Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

'A bull?' he said.

'A German bull. It was sticking its horn in me. When all the time I suppose it was Mr Imrie-'

Reggie laughed. 'I knew he was a dirty old man the moment we went in. What a sod though, to hurt my girl!'

'It's not his fault.' She got out her handkerchief and blew her nose. 'It's yours.'

'Mine! I like that!' He kissed her again. 'If it wasn't for you, driving a fellow crazy…' He rubbed his cheek against her head. The weight of his hand on her lower belly began to feel different. He had moved his fingers. 'Oh, Viv,' he said.

Now she pushed him away. 'Get off!' She laughed, despite herself. 'It's all right for you-'

'It's hell for me.'

'The thought of- Oh!' She shuddered.

He laughed, too. 'You say that now. We'll see what you think in a week or two.'

'A week or two! You're loopy. A year or two, more like.'

'Two years? I will be loopy. Let a man hope, at least. That's more than they give you for desertion.'

She laughed again; then caught her breath and shook her head, suddenly quite unable to speak. They sat for a minute or two in silence. He moved her hair with his chin and his cheek, and now and then put his mouth to her brow. The room began gradually to warm up. The pain in her stomach and back subsided, until it felt like the deep but ordinary ache one got, every month, with the curse. But she felt utterly without strength.

In time, Reggie stood and stretched. He looked at the bar and said he fancied a drink. He went and picked out a bottle; when he opened it up and smelt it, however, he made a face: 'Coloured water!' He tried another. 'They're all the same. And, look!' There were cigarettes in a box; but they were made of pasteboard. 'What a dirty trick. We shall have to make do with this, I suppose.'

He'd brought a little bottle of brandy with him. He pulled the stopper from it, and offered it to her.

She shook her head. 'Mr Imrie said I ought to have stout.'

'I'll get you some stout later on, if you like. Have a nip of this for now, though.'

She hadn't eaten all day, because of the anaesthetic: she took a sip, and felt the liquid as she swallowed it, travelling down her throat to her empty stomach, warm as a tongue of fire. Reggie drank some too, then lit up a cigarette. She couldn't quite manage that; but the smell, at least, didn't make her sick… I must be better , she thought-realising it then, in that moment, for the first time. I must be OK . The thought spread through her like the brandy. She closed her eyes. There was only the pain, now; and that, compared to everything else, would be easy.

Reggie finished his cigarette and got up; she heard him go to the lavatory, and then he was moving about in the bedroom, drawing back the curtain, looking out into the street. The street was quiet. The whole house was quiet. There must have been empty flats, like this, on every side.

When he came back she was almost sleeping. He crouched beside her and touched her face.

'Are you warm enough, Viv? You feel cold as anything.'

'Do I? I feel all right.'

'Wouldn't you like to lie on the bed? Do you want me to take you?'

She shook her head, unable to speak. She opened her eyes, but almost at once they closed again, as if the lids were weighted down. Reggie put his hand on her forehead and drew the collar of her coat more closely around her neck. He kicked off his shoes and sat on the floor, resting his head against her knees. 'You tell me if you want anything,' he said.

They stayed like that for more than an hour. They might have been an old married couple. They had never been so much alone together before, without making love.

And then, at half-past ten or so, Viv gave a start. She made Reggie jump.

'What is it?' he said, looking up at her.

'What?' she said, confused.

'Is it hurting?'

'What?'

He got to his feet. 'You're white as a sheet. You're not going to be sick?'

She felt really odd. 'I don't know. I need the toilet again, I think.' She tried to rise.

'Let me help you.'

He walked her to the bathroom. She went more slowly even than before. Her head seemed separated off from her body-as if her body were squat, dense, ungainly, her head attached to it by the merest thread. But the further she walked, the sharper the ache grew in her stomach; and that brought her back to herself. By the time she sat on the lavatory she was bent almost double with griping pains. The pains were strange: part like the pains of the curse, still; but part like a bowel pain. She thought she might have diarrohea. She pressed with her muscles, as if to pee; there was a slithering sensation between her legs, and the splash of something striking the water. She looked in the bowl. The plug of gauze was there, quite sodden and misshapen with blood; and blood was falling from her still, thick and dark and knotted as a length of tarry rope.

She cried out for Reggie. He came at once, frightened by the sound of her voice.

'Jesus!' he said, when he saw the mess in the bowl. He stepped back, as pale as her. 'Was it like this before?'

'No.' She tried to stop it with sheets of lavatory paper. The blood slid about, got all over her hands. She'd begun to shake. Her heart was beating wildly. 'It won't stop,' she said.

'Put the thing against it.' He meant the sanitary towel.

'It just keeps coming out, I can't stop it. Oh, Reggie, I can't stop it at all!'

The more afraid she grew, the faster the blood seemed to tumble. At first it was viscous with specks and clots; soon it was ordinary blood, astonishingly red. It struck the lavatory paper in the bowl with a sound like water in a sink. It got on the seat, her legs, her fingers, everywhere.

'It shouldn't be like this, should it?' said Reggie breathlessly.

'I don't know.'

'What did Mr Imrie say? Did he say it would be like this?'

'He said I might get a bit of bleeding.'

'A bit? What's a bit? Is this a bit? This can't be a bit, this is tons.'

'Is it?'

'Isn't it?'

'I don't know.'

'Why don't you know? What's it like when it comes out normally?'

'Not like this. It's getting everywhere!'

He put his hand across his mouth. 'There must be something you can do to make it stop. You could take more aspirins.'

'Aspirins won't help, will they?'

'It's better than nothing.'

It was all they had. He fumbled about in her coat pocket, getting the tub. She couldn't touch anything with the blood on her hands. She took three more tablets, chewing them up as she had before; he gave her another sip of brandy, then drank the rest of the bottle himself. They pulled the plug of the lavatory and watched water gush into the bowl. It settled clear and pinkish at the top, dark red and syrupy at the bottom-like a clever sort of cocktail. More blood immediately began to flow from her, and to swirl and spread about.

'And you don't think,' Reggie said, nodding again to the sanitary towel, 'if you were to just put the thing against it-'

She shook her head, too panicked to speak. She pulled off sheets and sheets of paper and tried to stop herself up with them. They held for a minute or two, and she grew a little calmer; but then they fell from her, just like the gauze. Reggie tried again, with more sheets. He put his hand over hers, to hold the paper in place. But those sheets fell out too, and the blood came faster than ever.

At last, almost beside themselves, they decided that Reggie should call up Mr Imrie and get his advice. He ran into the sitting-room; she heard the little ting of the bell in the pearly white phone; but then Reggie gave a cry, a sort of yelp of frustration and despair. When he came back he was lurching about, pulling on his shoes. The telephone didn't work. Its wire ran for two or three feet and then stopped. It was like the bottles of coloured water, the pasteboard cigarettes, and just for show.