Read It’s a Battlefield Online
Authors: Graham Greene
It’s a Battlefield (26 page)
âI remember you, of course,' the Assistant Commissioner said. âYou used to be chaplain at Leeds Prison. You've been â er â transferred here.'
âI wanted to see you.' He hesitated: a pale man in a heavy tweed suit with an ordinary collar and tie.
âGive me one moment,' the Assistant Commissioner said. âI've just been shot at â with a blank cartridge.' It was the blank cartridge which worried him. He went into his bedroom and sponged his face. âForgive my keeping you waiting,' he called through the door. But the chaplain was glad of the delay; he never found it easy to speak directly. Since he entered the prison service fifteen years before, his life had been spent in breaking things gently, the deaths of relatives, the treachery of wives. It had affected his manner, so that now he could not speak directly on any subject; he broke his views on wine, the theatre, revised prayer books, with interminable circumlocutions. The Assistant Commissioner watched him in the mirror of the dressing table, as he stood uneasily in front of a skin shield and tried to find words.
âYou know Beale's secretary?'
They progressed very slowly towards understanding: one, old and inarticulate and thinking all the time of the blank cartridge; the other middle-aged and shy, and, as it soon appeared, angry and unhappy.
âThat young man been talking again?'
âHe told me you were advising the Minister about Drover.'
âHe seems to have told everyone. I am â er â prejudiced against that young man.' He squeezed out his sponge. âWon't you sit down?' But in the mirror he could see that the chaplain preferred to roam; he took up a gourd and examined it, touched the edge of a spear.
âI'm going to resign.'
The Assistant Commissioner examined his hands; on one cuff there was a smear of blood. âWill you excuse me while I, that is, change my shirt?' He picked out the links slowly: a blank cartridge; never seen him before; incomprehensible.
âI'm going to resign,' the chaplain repeated.
âI'm sorry,' the Assistant Commissioner said. âI've heard often â how much the men like you.'
The chaplain said: âI can't stand human justice any longer. Its arbitrariness. Its incomprehensibility.'
âI don't mean, of course, to be, to be blasphemous, but isn't that very like, that is to say, isn't divine justice much the same?'
âPerhaps. But one can't hand in a resignation to God.'
The Assistant Commissioner took off his shirt and searched in a drawer. Through the open door he could see the chaplain fidgeting with a wooden tobacco jar.
âAnd I have no complaint against His mercy.' He was coming to the end of the long and rambling road; the object of his visit was in sight. He said with sudden fury: âOf course I am a fool to be here. Red-tape. Bureaucracy. Once a thing is done, it can't be undone.' The Assistant Commissioner put in his links. âIt's quite useless, I suppose, to ask you to undo the mischief when once you've done it?'
âReally,' the Assistant Commissioner said, âI don't, don't understand â'
âThey've acted on your advice.'
The Assistant Commissioner tied his tie. âYou mean the execution â'
âIt's off. They've reprieved him.'
The Assistant Commissioner came back into his sitting-room and sat down. âI haven't sent them my report. I haven't even written it. I think they ought to have let me know. It would have saved me a good deal of time, of trouble. As you see, I've got, got a lot of work to do.'
âThe Governor had a message from the Home Office this evening. As usual, of course, it was I who had to break the news.'
âThe good news.'
The chaplain said: âI had no illusions about that. Drover wasn't afraid of death, but he's very fond of his wife. She'll be a middle-aged woman when he comes out of prison; do you think any woman can be faithful for eighteen years to a man she sees once a month? And they love each other.'
âWhat did he say?'
âHe said nothing. He's not a talkative man. But when they were taking him to one of the top cells in Block A, he tried to kill himself. He flung himself over. Of course he was only bruised. The wire net caught him. Have you got a drink?'
The Assistant Commissioner opened a cupboard. âI'm sorry, the bottle's empty.'
âNever mind. I'm glad you weren't mixed up in this. There's only one comfort: he's got a brother. They're devoted to each other. He'll look after the wife. Well,' he looked helplessly round him, âif you haven't sent in your report, I suppose there's nothing you can do. The man must live.' He said with an irony which was quite lost on the Assistant Commissioner: âBeale has decided.'
âHe should have decided in the first place,' the Assistant Commissioner said. âHe had the judge's notes.' The chaplain found his hat. He did nothing so definite as to shake hands, a man prematurely old, a man bent under the misery of many deaths, he wavered at the door. âEighteen years,' he said, almost dumb with the misery of too protracted a life.
âI shouldn't resign,' the Assistant Commissioner said, âif I were you,' but his advice was rejected with less circumlocution than the chaplain had shown for a long while: âIt's already in writing'; and after he had gone and the telephone bell had checked the Assistant Commissioner's hand on the first leaf of the latest report, he found himself doubting his own statement. âIf I were you,' he had said. Now the voice from the hospital was telling him: âHe's dead. We've got his name. It's Conrad Drover. He's the brother of . . .'; and the Commissioner thought: Resign? He's right. I'm half inclined to resign myself.
The voice vibrated over the wire: the threatened storm was breaking: hummed and whistled through the black orifice. âThe operation was successful. Death due to shock. The only thing we can't find out is why he loaded with blank . . .' The voice faded; it could hardly be distinguished as it promised a full report, wished the Assistant Commissioner good night; and the first spatter of rain brushed the panes, blew through an open window, damped the papers on the desk.
Resign? He rose, shut the window, drew the curtains. The word seemed to usher him into an empty room, cold, fireless, without light, a room in which he might have expected company, but the only sign of their former presence was in the litter they had left behind them: the cigarette ash, the empty coffee-cups, which showed they had once been there, but had gone on.
He sat down again at his desk. I am a coward, he told himself; I haven't the courage of my convictions; I am not indispensable to the Yard; it is the Yard which is indispensable to me. He began to read the papers before him, but it was not his conscious mind which took their meaning in. If I had faith, he thought wryly; if I had any conviction that I was on the right side; Caroline has that; when she loses it, she has only to change her side.
Then without warning, from his dissatisfaction and self-distrust and shame, his spirits rose; all that worried him dropped away, like the little figures running back from the landing ground as an airship lifts. He was alone in the wide phosphorescent air with his idea. He forgot the chaplain, he forgot Drover, he forgot the blank cartridge. He began to write in his small meticulous handwriting across the top of the Streatham report: âWhat the officers in charge of this case have not realized is the significance of the prostitute's evidence that she saw Flossie Matthews waiting on a Park chair as early as 6 p.m. Taken in conjunction with the other evidence. . . .' It was for these moments of unsought revelation that the Assistant Commissioner lived.
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