Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

'We've sent for lights,' the warden said, 'but the fellows have been digging for half an hour. One's managed to get himself pretty badly cut.'

'How long,' Kay asked, 'before they get to the basement?'

'I'd say, an hour. Maybe two.'

'And the girl who's caught?'

'Yes, take a look at her, will you? She seems all right, but that might be shock, I don't know. She's over there. One of the men is with her, keeping her spirits up.'

He showed Kay where to walk. She left Mickey to see to the man who'd got cut, and began to pick her way to the back of the site. Her steps broke glass; once a board gave way beneath her and she sank into a mess of plaster and wood almost to the thigh. The crack of the board as it snapped was a sharp one, and she heard a girl cry out at the sound.

'It's all right,' said someone, softly. Kay flipped up her torch and made out the figure of a man, squatting on the rubble twenty feet away. He had his arms on his knees, his ARP helmet pushed matily back; he saw Kay coming, and lifted his hand. 'Ambulance? We're here. Watch out for the doo-dah, look.' He gestured to an object in her path: pale, gleaming, queerly shaped. It took her a moment to realise that it was a lavatory. 'Been blown clean out of its moorings,' said the man, straightening up. 'Lost its seat, though.'

He reached forward, to help guide Kay over the last stretch of chaos; and as she drew nearer to him she noticed something at his feet. She took it to be a heap of curtains or bedclothes, at first; but now, as she watched, the bedclothes seemed to billow or bulge, as if inflated from beneath; and an arm and a white face showed-showed as palely, almost, as the displaced lavatory. It was the girl who was trapped. She was covered in a film of plaster, and buried to the waist by a mess of beams and bricks. She was pushing herself up by her arms, to look at Kay. Kay went to her side and squatted, as the man had.

'I say, you are in a fix.' She gave the man a nod, and he went off.

The girl put her hand on Kay's ankle. 'Please,' she said, 'can you tell me?' Her voice was gritty, and light with fear. She coughed. 'Are they coming to get me out?'

'They are,' said Kay, 'just as soon as they can. Right now, however, I have to see if you're all right. May I feel for your pulse?' She took the girl's powdery arm. The pulse was quick, but pretty strong. 'There. And now, will you mind very much if I just shine this torch into your eyes? It won't take a moment.'

She put her fingers to the girl's chin, to steady her face. The girl blinked in apprehension. The rims and corners of her eyes were pink as a rabbit's against the white of the plaster dust. Her pupils shrank from the probing of the light. She seemed young, but not as young as Kay had thought her at first; perhaps twenty-four or -five. She turned her head before the beam of the torch was lowered, and tried to peer across the site.

'What are they doing?' she asked, of the men.

'They think there might be people,' Kay told her, 'a woman and a boy, trapped in the basement of your house.'

'Madeleine, and Tony?'

'Are those their names? Are they friends of yours?'

'Madeleine is Mrs Finch's daughter.'

'Mrs Finch?'

'My landlady. She-'

She didn't go on. Kay guessed that Mrs Finch was the woman who'd been killed. She began to feel the girl's arms and shoulders. 'Can you tell me,' she said as she did it, 'if you think you might be injured?'

The girl swallowed, and coughed again. 'I don't know.'

'Can you move your legs?'

'I think I could, a minute ago. I don't like to try, in case it topples the stuff and it crushes me.'

'Can you feel your feet?'

'I don't know. They're cold. It is just the cold, isn't it? What else could it be? It's not something worse, is it?'

She'd begun to shiver. She was dressed in what must have been a nightdress and dressing-gown, but the ARP man had put a blanket across her shoulders for extra warmth. Kay drew the blanket tighter, then looked around for something else. She found what might have been a bath-sheet; but it was sodden, and black with soot. She threw it away, then saw a cushion, its horsehair stuffing spilling from a gash in its velvet case. She put this against the girl's side, where she thought the sharp edges of rubble might be cutting or pressing against her.

The girl didn't notice. She was peering across the site again. She said, in an agitated way, 'What's that? Have they switched on lights? Tell them they mustn't!'

A lorry had come, bringing a single lamp and a little generator, and the R and D men had fitted them up and set them running. They'd tried to keep the lamp dim by stretching a square of tarpaulin above it; but light was leaking across the site, changing the look and the feel of things. Kay glanced about and saw quite plainly objects which, a moment before, had baffled her eye: an ironing-board with broken legs, a bucket, a little box to which someone had pasted shells… The lavatory lost its nacreous glamour and showed its stains. The walls of the houses rising up on either side of the heap of rubble were revealed to be not walls at all, but open rooms, with beds and chairs and tables and fireplaces in them, all intact.

'Tell them to turn off the lights!' the girl was still saying; but she was looking around, too, as Kay was-as if understanding, for the first time, the nature of the chaos in which she was trapped; perhaps seeing fragments of her old life in it… Then, 'Oh!' she said. The men had begun to hammer. She shuddered with every thud. 'What are they doing?'

'They have to work quickly,' said Kay. 'There might be gas, or water, you see, filling up the basement.'

'Gas or water?' asked the girl, as if not understanding. Then she winced, as another thud came. She must have been able to feel the blows through the rubble… She began to cry. She rubbed at her face, and the plaster grew thick with her tears. Kay touched her shoulder.

'Are you in pain?'

The girl shook her head. 'I can't tell. I don't think so. It's just- I'm so frightened.'

She put both her hands across her eyes and at last grew silent and almost still. When she took the hands away and spoke again her voice had changed, she sounded calmer, and older. 'What a coward you must think me,' she said.

Kay said gently, 'Not at all.'

The girl wiped her eyes and nose on a corner of the blanket. She made a face against the taste and the feel of the grit on her tongue. She said, 'I don't suppose you could give me a cigarette?'

'I'm afraid I can't, while there might be gas.'

'Of course not… Oh!' The men were hammering again. She held herself rigid.

Kay watched, growing rigid too, in sympathy. 'I think you must be in pain,' she said at last. 'There's a doctor coming. You must be brave just a little bit longer.'

Then they both turned their heads. Mickey was making her way towards them, her boots making boards crack, as Kay's had.

'Blimey!' she said, seeing the lavatory. Then she made out the figure of the girl. 'Blimey again! You are in trouble.'

'You'll forgive us,' Kay said to her, 'if we don't get up?' She turned back to the girl. 'This is my great friend, Miss Iris Carmichael. Did you ever see anything less like an iris in your life? Be nice to her, and she might let you call her Mickey.'

The girl was looking up, blinking. Mickey crouched and took her hand, squeezing her fingers. 'Not broken? Glad to hear it… How do you do?'

'Not so well just now,' said Kay, when Mickey got no answer. 'But soon to be better. But, what a rotten hostess I am!' She turned back to the girl. 'I never took the trouble to find out your name.'

The girl swallowed. She said awkwardly, 'It's Giniver.'

'Jennifer?'

The girl shook her head. 'Giniver. Helen Giniver.'

'Helen Giniver,' repeated Kay, as if trying it out. Then: 'Mrs, or Miss?'