It’s a Battlefield Read Online Free Page A

on the top floor and closed the door. Immediately all the typewriters in the room became silent, the keys dropped as softly as feathers. The chief reporter sitting on his desk with his knees pressed under his chin was interrupted in mid-sentence: ‘I was waiting at Winston’s all the morning and when he came out with his head all bandaged up, he only said –’ On the floor below the leader-writers sat in little studies and smoked cigarettes and chewed toffee, held up for the right word, looking in dictionaries, leading public opinion. On the floor below, the sub-editors sat at long tables and ran their blue pencils over the copy, scrawled headlines on scraps of paper, screwed the whole bunch into a metal shell, and sent it hurtling with a whine and a rattle to the composing room.
    â€˜Central 2301.’
    On the floor below the swing door turned and turned and the porter sat in his box asking: ‘Have you an appointment?’; the rolls of paper were wheeled like marble monuments towards the machines which turned and turned spitting out the Evening Watch pressed and folded: ‘Mr MacDonald Flies Home to Lossiemouth. Are you Insured?’, packing them up in piles of a hundred, spinning them down a steel incline, through a patch of darkness, into the waiting van.
    â€˜Press Bureau, please.’
    A messenger scurried upstairs from the sub-editors’ room to the leader-writers, from the leader-writers to the investigation department: ‘Where is Topolobampo?’ In the reporters’ room the typewriter keys fell noiselessly, the chief reporter sat on his desk, while his mouth opened and shut, Conder’s breath misted the cold glass.
    â€˜Yes, this is Conder. Have you got any dope about the Streatham murder? Can’t you invent something? Oh, well. No, the Chief’s not much interested in Drover. What about Paddington? I suppose you are still clinging to Ruttledge. Not? Not sufficient evidence? You mean you’ve detained the wrong man again, I know you. There might be a leader in that if the Chief’s had a bad lunch. Don’t blame me. Yes, I shall trot along. Pink, very pink these days. Is it a good story? My missus likes me to be in bed by eleven. Oh, all right. The “Green Man” at 10.45. All the children send their love.’
    Conder rang off and opened the door. The typewriters rattled like cavalry, and the chief reporter said: ‘I asked her, “But what were you doing in his pyjamas?” ‘Conder’s face and his bald head gleamed softly in the lamplight. He said with habitual melancholy: ‘Nothing doing at the Yard.’
    â€˜Nothing about Streatham?’
    â€˜No, and they’ve let Ruttledge go. He was the wrong man. They tried to give me a bromide about Drover.’
    â€˜The Chief’s not interested in your Reds.’
    â€˜No. Can I go? I’ve got a party meeting this evening.’
    â€˜Feeling red?’ the chief reporter asked with anxiety.
    â€˜Pink. Very pink,’ said Conder in a low sad voice, his vitality visibly ebbing.
    â€˜We ought to get a line about Ruttledge into the final if we can. Trot it along to the stone and show it to the subs on the way.’
    Conder took the lift to the floor below. It was quicker to walk, but for a few seconds, as he jerked downwards in the ancient metal cage, he was a captain of industry leaving his director’s room in Imperial Chemicals. He stepped out and became again the successful journalist, the domesticated man with a devoted wife and six children to support, a taxpayer, the backbone of the country. But his round shining face, his bald head, melancholy mouth and heavy lids never altered.
    A man passed him in the corridor walking rapidly and called over his shoulder: ‘Well, Conder, how are the Reds?’ Conder nodded silently without a smile, Conder who was no longer the backbone of the country, but the hidden hand. Conder the revolutionary. But