by Sarah Waters
‘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. ‘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.’
‘You’re the only one who does, then,’ said Duncan moodily. ‘My own father’s ashamed of me.’
‘Well, so is mine of me, if it comes to that. He thinks my sort ought to be handed over to Germany, since we’re all so keen on helping the Nazis along. A man ought to be a source of shame to his father, don’t you think? If I ever have a son, I hope he makes my life hell. How, otherwise, will there ever be any progress?’
But Duncan wouldn’t smile. ‘You make a joke of things,’ he said. ‘It’s different for people like you, for people in your world.’
‘Have things really been so bad for you?’
‘I dare say they wouldn’t seem bad, to someone looking in from outside. My father never—He never hit me, or anything like that. It was just—’ He struggled, searching for the words. ‘I don’t know. It was liking things you weren’t supposed to like; and feeling things you weren’t supposed to feel. Never being able to say the thing that people expected. And Alec felt like I did. He hated the war. His brother had died, right at the start of it, and his father kept on at him to go and fight. And it was the blitz. It was nearly the end of the blitz, though we didn’t know that then. It felt like—like the end of the bloody world! It was the worst time for everything. Alec and I never wanted to fight. He wanted to make a difference, to how people felt. Instead—Well—’
‘Poor chap,’ said Fraser feelingly, when Duncan wouldn’t go on. ‘He sounds all right. I’d like to have known him.’
‘He was all right,’ said Duncan. ‘He was clever. Not like me. People have always said I’m clever, but that’s only because I make myself talk in a certain way. But he was funny. He could never be still. He was always on to something new. He was a bit like you, I suppose; or you’re like he would have been, if he’d been to a proper school, had money. He made things seem exciting. He made things—I don’t know; he made them seem better than they really were. Even if afterwards, when you thought about it, you realised that some of what he’d said was silly; at the time, when you were with him, you wanted to go along with it. You felt—swept along by him.’
&nb
sp; ‘I’m sorry,’ said Fraser quietly. ‘I can see why you—Well, why you liked him so much. How old was he?’
‘He was just nineteen,’ said Duncan quietly. ‘He was older than me. That’s why he got called up first.’
‘Just nineteen. That stinks, Pearce! First his brother, and then him.’ He hesitated, and lowered his voice. ‘And then?’
‘And then?’ repeated Duncan.
‘After he died? Then, you—?’
Duncan had another, violent glimpse of the scarlet kitchen in his father’s house. He looked at Fraser in the moonlight, feeling his heart begin to race; wanting to tell him what had happened; longing to tell him!—but unable, finally, to say the words. He lowered his gaze and said flatly instead, ‘After he died, I didn’t. I meant to, and I didn’t. That’s all. All right?’
Fraser must not have noticed the change in his tone. He went on, ‘So they put you in here! There’s British justice for you, isn’t it! Two lives ruined instead of one. When all you needed, I suppose—’
‘Don’t let’s talk about it,’ said Duncan.
‘Not if you don’t want to. Of course not. It makes me sick, that’s all. If only somebody, perhaps your father, or—Shit!’ He leapt from his chair. ‘What the hell was that?’
A bomb had fallen, closer than ever; the blast had come so forcefully, the panes of glass in the window had been blown or sucked against their frames and one, with a sound like a pistol firing, had cracked. Duncan looked up. Fraser had darted back as far as the door and had tried to push it open. The blanket had fallen from his shoulders. ‘Shit! Shit!’ he said again. ‘That was an oil-bomb, wasn’t it? They make that whining sound, don’t they?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Duncan.
Fraser nodded. ‘I’ve heard them come down before. That was an oil-bomb all right.—God!’ Now another one had fallen. He tried the door again, then looked around, his voice rising. ‘Suppose an oil-bomb hit this hall: how d’you think we’d do? We’d be roasted in our beds! Do they even have fire-watchers on the roof? I’ve never heard anyone talk about fire-watchers, have you? Suppose a cluster of them came down? How quickly do you think a twirl could make his way to all the landings, to open all the doors? Would they even bother to come up out of their shelter? Christ! They could at least take us down to the Firsts when the Warning goes. They could let us sleep on our mattresses in the Rec!’
His voice was high and broken as a boy’s; and Duncan understood suddenly how really upset he was, and how hard he had been trying, until now, to make light of his fear. His face was white and strained and sweating. His short hair stood up: he smoothed it back with both his hands, again and again.
Then he caught Duncan’s gaze; and when Duncan, embarrassed, looked away, he grew calmer. ‘You think I’m funking it,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Duncan. ‘I wasn’t thinking that.’
‘Well, perhaps I am.’ He showed his hand. He was shaking. ‘Look at me!’
‘What does it matter?’
‘What does it matter? Christ! You’ve no idea! I—Shit!’
Now men were beginning to call out. They sounded afraid, like Fraser. One man was shouting for Mr Garnish. Another was thumping with something on his cell door. The windows jumped in their frames again, as another bomb fell, closer than ever…After that bombs fell, or seemed to fall, like rain. It was like being trapped in a dustbin while someone beat on it with a bat.
‘Giggs, you cunt!’ somebody shouted. ‘This is your fucking fault! I’m going to get you, Giggs! I’m going to frigging well slaughter you!’
But Giggs had shut up; and after a moment the shouting man shut up, too. Calling into the sound of the explosions was somehow horrible: Duncan had the sense that most of the men were in their bunks, lying tensely, silently, counting the seconds, waiting for the blasts.
Fraser was still standing, flinching, at the door. Duncan said to him, ‘Get back into bed until it stops.’
‘Suppose it doesn’t stop? Or suppose it stops, and we stop with it?’
‘It’s still miles away,’ said Duncan. ‘The yards’—he was making it up—‘the yards make it sound worse than it is. They make the bangs bigger than they really are.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Yes. Haven’t you ever noticed, when a man calls out of his window, how echoey it sounds?’
Fraser nodded, fastening on to the idea. ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘I’ve noticed that. That’s true, you’re right.’ But he was still shaking; and after a minute, he rubbed his arms. He was dressed only in his pyjamas, and the cell was freezing.
‘Go back to bed,’ Duncan said again. And then, when Fraser didn’t move, he got to his feet and climbed on to the chair, to close the curtain. He looked out of the window as he did it, and saw the yard, and the prison building opposite, lit up by the moon. A searchlight moved, as if restless or mad, about the sky, and somewhere to the east—it might have been Maida Vale, it might have been as far away as Euston—there was the faint, irregular glow of a rising fire. He brought in his gaze, to the crack in the windowpane. It was neatly done, a perfect arc; it didn’t look like something made by force or violence, at all. But when he put his fingers to it he felt it give, and he knew that if he pressed at it harder, it would shatter.
He seized the black-out curtain and pulled it across, and secured it to the sill; after that the view could have been of anything, and the cell—which was plunged into an almost perfect darkness—could have been quite a different sort of room—could have been anywhere, or nowhere. Where the moonlight struck the curtain from behind, it was baffled; but here and there it leaked through weaknesses in the weave of the fabric and made brilliant little stars and spots and crescents, like spangles on the cloak of a stage magician.
He got back into bed. He heard Fraser take a couple of steps and bend to pick up his blanket. But then he stood still, as if hesitating, still afraid…At last, very quietly, he spoke.
‘Let me come in with you, Pearce, will you?’ he said. ‘Let me share your bunk, I mean.’ And, when Duncan didn’t answer, he added simply, ‘It’s this bloody war. I can’t bear to lie alone.’
So Duncan put back the covers and moved in closer to the wall, and Fraser got in beside him and lay still. They didn’t speak. But every time another bomb fell, or a burst of anti-aircraft fire went up, Fraser would flinch and tense—like a man in pain, being knocked and jolted about. Soon Duncan found himself tensing with him, not in fear, but in sympathy.
That made Fraser laugh. ‘God!’ he said. His teeth were chattering. ‘I’m sorry, Pearce.’
‘There’s nothing to be sorry for,’ said Duncan.
‘Now that I’ve started shaking, I can’t seem to stop.’
‘That’s how it works.’
‘I’m making you shake.’
‘It doesn’t matter. You’ll warm up soon, and then you’ll be all right.’
Fraser shook his head. ‘It isn’t just through being cold, Pearce.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘You keep saying that. It matters terribly. Don’t you see?’
‘See what?’ asked Duncan.
‘Don’t you think I never wonder, about—about fear? It’s the very worst thing, the very worst thing of all. I could take any amount of tribunals. I could take women calling me gutless in the streets! But to think to oneself, quietly, that the tribunals and the women might be right; to have the suspicion gnawing and gnawing at one: do I truly believe this, or am I simply a—a bloody coward?’ He wiped his face again, and Duncan realised that the sweat upon his cheeks was mixed with tears. ‘You won’t catch men like me admitting it,’ he went on, less steadily. ‘But we feel it, Pearce, I know we feel it…And meanwhile, one sees the most ordinary types of men—men like Grayson, like Wright—going cheerfully off to fight. Are they the less brave, because they’re stupid? Do you think I don’t wonder how I’ll feel, when the war’s over, knowing that I’m probably only still alive because of fellows like them? Mean
while, here I am, and here’s Watling, and Willis, and Spinks, and all the other COs in every other gaol in England. And if—’ A plane buzzed loudly overhead. He grew tense again, until it passed. ‘And if we’re all burnt to death by an oil-bomb, will that make us brave men?’
‘I think it’s brave,’ said Duncan, ‘to do what you’ve done. Anyone would think it.’
Fraser wiped his nose. ‘An easy kind of bravery, doing nothing at all! You’re a braver man than I am, Pearce.’
‘Me!’
‘You did something, didn’t you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You did the thing—the thing you were talking about, that brought you here.’
Duncan shuddered, turning away.
‘It took a kind of courage, didn’t it?’ insisted Fraser. ‘Christ knows, it took more courage than I’ve got.’
Duncan moved again. He raised his hand—as if, even in the darkness, to push away Fraser’s gaze. ‘You don’t know anything about it,’ he said roughly. ‘You think—Oh!’ He felt disgusted. For even now, with Fraser trembling at his side, he couldn’t bring himself to tell him the simple truth. ‘Don’t talk about it,’ he said instead. ‘Shut up.’
‘All right. I’m sorry.’
They were silent after that. The buzz of aeroplanes was still heavy overhead, the pounding of ack-ack fire still dreadful. But when the next explosion came it was farther off, and the next was further off again, as the raiders moved on…
Fraser grew calmer. In another minute the All Clear went, and he gave a final quiver, passed his sleeve across his face, and then lay still. The hall was quiet. No one stood at their window to whistle or to cheer. Men who must have been lying rigid like him, or curled into balls, now lifted their heads, put out their limbs, to test the stillness of the night; and fell back exhausted.
Only the officers stirred: out they came, like beetles from underneath a stone. Duncan heard their footsteps on the cinder surface of the yard—slow, and halting, as if they were amazed to have emerged and found the prison still intact.
He knew, then, what sound would come next: the shivering sound of the metal landings, as Mr Mundy made his round. After a moment it started up, and he lifted his head, the better to hear it. The bar of light beneath the door showed extra palely now, because the cell was so dark. He saw Mr Mundy come and slide back the guard from over the spy-hole. He knew that Fraser saw it, too. But when Fraser opened his mouth, Duncan lifted his hand and put his fingers across his lips, to keep him from speaking; and when Mr Mundy called, in his night whisper, ‘All right?’ Duncan didn’t answer. The call came a second time, and a third, before Mr Mundy gave up and moved reluctantly away.