The Night Watch

Duncan thought it over. 'To whom it may concern sounds better,' he said. 'And it might be to Hitler and Goering and Mussolini then, too.'

'That's true,' said Alec, liking the idea. He thought for a second, sucking at his lip, tapping with the pen against his mouth; and then wrote more. He wrote swiftly, stylishly-like Keats or like Mozart, Duncan thought-dashing the nib with little flourishes across the paper, pausing to frown over what he had put, then writing stylishly again…

When he'd finished, he passed the letter over to Duncan, and gnawed at his knuckle while Duncan read.

To whom it may concern. If you are reading this, it means that we, Alec J.C. Planer and Duncan W. Pearce, of Streatham, London, England, have succeeded in our intentions and are no more. We do not undertake this deed lightly. We know that the country we are about to enter is that “dark, undiscovered one” from which “no traveller returns”. But we do what we are about to do on behalf of the Youth of England, and in the name of Liberty, Honesty and Truth. We would rather take our own lives freely, than have them stolen from us by the Pedlars of War. We ask for one epitaph only, and it is this: that, like the great T.E. Lawrence, we “drew the tides of men into our hands, and wrote our will across the sky in stars.”

Duncan gazed at Alec in amazement. He said, 'That's bloody wizard!'

Alec flushed. He said, as if shyly, 'D'you really think so? I thought of some of it, you know, on my way here.'

'You're a genius!'

Alec started to laugh. The laugh came out as a sort of giggle, like a girl's. 'It is all right, isn't it? It'll bloody well show them, anyway!' He held out his hand. 'Give it back, though, for me to sign. Then you sign it, too.'

They added their names, and then the date. Alec raised the page up and looked it over, tilting his head. 'This date,' he said, 'will become like the ones we learned in school. Isn't that a funny thought? Isn't it funny to think of kids being made to remember it, in a hundred years' time?'

'Yes,' said Duncan, vaguely… He'd thought of something else, and was only half listening. As Alec smoothed out the paper again he asked diffidently, 'Can't we put something in it for our families, too, Alec?'

Alec curled his lip. 'Our families! Of course we can't, don't be stupid.'

'I'm thinking of Viv. She'll be bloody upset by all this.'

'I told you,' said Alec, 'she'll be proud of you. They all will. Even my father will. He calls me a bloody coward. I'd like to see his face when this gets into the papers! We'll be like-like martyrs!' He grew thoughtful. 'All we need to do now is decide on how we're going to do it… I suppose we could gas ourselves.'

'Gas!' said Duncan in horror. 'That'll take too long, won't it? That'll take ages. And anyway, the gas will get out, we might end up gassing my father. He's an old sod but, you know, that wouldn't be very fair.'

'It wouldn't be sporting,' said Alec.

'It wouldn't be cricket, old chap.'

They began to laugh. They laughed so hard, they had to cover their mouths with their hands. Alec fell back on to the bed and buried his face in Duncan's pillow. He said, still laughing, 'We could poison ourselves. We could eat arsenic. Like that old tart, Madame Bovary.'

'An admirable plan, Mr Holmes,' said Duncan in a silly voice, 'but one with one substantial flaw. My father keeps no arsenic in the house.'

'No arsenic? And you call this a modern, well-appointed establishment? What about rat-poison, pray?'

'No rat-poison, either. Anyway-wouldn't poison hurt like billy-oh?'

'It's going to hurt like billy-oh, you imbecile, whatever we do. It wouldn't be a gesture if it didn't hurt.'

'Even so-'

Alec had stopped laughing. He lay thinking for a second, then sat up. 'How about,' he said seriously, 'if we drown ourselves? We'd see our life flash before our eyes. Not that I want to see mine, my life's been lousy-'

Duncan said, 'I'd see my mother again.'

'There you are. A man should see his mother before he dies. You can ask her why the hell she married your father.'

They laughed again. 'But, how could we do it?' asked Duncan at last. 'We'd have to find a canal or something.'

'No, we wouldn't. You can drown in four inches of water; I thought everybody knew that. It's a scientific fact. Don't you keep your bath filled up in this house, against fire?'

Duncan looked at him. 'Bloody hell, you're right!'

'Let's do it, D.P.!'

They got to their feet. 'Bring the letter,' said Duncan, 'and a drawing-pin.-Wait! Let me comb my hair.'

'The man wants to comb his hair,' said Alec, 'at a time like this!'

'Shut up!'

'Go ahead, Leslie Howard.'

Duncan stood at the dressing-table mirror and quickly tidied himself up. Then, as quietly as they could, he and Alec went out of the bedroom and down the hall, through the parlour and into the kitchen. The doors were open, in case of blast; Duncan closed them, very softly. He could hear his father as he did it, snoring his head off. Alec whispered, 'Your father sounds like a Messerschmit!'-and that set them off laughing, all over again.

They put the kitchen light on. The shadeless bulb was rather weak, and made the room spring into life in flat, drab colours: the stained white of the sink, the grey and yellow of the patched linoleum floor, the brown-as-gravy of the woodwork… The bath was next to the kitchen table, against the wall; Duncan's father had boxed it in with more gravy-coloured wood, years before, and made a cover for it. The cover was used as a draining-board: it had bits of crockery on it, and some of Duncan's and his father's underwear, soaking in soda in a big zinc pail. Duncan blushed when he saw this, and quickly moved the pail aside. Alec moved the crockery, piece by piece, to the kitchen table.

Then they each took an end of the bath cover and lifted it off.

The water beneath was left over from a bath that Duncan's father had taken days before. It was cloudy, and filled with little hairs-coarse, curling hairs, more embarassing even than the underwear, so that Duncan took one look at them and had to turn away. He made fists of his hands. If his father had been before him now, he would have punched him. 'That swine!' he said.

'There's about enough, anyway,' said Alec dubiously. 'How will we do it, though? We can't both lie in it at once… I suppose we could hold each other's heads in?'

The thought of putting his face in that filthy water, that had sloshed round his father's feet, his private parts, his arse, made Duncan want to be sick. 'I don't want to,' he said.

'Well, I don't, much,' Alec answered. 'But look here, we can't afford to be choosy.'

'Let's make it gas, after all, and risk it.'

'Shall we?'

'Yes.'

'All right. Or- Crikey, I've got it!' Alec snapped his fingers. 'Let's hang ourselves!'

The idea was almost a relief. Duncan didn't mind what they did, now, so long as it didn't involve his father's bath-water. They put the draining-board cover back in place, then looked about, at the walls and ceiling, in search of hooks, something to tie ropes to. They decided at last that the pulley of the laundry-rack would take the weight of one of them; the other could hang himself, they thought, from the coat-hook on the back of the kitchen door.

'Have you got any rope?' asked Alec next.

'I've got this,' said Duncan, with a flash of inspiration. He meant the cord of his dressing-gown. He untied it, pulled it out of its loops, and tested the strength of it with his hands. 'I think it'll hold me.'

'That's you taken care of, then. What about me? You haven't got another, I suppose?'