John Lanchester - The Wall

That first afternoon went by slowly. Planes passed overhead a few times; once, about two o’clock, I saw a boat on the horizon, got excited and called it in, but I was shouted down by my fellow Defenders, who said it was a Guard ship. They said they could tell by the shape. After Yos finished calling me an idiot over the communicator, Sarge came on and told me I would soon be able to recognise Guard ships on sight and that it was better to call in something I didn’t know about than keep quiet and risk something worse. I felt better after that. At three, I had another power bar, this time made of savoury ingredients, chickpeas I think and maybe sesame and carrot. It wasn’t especially nice but I was glad of it, and more glad of Mary’s second visit on her bike with her flask of hot liquid, coffee this time.

‘Nearly there,’ she said, as she pedalled off. But that wasn’t true, and the last few hours went by just as heavily as the rest of the day. It began to get dark at around five. The day had clouded over. It was one of those evenings which seem not so much a transition from day to night as from light grey to thicker grey to darker grey to darker still, the light fading by increments, until dark wins. Lights came on automatically, a hundred metres apart on the Wall. The lamps threw a narrow patch of blazing illumination which only made the dark around more intense. Some sections of the Wall were said to disable their lights and use night-vision instead; I could see why. There was no moon. I suddenly realised just how hard it would be to see Others coming at night, if the weather and light conditions were at all difficult. I also realised why they always start you on the Wall on a day shift: so you’ve had a chance to get used to a twelve-hour stint of duty before you have to do one when it really matters, at night, when the Others come.

For the first time that day, I grew anxious, not about fatigue or cold or whether I would get through it, but about the Others. It was not difficult to imagine a black-clad figure hopping silently over the Wall, knife in its hand, murder in its eyes, nothing to lose. No warning; no mercy. I tried to look straight ahead and then move my head from side to side, using my peripheral vision, the way we had been trained to do. All I could think of was how easy it would be for the Others if they attacked now.

‘Different at night, isn’t it?’ said a voice into my ear. I looked across and could see Hifa looking towards me. I raised an arm in acknowledgement.

‘You get used to it,’ Hifa added. ‘Sort of.’

The wind dropped at dusk, and the swell settled down. I could hear a motorboat in the distance. One of ours, I assumed – no Others would mount an assault in something so noisy. It would be a Guard patrol going home after dark. I could hear a plane far overhead too; that would be the Flight, also on their way home. The wind and the waves were quieter now, but I was more aware of them, because they were less constant. I started to think I could hear patterns in the sound, whispering or singing or voices muttering not-quite-words. An image began to run through my mind, not quite a hallucination or a waking dream, but like a guided fantasy, like the kind of story you tell yourself in the liminal in-between consciousness just as you’re falling asleep or just after you’ve woken up. The noises, the near-voices, were being made by a choir, hooded and robed in black, chanting in a ritual, appeasing spirits or gods or demons or the ancestors. There were two rows of them and their faces were in shadow, and maybe they themselves didn’t know the meaning of what they were chanting. Maybe it was a dirge, a funeral dirge. They were monks or nuns or a mixture of the two. They were chanting because they wanted something to happen, or not to. The chanting was a lament or a prayer.

‘Here they come,’ said the Sergeant over the communicator. I was so woozy, so out of it, that my first thought was that the black-robed figures were coming, had leapt out of my imagination and were here on the Wall with us. The adrenaline helped me snap out of it: he meant, the night shift was coming. The next shift of our company had come out of the watchtower and were clumping down the ramparts towards us. I don’t think I’ve ever felt my mood flip so abruptly and completely. Relief broke over me like a great wave. Relief is maybe the purest form of happiness there is; in that moment, anyway, I’d have said so. I’d never been happier; I’d never been more purely and ecstatically in the present. Cold? What cold? Here comes the next shift! Slowly, admittedly, very slowly, heads down, trudging and grumbling, the same way we had twelve hours ago. Take your time, guys, I thought, take it as slow as you like, as long as you keep coming.

There was no ceremony and not much small talk at the moment of handover. The Defender I’d seen twelve hours before arrived at my post. He was chewing gum. He did not speak but instead flicked his head up at me in a combination of greeting and dismissal. I already had my pack on and my rifle slung over my shoulder. I flicked my head back at him and started the walk back to the watchtower and the barracks. I realised that I had stiffened up with the cold and immobility. My legs hurt from standing. The wind, which had got up again, was directly in my face. It felt like it didn’t matter. The shift was over. That was the only thing that counted.

When you’re on the Wall, the division of time is very simple. Twelve hours on duty, twelve hours off. In practice that means four hours for you, eight hours for sleep. I don’t really remember what I did that first evening, but I do still remember the physical sensation of coming in out of the cold, aching with fatigue, and taking my pack off and dropping my rifle at the armoury and then just sitting, sitting in the dry and the warmth, and thinking that I had never really appreciated sitting before, had never fully got the point of it, but that now I did, and I would never again underestimate how good it is to have nothing to do, no demands on you, except to sit. Most of the patrol sat around too. We were in the mess hall. There was tea and biscuits – the best tea, the best biscuits. Nobody spoke much, or made a great deal of sense when they did. Then there was hot food – I don’t remember what, but I do remember going back for thirds. Some of the shift went to clean up, others to call home and check in with whoever it was they’d left behind. A few of us were gaming on our communicators, a few went through to watch television. I did all of those things in sequence and then woke with Yos shaking my shoulder.

‘You fell asleep,’ he said. ‘Daft bugger, you might have been here all night,’ his tone kinder than his words. The TV was on but the room was empty; it was a chat show with the sound turned right down. He laughed. ‘The first one is a long one. Bedtime.’

I followed him through to the barracks bedroom. There were different generations of design at different points along the Wall; some watchtowers had individual bedrooms. This design, with everyone in one big room, was from a period when the theory was that Defenders should share things, so that they understand they’re all in it together. My shift was in bed or getting ready for it, the other shift’s beds were empty. It was the same as when I’d arrived only the day before, though that fact – that it was only twenty-four hours since I had walked into this room – made no sense. It felt more like twenty-four years. I washed, stripped off my day clothes, then put on my night clothes, starting with a thermal inner layer. The lights went out.

I took off my glasses and got into bed. But then I realised there was one last thing I wanted to do before going to sleep. I put my glasses back on and got back out of bed. I walked down to the far end of the barracks. Most of the squad was already asleep, one or two of them snoring. Someone, I couldn’t tell who, was reading under the blankets with the help of a penlight. The moon had risen by now and some sharp light was coming in the narrow high windows. I stopped at the last cubicle beside the washroom. I looked down and saw what I was looking for: caramel-coloured skin and short waved hair and a button nose peering over the thickly stacked blankets. I thought I had got away with it, but just as I turned, I saw that Hifa’s eyes were open, looking narrowly at me, glinting and amused. But I had got what I wanted.