Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

By quarter past eight Duncan had begun to worry that Fraser might have come, have knocked, and gone away unheard. Mr Mundy had switched the wireless on, and the programme was rather noisy. So, on the pretext of getting himself a glass of water, he went out into the hall and stood quite still, cocking his head, listening for footsteps; he even, very softly, opened the front door and looked up and down the street. But there was no sign of Fraser… He went back into the parlour, leaving the door of it propped open. The radio programme changed, then changed again a half-hour later. The grandfather clock kept sending out its heavy, hollow chimes…

It took him until half-past nine to understand that Fraser wasn't going to come. The disappointment was dreadful-but then, he was used to disappointment; the first sting of it faded, turned instead into a settled blankness of heart. He put down his book, the table of hallmarks unlearnt. He was aware of Mr Mundy's gaze, but couldn't bring himself to meet it. And when Mr Mundy got up, came awkwardly to him, and lightly patted his shoulder and said, 'There. He's a busy chap, I expect. He'll have run into a couple of pals. That's what's happened, you mark my words!'-when Mr Mundy said that, he couldn't answer. He found he almost hated the feel of Mr Mundy's hand… Mr Mundy waited, then moved off. He went out to the kitchen. He let the parlour door close behind him, and Duncan suddenly felt the closeness and the airlessness of the dim, small, crowded room. He had a horrible sense of himself-falling, falling, as if down the narrow shaft of a well.

But the panic, like the disappointment, flared in him and died. Mr Mundy returned in time with a cup of cocoa: Duncan took it from his hands and meekly drank it. He carried the cup out to the kitchen and washed it himself, turning it over and over in the stream of cold water. The milk that was left in the pan he put down in a saucer on the floor, for the cat. He went out to the lavatory and, for a little while, just stood there in the yard, looking up at the sky.

When he went back into the parlour Mr Mundy was already going about shaking cushions, getting ready for bed. As Duncan watched, he started turning off the lamps. He moved from one lamp to the next. The parlour grew dark, the faces in the pictures on the walls, the ornaments on the mantelpiece, drawing back into shadow. It was just ten o'clock.

They went upstairs together, slowly, taking one step at a time. Mr Mundy kept his hand in the crook of Duncan 's elbow; and at the top he had to pause, still with his hand on Duncan 's arm, to get his breath back.

When he spoke, his voice was husky. He said, without looking at Duncan, 'You'll come in, son, in a minute, to say goodnight?'

Duncan didn't answer straight away. They stood in silence, and he felt Mr Mundy stiffen as if afraid… Then, 'Yes,' he said, very quietly. 'All right.'

Mr Mundy nodded, his shoulders drooping with relief. 'Thank you, son,' he said. He drew off his hand and made his slow, shuffling way along the landing to his bedroom. Duncan went into his own room and started to undress.

This room was small: a boy's room-the very room, in fact, in which Mr Mundy himself had used to sleep, when he was young and lived in this house with his parents and sister. The bed was a high Victorian one, with polished brass balls at each of its corners; Duncan had once unscrewed one of these and found a slip of paper inside it, marked in a smudged childish hand: Mabel Alice Mundy twenty dredful curses on you if you read this! The books in the bookcase were boys' adventure stories with broad, colourful spines. On the mantelpiece, set out as if to fight, were some badly-painted old lead soldiers… But Mr Mundy had put up shelves, too, for Duncan to display his own things, the things he'd bought in markets and antique shops. Duncan usually spent a moment, before he went to bed, looking over the pots and jars and ornaments, the teaspoons and tear-bottles-picking them up and delighting in them all over again; thinking about where they'd come from and who'd owned them before.

But he looked at it all, tonight, without much interest. He briefly picked up the bit of clay pipe he'd found on the beach by the riverside pub, that was all. He put his pyjamas on slowly, buttoning the jacket then tucking it tidily into the trousers. He cleaned his teeth, and combed his hair again-combing it differently this time, making it neat, putting a parting in it like a child's… He was very aware, as he did all this, of Mr Mundy waiting patiently in the room next door; he pictured him lying very still and straight, his head propped up on feather pillows, the blankets drawn up to his armpits, his hands neatly folded, but ready to pat the side of the bed, invitingly, when Duncan went in… It wasn't much. It was almost nothing. Duncan thought of other things. There was a picture, hanging over Mr Mundy's bed: a scene of an angel, safely leading children over a narrow, precipitous bridge. He'd look at that until it was over. He'd look at the complicated folds in the angel's gown; at the children's large, innocent-spiteful Victorian faces.

He put down his comb and picked up the bit of clay pipe again; and this time touched it to his mouth. It was chill and very smooth. He closed his eyes and moved it lightly across his lips, backwards and forwards-liking the feel of it, but made miserable by it too; aware of the uneasy stir of sensations it was calling up inside him. If only Fraser, he thought, had come! Perhaps, after all, he'd simply forgotten. It might be something as ordinary as that. If you were another sort of boy , he said bitterly to himself, you wouldn't have sat around here just waiting for him to turn up, you'd have gone out to find him . If you were a proper sort of boy you'd go out to his house right now -

He opened his eyes-and at once met his own gaze in the mirror. His hair was combed in its neat white parting, his pyjama jacket buttoned up to the chin; but he wasn't a boy. He wasn't ten years old. He wasn't even seventeen. He was twenty-four, and could do what he liked. He was twenty-four, and Mr Mundy-

Mr Mundy, he thought suddenly, could go to hell. Why shouldn't Duncan go out and get Fraser, if that's what he wanted? He knew the way to Fraser's street. He knew the very house Fraser lived in, because Fraser had taken him past the end of his road, once, and pointed it out to him!

He moved about very quickly now. He messed up the parting in his hair. He put on his trousers and his jacket-pulled them on right over his pyjamas, not wanting to waste even a minute by taking the pyjamas off. He put on his socks and his polished shoes, and as he stooped to tie his laces he realised that his hands were shaking; but he wasn't afraid. He felt almost giddy.

His shoes must have sounded loudly against the floor as he walked about. He heard the uneasy creaking of Mr Mundy's bed-and that made him move faster. He stepped out of his room and glanced just once across the landing to Mr Mundy's door; then he went quickly down the stairs.

The house was dark, but he knew his way through it as a blind man would-putting out his hand and finding door-knobs, anticipating steps and slippery rugs. He didn't go to the front door, because he knew that Mr Mundy's bedroom overlooked the street, and he wanted to go more secretly. For even in the midst of his excitement-even after having said to himself that Mr Mundy, for all he cared, could go to hell!-even after that, he thought it would be horrible to look back and see Mr Mundy at the window, watching him go.

So he went the back way, through to the kitchen and out, past the lavatory, to the end of the yard; and only when he got to the yard door did he remember that it was kept shut with a padlock. He knew where the key was, and might have run back for it; but he couldn't bear to go back now, not even as far as the scullery drawer. He dragged over a couple of crates and clambered up them, like a thief, to the top of the wall; he dropped to the other side, landing heavily, hurting his foot, hopping about.