The Night Watch

Kay had heard such sounds before: they were thrilling and unnerving, much more so than the sight of blasted limbs and mucked-up bodies. They made her shiver. She let out her breath. The site had grown noisy and alive again, as if in response to some small electric charge. The generator was started up, and the light switched back on. The men moved in and began to work with a new kind of purpose.

A car drew up, bumping over the broken road, a white cross gleaming from its bonnet. Mickey went to meet it. Kay hesitated, then squatted again at Helen's side.

Helen was bracing herself awkwardly against the rubble. She'd been straining to listen, too. 'Those voices,' she said, 'that was Madeleine and Tony, wasn't it? Are they all right?'

'We hope they are.'

'They will be, won't they? But how can they be? Mrs Finch-' She shook her head. 'I saw them taking her away, before you came. We'd been out in the kitchen. She wanted her glasses, that was all. I said I'd run up and get them for her. They were on the table, beside her bed. I had them, right here-' She held up her hand and looked at her palm, then gazed around, as if suddenly bewildered. 'She didn't want me to go,' she said. 'She wanted Tony to do it, she wanted Tony to go-'

Her voice had begun to shake. She looked at Kay, her eyes wide open. Then, 'Listen,' she said suddenly. 'Listen, would you mind very much if I were to hold your hand?'

'Mind?' said Kay, moved by the simplicity of the request. 'Good heavens! I would have offered it at the start; only, you know, I didn't want to seem forward.'

She took hold of Helen's fingers and began to chafe them between her own; then she raised them, and breathed on them-breathed slowly, steadily, on the knuckles and the palm.

Helen kept her gaze on her face as she did it, her eyes still wide. She said, 'You must be so brave. You and your friend. I could never be brave like that.'

'Nonsense,' said Kay, still chafing her hand. '-Is that better? It's easier to be out in the fuss, that's all, than sitting home listening to it.'

Helen's fingers were chill and dusty in her own, but the palm and the pads of the fingertips were soft, yielding. Kay pressed them harder, then let them go. 'Here's the doctor,' she said, hearing cracking boards again. And she added quietly: 'That was a secret, by the way, about its being easier to be out.'

The doctor was a brisk, handsome woman of forty-five or so. She was dressed in dungarees and a turban. 'Hello,' she said, seeing Helen, 'what have we here?'

Kay moved away while the woman squatted at Helen's side. She heard her murmur, and caught Helen's replies: 'No… I don't know… A little… Thank you…'

'Impossible to tell the extent of the trouble,' said the doctor, joining Kay again, wiping dust from her hands, 'until the legs are freed. I don't think there's any blood loss, but she seems pretty feverish, which might be from pain. I've given her a shot of morphia, take her mind off things.' She stretched, and grimaced.

Kay asked, 'Bad night?'

'You might say that. Nine dead from a shell on Victoria Street, four gone at Chelsea. Two here, I gather? We were told this blasted woman and her boy would be out for us to take a look at; no time to hang about now. There's a chap with his hands blown off, apparently, over in Vauxhall.'

As she spoke, a demolition man called out that there was no more fear of gas, and automatically she reached into her pocket and brought out a packet of cigarettes. She opened it up, and held it out.

'Give me two, could you?' said Kay.

'You've a nerve.'

Kay laughed. 'The first's for me; the other's medicinal.' She lit them both from the woman's lighter, and went back to Helen. 'Hey,' she said gently, 'look what I have.'

She put a cigarette between Helen's lips, then took one of her hands and held it, simply, as before. Helen's eyes, as she narrowed them against the smoke, were darker, and her voice had changed again.

'How kind you are,' she said.

'Don't mention it.'

'I seem to be drunk. How can that be?'

'It's the morphia, I expect.'

'How nice that doctor was!'

'Yes, wasn't she?'

'Should you like to be a doctor?'

'Not much,' said Kay. 'Should you?'

'I know a boy who means to be one.'

'Yes?'

'A boy I was in love with.'

'Ah.'

'He threw me over for another girl.'

'Silly chap.'

'He's gone into the army now… You're not in love with anyone, are you?'

'No,' said Kay. 'Someone's in love with me, as it happens. A grand person, too… But that's another secret. I'm thinking of the morphia, you see. I'm counting on your not being able to remember any of this.'

'Why is it a secret?'

'I promised the person it would be, that's all.'

'But you won't love him back?'

Kay smiled. 'You'd think I would, wouldn't you? But, isn't it funny-we never seem to love the people we ought to, I can't think why…'

'Don't let go of my hand, will you?'

'Never.'

'Are you holding it? I can't feel it.'

'There! Do you feel that?'

'Yes, I feel that. Keep it like that, will you? Just like that.'

They smoked in silence, and presently Helen seemed to doze: the cigarette smouldered forgotten in her hand, so Kay took it gently from her fingers and smoked the last of it herself. The demolition work went on. From time to time the drone of planes and the thump of shells grew louder; there were spectacular flashes in the sky, green and red, and tumbling flares. Now and then Mickey came over, to sit beside Kay and to yawn. Two or three times Helen stirred, and mumbled, or spoke quite clearly: 'Are you there?' 'I can't see you.' 'Where are you?'

'I'm here,' Kay answered, every time, and squeezed her hand a little harder.

'She'll be yours for life,' said Mickey.

And then, finally, the demolition work revealed a fallen staircase, and when this was raised by a winch the woman and her son were found beneath it, almost perfectly unharmed. The boy came out first-head-first, as he must have come out of the womb; but rigid, dry, dusty, his hair an old man's. He and his mother stood quite stunned. 'Where's Mum?' Kay heard the woman say. Mickey went to them with blankets, and Kay got to her feet.

Helen felt her move, and woke, and reached for her. 'What is it?'

'Madeleine and Tony are freed.'

'Are they all right?'

'They seem to be. Can you see? Now the men will come and free you.'

Helen shook her head. 'Don't leave me. Please!'

'I have to go.'

'Please don't.'

'I must go, so the men can free you.'

'I'm afraid of it!'

'I have to drive the woman and her son to the hospital.'

'Your friend can do it, can't she?'

Kay laughed. 'Look here, do you want to get me chucked out of the service?'

She put her hand to Helen's head, to brush back the dusty hair from her brow. She did it casually enough; but the sight of Helen's anxious expression-the large, darkened eyes, above the plaster-white cheeks-made her hesitate.

'Just a second,' she said. 'You must look your best, for the R and D men.'

She ran to Mickey, and returned to Helen with the flask of water. She fished out her handkerchief, and wet it; and began, very gently, to wipe the dust from Helen's face. She started at her brow, and worked downwards. 'Just close your eyes,' she murmured. She brushed at Helen's lashes, and then at the little dints at the side of her nose, the groove above her lip, the corners of her mouth, her cheeks and chin.

'Kay!' called Mickey.

'All right! I'm coming!'

The dust fell away. The skin beneath was pink, plump, astonishingly smooth… Kay brushed a little longer, then moved her hand to the curve of Helen's jaw and cupped it with her palm-not wanting to leave her, after all; gazing at her in a sort of wonder; unable to believe that something so fresh and so unmarked could have emerged from so much chaos.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Lennie Goodings and staff at Time Warner Books UK, to Julie Grau and staff at Penguin Putnam Inc, to Judith Murray and everyone at Greene amp; Heaton Ltd; and to the inestimable Sally O-J.