The Protagonists

by James Barlow

  Fortescue said confusedly, not knowing what he ought to say, still longing to escape, ‘No.’

  ‘The coat has your name on it.’

  ‘It isn’t mine.’

  ‘We fetched it from your home.’

  Fortescue gasped, ‘From my home!’

  MacIndoe nodded. ‘Yes, of course. Where else? Your wife didn’t want to let us have them.’

  ‘You saw my wife?’

  ‘Yes. She knows all about you, Mr Fortescue.’

  What it was Evelyn knew Fortescue dared not ask. He said, ‘Then they must be my clothes.’

  ‘Quite,’ said MacIndoe. ‘And is this not a photograph of you wearing them?’

  ‘It’s not a very good photo.’

  ‘No. It was exposed a little to sunlight.’

  Fortescue shouted in fear, ‘It’s not me … I wasn’t there.’

  ‘You weren’t where?’

  Fortescue leaped frantically over the trap. ‘It’s not me,’ he said. ‘Anybody could be wearing those sort of clothes. The jacket may be another shade of colours.’

  ‘Who is your dentist?’

  ‘My dentist?’

  ‘Yes, your dentist.’

  ‘It’s Mr Wiggins.’

  ‘His address?’

  ‘Somewhere in Flowersworth.’

  ‘At 49 High Street?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘Have you been to him often?’

  ‘Since I was a kid.’

  ‘Do you think he is competent?’

  ‘I would trust him.’

  ‘So would I,’ said MacIndoe. ‘And he says that the teeth marks in Olwen’s throat are yours. He is prepared to say so on oath in a court of law.’

  Fortescue seemed scarcely able to breathe, let alone speak. In an uneven voice he said, ‘He’s a liar. He must be. He can’t know I did a thing like that.’

  ‘You did do it, didn’t you?’

  Faintly Fortescue said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘You killed her, didn’t you?’

  Even more faintly – ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why did you kill her?’

  ‘I put her in the family way, see? She intended to open her mouth. It would have ruined everything – my job, my wife …’

  ‘But you’re an old hand at the game,’ persisted MacIndoe. ‘What happened to this one?’

  ‘I couldn’t use precautions,’ said Fortescue. ‘If she’d known I carried things around with me, she’d have known there’d been other women.’

  ‘You mean she was an innocent girl?’

  Fortescue was dazed; he had lost track; it was all he could do to survive each moment. ‘I don’t know why you keep bothering about that.’

  ‘Don’t you think it matters?’

  ‘No. It’s like religion. It never meant anything to me. People always do the things they want to. They go to church because they’re made that way.’

  ‘Olwen Hughes went to church before she met you.’

  ‘She came out with me quickly enough. She did it willingly enough. Perhaps she was fed up with church.’

  ‘She’d had opportunities before she met you. She’d loved other people. How did you persuade her to surrender?’

  ‘I talked about marriage.’

  ‘Did you persuade her to make love on the day you killed her?’

  ‘I tried to, but she came out with all this stuff about a baby.’

  ‘You knew you were going to kill her – and you tried to love her?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to kill her. I was scared. She shouldn’t have threatened me.’

  ‘She threatened you?’

  ‘She intended to talk. To save others, she said, but it was revenge she wanted, of course.’

  ‘I think that you are mistaken,’ said MacIndoe. ‘I think that, despite your successes, you don’t know the first thing about the female character.’

  Fortescue had begun to weep in great gulps. He was trying hard not to, but it was useless and his sobs came in great gasps of breath. ‘I don’t want to die. Don’t let me die,’ he pleaded in wet, loose ugliness.

  ‘What are you afraid of if there’s nothing on the other side of death?’

  ‘I don’t want to die,’ Fortescue whined. Then to MacIndoe’s astonishment he added, ‘I don’t want to see her. I can’t …’

  ‘I think,’ said MacIndoe, ‘that if there is another side, the one person there who will have pity for you is Olwen. You must learn pity for her, and for the baby, and for her parents and her friends who’ve all suffered because of your vanity and self-love. Don’t you feel sorry for what you’ve done?’

  Fortescue’s head was down on the desk, as were his hands, and the tears – or was it sweat? – ran in trickles towards the ink-marks: the liquids mixed and the clearer one muddied: it was the last spoliation he would ever cause. His words came in sobs: ‘I can’t! I can’t! I’ve never been able to …’

  ‘Then for God’s sake – and for yours – try,’ MacIndoe pleaded. ‘Believe me, you haven’t much time.’

  But he has a little, MacIndoe thought. He has weeks of suffering ahead of him yet: many humiliations to save him; many people to stare at him in horror and persuade him by their revulsion; and loneliness to eat at him; and the padre to convince him; and the cold, stern words of justice to be inflicted on him; and the common sense of the two men who would play cards in the death cell with him. And there would be the comradeship of pity: the small acts of kindness by those who were part of the machine to kill him; the cigarettes and the ‘Cheer up, chum’; the wise books he could read if fear did not dement him. If there was a battle he had won part of it; but now he was a prisoner of war; and he must hope for more mercy than he had ever offered.

  It was almost over. Less than three hours had passed since they had entered the tennis club. MacIndoe was very tired, but there was one more act. The official one. He said, ‘I want you now to make a statement, Mr Fortescue. But before you do I am going to caution you …’

  Chapter Ten

  MacIndoe backed his car slowly into its garage and switched off the engine. He sat still on the leather seat for a moment. Silence was a relief; at times it was a pleasure. He yawned, thinking as he did, I’m always yawning these days, just as if I’d been on night duty.

  He carried his front-door key in his left hand and his case in the other. The flowers had faded in the front garden; something had died; but someone had cut the lawn. The front door was open. Janet had seen, or perhaps heard, his approach, and was waiting in shyness just beyond it. She would not, he knew, embrace him anywhere which could be considered as in public, so he shut the door before he spoke a word. Words were difficult. It was like coming home from a battle. Everything was the same, but you were different. There was a weight of something like unhappiness inside you. The ones who had stayed behind wanted you back as you had gone away; that was how they had loved you. You could not explain with words about the battle: about the dead and the mutilated and the injured you could not help and the next-of-kin and the prisoners and the unbearable futility of the causes. He said gruffly, ‘Well, I’m home.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  They held each other for a long moment, and MacIndoe touched the top of his wife’s head. How small and frail women are, he thought. How clever they have to be – or how beautiful – to deal with men. How frail we all are: the human body is the softest part of any accident. He had a brief, terrible vision of the way Olwen Hughes had died and found it hard to dismiss from his mind. ‘Are ye all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Do I look different or something?’

  ‘No, thank God, ye look the same.’

  ‘Ye mustna talk like that.’

  ‘I meant it.’

  ‘Well, you sho
uldna.’

  ‘Away with ye. What’s been happening while I’ve been away?’

  ‘Nothing much. There’s an invitation to the Horse Show and my sister’s written. She’s coming to London in a couple of weeks’ time. She’ll be staying with us.’

  ‘Och, that’s terrible news,’ said MacIndoe. ‘Policemen on horses and Edith coming.’

  ‘Why don’t ye like Edith?’ Janet asked seriously. ‘She’s my twin sister, but ye’ve never liked her. Maybe ye don’t like me …’

  MacIndoe pulled her head down on to his chest. ‘The nonsense ye talk!’

  ‘But she’s just the same!’

  ‘Rubbish! Her voice is different.’

  ‘Is that all? Ye mean ye only like me for my voice? I never heard of such a thing! Did ye eat those sandwiches?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And did ye give Mr Baker some?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said MacIndoe. ‘We ate them in Oxford.’

  ‘Why in Oxford?’

  ‘I don’t know. It wasn’t Oxford, anyway.’

  ‘Ye shouldna lie.’

  ‘It was Oxfordshire somewhere.’

  ‘If ye can’t be sure of the town, how can ye be sure of the county?’

  ‘Stop your nattering. Ye’re like a policewoman.’

  ‘Thank ye for the card and the letter. It looks a pretty place.’

  ‘It’s nice enough.’

  ‘Will ye be going back?’

  ‘Aye. For the Assizes.’

  ‘Shall I come with ye? Is it nice enough for a holiday?’

  MacIndoe said quickly, ‘No; ye’d better not come.’

  She looked at him. ‘Was it a bad one?’

  ‘They’re all bad.’

  ‘Ye know what I mean.’

  ‘It was pretty bad. I don’t want to go there for any holiday. Not along the river.’

  ‘It was only a thought.’

  ‘It was where she died, ye see.’

  ‘Ye caught him?’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘Was he a foolish one? He lost his head?’

  ‘No. It was worse than that. He couldna face up to his responsibility. He didna mind who suffered … He gave her a baby and then took fright.’

  ‘He killed the two of them then? Oh, that’s bad,’ said Janet. ‘Will they find him guilty?’

  ‘They will.’

  ‘Did they say anything at the magistrate’s court?’

  ‘No. They just committed him for trial at the Assizes.’

  ‘What about his folk?’

  ‘His wife’s going back to her parents. The most extraordinary thing,’ said MacIndoe, and it was indeed remarkable to him, ‘was that he wrote about it in a book – ye know, an exercise book. We found it in his car. He wrote about that day, and the words he put into her mouth were not the words she used on that day, but the sort of things she’d been saying for weeks. What he wrote down as her words was beautiful, and yet d’ye know why he wrote them? Because he thought they proved what a fool she was.’

  ‘What a peculiar thing,’ said Janet. But MacIndoe could see that she did not comprehend how extraordinary it was. One had to be a participant in the battle to understand the freak effects of war.

  There was the sound of excited children’s voices. A girl’s voice cried, ‘It’s Daddy, it’s Daddy!’ MacIndoe’s two children ran into the hall. The boy was taller and faster, and the girl gave a quick cry, tears not far off, because she wanted to be the one who was loved first. MacIndoe hugged each one in turn; then he picked Mary up. She was the one who was full of laughter and tears, the one who needed love the more. Andrew, serious and quiet, was already moving out into a world of his own. MacIndoe said, ‘And Daddy’s brought something with him.’

  ‘What?’ she asked. Tell me.’

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘No. Tell me. A doll?’

  ‘Almost right.’

  ‘A teddy bear!’

  She knew she had guessed correctly, because that was one of the things she wanted; and when one is eight years old one still has the things one wants; one is even entitled to them. ‘Where is it, Daddy?’

  ‘In the car.’

  ‘Let me fetch it.’

  From his raincoat pocket MacIndoe produced a small model, which he handed to Andrew. ‘Thank you,’ the boy said. ‘What’s the red cross for?’

  ‘It’s an ambulance. I knew you hadn’t one.’

  ‘What’s an ambulance for?’

  ‘For when people get hurt.’

  ‘Do people get hurt in your games?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which people get hurt?’

  MacIndoe said, ‘I think perhaps that all of them do.’