It’s a Battlefield by Graham Greene Page A

the worst. There was something he was sure Milly had not considered; to have considered it did not belong to her quietness, her generosity and her malice; it belonged to his own cleverness, the cleverness of addition and subtraction, of balancing books, of double entries. ‘We’ve got to remember that if he gets his reprieve he may be in prison for eighteen years. He’s thirty-eight now. He’d be fifty-six when he came out, and you would be forty-five.’
    She took him by surprise. ‘I’ve thought of that. Of course I’ve thought of that. But what’s the good of thinking? He’d rather be alive than dead. I’ll go and see her tomorrow.’ But the long silence after her protest showed that she had not thought of it. The idea came to her suddenly and plainly of what she might lose; she felt it like a withering of the skin, the death of her sex. When he came out of prison, she would be without passion or enjoyment. ‘You can’t divorce a man in prison,’ Conrad said. He was afraid of her anger, but she was only astonished. ‘I wouldn’t divorce him. We love each other.’
    â€˜Of course,’ he said. ‘I can understand that. I love him too. More than anyone. I love him more than I love you.’
    â€˜You’ve no cause to love me.’ He wanted to tell her that he had the same reason as his brother had; he wanted to describe her to herself, the fair fine hair, the high cheekbones, the large mouth and the large hands and the small body; the courage of her malice and the fidelity of her despair. ‘You’ve no cause to,’ she said again. ‘We’ve laughed at you. Kay and I have. How often,’ she said with a long sigh for the happy malicious past, ‘I’ve called you an old woman. Your white face and your twitchings. And now,’ she went on, smiling unwillingly, ‘you are better than a house without a man in it. When you’ve been married five years it seems odd to be alone in a house with a girl. And of course,’ she said with generosity, ‘you’ve got the brains.’
    â€˜Kay doesn’t think much of them.’
    â€˜Oh, you needn’t mind what Kay thinks. There’s only one thing Kay wants in a man and that’s not brains.’
    â€˜I’ll come tomorrow night,’ Conrad said. She got up from the table and came and sat on its edge close to him. ‘You ought to go home to bed now,’ she said. ‘You look tired to death. You’ve been working too hard. It was good of you to come. I feel happier a lot with that idea for tomorrow. I don’t see how she can say no.’
    â€˜You oughtn’t to expect too much.’
    Milly said with an impatient flash of anger: ‘You don’t expect enough. There you are, always looking as if you’d got the sack, and you’re chief clerk and you’ve got six pounds a week. Why don’t you say to yourself every day, “I’m a success. I’m a success”? If I had you here for a month, we’d see something different.’
    â€˜Yes. What? Tell me?’ He sat back with a foolish uneasy smile at the thought of her company.
    â€˜I’d give you lots of porridge. I’d make you sleep a lot. Your nerves are all wrong. Hold out your hand. Look how it wobbles. You wouldn’t be much good with a gun. Oh, if I had you here a month, I’d make a man of you. You’re better already. Look at you smiling. You’re different.’
    â€˜You aren’t the same. I’ve never heard you talk as much as this.’
    â€˜I’ve never needed to talk before,’ she said. Exhilaration and forgetfulness wavered in her face like a paper scrap in a high wind; tossed on the currents of air it floated a moment and then was blown to earth in the gusts of misery. ‘I’ve got nothing to do but talk, talk.’
    â€˜Your nerves are as bad as mine.’ He caught her hands and