Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

Viv dipped a comb in the water, wet his hair and started cutting. She used a pair of old dressmaking scissors; God knows what Mr Mundy was doing with those. Probably he did his own sewing, she wouldn't put it past him… The newspaper crackled under her shoes as she moved about.

'Not too short,' said Duncan, hearing her clip.

She turned his head. 'Keep still.'

'You did it too short last time.'

'I'll do it how I do it… There such a things as a barber's, you know.'

'I don't like the barber's. I always think he's going to cut me up and put me in a pie.'

'Don't be silly. Why would he want to do that?'

'Don't you think I'd make a nice pie?'

'There's not enough meat on you.'

'He'd make a sandwich of me, then. Or he'd put me in one of those little tins. And then-' He turned and caught her eye, looking mischievous.

She straightened his head again. 'It'll end up crooked.'

'It doesn't matter, there's no-one to see. Only Len, at the factory. I haven't got any admirers. I'm not like you-'

'Will you shut up?'

He laughed. 'Uncle Horace can't hear. He wouldn't mind, even if he could. He doesn't trouble over things like that.'

She stopped cutting and put the point of the scissors to his shoulder. 'You haven't told him, Duncan?'

'Of course I haven't.'

'Don't you, ever!'

'Cross my heart.' He licked his finger, touched his chest; looked up at her, still smiling.

She wouldn't smile back. 'It isn't a thing to joke about.'

'If you can't joke about it, why do you do it?'

'If Dad should hear-'

'You're always thinking about Dad.'

'Well, somebody has to.'

'It's your life, isn't it?'

'Is it? I wonder, sometimes.'

She cut on in silence-unsettled, but wanting to say more; almost hoping that he'd keep teasing her; for she had no-one else to talk to, he was the only person she'd told… But she left it too long; he got distracted, tilting his head to look at the damp black locks on the newspaper under his chair. They'd falled as curls, but as they dried they were separating into individual strands and growing fluffy. She saw him grimace.

'Isn't it queer,' he said, 'how nice one's hair is when it's on one's head; and how gruesome it becomes, the instant it's cut off. You ought to take one of those curls, V, and put it in a locket. That's what a proper sister would do.'

She straightened his head again, less gently than before. 'I'll proper sister you in a minute, if you don't keep still.'

He put on a silly Cockney voice. ' I was proper sistered! '

That made them laugh. When she'd finished cutting he moved the chair aside and opened the back door. She got her cigarettes, and they sat together on the step, gazing out, smoking and chatting. He told her about his visit to Mr Leonard's; about the buses he and Mr Mundy had had to take, their little adventures… The sky was like water with blue ink in it, the darkness sinking, stars appearing one by one. The moon was a slim and perfect crescent, almost new. The little cat appeared, and wound itself around their legs, then threw herself on to its back and writhed, ecstatic again.

Then Mr Mundy came out from the parlour-came out to see what they were doing, Viv supposed; had perhaps heard them laughing, through the window. He saw Duncan 's hair and said, 'My word! That's a bit better, now, than the cuts you used to get from Mr Sweet!'

Duncan got up and started tidying the kitchen. He made a parcel of the paper and the hair. 'Mr Sweet,' he said, 'used to nip you with his scissors, just for fun.' He rubbed his neck. 'They said he took a man's ear off once!'

'That was all talk,' said Mr Mundy comfortably. 'Prison talk: that's all that was.'

'Well, that's what a man told me.'

They quarrelled about it for another minute or two; Viv had the feeling they were almost doing it on purpose-showing off, in some queer way, because she was there. If only Mr Mundy hadn't come out! He couldn't leave Duncan alone for a minute. She'd liked it, sitting on the step, watching the sky get darker. But she couldn't bear it when they started talking so airily about prison, all of that; it set her teeth on edge. The closeness and the fondness she'd felt for Duncan a moment before began to recede. She thought of her father. She found herself thinking in her father's voice. Duncan moved gracefully across the kitchen and she looked at his neat dark head, his slender neck, his face, that was handsome as a girl's, and she said to herself almost bitterly: All he put us through, look, and there's not a bloody mark on him!

She had to go back into the parlour and finish her cigarette there, on her own.

But there wasn't any point in getting worked-up about it. It would wear her out, just as it had worn out her father. And she had other things to think about. Duncan made more tea, and they listened to a programme on the wireless; and at quarter past nine she put her coat on. She left at the same time every week. Duncan and Mr Mundy stood at the front door to watch her go, like an old married couple.

'You don't want your brother to walk you to the station?' Mr Mundy would ask her; and Duncan would answer before she could, in a negligent sort of way, 'Oh, she's all right. Aren't you, Viv?'

But tonight he kissed her, too, as if aware that he'd annoyed her. 'Thanks for the haircut,' he said quietly. 'Thanks for the ham. I was only teasing, before.'

She looked back twice as she went off, and they were still there, watching; the next time she looked, the door was closed. She imagined Mr Mundy with his hand on Duncan 's shoulder; she pictured them going slowly back into the parlour-Duncan to one armchair, Mr Mundy to the other. She felt again the airless, flannel-like atmosphere of the house on her skin, and walked more briskly-growing excited, suddenly; liking the chill of the evening air and the crispness of the sound of her heels on the pavement.

Walking quickly, however, meant that she arrived too soon at the station. She had to stand about in the ticket-hall while trains came and went, feeling horribly exposed in the harsh, dead light. A boy tried to catch her eye. 'Hey, Beauty,' he kept saying. He kept going past her, singing. To put herself out of his way she went to the book-stall; and it was only as she was looking over the rack of magazines that she remembered what Helen had said, that afternoon, about the Radio Times . She took down a copy and opened it up, and almost at once found an article headed:

“Dangerous Glances”

URSULA WARING introduces Julia Standing's thrilling new novel The Bright Eyes of Danger, featured on “Armchair Detective” at 10.10 on Friday evening (Light Prog.).

The article was several columns long, and gave an account of the novel in very glowing terms. Above it was a photograph of Julia herself: her face tilted, her eyes downcast, her hands raised and pressed together at the side of her jaw.

Viv looked at the photo with a touch of dislike: for she'd met Julia once, in the street outside the office, and had not taken to her. She'd seemed too clever-shaking Viv's hand when Helen introduced them, but not saying, 'How do you do?' or 'Pleased to meet you,' or anything like that; saying coolly instead, as if she'd known Viv for years: 'Successful day? Have you got heaps of people married?' 'More fool them if we have,' Viv had answered; and at that she'd laughed, as if at a joke of her own, and said, 'Yes, indeed…' Her voice was very well-to-do, and yet she'd talked slangily: 'louse up your plans', 'go dotty'. What Helen, who was so nice, saw in her to like so much, Viv couldn't imagine.-But then, that was their own business. Viv closed her mind to it.

She put the magazine back in the rack and moved away. There was no sign, now, of the boy who'd sung at her. The clock showed two minutes to half-past ten. She went across the ticket hall-not towards the platforms, but back to the station entrance. She stood close to a pillar, looking out into the street: drawing her coat more tightly around her because, with so much standing about, she'd got chilled.