The Night Watch Read Free Page B

this lady here? Let's see. Enjoys dressmaking and trips to the cinema.'
    The man leaned to look at the photograph and at once sat back, shaking his head. 'I don't care for girls in spectacles.'
    'Now, remember my advice about the open mind?'
    'I don't want to sound harsh,' he said, giving a quick glance at Helen's own rather sensible brown outfit. 'But a girl in spectacles-well, she's let herself down already. You've got to ask yourself what's going to go next…'
    They went on like this for another twenty minutes; eventually, from the file of fifteen women that Helen had initially drawn up, they'd put together a list of five.
    The man was disappointed, but hid his dismay in a show of aggression. 'So, what happens now?' he asked, pulling at his shiny cuffs. 'This lot are shown my ugly face, I suppose, and have to say whether or not they like the look of it. I can see already how that will turn out. Perhaps I should have had myself photographed with a five-pound note behind my ear.'
    Helen imagined him at home that morning, choosing a tie, sponging his jacket, straightening and restraightening the parting in his hair.
    She saw him down the stairs to the street. When she went back up to the waiting-room she looked at Viv, her colleague, and blew out her cheeks.
    Viv said, 'Like that, was he? I did wonder. He wouldn't do for our lady from Forest Hill, I suppose?'
    'He's after someone younger.'
    'Aren't they all?' Viv stifled a yawn. On the desk before her was a diary. She patted her mouth, looking over the page. 'We've no-one, now,' she said, 'for nearly half an hour. Let's have a cup of tea, shall we?'
    'Oh, let's,' said Helen.
    They moved about more briskly, suddenly, than they ever did when dealing with clients. Viv opened the lowest drawer of a filing cabinet and brought out a neat little electric kettle and a tea-pot. Helen took the kettle down to the lavatory on the landing, and filled it at the sink. She set it on the floor, plugged it into a socket in the skirting-board, then stood waiting. It took about three minutes to boil. The paper above the socket was rising, where steam had struck it in the past. She smoothed it down, as she did every day; it lay flat for a moment, then slowly curled back up.
    The bureau was in two rooms above a wig-makers, in a street behind Bond Street Station. Helen saw the clients, individually, in the room at the front; Viv sat at her desk in the waiting-room, greeting them as they came in. There was a mismatched sofa and chairs, where people could sit when they came early. A Christmas cactus in a pot sent out occasional startling blooms. A low table held nearly-current copies of Lilliput and Reader's Digest .
    Helen had worked here since just after the end of the war; she'd taken it on as a temporary thing-something light-hearted, a contrast to her old job in a Damage Assistance department in Marylebone Town Hall. The routines were straightforward enough; she tried to do her best for the clients, and genuinely wished them well; but it was sometimes hard to remain encouraging. People came to look for new loves, but often-or so it seemed to her-only really wanted to talk about the loves that they had lost. Recently, of course, business had been booming. Servicemen, returning from overseas, found wives and girlfriends transformed out of all recognition. They came into the bureau still looking stunned. Women complained about their ex-husbands. 'He wanted me to stay in all the time.' 'He told me he didn't care for my friends.' 'We went back to the hotel we spent our honeymoon in, but it wasn't the same.'
    The water boiled. Helen made the tea and took the cups into the lavatory; Viv was in there already, and had raised the window. At the back of their building there was a fire-escape: if they climbed out they could reach a rusting metal platform with a low rail. The platform shuddered as they moved about on it, the ladder heaving against its bolts; but the spot was a sun-trap, and they made