It’s a Battlefield Read Online Free PDF Page A

‘From here to the drying,’ but the last word was buried by the crash of sound too deep for recognition. The manager and the visitor passed out of sight, and the eyebrows flashed messages up and down the machines. ‘Would you have him?’ ‘Not if he paid me.’
    A hand to the left, a hand to the right, the pressure of a foot.
    In the courtyard the manager pointed. ‘That’s Block A. The new employees go there for the simplest processes. Then if they work well they move to Block B, and so to Block C. Everyone in Block C is a skilled employee. Any serious mistake and they are moved back to Block B.’
    â€˜I suppose they have more pay,’ the visitor said.
    â€˜And other privileges. A quarter of an hour longer at lunch time. The use of the concert-room.’
    A hand to the left, a hand to the right, a pressure of the foot. All down the machine-room in Block C the eyelids flickered up and down; silent conversations passing with ease the barrier of noise. ‘Pictures?’ ‘How’s your boy?’ ‘I’m going out tonight.’ A hundred and fifty match-boxes were carried towards the drying chamber.
    â€˜Beautiful food in the canteen. The same food is served to the management.’
    â€˜Millions of match-boxes a month,’ the visitor said. ‘It’s wonderful when you think of it.’
    â€˜We even have our own hospital. Of course, there are accidents occasionally. One can’t avoid them. Carelessness or stupidity . . .’
    A hand to the left, a hand to the right, the foot pressed down. A finger sliced off so cleanly at the knuckle that it might never have been, a foot crushed between opposed revolving wheels. ‘It never hurt her. She suffered nothing. Fainted at the sight of the blood.’ ‘So brave. She chatted all the way, carried on the stretcher to the operating-room.’ Sickness benefit; half wages; incapacity; the management regrets. Between the line of machines the girls stood with tinted lips and waved hair, fluttering an eyelid, unable to talk because of the noise, thinking of boys and pictures and film stars: Norma, Greta, Marlene, Kay. Between death and disfigurement, unemployment and the streets, between the cog-wheels and the shafting, the girls stood, as the hands of the clock moved round from eight in the morning until one (milk and biscuits at eleven) and then the long drag to six.
    Two hundred match-boxes moved upwards to the drying-room; the hands of the clock pointed to five minutes to seven. Greta put a hand to the left, Norma a hand to the right, Marlene pressed down her foot, Kay Rimmer tried to draw her own image in the dusty stale air, head tilted with a lazy sensuous faint desire, orange lips a little parted. The clock struck and every machine was immediately stilled. The matches fifty deep stayed in mid circle, the electric lights flickered to half strength, and the girls ran to the entrance and the stairs. Each employee in Block C had earned ninepence overtime.
    In the cloakroom Norma put on her hat, Greta brushed her hair, Marlene made up her face. Norma said: ‘Where are you going tonight, Kay?’
    â€˜Party meeting,’ Kay said.
    â€˜How filthy,’ Greta said. Kay Rimmer smiled. She could afford to smile; she was going where there would be fifty men to every woman; Greta would spend the evening with one boy at a cinema, Norma at a church meeting with a few pale men from a choir; art, politics, the church, Kay Rimmer had tried them all.
    â€˜You’ll never meet anyone at those meetings,’ Norma said. Kay Rimmer tested the name ‘Jules’ on her tongue. All down the long passage to the gate, with a confident unconscious smile, she let fall a succession of names, Terry, Herbert, Arthur, Joe; she welcomed the sound of any man’s name with happiness, curiosity, and a profound ignorance. Peter, Bill, Ginger, Frank.
    The name DROVER in great letters faced her