Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

The moon had set, but there must be starlight: he and Fraser had drawn back the black-out, and the window-a series of ugly little panes-cast an interesting shadow on the floor. You could see it move, Duncan had found, if you watched hard enough; or you could lie looking up, with your head at a tiring angle, and see the stars themselves, see the moon, the odd sparkle of gunfire… The lights made you shiver. The cell was cold. Low in the wall beneath the window was an opening in the bricks with a piece of Victorian fret-work across it: it was meant to circulate heat, but the air that rose from it was always freezing. Duncan was wearing his prison pyjamas, his vest and his socks; the rest of his clothes-his shirt, his jacket and trousers and cape-he'd spread on top of the blankets which covered him, for extra warmth. In the bunk above, Fraser had done the same.

But Fraser had moved in his sleep, and his cape or his shirt was hanging slightly to one side. He'd flung out his arm, too, and the fingers of his hand showed: shapely, dark, like the legs of some impossibly large and well-muscled spider. As Duncan watched, the fingers gave a twitch-as if feeling for a purchase, trying for a spring… Don't look at it , Duncan said to himself-because he sometimes found that small, idiotic things like that could get a grip on his thoughts at night, and really unnerve him. He turned the other way, and that was better. If he stretched out his own hand now and touched the wall, he could feel where the plaster had been scratched away by men who'd lain here years before: J . B . December 1922, L . C . V . nine months ten days 1934 … The dates were not old enough to be really quaint, but he liked to think of the men who had made them, and the little instruments they must have used, the stolen needles and nails, the broken bits of china… R . I . P . George K , a fine screwsman : that made him wonder if a prisoner had died in this cell, been killed, or killed himself. One man had scored a calendar-but he had given every month thirty days, so the calendar was next to useless. Another had written verses: Five lonely years I must walk my cell , I wish my wife was here as well -and underneath this someone else had put, She don't you cunt, shes getting stuffed by your best pal ha ha .

Duncan closed his eyes. Who else, he wondered, was awake, in the whole of the building? Perhaps only the officers. You could hear them pass: back and forth they went, once every hour, like figures on an old-fashioned clock. Their shoes were soft, but made the metal landings ring: a chilly, shivering sound with a steady beat to it, like the pulsing of icy blood. You rarely heard it during the day, probably the place was too noisy then; to Duncan it seemed part of the special feel of the night, as if produced by the stillness and the dark. He would wait, to catch it. It meant another sixty minutes of prison time done, after all. And if he were the only man awake and knowing, then those sixty minutes, he felt, belonged exclusively to him: they went into his account, with a slither and a chink, like coins in the back of a china pig. Hard luck on the men who slept! They got nothing… But if someone stirred-if someone coughed, or banged on his door for an officer to come; if a man started weeping or calling out-then Duncan would share the minutes with him, fifty-fifty, thirty minutes each. That was only fair.

It was stupid, really-because of course, your time passed quickest of all when you were asleep; and lying awake, as Duncan was now, only made things worse. But you had to have little schemes, little tricks like this; you had to be able to turn your waiting into something more palpable-a piece of work or a puzzle. It was all you had to do. It was all that prison was: not a china pig after all, but a great, slow machine, for the grinding up of time. Your life went into it, and was crushed to a powder.

He lifted his head, then changed his pose again-rolled back on to his other side. The shivering sound had started up on the landing, and this time the beat was so slight, so subtle, he knew that it must be Mr Mundy who walked there; because Mr Mundy had been at the prison longer than any other officer and knew how to walk in a careful way, so as not to disturb the men. The beat came closer, but began to slow; like a fading heartbeat it came, until at last it stopped completely. Duncan held his breath. Beneath the door to his cell was a bar of sickly blue light, and in the vertical centre of the door, five feet from the floor, was a covered spy-hole. Now, as he watched, the bar of light was broken and the spy-hole, for a second, grew bright, then dimmed. Mr Mundy was standing, looking in. For, just as he knew how to walk so gently, so he also knew, he said, when any of his men were troubled and couldn't sleep…

He stood there, quite still, for almost a minute. Then, 'All right?' he called, very softly.

Duncan didn't answer at first. He was afraid that Fraser would wake. But finally, 'All right!' he whispered. And then, when Fraser didn't stir, he added: 'Good night!'

'Good night!' Mr Mundy answered.

Duncan closed his eyes. In time he heard the shivering beat start up again and grow faint. When he looked again, the bar of light beneath his door was unbroken, and the pale little circle of the spy-hole had been snuffed out. He rolled on to his other side, and put his hands beneath his cheek-like a boy in a picture-book, waiting patiently for sleep.

'Helen!' Helen heard somebody call, above the snarl of traffic on the Marylebone Road. 'Helen! Over here!'

She turned her head, and saw a woman in a blue jeans jacket and dungarees, rather filthy at the knee, with her hair done up in a dusty turban. The woman was smiling, and had lifted her hand. 'Helen!' she called again, beginning to laugh.

'Julia!' said Helen, at last. She crossed the road. 'I didn't recognise you!'

'I'm not surprised. I must look like a chimney-sweep, do I?'

'Well, a little.'

Julia got up. She'd been sitting in the sun, on a stump of wall. She had a Gladys Mitchell novel in one hand and a cigarette in the other: now she took a hasty final draw on the cigarette and threw it away. She rubbed her hand across the bib of her dungarees, so that she could offer it to Helen. But when she glanced at her palm, she looked doubtful.

'I think the dirt's there permanently. Do you mind?'

'Of course not.'

They shook hands. Julia said, 'Where are you going?'

'I'm going back to work,' answered Helen, a little self-consciously; for something about Julia-Julia's manner, Julia's clear, upper-class voice-always made her shy. 'I've just had lunch. I work just over there, in the Town Hall.'

'The Town Hall?' Julia peered along the street. 'We've probably passed one another before, then, and not noticed. My father and I've been working our way through all the streets around here. We've set up a sort of headquarters, in a house on Bryanston Square. We've been there for a week. He's just gone off to see a warden, and I'm making it an excuse for a little sit down.'

Julia's father, Helen knew, was an architect. He was making a survey of bomb-damaged buildings, and Julia was helping. But Helen had always imagined them working miles away, in the East End or somewhere like that. She said, ' Bryanston Square? How funny! I walk through there all the time.'

'Do you?' asked Julia

They looked at each other, for a second, frowning and smiling. Then Julia went on, more briskly, 'How are you, anyway?'

Helen shrugged, rather shy again. 'I'm all right. A bit tired, of course; like everyone. How are you? Are you writing?'

'Yes, a little.'

'You manage to do it, in between bangs?'