Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

Helen saw winter, drawing nearer, like a long dark tunnel on a railway line. She said, 'It won't be so cold as last year, will it?'

'I hope not.'

'It won't be, surely!'

Viv rubbed her arms. 'A man in the Evening Standard said our winters will go on getting colder and colder, and longer and longer; that in another ten years we'll all be living like Eskimos.'

'Eskimos!' said Helen-picturing fur hats and wide, friendly faces; quite fancying the idea.

'That's what he said. He said it was something to do with the angle of the earth-that we'd knocked it off-balance with all those bombs. It makes sense, if you think about it. He said it served us all right.'

'Oh,' said Helen, 'people in newspapers are always writing things like that. Do you remember someone, at the start of the war, saying the whole thing was a punishment on us for letting our king abdicate?'

'Yes!' said Viv. 'I always thought that was a bit hard on everyone in France and Norway and places like that. I mean, it wasn't their king, after all.'

She turned her head. The door to the wig-maker's downstairs had opened, and a man had come out into the yard with a waste-paper basket under his arm. The basket was filled to overflowing with dark fibres-a mixture, probably, of netting and hair. Viv and Helen watched him cross to a dustbin, lift its lid, and empty the mess of fibres into it. Then he wiped his hands, and went back in. He didn't look up. When the door was closed, Viv made a face.

But Helen was still thinking about the war. She took another little bite of her sandwich, then said, 'Isn't it odd, how everyone talks about the war as if it were a thing-oh, from years ago. It feels almost quaint. It's as though we all got together in private and said to each other, “Now don't, for God's sake, let's mention that !” When did that happen?'

Viv shrugged. 'We all got tired of it, I suppose. We wanted to forget it.'

'Yes, I suppose so. I never would have thought we'd all forget it, though, so quickly. When it was on- Well, it was the only thing, wasn't it? The only thing you talked about. The only thing that mattered. You tried to make other things matter, but it was always that, you always came back to that…'

'Imagine if it started again,' said Viv.

'Christ!' said Helen. 'What an awful thought! It'd be an end to this place, anyway. Would you go back to your old job?'

Viv considered it. She had worked at the Ministry of Food, just around the corner in Portman Square. 'I don't know,' she said. 'Maybe. It felt-important. I liked that. Even though all I was doing was typing, really… I had a good friend there: a girl called Betty; she was loads of fun. But she married a boy from Australia at the end of the war, and he took her back home… I envy her, now. If it really started again I might go into one of the services. I'd like to travel, get away.' She looked wistful. Then, 'How about you?' she asked Helen. 'Would you go back to your old job?'

'I suppose so, though I was glad enough to leave it. It was funny work-a bit like this, in a way: unhappy people all expecting impossible things. You tried to do your best for them, but you got tired; or you had things of your own to think about… I don't think I'd want to stay in London, though. London will get flattened, won't it, when the next war comes? But then, everywhere will get flattened. It won't be like last time. Even when things were so awful, right in the middle of the blitz, I wanted to stay-didn't you? I hadn't been here very long, but I felt a sort of-a sort of loyalty to the city, I suppose. I didn't want to let it down… It seems crazy, now! A loyalty to bricks and mortar! But then, of course, there were people I knew. I felt a loyalty to them, too. They were in London; and I wanted to be near them.'

'People like Julia?' asked Viv. 'Were you friends with her, then? Was she in London, too?'

'She was in London,' said Helen, nodding; 'but I only knew her at the end of the war. We shared a flat together, even then-a queer little flat, in Mecklenburgh Square. I remember that flat so vividly! All the mismatched bits of furniture.' She closed her eyes, recalling surfaces and scents. 'It had boards across its window. It was falling down, really. There was a man upstairs, who used to pace and make the floor creak.' She shook her head, opening her eyes. 'I remember it clearer than anywhere else I ever lived, I don't know why. We were only there for a year or so. For most of the war I was-' She looked away again; picked up her sandwich. 'Well, for most of it I was somewhere else.'

Viv waited. When Helen didn't go on she said, 'I lived in a boarding-house for Ministry girls. Down by the Strand.'

Helen looked up. 'Did you? I didn't know that. I thought you lived at home, with your father.'

'I did at weekends. But during the week they liked to have us there-so we could get to work if the railways were hit. It was an awful place. So many girls! Everyone running up and down the stairs. Everyone pinching your lipstick and your stockings. Or someone would borrow your blouse or something, and when you got it back it was a different colour or a different shape, they'd dyed it or taken the sleeves off!'

She laughed. She moved her feet to a higher step on the metal ladder-drew up her knees, tucked in her skirt, rested her chin upon her fists. Then her laughter, as it had before, faded. Her gaze grew distant, serious. Here comes that curtain , Helen thought… But instead Viv said, 'It's funny, thinking back. It's only a couple of years but, you're right, it seems ages away. Some things were easier, then. There was a way of doing things, wasn't there? Someone else had decided it for you, said that was the best way to do it; and that's what you did. It got me down, at the time. I used to look forward to peace, to all the things I'd be able to do then. I don't know what I thought those things would be. I don't know what I thought would be different. You expect things to change, or people to change; but it's silly, isn't it? Because people and things don't change. Not really. You just have to get used to them…'

Her expression, now, was so stripped, so solemn, Helen reached and touched her arm. 'Viv,' she said. 'You look so awfully sad.'

Viv grew self-conscious again. She coloured, and laughed. 'Oh, don't mind me. I've been feeling a bit sorry for myself lately, that's all.'

'What's the matter? Aren't you happy?'

'Happy?' Viv blinked. 'I don't know. Is anybody happy? Really happy, I mean? People pretend they are.'

'I don't know either,' said Helen, after a moment. 'Happiness is such a fragile sort of thing these days. It's as though there's only so much to go round.'

'As if it's on the ration.'

Helen smiled. 'Yes, exactly! And so you know, when you've got some, that it's going to run out soon; and that keeps you from enjoying it, you're too busy wondering how you're going to feel when it's all gone. Or you start thinking about the person who's had to go without so that you can have your portion.'

How own mood sank, as she thought this. She began picking at blisters of paint on the metal platform, exposing fibres of rust beneath. She went on quietly, 'Maybe it's right, after all, what the newspaper prophets say: that one gets paid back in the way one deserves. Maybe we've all forfeited our right to happiness, by doing bad things, or by letting bad things happen…'

She looked at Viv. They'd never spoken to each other quite so freely before, and she realised, as if for the first time, just how fond she was of Viv, and how much she liked doing this-just this-sitting out here, talking, on this rusting metal platform… And she thought of something else. Were you friends with Julia then? Viv had asked lightly, before-as if it was the most natural thing in the world that Helen should have been; as if it was perfectly normal that Helen should have stayed in London, in a war, for a woman's sake…