Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

He led Mr Mundy into the shadow of the crooked house. The house always looked at its most alarming, he thought, when looming over you like this. For it was the last surviving building in what had once, before the war, been a long terrace; it still had the scars, on either side, where it had been attached to its neighbours, the zig-zag of phantom staircases and the dints of absent hearths. What held it up, Duncan couldn't imagine; he'd never quite been able to shake off the feeling, as he let himself and Mr Mundy into the hall, that he'd one day close the door a shade too hard and the whole place would come tumbling down around them.

So he closed the door softly; and after that the house seemed more ordinary. The hall was dim and rather hushed; there were hard-backed chairs set all the way around it, a coatless coat-rack, and two or three pallid-looking plants; the floor was a pattern of white-and-black tiles, some of which had got lost, exposing the grey cement beneath. The shade of the light was a lovely rose-coloured porcelain shell-meant for a gas-lamp, probably, but now fitted up with a bulb in a bakelite socket and a fraying brown flex.

Duncan noticed flaws and features like this; it was one of the pleasures of life for him. The earlier they arrived at the house, the more he liked it, for that gave him time to help Mr Mundy to a chair and then wander quietly around the hall, looking everything over. He admired the finely-turned banisters, and the stair-rods with their tarnished brass ends. He liked the discoloured ivory knob on a cupboard door; and the paint on the skirting-boards, that had been combed to look like wood. But at the back of the passage which led to the basement was a bamboo table, set out with tawdry ornaments; and amongst the plaster dogs and cats, the paperweights and majolica vases, was his favourite thing of all: an old luster bowl, very beautiful, with a design of serpents and fruits. Mr Leonard kept dusty walnuts in it, with a pair of iron nutcrackers on the top, and Duncan never approached the bowl without feeling, as if in the fibres of his bones, the fatal little concussion that would occur if some careless person were to take the nutcrackers up and let them slip against the china.

But the walnuts sat in the bowl today just as usual, the layer of dust upon them woolly, undisturbed; and Duncan had time, too, to look quite closely at a couple of pictures hanging crookedly on the wall-for everything hung crookedly, in this house. They turned out to be rather commonplace, with very ordinary Oxford frames. But that gave him a sense of pleasure, too-a different sort of pleasure-the pleasure he got from looking at a moderately handsome thing and thinking, You're not mine, and I don't have to want you!

When there was movement in the room upstairs, he stepped nimbly back to Mr Mundy's side. A door had opened on the landing, and he heard voices: it was Mr Leonard, seeing out the young man who always had the hour before them. Duncan liked seeing this man, almost as much as he liked seeing Colonel Barker and the luster bowl; for the man was cheery. He might be a sailor. 'All right, mates?' he said today, giving Duncan a bit of a wink. He asked what the weather was doing now, and enquired after Mr Mundy's arthritis-all the while removing a cigarette from its packet, then putting it to his mouth, taking out a box of matches and striking a light: all perfectly easily and naturally with one hand, while the other, undeveloped, arm hung at his side.

Why did he come, Duncan always wondered, when he could get along so well just as he was? He thought that perhaps the young man wanted a sweetheart; for of course, the arm was something a girl might object to.

The young man tucked the box of matches back into his pocket and went on his way. Mr Leonard led Duncan and Mr Mundy upstairs-going slowly, of course; letting Mr Mundy set the pace.

'Blinking nuisance,' said Mr Mundy, embarassed. 'What can you do with me? Put me on the scrap heap.'

'Now, now!' said Mr Leonard.

He and Duncan helped Mr Mundy into the treatment room. They lowered him into another hard-backed chair, took his jacket from him, made sure he was comfortable. Mr Leonard got out a black notebook and looked briefly inside it; then he sat facing Mr Mundy in a stiff chair of his own. Duncan went to the window and sat on a low sort of padded box that was there, with Mr Mundy's jacket in his lap. The window had a bitter-smelling net curtain across it, slightly sagging from a wire. The walls of the room were done in lincrusta, painted a glossy chocolate brown.

Mr Leonard rubbed his hands together. 'So,' he said. 'How are we, since I saw you last?'

Mr Mundy ducked his head. 'Not too bright,' he said.

'The idea of pains, still?'

'Can't seem to shake them off at all.'

'But you've had no resort to false remedies of any kind?'

Mr Mundy moved his head again, uneasily. 'Well,' he admitted after a second, 'perhaps a little aspirin.'

Mr Leonard drew in his chin and looked ar Mr Mundy as if to say: Dear, dear . 'Now, you know very well, don't you,' he said, 'what a person is like, who employs false remedies and Spiritual treatment at the same time? He is like an ass pulled by two masters; he moves nowhere. You do know this, don't you?'

'It's only,' said Mr Mundy, 'so awfully sore-'

'Soreness!' said Mr Leonard, with a mixture of amusement and great contempt. He shook his chair. 'Is this chair sore, because it must support my weight? Why not, since the wood from which it is made is as material as the bone and muscle of your leg, which you say hurts from bearing your weight? It is because nobody believes that a chair may hurt. If you will only not believe in the hurt of your leg, that leg will become as negligible to you as wood is. Don't you know this?'

'Yes,' said Mr Mundy meekly.

'Yes,' repeated Mr Leonard. 'Now, let us make a start.'

Duncan sat very still. It was necessary to be very still and quiet through all of the session, but particularly now, while Mr Leonard was gathering his thoughts, gathering his strength, concentrating his mind so that he might be ready to take on the false idea of Mr Mundy's arthritis. He did this by slightly putting back his head and looking with great intensity, not at Mr Mundy, but at a picture he had hung over the mantelpiece, of a soft-eyed woman in a high-necked Victorian gown, who Duncan knew to be the founder of Christian Science, Mrs Mary Baker Eddy. On the black frame of the picture someone-possibly Mr Leonard himself-had written a phrase, not very handily, in enamel paint. The phrase was: Ever Stand Porter at the Gate of Thought .

The words made Duncan want to laugh, every time: not because he found them especially comical, but simply because to laugh, just now, would be so dreadful; and he always, at this point, began to grow panicked at the thought of having to sit so silently, for so long: he felt he would be bound to make some sound, some movement-leap up, start shrieking, throw a fit… But it was too late. Mr Leonard had changed his pose-had leaned forward and fixed Mr Mundy with his gaze. And when he spoke again, he spoke in a whisper, intently, with a tremendous sense of urgency and belief.

'Dear Horace,' he said, 'you must listen to me. All that you think about your arthritis is untrue. You have no arthritis. You have no pain.You are not subject to those thoughts and opinions, which have illness and pain as a law and condition of matter… Dear Horace, listen. You have no fear. No memory frightens you. No memory makes you think misfortune will come to you again. You have nothing to fear, dear Horace. Love is with you. Love fills and surrounds you…'

The words went on and on-like a rain of gentle blows, from a stern lover. It was impossible, Duncan thought-forgetting, now, his desire to laugh-not to want to surrender yourself to the passion of them; impossible not to want to be impressed, moved, persuaded. He thought of the young man with the wasted arm; he imagined the man sitting where Mr Mundy was now, being told, 'Love fills you,' being told, 'You must not fear,' and willing and willing his arm to lengthen, to flesh itself out. Could such a thing happen? Duncan wanted, for Mr Mundy's sake, and the young man's sake, to think that it could. He wanted it more than anything.