The Night Watch (4 page)

She finally went down into the Underground at Lancaster Gate; she only had five stops, then, to Wood Lane. Mr Mundy's house was a ten-minute walk from the station, round the back of the dog-track. When races were on you could hear the crowds-a funny sound: loud, almost frightening, it seemed to surge after you down the streets like great waves of invisible water. Tonight the track was quiet. The streets had children in them-three of them balanced on one old bicycle, weaving about, raising dust.

Mr Mundy's gate was fastened with a fussy little latch, that somehow reminded Viv of Mr Mundy himself. His front door had panels of glass in it. She stood at them now, and lightly tapped, and, after a moment, a figure appeared in the hall beyond. It came slowly, with a limp. Viv put on a smile-and imagined Mr Mundy, on his side, doing the same.

'Hello, Vivien. How are you, dear?'

'Hello, Mr Mundy. I'm all right. How are you?'

She moved forward, wiping her feet on the bit of coconut-matting on the floor. 'Can't complain,' said Mr Mundy.

The hall was narrow, and there was a moment's awkwardness, every time, as he made room for her to pass him. She went to the bottom of the stairs and stood beside the umbrella-stand, unbuttoning her coat. It always took her a minute or two to get used to the dimness. She looked around, blinking. 'My brother about, is he?'

Mr Mundy closed the door. 'He's in the parlour. Go on in, dear.'

But Duncan had already heard them talking. He called out, 'Is that Vivien? V, come and see me in here! I can't get up.'

'He's pinned to the floor,' said Mr Mundy, smiling.

'Come and see!' called Duncan again.

She pushed at the parlour door and went inside. Duncan was lying on his stomach on the hearth-rug with an open book before him, and in the small of his back sat Mr Mundy's little tabby cat. The cat was working its two front legs as if kneading dough, flexing and retracting its toes and claws, purring ecstatically. Catching sight of Viv, it narrowed its eyes and worked faster.

Duncan laughed. 'What do you think? She's giving me a massage.'

Viv felt Mr Mundy at her shoulder. He had come to watch, and to laugh along with Duncan. His laugh was light, and dry-an old man's chuckle. There was nothing to do but laugh too. She said, 'You're barmy.'

Duncan began to lift himself up, as if about to start physical jerks. 'I'm training her.'

'What for?'

'The circus.'

'She'll snag your shirt.'

'I don't mind. Watch.'

The cat worked on as if demented while Duncan raised himself higher. He began to straighten up. He tried to do it in such a way that the cat could keep her place on his back-even, could walk right up his body. All the time he tried it, he kept laughing. Mr Mundy called encouragement… At last though, the cat had had enough, and sprang to the floor. Duncan brushed at his trousers.

'Sometimes,' he said to Viv, 'she gets on my shoulders. I walk about-don't I, Uncle Horace?-with her draped around my neck. Quite like your collar, in fact.'

Viv had a little false-fur collar on her coat. He came and touched it. She said, 'She's snagged your shirt after all.'

He twisted to look. 'It's only a shirt. I don't have to be smart like you. Doesn't Viv look smart, Uncle Horace? A smart lady secretary.'

He gave her one of his charming smiles, then let her hug him and kiss his cheek. His clothes had a faintly perfumed smell-that, she knew, was from the candle factory-but beneath the scent he smelt like a boy; and when she lifted her hands to him his shoulders seemed ridiculously narrow and full of slender bones. She thought of the story she'd told Helen that afternoon, about the box of magic tricks; and remembered him vividly, again, when he was little-how he'd used to come into her and Pamela's bed, and lie between them. She could still feel his thin arms and legs, and his forehead, that would get hot, the dark hair sticking to it, fine as silk… She wished for a moment that they were all children again. It still seemed extraordinary to her, that everything had turned out the way it had.

She took off her coat and her hat, and they sat down. Mr Mundy had gone back out to the kitchen. There came the sounds of him, after a minute, preparing tea.

'I ought to go and give a hand,' she said. She said this every time she came. And Duncan always answered, as he did now, 'He prefers it on his own. He'll start up singing in a minute. He had his treatment this afternoon; he's a little bit better. Anyway, I'll do the washing up. Tell me how you are.'

They exchanged their little pieces of news.

'Dad sends his love,' she said.

'Does he?' He wasn't interested. He'd only been seated for a moment, but now he got up excitedly and brought something down to her from a shelf. 'Look at this,' he said. It was a little copperish jug, with a dent in its side. 'I got it on Sunday, for three and six. The man asked seven shillings, and I knocked him down. I think it must be eighteenth-century. Imagine ladies, V, taking tea, pouring cream from this! It would have been silvered then, of course. Do you see where the plating's come off?' He showed her the traces of silver, at the join of the handle. 'Isn't it lovely? Three and six! That bit of damage is nothing. I could knock that out if I wanted.'

He turned the jug in his hands, delighted with it. It looked like a piece of rubbish to Viv. But he had some new object to show her every time she came: a broken cup, a chipped enamel box, a cushion of napless velvet. She could never help thinking of the mouths that had touched the china, the grubby hands and sweating heads that had rubbed the cushions bald. Mr Mundy's house, itself, rather gave her the creeps: an old person's house, it was, its little rooms crowded with great dark furniture, its walls swarming with pictures. On the mantelpiece were flowers of wax, and pieces of coral, under spotted glass domes. The lamps were gas ones still, with fish-tail flames. There were yellow, exhausted photographs: of Mr Mundy as a slim young man; another of him as a boy, with his sister and mother, his mother in a stiff black dress like Queen Victoria. It was all dead, dead, dead; and yet here was Duncan, with his quick dark eyes, his clear boy's laugh, quite at home amongst it all.

She picked up her bag. 'I've brought you something.'

It was a tin of ham. He saw it and said, 'I say!' He said it in the affectionate, faintly teasing way he'd said
smart lady secretary
, before; and when Mr Mundy came limping in with the tea-tray, he held the tin up extravagantly.

'Look here, Uncle Horace! Look what Viv has brought us.'

There was corned beef on the tray, already. She had brought that last time. Mr Mundy said, 'By golly, we are well set up now, aren't we?'

They pulled out the leaves of the table and put out the plates and cups, the tomato sandwiches, the lettuce-hearts and cream crackers. They drew up their chairs, shook out their napkins, and began to help themselves to the food.

'How is your father, Vivien?' Mr Mundy asked politely. 'And your sister? How's that fat little chap?' He meant Pamela's baby, Graham. 'Such a fat little chap, isn't he? Fat as butter! Quite like the kids you used to see about when I was a boy. Seemed to go out of fashion.'

He was opening the tin of ham as he spoke: turning its key over and over with his great, blunt fingers, producing a line of exposed meat like a thin pink wound. Viv saw Duncan watching; she saw him blink and look away. He said, as if with a show of brightness, 'Are there fashions in babies, then, like in skirts?'

'I'll tell you one thing,' said Mr Mundy, shaking out the ham, scooping out the jelly. 'What you never used to see, that was wheeled perambulators. You saw a wheeled perambulator round here, that was something marvellous. That was what you used to call, top-drawer. We used to cart my cousins about in a wagon meant for coal. Kids walked sooner then, though. Kids earned their living in those days.'

'Were you ever sent up a chimney, Uncle Horace?' asked Duncan.

'A chimney?' Mr Mundy blinked.

'By a great big brute of a man, setting fire to your toes to make you go faster?'

'Get away with you!'

They laughed. The empty ham tin was set aside. Mr Mundy took out his handkerchief and blew his nose-blew it short and hard like a trumpet-then shook the handkerchief back into its folds and put it neatly back in his pocket. His sandwiches and lettuce-hearts he cut into fussy little pieces before he ate them. When Viv left the lid of the mustard-pot up, he tipped it down. But the slivers of meat and jelly that were left on his plate at the end of the meal he held to the cat: he let her lick them from his hand-lick all about his knuckles and nails.

When the cat had finished, she mewed for more. Her mew was thin, high-pitched.

'She sounds like pins,' said Duncan.

'Pins?'

'I feel as though she's pricking me.'

Mr Mundy didn't understand. He reached to touch the cat's head. 'She'll scratch you, mind, when her dander's up. Won't you Catty?'

There was cake to be eaten, after that; but as soon as the cake was finished, Mr Mundy and Duncan got up and cleared the cups and plates away. Viv sat there rather tensely, watching them carrying things about; soon they went out to the kitchen together and left her alone. The doors in the house were heavy and cut off sound; the room seemed quiet and dreadfully airless, the gas-lamps hissing, a grandfather clock in the corner giving a steady
tick-tick
. It sounded laboured, she thought-as though its works had got stiff, like Mr Mundy's; or else, as if it felt weighted down by the old-fashioned atmosphere, like her. She checked the face of it against her wristwatch. Twenty to eight… How slowly the time ran here. As slowly as at work. How unfair it was! For she knew that later-when she would want it-it would seem to rush.

Tonight, at least, there was a distraction. Mr Mundy came in and sat down in his armchair beside the fire, as he always did after dinner; Duncan, however, wanted Viv to cut his hair. They went out to the kitchen. He put down newspaper on the floor, and set a chair in the middle. He filled a bowl with warm water, and tucked a towel into the collar of his shirt.

Viv dipped a comb in the water, wet his hair and started cutting. She used a pair of old dressmaking scissors; God knows what Mr Mundy was doing with those. Probably he did his own sewing, she wouldn't put it past him… The newspaper crackled under her shoes as she moved about.

'Not too short,' said Duncan, hearing her clip.

She turned his head. 'Keep still.'

'You did it too short last time.'

'I'll do it how I do it… There such a things as a barber's, you know.'

'I don't like the barber's. I always think he's going to cut me up and put me in a pie.'

'Don't be silly. Why would he want to do that?'

'Don't you think I'd make a nice pie?'

'There's not enough meat on you.'

'He'd make a sandwich of me, then. Or he'd put me in one of those little tins. And then-' He turned and caught her eye, looking mischievous.

She straightened his head again. 'It'll end up crooked.'

'It doesn't matter, there's no-one to see. Only Len, at the factory. I haven't got any admirers. I'm not like you-'

'Will you shut up?'

He laughed. 'Uncle Horace can't hear. He wouldn't mind, even if he could. He doesn't trouble over things like that.'

She stopped cutting and put the point of the scissors to his shoulder. 'You haven't told him, Duncan?'

'Of course I haven't.'

'Don't you, ever!'

'Cross my heart.' He licked his finger, touched his chest; looked up at her, still smiling.

She wouldn't smile back. 'It isn't a thing to joke about.'

'If you can't joke about it, why do you do it?'

'If Dad should hear-'

'You're always thinking about Dad.'

'Well, somebody has to.'

'It's your life, isn't it?'

'Is it? I wonder, sometimes.'

She cut on in silence-unsettled, but wanting to say more; almost hoping that he'd keep teasing her; for she had no-one else to talk to, he was the only person she'd told… But she left it too long; he got distracted, tilting his head to look at the damp black locks on the newspaper under his chair. They'd falled as curls, but as they dried they were separating into individual strands and growing fluffy. She saw him grimace.

'Isn't it queer,' he said, 'how nice one's hair is when it's on one's head; and how gruesome it becomes, the instant it's cut off. You ought to take one of those curls, V, and put it in a locket. That's what a proper sister would do.'

She straightened his head again, less gently than before. 'I'll proper sister you in a minute, if you don't keep still.'

He put on a silly Cockney voice. '
I was proper sistered!
'

That made them laugh. When she'd finished cutting he moved the chair aside and opened the back door. She got her cigarettes, and they sat together on the step, gazing out, smoking and chatting. He told her about his visit to Mr Leonard's; about the buses he and Mr Mundy had had to take, their little adventures… The sky was like water with blue ink in it, the darkness sinking, stars appearing one by one. The moon was a slim and perfect crescent, almost new. The little cat appeared, and wound itself around their legs, then threw herself on to its back and writhed, ecstatic again.

Then Mr Mundy came out from the parlour-came out to see what they were doing, Viv supposed; had perhaps heard them laughing, through the window. He saw Duncan 's hair and said, 'My word! That's a bit better, now, than the cuts you used to get from Mr Sweet!'

Duncan got up and started tidying the kitchen. He made a parcel of the paper and the hair. 'Mr Sweet,' he said, 'used to nip you with his scissors, just for fun.' He rubbed his neck. 'They said he took a man's ear off once!'

'That was all talk,' said Mr Mundy comfortably. 'Prison talk: that's all that was.'

'Well, that's what a man told me.'

They quarrelled about it for another minute or two; Viv had the feeling they were almost doing it on purpose-showing off, in some queer way, because she was there. If only Mr Mundy hadn't come out! He couldn't leave Duncan alone for a minute. She'd liked it, sitting on the step, watching the sky get darker. But she couldn't bear it when they started talking so airily about prison, all of that; it set her teeth on edge. The closeness and the fondness she'd felt for Duncan a moment before began to recede. She thought of her father. She found herself thinking in her father's voice. Duncan moved gracefully across the kitchen and she looked at his neat dark head, his slender neck, his face, that was handsome as a girl's, and she said to herself almost bitterly:
All he put us through, look, and there's not a bloody mark on him!