Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

'That's right. It's the worst thing a boy in your situation can do, to start thinking like that.'

'Yes, I know,' said Duncan. 'It's just- Well, you look so much at walls, in this place. I try to look into the future but that's like a wall, too, I can't see myself getting over it. I try to think of what I'll do, where I'll live. There's my dad's house,'-he saw again that scarlet kitchen-'but my dad's house is only two streets away from-' he lowered his voice, 'from Alec's. Alec, you know, the boy, my friend-? My father used to go down that street to go to work. Now he goes half a mile around it every time, my sister told me. How will it be, if I go back there? I keep thinking about it, Mr Mundy. I keep thinking, if I was to see someone who knew Alec-'

'That boy Alec,' said Mr Mundy firmly, 'was a troubled boy, from everything you've told me. That boy lived in Error, if anybody ever did. He's free of all that now.'

Duncan moved, uncomfortable. 'You said that before. But it never feels like that. If you'd been there-'

'No-one was there,' said Mr Mundy, 'but you. And that's what you might call, your Burden. But I'd lay a pound against a penny Alec is looking at you right now, longing to pluck that Burden from you-saying, Put it down, chum! and wishing you could hear him. I'd bet you he is laughing, but also crying: laughing, to be where he is, in the sunshine; crying, because you are still in the dark…'

Duncan nodded-liking the comforting sound of Mr Mundy's voice; liking the quaintness of the words- pluck , Burden , Error , chum ; but not, in his heart, believing any of it. He wanted to think that Alec was where Mr Mundy described: he tried to imagine him surrounded by sunlight and flowers, smiling… But Alec had never been like that, he'd said it was common to sit about in parks and gardens or go bathing; and he hardly ever really smiled, because his teeth were bad and he was ashamed of them.

Duncan looked up, into Mr Mundy's face. 'It's hard, Mr Mundy,' he said simply.

Mr Mundy didn't answer for a moment. Instead he got slowly to his feet, then came to Duncan 's bunk and sat beside him; and he put his hand-his left hand, with the cigarette in it-on Duncan 's shoulder. He said, in a quiet, confidential tone, 'You think of me, when you get low; and I'll think of you. How's that? You and me are alike, after all: for I shall be out of here next year, just as you will. My date for retirement's coming up, you see; and the idea's as queer to me as it is to you-queerer, perhaps, for you know what they say, that if a prisoner does two years in gaol, then his guard does one… So you think of me, when you get low. And I'll think of you. I'll think of you-well, I won't say, as a father thinks of his son, for I know you've got your own dad to do that; but let's say, as a man might think of his nephew… How about that?'

He held Duncan 's gaze, and patted his shoulder. When a little ash fell from the tip of his cigarette to Duncan 's knee, he reached with his other hand and carefully brushed it away; then let the hand stay there.

'All right?' he asked.

Duncan lowered his gaze. 'Yes,' he answered quietly.

Mr Mundy patted him again. 'Good boy. For you're a special boy-you know that, don't you? You're a very special boy. And things have a way of turning out all right, for special boys like you. You see if they don't.'

He kept his hand on Duncan 's knee for another moment; then gave the knee a squeeze, and got up. The gates, at the end of the hall, had been thrown open: the men were being brought back from the workshops. There was the sound of many footsteps, the rattling of the stairs and iron landings. Mr Chase could be heard calling out: 'Keep moving. Keep moving! Every man to his own cell. Giggs and Hammond, stop pissing about!'

Mr Mundy pinched out his cigarette and put it back into its packet; then, as Duncan watched, he took out two fresh ones, lifted up the corner of Duncan 's pillow and slipped them underneath. He gave Duncan a wink, and patted the pillow smooth, when he'd done it; he was just straightening up when the first of the men began to troop past Duncan 's door. Crawley, Waterman, Giggs, Quigley… Then Fraser appeared. He had his hands in his pockets and was kicking his boots as he walked. He brightened up, however, when he saw Mr Mundy.

'Hello,' he said. 'This is an honour, sir, and no mistake! And do I smell real tobacco? Hello, Pearce. How was your visit? About as much fun as mine, from the look of it. That was a nice trick of Mr Chase's, too-sending us back to the Basket Shop, while you Mailbags got off early.'

Duncan didn't answer. Fraser wasn't listening, anyway. He was looking at Mr Mundy, who was moving past him to the door. 'You're not leaving us, sir?'

'I've got work to do,' said Mr Mundy stiffly. 'My day's not like you men's, that finishes at five.'

'Oh, but give us proper occupations,' said Fraser in his exaggerated way. 'Teach us trades. Pay us real men's wages, instead of the pittances we get now. I'm sure we'd work like billy-oh then! Heavens, you might even find you'd make decent men of us. Imagine a prison doing that!'

Mr Mundy nodded, rather sourly. 'You're clever, son,' he said, as he went out.

'So my father always tells me, Mr Mundy,' Fraser answered. 'So clever I'll cut myself. Hey?'

He started to laugh; and looked at Duncan, as if expecting Duncan to join in.

But Duncan wouldn't meet his gaze. He lay down on his bed, on his side, with his face turned to the wall. And when Fraser said, 'What's the matter with you? Pearce? What the hell's the matter?', he flung back his arm, as if to push him away.

'Shut up, will you?' he said. 'Just fucking well shut up.'

'I'll read my book,' Helen had said, when Kay was leaving. 'I'll listen to the wireless. I'll change into my lovely new pyjamas and go to bed.' And she had meant it. For almost an hour after Kay had gone, she'd stayed on the sofa reading Frenchman's Creek . At half-past seven she made more toast; she turned on the radio, caught the start of a play… But the play was rather dull. She listened for ten or fifteen minutes, then tried another programme. Finally she switched the radio off. The flat seemed very silent after that: it was always especially silent in the evenings and at weekends, because of Palmer's, the furniture warehouse, being so shut up and dark. The silence and the stillness sometimes got on Helen's nerves.

She sat down again with her book, but found she couldn't settle to it. She tried a magazine; her gaze slid over the words on the page and took nothing in… The idea began to rise in her, that she was wasting time. It was her birthday-her birthday, in wartime. She might never have another! 'You can't expect to have a special day in wartime,' Kay had said that afternoon; but why couldn't you? How long did they have to go on, letting the war spoil everything? They had been patient, all this time. They'd lived in darkness. They'd lived without salt, without scent. They'd fed themselves little scraps of pleasure, like parings of cheese… Now she became aware of the minutes as they passed: she felt them, suddenly, for what they were, as fragments of her life, her youth, that were rushing away like so many drops of water, never to return.

I want to see Julia , she thought. And then it was exactly as if somebody was seizing her by the shoulders and whispering urgently into her face, What are you waiting for? Come on! She threw the magazine down, jumped up, and ran into the bathroom to use the lavatory and comb her hair and redo her make-up; and then she put on her coat and scarf, and the wool tam o'shanter she'd been wearing earlier that day, and went out.

The mews, of course, was perfectly dark, the cobblestones slippery with frost; but she picked her way across it without her torch. From the various pubs on Rathbone Place she could just hear the clink of glass, the buzz of beery voices, the tipsy lilt of a mechanical piano. The sounds made her feel better. It was an ordinary Saturday night. People were out, enjoying themselves. Why shouldn't she be? She wasn't thirty yet… She went along Percy Street, past the blacked-out windows of the cafés and restaurants there. She crossed Tottenham Court Road, and entered the shabby streets of Bloomsbury.