Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

As she spoke, she was drawing the ornament from Helen's ear, and smoothing the chill, naked lobe with her fingers.

Helen blushed. 'Someone will come,' she said again.

'Not if we're quick.'

'Don't be silly, Kay.'

But Kay kissed her, anyway; then felt her break almost roughly away. For someone had come-a nice-looking woman, walking a dog. She'd appeared on the other side of the bridge, soundlessly, from nowhere.

Kay held up the earring and said, in an ordinary voice, 'No, it's no good. I'm afraid you'll have to do it.' Helen turned her back to her and stood stiffly, as if absolutely riveted by some little detail in the scene below.

As the woman passed, Kay caught her eye and smiled. The woman smiled back-but smiled uncertainly, Kay thought. She must have glimpsed the end of their embrace, but was doubtful: puzzled and embarassed. The dog came trotting over and sniffed at Helen's heels. He took ages to go.

'Smuts!' cried the woman, getting redder and redder in the face. 'Smuts! Bad dog!'

'God!' said Helen when they had gone. She tilted her head to put the earring back on, her hands at her jaw, her fingers working furiously at the little screw.

Kay was laughing. 'Oh, so what? It's not the nineteenth bloody century.'

But Helen wouldn't smile. Her mouth was set, almost grim, as she fumbled with the earring. And when Kay made to help her she moved sharply away. Kay gave it up. What a lot of fuss , she thought about nothing … She got out her cigarettes again, and offered the case. Helen shook her head. They went on with unlinked arms, in silence.

They rejoined the path they had come in on and, without debating it, crossed to another, heading south. This led, they saw after a moment, to the crest of Parliament Hill. The slope was gentle at first, but soon grew steep, and Kay glanced at Helen from the corner of her eye, and saw her moving brusquely, breathing hard; she looked as though she might be working herself into a temper, looking for a reason to start complaining, a way of somehow blaming Kay… But then they got to the top, and saw the view. Her expression changed, cleared, grew simple and pleased again.

For you could see right across the city from here, to all the landmarks of London; and because of the distance-and because of the smoke from so many chimneys, which hung in the chill, windless air like a net in water-even the patches of rubble and the hollowed-out, roofless buildings had a certain smudgy charm. Four or five barrage balloons were up, seeming to swell, and then to shrink, as they turned and drifted. They were like pigs in a barnyard, Kay thought. They gave the city a jovial, cosy look.

A few people were taking photographs. 'There's St Paul 's Cathedral,' a girl was saying to her American soldier boyfriend. 'There's the Houses of Parliament. There's-'

'Be quiet, will you?' a man said loudly to her. 'There might be fifth columnists about.'

The girl shut up.

Helen and Kay stood gazing at the view with everyone else, shading their eyes against the glare of the bleached-out sky. Then, a little way along the path, a bench became free, and Kay darted to claim it. Helen joined her, moving more slowly. She sat, leaning forward, frowning-still gazing hard across the city.

Kay said, 'Isn't it marvellous?'

Helen nodded. 'Isn't it. I wish it was clearer, though.'

'But then it wouldn't be so charming. It's romantic, like this.'

Helen still peered. She pointed. 'That's St Pancras Station, isn't it?' She spoke quietly, glancing about for the officious man.

Kay looked. 'Yes, it must be.'

'And there's the University building.'

'Yes. What are you looking for? Rathbone Place? I doubt we'd be able to see it from here.'

'There's the Foundling Estate,' said Helen, as if she hadn't heard.

'It's further west than the Coram's Fields, and further south.' Kay looked again, and pointed. 'There's Portland Place, I think. It's nearer to there.'

'Yes,' said Helen, vaguely.

'Can you see? You're not looking in the right direction.'

'Yes.'

Kay put her hand on Helen's wrist. 'Darling, you're not-'

'God!' said Helen, sharply moving her arm away. 'Must you call me that?'

She spoke almost in a hiss, glancing about as she had before. Her face was white, with cold and with annoyance. The lipstick was standing out on her lips.

Kay turned her head. She felt, suddenly, a rush not so much of anger as of disappointment: a disappointment in the weather, in Helen, in the day-in the whole damn thing. 'For Christ's sake,' she said. She lit up yet another cigarette, without offering the case. The smoke was bitter in her mouth, like her own soured mood.

Helen said quietly, after a time, 'I'm sorry, Kay.' She'd clasped her hands together in her lap and was gazing down at them.

'What on earth's the matter with you?'

'I feel a bit blue, that's all.'

'Well, don't for God's sake start looking like that, or-' Kay threw away the cigarette, and lowered her voice-'I shall have to put my arm around you; and think how much you'll hate it…'

Her mood had changed again. The bitterness had gone, had sunk as quickly as it had risen; the disappointment, after all, had been too huge a thing to bear. She felt filled, instead, with tenderness. She felt actually sore, about her heart. 'I'm sorry, too,' she said gently. 'I suppose that birthdays are never as much fun for the people having them, as they are for the people putting them together.'

Helen looked up and smiled, rather sadly. 'I must not like being twenty-nine. It's a funny age, isn't it? Much better to have got it over with and gone straight to thirty.'

'It's a perfect age,' said Kay, with some of her former gallantry, 'on you. Any age would be that-'

But Helen had flinched. 'Don't, Kay,' she said. 'Don't- Don't be so nice to me.'

'Don't be nice to you!'

'Don't-' Helen shook her head. 'I don't deserve it.'

'You said that this morning.'

'It's true, that's why. I-'

She looked out across London again, in the same direction she'd gazed in before; and wouldn't go on. Kay watched her, perplexed; then rubbed her arm, gently, with her knuckles.

'Hey,' she said quietly. 'It doesn't matter. I wanted to make the day a special one, that's all. But maybe you can't expect to have a special day in wartime. Next year- Who knows? The war might have ended. We'll do it properly. I'll take you away! I'll take you to France! Would you like that?'

Helen didn't answer. She had turned to Kay and was holding her gaze, and her look had grown earnest. After a moment she said, in a murmur, 'You won't get tired of me, Kay, now that I'm a beastly bad-tempered old spinster?'

For a second, Kay couldn't reply. Then she said, in the same low tone, 'You're my girl, aren't you? I'll never grow tired of you, you know that.'

'You might.'

'I shan't ever. You're mine, for ever.'

'I wish I was,' said Helen. 'I wish- I wish the world was different. Why can't it be different? I hate having to sneak and-' She waited, while a woman and a man went silently by, arm in arm. She lowered her voice still further. 'I hate having to sneak and slink so grubbily about. If we could only be married, something like that.'

Kay blinked and looked away. It was one of the tragedies of her life, that she couldn't be like a man to Helen-make her a wife, give her children… They sat in silence for a moment, gazing out again at the view but not seeing any of it now. Kay said quietly, 'Let me take you home.'

Helen was pulling at a button on her coat. 'We'll only have an hour or two before you'll have to go out.'

Kay made herself smile. 'Well, I know a way to fill an hour or two.'

'You know what I mean,' said Helen. She looked up again, and Kay saw then that she was almost crying. 'Can't you stay home with me tonight, Kay?'