Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

Then Reggie braked and tooted his horn. Someone had sauntered across the road in front of him and moved casually on. He threw up his hands. 'Don't mind me, mister, will you? Jesus Christ!' He followed the sauntering figure with his gaze, looking disgusted; but then his face changed. The figure, in stepping on to the pavement, must have given something away. Reggie started to laugh. 'My mistake,' he said, nudging Viv. 'What do you think of that? It's not a mister, it's a miss.'

Viv turned to look-and saw Kay, in a jacket and trousers. She was drawing a cigarette from a case and, with a stylish, idle gesture, tapping it lightly against the silver before raising it to her lip…

'What the hell's the matter?' asked Reggie in amazement.

For Viv had cried out. Her stomach had contracted as if she'd been struck in it. She put up a hand to hide her face and, ducking further down in her seat, said to Reggie with awful urgency: 'Go on. Drive on!'

He gaped at her. 'What's the matter?'

'Just drive on, can't you? Please!'

'Drive on? Have you gone barmy?'

The way ahead was still jammed with cars. Viv moved about as if tormented. She looked back, towards Fleet Street. She said desperately, 'Go that way, can't you?'

'Which way?'

'The way we came.'

'The way we came? Are you-?' But now she'd actually grabbed the steering-wheel. 'Jesus!' said Reggie, pushing her hand away. 'All right. All right!' He looked over his shoulder and began, laboriously, to turn the car. The car behind gave a blast of its horn. The drivers heading for Ludgate Circus gazed at him as if he was a lunatic. He worked the gears, sweating and cursing, and slowly edged the car round.

Viv kept her head down; but looked back once. Kay had joined the line of people outside the cinema: she was holding a lighter to her cigarette, and the flame of it, springing up, through the twilight, lit her fingers and her face… Hush, Vivien , Viv remembered her saying. The memory was stark, after all this time-stark and terrible-the grip of her hand, the closeness of her mouth. Vivien, hush .

'Thank God for that!' said Reggie, when they were inching forwards again in the other direction. 'Talk about not drawing attention to ourselves. What on earth was all that for? Are you all right?'

She didn't answer. She'd felt the grinding of the gears, the lurching forwards and backwards of the car, in what seemed to be all her muscles and bones. She folded her arms across herself, as if to hold herself together.

'What is it?' asked Reggie.

'I saw someone I knew,' she said at last; 'that's all.'

'Someone you knew? Who was it?'

'Just someone.'

'Just someone. Well, I expect they got a bloody good look at you and me, too. Hell, Viv…'

He went grumbling on. She didn't listen. He stopped the car at last in some street near Blackfriars Bridge; she said she'd take a bus from there, and he didn't argue. He pulled up in a quiet-looking spot, and drew her to him so that they could kiss; afterwards he borrowed her handkerchief again and wiped his mouth. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, too, and, 'What a trip!' he said-as if the afternoon had been some sort of disaster; as if he'd forgotten, already, the stream and the ruined mill, the initials on the wall… She didn't care. The feel of his hand on her arm, of his lips against her mouth, was suddenly frightful. She wanted to get home, be on her own, away from him.

But as she opened her door he reached for her again. He'd put his hand into a pocket in the dashboard and was bringing something out. It turned out to be two tins of meat: one beef, and one pork.

She was so distracted, she started to take them. She opened her bag to put them away. But then something seemed to give way inside her, and she was suddenly furious. She pushed them back at him. 'I don't want them!' she said. 'Take them- Give them to your wife!'

The tins fell, and bounced from the seat. 'Viv!' said Reggie, astonished, hurt. 'Don't be like that! What have I done? What the hell's the matter? Viv!'

She got out, closed the door and walked away. He leaned across the seat and wound down the window, still calling her name-still saying, in amazement, 'What's the matter? What have I done? What-?' Then his voice began to grow hard-not so much, she thought, with anger, as with simple weariness. 'What the hell have I done, now?'

She didn't look back. She turned a corner, and the words faded. After that he must have started the engine again and driven off. She joined a queue at a bus-stop, and waited ten minutes for a bus; and he didn't come after her.

When she got home, she found the flat full of people. Her sister Pamela had come round, with her husband, Howard, and their three little boys. They'd come to bring Viv's father some tea. Pamela had warmed it up on the stove, and the narrow kitchen was stuffy and hot. There was washing draped on the laundry rack, hoisted up but dangling almost to the floor; Pamela must have done that, too. The wireless was on full-blast. Howard was sitting on the kitchen table. The two eldest boys were charging about, and Viv's father had the baby in his lap.

'Nice day?' asked Pamela. She was drying her hands, working the towel into the creases between her fingers. She looked Viv over. 'You've caught the sun. All right for some.'

Viv went to the sink and peered into her father's shaving mirror. Her face was pink and white, blotchy. She drew forward her hair. 'It was hot,' she said. 'Hello, Dad.'

'All right, love? How was your picnic?'

'It was OK. How's things, Howard?'

'All right, Viv. Doing our best, aren't we? How d'you like this weather? I tell you-'

Howard could never stop talking. The two boys were the same. They had things to show her: noisy little pop-guns; they put in the corks and fired them off. Her father followed the words on everybody's mouths-nodding, smiling, moving his own lips slightly; for he was awfully deaf. The baby was struggling in his arms, reaching for the pop-guns, wanting to get down. When Viv drew close her father held him out to her, glad to give him up. 'He wants you, love.'

But she shook her head. 'He's too big, that one. He weighs a ton.'

'Give him here,' said Pamela. 'Maurice- Howard, don't just bloody well sit there-!'

The racket was terrible. Viv said she was going to go and take her shoes and stockings off. She went into her bedroom and closed the door.

For a second she just stood, not knowing what to do with herself-thinking that she might start crying, be ill… But she couldn't start crying with her dad and her sister in the other room. She sat on the bed, then lay down with her hands on her stomach; lying down, however, made her feel worse. She sat up again. She got to her feet. She couldn't shake off the shock of it, the upset of it.

Hush, Vivien .

She took a step; then tilted her head, hearing a noise above the muffled din of the radio, thinking it might be Pamela or one of the boys, in the hall. But the noise turned out to be nothing. She stood undecided, for almost a minute, biting her hand…

Then she went quickly to her wardrobe and drew back its door.

The wardrobe was filled with bits of rubbish. There were some of Duncan 's old school-clothes there, hanging up beside her dresses; there were even two or three ancient frocks of her mother's, that her father had never wanted to throw away. Above the rail was a shelf, where she kept her sweaters. Behind the sweaters were photograph albums, old autograph books, old diaries, things like that.

She tilted her head, listening again for footsteps in the hall; then she reached into the shadows behind the albums and brought out a little tobacco tin. She brought it out as naturally as if she reached for it every day, when in fact she'd placed it there three years before and hadn't looked at it since. She'd pressed the lid down very tightly then, and now the joints in her wrists and fingers felt weak. She had to get a coin, and prise away at it with that. And when the lid was loosened she hesitated again-still listening out, anxiously, in case someone should come.