The Protagonists

by James Barlow

  ‘Do you have a half day?’

  ‘Yes. On Tuesdays.’

  ‘Then may I take you to lunch again on Tuesday? We can discuss – all of this – again at lunch; and if you decide in my favour we could perhaps drive somewhere else afterwards or see a show …’

  ‘All right,’ said Olwen. ‘I’d agree to that. And I’ve enjoyed myself today, thank you.’

  ‘One more request,’ said Harrison. ‘May I call you Olwen?’

  She nodded – for it was difficult to refuse without seeming churlish – and he went on, ‘Will you call me Roy? That would give me an equal pleasure.’

  At five-thirty Olwen, rather tired after the work, but still pleasurably excited and perturbed about her meeting with Harrison, walked home to her rooms. She lived now in an old, three-storied house with a widow and the other guest, Hazel. The house was in an Edwardian district, and was one of a straight, long line of nearly two hundred. It was respectable but dreary, with a very small front garden, scarcely two yards to the pavement, a long, dark hall and rather spacious, musty rooms. These were full of old, faded photographs, furniture bought at sales, heavily-framed pictures of cows in fields, bulky, second-hand wardrobes upstairs; even the wallpaper was dark. Olwen did not mind it at all. Mrs Wilson, the widow, was very cheerful, laughing uproariously at the slightest opportunity. She was very nearly affectionate, certainly vitally interested in anything the two girls had to say. Hazel was five years younger than Olwen. She also was affectionate, admiring Olwen for her beauty, sincerity and seriousness. She confessed all her own misbehaviour to Olwen, more or less throwing herself on Olwen’s mercy. She would explain all the events that had led to her getting drunk with her bus-driver, a married man, and permitting slight impropriety afterwards, and would expect Olwen to comfort her conscience. She listened to what Olwen had to say about the customers at work, her past experiences at the hospital, her feelings about Joe and Stephen. The two girls’ duty hours tended to overlap, but whenever this did not happen and they could share their leisure hours, they did so, going shopping or to the cinema.

  As Olwen came beyond the porch into the long, tiled hall Mrs Wilson greeted her. ‘Here’s Olwen,’ she said. ‘Are you tired? Hazel’s in, and there’s a letter from Wales for you.’

  ‘My feet hurt,’ Olwen said. ‘Is the letter upstairs, Mrs Wilson?’

  ‘I gave it to Hazel. Are you going out tonight?’

  ‘We might go to the pictures.’

  Olwen climbed the stairs to the large front room, complete with bed and gas ring, which was her home. Inside, on a bed, a girl was leaning against the pillows, reading a magazine. She was plump, dark-haired, pretty, but with an exhausted pallor, had large brown eyes and a rather naïve expression. She jumped as Olwen opened the door and entered.

  ‘My God,’ she said. ‘You did give me a start. I was reading.’

  ‘So I see. What’s for tea?’

  ‘Herrings. I’ve had mine.’

  ‘Let’s go out tonight. I feel restless.’

  ‘Okay. I’d like that. What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m writing in my diary.’

  ‘But the day isn’t over yet,’ Hazel complained. ‘Aren’t we going out?’

  ‘The day’s over for me.’

  ‘Are you tired or something?’

  ‘It’s not that. Something’s happened.’

  ‘You’ve met a man!’ said Hazel. ‘Tell me how it happened.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better if I didn’t?’ Olwen queried. ‘It might be unlucky to talk about it. I’ll tell you something – it may be serious.’

  ‘How wonderful,’ said Hazel in genuine happiness. ‘Look, let’s break all your rules tonight. It’s St Patrick’s Day and you’ve met a man. Come and have a drink after the flicks.’

  ‘All right,’ said Olwen. ‘But only one – I know you! And let’s take Mrs Wilson with us. Don’t say anything to her, will you?’

  On the following Tuesday at one o’clock, Olwen was more prepared for her second meeting with Harrison. There was no strand of hair over her forehead this time; she wore the only costume she had, her best shoes and one of her two pairs of nylon stockings.

  He was waiting for her by his car in exactly the same place as before, and was visibly pleased to see her. Olwen’s own heart fluttered at his appearance. He was theatrically good-looking, tall and slim, well-dressed in another tweed suit, the heavy tweed overcoat, brown shoes, and he carried his gloves in one hand. She realized with how much pleasure she had anticipated this next meeting and how much she desired to be relieved of that scruple, that faint hesitation promoted by the remembrance that it was he who had asked her out, quite boldly despite the politeness, and it was she who had inquired about the wife, not he who had offered the information. Yet she could not be perturbed at the way either of these things had taken place; they hadn’t been obvious enough in either case to be categorized as wrong in any way; in any case, when questioned about the wife he had not lied to her. What was she worrying about? She could not herself define it. His large, sentimental eyes smiled at her in obvious pleasure. He looks like an ex-officer, she thought.

  ‘I’m so glad you came, Olwen,’ he said. ‘Once again I was afraid you might not.’

  Olwen stared straight into his eyes and noted the dark, sallow face with its slightly taut hollows at each side. ‘I know how you feel,’ she said. ‘I was the same. Let’s not keep apologizing because we met in a shop.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ Harrison said. ‘Let’s have lunch instead. I say, I’ve got one call to make afterwards. Do you mind? You could come with me.’

  ‘I haven’t decided about that yet,’ Olwen said.

  ‘Well, I hope you do.’

  She had two sherries before her lunch and in consequence felt more confident – in fact, quite gay. Harrison’s own conversation was witty and interesting. He made few attempts to flatter her, but instead talked earnestly and, when Olwen was talking, listened with all his attention.

  ‘Listen, Roy,’ she said towards the end of the meal. ‘I’ve been thinking during the last few days – playing a sort of guessing game. Tell me if I made the correct conclusions. You’re over thirty?’

  ‘Thirty-five,’ said Harrison.

  ‘You were an Army officer?’

  ‘Nearly right. I was R.A.F.’

  ‘You were a pilot?’

  ‘Bombers,’ he said. His eyes misted over. Perhaps he was in the clouds, searching for the target indicators, thinking in terms of flak, photographs. Or was it that he made a study of inscrutability – or perhaps Yogi? He certainly seemed to become lost quickly in thought, and gazed unseeing at the end of the room. ‘I was at Little Over.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘It was a bomber station. Rather special. Dropped mines in the Kiel Canal – that was one of our shows. Only four of we originals left. I did sixty-four ops from there.’

  ‘Sixty-four!’

  ‘It’s a lot,’ Harrison admitted. ‘I was very lucky. I’d already flown on fifty in the Middle East. Lost my first crew out there.’

  ‘I knew you were something – reckless.’

  He lowered his gaze modestly. ‘All over now, Olwen.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘I’m flattered that you should be.’

  ‘Then I guessed rather wildly that you’d been to Oxford or Cambridge …’

  ‘Woman’s intuition!’ he laughed. ‘It was Oxford. I studied chemistry there –’

  ‘I thought chemistry was studied at Cambridge,’ Olwen said, remembering Bond.

  ‘Oh, there’s no hard-and-fast rule,’ Roy said, waving his hands vaguely. ‘I wasn’t limited to chemistry. There was literature and rugger and beer-drinking as well. Splendid days. All gone now, of course – everything for money n
ow …’

  ‘I also worked out that you are a representative because you can’t stand the office sort of life.’

  ‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘A fellow I knew in the R.A.F. was a district manager … Matter of fact, they wanted to send me to Pakistan. English representative, you know. Very good job – house, servants, cars and what not. Interesting country too. But this terrible business happened to Evelyn … Can’t go abroad now, of course. Not yet, anyway …’

  Harrison paused to look intently across the table at Olwen. ‘I’ve been thinking, too, about all this … Oh, don’t blush, Olwen. I’ve been thinking about you very seriously. I want to do the right thing by you … I don’t suppose you like it much, coming with me when my wife’s alive – if you can call that alive.’ He shuddered. ‘I had to speak to you when I saw you, Olwen. Couldn’t leave it twelve months, or you might have gone … I saw the doctor on Sunday – that’s the visiting day – and he says it may be less than twelve months. A merciful release. Or a miracle. But I don’t believe in miracles.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Olwen, ‘that there’s no harm in our just knowing each other.’

  ‘That’s how I felt,’ Harrison said. ‘But I can’t pretend that it’s a platonic kind of feeling. I admire you, Olwen. You’re unbelievably beautiful.’

  Olwen’s blush deepened, but her concern faded slowly. He cared for her, but wanted to do the right thing by everybody. She couldn’t ask for more, and looking at him in her relief she knew that she admired him tremendously. He was in love with her, but still capable of doing the moral thing. It indicated that he was a good man with a strong character. Mama and Dada and Tom would be excited when she told them. But when would that be? It would have to be after the twelve months Roy had mentioned. Any other way would worry them, for at that distance they wouldn’t understand about the wife.

  ‘I’ve been guessing too,’ Roy said. ‘You’re twenty-two?’

  ‘Nearly twenty-six,’ Olwen said.

  ‘Are you?’ he said in surprise, and then smiled. ‘You’re a well-preserved old woman. Your family had a bad time in the war. Hence your working at an unfamiliar job in a strange city …’

  ‘I came here because I wanted to nurse,’ she explained. ‘A friend worked at a Birlchester hospital, so I followed her.’

  ‘You send money away every week to your grey-haired granny?’

  Olwen wondered what he was driving at. Was he trying to establish what was her social status? She felt for the first time a feeling of shame because her father was a bus-driver. She couldn’t admit it to Roy; it might cancel everything when it had scarcely begun. ‘My people are farmers,’ she said, ‘but I do send a pound or so each week to help Mama.’

  ‘You have no brothers or sisters?’

  ‘I have a brother.’

  ‘He’s at home on the farm?’

  She hesitated. ‘Yes.’

  Roy looked straight at her with the large, sentimental eyes. ‘You’ve been in love three or four times,’ he guessed, ‘always tenderly, and you’ve never made a fool of yourself?’

  It sounded a little like an inquiry about her virginity, but Olwen answered truthfully, ‘Something like that.’

  ‘And now,’ he said, ‘you’d like a cup of coffee?’

  ‘Absolutely right,’ said Olwen.

  When they left the hotel they found that the weather had deteriorated and it was raining heavily. Roy had left the hood of his car down and he fixed it now urgently, wiped the seats with a cloth, and ushered Olwen into the vehicle. ‘Now you’ll have to come with me,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t wait about at bus stops in this.’

  ‘All right,’ said Olwen. ‘My decision is made for me.’

  The rain drummed on the canvas and there was a smell of oil, but she felt more a part of Roy’s world because of it. The windscreen wiper on her side was not working, but when Roy stopped the car she could see that he was outside Birrell’s, the shop at which she and Hazel obtained their groceries. Roy came back to the car elated. ‘Got a good order there. A hundred and fifty gross.’

  ‘Is that a lot?’

  ‘It’s not bad,’ he said. ‘I say, we can’t very well go far in this rain, can we?’

  ‘It’s set in for the day,’ Olwen said. ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘I don’t mind what we do,’ Olwen said. She pointed back along the main road. ‘Let’s go to the cinema.’

  Inside the darkness of the cinema Roy gave her a box of chocolates. After some time had elapsed he held her hand; he did not hold it for long, but before releasing it he gave an affectionate squeeze. Olwen returned this. After the show Roy took Olwen to a Tudor sort of café, full of old ladies, young mothers with their children, with horse brasses and water-colours on the dark wooden walls.

  ‘What did you think of the film?’ he asked over the cakes and tea cups.

  It had been a film concerned with spies and the wartime Resistance Movement in France. ‘It was exciting,’ Olwen said. ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘Amusing,’ he said, ‘but not like the real thing.’

  ‘It seemed real to me. I was biting my nails.’

  Roy laughed. ‘A good job you never became a spy,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you weren’t either,’ Olwen commented, slightly piqued. ‘You were a pilot.’

  ‘Up to 1944 certainly,’ he said. ‘Then I had slight eyestrain and had to be taken off. I speak French, and so …’ He waved his hands, palms upwards, to indicate without words the parachute droppings, the secret meetings and messages, the Gestapo …

  ‘You seem to have done everything.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Roy said. ‘Not everything. I’ve never kissed a red-haired girl.’

  Olwen blushed scarlet instantly, but at an uncomfortable thought which somehow entered her mind. If redheads were the only women he had not kissed, did this not imply an abundance of blondes and brunettes? ‘You should write a book about the things you’ve done,’ she said.

  He did not seem to notice her confusion, but commented, ‘Some of the stuff’s still secret. Where shall we go this evening? Dancing or a ride?’

  ‘Is it raining?’

  ‘I think it’s stopped.’

  ‘Then let’s ride,’ Olwen suggested, because she wanted to be near him in the car, to talk and listen for hours yet to his talk. Dancing meant an impersonal crowd …

  ‘I know,’ Roy said. ‘We’ll drive round and then have dinner at the Castle at Brownhill. It’s a smart little place,’ he explained. ‘One gets a first-class meal there.’

  ‘You’ve travelled a lot.’

  ‘I cover the whole county.’

  ‘Do you meet a lot of women?’

  ‘Oh, Olwen,’ he pleaded. ‘You’re still not at ease about this. You mustn’t think on those lines. Two years ago Evelyn was as well as you. Since she – since then there’s been nothing but work and the pain of waiting. I feel very guilty as it is. Don’t make it too difficult for us to associate at all.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Olwen said. ‘I wasn’t being serious, anyway. Don’t feel unhappy, Roy, because I would wait willingly for those twelve months to pass.’

  ‘You mean –’

  ‘I mean that I like you.’

  She could see that he was tremendously elated, and because there could only be one reason for that, she was pleased too. She wanted him to fall in love with her; and it seemed that he would; she was very nearly in love with him; so long as they could retain some kind of integrity towards the unknown Evelyn, then Olwen was willing to love him patiently now, in tenderness, without passion, while they waited until they could legally and morally become passionate. It did not seem to be too early to think on these lines, because he was serious, and this was the course of action that she intended.

  He drove the sports car t
hrough the spring evening, rather pointlessly, as the darkness soon came. At the Castle, a small inn with many beams and unnecessary steps, they received a personal sort of welcome. Already she was beginning to collect memories, and this was one of place … Olwen had several sherries and an excellent meal. Roy plied her with more sherry before they left, but she refused it. ‘No, thanks, Roy. I’m nearly asleep as it is. Anyway, it’s getting late.’

  In the country lanes on the way back Roy drove slowly and eventually turned into one in total darkness to stop. With the engine stopped, it was so quiet that it was almost embarrassing. One could almost hear thoughts. ‘Let’s stop and talk,’ Roy suggested, having already done so. ‘Like a cigarette?’

  He had now turned off the lights of the car, and she knew in a mixture of pleasure and alarm that he intended to kiss her. Olwen had not the power to deny the moment with cigarettes, and replied, ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Do you want me to pretend?’ he asked.

  ‘Pretend?’

  ‘Pretend that I don’t love you. I do, you see, and it seemed pointless to hide that …’

  ‘I don’t mind if you love me,’ Olwen said – and if her voice trembled it surely could not be conscience – ‘as long as we can love with clear consciences.’

  ‘You put it perfectly,’ Roy said. ‘We must do the right thing.’

  He caressed her gently, her hair and face, even her ears, and then turned her face upwards. She closed her eyes as if to pretend she did not know she was being kissed: it was just some thing theoretical that was happening: some thing she wanted in thought. His kisses were quite gentle at first, but became longer and more passionate as the minutes went by. He did not seem to be in any hurry, even though it was late: it would take a long time to satisfy him. Olwen’s head swam a little because of the sherry; her heart thudded as he kissed round her neck; she recognized that they had already passed the point of a mere tender, passionless relationship; it was his fault as well as hers, but she understood his eagerness and forgave him. There was a wife somewhere who was not legally or physically dead; yet neither was she legally nor physically alive … Roy whispered her name and Olwen opened her eyes. In the feeble light she could see the taut hollows in his cheeks and a vein that ticked at the side of his eyebrow. There was no doubting the truth of his admiration; he was very excited; his very breathing was too heavy to be faithful; in his pleasure he had obviously forgotten his previous unhappiness, the accident and the beautiful wife who had gone mad and ugly … ‘Don’t be too happy,’ Olwen pleaded. ‘We have a long time to endure.’