The Night Watch

Mickey carried it down to the other end of the cabin, and stowed it away under her bed.

When she came back, she mixed more drinks. Binkie took a fresh glassful but sat swirling the gin, gazing down into it, looking suddenly gloomy. After a minute or so she said, 'All this stuff about gallantry, girls, has rather depressed me.'

'Oh, Bink!' said Mickey. 'Don't say that.'

'But I'm afraid it has. It's all very well, Kay, for you to set yourself up as some kind of champion-the Queers' Best Friend-you, with your dear little Helen, your silk pyjamas, all of that. But your sort of story is awfully rare. Most of us- Well, take Mickey and me. What do we have?'

'Speak for yourself!' said Mickey, coughing.

'The gin's made you maudlin,' said Kay. 'I knew cocktails before six was a bad idea.'

'It's not the gin. I'm quite serious. Tell me truly: doesn't the life we lead ever get you down? It's all right when one is young. It's positively thrilling, when one is twenty! The secrecy, the intensity-being keyed up, like a harp. Girls were fabulous things to me, once-all that flying into rages over bits of nonsense; threatening to slash their wrists in the lavatories at parties, that sort of thing. Men were like shadows, like paper puppets, like little boys! compared with that. But one gets to an age, where one sees the truth of it. One gets to an age, where one is simply exhausted. And one realises one has finished with the whole damn game… Men begin to seem almost attractive after that. Sometimes I think quite seriously of finding some nice little chap to settle down with-some quiet little Liberal MP, someone like that. It would be so restful.'

Kay had once felt something similar, as it happened. But that was before the war, and before she'd met Helen. Now she said drily, 'The deep, deep peace of the marital bed, after the hurly-burly of the Sapphic chaise longue.'

'Precisely.'

'What rubbish.'

'I mean it!' said Binkie. 'You wait till you're my age,'-she was forty-six-'and wake every morning to gaze on the vast tract of uncreased linen that is the other side of the divan. Try being gallant to that… We shan't even have children, don't forget, to look after us in our old age.'

'God!' said Mickey. 'Why don't we just cut our throats right now and get it over with?'

'If I had the spunk,' said Binkie, 'I might do just that. It's only the station I keep going for. Thank God for the war, is what I say! The thought of peace starting up again, I don't mind telling you, fills me with horror.'

'Well,' said Kay, 'you'd better get used to the idea. Now we're only seventeen miles from Rome -or whatever it is-it's surely only a matter of time…'

They discussed the state of things in Italy for the next ten minutes or so; then got on-as people did get on, these days-to the subject of Hitler's secret weapons.

'You know there are absolutely gigantic guns,' said Binkie, 'being put in place in France? The government's trying to keep it hush-hush, but Collins, at Berkeley Square, knows a chap in one of the Ministries. He says the shells from those guns will make it as far as north London. They'll take out entire streets, apparently.'

'I heard the Germans,' said Mickey, 'are putting together a kind of ray-'

The boat tilted, as someone stepped on to it from the tow-path. Kay-who'd been listening out for footsteps-leaned forward to put down her glass. She said in a whisper, 'That'll be Helen. Remember, now: not a word about pyjamas, birthdays, or anything like that.'

There was a knock, the doors were opened, and Helen appeared. Kay rose, to take her hand and help her down the couple of steps into the cabin, and to kiss her cheek.

'Hello, darling.'

'Hello, Kay,' said Helen, smiling. Her cheek was cold, curved, soft and smooth as a child's. Her lips were dry beneath their lipstick, slightly roughened by the wind. She looked around, at the clouds of smoke. 'Goodness! It's like a Turkish harem in here. Not that I've ever been in a Tukish harem-'

'Dear girl, I have,' said Binkie. 'I can tell you, they're awfully overrated.'

Helen laughed. 'Hello, Binkie. Hello, Mickey. How are you both?'

'All right.'

'Fighting fit, dear girl. And you?'

Helen nodded to the glasses that were sitting about. 'I shall be fine, with something like that inside me.'

'We're drinking gimlets-sound all right?'

'Right now I'd drink powdered glass if it had a splash of alcohol in it.'

She took off her coat and hat, and glanced about for a mirror. 'Do I look awful?' she said, not finding one, and trying to tidy her hair.

'You look wonderful,' said Kay. 'Come and sit down.'

She slipped an arm around Helen's waist, and they sat. Binkie and Mickey leaned forward to make a fresh round of cocktails. They were still debating secret weapons. 'I don't believe it for a second,' Binkie was saying. 'Invisible rays-?'

'All right, darling?' murmured Kay, touching her lips to Helen's cheek again. 'Did you have a lousy day?'

'Not really,' said Helen. 'How was yours? What have you been doing?'

'Nothing at all. Thinking of you.'

Helen smiled. 'You always say that.'

'That's because I'm always doing it. I'm doing it now.'

'Are you? What are you thinking?'

'Ah,' said Kay…

She was thinking, of course, of the satin pyjamas. She was imagining buttoning up the pyjama jacket over Helen's bare breasts. She was thinking of the look and the feel of Helen's bottom and thighs, in the pearl-coloured silk… She moved her hand to Helen's hip, and began to stroke it-enchanted, suddenly, by the lovely swell and spring of it; remembering what Binkie had said, and feeling the force of her own good fortune; marvelling that Helen was here-right here, in this funny little clog-shaped boat, warm and pink and rounded and alive, in the curve of her arm.

Helen turned her head, and met her look. She said, 'You're tight.'

'I belive I am. Here's a thought. Get tight too.'

'Get tight, for forty-five minutes with you? Then have to sleep it off all by myself?'

'Come over to the station with us when we go,' said Kay. She raised and lowered her eyebrows. 'I'll show you the back of my ambulance.'

'You nit,' said Helen, laughing. 'What on earth's the matter with you?'

'I'm in love, that's all.'

'I say, you two,' said Binkie loudly, handing Helen a glass. 'If I'd known this was going to turn into a petting-session, I might not have come. Stop making wallflowers of Mickey and me, will you?'

'We were just being friendly,' said Kay. 'I might get my head blown off later on. I've got to make the most of my lips while I still have them.'

'I've got to make the most of mine, then,' said Binkie, raising her glass. 'Here's how.'

At six o'clock they heard the wireless starting up on the barge next door: they opened the doors, to listen to the news. Then a programme of dance-music came on; it was too cold to keep the doors open, but Mickey slid back a window so that they could still hear the music a little, mixed up with the buzz and splutter of passing engines, the bumping of the boats. The song was a slow one. Kay kept her arm around Helen's waist, still lightly stroking and smoothing it, while Mickey and Binkie chatted on. The heat from the stove, and the gin in her cocktail, had made her dozy.

Then Helen moved forward, to reach for her drink again; and when she sat back, she turned and caught Kay's eye, a little awkwardly.

'Who do you think I saw today?' she said.

'I don't know. Who?'

'A friend of yours. Julia.'

Kay stared at her. 'Julia?' she said. 'Julia Standing?'

'Yes.'

'You mean, you saw her in the street?'

'No,' said Helen. 'That is, yes. But then we had a cup of tea together, from a van near my office. She'd been to a house nearby-you know, that job she has, with her father?'

'Yes, of course,' said Kay slowly.

She was trying to push away the mix of feelings that the sound of Julia's name always conjured up in her. She said to herself, as she always did, Don't be silly. It was nothing. It was too long ago. But it wasn't nothing, she knew that… She tried to picture Helen and Julia together: she saw Helen, with her round child's face, her untidy hair and chapped lips; and Julia, smooth and self-possessed as a cool dark gem… She said, 'Was it all right?'