Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

The area was quiet, and she went swiftly; then her foot struck a broken kerb and she almost fell, and after that she forced herself to walk at a sensible pace, and to pick out her way, carefully, with the beam of her torch.

But her heart was racing as though she was running. She kept saying to herself, This is crazy, Helen! What on earth would Julia think? She probably wouldn't even be at home. Why should she be? Or she might be writing. She might have visitors. There might be somebody-a friend-

That made her slow her step again. For it hadn't occurred to her, before, that Julia might have a lover. She'd never mentioned anyone; but it would be like her, Helen thought, to keep that sort of thing a secret. Why should she mention something like that to Helen, anyway? What was there between them? They had had tea together that time, outside Marylebone Station. Then they'd wandered around that house in Bryanston Square, practically in silence. After that, they'd met up again and had drinks in a pub; and one sunny lunch-time, a few days before, they had gone into Regent's Park and sat beside the lake…

That was all they had done; and yet it seemed to Helen that with those slight encounters the world had been subtly transformed. She felt connected to Julia now, as if by a slender, quivering thread. She could have closed her eyes and, with a fingertip, touched the exact small point on her breast at which the thread ran delicately into her heart and tugged at it.

She had reached Russell Square Underground Station, and the streets were busier here. She got caught up, briefly, in a little knot of people who'd just come up from the platforms and were standing around rather helplessly, waiting for their eyes to grow used to the darkness.

The sight of them, like the sounds from the Rathbone Place pubs, gave her more confidence. She went on, past the garden of the Foundling Estate; hesitated only once, at the mouth of Mecklenburgh Place; and then pushed on, into the square.

It looked forbidding in the darkness, the flat Georgian houses seeming smooth as well-bred bored blank faces-until she moved, and saw the sky behind the windows, and realised that many of them had been gutted by blast and by fire. She thought she remembered which house was Julia's, though she'd only been here once before. But she was sure that Julia's house was at the end of one of the terraces. She recalled it as having a broken step, that had rocked about under her feet.

She went up the steps of the house she thought she remembered. The steps were cracked, but stayed steady. They might have been mended, she supposed…

She wasn't sure, suddenly, if this house was right. She looked for the bell to Julia's flat: there were four bells there, unmarked, unnamed. Which was the one? She had no idea, so chose one at random. She heard it ring, somewhere in the depths of the building, as if in an empty room; she knew from the sound that it wasn't the right one and, without waiting, pressed another. The ring of this one was less clear, she couldn't gauge the location of it. She thought she heard a movement on the first or second floor; but even as she heard it she said to herself, It won't be this one, it'll be the next .-For it was never the second thing, in tales, in spells, it was always the third… But the movement came again. She heard slow, soft-soled footsteps on a staircase. Then the door was opened, and Julia was there.

It took her a moment to recognise Helen, in the darkness, with only the single, shaded bulb of a torch to light her. But when she saw who it was she gripped the edge of the door and said, 'What is it? Is it Kay?'

Has Kay found out? is what Helen took her to mean; and her heart contracted. Then she realised, horribly, that Julia thought she must have come with bad news. She said quickly, breathlessly, 'No. It's just- I wanted to see you, Julia. I just wanted to see you, that's all.'

Julia didn't answer. The torch lit her face as it must have lit Helen's, making a queer sort of mask of it. Her expression was impossible to read. But after a moment she opened the door wider, and moved back.

'Come in,' she said.

She led the way up a darkened staircase to the second floor. She showed Helen into a tiny hallway, then took her through a curtained doorway into a sitting-room. The light was dim, but seemed bright after the blacked-out street. Helen felt exposed in it, embarassed.

Julia stooped to pick up a pair of kicked-off shoes, a dropped tea-towel, a fallen jacket. She looked distracted, preoccupied: not at all glad, in the ordinary way of gladness, that Helen had come. Her hair was very dark, and curiously flat against her head: when she moved further into the light Helen saw with dismay that it was damp, that she must recently have washed it. Her face was pale, and quite unmade-up. She was wearing unpressed dark flannel trousers, a wide-collared shirt, and a sleeveless sweater. On her feet she had what looked like fishermen's socks, and a pair of red Moroccan slippers.

'Wait here, while I get rid of this lot,' she said, going back out through the curtain with the jacket and the shoes.

Helen stood, nervously, helplessly, and gazed about.

The room was large, warm, untidy, not at all like Kay's neat bachelor flat; but not quite, either, what Helen had been expecting. The walls were bare, and coloured with a patchy red distemper; the carpets were an assortment of overlapping Turkish khelims and imitation rugs. The furniture was very ordinary. There was one large divan couch, covered with mismatched cushions; and a dirty pink velvet chair, with springs and strips of torn hessian showing beneath. The mantelpiece was painted marble. It had an ashtray on it, overflowing with stubs. One of these still smoked: Julia came back, and picked it up and pinched it out.

Helen said, 'You don't mind, do you, that I've come?'

'Of course not.'

'I started to walk. Then I saw where I was. I remembered your house.'

'Did you?'

'Yes. I came here once, ages ago. With Kay. Do you remember? Kay was dropping something off to you-a ticket, or a book, something like that. We didn't come up, you said the place was too untidy. We stood about in the hall, downstairs… Do you remember?'

Julia frowned. Then, 'Yes,' she said slowly. 'I think I do.'

They looked at one another, and almost at once looked away, as if in embarassment or perplexity-for it was impossible, Helen found, to imagine a time when calling on Julia with Kay would have been an ordinary thing to do; impossible to think of standing at Kay's side on a doorstep, chatting politely, thinking only how mildly awkward things were, between Julia and Kay… And again she thought, what had happened, since then? Nothing had happened, really.

But if nothing has happened , she asked herself, why have I kept that nothing from Kay? Why the hell am I here?

She knew why she was there. She grew afraid.

'Perhaps I should go,' she said, 'after all.'

'You've only just arrived!'

'You've been washing your hair.'

Julia frowned, as if annoyed. 'You've seen wet hair before, haven't you? Don't be idiotic. Sit down, and I'll get you a drink. I have wine! I've had it for weeks, and had no occasion for opening it. It's only Algerian, but still.'

She stooped to open a cupboard and started shifting things about inside it. Helen watched her for a second, then took a step and, nervously, looked around again. She went to a shelf of books and glanced across the titles. They were detective stories, mainly, with gaudy spines. Julia's two published novels sat amongst them: Death By Degrees , and Twenty Mortal Murders .

She looked from the books to the pictures on the walls, the ornaments on the painted mantelpiece. As awkward and as anxious as she was, she wanted to absorb every little detail, for the sake of what that detail might be able to tell her about Julia.