NIGHT FEARS

The coke-brazier was elegant enough but the night-watchman was not, consciously at any rate, sensitive to beauty of form. No; he valued the brazier primarily for its warmth. He could not make up his mind whether he liked its light. Two days ago, when he first took on the job, he was inclined to suspect the light; it dazzled him, made a target of him, increased his helplessness; it emphasized the darkness. But tonight he was feeling reconciled to it; and aided by its dark, clear rays, he explored his domain—a long narrow rectangle, fenced off from the road by poles round and thick as flag-posts and lashed loosely at the ends. By day they seemed simply an obstacle to be straddled over; but at night they were boundaries, defences almost. At their junctions, where the warning red lanterns dully gleamed, they bristled like a barricade. The night-watchman felt himself in charge of a fortress.

He took a turn up and down, musing. Now that the strangeness of the position had worn off he could think with less effort. The first night he had vaguely wished that the ‘No Thoroughfare’ board had faced him instead of staring uselessly up the street: it would have given his thoughts a rallying-point. Now he scarcely noticed its blankness. His thoughts were few but pleasant to dwell on, and in the solitude they had the intensity of sensations. He arranged them in cycles, the rotation coming at the end of ten paces or so when he turned to go back over his tracks. He enjoyed the thought that held his mind for the moment, but always with some agreeable impatience for the next. If he surmised there would be a fresh development in it, he would deliberately refrain from calling it up, leave it fermenting and ripening, as it were, in a luxury of expectation.

The night-watchman was a domesticated man with a wife and two children, both babies. One was beginning to talk. Since he took on his job wages had risen, and everything at home seemed gilt-edged. It made a difference to his wife. When he got home she would say, as she had done on the preceding mornings, ‘Well, you do look a wreck. This night work doesn’t suit you, I’m sure.’ The night-watchman liked being addressed in that way and hearing his job described as night work; it showed an easy competent familiarity with a man’s occupation. He would tell her, with the air of one who had seen much, about the incidents of his vigil, and what he hadn’t seen he would invent, just for the pleasure of hearing her say: ‘Well, I never! You do have some experiences, and no mistake.’ He was very fond of his wife. Why, hadn’t she promised to patch up the old blue-paper blinds, used once for the air-raids, but somewhat out of repair as a consequence of their being employed as a quarry for paper to wrap up parcels? He hadn’t slept well, couldn’t get accustomed to sleeping by day, the room was so light; but these blinds would be just the thing, and it would be nice to see them and feel that the war was over and there was no need for them, really.

The night-watchman yawned as for the twentieth time perhaps he came up sharp against the boundary of his walk. Loss of sleep, no doubt. He would sit in his shelter and rest a bit. As he turned and saw the narrowing gleams that transformed the separating poles into thin lines of fire, he noticed that nearly at the end, just opposite the brazier in fact and only a foot or two from the door of his hut, the left line was broken. Someone was sitting on the barrier, his back turned on the night-watchman’s little compound. ‘Strange I never heard him come,’ thought the man, brought back with a jerk from his world of thoughts to the real world of darkness and the deserted street—well, no, not exactly deserted, for here was someone who might be inclined to talk for half an hour or so. The stranger paid no attention to the watchman’s slowly advancing tread. A little disconcerting. He stopped. Drunk, I expect, he thought. This would be a real adventure to tell his wife. ‘I told him I wasn’t going to stand any rot from him. “Now, my fine fellow, you go home to bed; that’s the best place for you,” I said.’ He had heard drunk men addressed in that way, and wondered doubtfully whether he would be able to catch the tone; it was more important than the words, he reflected. At last, pulling himself together, he walked up to the brazier and coughed loudly, and feeling ill-at-ease, set about warming his hands with such energy he nearly burned them.

As the stranger took no notice, but continued to sit wrapped in thought, the night-watchman hazarded a remark to his bent back. ‘A fine night,’ he said rather loudly, though it was ridiculous to raise one’s voice in an empty street. The stranger did not turn round.

‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘but cold; it will be colder before morning.’ The night-watchman looked at his brazier, and it struck him that the coke was not lasting so well as on the previous nights. I’ll put some more on, he thought, picking up a shovel; but instead of the little heap he had expected to see, there was nothing but dust and a few bits of grit—his night’s supply had been somehow overlooked. ‘Won’t you turn round and warm your hands?’ he said to the person sitting on the barrier. ‘The fire isn’t very good, but I can’t make it up, for they forgot to give me any extra, unless somebody pinched it when my back was turned.’ The night-watchman was talking for effect; he did not really believe that anyone had taken the coke. The stranger might have made a movement somewhere about the shoulders.

‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘but I prefer to warm my back.’

Funny idea that, thought the watchman.

‘Have you noticed,’ proceeded the stranger, ‘how easily men forget? This coke of yours, I mean; it looks as if they didn’t care about you very much, leaving you in the cold like this.’ It had certainly grown colder, but the man replied cheerfully: ‘Oh, it wasn’t that. They forgot it. Hurrying to get home, you know.’ Still, they might have remembered, he thought. It was Bill Jackson’s turn to fetch it—Old Bill, as the fellows call him. He doesn’t like me very much. The chaps are a bit stand-offish. They’ll be all right when I know them better.

His visitor had not stirred. How I would like to push him off, the night-watchman thought, irritated and somehow troubled. The stranger’s voice broke in upon his reflections.

‘Do you like this job?’

‘Oh, not so bad,’ said the man carelessly; ‘good money, you know.’

‘Good money,’ repeated the stranger scornfully. ‘How much do you get?’

The night-watchman named the sum.

‘Are you married, and have you got any children?’ the stranger persisted.

The night-watchman said ‘Yes,’ without enthusiasm.

‘Well, that won’t go very far when the children are a bit older,’ declared the stranger. ‘Have you any prospect of a rise?’ The man said no, he had just had one.

‘Prices going up, too,’ the stranger commented.

A change came over the night-watchman’s outlook. The feeling of hostility and unrest increased. He couldn’t deny all this. He longed to say, ‘What do you think you’re getting at?’ and rehearsed the phrase under his breath, but couldn’t get himself to utter it aloud; his visitor had created his present state of mind and was lord of it. Another picture floated before him, less rosy than the first: an existence drab-coloured with the dust of conflict, but relieved by the faithful support of his wife and children at home. After all, that’s the life for a man, he thought; but he did not cherish the idea, did not walk up and down hugging it, as he cherished and hugged the other.

‘Do you find it easy to sleep in the daytime?’ asked the stranger presently.

‘Not very,’ the night-watchman admitted. ‘Ah,’ said the stranger, ‘dreadful thing, insomnia.’

‘When you can’t go to sleep, you mean,’ interpreted the night-watchman, not without a secret pride.