Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

The mystery and glamour had been there, right from the start. 'You must meet Julia,' Kay had used to say, after Helen had moved into her flat. 'I do so want you two to meet up.' But there had always been something in the way of it: Julia was busy, Julia was writing; Julia kept odd hours and could never be pinned down… They'd met, at last, about a year before, by accident: bumped into each other at the theatre, after a performance of-of all things- Blithe Spirit . Julia had been handsome, charming, frightening, remote: Helen had taken one look at her; noted the awkward, slightly flustered manner with which Kay introduced her; and guessed everything.

Later that night she'd asked Kay: 'What was there, between you and Julia?'-and Kay had instantly grown awkward again.

'Nothing,' she'd said.

'Nothing?'

'A sort of-misaffection, that was all. Ages ago.'

'You were in love with her,' Helen had said, bluntly.

And Kay had laughed-'Look here, let's talk of something else!'-but also, what was rare for her, had blushed.

That blush was all the link there was, between Helen and Julia-a funny sort of link, when you thought about it…

Julia smiled and tilted her head. They were only fifty yards or so from the entrance to Marylebone Station, and through a lull in the traffic there had come a sudden burst of noise from one of the platforms: a blown whistle, followed by the letting out of steam. She opened her eyes. 'I like that sound.'

'So do I,' said Helen. 'It's a holiday sound, isn't it? A buckets-and-spades sort of sound. It makes me long to get away-get out of London, just for a bit.' She swilled the tea in the bottom of her cup. 'No chance of that, I suppose.'

'No?' said Julia, looking at her. 'Can't you fix something up?'

'Where's there to go to? And then, the trains… And, anyway, I'd never persuade Kay. She's working extra shifts, now, at Dolphin Square. She'd never take time off, while things are so bad.'

Julia drew on her cigarette, then threw it down and covered it over with her shoe. 'Kay's such a heroine, though, isn't she?' she said, blowing out smoke. 'Kay's such a brick.'

She meant it jokingly, Helen supposed; but her tone was not quite light, and she looked at Helen, as she said it, from the corner of her eye, almost slyly-as if testing her, weighing up her response.

Helen remembered, then, something she'd once heard Mickey say about Julia: that she longed to be admired; that she couldn't bear to have anyone liked over herself; and that she was hard. And she thought, with a flicker of dislike, It's true, you are hard . She felt suddenly, in that one moment, exposed, unsafe.

But the queer thing was, the sensation of unsafeness, even of dislike, was almost exciting. She glanced again at Julia's smooth, handsome, upper-class face and thought of jewels, of pearls. Wasn't hardness a condition of glamour, after all?

And then Julia changed her pose, and the moment passed. She caught hold of her wristwatch again; Helen saw how late it was and said, 'Damn.' She quickly finished her cigarette, dropped the stub into her almost empty cup, and heard it hiss. 'I must get back to work.'

Julia nodded, drinking off her tea. She said, 'I'll go with you.'

They went quickly back to the canteen, to leave their cups on the counter; then walked the couple of hundred yards to Helen's office.

'Will your Miss Prism give you hell, for staying out so long?' asked Julia, as they went.

'Miss Chisholm,' said Helen, smiling. 'She might.'

'You'd better put the blame on me, then. Say I'm an emergency case. That I've- What? Lost my house, and everything in it?'

'Everything?' Helen thought it over. 'That's about six separate departments, I'm afraid. I could only help you with a grant for light repairs. You'd have to see someone over at the War Damage Commisson about rebuilding work; they're just as likely, however, to send you back to us. Miss Links, on the third floor, might be able to give you some assistance with the cleaning of any salvageable items-curtains, carpets, things like that. But be sure to bring your cleaners' bills with you; and the chit we gave you, when you first filed your report of the incident.-What's that? You've lost the chit? Oh, dear. You must get another, and start all over again… It's like snakes and ladders, you see. And this is always assuming, of course, that we've found time to see you in the first place.'

Julia grimaced. 'You enjoy your job.'

'It's frustrating, that's all. You hope to make some sort of difference. But now the people we rehoused three years ago are coming back; they've been bombed out all over again. We've less money than ever. And still the war is costing us-how much do they say? Eleven million a day?'

'Don't ask me,' said Julia. 'I've given up reading the papers. Since the world's so obviously bent on killing itself, I decided months ago to sit back and let it.'

'I wish I could,' said Helen. 'But I find I feel even worse, not knowing, than I do when I know it all…'

But now they had reached the Town Hall; and paused, at the bottom of the steps, to say goodbye. The steps were flanked by two anxious-looking stone lions, furred grey with a coating of ash. Julia reached to pat one, and laughed.

'I'm awfully tempted to hop up on the back of it. What do you think Miss Chisholm would say about that?'

'I think you'd give her a heart attack,' said Helen… 'Goodbye, Julia.' She held out her hand. 'Don't climb through any more fanlights, will you?'

'I'll do my best. Goodbye, Helen. It's been nice.-That's an awful word, isn't it?'

'It's a grand word. It's been nice to see you, too.'

'Has it? I hope I'll bump into you again, then. Or, you must have Kay bring you over, some time, to Mecklenburgh Square. We could have dinner.'

'Yes,' said Helen. For after all, why shouldn't they? It seemed easy now. 'Yes, I will.' They moved apart. 'And, thanks for the tea!'

'We've rather a lot of people waiting, Miss Giniver,' said Miss Chisholm, when she went in.

'Have we?' asked Helen. She went through the office, and down the staff corridor to the lavatory, to take off her coat and hat, to stand at the mirror and re-powder her face. She saw again, as she did it, Julia's smooth, striking features: the slender throat, dark eyes, neat brows; the full, irregular, distracting mouth.

The door opened, and Miss Links came in.

'Oh, Miss Giniver, I'm glad I caught you. Rather sad news, I'm afraid. Mr Piper, at the Mayor's Fund: his wife's been killed.'

'Oh, no,' said Helen, lowering her hand.

'Yes, a timed one. Got her early this morning. Awfully bad luck. We're sending a card. We won't ask everyone to sign it-gets rather monotonous after a while-but I thought you'd like to know.'

'Yes, thanks.'

Helen closed her compact and put it away, and went sadly back to her desk-and hardly thought of Julia again, after that; hardly thought of her at all.

'Well,' said the prisoner in front of Duncan in the dinner-queue, an awful old pansy called Auntie Vi, 'and what have we today? Lobster Thermidore, perhaps? Paté? Veal?'

'It's mutton, Auntie,' said the boy dishing up the food.

Auntie Vi tutted. 'Doesn't even have the imagination to dress itself as lamb, I suppose. Heigh ho. Give me a plateful, darling. I hear the lunches at Brooks are hardly much better these days.'

She said this last to Duncan, rolling her eyes and touching her hair. Her hair was blonded at the front with a bit of peroxide, and beautifully waved-for she slept every night with strings around her head, to put the kinks in. Her cheeks were rouged, and her lips as red as a girl's: you couldn't pick up a scarlet-bound book in the library without finding pale little patches on it, where men like her had sucked at the boards for lipstick.