Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

But the boy was laughing. The laugh was throaty, but light, like a girl's. He said, 'I like your tiger-skin rug. Doesn't it ever give you a scare, though, in the middle of the night? I should be afraid of it having a go at my ankles as I went by…' He examined the towel that Viv was sitting on, and his laugh faded, but his face stayed kind. The towel was utterly scarlet and sodden. He put his hand across her brow. He said to the man, quietly, 'Skin's pretty clammy.'

'I couldn't make it stop,' mumbled Viv.

The man had squatted before her. He had bared her arm and was strapping a band around it; now he quickly pumped at a rubber bladder and frowned at a dial. He touched her thigh and looked, as the boy had, at the towel beneath her bottom. She was past embarassment. 'How long,' he asked, 'has it been coming from you like this?'

'I don't know,' she answered weakly. She thought, Where's Reggie? Reggie would know. 'About an hour, I think.'

The man nodded. 'You've lost an awful lot of blood by the looks of it. We'll have to take you to a hospital, as quickly as we can. All right?' He spoke calmly, comfortingly. She wanted to give herself up to his arms. He still squatted before her,

putting the strap and the bladder away in his bag. He worked very swiftly. But he looked into her face again before he rose, and, 'What's your name?' he asked her gently.

'Pearce,' she answered, without thinking. 'Vivien Pearce.'

'And how far on was your baby, Mrs Pearce?'

But now she realised what she had done. She had said Vivien Pearce, when she should have said Margaret Harrison… She started looking about for Reggie again. The man touched her knee.

'I'm sorry,' he was saying. 'It's rotten luck. But for now, we must make you better. My friend Miss Carmichael and I are going to carry you downstairs.'

She was still looking for Reggie, and couldn't concentrate on his words. She thought that when he said 'Miss Carmichael' he must mean the old lady. Then he and the boy said other things-spoke to each other, calling each other 'Kay' and 'Mickey'-and she understood, with a rush of dismay, that they were not men at all, but simply short-haired women… All the confidence she'd had in them, the sense of care and safety, disappeared. She began to shake. They seemed to think that she was cold, and put a blanket around her. They had brought a folding canvas chair, into which they strapped her; and they began to manoeuvre her out of the bathroom and across the tiger-skin rug, through the sitting-room, past the bar and the pictures of Paris, and down the unlit stairs. She thought she would fall, at every turning. 'I'm sorry,' she kept saying weakly. 'I'm sorry.'

They scolded her, in a playful way, for being worried.

'If you could see some of the heavy great blokes we have to haul about!' said the boyish one-Mickey-laughing. 'We're going into business, after this, as piano movers.'

The old lady went ahead of them, to tell them about awkward steps. She held the front-door open for them, and then trotted down the path to do the same with the garden gate. The ambulance was parked just beyond it, the touches of white on its dull grey paintwork lit up by the moon and making it seem to float above the inky-black surface of the street. Kay and Mickey set Viv down, and opened up the doors.

'We're going to lay you flat,' said Mickey. 'We think that'll help the bleeding. Here we go.'

They lifted her in, got her out of the chair and put her down on the bunk. She still shook as if cold, and the blood still seeped; now, too, she'd begun to labour after air-as if she'd run a race, something like that. She heard Kay speak, telling Mickey that Mickey could drive, while she stayed in the back; then the bunk tilted slightly as Kay climbed in. Viv looked up-looking for Reggie, wanting Kay to let him sit beside her and hold her hand… One of the ambulance doors was closed, and the old lady stood in the frame of the other: she was calling out, in her sloppy voice, that Viv wasn't to be frightened now; that the doctors would have her right in no time… She stepped back. Mickey had hold of the open door and was closing it.

Viv struggled, and sat up. She said, 'Wait. Where's Reggie?'

'Reggie?' said Kay.

'Her husband!' said the old lady. 'Lord, I clean forgot him. I saw him slip away and-'

'Reggie!' called Viv, growing frantic. There was a strap holding down her hips. She began to pluck at it. ' Reggie! '

'Is he there?' asked Kay.

'I don't think so,' answered Mickey. 'Do you want me to go and have a look?'

Viv still struggled with the strap.

'All right,' said Kay. 'But be quick!'

Mickey went off. When she came back, a minute or two later, she was panting. She put up the brim of her tin hat and leaned into the van.

'There's no-one there,' she said. 'I looked all over.'

Kay nodded. 'Right, let's go. He can find her at the hospital.'

'But he was there,' said Viv breathlessly. 'You must have made a mistake- In the darkness-'

'There's no-one,' Mickey said again. 'I'm sorry.'

'Now, ain't that a shame,' said the old lady, with great feeling.

Viv fell back: weaker than ever, unable to protest. She was thinking of Reggie, on the edge of tears, saying, 'A doctor will be able to tell, won't he? A doctor will want our names, he'll want to know everything about us.' She was remembering him standing in the doorway to the bathroom, shaking his head, saying, 'I'm sorry…'

She closed her eyes. The door was slammed and, after a moment, the ambulance started up and moved off. The engine was so loud, it felt as though she had her head against its engine. It was like being trapped in the hold of a ship. Kay's voice came, close above her face. 'All right, Mrs Pearce.' She was doing something-filling in a label, fastening it to Viv's collar. 'Be brave, Mrs Pearce-'

Viv said, wretchedly, 'Don't call me Mrs . He's not my husband, like the lady said. We had to make out, that's all, for Mr Imrie-'

'Never mind,' said Kay.

'We said Harrison, because that was Reggie's mother's name. You must say Harrison at the hospital. Will you? You must say I'm Mrs Harrison. Because even if they look, and can tell-it's not so bad if a married lady does it, is it?'

'Don't worry.' Kay was holding her wrist, feeling her pulse.

'They don't send for the police, do they, when it's married ladies?'

'You're getting muddled. Send for the police? Why would they do that?'

'It's against the law, isn't it?' said Viv.

She saw Kay smile. 'Being ill? Not yet.'

'Getting rid of a baby, I mean.'

The van gave a series of bumps, as it ran over the broken surface of the road. Kay said, 'What?'

Viv wouldn't answer. She could feel a little more blood being shaken out of her with every jolt. She closed her eyes again.

'Vivien,' said Kay. 'What did you do?'

'We went to a man,' said Viv at last. She caught her breath. 'A dentist.'

'What did he do to you?'

'He put me to sleep. It was all right, at first. But he put a dressing inside me, and the dressing came out, and that's when it started bleeding. It was all right till then.'

Kay moved away and thumped on the wall of the cabin. 'Mickey!' The van slowed, then stopped; there was the ratcheting sound of the brake. Mickey's face appeared at the sliding glass panel above Viv's head.

'Is she OK?'

'It's not,' said Kay, 'what we thought. She's been to someone-a bloody dentist-he's mucked about with the pregnancy.'

'Oh, no,' said Mickey.

'She's bleeding, still. He might have-I don't know. He might have punctured the wall of the womb.'

'Right.' Mickey turned. 'I'll go as quick as I can.'

'Wait. Wait!' Mickey turned back. 'She's afraid of the police.'

Viv was watching their faces. She'd raised herself up again. 'There mustn't be police!' she said. 'There mustn't be police, or newspaper men. They can't tell my father!'