The Night Watch

The men moved with what seemed maddening slowness: for there was something queer, Mickey said, about the way the house had fallen, and it made the job a stickier one than they'd supposed. But at last they put their hammers aside and fixed ropes to a flattened section of wall, and began to pull. The wall was raised, and stood eerily upright for a moment; then the ropes tugged it backwards and it toppled and broke, sending out a new cloud of dust.

In the patch of freshly-exposed ground there seemed only more rubble and a mess of twisted pipes; but a man moved quickly forward to the pipes, took up a brick, and gave a series of taps on the lead. He held up his hand. Another man called, sharply, for silence. The little generator was switched off, and the scene grew dark again, and still. There was the drone, of course, of aeroplanes, the thudding of the guns from Hyde Park and elsewhere; but those sounds had been there, it seemed incessantly, for the past six months: you filtered them out, Kay found, as you filtered out the roaring of the blood in your own ears.

The man with the brick said something too low for Kay to catch. He gave another tap on the pipes… And then, very faintly, there came a cry-like the mewing of a cat, from beneath the rubble.

Kay had heard such sounds before: they were thrilling and u

A car drew up, bumping over the broken road, a white cross gleaming from its bo

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 fu

'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 stu

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.'