The Night Watch

'I say, you are in a fix.' She gave the man a nod, and he went off.

The girl put her hand on Kay's ankle. 'Please,' she said, 'can you tell me?' Her voice was gritty, and light with fear. She coughed. 'Are they coming to get me out?'

'They are,' said Kay, 'just as soon as they can. Right now, however, I have to see if you're all right. May I feel for your pulse?' She took the girl's powdery arm. The pulse was quick, but pretty strong. 'There. And now, will you mind very much if I just shine this torch into your eyes? It won't take a moment.'

She put her fingers to the girl's chin, to steady her face. The girl blinked in apprehension. The rims and corners of her eyes were pink as a rabbit's against the white of the plaster dust. Her pupils shrank from the probing of the light. She seemed young, but not as young as Kay had thought her at first; perhaps twenty-four or -five. She turned her head before the beam of the torch was lowered, and tried to peer across the site.

'What are they doing?' she asked, of the men.

'They think there might be people,' Kay told her, 'a woman and a boy, trapped in the basement of your house.'

'Madeleine, and Tony?'

'Are those their names? Are they friends of yours?'

'Madeleine is Mrs Finch's daughter.'

'Mrs Finch?'

'My landlady. She-'

She didn't go on. Kay guessed that Mrs Finch was the woman who'd been killed. She began to feel the girl's arms and shoulders. 'Can you tell me,' she said as she did it, 'if you think you might be injured?'

The girl swallowed, and coughed again. 'I don't know.'

'Can you move your legs?'

'I think I could, a minute ago. I don't like to try, in case it topples the stuff and it crushes me.'

'Can you feel your feet?'

'I don't know. They're cold. It is just the cold, isn't it? What else could it be? It's not something worse, is it?'

She'd begun to shiver. She was dressed in what must have been a nightdress and dressing-gown, but the ARP man had put a blanket across her shoulders for extra warmth. Kay drew the blanket tighter, then looked around for something else. She found what might have been a bath-sheet; but it was sodden, and black with soot. She threw it away, then saw a cushion, its horsehair stuffing spilling from a gash in its velvet case. She put this against the girl's side, where she thought the sharp edges of rubble might be cutting or pressing against her.

The girl didn't notice. She was peering across the site again. She said, in an agitated way, 'What's that? Have they switched on lights? Tell them they mustn't!'

A lorry had come, bringing a single lamp and a little generator, and the R and D men had fitted them up and set them running. They'd tried to keep the lamp dim by stretching a square of tarpaulin above it; but light was leaking across the site, changing the look and the feel of things. Kay glanced about and saw quite plainly objects which, a moment before, had baffled her eye: an ironing-board with broken legs, a bucket, a little box to which someone had pasted shells… The lavatory lost its nacreous glamour and showed its stains. The walls of the houses rising up on either side of the heap of rubble were revealed to be not walls at all, but open rooms, with beds and chairs and tables and fireplaces in them, all intact.

'Tell them to turn off the lights!' the girl was still saying; but she was looking around, too, as Kay was-as if understanding, for the first time, the nature of the chaos in which she was trapped; perhaps seeing fragments of her old life in it… Then, 'Oh!' she said. The men had begun to hammer. She shuddered with every thud. 'What are they doing?'

'They have to work quickly,' said Kay. 'There might be gas, or water, you see, filling up the basement.'

'Gas or water?' asked the girl, as if not understanding. Then she winced, as another thud came. She must have been able to feel the blows through the rubble… She began to cry. She rubbed at her face, and the plaster grew thick with her tears. Kay touched her shoulder.

'Are you in pain?'

The girl shook her head. 'I can't tell. I don't think so. It's just- I'm so frightened.'

She put both her hands across her eyes and at last grew silent and almost still. When she took the hands away and spoke again her voice had changed, she sounded calmer, and older. 'What a coward you must think me,' she said.

Kay said gently, 'Not at all.'

The girl wiped her eyes and nose on a corner of the blanket. She made a face against the taste and the feel of the grit on her tongue. She said, 'I don't suppose you could give me a cigarette?'

'I'm afraid I can't, while there might be gas.'

'Of course not… Oh!' The men were hammering again. She held herself rigid.

Kay watched, growing rigid too, in sympathy. 'I think you must be in pain,' she said at last. 'There's a doctor coming. You must be brave just a little bit longer.'

Then they both turned their heads. Mickey was making her way towards them, her boots making boards crack, as Kay's had.

'Blimey!' she said, seeing the lavatory. Then she made out the figure of the girl. 'Blimey again! You are in trouble.'

'You'll forgive us,' Kay said to her, 'if we don't get up?' She turned back to the girl. 'This is my great friend, Miss Iris Carmichael. Did you ever see anything less like an iris in your life? Be nice to her, and she might let you call her Mickey.'

The girl was looking up, blinking. Mickey crouched and took her hand, squeezing her fingers. 'Not broken? Glad to hear it… How do you do?'

'Not so well just now,' said Kay, when Mickey got no answer. 'But soon to be better. But, what a rotten hostess I am!' She turned back to the girl. 'I never took the trouble to find out your name.'

The girl swallowed. She said awkwardly, 'It's Giniver.'

'Jennifer?'

The girl shook her head. 'Giniver. Helen Giniver.'

'Helen Giniver,' repeated Kay, as if trying it out. Then: 'Mrs, or Miss?'

Mickey laughed. She said softly, 'Give the girl a break.'

But, 'Miss,' said Helen, not understanding.

Kay shook her hand, as Mickey had, and introduced herself. Helen looked into her face, then turned to Mickey. 'I thought you were a boy,' she said, beginning to cough again.

'Everyone does,' answered Mickey. 'I'm used to it. Here, have some water.'

She had brought a flask. While Helen drank, Kay fished out an injury label from her jacket pocket, and filled in various details; she attached the label to Helen's collar. 'There. Just like a parcel, you see?' Then she and Mickey stood up for a moment, to watch the men at work on the demolition.

The men moved with what seemed maddening slowness: for there was something queer, Mickey said, about the way the house had fallen, and it made the job a stickier one than they'd supposed. But at last they put their hammers aside and fixed ropes to a flattened section of wall, and began to pull. The wall was raised, and stood eerily upright for a moment; then the ropes tugged it backwards and it toppled and broke, sending out a new cloud of dust.

In the patch of freshly-exposed ground there seemed only more rubble and a mess of twisted pipes; but a man moved quickly forward to the pipes, took up a brick, and gave a series of taps on the lead. He held up his hand. Another man called, sharply, for silence. The little generator was switched off, and the scene grew dark again, and still. There was the drone, of course, of aeroplanes, the thudding of the guns from Hyde Park and elsewhere; but those sounds had been there, it seemed incessantly, for the past six months: you filtered them out, Kay found, as you filtered out the roaring of the blood in your own ears.

The man with the brick said something too low for Kay to catch. He gave another tap on the pipes… And then, very faintly, there came a cry-like the mewing of a cat, from beneath the rubble.