Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

Duncan was still in his bunk. He was lying on his back, more or less comfortably, with his hands behind his head. He said, 'They sound closer than they are.'

'They don't disturb you?' asked Fraser incredulously.

'You get used to it.'

'It doesn't trouble you, that a bloody great bomb might be heading straight for you and you can't so much as duck your head?'

The cell was lit up by the moonlight, weirdly bright. Fraser's face showed clearly, but his boyish blue eyes, the blond of his hair, and the brown of the blanket across his shoulders, had lost their colours; they were all versions of silvery grey, like things in a photograph.

'They say if it's got your name on,' said Duncan, 'it'll get you wherever you are.'

Fraser snorted. 'That's the sort of thing I'd expect to hear from someone like Giggs. Except that when he says it, I really think he might imagine there's a factory somewhere on the outskirts of Berlin, stamping Giggs, R, Wormwood Scrubs, England into the casing.'

'All I mean,' said Duncan, 'is, if it's going to get us at all, it might as well get us here.'

Fraser put his face back to the window. 'I'd like to think I had a shot at improving my chances, that's all.-Oh, bugger!' He jumped, as another explosion sounded, rattling the glass, dislodging stones or mortar in the duct behind the heating grille in the wall. There came cries-whoops and cheers-from other cells; but someone called, too, in a high broken voice, ' Turn it off, you cunts! ' And after that, just for a moment, there was silence.

Then the ack-ack guns started up again, and more bombs fell.

Duncan looked up. 'You'll get your face blown off,' he said. 'Can you even see anything?'

'I can see the searchlights,' said Fraser. 'They're making their usual bloody muck of things… I can see the glow of fires. Christ knows where they are. For all we know, the whole damn city could be burning to the ground.' He started biting at one of his fingernails. 'My eldest brother's a warden,' he said, 'in Islington.'

'Go back to bed,' said Duncan, after another minute. 'There's nothing you can do.'

'That's what makes it so bloody! And to think of those damn twirls, down there in their shelter- What do you think they're doing right now? I bet they're playing cards and drinking whisky; and rubbing their blasted hands together in glee.'

'Mr Mundy won't be doing that,' said Duncan loyally.

Fraser laughed. 'You're right. He'll be sitting in the corner with a Christian Science tract, imagining the bombs away. Maybe I should take a tip from him. What do you say? He's persuaded you with all that nonsense, hasn't he? Is that why you're so untroubled?' He drew in his breath, and closed his eyes. When he spoke again, he spoke in a voice of unnatural calmness. ' There are no bombs . The bombs are not real . There is no war . The bombing of Portsmouth, Pisa, Cologne-that was nothing but a mass hallucination . Those people did not die, they only made a little mistake in thinking they did, it could happen to anyone . There is no war …'

He opened his eyes. The night was suddenly silent again. He whispered, 'Has that done the trick?' Then he jumped about a foot, as another explosion came. 'Fuck! Not quite. Try harder, Fraser. You're not trying hard enough, damn you!' He pressed his hands to his temples and began to recite again, more softly. ' There are no bombs . There are no fires . There are no bombs . There are no fires …'

At last he drew his blanket tighter across his shoulders, got down from the table and, still muttering, began to pace back and forth across the cell. With every fresh explosion, he swore and walked on faster. At last Duncan lifted his head from his pillow to say irritably, 'Stop walking about, can't you?'

'I'm sorry,' said Fraser, exaggeratedly polite, 'am I keeping you awake?' He got back on the table. 'It's this wretched moon brings them,' he said, as if to himself. 'Why can't there be clouds?' He rubbed the glass where his breath had misted it. For a minute he said nothing. Then he started up again: ' There are no bombs . There are no fires . There is no poverty and no injustice . There is no piss-pot in my cell -'

'Shut up,' said Duncan. 'You shouldn't make fun of it. It- Well, it isn't fair on Mr Mundy.'

Fraser laughed outright at that. 'Mr Mundy,' he repeated. 'Not fair on Mr Mundy. What's it to you, if I make fun of old Mr Mundy?' He said this as if still to himself; but then seemed struck by the idea, and turned his head, and asked Duncan properly. 'Just what sort of a racket do you have going on with Mr Mundy, anyway?'

Duncan didn't answer. Fraser waited, then went on, 'You know what I'm talking about. Did you think I hadn't noticed? He gives you cigarettes, doesn't he? He gives you sugar for your cocoa, things like that.'

'Mr Mundy's kind,' said Duncan. 'He's the only kind twirl here, you can ask anyone.'

'But I'm asking you,' persisted Fraser. 'He doesn't give me cigarettes and sugar, after all.'

'He doesn't feel sorry for you, I suppose.'

'Does he feel sorry for you, then? Is that what it is?'

Duncan lifted his head. He'd begun picking at a length of wool that had come loose at the edge of his blanket. 'I expect so,' he said. 'People do, that's all. It's a thing of mine. It's always been like that, even before.-Before all this, I mean.'

'You've just one of those faces,' said Fraser.

'I suppose so.'

'The fascination of your eyelashes, something like that.'

Duncan let the blanket fall. 'I can't help my eyelashes!' he said, stupidly.

Fraser laughed, and his manner changed again. 'Indeed you can't, Pearce.' He got down from the table again and sat on the chair-moving the chair so that it was close to the wall, and spreading his knees, putting back his head. 'I once knew a girl,' he began, 'with eyelashes like yours-'

'Known lots of girls, haven't you?'

'Well, I don't like to boast.'

'Don't, then.'

'I say, look here, it was you who brought the subject up! I was asking about you and Mr Mundy… I was wondering if it really was just for the sake of your beautiful eyelashes that he gives you such a soft time of it.'

Duncan sat up. He'd remembered the feel of Mr Mundy's hand on his knee, and started to blush. He said hotly, 'I don't give him anything back, if that's what you mean!'

'Well, I suppose that is what I meant.'

'Is that how it works, with you and your girls?'

'Ouch. All right. I just-'

'Just what?'

Fraser hesitated again. Then, 'Just nothing,' he said. 'I was curious, that's all, about how these things go.'

'How what things go?'

'For someone like you.'

'Like me?' asked Duncan. 'What do you mean?'

Fraser moved, turned away: impatient, or simply embarassed. 'You know very well what I mean.'

'I don't.'

'You must know, at least, what gets said about you in here.'

Duncan felt himself blush harder. 'That gets said, in here, about anyone. Anyone with any kind of-of culture; who likes books, likes music. Who isn't a brute, in other words. But the fact is, it's the brutes who are worst of all at that sort of thing-'

'I know that,' said Fraser quietly. 'It isn't only that.'

'What is it, then?'

'Nothing. Something I heard, about why you're here.'

'What did you hear?'

'That you're here because- Look, forget it, it's none of my business.'

'No,' said Duncan. 'Tell me what you heard.'

Fraser smoothed back his hair. 'That you're here,' he said bluntly at last, 'because your boyfriend died, and you tried to kill yourself over it.'

Duncan lay very still, unable to answer.

'I'm sorry,' said Fraser. 'As I said, it's none of my damn business. I don't care a fig why you're here, or who you used to go around with. I think the laws about suicide are bloody, if you want to know-'