserve it.'

'Don't deserve it? What are you talking about?'

Helen shook her head and laughed, opening her eyes. 'Nothing. I'm being silly, that's all.'

Kay took away the tray, the cups and plates and paper. 'Try it on,' she said.

'I oughtn't to. Not without bathing first.'

'Oh, rubbish. Put it on. I want to see you in it!'

So Helen got slowly out of bed, drew off her threabare nightdress, stepped into the pyjama trousers and buttoned on the top. The trousers were fastened with a linen cord. The jacket tied at the waist: it was full like a blouse but, the satin being heavy, it showed very clearly the swell of her breasts, the tips of her nipples. The sleeves were long: she buttoned the cuffs and folded them back, but they slid out of the folds at once and fell almost to her fingertips. She stood, as if shyly, for Kay to look her over.

Kay whistled. 'How glamorous you look! Just like Greta Garbo in
Grand Hotel
.'

She didn't look glamorous really, however; she looked young, and small, and rather solemn. The room was cold, and the satin chill; she shivered and blew on her hands. She worked again at folding back the sleeves, almost fretfully-gazing once, as she did it, into the mirror, and then turning quickly away.

Kay watched her, with a sort of ache about her heart. She felt her love, at moments like this, as a thing of wonder-it was wonderful to her, that Helen, who was so lovely, so fair and unmarked, should be here at all, to be looked at and touched… Then again, it was impossible to imagine her in any other place, with any other lover. No other lover, Kay knew, would feel about her quite as Kay did. She might have been born, been a child, grown up-done all the particular, serious and inconsequential things she'd done-just so she could arrive at this point, now; just so she could stand, barefoot, in a satin pyjama-suit, and Kay could watch her.

But then she moved away from the mirror.

'Don't go,' said Kay.

'Just to start my bath off.'

'No,' said Kay. 'Not yet.'

She got off the bed and crossed the room and took Helen in her arms. She ran her fingers over her face, and kissed her lips. She slid her hands beneath the satin jacket to touch the smooth, warm flesh of her back and waist. Then she moved behind her and held her breasts, taking the weight of them against her palms. She felt the swell of Helen's buttocks, the sliding of the skin of her plump thighs inside the satin. She put her cheek against Helen's ear.

'You're beautiful.'

'No,' said Helen.

Kay turned her to face the mirror. 'Can't you see yourself? You're lovely. I knew you were, the first time I saw you. I held your face in my hand. You were smooth, like a pearl.'

Helen closed her eyes. 'I know,' she said.

They kissed again. The kiss went on. But then Helen drew away. 'I have to pee again,' she said. 'I'm sorry, Kay. And I really should bathe.'

The satin made her slippery: she moved from Kay's grasp, turning her head and laughing-playful but determined, like a nymph eluding a satyr. She went back to the bathroom and closed the door. There was the rush of the faucets, the whoosh of flame in the water-heater; and then, in a minute or so, the rub of her heels against the enamel of the tub.

Kay took the coffee-pot to the sitting-room fire and put it close to the grate. She went back to the bedroom, cleared away the tray, made up the bed, folded the torn tissue paper. The flowers she set, in their vase, on the sitting-room table, beside the cards that Helen had already received, by yesterday's post, from her family in Worthing. She moved a chair. Where the chair had stood she saw a sprinkling of crumbs. She got a brush and a pan from the kitchen, and swept them up.

Kay had lived in this flat for almost seven years. She'd got it from a woman she'd once been lovers with, a woman who'd worked here, more or less-though Kay had never told Helen this-as a prostitute. Kay's life had been rather chaotic in those days. She'd had too much money; she'd drunk too much; she'd careered from one unhappy love-affair to another… The woman had taken up with a businessman in the end, and moved to Mayfair; but she'd given Kay the flat as a parting gift.

Kay liked it here more than anywhere she'd ever lived. The flat's rooms were L-shaped; she liked those. She liked, too, the funny little mews or yard that the flat overlooked. The warehouse next door served some of the furniture stores on the Tottenham Court Road; before the war, Kay had been able to stand at her window and watch young men and women in the workshops painting swags and cupids on lovely old tables and chairs. Now the workshops had been closed down. The warehouse was used for holding utility furniture for the Board of Trade. The fact of there being so much wood there, and so much varnish and paint, made the mews a dreadfully unsafe place. But when Kay thought of moving, her heart sank. She felt about the flat rather as she felt about Helen: that it was secret, special, hers.

She checked the warmth of the coffee in its pot. On the mantelpiece was a box of cigarettes; that made her think of the case in her pocket. She took it out, and started to fill it. Presently she heard Helen come out of the bathroom and begin the business of getting dressed. She called to her, across the hall. 'What shall we do today, Helen? What would you like to do?'

'I don't know,' answered Helen.

'I might take you to a smart restaurant for lunch. How about that?'

'You've spent too much on me already!'

'Oh, balls to that!-as Binkie might say. Wouldn't you like a fancy luncheon?'

There was no reply. Kay shut the cigarette case and put it back in her pocket. She poured more coffee into Helen's cup and took it through to the bedroom. Helen was dressed in her bra, her petticoat and stockings. She was combing her hair-combing it carefully, trying to turn the curls into waves. The pyjama-suit lay on the bed, very neatly folded.

Kay set the cup down on the dressing-table. 'Helen,' she said.

'Yes, darling?'

'You seem awfully distracted. Isn't there anywhere you'd like to go? Not Windsor Castle, somewhere like that? The Zoo?'

'The Zoo?' said Helen, laughing, but also frowning. 'My goodness, I feel like a child being offered a day out by its aunt.'

'Well, that's how one's supposed to feel on one's birthday. And you did, you know, mention Windsor Castle -and the Zoo-when we talked about this last week.'

'I know I did,' said Helen. 'I'm sorry, Kay. But Windsor-oh, won't it take an age to get there? Won't the trains be awful?' She had gone to the wardrobe and was looking through her dresses. 'You'll have to be home for work at seven.'

'We have ages till seven,' said Kay. Then she saw the dress that Helen was taking from its hanger. 'That one?' she said.

'Don't you like it?'

'It's your birthday. Wear the Cedric Allen one. I like that one more.'

Helen looked doubtful. 'It's awfully smart.' But she put the first dress back and drew out another-a dark blue dress with cream lapels. It had cost £2 11s, two years before; Kay had bought it, of course. Kay had bought most of Helen's things, especially in those days. A section of the hem was slightly puckered, where it had got worn and had to be darned; but apart from that, it looked almost new. Helen shook it open and stepped inside it.

Kay held out her hands. 'Come here,' she said, 'and I'll hook you up.'

So Helen came to her and turned her back, and lifted up her hair. Kay settled the dress more smoothly on her shoulders, drew close its panels and, starting at the bottom, began to fasten together its hooks. She did it slowly. She'd always liked the sight and the feel of a woman's back. She liked, for example, the look of an evening dress on naked shoulders-the tautness of it-the way, when the shoulder-blades were drawn together, it gaped, giving you a glimpse of the underclothes or the pink, pressed flesh behind… Helen's back was firm-not muscular, but plump, resilient. Her neck was handsome, with a down of fair hair. When Kay had closed the final hook and eye she bent her head and kissed it. Then she put her arms around Helen's waist, laid her hands upon her stomach and pulled her closer.

Helen moved her cheek against Kay's jaw. 'I thought you wanted to go out.'

'But you look so lovely in your dress.'

'Perhaps I ought to take it off, if you feel like that about it.'

'Perhaps I ought to take it off for you.'

Helen pulled away. 'Be sensible, Kay.'

Kay laughed and let her go. 'All right… Now, how about the Zoo?'

Helen had gone back to the dressing-table and was screwing on earrings. 'The Zoo,' she said, frowning again. 'Well, perhaps. But won't it look funny? Two women, our age?'

'Does that matter?'

'No,' said Helen, after a moment, 'I suppose not.'

She sat and drew on her shoes-bending her head, so that her hair fell before her face. 'You don't,' she added lightly, as Kay was turning from the room, 'want to ask other people?'

'Other people?' asked Kay, surprised, turning back. 'You mean, like Mickey?'

'Yes,' said Helen, after a second. Then, 'No, it was just a thought.'

'Would you like to call in on Mickey, on the way?'

'No. It's all right, really.' She straightened up, laughing at herself-her face quite pink, from the effort of leaning forward and reaching to tie her laces.

They didn't go to the Zoo, in the end. Helen said she didn't, after all, like the idea of looking at so many poor little creatures in their cages and pens. They began to walk, and saw a bus marked up for Hampstead; and ran to catch that, instead. They got off at the High Street, and had a lunch of sardines and chips in a little café; they looked in a couple of second-hand bookshops, then made their way, through the handsome, higgledy-piggledy, red-brick streets, to the Heath. They walked arm-in-arm-Helen not minding the fact that they were two women, now, for one expected to see women, she said, on a Saturday afternoon on Hampstead Heath; it was a place for plain, brisk women, spinsters, and dogs.

Actually, there were many young couples about. One or two of the girls wore trousers, like Kay; most were in service uniforms, or in the glamourless austere get-ups that passed, these days, for weekend best. The boys were in battledress: khaki and navy blue and every shade between-the uniforms of Poland, Norway, Canada, Australia, France.

The day was cold. The sky was so white it hurt the eye. Kay and Helen hadn't come to the Heath since the summer before last, when they'd gone bathing in the Ladies' pond; they remembered it as lush, green, lovely. But now the trees were utterly bare, revealing, here and there, the brutal, barbed-wired flanks of anti-aircraft batteries and military gear. The leaves that had fallen months before had turned to mulch, and the mulch had a rime of frost on it: it looked unhealthy, liked rotting fruit. Much of the ground had been marked by shrapnel, or torn by the tyres of trucks; and in the west there were enormous canyons and pits where earth had been dug, at various points, for filling sand-bags.

They tried to keep away from the worst of it-going more or less aimlessly, but following the more secluded routes. At the junction of two broad paths they turned north; the path led them up, then down through a wood, and they emerged, in another few minutes, at a lake. The water was frozen, right across. A dozen or so ducks were huddled together, like refugees, on an island of twigs.

'Poor things,' said Helen, squeezing Kay's arm. 'I wish we'd brought bread.'

They went closer to the water. The ice was thin, but must have been strong, for it was littered with sticks and stones, that people had thrown in an effort to break it. Kay bared her hands-for she was dressed against the cold, in gloves and a belted coat, a scarf and a beret-and picked up a stone of her own, and tossed it, just for the pleasure of seeing it skitter. Then she went right to the lake's edge and pressed at the ice with the toe of her shoe. A couple of children came to watch her: she showed them the silvery pockets of air which bulged beneath the ice's surface, then squatted and prised at the ice with her hands, bringing up great jagged sheets, which she broke into smaller pieces for the children to hold, and fling, or stamp on with their heels. When the ice was crushed, it became white powder-exactly the powder of broken glass at a bomb site.

Helen was standing where Kay had left her, watching. She'd kept her gloved hands in her pockets; the collar of her coat was turned up, and she was wearing a soft wool hat, like a tam o'shanter, pulled down low over her brow. Her expression was a queer one-a smile, that was soft but also troubled. Kay fished out a last piece of ice for the children and went back to her.