Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

So it was she who pressed the bell. The man-Mr Imrie-came to answer it almost at once.

'Ah yes,' he said, quite loudly, looking past them into the street. 'Come in, come in.' They stood close together in the darkness, unsure of the size of the hall, while he closed the door and rearranged the black-out across its panels of frosted glass; then he led them into his waiting-room, where the light was bright and made them blink. The room smelt sweet: of polish, of rubber, of gas. There were pictures on the walls, showing teeth, pink gums; a case had a plaster model inside it of a single great molar, a slice removed to expose the enamel, the pulp and red nerve. The colours were livid, because of the light. Viv looked from one thing to another and felt her teeth begin to ache.

Mr Imrie was a dentist; and did this other thing on the side.

'Do sit down,' he said.

He took up a sheet of paper and clipped it to a board. He wore spectacles with heavy frames and, in order to see the page before him, he pushed them up, so that they gripped his brow like a pair of goggles on a band. He asked for Viv's name. She'd taken off her gloves to expose the ring, and now, with a little flush of self-consciousness, gave the name that she and Reggie had agreed on: Mrs Margaret Harrison . He said it aloud, as he wrote it down; and then he kept saying it at the start of every question: 'And now, Mrs Harrison', 'Well, Mrs Harrison'-until the name, Viv thought, sounded so false and made-up, it might have been an actress's name, or the name of a character in a film.

The questions were simple enough at first. When they grew more personal, Mr Imrie suggested that Reggie might like to wait in the hall. Viv thought he went out pretty quickly, as if in relief. She heard the slither of his shoes on the lino as he paced up and down.

Perhaps Mr Imrie heard it too. He lowered his voice. 'The date of your last period?'

Viv gave it. He made a note of it, and seemed to frown.

'Any children?' he asked her then. 'Miscarriages? You know what a miscarriage is? Of course… And have you ever before been obliged to receive the, er, treatment that you've come to receive from me?'

She said 'No' to it all; but told him, after a little hesitation, about the pills, in case they made some sort of difference.

He shook his head, dismissively, as she described them. 'It's never worth bothering, if you'll take my advice,' he said, 'with that sort of thing. Probably gave you a tummy upset, did they? Yes, I thought they would have.' He drew down his spectacles; and was left with a phantom pair, marked out in lines of red, on the flesh of his brow.

He produced a case of instruments, and Viv flinched, growing frightened. He wanted only, however, to test her blood-pressure and listen to her chest; and he made her stand and loosen her skirt, and felt her stomach-felt all about it, pressing hard with his fingers and palms.

Then he straightened, and wiped his hands. 'Well,' he said gravely, 'you're a little further along than I should have liked.' He was dating it, of course, from her last period. 'I usually recommend this treatment for pregnancies of up to ten weeks, and yours is rather past that.'

The extra weeks made a difference, apparently. He went to the door and called for Reggie and explained to them both that, because of the added element of risk, he would have to charge them more than the standard fee. 'A further ten pounds, I'm afraid.'

'Ten pounds?' said Reggie, appalled.

Mr Imrie spread his hands. 'You'll understand, with the law as it is… The risk I'm running is very grave.'

'My friend said seventy-five. Seventy-five's all I've brought.'

'Seventy-five would have seen to it, a month ago. I dare say seventy-five would see to it even now, were you to go to another sort of man. I'm not that sort of man, however… I'm thinking of your wife's health. I'm thinking of my own wife… I am sorry.'

Reggie shook his head. 'This is a rum kind of way to do business,' he said bitterly, 'if you don't mind my saying so. One price one month, and another the next. What difference does it make to you, it being in there'-he nodded in the general direction of Viv's stomach-'two or three weeks longer?'

Mr Imrie smiled, as if with tremendous patience. 'It makes a great deal of difference, I'm afraid.'

'Well, that's what you say. You'd say the same thing, I suppose, to a chap who'd come to you with a case of-of an ingrowing tooth?'

'I very well might.'

'You would, would you-?'

The argument ran on. Viv stood and said nothing, hating it all, hating Reggie, gazing at the floor. At last Mr Imrie agreed to take the extra ten pounds in the form of clothing coupons: Reggie turned his back and brought out a little stash of them, pressed them into the envelope in which he'd already put the money, and handed them over. He made a snorting noise as he did it.

'Thank you,' said Mr Imrie, with exaggerated politeness. He stowed the envelope away in a pocket of his own. 'Now, if you wouldn't mind making yourself comfortable here, just for twenty minutes or so, I'll take your wife next door.'

'Keep my coat and hat, will you?' said Viv to Reggie, coldly. He took them, and reached after her fingers.

'It'll be all right,' he said, trying to catch her eye. 'It'll be OK.'

She pulled her fingers away. A clock on the wall showed five past eight. Mr Imrie led her back across the hall and into his surgery.

She thought at first he meant to take her through this room into another. She thought he would have some quite different place set up. But he closed the door behind her and went to a counter, looking busy; and for an awful moment, then, she imagined he meant to do the operation with her sitting in his dentist's chair… Then she saw, beyond the chair, a couch, on trestle legs, covered over with a wax-paper sheet, and with a little zinc pail beside it. It looked horrible with the great steel light shining on it, and the trays of instruments all around, the queer machines, the drills, the bottles of gas. She felt the suffocated rising of tears in her chest and throat, and thought, for the first time, I can't!

'Now then, Mrs Harrison,' said Mr Imrie, perhaps seeing her hesitate. 'Just slip off your skirt, your shoes and underthings, and hop up onto the couch, and we'll make a start. All right? There's nothing to worry about. A very straightforward procedure indeed.'

He turned away, took off his jacket and washed his hands; began to fold back his sleeves. There was an electric fire burning, and she stood in front of it to undress; she put her clothes on a chair, and got quickly onto the crackling wax-paper before he should turn-for she felt more exposed and embarassed, somehow, with only her bottom half bare, than she would have felt if she had stripped completely. It was like something a tart would do… But when she lay on the hard flat couch, she felt foolish in another way-like a fish, with gaping gills and mouth, on a fishmonger's slab.

'Let me give you a pillow,' said Mr Imrie, coming over and carefully not looking at her naked hips. 'And now, if you'd care to raise yourself?' He slid a folded towel under her bottom-moving her blouse, as he did it, a little higher up her back, and saying, 'We don't want this to spoil, do we?'

She realised he was tucking it out of the way of any blood that might come; and grew frightened again. She had no idea how much blood would come-had only, in fact, the haziest notion of what he was about to do to her. He had not explained it; and it seemed too late, now, to ask. She didn't want to speak at all, with her lower half all exposed to his gaze like this; she was too embarassed. She closed her eyes.

When she felt him lift and try to part her knees, she grew more self-conscious than ever. 'Lie a little less rigidly, if you can, Mrs Harrison,' he said. And then: 'Mrs Harrison? A little less rigid?' She opened her legs, and after a second felt something warm and dry come between them and begin to probe. It was his finger. He pushed firmly into her, and with his other hand pressed again at her stomach, harder than before. She gave a little gasp. He pushed and pressed on, until she couldn't help but draw her hips away. He moved back, and wiped his hands on a towel.