'But if we can't see them, they can't see us. Besides, they'd probably take us for a boy and his girl. Last week I went out in this coat and cap, and a tart in a doorway thought I was a chap and showed me her breast-flashed her torch at it. That was in Piccadilly.'
'Good God,' said Helen.
'Yes,' said Julia. 'And I can't tell you how odd a single breast looks, when lit up in the dark like that.'
She slowed her step and swung her torch. 'Here's St Clement's,' she said, 'the church from the nursery rhyme. They used to bring oranges and lemons, I suppose, to the shore of the Thames, just down there.'
Helen thought of the orange Kay had given her that morning… But Kay and the morning felt far away, in a place like this. They were on the other side of that mad, impossible landscape.
They crossed a road. 'Where are we now?'
'This must be Eastcheap. We're nearly there.'
'Nearly where?'
'Only another church, I'm afraid. You won't be disappointed?'
'I'm thinking of the walk we must do, to get home. We'll get our throats cut.'
'How you fret!' said Julia. She made Helen walk a little further, then drew her towards a narrowish opening between two buildings. 'This is Idol Lane,' she murmured-or she might, Helen supposed, have said ' Idle Lane '. 'It's just along here.'
Helen hung back. 'It's too dark!'
'But it's just down here,' said Julia.
Her grip slid from Helen's elbow to her hand. She squeezed her fingers, and led her down a sloping path and then, a little way along it, made her stop. She swung up the beam of her torch and Helen could just make out, in the sweep of it, the shape of a tower: a high and elegant tower, with a sharp, slender spire supported by arches or buttresses-or simply blown through, perhaps, by bomb-blast, for the body of the church from which it rose seemed to be roofless, gutted, quite wrecked.
'St Dunstan-in-the-East,' said Julia quietly, looking up. 'It was rebuilt by Wren, like most of these churches, after the Great Fire of 1666. But they say that his daughter, Jane, helped him to design it. She's supposed to have gone to the top to lay the last stones, when the mason lost his nerve. And when they drew away the scaffolding, she lay down here, to show her faith that the tower wouldn't fall… I like to come here. I like to think of her making her way up the tower steps, with bricks and a trowel. She couldn't have been at all delicate, yet the portraits of her have made her out to be pale and slight. Shall we stay here a minute? Are you too cold?'
'No, I'm all right. Not inside the church, though.'
'No, just here. If we keep to the shadow, any sort of footpad or cut-throat could go by, and never know we were here.'
They walked cautiously around the tower, still hand in hand, guiding themselves by a set of broken railings and feeling for uneven ground. A flight of three or four shallow stone steps ran up to each of the tower doors; they made their way up to one of these doors, and sat down. The stone was icily cold. The doors, and the walls around them, were black, and threw off no light: Helen looked for Julia in her cap and dark coat and could hardly see her.
But she felt the movement of her arm, as she dipped her fingers into her pocket and brought out the nightwatchman's bottle. And she heard the moist little pop of the stopper coming out of the glass neck. Julia handed the bottle over, and Helen raised it to her mouth. The rough red liquid met her lips and seemed to flare across her tongue like a flame. She swallowed, and felt easier almost at once.
'We might,' she whispered, as she handed the bottle back, 'be the only people alive in the City. Do you think there are ghosts here, Julia?'
Julia was drinking. She wiped her mouth. 'There might,' she said, 'be the ghost of Samuel Pepys. He used to come to this church. Once he was set upon by a couple of robbers here.'
'I shouldn't like to know that,' said Helen, 'if I weren't tipsy.'
'You got tipsy rather quick.'
'I was tipsy before, I just didn't like to say… Anyway, it's my birthday and I'm allowed to be tipsy.'
'Then I ought to get tipsy, too. There's no pleasure in being tipsy on your own.'
They drank more, then sat without speaking. At last Helen, very softly, began to sing.
Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's.
Pancake and fritters say the bells of St Peter's.
'What mad sort of words they are, aren't they?' she said, interrupting herself. 'I didn't even know I'd remembered them, until now.'
Bull's eyes and targets, say the bells of St Margaret's.
Pokers and tongs, say the bells of St John's .
Julia said, 'You sing nicely… I don't suppose there's a St Helen's in the song?'
'I don't think so. What would those bells say?'
'I can't imagine. Strawberries and melons?'
'Torturers and felons… What about St Julia?'
'I don't think there ever was a St Julia. Anyway, nothing rhymes with Julia. Except peculiar.'
'You're about the most unpeculiar person I've ever met, Julia.'
They had put back their heads against the black tower door, and turned their faces to one another, to speak softly. When Julia laughed, Helen felt the rush of breath against her own mouth: warm, wine-scented, slightly soured by tobacco.
'You don't think it's peculiar,' Julia said, 'to have brought you here, to the ruin of a church, in the middle of a black-out?'
'I think it's marvellous,' said Helen simply.
Julia answered, still laughing, 'Have some more wine.'
Helen shook her head. Her heart had risen into her throat. Too high and full, it felt, to swallow back down. 'I don't want any more,' she said softly. 'The fact is, Julia, I'm afraid to be drunk while I'm with you.'
It seemed to her that there could be no mistaking the meaning of her words: that they had penetrated some thin but resilient membrane, made a tear through which a heap of unruly passions would now come tumbling… But Julia laughed again, and must have turned her head, for her breath no longer came against Helen's lips; and when she spoke, she spoke musingly, distantly. She said, 'Isn't it queer, though, that we know each other so little? Three weeks ago, when we had that cup of tea outside Marylebone Station-do you remember? I would never have said, then, that we'd be here now, like this…'
'Why did you stop me that day, Julia?' asked Helen, after a moment. 'Why did you ask me to have tea with you?'
'Why did I?' said Julia. 'Shall I tell you? I'm almost afraid to. It might make you hate me. I did it-well, out of curiosity, I suppose you'd have to call it.'
'Curiosity?'
'I wanted to-get the measure of you, something like that.' She gave an uncomfortable little laugh. 'I thought you might have guessed it.'
Helen didn't answer. She was remembering the odd, sly way in which Julia had glanced at her, when they'd been talking about Kay; she was thinking of the feeling she'd had, that Julia was testing her, weighing her up… She said slowly at last, 'I think I did guess. You wanted to see, didn't you, if you could find in me what Kay does?'
Julia moved, as if embarassed. 'It was a lousy thing to do. I'm sorry now.'
'It doesn't matter,' said Helen. 'Truly, it doesn't. After all-' Her feelings had faltered, just a little, but now rose again-buoyed up, by wine, by the darkness. 'After all, we're in a funny sort of situation, you and I.'
'Are we?'
'I mean, because of what happened between you and Kay-'
At once, even in the darkness, she knew that she had made a mistake. Julia stiffened. She said sharply, 'Kay told you that?'
'Yes,' said Helen, growing wary, speaking slowly. 'At least, I guessed it.'
'And you spoke with Kay about it?'
'Yes.'
'What did she say?'
'Only, that there had been a-'
'A what?'
Helen hesitated. Then, 'A misaffection, she called it,' she said.
'A misaffection?' Julia laughed. 'Christ!' She turned away again.