The Night Watch

'Sorry, Millie.'

'Where are you going? The basement? Rather you than me. You'll be just in time for the second round of Boy, Girl, Flower, Animal… Or, did you have your eye on those cream crackers that were knocking about in the common-room? Too bad. I've bagged the lot, look, for Jacqueline Knight and Caroline Graham and me.'

Viv shook her head. 'You can have them. I'm just getting a glass of water.'

'Watch out for mice, then,' said Millie, beginning to climb the stairs. 'And remember: if anyone asks you who took those cream crackers, you never saw me. I'll do the same for you one day…'

Her voice faded. Viv waited until she'd crossed the landing, then carried on down. The staircase grew wider the lower she went; the house was an old one, built to a rather grand scale. There were great plaster roses in all the ceilings, and hooks where chandeliers had once hung. The banister rail had elegant curves and graceful finials. But though there were handsome crimson carpets in the hallways, they were all covered up with canvas, and the canvas was much damaged by high heels. The walls were painted in dispiriting gloss shades, green and cream and grey: they looked worse than ever in the dim blue light.

The lobby was a mess of women's coats and hats and umbrellas. A table spilled over with papers and unclaimed post. The fanlight, of course, had been boarded up, but the bomb-proofed glass in the door which led to the basement was gleaming turgidly. From beyond it came one girl's voice, and then others: 'Primrose… Pansy… Primula…'

Viv put on her torch. The telephone was further on, in an alcove outside the common-room-horribly public, but over the years girls had unpicked the staples which attached the wire to the wall, and if you wanted to make a private call you could pull the telephone across the corridor into a cupboard, and sit, in darkness, on a gas-meter, amongst brooms and buckets and mops. Viv did this now, drawing shut the cupboard door and propping her torch on a shelf; looking rather fearfully into the cracks and corners, for fear of spiders and mice. Think Before You Speak, said a label on the telephone.

She had the number of Reggie's unit on an old bit of paper in her dressing-gown pocket; he'd given it to her, ages ago, for emergencies, and she'd never used it. But what was this, she thought, if not an emergency? She got the number out. She picked up the receiver and dialled 0 for the Exchange-letting the dial turn slowly; muffling the clicks of it, as best she could, with a handkerchief.

The operator's voice was as bright as glass. The call, she said, would take several minutes to connect… 'Thank you,' said Viv. She sat with the telephone in her lap, nerving herself for the ring of it. Then the beam of her torch began to waver: she thought of the battery, and turned it off. She'd left the door open, just a little, and the dim blue light of the corridor showed through the crack. Apart from that, the cupboard was absolutely dark. She could just make out bursts of laughter, and groans, from the girls in the basement. There were bumps, and shivers, and trickles of dust in the walls, as bombs kept falling.

When at last the phone rang again, the noise of the bell, and the jolt of it in her lap, frightened the life out of her. She picked up the receiver with shaking hands, and almost dropped it. The glass-voiced girl said, 'Just a moment'; and there was another wait, then, and a series of clicks, as she made the connection…

Then a man's voice came on the line: the switchboard-operator at Reggie's camp. Viv gave him Reggie's name.

'You don't know his hut?' he asked her. She didn't. He tried a central number. The phone rang and rang… 'No answer, Caller,' he said.

'Please,' said Viv, 'just a minute longer. It's awfully urgent…'

'Hello?' said another voice at last. 'Is that my call to Southampton? Hello?'

'This is an incoming call, I'm afraid,' said the operator blandly.

'Blast you.'

'You're welcome.'

The phone was picked up by somebody else after that; he gave them, at least, the number of Reggie's hut… The phone rang only twice, this time, and then came a deafening burst of noise: shouting, and laughter, and music from a radio or gramophone.

A man bellowed into the phone. 'Hello?'

'Hello?' said Viv quietly.

'Hello? Who's this?'

She told him she wanted Reggie.

'Reggie? What?' he shouted.

'Who's there?' came another man's voice.

'Some girl, calling herself Reggie.'

'She's not calling herself Reggie, you oaf. It's Reggie she wants to speak to.' The receiver was taken by another hand. 'Miss, I really must apologise- Or is it Madam?'

'Please,' said Viv. She glanced out nervously, into the corridor, through the crack in the nearly-closed door. She put her hand around her mouth, to muffle her voice. 'Is Reggie there?'

'Is he here? That would probably depend, if I know Reg, on who wants to know. Does he owe you money?'

'Is she sure it's Reg she wants?' said the first voice.

'My friend,' said the second, 'wants to know if you're sure it's Reg you want, and not him. He is making shapes with his hands, suggestive of what he considers must be the lovely colour of your eyes, the beautiful curl of your hair, the magnificent swell of your-voice.'

'Please,' said Viv again, 'I haven't got very long.'

'That won't bother my friend, from what I've heard.'

'Is Reggie there, or not?'

'May I say who's calling?'

'Tell him- Tell him it's his wife.'

'His lady wife? In that case, far be it from me to…'

The voice became a mumble, and then a distorted shout. That was followed by cheers, and a kind of scuffling sound, as the phone was passed from hand to hand… At last, Reggie's voice came on the line. He sounded breathless.

'Marilyn?' he said.

'It's not her, it's me,' said Viv, very quickly. 'Don't say my name, in case the operator's listening.'

But he said her name, anyway. 'Viv?' He sounded amazed. 'The boys told me-'

'I know. They were mucking about, and I didn't know what else to say.'

'Christ.' She heard him rubbing his bristly chin and cheeks with his hand. 'Where are you? How did you get hold of me?' He turned his mouth away. 'Woods, I swear to God, one more crack like that, and-'

'I just called the Exchange,' she said.

'What?'

'I called the Exchange.'

'Are you all right?'

'Yes. No.'

'I can't hear you. Just a minute-' He put the phone down and went off; there was more cheering, and more laughter. When he came back, he was breathless again. 'Those buggers,' he said. He had moved, or closed a door. 'Where are you? You sound like you're in the bucket at the bottom of well.'

'I'm in a cupboard,' she whispered, 'at home. I mean, at John Adam House.'

'A cupboard?'

'Where the girls make calls. It doesn't matter. It's just- Something's happened, Reggie.'

'What? Not your bloody brother?'

'Don't call him that. No, not that. Nothing like that.'

'What, then?'

'I- It's just-' She tried to see out into the hall again; then turned her head, and spoke more quietly than ever. 'My friend hasn't come,' she said.

'Your what? Your friend?' He didn't understand. 'Which friend?'

'My friend.'

There was a silence. Then, 'Christ,' he said softly. 'Christ, Viv.'

'Don't say my name!'

'No. No. How much? I mean, how long?'

'About eight weeks, I think.'

'Eight weeks?' He was turning it over in his mind. 'So you mean, you must have been, already, when I saw you last-?'

'Yes, I must have been. But I didn't know.'