Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

He stood chatting with them for another few moments; then, 'Jolly good,' he said. 'I'm off down to the basement, to take a quick look at those plans. If you'll excuse me, Miss-?'

He stepped around them and headed downstairs. As he moved out of the thickest of the shadows Helen saw that what she'd taken to be dirt, or freckles, on his face, were really the scars of old blisters, from fire or gas.

'Isn't he a darling?' said Julia, when he'd gone. 'Really, he's the most awful rogue.' She opened the door, and she and Helen stood together on the step. She shivered again. 'It looks like rain. You'll have to be quick! You know your way back all right? I'd come with you, only- Oh, hang on.'

She'd put her hand, suddenly, on Helen's shoulder, to keep her from moving on to the pavement, and Helen turned back to her, alarmed-thinking, almost, that Julia meant to kiss her, embrace her, something like that. But all she was doing was brushing dust from Helen's arm…

'There,' she said, smiling. 'Now, turn around and let me see the back of you. Yes, here's another bit… Now, the other way. How biddable you are! But we mustn't give Miss Chisholm any grounds for complaint.' She raised an eyebrow. 'Nor Kay, for that matter… There. That's splendid.'

They said goodbye. 'Come and find me some other lunchtime!' Julia called, as Helen moved off. 'I'll be here for two more weeks. We could go to a pub. You can buy me that drink!'

Helen said she would.

She began to walk. Once the door was closed she looked at her wristwatch, and started to run. She got back to her office at a minute past two. 'Your first appointment's waiting, Miss Giniver,' Miss Chisholm told her, with a glance at the clock; so she didn't have time, even, to visit the lavatory or comb her hair…

She worked very steadily, for an hour and a half. The job was tiring in times like these. The sort of people she'd been interviewing in the past few weeks were like the people she'd got used to seeing during the big blitz, three years before. Some of them came fresh from the wreckage of their homes, with dirty hands, cut about and bandaged. One woman had been bombed out, she said, three times; she sat on the other side of Helen's desk and wept.

'It's not the house having gone,' she said. 'It's the moving about. I feel like a bit of tinder, miss. I haven't slept since all this happened. My little boy's got delicate health. My husband's in Burma, I'm all on my own.'

'It's awfully hard,' said Helen. She gave the woman a form, and patiently showed her where to fill it. The woman looked at it, not understanding.

'All this?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'But, if I could just have a pound or two-'

'I can't give you money, I'm afraid. You see, it's a rather lengthy process. We must send a valuer to assess the damage before we can make an advance. We must have someone from our own department see your old home and make a report. I'll try to get them to the site as quickly as I can, but with all the new raids…'

The woman was gazing, still, at the pieces of paper in her hand. 'I feel like tinder,' she said again, passing her hand across her eyes. 'Just like tinder.'

Helen watched her for a second; then took the form back. She filled in the woman's details herself, back-dating it all to the month before; and in the space that requested the date and serial number of the valuer's report, she wrote some likely but vaguely illegible inky figures. She put the form in a tray marked Approved , ready to be sent up to Miss Steadman on the first floor; and she clipped on a note, to say it was urgent.

But she didn't do anything like that for the next person, or for the people after him. She'd been struck by the woman's describing herself as being like tinder, that was all. In the first blitz, she'd tried to help everyone; she'd given money to people, sometimes, from her own purse. But the war made you careless. You started off, she thought sadly, imagining you'd be a kind of heroine. You ended up thinking only of yourself.

For at the back of her mind, all afternoon, was the idea of Julia. She was thinking of Julia even as she was comforting the crying woman-even as she was saying, 'It's awfully hard.' She was remembering the feel of Julia's arm as it brushed against hers; the closeness of Julia, in that small attic room.

Then, at a quarter to four, her telephone rang.

'Miss Giniver?' said the girl on reception. 'An outside call. A Miss Hepburn. Shall I put her through?'

Miss Hepburn? thought Helen, distractedly… Then she understood, and her stomach fluttered with anxiety and guilt. 'Just a second,' she said. 'Ask the caller to hold, will you?' She put the receiver down, and went to her door and called out: 'Miss Chisholm? No more applicants, please, just for a minute! I've got the Camden Town office on the line.' She sat back at her desk, and willed herself steady. 'Hello, Miss Hepburn,' she said quietly, when the call had been put through.

'Hello, you.' It was Kay. They had a sort of game, with names, like that. 'This is just a nuisance call, I'm afraid.' Her voice sounded deep, and rather lazy. She was smoking a cigarette: she moved the receiver, to blow out smoke… 'How's life in Assistance?'

'Pretty hectic, actually,' said Helen, glancing at the door. 'I can't talk long.'

'Can't you? I oughtn't to have rung, ought I?'

'Not really.'

'I've been kicking my heels at home. I- Just a minute.'

There was a little puff of air, and then a sense of deadness: Kay had put her palm over the receiver and started to cough. The cough went on. Helen pictured her as she'd often seen her-doubled over, her eyes watering, her face scarlet, her lungs filled up with smoke and brick-dust. She said, 'Kay? Are you all right?'

'Still here,' said Kay, coming back. 'It's not so bad.'

'You oughtn't to be smoking.'

'The smoking helps… Hearing your voice helps.'

Helen didn't answer. She was thinking of the switchboard girl. A friend of Mickey's had lost her job, when a girl had listened in on a private call between her and her lover.

'I wish you were here, at home,' Kay went on. 'Can't they get along without you?'

'You know they can't.'

'You have to go, don't you?'

'I do, really.'

Kay was smiling: Helen could hear it in her voice. 'All right… Nothing else to report, though? No-one tried to storm the office? Mr Holmes still giving you the eye?'

'No,' said Helen, smiling too. Then her stomach fluttered again, and she drew in her breath. 'Actually-'

'Hang on,' said Kay. She moved the receiver, and began to cough again. Helen heard her wiping her mouth… 'I must let you go,' she said, when she came back.

'Yes,' said Helen leadenly.

'I'll see you later. You're coming straight home? Come quickly, won't you?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Good girl… Goodbye, Miss Giniver.'

'Goodbye, Kay.'

Helen put the receiver down and sat very still. She had a clear image of Kay, getting up, finishing her cigarette, wandering restlessly around the flat, perhaps coughing again. She might stand at the window with her hands in her pockets. She might whistle or hum-old songs from the music hall, 'Daisy, Daisy,' songs like that. She might put down paper on the sitting-room table, to polish her shoes. She might get out a funny little sailor's sewing-kit she had, and darn her socks… She didn't know that Helen, a few hours before, had been standing at a window, feeling the flesh on her arm rise up like the petals of a flower to the sun, because Julia was beside her. She didn't know that Helen, in a little attic room, had had to turn away from Julia's gaze, because the quickening of her own blood had made her afraid…

Helen snatched up the telephone again and gave the girl a number. The phone rang twice, and then, 'Hello,' said Kay, surprised by Helen's voice. 'What did you forget?'