The Night Watch Read Free Page A

pain.You are not subject to those thoughts and opinions, which have illness and pain as a law and condition of matter… Dear Horace, listen. You have no fear. No memory frightens you. No memory makes you think misfortune will come to you again. You have nothing to fear, dear Horace. Love is with you. Love fills and surrounds you…'
    The words went on and on-like a rain of gentle blows, from a stern lover. It was impossible, Duncan thought-forgetting, now, his desire to laugh-not to want to surrender yourself to the passion of them; impossible not to want to be impressed, moved, persuaded. He thought of the young man with the wasted arm; he imagined the man sitting where Mr Mundy was now, being told, 'Love fills you,' being told, 'You must not fear,' and willing and willing his arm to lengthen, to flesh itself out. Could such a thing happen? Duncan wanted, for Mr Mundy's sake, and the young man's sake, to think that it could. He wanted it more than anything.
    He looked at Mr Mundy. Soon after the start of the treatment he had closed his eyes; now, as the whispers went on, he began, very gently, to cry. The tears flowed thinly down his cheeks, they gathered at his throat and wet his collar. He made no attempt to catch them, but sat with his hands loosely in his lap, his neat, blunt fingers now and then twitching; and every so often he drew in his breath and let it out again in a great shuddering sigh.
    'Dear Horace,' Mr Leonard was insisting, 'no mind has any power over you. I deny the power of thoughts of disorder over you. Disorder does not exist. I affirm the power of harmony over you, over every organ of you: the arms of you, the legs of you; the eyes and ears of you; the liver and kidneys of you; the heart and brain and stomach and loins of you. Those organs are perfect. Horace, hear me…'
    He kept it up for forty-five minutes; then sat back, quite untired. Mr Mundy got out his handkerchief at last and blew his nose and wiped his face. But his tears had already dried; he stood without help, and seemed to walk a little easier, and be a little lighter in his mind. Duncan took him his jacket. Mr Leonard rose and stretched, had a sip of water from a glass. When Mr Mundy paid him, he took the money with an air of great apology.
    'And tonight, of course,' he said, 'I shall include you in my evening benediction. You'll be ready for that? Shall we say, half-past nine?' For he had many patients, Duncan knew, whom he never saw: patients who sent him money, and whom he worked on from a distance, or by letter and telephone.
    He shook Duncan 's hand. His palm was dry, his fingers soft and smooth as a girl's. He smiled, but his look was inward-seeming, like a mole's. He might, at that moment, have been blind.
    And how awkward for him, Duncan thought suddenly, if he were!
    The idea made him want to laugh again. When he and Mr Mundy were back on the path in front of the house, he did laugh; and Mr Mundy picked up his hilarity and began to laugh too. It was a sort of nervous reaction, to the room, the stillness, the barrage of gentle words. They caught one another's eye, as they left the shadow of the crooked house and walked towards Lavender Hill, and laughed like children.
    'I shan't want a flighty sort of woman,' the man was saying. 'I had enough of that sort of thing with my last girl, I don't mind telling you.'
    Helen said, 'We always advise our clients to keep as open a mind as possible, at this stage of things.'
    The man said, 'Hmm. And an open wallet, too, I dare say.'
    He wore a dark blue demob suit, already shiny at the elbows and the cuffs, and his face was sallow with a tired tropical tan. His hair was combed with fantastic neatness, the parting straight and white as a scar; but the oil had little crumbs of scurf caught in it, that kept drawing Helen's eye.
    'I dated a WAAF once,' he was saying bitterly now. 'Every time we passed a jeweller's she'd just happen to turn her ankle-'
    Helen drew out another sheet. 'What about