Free It’s a Battlefield by Graham Greene

all the way to Battersea. He could not bring himself to spend any pence on bus or tube that might be spent on his brother’s petition. His brother was the only man he loved in the world, and his brother for the first time in his life needed him; strength for the first time needed brains. Before it had always been brains which had needed strength, cleverness which had needed stupidity. All the way down Oakley Street and along the Embankment a child ran scurrying to the corner of the playground where his brother beat a ball against the wall; the trams came screeching like a finger drawn on glass up the curve of Battersea Bridge and down into the ill-lighted network of streets beyond; on the water the gulls floated asleep. Into the darkness of the secondary school Conrad fell, alone without his brother, his name tossed across the asphalt – ‘He’s called Conrad, Conrad, Conrad.’ His brother sat in a steel cage driving through the rain; he earned three pounds a week; Conrad sat at a desk aware of the hatred behind him, in the school, in the office; the cold recognition of his efficiency through the glass door of the headmaster’s room, of the manager’s room; Conrad earned six pounds a week.
    The cold railings round the Battersea Polytechnic touched the backs of his hands; Conrad Drover walked on towards the woman he loved more than any other woman. He opened the letter from his brother at his desk and read with despair, ‘married on Tuesday’; it was weeks before he realized that Milly had not robbed him of his brother’s stupidity and serenity and strength.
    A notice on the railings said: ‘It is forbidden to throw stones at the Polytechnic.’
    There was nothing that either of them had ever been able to do for his brother; they had come together in their admiration and impotence, sitting as it were in his shadow away from the world which rocked and roared around them. Now he was gone and it was they who had to have strength. All day in Court Conrad had prayed that he might be lent stupidity, so that he might not recognize what lay behind the three white wigs, the silk robes, the whispers, the getting up and the sitting down: ‘I submit, m’lud, that if you look at Rex v . Hindle’; the coughing and the complete lack of interest. A child ran into him chasing a ball, and Conrad clutched a railing for support. He thought with bitterness of Kay: ‘The manager would sack me. You are different. You have brains.’ If ever I have a child, he thought, I shall pray that he will be born stupid.
    The oldest judge put his head on his hand and said wearily: ‘We have given counsel for the defence the greatest possible latitude. He has taken up a great deal of time with irrelevancies.’ He seemed surprised and a little shocked at the ingenuity of the attempt to save the accused man. Ingenuity but not passion; the two counsel nodded and becked and exchanged compliments; once they became a little acrid over Rex v . Hindle; but afterwards in the corridor Conrad Drover saw them arm in arm going off to lunch. ‘Of course I hadn’t a chance.’ ‘You did splendidly. I could see the solicitors were impressed.’ And afterwards in Piccadilly, on the steps of the Berkeley, he had heard the thin man with a jaundiced face say: ‘A pram on top of a taxi,’ and laugh. Conrad Drover had recognized him. On the same day as his brother’s fate was decided, the Assistant Commissioner could laugh at a stupid joke. His brother was just one of many men strung up for justice. The old judge said in a kind voice: ‘Counsel for the defence has argued with great skill on the question of motive. He has tried to show that the jury were improperly directed. . . .’ A young barrister just behind Conrad said: ‘I’m off to old Symond’s Court. There’s nothing more of interest here. See you in hall.’ When the door opened Conrad