The Protagonists Page 3

  ‘Not even tomorrow?’

  ‘No. It’s my father. His job. They haven’t said a word about it to me before. They say I have to pack tomorrow, and to see aunts and things.’ He concluded in dejection, ‘We leave on Monday.’

  There was not much to say. She knew he would never come back; even in love one does not make visits when one is fifteen; one accepts the arbitration of parents.

  ‘Will you write to me?’

  ‘Of course I will.’

  ‘It’s such a pity. I’m going to the county school in September.’

  They cycled to the lighthouse, heavy-hearted, and found two older lovers inside, tightly pressed against each other in silence. The entire day was prejudiced against young lovers, for it began to rain. They rode the whole way to Bar Quay and sat in a shelter. They could only hold hands, for in the wet afternoon of early summer old ladies, having ventured out without umbrellas, now sat and stared with hostile curiosity at the young. The rain became heavier, and there arrived a moment when there was nothing to do but go home. Leslie, without a raincoat, cycled all the way with Olwen to the village. Halfway up the lane, in the darkness of the rain and trees, they separated in tender misery. At the last moment he gave her a small packet. ‘Open it when I’ve gone,’ he asked. In the quietness of her bedroom, with the rain still hissing outside, and tears still possible and imminent, Olwen opened the package and found inside a brooch made in the shape of a lighthouse.

  Olwen received a few letters from Leslie, but she never saw him again. He influenced her life in that his love did not have time to deteriorate; it was not sapped away in any quarrels or indifference; she was left with a tender, uncomplicated view of love; it was as if he was a casualty in the war that was raging. Without their more permanent pain, she was like the young war widows who would never know the ordinariness of marriage, but would move through the remainder of their lives knowing that something perfect had gone out of them. Sneered at and despised as semi-spinsters, as they grew older they would look back to the brittle glory of the 1940s: to the departures at railway stations, the dancing while the bombs shook the tables and glasses, to the films and plays, to his guarded confessions, to the passion; in the midst of drabness they could look behind, never knowing that perfection might have faltered and grown old and ordinary. Olwen was only a child, and recovery for her was quick and at times pleasant; to say that she had a boy in London made the lads at school seem suburban.

  Autumn, 1943. The bombers stream out both times round the clock – wedges of destruction a hundred miles long and two or three deep and wide. Across and under the Mediterranean there thumps explosion after explosion. Petrol flames and men die horribly. Beside the statistical destruction emerges slowly the probability that we are going to win.

  By the school gates the leaves fell from the plane trees. The rounded clouds were pushed quickly across the sky. There was little traffic, for the visitors had gone home. It was a delicious quiet, a peace that was broken only by the sound of children’s voices. There was no sign of war, but nevertheless an assault was forming; for the million-millionth time the oldest battle of all commenced.

  Each afternoon the sixth-form boy stood at the school gates watching Olwen through the smoke as it issued from the pipe he had. The glance was different; it was significant; it was adult and unnerving, and in some way she knew why it was more serious than the innocent admiration of those third-, fourth- and fifth-form boys which had preceded it. It was because it held no awe, perhaps no respect; it approached her beauty on equal, even superior, terms.

  Olwen, in the fifth form, was beginning the last three terms of her school life. She was plump now, with a wide, beautiful face, incredibly smooth and rounded in this, her sixteenth year, and with a body that was as ripe as a woman’s. She had become aware of her face and body, conscious that men stared at her legs and figure, and, although scarcely aware of the full vulgarity of these stares, was embarrassed by them – embarrassed and yet pleased. She was torn between a desire to wear attractive clothes and stockings and look desirable, and the shy necessity of wearing woollen stockings and presenting as flat a chest as possible. She longed to be a woman, a person with rights and freedoms, but saw that it would have its disadvantages. She would blush easily and even unnecessarily, and did not altogether enjoy visiting the town of Bar Quay except in the safety of winter. There were crowds of soldiers there from the wartime camp; there were drunks in the afternoon and fights in the evening; it was unsafe to sit in a cinema unless friends were contiguous; women with bold faces and clothes promenaded with arrogant confidence; not knowing why, Olwen was afraid of them. The soldiers looked at her boldly and suggestively; some whistled, and a few even spoke to her; all of them whispered to each other, and her face would go hot in fear and unaccountable shame. It was a relief to cycle home to the village. She would pass soldiers out walking with town girls, but they never penetrated as far as the village: five miles was too far for girls with high heels.

  Each afternoon she would chatter at the school gates, unnerved and yet attracted by that unwavering examination by the sixth-form boy. She averted her gaze, smiled to show that she was busily engaged, and made loud and adult remarks about Beethoven, the war, marriage, the peculiarities of the teachers – anything that entered her head. She talked eagerly, for to stop would reveal that she was not popular, or was not gay, or was ignorant – it might convey any unfavourable impression the older boy cared to form.

  The sixth-form boy, whose name was Bond, was tall, cumbersomely built, as big as a man and appearing old enough to be one. His Christian name, rarely used because he was not liked much, was Paul. Like the soldiers, he had noticed Olwen’s adult body, her smooth, long legs, her pulchritude; otherwise he would not nave bothered to pursue her, being already involved with waitresses, girls at the fun fairs and shop-girls. Olwen was flattered as well as perturbed by the attentions of an older boy, particularly one who was going soon to the university; and she acted in a very grown-up manner until Bond actually spoke to her. Then she stammered, answered in monosyllables and conveyed a true impression of innocence and inexperience.

  She listened attentively to Bond’s talk about himself, about books, the war, love and life in general. It was the most sophisticated talk she had heard, and the compliments that went with it were different from those that had preceded them. They did not plead or falter in reverence: we both know about this beauty, they said; it is ours and we must share it. Olwen admired Bond when he smoked his pipe; liked the way he handled people less nervously than did her own father; and went with him willingly and shyly into cafés and the theatres of the town. If his kisses were different – exploring inside her mouth: it made her rather giddy and faint – and if one arm and hand hugged her below instead of around the waist, it did not seem important enough to dispute. She liked him very much because it gave her an importance to be the friend of a sixth-form boy.

  When Bond suggested a swim in the sea, Olwen accompanied him with the anticipation of a pleasant Saturday afternoon and evening: tea in a café to follow the swim, then a visit to a theatre or cinema, and finally, before her bus left, a walk in the dusk and his words and the probing tongue … It was still warm and as bright as summer on the shore, and after the swim she and Bond lay on the sand in the sunlight. The beach was crowded with holiday-makers, and when Bond desired to kiss her she presumed she understood perfectly his plea for the privacy of a beach hut. But inside the hut Bond’s kisses, having probed her mouth to induce the pleasurable excitement, soon moved from the mouth to her shoulders. At the same time the hands that had been embracing her – the one, as before, much too low; how low explained perfectly well by the pressure of her wet bathing costume against her skin – the hands began to stroke her bare arms and back. It seemed to be the approach that had been whispered and joked about, in theory, at school, and Olwen was too alarmed to move. Bond took this for consent and began
slowly to peel off her swim suit. Olwen now struggled, and Bond soon found his efforts ludicrous, if not impossible. He explained that this was very adult; she must not be afraid; this was love; there was nothing wrong. But Olwen’s virtue was not an accident, and, in any case, the ugliness in his eyes was not adult or beautiful; it was animal. She resisted the words as well as the gestures.

  ‘What’s the matter, Olwen?’ Bond asked, polite with difficulty. Couldn’t the fool see her own ripeness and how necessary it was to burst it? ‘I thought you liked me.’

  ‘I don’t like that.’

  Bond smiled in superiority. ‘You don’t know about it. You can’t be a kid for ever,’ he said. It was an explanation, not an apology; it seemed he pitied her. ‘No use being a smasher if you don’t have fun.’ The smile was confident, mature – Bond was one of those who think the act of sex is the cleverest thing in the world; he could not stop admiring himself for being as accomplished as the animals. ‘Perhaps you don’t know how to have fun.’ He would demonstrate, the fading smile said, and forgive her ignorance. Had Bond learned to have fun? Well, yes, he had. Bond had a certain talent for that kind of thing. Then one was not individual or remarkable to Bond? Well, no, except for the red hair; you see, as Bond understood it, love could be dished out wholesale; there was no necessity for a retail trade … Olwen found such an approach too carnal, too emotionless. More than a decade later she was a woman, but still a virgin, and even the man called Harrison, more experienced and subtle than Bond, had to explain and promise much about love and marriage before attempting any physical relationship. None of this was mentioned in the newspapers when Olwen died. The child Olwen clutched her wet costume and protested, ‘Stop it, Paul.’

  ‘Come on, angel,’ Bond said. ‘Don’t start going weepy. I’ll make you feel good. Nothing else, I promise.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Olwen said. ‘I want to go.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘You’ve spoilt it. I liked you as you were.’

  ‘You’re scared,’ he mocked. ‘You’re only a kid.’

  ‘I’m not scared,’ Olwen said, ‘but I don’t want to be touched. We’re both still wet.’

  ‘I’m almost dry,’ Bond said. He grabbed a towel and started to dry Olwen’s back, which was still flecked with spots of water.

  ‘I want to get dry in my own hut,’ Olwen said. Her voice trembled, and she knew that he would regard it, with her behaviour, as childish. But it was obviously not love that actuated him – love does not plead so hard against the wishes of the loved one – Bond sought his own pleasure, not hers. He wanted what the soldiers joked about in the semi-respect of whispers: the fine shoulders and the firm stomach, the graceful legs and the untouched, woman’s breasts. Olwen walked to the door, but Bond, abandoning his limited measures of charm and politeness, began to struggle with her. She was too full of panic to fight back, but she pulled his hair and made it too painful for him to overcome her. He had to desist and stood there, lust replaced by anger. ‘Scram,’ he sneered. ‘You’re not that wonderful. I can get someone better than you any day – someone who knows the tricks. You stay with fifth-form kids – you’ll be safer with them.’

  Olwen said nothing and left quickly in relief. Outside, the sun glared, the sand was hot under her feet and children laughed. She dressed quickly and cycled home. On the way she began to tremble and cry, and was forced to stop to be sick. But she was loyal to whatever had existed between herself and Bond in that she said nothing to her parents or Tom, all of whom would have acted quickly on her behalf.

  Six weeks later her friend Peggy asked her to accompany her to a dance in me town – not a school dance, for Peggy had left school a year before, but a dance in a hall packed with soldiers, older girls and the hard-eyed women who sprang from nowhere and seemed to have endless leisure. Peggy, a tall, heavy girl with a great deal of physical energy and a tendency to become bored quickly if she was not using it, was a year older than Olwen. She spent her time now driving her father’s lorry about recklessly – from the farm to the railway station and back with milk-churns, to Bar Quay for seeds and chemical manures. Although she did not share Olwen’s reluctance – she collected soldier friends as other girls collected stamps – she understood it, and with this invitation she offered explanations.

  ‘You see,’ she said, ‘Harry’s got a friend who’s only about eighteen. He’s not like Harry. I mean,’ she added quickly, ‘that he’s shy, quiet and that. Harry said that if I knew someone –’

  ‘It does sound a bit casual,’ Olwen said.

  ‘I know,’ Peggy said. ‘But, I mean, you can’t have the usual formalities in a war. I’d bring you back in the lorry. They’re quite nice dames, and we’d come home before twelve.’

  ‘I’ll ask Mama,’ Olwen said.

  She put the decision in the hands of another, and was quite surprised when her mother gave her consent. ‘What time will you be back?’ Mrs Hughes asked Peggy. ‘I’ll bring her back in the lorry at twelve, honestly. The dances don’t end until two, but we’ll leave before then,’ said Peggy piously.

  ‘No drinking, mind you,’ Olwen’s mother said. ‘And I’ll wait up for you,’ she added, with a smile that nevertheless did not deny the intention.

  It was a cold October Saturday evening when Peggy came to collect Olwen. She had a scarf round her head, was over-painted and was smoking. To Olwen the paint and the cigarette savoured faintly of sin; it was in any case her first venture into a completely adult world – the world at war – and she was full of misgivings.

  The dance hall had been some kind of civic institution. It had now a definitely military aspect – the walls were scratched; the furniture was damaged; paint flaked off the tall entrance columns; notices about boxing matches flapped on its outside walls; in the men’s lavatories obscene drawings and jokes were pencilled on the walls. Inside the large main hall etiolated cherubims and the paintings of bearded aldermen looked down with disapproval on the occasion. There were many people already dancing: soldiers in battle-dress, all of whom had obtained black shoes from somewhere; women whom Olwen recognized as having been girls in the fifth form when she had been in the third; other women whose sardonic stares made her uncomfortable; a few girls who stayed with the one soldier they had obviously met in their own homes; a few civilian youths who had, incredibly, come for the music. There was a crowd round the makeshift bar, including men who were doing some steady drinking and some women whose encouraging laughs were just a little too shrill and prompt. The noise made by the already sweating band was deafening. Olwen did not like the look of any of it. These were the men who would bring victory for the most sacred of causes, but she found difficulty in associating them with it.

  A broad soldier with bright blue eyes and very fuzzy hair approached across the dance floor. He was not especially tall, but deep in the chest, and with hips that swayed as he walked.

  ‘Hello, Peg o’ my heart,’ he said. It was obvious that he was one of those people who take over the responsibility for things when others are hovering, and decide what everybody shall do. He had a small black moustache that bobbed up and down as he talked, and was so cheerful that it gave Olwen confidence.

  ‘Watcha, Harry,’ said Peggy. ‘Where’s your friend?’

  Harry’s friend, like Olwen, was hanging back shyly. He was a boy, quite thin and small, with a young, nervous face from which the Army had scarcely removed the pallor of the city. There was that about him that still told of hard work in the bad atmosphere of a factory, of too much smoking in too many cinemas and billiard halls, of not enough sleep and not quite the right kinds of food, and of energy frittered away in the masturbations of innocence. His courage and his shyness and his integrity were all he would ever have, but because he did not know it, he did not in resentment burn out his energy, as many of his friends did, in fights and fornication and in
solence …

  Harry swung round. ‘Here he is. Did y’think you’d escaped, Joe?’

  Joe blushed uneasily.

  ‘How d’y’do?’ said Peggy. ‘This is Olwen.’

  ‘That’s a nice name,’ said Harry. ‘Got nice hair, hasn’t she?’ He paused, on the edge of a dirty joke, but instead of it said, ‘Like a pint of wallop, it looks.’

  ‘Hello,’ said Olwen.

  ‘Hello, Olwen,’ Joe said faintly. He blushed outright now, his mouth hung open slightly, and he found Olwen so beautiful as to be unbearable to look upon. Each time he had to summon courage to dart quick glances at the extraordinary, glowing child’s face.

  ‘Well, what are we all having?’ roared Harry.

  ‘I’ll have an ’alf,’ said Joe.

  ‘Gin and tonic,’ said Peggy promptly.

  ‘I’d like a lemonade,’ said Olwen.

  Harry looked at her, grinned, seemed to regard this as a deplorable choice in liquid refreshment, and then said, ‘Okay, so be it.’ He was back with the drinks in scarcely any time, being one of those men who can cut straight through a crowd, give an order in a loud, friendly voice and be served with it at once.

  They stood about, talking and sipping their drinks, except for Harry, who downed his pint quickly and went in search of another. When the music recommenced its noisy, uneven thump, Harry shouted, ‘Let’s dance!’ He grabbed Peggy by her hips and seemed to launch her into the crowd in a waltz.

  Joe and Olwen stood about, arms hanging awkwardly, too aware that they had been brought for each other’s company, until Joe said, ‘Would you like to?’

  It reassured Olwen to find that he was nervous; after all, he was a soldier. They danced like sadness, slowly and silently down the edges of the ballroom.