The Chequer Board by Nevil Shute
He knew now that when they overtook him they would shoot.
Stark panic seized him, born of the lynching stories told to him in his childhood in the South. He had done the unforgivable thing, and if the mob caught up with him they would tear him in pieces, burn him on a fire, torture him in vile ways. He put his foot down hard and dashed on through the quiet English moonlit scene in a frenzy of terror. The jeep he drove was in poor condition; behind him the Command cars and the other jeeps were gaining on him. He had one hope only now, to gain the shelter of the houses of Penzance and leave the jeep, and hide somewhere, anywhere. In his agony the thought of a well came to him; perhaps there would be a well somewhere, in some yard, that a man could get down into and hide, and let the hunt pass by. They would not think of looking down a well.
He would have been safer in a British police station, but he could not be expected to know that.
He dashed into the streets of Penzance at fifty miles an hour, his speed conditioned only by the speed at which the jeep would take the bends without going over. As he drove, he swung his head desperately from side to side, seeking for refuge. He came out by the sea not far from the harbour, and that checked him. He braked heavily and swung the jeep around into a side alley, and stopped, and ran blindly up towards the shadows. A Command car drew up with a scream of tyres, and a shot rang out, and the bullet hit the wall beside him.
He leaped for a seven-foot wall and caught it with his hands, and got one leg up on it, and miraculously he was over it and in a hen run on the other side. He blundered through the wire of that and into a vegetable garden, and over another wall into a churchyard. Behind him there were lights and the voices of excited American men.
He ran through the churchyard and stopped by a wall, peering out into the street. The Military Police were spreading round the block that he was in, as they had done before. He was caught. In a few minutes he would be in their hands.
In those last moments all trace of confidence in military justice left him. He was the elemental, fear-crazed nigger hunted by the whites, conditioned by centuries of discrimination. The whites were after him and murderous in their intention to avenge the insult to the colour of their skin. Rather than fall into their hands, it was preferable to fall into the hands of death.
There was an air-raid shelter built against the wall of the churchyard. Behind him the hunt was close; men were already in the far side of the churchyard at his heels. He went into the air-raid shelter and drew out his knife. It was a good knife and one that he was proud of, given to him by his father back in distant Nashville when he was on leave before proceeding overseas; he kept it as sharp as a razor.
With tears streaming down his cheeks, in the smelly darkness of the shelter, he drew it hard and unskillfully across his throat.
In the quiet moonlight of the garden, five years later, Mr Turner said to his wife, “That’s what happened. That’s how he come to be in the hospital with me.”
His wife stirred in her chair. She was growing cold, but she was interested. “What happened to him?” she enquired.
“I dunno,” he said. “I dunno only what he told me, what I’ve told you now. He was for court-martial when he got out, on a charge of attempted rape. That’s all I know.”
She said, “But what he done wasn’t rape at all, was it? I mean, you said he kissed her.”
“That’s what he told me,” said Mr Turner. “He said that’s all he did.”
“Well, they couldn’t charge him with attempting rape for that.”
“I dunno,” said Mr Turner. “Maybe they can in the American Army. I dunno but what he told me may have been a pack of lies.”
“It must have been,” she said. “There must have been more to it than that.”
He was silent for a minute. “I dunno that there was,” he said at last. “I don’t think he was lying. He was pretty miserable, and I think what he said was true, far as he knew it. He knew he was for court-martial, and he was kind of resigned to that.”
She said, “What was he miserable about, then? Just general disgrace?”
He said, “It was the girl. He’d gone and spoilt everything with his own foolishness, and made her complain against him, and he’d never see her again. He used to sit staring out of the window, hour after hour, without saying anything—wishing he was back in Nashville, I suppose. One time I saw him crying—tears running all down his black face. It made me feel sort of funny to see that.”
He paused, and then he said, “I think he was in love with her. Really in love, I mean—just like he was a white lad.”
CHAPTER FOUR
MR TURNER went to the London office of his firm, Cereal Products Ltd., by underground and bus next morning. Cereal Products Ltd. has a suite of offices high up in a building in Leadenhall Street. He got there about ten o’clock, and went in to see the Managing Director, Mr Parkinson. He told Mr Parkinson his position frankly, as one man to another.
“I don’t want any special favour, or anything o’ that,” he said. “But I want what’s my due, and it’s only right you should know what the doctor said, so you can make your own arrangements.”
Mr Parkinson told him what was his due. “On your salary scale, the firm gives three months’ sick leave on full pay. Then if you are still unfit for work, another three months on half pay.”
“And after that the firm’s finished,” said Mr Turner. “Well, that’s fair enough. What about last year’s summer holiday? I didn’t get it then because of that Argentine deal we did—Señor Truleja. Can I have that fortnight now?”
“I suppose so,” said the Managing Director. “Yes, I think we can do that.”
“Can I put this year’s fortnight to it ’n have a month?” said Mr Turner.
“Now?”
“Yes.” He paused, and then he said, “I got things to do.”
Mr Parkinson eyed him shrewdly. “Three months and three months and one month makes seven months,” he said. “The firm’s not going to see much more of you, is it?”
Mr Turner said, “It wouldn’t see much more of you, either, not if you was in my shoes.”
“No. All right, go on and take your month’s holiday, Turner. I’m very sorry to hear about all this.”
“Not half so sorry as I am,” said Mr Turner.
He went out, and turned into a Lyon’s teashop, and had a cup of coffee. He was feeling slack and unwell; the beer that he had drunk the night before and the long sitting in the garden with his wife had done him no good. He sat there moody for a time, the great wound in his forehead pulsing intermittently. He smoked two cigarettes and then got up, and paid his bill, and took a bus up to the Air Ministry in Kingsway.
“I got to try and trace an officer what served in the war,” he said to the messenger at the door.
He spent the next hour waiting in corridors and explaining his requirement to a number of uninterested people. They told him to go away and write a letter about it, but he would not do that. Finally he struck a Junior Clerk (Female) who was much his type and very much in tune with the outrageous remarks that he saw fit to make to her, and who exerted herself to help him in his search.
She pulled a sheaf of cards from the immense card index. “Give over,” she commanded; “here, pay attention to this. There’s five Phillip Morgans here.” She sorted them. “He wouldn’t be the Group Captain, would he? Nor this one that got killed in April 1942? What about this one-Squadron Leader at H.Q. Bomber Command?”
“That’s not him, I shouldn’t think,” said Mr Turner. “You’re busting out of your jersey, Loveliness. Want about sixteen more stitches in the next one, round about.”
“If you go on like that I won’t help you any more,” she said. “Now what about this Flight Lieutenant Morgan that got took prisoner by the Japs in November 1944? Released from Rangoon Jail in May 1945, and demobed.”
“What was he doing before?”
She scrutinised the card. “Two tours in fighters, and then Transport Command.”
Mr Turner said, “That’s the boy. Got took prisoner by the Japs, did he? Well I never!”
She said, “That’s right. Last job was a Dakota squadron in South East Asia Command. Supply drops, I suppose. Missing November 1944, reported prisoner in January 1945.”
“How can I get hold of him?”
“I dunno,” she said. “There’s next of kin here. That’s all the address I’ve got.” She scrutinised the card. “There’s two here, wife and mother.”
“That’s what’ll happen to you before you’re much older, Beautiful,” Mr Turner said. “Specially the last. Let’s have a look.”
He took down the addresses in his pocketbook, and left her pleased and giggling. He lunched on a pint of beer and a snack at his favourite local off Shaftesbury Avenue, the Jolly Huntsman, and went to the address at Pont Street in the afternoon. He climbed the stairs to the tiny top-floor flat. The door was opened to him by a pleasant, plain woman.
He said, “Does Mrs Morgan live here still?” He explained, “I knew her husband in the war—I was trying to get in touch with him again.”
She wrinkled her brows. “There’s nobody of that name lives here now.”
He said, “Pity. This was some time ago, in 1943, of course. You don’t happen to have the address of the tenant before you, I suppose?”
She said, “We’ve been here for eighteen months. The tenant before us was a Mrs Bristow. Bobby Charmaine, the actress, you know—that was her stage name, but she was Mrs Bristow. She might know about the people who were here before her. It’s just a chance, you know.”
He said, “Do you know how I could get in touch with her?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” she said. “There was a divorce-she divorced Squadron Leader Bristow, or he divorced her, just after they left here. Perhaps some theatrical agent could tell you how to get in touch with Bobby Charmaine—she’s still on the stage. I saw that she had a small part in the Winter Gardens pantomime the Christmas before last, and my husband said he saw her in a touring company in Stockton-on-Tees last year. A theatrical agent might know.”
He left, and went down to the street again. He did not feel inclined to start a round of theatrical agents to get in touch with Bobby Charmaine in a second-rate touring company up at Wigan or West Hartlepool in order that he might ask her questions about her last husband but one or two. He took a bus to Kensington to see the mother.
She still lived in Ladbroke Square. He found the house without difficulty, a tall old house, four stories high. It was set in a terrace, each house with a basement, and the stucco peeling off a little. Once it had been a smart residential neighbourhood; now it was a bit down at the heels, still proud, but poor.
He rang the bell. After a long time the door was opened to him by a young woman, plainly, rather dowdily dressed. A glance at her and he knew from the likeness to the pilot that he had come to the right house.
“Excuse me,” he said, “does Mrs Morgan live here?”
She looked him up and down, wondering what he wanted to sell. “She does,” she said. “What do you want?”
He hesitated. “It’s like this,” he said. “I met a man called Flying Officer Morgan in the war, right back in 1943, and I was trying to get in touch with him again. Phillip Morgan, the name was. I went and asked at the Air Ministry and they told me this address.”
“I see,” she said. “You want my brother Phillip?” She did not seem to be particularly enthusiastic in the matter. She hesitated. “I think you’d better come in,” she said at length. She led him into the narrow hall, and showed him into the room on the right, which was the dining room. “If you wouldn’t mind waiting a few moments,” she said, “I’ll go and tell my mother.” She hesitated. “What’s the name?”
“Turner,” he said, “Captain Turner.” He had not the slightest right to use his military title, but that never worried him.
She left him, and he stood in the dining room, hat in hand, staring around at the depressing scene. The room was furnished in the most doleful late Victorian style, with heavy mahogany furniture of an uninspiring design. On the walls there were engravings of “The Stag at Bay” and of a lion and of a collie dog with a Scots shepherd, all very genteel. On the black-marble mantelpiece there was a black-marble clock with tarnished gilt pillars, stopped at twenty-three minutes to eleven. On the table was a white linen cloth, slightly soiled, and such tablespoons and cruets as would be needed for the next meal and could be conveniently left on the table. Mr Turner thought nothing of it at all, in comparison with his cheerful little villa at Watford.
“Fair gives you the creeps,” he thought. And then, as he waited minute after minute, “I bet something’s happened to him that they don’t want to talk about. She wasn’t a bit keen.” The idea stiffened him to go through with the matter.
After a long ten minutes the girl came back. “Would you come upstairs and see my mother?” she said.
He went up with her to the first-floor drawing room usual in such tall old houses. It was furnished in the same Victorian style as the dining room had been, with mahogany furniture and heavy plush curtains. Although the day was warm, all the windows were closed and a small gas fire was burning at the grate. Seated in a chair before this was an invalid lady, not very old, but soured and unpleasant.
The girl said, “This is Captain Turner, Mother, who wants to know about Phillip.”
Turner advanced jauntily into the room. He said, “Afternoon, Mrs Morgan. I used to know your son Phillip in the war, and I wanted to get in touch with him again, talk over the old days, and all that, you know.”
She said, “Sit down.” He sat down in a chair before her, and beamed at her expectantly, his hat upon his knee.
She said, “Did you know my boy well?”
“Not well. We were in hospital together.”
“Did you know his wife?”
Mr Turner knew thin ice when he saw it. “I never met her,” he said carefully. “From what he told me, she was a very lovely girl.”
She said vehemently, “He was a fool—oh, such a fool. But then, men are. They never know when they’re well off. Always running after someone new—even the lowest of the low, Captain Turner, even the lowest of the low. Joyce was very patient with him—nobody could have had a more angelic wife, perfectly angelic. But you can’t expect a girl like that to wait forever. She has her pride, you know.”
“I suppose so,” said Mr Turner vaguely. “Can I get in touch with him? I’d kind of like to see him again.”
“If you met him now, after having held the King’s commission with him, you would be very disappointed, Captain Turner. A mother has a right to speak frankly about her son; you would be very disappointed that an officer and a gentleman could have fallen so low.”
The girl said, “Mother, don’t excite yourself.”
The invalid said, “No.” And then there was a long silence.
Mr Turner said, “Is he in London?”
His mother raised her head. “He is abroad, in Burma somewhere, I believe. We do not correspond with him. If I were you, I should forget about him, Captain Turner. My son has not had a very satisfactory life.”
He said, “I see.” If Morgan was in Burma there was not much point in going on with this. He said, “Well, I’m sorry to have troubled you, Mrs Morgan. I just kind of thought if he was around about we might have got together for a glass of beer or something.”
She said, “My son came home for a fortnight only, in 1945, and then went back to the East again. I am sorry that I cannot give you better news of him, but there it is.”
“Oh well, can’t be helped,” said Mr Turner. He got to his feet. “Sorry I troubled you, but it was just a thought I had, that he might have been about somewhere.”
He went downstairs escorted by the girl, leaving the invalid mother sitting over the gas fire in the sunlit room. As the girl opened the front door, he was glad to see the light and breathe fresh air after the close confinement of the house.
The girl hesitated, and then said, “He left his wife, Captain Turner. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you’d better know about it, in case you ever meet him. He just walked out, and left her, and went back to Burma.”
“He did?” said Turner. His first reaction was that Morgan had shown more pluck and initiative than he would quite have expected. “Well, these things happen to people,” he said. “Sometimes there are faults on both sides.”
She said quickly, “Oh, do you think that? Did you ever meet her?”
“I never did,” he said. “He showed me her photograph and he talked a lot about her in the hospital. I saw her once in a play, but only on the stage.”
She said, “It’s so difficult to find out things, living alone here, like we do. What did you think of her, Captain Turner?”
He was well out in the street by that time; after the constrained atmosphere of the house it was pleasant to speak freely in the clean, fresh air. “I thought she was the most bloody awful bitch God ever made,” he said. “She was giving him the hell of a time, though he wouldn’t admit it. He must have been crazy ever to have married her.”
She stared at him, dumbfounded. “You don’t think that?”
“I do think that, and a lot more,” he said.
She said, “But she was always so sweet with Mother.”
“I dare say.” He thought for a moment. “Did your mother give her any money?” he enquired.
She stared at him. “However did you know about that? You’ve been talking to her, Captain Turner.”
“Never met her in my life,” he said, “and I don’t want to, either.”
They stood in silence for a moment. “I’ll walk down to the end of the street with you,” she said at last. They turned and walked along the pavement together. Presently she said, “You could write to my brother, if you want to, Captain Turner. He writes to me sometimes, and I write back. I don’t tell my mother, unless there’s anything very important, and that’s not often. It only upsets her.”