It’s a Battlefield by Graham Greene Page B

unbearable to him. His nerves shrank from it. He remembered with longing the bare panelled walls of his flat, the glow of the gas fire, the mirror and the Adam mantel. Only one suffering individual penetrated there, and she was dead and could be dismissed and forgotten with a book.
    â€˜They’d been married five years.’
    â€˜Listen,’ Mr Surrogate said, ‘there’s still the petition.’
    â€˜She doesn’t believe in that.’
    â€˜There are things one can do – privately. People one can see. I’ll speak to Caroline Bury.’
    â€˜If only there was something I could tell Milly.’
    â€˜There shall be, I promise you.’ Somehow the promise of the evening must be re-established, drawn away from suffering. ‘Come back with me now and we’ll discuss it.’
    â€˜Shall I?’
    â€˜Go along, Kay,’ Jules said. He hoped that Mr Surrogate would invite him to go with them; he too wanted to do something for Drover; he would enjoy a party instead of bed, a little drink, a lot of talk, and after they had discussed what to do, a little music. But his encouragement angered Kay. ‘It’s too late,’ she said.
    Mr Surrogate was taken aback; he had forgotten in his resistance to pain that she was a girl, someone with whom he could discuss the old burning question of the Emancipation of Women. ‘These bourgeois ideas,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised.’ He waved to a taxi.
    *
    Conder opened the smoking-room door; in a corner the genteel woman in black velvet sat as usual beside a table of bottles. Over the fireplace hung a photograph of an admiral with a blasé face and a tilted cap; a plaque on the walls stated that a naval officers’ club had met in the room between 1914 and 1918.
    â€˜Anyone asked for me?’ Conder asked.
    â€˜No, Mr Simpson’s not been in tonight, nor Mr Barham, Mr Conder. We’ve been quite quiet.’ Her genteel voice made the words sound like ‘quack, quack’.
    â€˜I’ll look in the bar.’ Conder went downstairs. But he did not open the bar door, for through the glass he saw Bennett. His back was turned and he had lifted a glass of bitter to his lips. His friends crowded the bar and the noise of their laughter peopled the stair, so that Conder stood for a moment very still, feeling himself the centre of a hostile crowd. The outer door opened, and a large man in a soft hat came in; he wore ordinary clothes like a disguise. ‘Hallo, Mr Conder,’ he said. Conder jerked his finger to his lips. ‘Shsh,’ he said, and retreated up the stairs. ‘Shsh.’ The large man followed him; he took a long look into the bar on the way. ‘What’s got you?’ he said.
    â€˜I’ll tell you in a moment. Have a drink? You’re late.’
    â€˜How nice to see a new face,’ the woman in black velvet said.
    â€˜Two Basses,’ Conder said. The woman trailed back to her corner, an empty bottle in either hand, with the manners of an Edwardian hostess.
    â€˜What’s got you?’ the man said, and raising his glass, ‘Here’s how.’
    â€˜Look here, Patmore,’ Conder said, ‘you may get me into trouble. Bennett’s downstairs. He’s spoiling for trouble. If he saw me with you –’
    â€˜Why, Mr Conder, can’t you entertain a friend?’
    â€˜There are only two things, Patmore, you could possibly be, one’s a policeman and the other’s a bailiff.’ The thought of Bennett in the bar frightened and irritated him. ‘I’m tired to death, Patmore, of you fellows at Scotland Yard. You’re a lot of ostriches burying your heads in the sand, thinking you aren’t noticed. You’ve released Ruttledge. You haven’t an idea about the Streatham Murder. The only man you can get is a poor devil like Drover.’
    â€˜You wanted to talk to me about that, Mr Conder?’
    â€˜And the