Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

'Shush!' said Julia, even as she still pushed frantically at her. She was thinking of the people in the neighbouring flats. 'Shush, Helen! Shush!'

'I'm sorry,' said Helen breathlessly; and cried out again.

It wasn't like their leisurely lovemaking from before. Afterwards Helen lay shaken, chastened, as if from an argument. When she stood, she found she was trembling. She went to the mirror: she had Julia's lipstick all around her mouth, and her lips were swollen as though she'd been hit. Then she moved into the firelight and saw that her thighs and breasts were marked, as if with rashes, from the rubbing of Julia's clothes. It was what she'd wanted, while Julia was pushing at her; now the marks upset her, absurdly. She moved blindly about the room, picking things up, putting them down-feeling the gathering inside her of a sort of hysteria.

Julia had gone through to the kitchen to wash her hands and mouth. When she came back, Helen stood before her and said unsteadily, 'Look at the state of me, Julia! How the hell will I hide this from Kay?'

Julia frowned. 'What's the matter with you? Keep your voice down, can't you?'

The words were like a slap. Helen sat, and put her head in her hands.

'What have you done to me, Julia?' she said at last, still shakily. 'What have you done? I don't know myself. I used to loathe the sort of people who did the kind of thing we're doing. I used to think they must be cruel, or careless, or cowardly. But I don't want to be cruel to Kay. It seems to me I'm doing this, because I care too much!-too much, I mean, for her, and for you. Can that be true, Julia?'

Julia didn't answer. Helen looked up once, then lowered her head again. She pressed at her eyes with the heels of her hands-conscious that she mustn't let herself cry, because crying would only make more marks… 'And the worst thing is,' she went on. 'Do you know what the worst thing of all is? It's that when I'm with Kay I'm wretched, because she isn't you; and she's sees that I'm wretched, and doesn't know why; and she comforts me! She comforts me, and I let her! I let her console me, for wanting you!'

She laughed. The laugh sounded horrible. She put down her hands. 'I can't keep doing it,' she said, more steadily. 'I have to tell her, Julia. But I'm afraid of it. I'm afraid of how she'll be. That it should be you, Julia! That it should be you! That she loved you, before, and now-' She shook her head and couldn't finish.

She reached to the pocket of her skirt for a handkerchief, and blew her nose. She felt exhausted-limp, like a doll. Julia had moved across the room to shovel ash on to the coke in the grate; but she had risen, and was standing at the mantelpiece, without having turned around. She didn't come to Helen's side, as she had before. She stood as if gazing down at the fire, brooding over the smothered coals. And when she spoke at last, her voice seemed distant.

She said, 'It wasn't like that, you know.'

Helen was blowing her nose again, and hardly heard. 'Like what?' she asked, not understanding.

'With Kay and me,' said Julia, still without turning her head. 'It wasn't the way you think it was. Kay let you imagine it, I suppose. It's awfully like her.'

'What do you mean?'

Julia hesitated. Then, 'She was never in love with me,' she said. She said it almost casually, putting down her hand to flick a piece of ash from her trouser-leg. 'I was the one. I was in love with Kay for years. She tried to love me back, but-it never took. I'm just not her type, I suppose. We're too similar; that's all it is…' She straightened up, and started picking at the paint on the mantelpiece. 'Kay wants a wife, you see. I said that once before, didn't I? She wants a wife-someone good, I mean; someone kind, untarnished. Someone to keep things in order for her, hold things in place… I could never do that. I used to tell her, she wouldn't be happy until she'd found herself some nice blue-eyed girl-some girl who'd need rescuing, or fussing over, or something like that…' She turned her head, and met Helen's gaze at last. She said, with a sort of infinite sadness, 'That was rather a joke on me, wasn't it?'

Helen stared at her, until she blinked and looked away. She went back to picking at the mantelpiece. 'Does it matter, either way?' she asked, in the same low, casual way as before.

It mattered terribly, Helen knew. At Julia's words, something inside her had dropped, or shrunk. She felt as though she'd been tricked, made a fool of-

That was silly, for Julia hadn't tricked her. Julia hadn't lied, or anything like that. But still, Helen felt betrayed. She became aware, suddenly, of her own nakedness. She didn't want to be naked in front of Julia any more! She quickly pulled on her skirt and her blouse. She said, as she did it, 'Why didn't you tell me?'

'I don't know.'

'You knew what I thought.'

'Yes.'

'You knew it, three weeks ago!'

'It was the surprise of hearing you say it,' said Julia. 'It was thinking of Kay- You know what she's like, she's such a bloody gentleman. She more of a gentleman than any real man I ever knew… I asked her, you see, not to tell. I never imagined-' She lifted a hand, and rubbed her eye. She went on tiredly, 'And then, I was proud. That's all it was. I was proud; and I was lonely. I was fucking lonely, if you want to know the truth.'

She blew out her breath in a rough sort of sigh; and looked back again, over her shoulder. 'Does it make a difference, what I've told you? It doesn't make any difference to me. But if you want, you know, to call the whole show off-'

'No,' said Helen. She didn't want that. And she was frightened by Julia's having raised, so casually, the possibility of their parting. For one terrible moment she saw herself completely alone-abandoned by Julia, as well as by Kay.

She put on the rest of her clothes without speaking. Julia kept her pose at the fireplace. When, at last, Helen went to her and put her arms around her, she moved into Helen's embrace with something like relief. But they held one another awkwardly. Julia said, 'After all, what's changed? Nothing's changed, has it?'-and Helen shook her head and said, No, nothing had changed… 'I love you, Julia,' she said.

But there was that shrinking or dropping inside her, still-as if her heart, that before had seemed to yearn after Julia, to swell and expand, was drawing in its muscles, closing its valves.

She finished dressing. Julia moved around the room, putting things away. Now and then they caught each other's eye, and smiled; if they moved close to one another, they reached out their hands, automatically, and lightly touched, or drily kissed.

Outside, over London, bombs were still falling. Helen had forgotten all about them. But when Julia went back through the curtained doorway and left her alone for a moment, she moved softly to the window and looked out, through one of the cracks in the talc, at the square. She could see houses, still silvered with moonlight; and as she watched, the sky was lit by a series of lurid sparkles and flares. The booms produced by the explosions started a second later: she felt the slight vibration of them in the board against her brow.

At every one of them, she flinched. All her confidence seemed to have left her. She began to shake-as if she'd lost the habit, the trick, of being at war; as if she knew, suddenly, only menace, the certainty of danger, the sureness of harm.

'God!' said Fraser. 'That was close, wasn't it?'

The bombs, and the anti-aircraft fire, had woken them all up. A few men were standing at their windows, calling encouragement to the British pilots and the ack-ack guns; Giggs, as usual, was yelling at the Germans. ' This way, Fritz! ' It was a kind of pandaemonium, really. Fraser had lain very rigidly for fifteen minutes, swearing at the noise; finally, unable to bear it, he'd got out of bed. He'd pulled the table across the cell and was standing on it in his socks, trying to see out of the window. Every time another blast came he flinched away from the panes of glass, sometimes covering his head; but he always moved back to them. It was better, he said, than doing nothing.