Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

'What's the matter?' he hissed, when the window was up.

Alec tried to see past him. 'What are you doing in there? I've been knocking at the other window.'

'Viv's not back. I'm sleeping in here. How long have you been there? You woke me up. You scared me to death! What's going on?'

'I've bloody well had it, Duncan, that's what,' said Alec, his voice rising. 'I've bloody well had it!'

There was the bursting of flares in the sky behind him, and a series of crackles. Duncan looked at the sky, growing afraid. He could only think that something dreadful must have happened to Alec's family, Alec's house. He said, 'What is it? What's happened?'

'I've bloody well had it!' Alec said again.

'Stop saying that! What do you mean? What's the matter with you?'

Alec twitched, as if forcing himself to be calm. 'My papers have come,' he said at last.

Duncan grew frightened, then, in a different way. He said, 'They can't have!'

'Well, they bloody well have! I'm not going, Duncan. They're not going to make me. I mean it. I mean it, and no-one believes me-'

He worked his mouth. There was the flash of another bomb, and more explosions. Duncan looked at the sky again. 'How long,' he asked, 'has the raid been on?' He must have slept right through the Warning. 'Did you come, through the raid?'

'I don't care about the bloody raid!' said Alec. 'I was glad when the raid started. I was hoping I'd get hit! I've been all down Mitcham Lane, right in the middle of the road.' He leaned over the sill and caught hold of Duncan 's arm. His hand was freezing. 'Come out with me, too.'

'Don't be daft,' said Duncan, pulling away. He glanced at the bedroom door. He was supposed to wake his father when a raid started up. They were supposed to go down the road to the public shelter. 'I should get my dad.'

Alec plucked at his arm. 'Do it in a bit. Come out with me first. I've got something to tell you.'

'What? Tell me now.'

'Come out.'

'It's too late. It's too cold.'

Alec drew his hand back, raised it to his mouth, and started biting at his fingers. 'Let me in, then,' he said, after a second. 'Let me in, with you.'

So Duncan moved away from the window and Alec hoisted himself on to the sill, working his knees and his feet over it and dropping into the room. He did it awkwardly, as he did anything like that-landing heavily, so that the floorboards thumped, and the bottles and jars on Viv's dressing-table rattled and skidded about.

Duncan drew down the sash and fixed the curtains. When he turned on the light, he and Alec blinked. The light made everything seemed weirder. It made it feel later, even, than it was. There might have been sickness in the house… Duncan had a sudden vivid memory of his mother, when she was ill: his father sending out for his auntie, and then for a doctor-people coming and going, murmuring, in the middle of the night; the excitement of it, turning to disaster…

He started to shiver with the cold. He put on his slippers and dressing-gown. As he tied the cord, he looked at what Alec was wearing: a zip-up jacket, dark flannel trousers, and dirty canvas shoes. He saw Alec's bare white bony ankles and said, 'You haven't got any socks on!'

Alec was still blinking against the light. 'I had to get dressed really fast,' he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. 'I've been going mad, wanting to tell you! I went to Franklin 's this afternoon, looking for you, and you weren't there. Where were you?'

'To Franklin 's?' Duncan frowned. 'What time did you come?'

'I don't know. About four.'

'I was taking some parcels for Mr Manning. No-one said you'd been.'

'I didn't ask anyone, I just looked. I just walked in and looked around. No-one stopped me.'

'Why didn't you come after tea, tonight?'

Alec looked bitter. 'Why do you think? I got into a row with my bloody father. I got-' His voice grew high again. 'He bloody well hit me, Duncan! Look! Can you see?' He turned his head and showed Duncan his face. There was a faint red mark, high on his cheekbone. But his eyes, Duncan saw now, were redder than anything. He had been crying… He saw Duncan looking, and turned away again. 'He's a bloody brute,' he said quietly, as if ashamed.

'What did you do?'

'I told them I wasn't going to go, that they couldn't make me. I wouldn't have told them about the papers at all, except that the postman made such a thing out of it when he brought them. My mother got hold of the letter first. I said, “It's got my name on it, I can do what I want with it-”'

'What's it like? What does it say?'

'I've got it, look.'

He unzipped his jacket and brought out a buff-coloured envelope. Duncan sat on the bed beside him, so that he could see. The papers were addressed to A . J . C . Planer ; they told him that, in accordance with the National Service Acts, he was called upon for service in the Territorial Army, and was required to present himself in two weeks' time to a Royal Artillery Training Regiment at Shoeburyness. There was information on how he should get there and what he should take; and a postal order for four shillings, in advance of service pay… The pages were stamped all over with dates and numbers-but were creased dreadfully, as if Alec had screwed them up then flattened them out again.

Duncan looked at the creases in horror. 'What have you done to them?'

'It doesn't matter, does it?'

'I don't know. They might- They might use it against you.'

'Use it against me? You sound like my mother! You don't think I'm going to go, do you? I've told you-' Alec took the papers back and, with a gesture of disgust, he crumpled them up and threw them to the floor; then, like a spring recoiling, he pounced on them again, unscrewed them, and tore them right across-even the postal order. 'There!' he said. His face was flushed, and he was shaking.

'Crumbs,' said Duncan, his horror turning to admiration. 'You've done it now, all right!'

'I told you, didn't I?'

'You're a bloody lunatic!'

'I'd rather be a lunatic,' said Alec, tossing his head, 'than do what they want me to do. They're the lunatics. They're making lunatics of everybody else, and no-one's stopping them, everyone's acting as if it's ordinary. As if it's an ordinary thing, that they make a soldier of you, give you a gun.' He got up, and agitatedly smoothed back his already greased-down hair. 'I can't stand it any more. I'm getting out of it, Duncan.'

Duncan stared at him. 'You're not going to register as a conchy?'

Alec snorted. 'I don't mean that . That's as bad as the other thing. Having to stand in a room and say your piece, in front of all those strangers? Why should I have to do that? What's it to anybody else, if I won't fight? Anyway,' he added, 'my bloody father would kill me.'

'What do you mean, then?'

Alec put his hand to his mouth and began to bite at his fingers again. He held Duncan's gaze. 'Can't you tell?'

He said it with a sort of suppressed excitement-as if, despite everything, wanting to laugh. Duncan felt his heart seem to shrink in his breast. 'You're not- You're not running away?'

Alec wouldn't answer.

'You can't run away! It's not fair! You can't do it. You haven't got anything with you. You'd need money, you'd need coupons, you'd need to buy food. Where would you go? You're not- You're not going to go to Ireland, are you?' They'd talked, before, about doing that. But they'd talked about doing it together. 'They've got ways of finding you, even in Ireland.'

'I don't care,' said Alec, suddenly furious, 'about fucking Ireland! I don't care what happens to me. I'm not going to go, that's all. Do you know what they do to you?' He turned down the corners of his mouth. 'They do filthy things! Handling you all over, looking at you-up your arse and between your legs. A row of them, Michael Warren said: a row of old men, looking you over. It's disgusting. Old men! It's all right for them. It's all right for my father, and your father. They've had their lives; they want to take our lives from us. They had one war, and now they've made another one. They don't care that we're young. They want to make us old like them. They don't care that it's not our quarrel-'