Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

'Miss,' he said. He'd taken off his cap. 'Do me a favour, will you? The guard's on his way. I've lost my ticket and he'll give me hell-'

'I'm just coming out,' she said, 'if you'll let me.'

He shook his head. Now he was keeping her from opening the door, as well as from closing it. He said, 'I've seen this bloke and, honest to God, he's a tartar. I heard him earlier on, tearing a strip off some poor devil who had the wrong sort of warrant. If he knocks and hears my voice, he'll still want his ticket.'

'Well, what do you want me to do about it?'

'Can't you just let me in till he's gone past?'

She looked at him in amazement. 'In here, with me?'

'Just till he's gone by. And when he knocks, you can slip your ticket under the door… Please, miss. It's a thing girls do for servicemen all the time.'

'I'll bet it is. Not this girl, though.'

'Come on, I'm begging you. I'm in an awful squeeze. I've got compassionate leave, only forty-eight hours. I've spent half of that already, freezing my- Well, freezing my feet off, on Swindon station. If he throws me out I'm done for. Be a sport. It's not my fault. I had the ticket in my hand and put it down for half a minute. I think some Navy boy saw me do it-'

'A minute ago you said you'd lost it.'

He touched his hair distractedly. 'Lost it, had it pinched, what's the difference? I've been dodging up and down this train like a ruddy lunatic, in and out of lavatories all the way. All I'm looking for is someone tender-hearted to give me a bit of a break. It'll be no skin off your nose, will it? You can trust me, I swear to God. I'm not-' He stopped and drew back his head; then his face reappeared, he gave a hiss-'Here he comes!'-and before she could do anything about it he had made a scuffling rush into the lavatory, bundling her back into it in the process. He shot the bolt and stood with his ear at the crack of the door-frame, his lower lip caught between his teeth.

Viv said, 'If you think-!'

He put his finger to his mouth: 'Shh!' He still had his ear pressed to the door-frame, and now began moving his head up and down it-like a doctor, desperately trying to find a heartbeat in the bosom of a dying man.

Then there was a smart, authoritative tap-tap-tap! on the door that made him jump as though he'd been shot.

' All tickets, please! '

The soldier looked at Viv and grimaced dreadfully. He went through a mad sort of pantomime, pretending to take a ticket from his pocket, stoop, and shove it under the door.

'All tickets!' the guard called again.

'This lavatory's taken!' Viv cried at last. Her voice was flustered, silly-sounding.

'I know it's taken,' came the reply from the corridor. 'I need to see your ticket please, miss.'

'Can't you see it later?'

'I need to see it now, please.'

'Just- Just a minute.'

What could she do? She couldn't open the door, the guard would take one look at the soldier and think the worst… So she got out her ticket, and, 'Move over,' she hissed, flapping her hand furiously. The soldier took a step away from the door so that she could stoop and slip the ticket under it. She bent her legs self-consciously-aware of the smallness of the space they were in; aware that she was making it smaller, by stooping; feeling, in fact, her thigh pass against his knee, so that the wool of her skirt clung momentarily to the khaki of his trousers.

Her ticket lay flat in the shadow of the door for a second and then, as if through some weird agency of its own, gave a quiver and slid away. There was a moment's suspense. She stayed awkwardly squatting, and didn't look up. But at last, 'Very good, miss!' came the call. The ticket was returned, with a neat little hole punched out of it; and the guard moved on.

She stood up, stepped back, put her ticket into her bag and snapped closed its clasp.

'Happy now?'

The soldier was wiping his forehead with his sleeve. 'Miss,' he said, 'you're an angel! The sort of girl, I swear to God, who restores a fellow's faith in life. The sort of girl the songs are written for.'

'Well, you can write one now,' she said, moving forward, 'and sing it to yourself.'

'What?' He put his arm across the door. 'You can't go yet. Suppose the ticket fellow comes back? Give it another minute, at least. Look-' He put his hand to his jacket pocket and brought out a crumpled packet of Woodbines. 'Just keep me company for the length of a smoke, that's all I ask. Give him time to get down to First Class. I swear to God, if you knew the journey I've had, the hoops I've had to jump through-'

'That's your look-out.'

He started to smile. 'You'll be helping the war-effort. Think of it that way.'

'How many girls have you used that line on?'

'You're the first. I swear!'

'The first today, you mean.'

But now he was almost grinning. His lips parted and she saw his teeth. Rather distracting teeth, they were: very straight and very even and white, and seeming to be whiter against the stubble of his chin. They made the rest of his face good-looking, suddenly. She noticed the hazel of his eyes, the thick black lashes. His hair was dark, darker even than her own; he'd tried to flatten it down with Brylcreem but individual locks were pulling against the grease, lifting back into curls.

His uniform, however, looked as though he'd slept in it. The jacket was stained and badly-fitting. The trouser legs were creased in horizontal bands like stretched-out concertinas. But he held out the packet of Woodbines, imploringly; and she pictured her own empty narrow seat in the crowded compartment: the Navy man making passes, the asthmatic WAAF, the horse-mad girl.

'All right,' she said at last. 'Give me a cigarette, just for a minute. I must want my head read, though!'

He smiled more broadly, in relief. His teeth were more distracting than ever, she thought, when seen all together like that… He lit a match for her, from a match-book, and she moved forward to the flame; but then she moved back and stood guardedly, with one arm folded across herself, the wrist of it propping up the elbow of the other, and the heel of her foot pressed tight to the wall, a brace against the lurching of the train. It was hard to ignore the presence of the porcelain lavatory-over which, after all, she'd recently stooped with her bottom bared. Then again, like everyone else she'd had to get used to sharing odd spaces with strangers recently. On another train journey, two months before, a raid had started up and all the passengers had had to get down on the floor. She'd had to lie for forty minutes with her face more or less in a man's lap; he'd been awfully embarassed…

This man, at least, seemed quite at his ease. He leaned on the counter which held the basin and started to yawn. The yawn became a low sort of yodelling groan, and when that was finished he put his cigarette between his lips and rubbed his face-rubbed it in that vigorous, unselfconscious way with which men always handled their own faces, and girls never did.

Then the train began to slow. Viv looked anxiously at the window. 'That's not Paddington, is it?'

'Paddington!' he said. 'Christ, I wish it was!' He leaned to the blind and drew it back a little and tried to look out; but it was impossible to see anything. 'God knows where we are,' he said. 'Just past Didcot, I should say.-There we go.' He'd almost staggered. 'They're throwing in a fun-fair ride, for free.'

The train had run quickly for a moment, then abruptly slowed; now it was moving with a series of jolts. He and Viv bounced about like jumping beans. Viv put out her arms, looking for hand-holds. It was impossible not to smile. The soldier shook his head, too, in disbelief. 'Has it been like this all the way? Where did you get on?'

After a little show of reluctance, she told him: Taunton. She'd been to visit her sister and her baby; they'd gone down there, she said, away from the bombs… He listened, nodding.