The Chequer Board by Nevil Shute
Mr Turner stared at him in astonishment. “What’s that—Sub-divisional Officer? What does that mean?”
Mr Chang said, “Sub-divisional Officer, he is Government official. Like Judge and Tax Collector and Registrar. Mr Morgan is Sub-divisional Officer for five villages, but he live in Mandinaung.”
Turner said, bewildered, “I thought he was quite poor.”
Mr Chang smiled tolerantly. “Oh no, Mr Morgan never poor. Mr Morgan, he is owner of three motor boats, trade up and down the Irrawaddy, carry passengers and goods. Now he sold those boats, and now he is Sub-divisional Officer.”
Mr Turner stared at the Chinaman. “Is he a well-known man, then?”
“Oh yes—Mr Morgan very well known in the Irrawaddy; people like him very much. He marry nice girl, Ma Nay Htohn, daughter to Maung Shway Than. Maung Shway Than is important man in Rangoon. His brother, Nga Myah, is Minister for Education in the Burma Government. All very good people.”
“Well, I’m damned,” said Mr Turner. He sat in silence for a minute, trying to re-adjust his ideas. “This girl he married,” he said presently, “—Ma something, you said—is she a native? I mean, a Burmese girl?”
“Oh yes,” said Mr Chang. “Ma Nay Htohn educated at Rangoon High School; she speak very good English. Very nice girl, very clever. She have two children now, one boy, one girl. They very happy.”
Mr Turner said mechanically, “That’s fine,” and sat trying to think out what this meant to him. It was not in the least what he had been led to expect.
Mr Chang went on to add to his information. “Ma Nay Htohn has brother, colonel in the Burma Army, Burma Independence Army in the war. His name, Utt Nee. Utt Nee, he fight against the British in 1942 to make Burma independent. Later he fight against the Japanese also to make Burma independent, but he fight more against Japanese than against the British. He very important man also, colonel in the Burma Army.”
He grinned at Turner. “You want to go up river to Mandinaung to see your friend? I arrange it for you, very easy.”
Mr Turner said slowly, “Yes, I think I do want to go. I’d better write him a letter first, though. How long does a letter take to get there?”
“One week to get answer. Why not send telegram?”
“Can one send telegrams to Mandinaung?”
“Oh yes. I go to Danubyu, and then boy run with the message. You get answer same day. I send it for you.”
Mr Turner said, “Got a piece of paper?”
He thought for a moment, and then wrote:
MORGAN, MANDINAUNG, IRRAWADDY. WE MET IN HOSPITAL PENZANCE 1943 STOP I AM NOW IN RANGOON WEEK OR TWO ON BUSINESS AND WOULD LIKE SEE YOU AGAIN STOP CAN WE MEET EITHER RANGOON OR MANDINAUNG. TURNER, STRAND HOTEL, RANGOON.
He got an answer the next day at his hotel:
SORRY CANNOT GET DOWN TO RANGOON BUT GLAD TO PUT YOU UP HERE FOR A FEW DAYS IF YOU CAN SPARE THE TIME STOP DELIGHTED HEAR FROM YOU AGAIN. MORGAN.
Mr Turner stood looking at this thoughtfully, in front of the mirror in his bedroom. “Made a bloody fool of yourself,” he said to his reflection. “Come all this way for nothing. He don’t want your help.”
He hesitated, half minded to abandon the adventure and go downstairs and book a passage back to England on the next aircraft. This young man that he had thought of as a beachcomber was a government official, and one with very good connections in the country. Out here, where white faces were few, the fact that he was married to a Burmese girl did not seem quite so shattering as it had seemed in England; Mr Turner had already seen a number of girls in the street that he would not have minded being married to, himself.
“Might as well go straight back home,” he said disconsolately. “He’s all right.”
He did not go. The fascination of a strange scene was upon him; he had never been to the East before, and though the purpose that had brought him there was obviously void, he might as well see everything there was to see before going home. He had said nothing to anybody, fortunately, of his desire to help Phillip Morgan make his life anew; he had described himself as on a business trip, and he could stick to that story. This journey up the river to this Burmese village would be interesting, an out-of-the-way adventure, something to tell Mollie about when he got back to Watford, something to tell buyers from the Provinces when he lunched with them at the Strand Palace Hotel. He decided that he would go, and spent some time in thinking up corroborative lies about his business in Rangoon to tell to Morgan if he showed much interest in his presence in Burma.
He set out for Mandinaung the following morning on the paddle steamer. He travelled in some comfort in a cabin with a good electric fan, and he enjoyed every minute of the journey. The Irrawaddy delta is a smiling, fertile country of tall trees and rich farm land. Between the showers of rain Mr Turner sat in a deck chair on the upper deck of the steamer, watching the dugouts and sampans on the river, the women decorously bathing with two longyis wrapped about them, the domestic life in villages and bamboo houses that they passed, the monkeys playing in the trees. Each minute of the day was an interest and an amusement to him, and though he was still worried that he had come on a fool’s errand, he was glad that he had come.
The steamer reached a fair-sized town called Yandoon in the evening, and berthed there for the night. Mr Turner went on shore and walked a little through the lines of bamboo and mat houses, wondering at everything he saw. He had thought that women in all Eastern countries lived in purdah and seclusion, but here the girls walked around in pairs, chi-hiking with the young men just as they did at home. He found a well that seemed to be a social centre and sat watching for a long time a very merry scene as girls and women came down for the water and the young men drew it for them. From time to time he saw a monk in bare feet and a heavy robe of a coarse yellow cloth, and wondered. He went back to the ship to dinner, rather thoughtful. There was in Yandoon an atmosphere of business, good humour, and a pleasant life that was different from his English conception of a native town.
He got to Mandinaung next day in the late afternoon. There was a little rickety bamboo jetty for the steamer to berth against, and on this jetty a white man was standing with a Burmese girl by his side, and a few natives behind. As they drew near, he saw that the man was Morgan, but a different Morgan from the one he had known in 1943 in hospital. This was an older man, who had an air of authority about him. He was very tanned. He wore an old bush hat, with a khaki shirt and faded shorts of jungle green; he had sandals on his feet. Up on the bank above the jetty an old jeep was parked, presumably his property.
The girl standing with him wore a flat, slightly conical straw sun hat, a white blouse, a green longyi wrapped around her waist and falling to her feet, and sandals. She was a pale, yellowish brown colour; she had a broad face and straight black hair which she parted in the middle and wore made up in a knot at the back of her head, usually with a flower in it for ornament. When Mr Turner came to study her at closer range, he found that she used lipstick and nail varnish like the girls in Watford, and, like them, made up her cheeks with a faint colour. Later still, he found she did it with the same brands of cosmetic that English girls used.
A native boy carried his suitcase off the boat behind him, and he went down the gangplank to meet Morgan. “I took you at your word,” he said. “Seemed a shame we shouldn’t meet again, being so close and all.”
“I’m jolly glad you came,” said Morgan. “We don’t see very many people out from England, up the river here. Turner, this is my wife, Ma Nay Htohn.”
Mr Turner raised his hat formally. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs Morgan.”
She smiled, and then laughed a little. “Not Mrs Morgan,” she said, “I am Ma Nay Htohn. We do not change our names in Burma after marriage, as you do in England. I am still Ma Nay Htohn unless we go to live in England ever. Then I suppose I shall have to be Mrs Morgan.” She held out her hand. “I am very glad that you could spare the time to come and see us.”
She spoke English with
Mr Turner was confused. “Ever so sorry,” he said. “I got a bit to learn about the way you do things out here.”
The girl said, laughing, “I will teach you. I hope you will be able to stay for a long time here with us.”
“Just a day or two.” He turned to Morgan. “You’ve not changed a lot.”
The other studied him. “I doubt if I’d have known you again,” he said. “You were all bandaged up, at the time I left the hospital. How long did you stay on after me?”
“’Bout a month,” said Mr Turner. “Bloody fed up with it, I was—just lying there day after day. After you went there was no one but the nigger to talk to.”
Morgan said quietly, “I remember. How did you get on with him?”
Mr Turner said, “Well, I got on with him all right. Better ’n you’d think. We used to play a lot of draughts together, I remember. Checkers, he called it.”
They turned and walked up to the jeep and got into it together with the luggage. Morgan drove along a dirt road on the track that overlooked the river, out of the village. They did not drive far. A quarter of a mile from the last bamboo house they turned the corner of a wood and came upon a clearing with a mown lawn on which stood a flagstaff; from this staff there floated a blue ensign with a peacock in the fly. Behind the lawn there was a pleasant wooden house of two stories, with a verandah and a red-tiled roof of many gables. It stood on the river bank at a great bend, with a view over the stream nearly a mile wide.
“This is where we live,” said Morgan.
“Nice place,” said Mr Turner, very much impressed.
Morgan said, “We only got it built last year. You should have seen what we were living in before.”
Nay Htohn rippled into laughter. “We use our old home for a garage,” she said. “Show it to him, Phillip.”
“All right.” He stopped the jeep before the steps that led up to the verandah of the house and gave the suitcase to a manservant in a long white coat, who came out to meet them; then they drove on around the house to a small bashah made of bamboo, palm-leaf matting, and palm thatch. It stood looking out over the river in a pleasant place, but it was old now, and beginning to decay. Morgan drove the jeep into what had once been the main room, and they got out.
“This is where we used to live,” he said.
Mr Turner did not know quite what to say. “Sort of country cottage,” he ventured.
“That’s right,” said Morgan. “This was the living room, and this was the bedroom. The kitchen was that other one.” He pointed to another decrepit bashah close beside. He stared around. “We lived here for two years,” he said. “It wasn’t bad.”
The girl said softly, “We were very happy here.”
Mr Turner looked around him. The place had a bare floor of trampled earth; there was a trench outside, dug around to catch the monsoon rain. He glanced into the bedroom; the bed was a platform of thin, springy bamboo slats. There were no doors, no ceiling, no glass in the windows, no amenity of any kind.
He smiled, puzzled by the contrast between the new house and the old. “Sort of rough, living here,” he said warily.
Morgan said, “It was rough all right.”
Nay Htohn said, “It was as we wanted it to be. My father, when we married, wanted to build us a good house. But Mandinaung itself was so much ruined that we did not want to live like that. It would not have been right.”
Comprehension was beginning to dawn on Mr Turner. “What ruined it?” he asked.
Morgan said, “We did it a bit of no good one day with the Thunderbolts and Hurribombers, early in 1945, when we were coming down this way. It was a Jap headquarters. These places burn like fun, you know—there wasn’t much left of the town when we’d done with it.”
“I suppose they do burn pretty easy.”
“They do that. When I got back here afterwards and we got married, all building materials were in short supply. Well, you see how it was. We didn’t kind of fancy building a brand-new slap-up house with all modern conveniences while the rest of the bloody place was flat—especially with my R.A.F. record. So we made do with a bashah for the time.” He glanced around. “They’re really quite comfortable, these places, but they get old pretty soon. This one’s just about had it.”
The girl said, “These are very good houses while you can live simply, with just the two of you. Later on, when the babies come, it is more difficult. I was glad when we could build the new house last year, with a bathroom. But I do not regret the years we spent in this small place. And the people liked it, too, when they came to understand the reason why we lived here.”
They turned, and walked up to the house. They passed through the garden, a few beds full of flowering azaleas, and strange flowers that Mr Turner did not recognize, and that he learned later were orchids. He was diffident about asking questions. They moved in a scent of flowers, brought out by the rain; beside them the azaleas and the orchids, beyond those the mimosa and the great orange and red glory of a flame tree. Mr Turner walked through these wonders in a daze.
“When did you leave England?” Morgan asked.
“Only last week—I come out by air.”
The girl walking between them said, “Has Rita Hayworth made a new film, after ‘My Gal Sal’?” She laughed. “I am a terrible fan.”
Mr Turner scratched his head. “I dunno,” he said. “I don’t go much, myself. You want to ask my wife; she’s always going to the pictures.” He glanced at the pale brown girl beside him curiously. “Where do you go to see a film out here?”
“Sometimes they are shown in Danubyu,” she said. “But every two or three months we go down to Rangoon for a few days, while Phillip does business.” She laughed. “Then I am in the picture house all the time.”
Mr Turner said, “Cary Grant made a good one that I saw just before I come out,” and he told her about it.
They went up the steps on to the wide, shady verandah and into the house. There was a hall with rooms that opened out of it; the hall itself seemed to be the living-room, and there was a table laid with afternoon tea, and long cane chairs with leg extensions.
Presently they were sitting down to tea. A large white cat walked slowly into the room from the verandah and walked straight to Mr Turner, as he lay in the cane chair, and jumped up on to his lap.
Mr Turner said, “Hullo, puss,” and stroked its ear. Then he noticed Morgan and Nay Htohn staring at it.
“Well, I’m damned,” said Morgan. “Never saw it do that before. You’re honoured, old boy.”
The cat stood, kneading, on his stomach for a moment, then settled down and began to purr. In that tropic heat its presence was uncomfortable, but Mr Turner liked a cat and was prepared to put up with it for a time. “Took a fancy to me,” he said.
The girl said something softly to Morgan in Burmese. He smiled at her gently, and said a word or two in the same language.
“What’s his name?” asked Turner.
Morgan glanced at the girl; she nodded slightly. “I don’t call him anything,” he said. “Nay Htohn calls him Maung Payah.” He hesitated for a moment. “That means, Your Reverence.”
“Strewth,” said Turner, comfortably. “What a name to call him!”
“As a matter of fact, you’re very much honoured,” said Morgan. “He’s a most unfriendly cat in the normal way. Won’t have anything to do with me or Nay Htohn. Catches a lot of rats, though.”
He turned the subject. “How did you get to know I was out here?” he asked.
It was a question that Mr Turner had some difficulty in answering; the lie, when it came, was not very convincing. “I kind of wondered what had happened to you,” he said. “Then one day I met a chap in the Air Ministry who said he could find out easy—put his girl on to look up in the records. Well, he did that, ’n wrote and told me you were out in Burma, ’n give me your last address, Ladbroke Square. Well, I didn’t think no more about it—stuck the letter i
The meal was over, and they were smoking. Nay Htohn got up and went into an inner room, to the sound of children. Morgan said, “Let’s go and sit out on the verandah. It’s cooler there.”
They went out, and pulled other long cane chairs together, and reclined, smoking and looking out over the wide river. There was still sunshine, and it was very hot; on the far side of the river over in the direction of the Pegu Yoma thunderheads were massing for another storm.
Morgan said, “How was my mother?”
“She didn’t seem very well to me,” said Mr Turner. “’Course, I don’t know her. Sort of invalid, is she?”
“Yes.” Morgan hesitated, and then said, “I suppose she didn’t give you a very good account of me.”
Mr Turner was silent for a moment. “Seems kind of different out here to what it did in Ladbroke Square,” he said at last. “What she said was right enough, but it had got a twist, if you get me. Not like things really are.”
The other said quietly, “I know. I’ve tried to make her see it, but it’s no damn good. We don’t write much now. I had to make a choice between England and Burma, and—well, I chose Burma.” He paused, and then he said, “England wasn’t very kind to me, you know.”
“How did you come to get out here?” asked Mr Turner. “I mean, settled in like this, and knowing everyone?”
Morgan said, “I’ll tell you.”
When he left the hospital at Penzance he went up to London to that lovely girl, his wife. She flew into his arms directly he opened the door of the little flat in Pont Street, and in her close embrace all doubts slipped away from him. Then they broke away, and she said, “Did you bring my parcel?”
He said, “I’m terribly sorry—I’m afraid it’s gone. They’ve cleared away the wreck and everything.”