Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

' Giggs, you cunt! ' somebody shouted. ' This is your fucking fault! I'm going to get you, Giggs! I'm going to frigging well slaughter you! '

But Giggs had shut up; and after a moment the shouting man shut up, too. Calling into the sound of the explosions was somehow horrible: Duncan had the sense that most of the men were in their bunks, lying tensely, silently, counting the seconds, waiting for the blasts.

Fraser was still standing, flinching, at the door. Duncan said to him, 'Get back into bed until it stops.'

'Suppose it doesn't stop? Or suppose it stops, and we stop with it?'

'It's still miles away,' said Duncan. 'The yards-' he was making it up-'the yards make it sound worse than it is. They make the bangs bigger than they really are.'

'Do you think so?'

'Yes. Haven't you ever noticed, when a man calls out of his window-how queer and echoey it sounds?'

Fraser nodded, fastening on to the idea. 'That's true,' he said. 'I've noticed that. That's true, you're right.' But he was still shaking; and after a minute, he rubbed his arms. He was dressed only in his pyjamas, and the cell was freezing.

'Go back to bed,' Duncan said again. And then, when Fraser didn't move, he got to his feet and climbed on to the chair, to close the curtain. He looked out of the window as he did it, and saw the yard, and the prison building opposite, lit up by the moon. A searchlight moved, as if restless or mad, about the sky, and somewhere to the east-it might have been Maida Vale, it might have been as far away as Euston-there was the faint, irregular glow of a rising fire… He brought in his gaze, to the crack in the window-pane. It was neatly done, a perfect arc; it didn't look like something made by force or violence, at all. But when he put his fingers to it he felt it give, and he knew that if he pressed at it harder, it would shatter.

He seized the black-out curtain and pulled it across, and secured it to the sill; after that the view could have been of anything, and the cell-which was plunged into an almost perfect darkness-could have been quite a different sort of room-could have been anywhere, or nowhere. Where the moonlight struck the curtain from behind, it was baffled; but here and there it leaked through weaknesses in the weave of the fabric and made brilliant little stars and spots and crescents-like spangles on the cloak of a stage magician.

He got back into bed. He heard Fraser take a couple of steps and bend to pick up his blanket. But then he stood still-as if hesitating, still afraid… At last, very quietly, he spoke.

'Let me come in with you, Pearce, will you?' he said. 'Let me share your bunk, I mean.' And, when Duncan didn't answer, he added simply, 'It's this bloody war. I can't bear to lie alone.'

So Duncan put back the covers and moved in closer to the wall, and Fraser got in beside him and lay still. They didn't speak. But every time another bomb fell, or a burst of anti-aircraft fire went up, Fraser would flinch and tense-like a man in pain, being knocked and jolted about. Soon Duncan found himself tensing with him-not in fear, but in sympathy.

That made Fraser laugh. 'God!' he said. His teeth were chattering. 'I'm sorry, Pearce.'

'There's nothing to be sorry for,' said Duncan.

'Now that I've started shaking, I can't seem to stop.'

'That's how it works.'

'I'm making you shake.'

'It doesn't matter. You'll warm up soon, and then you'll be all right.'

Fraser shook his head. 'It isn't just through being cold, Pearce.'

'It doesn't matter.'

'You keep saying that. It matters terribly. Don't you see?'

'See what?' asked Duncan.

'Don't you think I never wonder, about-about fear? It's the very worst thing, the very worst thing of all. I could take any amount of tribunals. I could take women calling me gutless in the streets! But to think to oneself, quietly, that the tribunals and the women might be right; to have the suspicion gnawing and gnawing at one: do I truly believe this, or am I simply a-a bloody coward?' He wiped his face again, and Duncan realised that the sweat upon his cheeks was mixed with tears. 'You won't catch men like me admitting it,' he went on, less steadily. 'But we feel it, Pearce, I know we feel it… And meanwhile, one sees the most ordinary types of men-men like Grayson, like Wright-going cheerfully off to fight. Are they the less brave, because they're stupid? Do you think I don't wonder how I'll feel, when the war's over-knowing that I'm probably only still alive because of fellows like them? Meanwhile, here I am, and here's Watling, and Willis, and Spinks, and all the other COs in every other gaol in England. And if-' A plane buzzed loudly overhead. He grew tense again, until it passed-'And if we're all burnt to death by an oil-bomb, will that make us brave men?'

'I think it's brave,' said Duncan, 'to do what you've done. Anyone would think it.'

Fraser wiped his nose. 'An easy kind of bravery, doing nothing at all! You're a braver man than I am, Pearce.'

'Me!'

'You did something, didn't you?'

'What do you mean?'

'You did the thing-the thing you were talking about, that brought you here.'

Duncan shuddered, turning away.

'It took a kind of courage, didn't it?' insisted Fraser. 'Christ knows, it took more courage than I've got.'

Duncan moved again. He raised his hand-as if, even in the darkness, to push away Fraser's gaze. 'You don't know anything about it,' he said roughly. 'You think- Oh!' He felt disgusted. For even now, with Fraser trembling at his side, he couldn't bring himself to tell him the simple truth. 'Don't talk about it,' he said instead. 'Shut up.'

'All right. I'm sorry.'

They were silent after that. The buzz of aeroplanes was still heavy overhead, the pounding of ack-ack fire still dreadful. But when the next explosion came it was further off, and the next was further off again, as the raiders moved on…

Fraser grew calmer. In another minute the All Clear went, and he gave a final quiver, passed his sleeve across his face, and then lay still. The hall was quiet. No-one stood at their window to whistle or to cheer. Men who must have been lying, rigid like him, or curled into balls, now lifted their heads, put out their limbs, to test the stillness of the night; and fell back exhausted.

Only the officers stirred: out they came, like beetles from underneath a stone. Duncan heard their footsteps on the cinder surface of the yard-slow, and halting, as if they were amazed to have emerged and found the prison still intact.

He knew, then, what sound would come next: the shivering sound of the metal landings, as Mr Mundy made his round… After a moment it started up, and he lifted his head, the better to hear it. The bar of light beneath the door showed extra palely now, because the cell was so dark. He saw Mr Mundy come and slide back the guard from over the spy-hole. He knew that Fraser saw it, too. But when Fraser opened his mouth, Duncan lifted his hand and put his fingers across his lips, to keep him from speaking; and when Mr Mundy called, in his night-whisper, 'All right?', Duncan didn't answer. The call came a second time, and a third, before Mr Mundy gave up and moved reluctantly away.

Duncan still had his hand across Fraser's lips. He felt Fraser's breath against his fingers, and slowly drew the hand off. They didn't speak. But Duncan was aware now, as he had not been aware before, of Fraser's body: of the heat of it, and the places-the feet, the thighs, the arms and shoulders-at which it touched Duncan 's own. The bunk was narrow. Duncan had lain alone in it every night, for almost three years. He had gone about the prison, as all the men did, being occasionally jostled, occasionally struck; he had touched his fingers to Viv's across the table in the visiting-room; he had once shaken hands with the Chaplain… It ought to have been strange, to be pressed so close to another person now; but it wasn't strange. He turned his head. He said, in a whisper, 'Are you all right?' and Fraser answered, 'Yes.' 'Don't you want to go back up?'-Fraser shook his head: 'Not yet…' It wasn't strange, at all. They moved closer together, not further apart. Duncan put up his arm and Fraser raised himself so that the arm could go beneath his head. They settled back into an embrace-as if it was nothing, as if it was easy; as if they weren't two boys, in a prison, in a city being blown and shot to bits; as if it was the most natural thing in the world.