Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

'I didn't say that.'

'-I'll do it on my own.'

'I won't let you do it on your own!' said Duncan. 'I told you, you're not going to leave me.'

Alec came back. 'Help me write the letter, then,' he said, excited again. 'We can write it- Look.' He stooped and picked up one of the torn-off halves of the call-up paper. 'We can write it on the back of this. It'll be symbolic. Give me a pen, will you?'

Duncan 's leather writing-case was on the floor, beside the bed. Automatically, Duncan took a step towards it; then checked himself. He went instead, as if casually, to the mantelpiece, picked up a pencil, and held it out. But Alec wouldn't take it. 'Not that,' he said. 'They'll think a bloody kid wrote it, if I use that! Let me have your fountain pen.'

Duncan blinked and looked away. 'It isn't in here.'

'You bloody liar, I know it is!'

'It's just,' said Duncan, 'if a pen's any good, you're not suppose to let other people use it.'

'You always say that! It doesn't matter now, does it?'

'I don't want you to, that's all. Use the pencil. My sister bought me that pen.'

'She'll be proud of you, then,' said Alec. 'They'll probably put that pen in some sort of frame, after they find us! Think of it like that. Come on, Duncan.'

Duncan hesitated a little longer, then reluctantly unzipped the writing-case and drew out his pen. Alec was always badgering him for a go with this pen, and he took it from Duncan now with obvious relish: making a business of unscrewing the lid, examining the nib, testing the weight of the pen in his hand. He took the writing-case too, then sat down on the edge of the bed with the case on his knee, and he smoothed out the paper, trying to press the creases from it. When he'd got it as flat as he could, he started to write.

' To whom it may concern …' He looked at Duncan. 'Shall I put that? Or shall I put, To Mr Winston Churchill ?'

Duncan thought it over. ' To whom it may concern sounds better,' he said. 'And it might be to Hitler and Goering and Mussolini then, too.'

'That's true,' said Alec, liking the idea. He thought for a second, sucking at his lip, tapping with the pen against his mouth; and then wrote more. He wrote swiftly, stylishly-like Keats or like Mozart, Duncan thought-dashing the nib with little flourishes across the paper, pausing to frown over what he had put, then writing stylishly again…

When he'd finished, he passed the letter over to Duncan, and gnawed at his knuckle while Duncan read.

To whom it may concern . If you are reading this, it means that we, Alec J . C . Planer and Duncan W . Pearce, of Streatham, London, England, have succeeded in our intentions and are no more . We do not undertake this deed lightly . We know that the country we are about to enter is that “dark, undiscovered one” from which “no traveller returns” . But we do what we are about to do on behalf of the Youth of England, and in the name of Liberty, Honestyand Truth . We would rather take our own lives freely, than have them stolen from us by the Pedlars of War . We ask for one epitaph only, and it is this: that, like the great T . E . Lawrence , we “drew the tides of men into our hands, and wrote our will across the sky in stars . ”

Duncan gazed at Alec in amazement. He said, 'That's bloody wizard!'

Alec flushed. He said, as if shyly, 'D'you really think so? I thought of some of it, you know, on my way here.'

'You're a genius!'

Alec started to laugh. The laugh came out as a sort of giggle, like a girl's. 'It is all right, isn't it? It'll bloody well show them, anyway!' He held out his hand. 'Give it back, though, for me to sign. Then you sign it, too.'

They added their names, and then the date. Alec raised the page up and looked it over, tilting his head. 'This date,' he said, 'will become like the ones we learned in school. Isn't that a funny thought? Isn't it funny to think of kids being made to remember it, in a hundred years' time?'

'Yes,' said Duncan, vaguely… He'd thought of something else, and was only half listening. As Alec smoothed out the paper again he asked diffidently, 'Can't we put something in it for our families, too, Alec?'

Alec curled his lip. 'Our families! Of course we can't, don't be stupid.'

'I'm thinking of Viv. She'll be bloody upset by all this.'

'I told you,' said Alec, 'she'll be proud of you. They all will. Even my father will. He calls me a bloody coward. I'd like to see his face when this gets into the papers! We'll be like-like martyrs!' He grew thoughtful. 'All we need to do now is decide on how we're going to do it… I suppose we could gas ourselves.'

'Gas!' said Duncan in horror. 'That'll take too long, won't it? That'll take ages. And anyway, the gas will get out, we might end up gassing my father. He's an old sod but, you know, that wouldn't be very fair.'

'It wouldn't be sporting,' said Alec.

'It wouldn't be cricket, old chap.'

They began to laugh. They laughed so hard, they had to cover their mouths with their hands. Alec fell back on to the bed and buried his face in Duncan's pillow. He said, still laughing, 'We could poison ourselves. We could eat arsenic. Like that old tart, Madame Bovary.'

'An admirable plan, Mr Holmes,' said Duncan in a silly voice, 'but one with one substantial flaw. My father keeps no arsenic in the house.'

'No arsenic? And you call this a modern, well-appointed establishment? What about rat-poison, pray?'

'No rat-poison, either. Anyway-wouldn't poison hurt like billy-oh?'

'It's going to hurt like billy-oh, you imbecile, whatever we do. It wouldn't be a gesture if it didn't hurt.'

'Even so-'

Alec had stopped laughing. He lay thinking for a second, then sat up. 'How about,' he said seriously, 'if we drown ourselves? We'd see our life flash before our eyes. Not that I want to see mine, my life's been lousy-'

Duncan said, 'I'd see my mother again.'

'There you are. A man should see his mother before he dies. You can ask her why the hell she married your father.'

They laughed again. 'But, how could we do it?' asked Duncan at last. 'We'd have to find a canal or something.'

'No, we wouldn't. You can drown in four inches of water; I thought everybody knew that. It's a scientific fact. Don't you keep your bath filled up in this house, against fire?'

Duncan looked at him. 'Bloody hell, you're right!'

'Let's do it, D.P.!'

They got to their feet. 'Bring the letter,' said Duncan, 'and a drawing-pin.-Wait! Let me comb my hair.'

'The man wants to comb his hair,' said Alec, 'at a time like this!'

'Shut up!'

'Go ahead, Leslie Howard.'

Duncan stood at the dressing-table mirror and quickly tidied himself up. Then, as quietly as they could, he and Alec went out of the bedroom and down the hall, through the parlour and into the kitchen. The doors were open, in case of blast; Duncan closed them, very softly. He could hear his father as he did it, snoring his head off. Alec whispered, 'Your father sounds like a Messerschmit!'-and that set them off laughing, all over again.

They put the kitchen light on. The shadeless bulb was rather weak, and made the room spring into life in flat, drab colours: the stained white of the sink, the grey and yellow of the patched linoleum floor, the brown-as-gravy of the woodwork… The bath was next to the kitchen table, against the wall; Duncan's father had boxed it in with more gravy-coloured wood, years before, and made a cover for it. The cover was used as a draining-board: it had bits of crockery on it, and some of Duncan's and his father's underwear, soaking in soda in a big zinc pail. Duncan blushed when he saw this, and quickly moved the pail aside. Alec moved the crockery, piece by piece, to the kitchen table.