Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

He spoke very passionately, holding Duncan 's gaze with his clear blue eyes; and Duncan felt himself blush again. 'It's easy for you-' he started to say.

But Fraser's gaze had moved to a point behind Duncan 's shoulder, and his look had changed. He'd seen Mr Mundy, making his way between the tables. He lifted his hand.

'Why, Mr Mundy, sir!' he called, in a stagey kind of way. 'You're just the man!'

Mr Mundy ambled over. He saw Duncan and gave him a nod. But he looked more warily at Fraser and said, in his soft, pleasant voice, 'Now, what's the matter?'

'Nothing's the matter,' Fraser answered. 'I just thought you might be able to explain to us why the prison system seems so keen on turning its inmates into morons, when it might-oh, I don't know-educate them?'

Mr Mundy smiled tolerantly, but would not be drawn. 'There you are,' he said, starting to move on. 'You grumble all you like. Prison lets a man do that, anyway.'

'But it won't let him think, sir!' pursued Fraser. 'It won't let him read the papers, or listen to the wireless. What's the point of that?'

'You know what the point is, son. It does you men no good to hear about things from the world outside that you've got no part in. It stirs you up.'

'It give us minds and opinions of our own, in other words; and makes us harder for you to manage.'

Mr Mundy shook his head. 'You got a grievance, son, you take it up with Mr Garnish. But if you'd been in the service as long as I have-'

'How long have you been in the service, Mr Mundy?' broke in Hammond. He and Giggs had been listening. The other men at the table were listening, too. Mr Mundy hesitated. Hammond went on, 'Mr Daniels told us, sir, that you'd been here for forty years, something like that.'

'Well,' said Mr Mundy, slowing his step, 'I've been here twenty-seven years; and before that, I was at Parkhurst for ten.'

Hammond whistled. Giggs said, 'Christ! That's more than murderers get, ain't it? What was it like here in the old days, though? What were the men like, Mr Mundy?'

They sounded like boys in a classroom, Duncan thought, trying to distract the master into talking about his time at Ypres; and Mr Mundy was too kind to walk away. Probably, too, he would rather talk to Hammond than to Fraser… He shifted his pose, to stand more comfortably. He folded his arms and thought it over.

'The men, I should say,' he said at last, 'were about the same.'

'About the same?' said Hammond. 'What, you mean there've been blokes like Wainwright, going on about the grub-and Watling and Fraser, boring everyone's arse off about politics-for thirty-seven years? Blimey! I wonder you haven't gone right off your chump, Mr Mundy. I wonder you haven't gone clean round the twist!'

'What about the twirls, sir?' asked Giggs excitedly. 'I bet they was cruel men, wasn't they?'

'Well,'said Mr Mundy fairly, 'there's good officers and bad, kind and hard, everywhere you go. But prison habits-' He wrinkled his nose. 'Prison habits were awfully hard in those days; yes, awfully hard. You fellows think you have it rough; but your days are like lambswool, compared to those. I've known officers would whip a man as soon as look at him. I've seen lads flogged-lads of eleven, twelve, thirteen, it'd break your heart. Yes, they were awfully brutal days… But, there it is. What I always say is, in prison you see men at their worst, and at their best. I've known plenty of gentlemen, in my time here. I've known fellows come in as villains, and leave as saints-and the other way around. I've walked with men to the gallows, and been proud to shake their hands-'

'That must have cheered them up no end, sir!' called Fraser.

Duncan looked at Mr Mundy and saw him flush, as if embarassed, caught out. Hammond said quickly, 'Who was the hardest man you ever had in here, sir? Who was the biggest villain?'-but Mr Mundy would not be drawn again. He unfolded his arms, straightened up.

'All right,' he said, as he moved off. 'You men ought to get on and finish your dinners, now. Come on.'

He started his circuit of the hall again-going slowly, and limping slightly, because of his hip.

Giggs and Hammond snorted with laughter.

'He's a soft fucking git!' said Hammond, when Mr Mundy was out of earshot. 'He's a fucking peach, isn't he? I tell you what though, he must be out of his fucking mind to have stood it in prison for-how long did he say? Thirty-seven years? Thirty-seven days was enough for me of this fucking place. Thirty-seven minutes. Thirty-seven seconds-'

'Look!' said Giggs. 'Look at him go! What's he walk like that for? He walks like a fucking old duck. Imagine if some bloke was to have it away over the wall while Mr Mundy was with him! Imagine Mr Mundy starting off after him-!'

'Leave him alone,' said Duncan suddenly, 'can't you?'

Hammond looked at him, amazed. 'What's it matter to you? We're only having a bit of a laugh. Christ, if you can't have a laugh in this place-'

'Just leave him alone.'

Giggs made a face. 'Well, pardon us. We forgot you and him were so fucking thick.'

'We're not anything,' said Duncan. 'Just-'

'Yes, give it a rest, can't you?' said another man, the embezzler. He'd been trying to read the cut-up Daily Express . He gave it a shake, and a bit of it fell out. 'It's like feeding time in the blasted Zoo.'

Giggs pushed back his chair and got up. 'Come on, mate,' he said to Hammond. 'This table fucking stinks, anyhow.'

They picked their plates up and moved off. After a moment the embezzler and another man went, too. The men left at Duncan 's end of the table shifted closer together. One of them had a little set of dominoes, made from cast-off pieces of wood, and they began setting out the pieces for a game.

Fraser stretched in his chair again. 'Just another dinner-hour,' he said, 'at Wormwood Scrubs, D Hall…' He looked at Duncan. 'I never thought I'd see you take on Hammond and Giggs, Pearce. And all on Mr Mundy's behalf! He'd be quite touched.'

Duncan was trembling a little, as it happened. He hated arguments, confrontations; he always had. He said, 'Hammond and Giggs get on my nerves. Mr Mundy's all right… He's better than Mr Garnish and the others, anybody will tell you that.'

But Fraser curled his lip. 'Give me Garnish over Mundy, any day. Give me an honest sadist, I mean, rather than a hypocrite. All that bloody nonsense about shaking hands with the condemned man.'

'He's only doing a job, like everyone else.'

'Like state-paid bullies and murderers everywhere!'

'Mr Mundy's not like that,' said Duncan stubbornly.

'He certainly,' said Watling, glancing at Duncan but addressing Fraser, 'has some very queer ideas about Christianity. Have you ever heard him talk on the subject?'

'I think I have,' said Fraser. 'He's one of the Mary Baker Eddy crowd, isn't he?'

'He said something to me once, when I was over at the Infirmary with some very painful boils. He said the boils were simply manifesting -these were the very words he used, mind-they were manifesting my belief in pain . He said, “You believe in God, don't you? Well then, God is perfect and He made a perfect world. So how can you have boils?” He said, “ What the doctors call your boils is really only your false belief! Make your belief a true one, and your boils will disappear! ”'

Fraser gave a shout of laughter. 'What poetry!' he cried. 'And what a comfort, to a man who's just had his leg blown off, or his stomach bayoneted!'

Duncan frowned. 'You're as bad as Hammond. Just because you don't agree with it.'

'What's there to agree with?' Fraser said. 'You can't agree, or disagree, with gibberish. And gibberish it is, most certainly. One of those things dreamed up to pacify sex-starved old women.' He sniggered. 'Like the WVS.'