Its a Battlefield

by Graham Greene

The Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, newly appointed after a career in the Far East, is summoned to a meeting with an assistant to the Home Secretary, who has to decide whether to reprieve Drover. During a demonstration, this Communist bus driver knifed a policeman who was about to strike his wife and is sentenced to hang. Drover's fate affects a wide circle of other people. His wife Milly goes to visit the policeman's widow and then seeks comfort with Drover's brother Conrad, who is consumed with guilt over his incest. Milly's sister Kay goes to bed with Surrogate, a rich economist who is a Communist, and then with Jules, who works in the Soho café where the Communist journalist Conder lodges. Both Surrogate and the Assistant Commissioner try to enlist the aid of the society hostess, Caroline Bury. All are unsure how far they should try to save Drover, who faces long imprisonment if he does not hang. Conrad, feeling he ought to act, blackmails a pawnbroker into selling him a revolver and shoots at the Assistant Commissioner. The gun was loaded with blanks however, and Conrad is knocked down by a car as he fires. Unknown to either, the Home Secretary has already reprieved Drover.