The Protagonists

by James Barlow

  Taylor looked sullen and white again. ‘I don’t want any tea.’

  ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

  ‘What’s the good of it?’

  ‘Don’t forget you’re on my conscience if you don’t eat,’ Olwen said. ‘We had an agreement about it.’

  ‘Don’t flannel me,’ he said loudly. ‘I don’t have to eat.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing, except that I’m cheesed off.’

  ‘Have you got a temperature? Why are you back in bed?’

  ‘I’ve got fluid on the other lung. The quack’s going to ease up on the collapsed one. I have news for you, nurse. You’ll be fascinated. I’m afraid. They’ve worn me down at last. Not the Germans – oh, no, that would have been too obvious – it had to be Sister Jones, a pack of nurses and a doctor who is brave about other people’s deaths …’

  ‘You’ll get better.’

  ‘Don’t give me that crap,’ he said. ‘I’m going to die. How long have I got, nurse?’

  ‘It’s silly to ask questions like that’ Olwen smiled faintly. I’m not an insurance company.’

  ‘You’d lie to me if you were,’ Taylor said. ‘You have to lie, anyway. It’s very nice of you to lie to me, nurse. Do you pray for me too?’

  His tone was derisive, and Olwen blushed as she answered, ‘Yes.’

  He was a little surprised by her ‘Yes’, and said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know or imagine– It’s just that I’ve been here for months. I’ve seen the others. I know too much for a patient.’

  ‘Everyone has setbacks.’

  ‘Dirty, stinking hospitals,’ Taylor said. ‘They sap the guts out of you for month … Why can’t they do it clean and quick?’ He lowered his voice and said, almost to himself, ‘Why didn’t it happen in France, Germany or Poland? I’d have laughed …’

  By the next day his mood had changed; he became calmer, cheerful, and made no mention of death. He ate all the food he was given. His fluid was extracted – a long needle was used to remove it; it was painful and alarming, but he said nothing. A week later there was fluid in both lungs. It was removed and more came. Yet still Taylor did not complain. It was not the frontal assault of pain he minded, but the prolonged wait for it; the trick pain had of waiting until he imagined he was on the way to cure before it struck again. He came to be regarded with respect as one of those patients who stay in sanatoria for years, whose recovery or death becomes an event in the whole busy hospital. He was called Stephen by the nurses and doctors, and gradually began to accept the role. He learned by its absence to forget the outside world (for him it was as far back as 1940) and his longing for it; to regard the institutional life as the normal one, and temperatures and fluids as the trials of the day.

  In the succeeding days he began to take an interest in the occupational therapy and to become very expert at it. He made toys and handbags, insisting on giving Olwen one of the latter. He talked to her incessantly when she was near; it was always she who was asked to do any small task outside the hospital. Olwen posted his letters, bought magazines and cigarettes – even beer if he persisted. He watched her as she moved round his chalet to dust or wash or simply came in to talk, but she never suspected that he could be in love with her. He was a patient who was ill; he had been there a long time without falling in love with her; why should he start now? That was the way she might have reasoned, and not knowing that he was in love with her, she hurt him as often as she delighted.

  Taylor knew how foolish and painful it might be to fall in love when he was ill, but he could not help himself. He knew her footsteps so well; he listened to her singing; he waited to hear about her every innocent activity; he watched the tossing of her auburn hair and the roundness of her face as she moved through the silence of his room, that prison he knew in every detail. She was so lovely in face and body, and so unaware of it that he longed to be the one to tell her. He ached to be as well as she, to be on equal terms; and in his bitter moments he wanted her to be ill, for the same reason. When he heard her laughter in the open air he hated the patients who could walk about; they meant no more to her than he, but they could chatter to her and be accepted. They could crowd her into a corner and seize a kiss if they willed. They could, if she were agreeable, meet her at night in or beyond the grounds. She seemed so innocent, but how could he know what she did? And how could any nurse be completely innocent?

  He did not see her during all of one day, and wondered what had become of her. There was nobody he could ask without betraying himself. When he had given up hope for that day he heard her well-known footsteps in the dusk and waited impatiently until she would come to visit him.

  She came in the dark at about ten o’clock and shone a torch on him. ‘Hello, Stephen,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Are you on nights?’

  ‘Only while Peggy’s away. Have you had your drink?’

  ‘Yes,’ Taylor said. ‘I’m waiting now for my goodnight kiss.’

  The words were trite and he knew it, but one cannot whisper beautiful phrases from a sick bed unless one is Proust.

  ‘You’re all very cheeky,’ Olwen said, and the words gave him an agonized conception of what the other patients might be attempting to do. Perhaps they loved her too. One always had the foolish notion that one’s discovery of something beautiful was individual, whereas in reality the whole world stared. ‘I shan’t dare answer any bell during the night.’

  ‘Why won’t you kiss me?’ he asked sullenly. ‘I’m a special patient.’

  ‘You’re not that special.’

  He said in the bitterness of disappointment, ‘You’re afraid to.’

  ‘You don’t trap me that way,’ she laughed.

  ‘You might catch something,’ he said angrily.

  Olwen walked out without a reply, wounded by his words, but still not knowing the reason for them. Two hours later she tiptoed round the chalets to see that all the patients were asleep. Taylor had remained awake, knowing that she must come and waiting for her to do so. He made a slight movement and whispered sleepily, ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Go to sleep, Stephen.’

  ‘I’m sorry for what I said.’

  ‘Surely that hasn’t kept you awake?’

  ‘I had to apologize.’

  ‘Go to sleep and don’t worry. I had forgotten it.’

  ‘Kiss me, then.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Does there have to be a reason?’

  Olwen touched his head. ‘I don’t understand you,’ she said. ‘You didn’t need to be unkind.’ She kissed him. ‘Why were you so angry?’

  ‘Olwen,’ he whispered. ‘Surely you understand?’

  She trembled at the force of his words. ‘How did you know my name? Oh, Stephen, but I don’t love you. I like you, but –’

  ‘Don’t say it twice,’ he pleaded. ‘Lie to me. Tell me anything you like. It won’t matter. I’m going to die.’

  In astonishment, he felt the splash of her instantaneous tears on his face. ‘You’re not going to die,’ Olwen said. ‘I won’t let you. I pray for you. It wouldn’t be fair.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be fair,’ he said. ‘It’s more complicated than that. If it was fair, life wouldn’t be what it is. It would be that heaven you believe in.’

  ‘Oh, how hurt you are,’ she said, and kissed him fiercely in tremendous pity. ‘Don’t say angry things to me again. I will kiss you whenever you want me to. It will be easy to love you – I just hadn’t thought of it.’

  He touched her soft, glabrous face. ‘You’re not used to untruths, are you?’

  ‘I’ve only just started to love you. The words don’t come easily yet.’

  ‘I’ve never met anyone like you,’ Taylor said. ‘You’re gentle and yet you’re full of
life. You sing children’s songs …’

  ‘I was unaware –’

  ‘I’ve heard you doing it.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have told me. Now I shan’t be able –’

  ‘Will you come a walk with me?’

  She touched his face and hair. ‘Of course I’ll come a walk with you.’

  ‘When will you come?’

  ‘I’ll come twelve months today.’

  He winced. ‘Is it as bad as that?’

  Olwen whispered frantically, ‘Twelve months isn’t long, Stephen. You have to accept the time it takes to heal. And I’ll be here all the time. Oh, my dear, learn to wait …’

  ‘I wish I was all right now,’ he said. ‘I’d like to walk beyond those pine trees with you.’

  ‘That’s what we’ll do at the start. But you must be patient. What makes you so angry?’

  He sighed. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The war’s been over for five years.’

  ‘Not for me.’

  ‘It’s too late to be angry. We know it was cruel and unjust, but that’s exactly why nobody wants another.’

  ‘You talk like a politician,’ said Taylor. ‘I was captured in France. They marched us along the road to Luxembourg, collecting other parties on the way. It was boiling hot and they gave us no food. Blokes would drop out and the Nazis would bash ’em with their rifle butts. Some of them died. In one place they put us in a field where there was a mad bull. It killed two blokes. At the first halt I got dysentery. I used to faint all the time in the food queues. They gimme Straw to fill my pants with. That was the start of five years …’

  ‘And now this,’ said Olwen.

  Taylor had taken hold of her hands. ‘Your hands are very cold,’ he said. I’ve been giving you the old hard-luck story and all the time you’re freezing.’

  ‘I’m not cold,’ said Olwen. ‘Only my hands. I must go to see the others. Shall I come back?’

  ‘If you want to.’

  ‘Would you like a drink of coffee?’

  ‘If you’ll have one.’

  ‘All right. I’ll be back.’

  But when she returned with a jug of coffee Taylor was asleep, his mouth open and one arm limp across the bed. Olwen covered it and tiptoed away.

  On the next evening and the five following it Olwen was again on duty. Taylor would not go to sleep until she had kissed him; and when she had kissed him he couldn’t. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said when Olwen found him awake at one o’clock on the sixth morning. ‘I can sleep tomorrow, when you’re not here.’

  She said with difficulty, ‘I shan’t be here for a long time.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve been instructed to go again on the women’s section.’

  There was an uncomfortable silence and then Taylor said with angry unhappiness, ‘Did you have difficulty arranging it? Who’s coming in your place? Someone very ugly, I hope.’

  ‘Do you believe that of me? Do you think I want to go?’

  ‘What am I to believe?’

  ‘I must go on the women’s section because I’ve been told to. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Why can’t you say you won’t?’

  ‘What reason could I give? That I’m fond of one of the men? They’d keep me on the women’s section all of the time if they thought it.’

  ‘Will you come to see me?’

  ‘As often as I can manage.’

  ‘Don’t bother if you don’t want to.’

  ‘Oh, you fool,’ Olwen protested. ‘Remember I’m at work, will you? I will take every risk I can for you.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Taylor sighed. ‘I know you will. Try to see my side, though. You’re the only thing I value in the whole damn world …’

  ‘You can write to me,’ Olwen said. ‘Haven’t you any faith in me at all? And I will try to come to see you – because I want to – but it can only be for brief moments when I’m passing through.’

  While Olwen was working on the women’s section she talked to Mrs Dawson. Mrs Dawson was not particularly ill. ‘The doctor says I can leave in six weeks if there’s no setback. “Take it quietly,” he says to me. “Potter about in the garden. Have a sleep in the afternoon. Let your kids look after you.” I can see ’em doing it!’ Mrs Dawson shook with merriment. ‘You’re a good girl,’ she said to Olwen. ‘Don’t you ever think of the world outside?’

  Olwen shrugged. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Listen, my dear. Haven’t you thought of what lovely hair you have?’

  ‘Not since I was twelve.’

  ‘I’m not joking,’ explained Mrs Dawson. ‘Listen, kid, I’ve got a sister who’d like to see your hair.’

  ‘Like to see my hair?’ echoed Olwen.

  ‘She’s a hairdresser,’ said Mrs Dawson. ‘Five quid a week she pays her girls to start with, and the ones she’s got are lazy. Why don’t you let me ask her?’

  ‘It’s nice of you to think of me,’ Olwen said, ‘but I’m needed here.’

  ‘Well, see her, anyway,’ Mrs Dawson suggested. ‘I know there’s a vacancy. There’s no harm in seeing her. She’ll be here on Sunday.’

  Olwen tried to keep out of the way of Mrs Dawson and her visitor on the Sunday afternoon, but Mrs Dawson eventually insisted on her presence.

  ‘Olga,’ she said, making the introduction, ‘this is the girl I was telling you about. Nurse, this is my sister, Mrs Harper.’

  Olga Harper was a middle-aged, dyed blonde, with a tired, painted face and a small, unhappy mouth. She dressed well but unavailingly. It was all too evident that she lived for business and the money that business brought; everything else had been forgotten deliberately. ‘You’ve got nice hair, nurse,’ she said. ‘If you ever want a job in this business, let Doris know and we’ll get in touch. I’ve got three cubicles and the girls get at least five quid a week, plus tips.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ Olwen said. ‘I’ll let you know.’

  A starting wage of five pounds seemed quite a lot, but she was not interested while Stephen Taylor needed her pity. The decision was made for her. About three weeks after this conversation Peggy said at lunch, ‘Listen, Olwen. Just how fond of that soldier are you?’

  Olwen trembled in apprehension and glanced at the other nurses and the sisters, certain that they were listening to every word. ‘I like him very much,’ she said. With an effort she asked. ‘Why?’

  ‘I think he’s dying.’

  Olwen could not eat and abandoned any attempt to continue doing so. She saw the other nurses eating heartily. It was fantastic. The knives cut into meat, the forks moved in air selecting and then stabbed arbitrarily at little pieces of meat, potato and cabbage. The warm food rose upwards, tiny globules of gravy shaken off, and feminine mouths, slightly lipsticked, opened wide and then closed, the food inside. The trap. ‘I think he’s dying.’ The logical conclusion. The inevitability of nothing. He has to solve it all by himself. It’s a very big problem and no one other person has solved it, but he has to try. He must not be helped. There must be no cheating. I was going to help, but perhaps that would have been cheating of a kind. Oh God – if there is a God, and if You are not busy elsewhere this day, and if You love me, and if You love him – let’s cheat a little. Let him stay alive so that I can show him – by love or by compassion or something – that the world is not what he believes. Let him have some happiness – I do feel that he deserves it. I know happiness is not a quality, and he really ought to manage without it – he should welcome the pain, for someone else is spared it – but let’s make an exception. Let’s cheat for a little time, anyway – a few days, perhaps. Let him live so that I may try to free him of the bitterness and convince him of his own immortality. Don’t let him be embittered, please, because–

 
‘I must see him,’ she said. ‘I’ll ask permission.’

  Peggy said, ‘Do you think anyone would give it to you? And suppose they refused it? You’ve got to see him, haven’t you? It can’t wait, can it? And perhaps it shouldn’t. Come at about three o’clock, when a lot of them will be having blood tests.’

  Olwen sought an excuse to leave her own section at three o’clock, and then looked in the duty room of the male block to see if Peggy was there. Peggy said, ‘You’ve got about ten minutes.’

  Inside chalet No. 17 Stephen Taylor lay very still. His face was emaciated and quite white; the eyes had an unreality in them; it was impossible to doubt that he would soon be dead. He sat upright, leaning on three pillows; his pale lips moved and he spoke slowly. ‘You’ve come to see me?’

  The anger did not seem to be in his face; nor any fear; nor any problem; he might have been playing chess or thinking about the problems others play with: how to make the first million; how to marry the boss’s daughter; how to fly to the moon; what to do with the Jews or the Negroes; it was quite an interesting planet: rather dirty perhaps but otherwise fascinating: surely he did not want to leave it? He is not embittered, Olwen thought; my prayer has been answered.

  She held his bony hands – in a short time he had become a skeleton: an interesting skeleton with the right to vote: a skeleton that Goya should have been introduced to: still, only a skeleton: he would soon be out of the way, unable to complain; and this girl would have to find someone else to adjust her over-compensated generosity upon. It was nothing important, really: not an important case, even statistically, certainly not classical and completely without complications: just the usual human animal moaning because the one was leaving his case of pain and the other had a streak of sadness. It was doubtful if it would be reported anywhere beyond the doctor’s exercise book. The intellectual weeklies wouldn’t touch it with a barge-pole: too sentimental: too small: there was such a lot of big stuff to thrash the brains on. Probably some fool would have to be dug up to pay for the funeral. Olwen Rosemary Hughes said, not knowing of the ordinariness, the lack of intellectual merit, ‘Stephen, I would have waited for you. I will –’