The Protagonists

by James Barlow

  ‘I telephoned this morning.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Please leave go of my arm.’ He released it for a moment. ‘About you.’

  ‘Are you mad? What about me?’

  ‘Only to ask if you were there. I wanted to tell you.’ He twisted the arm again. ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘About having the sack and about the baby.’

  ‘Did you tell him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you’d better not.’

  ‘I shall,’ said Olwen, weeping bitterly. ‘You can twist my arm off. You don’t think I have that kind of courage, do you? I shall tell him.’

  ‘You’ve got no proof.’

  ‘I have a letter here that talks about marriage,’ Olwen said.

  She trembled as she saw his terrible face. ‘You’ve got it here, have you?’ he said with malicious satisfaction. ‘Let’s have it.’

  ‘It’s at home.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ Roy said. ‘I know where it is.’

  He released her and they both ran the few yards to where Olwen’s handbag lay on the grass. Olwen reached the spot first, caught the bag and would have run on, but he caught her ankle and she fell on her face.

  Roy was on top of her at once and his hands went round her throat to control her wriggling. There was no thought in his head but to prevent Olwen getting away. It was not only the letter. They would know there was some truth in her words without any letter; there were blood tests; there were people she could fetch as witnesses. His large hands pressed and pressed.

  Olwen could not believe that it was happening. He only wanted to frighten her. It couldn’t happen to her. After all, he was a normal person. She wanted nothing from him now and would say so. But the hands pressed on past the point of normality and she struggled madly, sweating profusely all the time. She tried to scream, to protest, even to look at him so that he might know what he was doing and desist. She half turned and in her agony saw the vein at the side of his head pulsating furiously. Her lips moved and silently formed the words, ‘Roy, the baby …’

  PART TWO

  Criminal

  Chapter One

  It is four forty-five on the afternoon of July 27th. Without awareness I draw my car slowly towards the gutter and bring it to a stop. I do not at this moment quite know where I am. Instinct had made me stop at this time and place before I drive home to weak tea and a boiled egg. That part of the planet on which the four wheels of my car rest is revolving at about nine hundred miles an hour. The planet itself is gyrating round a star at several thousand miles an hour. The star is ninety-six million miles distant and is one in a constellation sixty million light years across. The constellation is one of many. Somewhere, the fools say, there is a God who cares about love and the hairs of our heads and whether one possesses a piece of paper before one loves a woman.

  It is Wednesday afternoon and in the absence of noise from the car I can hear the other movements: people walking along the pavement, dogs barking, shop doors opening and closing, buses passing by, other cars; in a temporary lull I hear far overhead the thin scream of a jet-plane. Some of the people all of the time. I am a human being; I do not like other human beings, but I seek my pleasures through them. People are ugly. Look at those who pass by now. The harassed, middle-aged crowd waits in livid silence, hating the possibility of another’s supremacy, at a bus stop. A twice-swollen fool pushes a pram and drags a brat from shop to shop. Love is the world, the poets say. But not if you’re caught. Oh, no. The woman is elbowed out of the way by anyone who comes near. They see she is no longer beautiful, so they do not care that she is tired or ill or in pain. Some bricklayers walk towards a cheap café. They are powerfully built and have cheerful faces, but no brains. Animals. They talk cricket. They look at a girl who passes by. She is shapely, but with a face of incredible stupidity. Another animal. She smirks at the men. They whistle back. Somewhere, the fools say, there is a beautiful God who made man in His image. But man is not beautiful. The world is full of people who are ugly or ill or stupid: the world shoves them around, and they pay, willingly and even eagerly, in money and pain and time, not knowing that it could be different, righteously indignant if someone tries to make it different. These are the fools who have not the courage of their convictions because they have no convictions. Because life kicks them in the face, they shrug and say it is a struggle. Because they have to marry someone whose beauty soon fades into the usual appearance of approaching death, they romanticize themselves: they say that love has the quality of sadness. But that is not the considered opinion of the world. All the literature of the world, as far back as it reaches and in all places, excludes mention of marriage. Love without rules, love without being trapped by rent and age and children and gas bills – how can anyone consider it in any other way? Yet they do. They rush madly at the biological trap, ignoring the great gift of freedom which science and the rubber industry have given them.

  A newsboy shouts about murder. A body has been found. The bricklayers buy a paper. They yawn. It is a warm afternoon after the rain. They do not know that in the red car thirty feet away sits the man who has committed murder. In the bright glitter of this afternoon is my moment in the world. Some of the people all of the time – yes, I’ve always managed that. Now I have a secret and must fool all of the people all of the time. The circumstances are such that I believe I will. Nevertheless, I have my moment of terror. I feel I must put on my dark spectacles, but I resist the urge and instead walk with deliberate slowness to the newsboy and back. Then, when I have read the words, I think: It is my moment, but they will never know unless I tell them: I must write it down. And now, two hours later, I am doing that. It is my intention to put this manuscript into the strong, indifferent arms of my bank, the trustee department. To be opened after my death at, I hope, a ripe old age.

  In the newspaper the victim’s name was not mentioned. It merely stated in the Stop Press that a Miss Jacqueline Best and a Mr Reginald Meredith (I struggle hard to picture them, but cannot), out walking last evening, found the body of a young woman in a copse near the bank of the River Pigeon, about a mile from the small town of Almond Vale, Middleshire. Apparently Miss Best had to receive attention for shock. I bet it put Mr Meredith off his stroke too. They won’t trot round the mulberry bushes again: they’ll buy a double bed and get married at once! In slight irritation and apprehension, I wish that they had postponed their walk a few hours, for then the torrential rain of this morning would have filled up the river and covered those hard, sun-baked banks on which Mr Meredith and Miss Best were able to walk not many hours after I did. Then the victim might not have been found for another twelve months.

  Her name was Olwen Hughes. I didn’t want or intend to kill her, of course, although in the surrounding circumstances it was perhaps inevitable. I believe in life and love, both of them at high pressure; and I persuaded her to my way of thinking, although she was always a bit mushy. They all are to a certain extent; it’s in their nature; I have to persuade every woman that she is the one thing I live for – as, of course, she is at the time. It shows how badly we are in need of a bodily freedom that we both have to feign everlasting love for the few months we’re together. In the face of such a lie, one partner is bound to be hurt or angered, and not having the freedom I have, being too deep in the mire of sentiment or religion, it has always been the female. Even in the cases of those women who have no emotional or religious scruples there is vanity: they are annoyed with me because I admit love is not going to last for ever, not even their special brand. This Olwen Hughes was twenty-six and, being a product of her times, naturally wanted the make-believe to turn into wedded bliss and all that stuff. I offered her fifty quid to get out, but it was useless. She just didn’t understand anything beyond the orthodox sentimentality. As well as God she acknowledged society and believed we owed it a duty. It seemed to me – a
nd for a long time, while we were in love, she agreed – that the framework of society is raving mad. No one can say with certainty, politically and socially, why we are alive. Heaven knows, they are all trying: the ether and print are full of their remedies and exhortations. But all without result. The whole thing, surely, is based on the chance of birth, inclination and circumstance. In these, I admit, I’ve been very lucky. Poor Olwen! She wanted everyone to work their guts out, from the schoolroom to the grave, for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Whatever was dreary was right! Society, I suggest, prefers the Olwen Hugheses of the world to those like myself because they’re easier to handle. They fill in the forms willingly; they fight the wars; they pay the bills; they acknowledge the God; they suffer the work and illness and squalor; they stay allied to their dreary partners; they acknowledge the rules and even believe in them. But I am not fooled by society or God or even Freud. I realize that we’re on our own – look at what ugly things most humans are or become: are they immortal, and, if so, what the hell for? – and, apprehending we’re on our own, I appreciate that there is nothing we need refrain from. The great sin is being found out. I did not intend or wish to kill Olwen Hughes, but since I have done and the thing was brought on by herself, I see no reason to be sorry. Conscience and lack of courage are the things that make people sorry. Conscience, as I’ve explained, is a lot of twaddle. Courage – well, if, when these words are read, World War II means anything at all, then our squadron’s attack on the Kiel Canal – laying mines at deck level in a ten-tenth’s concentration of flak – will explain what sort of a man I am.

  Extraordinary to think that as I write, the Middleshire Police may still be searching round that copse. The rain has stopped – there’ll be the curious there too: the tourists! I presume that by tomorrow the police, having found Olwen’s handbag and laundry-marks, will have switched their attentions to the city of Birlchester. Olwen lived and worked on the south-west side of the city – the opposite side to mine – and this was, I suppose, the reason why we drove to the small riverside town of Almond Vale, on the main road to Bristol and Wales.

  I’m a representative of the Perfecta Soap Company and I called at a hairdresser’s shop some time in March. It had recently been repainted, which was what drew it to my attention. Olwen can attribute her own death to so many tins of paint; also to the absence of the proprietress.

  What am I to say about her? I remember well the impression she made. A rather tall girl, with a hefty, plastic body; underneath the white apron was the puppy fat of the school-room; it wobbled in delicious outrage as she moved. A wide, heart-shaped face with a good mouth, and eyes that looked at you with frankness. She was unaware of herself. Possibly that was her first attraction for me: this creamy girl with the long, excellent bones covered by sufficient flesh to make her extremely desirable did not know she was beautiful; she had never been aroused. In addition, there was her auburn hair. I had never loved a redhead. Although I knew she was the sort who remained innocent by choice, and although I never become involved with customers unless they themselves half-suggest it, nevertheless I knew I had to possess her. It was unbearable to think of that face and body belonging to some humdrum clerk or shop assistant with dirty hands, beery breath and unseeing eyes. This, I thought, has to be mine first. That wide, credulous face must be excited until it pleaded surrender. The hundreds of thousands of auburn hairs, the millions of pores that breathed, the soft flesh that creased and folded in unbearable sensuality under the protection of wool and silk and nylon, the perfect integration of blood, flesh and bone must tremble, reveal and abandon itself, as others had done before it, for me. Love was a battle in words and time, and I had the advantage in so far as my words were more adequate than hers. She had the advantage of her beauty, but I was not like other men, in awe of it. I did not want it permanently and therefore had no need to beseech and plead. If it became necessary, I would use the ace card and talk of marriage, but I wanted to avoid that if possible. The danger of Olwen’s serious, virtuous type is that they take love so seriously. When, at the end, you explain to them that it was a game and that the game, very enjoyable while it lasted, is over, they protest. They demand an umpire – one prejudiced in their favour at that! I intended to have and provide a good time before I dumped her: before either of us could be bored by the other, I would have gone.

  She advanced demurely across the shop, and in spite of her innocence I could see that she was favouring me with the eye. She even blushed. Nobody can deny that she came out with me quickly enough and willingly.

  When I had explained the reason for my call, Olwen said, in a mellifluous voice free from any Welsh accent, ‘You’ll have to come back this afternoon, sir, if you don’t mind, when the proprietress will have returned.’

  ‘About what time?’

  ‘At about three.’

  ‘Then I’d better nave lunch,’ I said. ‘Can you recommend anywhere?’

  ‘There’s the Dragon,’ she said. ‘It’s about three miles along the main road. They tell me it’s very good, although I’ve never been.’

  She gave me one of her frank, piercing, all-woman stares, and I said, ‘Would you care to lunch with me?’

  But, like all of her type, Olwen did not want the onus of responsibility should anything happen in the future. She always wished to be in the position of enjoying herself and yet, should the person or the circumstances not suit her, able to withdraw saying, ‘Not my fault. You persuaded me to come here. If I’d known –’ It’s part of the female dialogue in the game, of course, so I was not at all discouraged when she answered, ‘But I don’t know you.’

  ‘Equally, I don’t know you,’ I said. ‘Let’s get to know each other over lunch.’

  Olwen hesitated. ‘I can’t come until one,’ she said.

  ‘I can wait.’

  ‘And you mustn’t come here,’ Olwen said. She didn’t want the proprietress to learn that she’d made a friend of a customer. This was why I never met the proprietress and retained the advantage of anonymity.

  ‘Where shall I meet you?’

  ‘By the crossroads,’ she said. ‘Is that your car?’

  She was looking through the shop window at my red sports. I said, ‘Yes. I’ll be parked near the traffic lights at one o’clock.’

  I was turning away when she said, ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Roy Harrison.’

  ‘I’m Olwen Hughes,’ she said.

  Perhaps she was surprised at her own impertinence, for when she arrived at the car at one o’clock the first thing she said was, ‘Please don’t think I’ve done this before, Mr Harrison.’

  ‘I’m sure you don’t do it at all,’ I said. I saw already that she was a girl who had a conscience, and anticipated that exciting day when it was overcome. ‘That was one reason why I asked you.’

  She nipped into the car then, unable to avoid showing her nylons and a splash of thigh. It was as I’d guessed: she had long legs that tapered from thighs white and rounded and soft. (Inexplicable the way the back of the female thigh never hardens into muscle as does the male; this despite the fact that women do many of the standing-up jobs; Olwen’s thighs were flexible enough to wobble in incredible sensuality.) She sat there, not knowing what she had aroused, certain of her safety, and right so. This century, so disastrous for men, has been very fortunate for women. The beautiful ones enjoy something more than an equality: they have the advantage of a prejudice in their favour. The same law that allows them to flout their sensuality is severe upon those who assault it without permission! Fortunately, one has the advantage of brains and words, and they have the disadvantage of their natures, which plead alongside myself for their surrenders.

  We drove to this Dragon Hotel. I use many of the hotels in the county, but had not previously visited this one. It was a great barn of a place, full of business gentlemen and their tarts stuffing themselves
with chicken and suet pudding.

  Olwen had a sherry before lunch and seemed to like it: I made a mental note of the fact. During the meal she looked up from her shyness and stared at me with a quizzical gaze, her large eyes as steady and innocent as fruit drops, and said, ‘Mr Harrison, you are married, aren’t you?’

  I was startled into an admission that I was. I presumed she’d seen me somewhere previously with a woman. But I worried and admitted unnecessarily: my one mistake perhaps. For it was only the demure Olwen with the scruples who had asked. Demure girls who don’t know the game are always possessive: obviously, not believing in freedom, they are bound to be: it’s why they believe so strongly in the institution of marriage. She wished to ascertain if I was married so that, if I was not, she could set her traps accordingly, and if I was, and if it was an unfortunate marriage, then she could brood about divorce … I was able to set her conscience at rest. ‘I am married,’ I said. Her conscience blushed all over her face, and I explained, ‘My wife is ill.’ This didn’t seem to ease her discomfort so I explained further, ‘Mentally ill. You see, Miss Hughes, she was involved in an accident.’

  She wanted to know all the gory details, but I said instead, ‘They give her a year, Miss Hughes … She’s a complete, ugly stranger, fatally ill in body and mind.’

  She still hummed and hawed, so I carried on, ‘But until this moment I’d remained true to the past Evelyn and I had shared.’

  Olwen felt a little better then. ‘I don’t suppose,’ she said, ‘it matters if we just know each other.’ Her very words belied her belief in platonic friendship, for if simply meeting her was all that was involved, why had she haggled in the first place? She knew damn well it was never a question of platonic friendship. ‘Evelyn is a nice name,’ she commented.