The Night Watch

He opened his eyes. The night was suddenly silent again. He whispered, 'Has that done the trick?' Then he jumped about a foot, as another explosion came. 'Fuck! Not quite. Try harder, Fraser. You're not trying hard enough, damn you!' He pressed his hands to his temples and began to recite again, more softly. 'There are no bombs. There are no fires. There are no bombs. There are no fires…'

At last he drew his blanket tighter across his shoulders, got down from the table and, still muttering, began to pace back and forth across the cell. With every fresh explosion, he swore and walked on faster. At last Duncan lifted his head from his pillow to say irritably, 'Stop walking about, can't you?'

'I'm sorry,' said Fraser, exaggeratedly polite, 'am I keeping you awake?' He got back on the table. 'It's this wretched moon brings them,' he said, as if to himself. 'Why can't there be clouds?' He rubbed the glass where his breath had misted it. For a minute he said nothing. Then he started up again: 'There are no bombs. There are no fires. There is no poverty and no injustice. There is no piss-pot in my cell-'

'Shut up,' said Duncan. 'You shouldn't make fun of it. It- Well, it isn't fair on Mr Mundy.'

Fraser laughed outright at that. 'Mr Mundy,' he repeated. 'Not fair on Mr Mundy. What's it to you, if I make fun of old Mr Mundy?' He said this as if still to himself; but then seemed struck by the idea, and turned his head, and asked Duncan properly. 'Just what sort of a racket do you have going on with Mr Mundy, anyway?'

Duncan didn't answer. Fraser waited, then went on, 'You know what I'm talking about. Did you think I hadn't noticed? He gives you cigarettes, doesn't he? He gives you sugar for your cocoa, things like that.'

'Mr Mundy's kind,' said Duncan. 'He's the only kind twirl here, you can ask anyone.'

'But I'm asking you,' persisted Fraser. 'He doesn't give me cigarettes and sugar, after all.'

'He doesn't feel sorry for you, I suppose.'

'Does he feel sorry for you, then? Is that what it is?'

Duncan lifted his head. He'd begun picking at a length of wool that had come loose at the edge of his blanket. 'I expect so,' he said. 'People do, that's all. It's a thing of mine. It's always been like that, even before.-Before all this, I mean.'

'You've just one of those faces,' said Fraser.

'I suppose so.'

'The fascination of your eyelashes, something like that.'

Duncan let the blanket fall. 'I can't help my eyelashes!' he said, stupidly.

Fraser laughed, and his manner changed again. 'Indeed you can't, Pearce.' He got down from the table again and sat on the chair-moving the chair so that it was close to the wall, and spreading his knees, putting back his head. 'I once knew a girl,' he began, 'with eyelashes like yours-'

'Known lots of girls, haven't you?'

'Well, I don't like to boast.'

'Don't, then.'

'I say, look here, it was you who brought the subject up! I was asking about you and Mr Mundy… I was wondering if it really was just for the sake of your beautiful eyelashes that he gives you such a soft time of it.'

Duncan sat up. He'd remembered the feel of Mr Mundy's hand on his knee, and started to blush. He said hotly, 'I don't give him anything back, if that's what you mean!'

'Well, I suppose that is what I meant.'

'Is that how it works, with you and your girls?'

'Ouch. All right. I just-'

'Just what?'

Fraser hesitated again. Then, 'Just nothing,' he said. 'I was curious, that's all, about how these things go.'

'How what things go?'

'For someone like you.'

'Like me?' asked Duncan. 'What do you mean?'

Fraser moved, turned away: impatient, or simply embarassed. 'You know very well what I mean.'

'I don't.'

'You must know, at least, what gets said about you in here.'

Duncan felt himself blush harder. 'That gets said, in here, about anyone. Anyone with any kind of-of culture; who likes books, likes music. Who isn't a brute, in other words. But the fact is, it's the brutes who are worst of all at that sort of thing-'

'I know that,' said Fraser quietly. 'It isn't only that.'

'What is it, then?'

'Nothing. Something I heard, about why you're here.'

'What did you hear?'

'That you're here because- Look, forget it, it's none of my business.'

'No,' said Duncan. 'Tell me what you heard.'

Fraser smoothed back his hair. 'That you're here,' he said bluntly at last, 'because your boyfriend died, and you tried to kill yourself over it.'

Duncan lay very still, unable to answer.

'I'm sorry,' said Fraser. 'As I said, it's none of my damn business. I don't care a fig why you're here, or who you used to go around with. I think the laws about suicide are bloody, if you want to know-'

'Who told you that?' asked Duncan thickly.

'It doesn't matter. Forget it.'

'Was it Wainwright? Or Binns?'

'No.'

'Who was it, then?'

Fraser looked away. 'It was that little queer Stella, of course.'

'Her!' said Duncan. 'She makes me sick. They all do, all that crowd. They don't want to go to bed with girls, but they make themselves like girls. They make themselves worse than girls! They need doctors! I hate them.'

'All right,' said Fraser mildly. 'So do I.'

'You think I'm like them!'

'That's not what I said.'

'You think I used to be like them; or that Alec was-'

He stopped. He had never said Alec's name here, aloud, to anyone but Mr Mundy; and now he'd spat it out as if it were a curse.

Fraser was watching him through the gloom. 'Alec,' he said, carefully. 'Was that- Was that your boyfriend?'

'He wasn't my boyfriend!' said Duncan. Why did everybody have to think of it like that? 'He was only my friend. Don't you have friends? Doesn't everyone?'

'Of course. I'm sorry.'

'He was only my friend. If you'd grown up where I grew up, feeling like me, you'd know what that meant.'

'Yes. I expect so…'

The worst of the bombing seemed, for the moment, to have passed on. Fraser blew into his hands, worked his fingers, to get the cold out. Then he got up, reached under his pillow and brought out cigarettes. Almost shyly, he offered one to Duncan. Duncan shook his head.

But Fraser kept the cigarettes held out. 'I should like you to,' he said quietly. 'Go on. Please.'

'It'll be one less for you.'

'I don't care… Better let me light it, though.'

He put two cigarettes to his mouth, then took up the pot that he and Duncan kept their dinner-salt in, and a needle. You could make a flame, by sparking the metal against the stone: it took him a moment or two, but at last the paper caught and the tobacco started to glow. The cigarette he handed over was damp from his lips: collapsed, like a sucked-on straw. A strand or two of tobacco came loose upon Duncan's tongue.

They smoked without speaking. The cigarettes only lasted a minute. And when Fraser's was finished he opened it up, to keep what he could for the next one…

As he did it he said quietly, 'I envy you your friend, Pearce. Truly I do. I don't think I've ever cared so much for a man-or a woman either, come to that-as much as you must have cared for him… Yes, I envy you.'