Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

Fraser smiled. 'Isn't it?'

Duncan held the pipe up and studied it. 'I wonder what that man's name was. Doesn't it torment you, that we'll never know? I wonder where he lived and what he was like. He didn't know, did he, that his pipe would be found by people like us, in 1947?'

'Perhaps he was lucky not to be able to imagine 1947.'

'Maybe someone will find your pipe, three hundred years from now.'

'Not a chance of it!' said Fraser. 'I'd lay a thousand pounds to a penny that my little pipe, and everything else, will be burnt to cinders by then…' He finished his beer, and got to his feet.

'Where are you going?' Duncan asked him.

'To get more beer.'

'It's my turn.'

'It doesn't matter. I drank most of this jug. I need the lavatory, too.'

'Shall I come with you?'

'To the lavatory?'

'To the bar!'

Fraser laughed. 'No, stay here. Someone will take our place. I won't be long.'

He'd started to move off across the beach as he was speaking, beating idly with the empty jug against his thigh. Duncan watched him climb the water-stairs and disappear over the top.

The pub, it was true, was more crowded than before. People had brought their drinks out, as Fraser and Duncan had, to the street and the beach; a few men and women were sitting or perching on the wall above Duncan 's head. He hadn't realised, before, that they were there. He didn't like to think that they were looking down at him, or might have been listening to the things he had been saying…

He piece of clay pipe in his pocket; then gazed out at the river. The tide was turning, and the surface of the water seemed to tussle with itself, like snakes. The boys who'd been splashing about in the mud had all sat down at the edge of the shore; but now they rose and came back up the beach, driven in by the tide. They looked younger than ever. They were grinning, but also shivering, like dogs. They walked more wincingly, too: Duncan imagined the soles of their feet having softened in the water, getting cut by stones and shells. He tried to stop himself looking at them as they climbed the water-stairs; he had a sudden horror of seeing a boy's white foot with blood on it.

He lowered his head, and started picking at the beach again. He found a comb with broken teeth. He prised up a shard of china from a cup, its dainty handle still attached.

And then-he didn't know why; it might have been that someone spoke his name, and the words reached his ears through some freak lull in the sounds of voices, laughter, water-but he turned his head towards the pier again, and his gaze met that of a bald-headed man who was sitting with a woman at one of its tables. Duncan knew the man at once. He came from Streatham; he lived in a street close to the one in which Duncan had grown up. But now, instead of nodding to Duncan, instead of smiling or lifting his hand, the bald-headed man said something to the woman he was with, something like, 'Yes, that's him all right'; and the two of them stared at Duncan, with an extraordinary mixture of malevolence, avidity and blankness.

Duncan quickly looked away. When he glanced back, and found the man and woman still watching, he changed his pose-turned his head, moved his legs, shifted his weight to his other shoulder. But he was still horribly aware of being observed, being discussed, sized-up, disliked. Look at him , he imagined the man and woman saying. He thinks he's all right, he does . He thinks he's just like you and me . For he tried to picture himself as he must appear to them; and he saw himself, without Fraser beside him, as a kind of oddity or fraud… He turned his head again, more slyly-and yes, there they were, still watching him: they were lifting drinks and cigarettes, looking at him now with the empty yet bullying expressions of people who have settled down for a night at the cinema… He closed his eyes. Someone above him gave a raucous laugh. It seemed to him that the laughter could only be directed at him-that, one by one, the drinkers outside the pub were nudging their neighbours, nodding and smiling, spreading the story that Pearce was here-Duncan Pearce was here, drinking beer on the beach, just as if he had as perfect a right to do it as anybody else!

If only Fraser would come! How long had it been, since he'd gone off with the jug? Duncan wasn't sure. It seemed like ages. He'd probably got talking to someone-some ordinary man. He was probably flirting with the barmaid. And suppose, for some reason, he never came back? How would Duncan get home? He wasn't sure he could remember the way. His mind was getting blank or dark-he tried to concentrate, and it was just as though he was blindfolded and putting out his foot, and could feel soft ground, crumbling away… Now he began really to panic. He opened his eyes and looked down at his hands-for he'd once heard a doctor say that looking at your own hands, when you were frightened, could make you feel calmer. But he'd grown too conscious of himself: his hands seemed odd to him, like a stranger's. His whole body felt queer and wrong: he was aware all at once of his heart, his lungs; it began to seem to him that if he was to draw his attention away from those organs for a single instant, they'd fail. He sat on the beach with his eyes shut tight, sweating and almost panting under the frightful burden of having to breathe, press blood through his veins, keep the muscles in his arms and legs from flying into a spasm.

In what might have been five minutes more-or what might easily have been ten or even twenty-Fraser came back. Duncan heard the chink of the full jug being set down on the stones, then felt the touch of Fraser's thigh against his own as Fraser sat.

'It's crazy in there,' he was saying. 'It's like a scrum. I- What's the matter?'

Duncan couldn't answer. He opened his eyes and tried to smile. But even the muscles of his face were against him: he felt his mouth twist, and must have looked ghastly. Fraser said again, more urgently, 'What is it, Pearce?'

'It's nothing,' said Duncan at last.

'Nothing? You look like absolute hell. Here.' He passed Duncan his handkerchief. 'Wipe your face, you're sweating… Is that better?'

'Yes, a bit.'

'You're trembling like a leaf! What's it all about?'

Duncan shook his head. He said unsteadily, 'It'll sound stupid.' His tongue was sticking to his mouth.

'I don't care about that.'

'It's just, there's a man over there-'

Fraser turned to look. 'What man? Where?'

'Don't let him see you! He's over there, on the pier. A man from Streatham. A bald-headed man. He's been looking at me, him and his girl. He- He knows all about me.'

'What do you mean? That you've-been inside?'

Duncan shook his head again. 'Not just that. About why I was in there. About me and-and Alec-'

He couldn't go on. Fraser watched him a little longer, then turned and gazed again at the figures on the pier. Duncan wondered what the man would do when he saw Fraser looking. He imagined him making some awful gesture-or simply nodding at Fraser and smiling…

But after a moment, Fraser turned back. He said gently, 'There's no-one looking, Pearce.'

'There must be,' said Duncan. 'Are you sure?'

'Quite sure. No-one's looking at all. See for yourself.'

Duncan hesitated, then put his hand across his eyes and peered between his fingers… And it was true. The man and the woman had disappeared and a quite different couple were sitting at their table. This man had sandy-coloured hair; he was pouring crumbs into his mouth from a bag of crisps. The woman was yawning: patting at her lips with a plump white hand. The rest of the drinkers were talking amongst themselves, or gazing back into the bar, or out at the water-gazing anywhere, in fact, but at Duncan.

Duncan let out his breath, and his shoulders sank. He didn't know what to think now. For all he knew, he might have imagined the whole thing… He didn't care. His panic had drained him, emptied him out. He wiped his face again and said shakily, wretchedly, 'I ought to go home.'