The Chequer Board

by Nevil Shute

  He went back into the house and fetched a deck chair from the cupboard under the stairs, and took it out and set it up under the laburnum tree. It would be nice, he thought, to sit in his garden for a little and look at the flowers, a thing that somehow he had never had the leisure for. He took the Evening Standard with him; within ten minutes it was draped across his face, and presently he slept.

  He woke at about five o’clock, aware in some way that his wife was coming down the garden to him. He brushed off the paper and sat up. “Hullo,” he said, with no great cordiality.

  She said, “Hullo. You got back?”

  “Aye,” he said. He did not get to his feet, but rubbed his hand over his face. It was for her to make the first approach, he felt. She had not been to see him in the hospital.

  “Did they find anything wrong with you?” she asked.

  “I dunno,” he said briefly. “I’m not going to die next week, anyway.”

  She said a little scornfully, “Well, that’s something off your mind.”

  “Aye,” he said. “Been to the pictures?”

  “I went with Mrs Kennedy,” she said. “It was ever so good.”

  He nodded. He liked the pictures well enough, although he had not her devouring passion for them. She was eleven years younger than he, only twenty-nine. She still lived in the dream world of romance, and flew to it at every opportunity as an escape from her realities. He could not follow her; the true world was more real to him, and more interesting. That made a breach between them, increased by the many occupations of his work and by her idleness. At one time she had been a typist in his office; they neither of them realised how much she missed the work.

  “Been busy this week?” he enquired. He was bitterly resentful, deep inside him, that with so much time to spare she had not been to see him in the hospital. He had paid for a private ward for that reason only, and he had been lonely there; he liked plenty of company, and would have been happier in a public ward with many other patients.

  “I been over helping Laura most mornings,” she said defensively. “She can’t do much.”

  Laura was her sister, and about to produce an infant. She lived at Bushey, not very far from them, and she was a thorn in Mr Turner’s flesh in that she was a constant excuse for all the errors of omission that his wife fell into. Whenever the dinner was not cooked, the beds unmade, or the house dirty, it was because Laura wanted help. This had been going on for some time now because Laura produced a baby regularly once a year, and Mr Turner was getting very tired of it indeed.

  “Well, put the kettle on and let’s have a cup of tea,” he said, “—if you’ve got time for that.”

  She flared out at him, “That’s no way to speak to me, after being away all week.”

  “If you’d found time to come ’n talk to me in hospital during the week,” he said evenly, “you might have got talked to better. Now go ’n put that kettle on, unless you want me to go out.”

  She stared at him for a minute, and then walked slowly to the house. Mr Turner sat on in his deck chair in the garden, the great wound in his forehead throbbing a little. The sordid little quarrel had upset him. He wanted to get rid of all that sort of thing. In a short time now he would have to slough off all experience, both good and bad; since everything must go soon, he wanted to get rid of the bad first in order that he might be left free to enjoy the real and the good. He wanted to get rid of Laura, and the quarrels with his wife, and the office routine. He did not want to go on nickering after small commissions. He did not want to be mixed up again in the sly, illegal deals in pastry flour for East End confectioners that had proved profitable for him in the post-war years. He had some money saved. He wanted to lay off the business of petty earning now and do something different.

  He had about three thousand pounds in savings. He had never told his wife the extent of these riches because they had been amassed in a variety of dubious ways; only a small fraction came from legitimate saving out of his income. Full of ideals gleaned from the cinema, she was so rude about his way of life in general that he could not bring himself to tell her how he had built up their joint security, and now things had reached that pitch between them when he did not even want to tell her what he had achieved to safeguard them in sickness or old age. He knew that three thousand pounds would not go far to meet her needs after his death. Safely invested, after income tax it would not provide her with much more than a pound a week; she had been making five pounds a week in the office when they married, and five pounds ten by the end of the war, when she had retired from work. She could earn that again if she went back to office life; she had not treated him so well, he felt, that he need fear to spend his money for the sake of giving her another pound a week on top of the five or six that she could earn.

  The little bell rang from the house; he heaved himself up from his chair and went in to tea. She had laid it in the dining room, tea and cold sausages, and salad, and bread and jam, and cherry cake. They usually had it cold in the summer; in winter it was a more generous meal, with a hot kipper or bacon and eggs. Supper was a light meal that took place when they wanted it.

  Mollie was already seated when he came into the room. He sat down heavily and forked a sausage on to his plate; she passed him his tea and he buttered a piece of bread, “What about a run in the car afterwards?” she said.

  He considered this. He had a little ten-horsepower Ford in the garage by the side of the house, seven years old; he liked driving it. It was one of their chief relaxations, marred only by the destination of their journey. She would have liked to drive out into the country and sit in the sun in some beautiful place and read a book like girls did in the pictures. He liked to drive for an hour to some country pub or roadhouse and drink beer in an atmosphere of smoke and laughter and good company.

  “All right,” he said. “Might end up at the Barley Mow.”

  “Lord,” she said, “can’t you ever get away from beer?”

  “That’s enough of that,” he said. “I don’t mind doing what you want to first, and after that we do what I want to. Otherwise, we better go out separate.” He paused. “What were you thinking of?”

  She said, “I wanted to go out somewhere in the country and pick flowers.”

  He glanced out of the window at their roses. “Want any more flowers? There’s flowers everywhere this time of year.”

  “Wild ones, I want,” she said. “Hawthorn and violets and forget-me-nots, and them sort of things.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Go out past Hatfield, ’n then come home by the Barley Mow.”

  She said, “All right, if we’ve got to.”

  He slit his sausage up the middle carefully, and spread a little mustard on it. “One thing,” he said casually, “you better drive.”

  She stared at him. “Don’t you want to?”

  “Not much,” he said. “I don’t feel like it.”

  She said, “I’m not going to drive all the way—you can’t see the country, driving. I’ll drive back from the Barley Mow. I’d better do that anyway.”

  He said irritably, “You’ll drive all the way, or we don’t go at all.”

  She said, “For the Lord’s sake! Why won’t you drive some of the way?”

  He said angrily, “Because the specialist told me not to. That’s why. If you think I like being driven by you, you’re very much mistaken.”

  She stared at him. “Told you not to?”

  “That’s right. Not till I get rid of these giddy fits I been getting.”

  “How long have you not got to drive for, then?”

  “I dunno,” he said. “Till I get rid of them, I suppose.”

  She said no more about it, and presently they went out in the car. He sat smoking cigarette after cigarette beside her, watching the arterial road slide past. He was feeling stale and tired and upset by the slight combat with his wife; so little time was left that it was bitter that it should be marred with quarrels. He sat moody by her side, trying not to flinch
each time she cut in between two vehicles; he would have to get accustomed to that if he went on motoring, he thought.

  She turned presently from the main road and went on through the byways; they knew the country within a radius of thirty miles from Watford very well from afternoon joyriding. She drew up presently beside a water-splash in a small lane; there was a maytree in red bloom not far away beside the stream.

  “Be nice to have a bit of that,” she said. “It’d look lovely in the drawing-room vase.”

  They got out of the car and walked across the field to the tree. He had a very blunt penknife that he knew for a bad tool, but he had no means of sharpening it at home, and if he had the means he would not have had the time. One day, when he had achieved leisure, he would like to have a proper little workshop with a grinder and some hand tools, in a shed in the back garden, perhaps. But that meant time, and when you were out late most evenings there was hardly time to think about a thing like that let alone do it.

  With his blunt penknife they hacked off a few twigs of the maytree; the bright clusters of the flowers were thin on the twigs, but Mollie was pleased with them. She gave them to him to carry, and they walked along the hedge for a little time while she looked for cowslips and for violets; he was frankly bored, and presently she agreed that he should sit upon a gate and wait for her.

  He sat upon the gate, may blooms in hand, and lit a cigarette. It was quiet and pleasant in the sun, now that he had not got to walk around like a dolt, looking for flowers. It was still, and the sky was blue, down to the riot of colour of the hawthorn and may along the hedge. His eye fell on the tiny flowers on the twigs that he was holding; they were delicate and perfect, and most beautiful. He realised dimly that there was some sense in what his wife was doing. If you had absolutely nothing else to do it might be possible to get great pleasure out of flowers, though that had never been his line.

  Mollie came back presently with foxgloves and daisies and violets and forget-me-nots. He said, “You been buying up the shop?”

  She disregarded that. “I think they’re ever so lovely,” she said. She passed him up the little bunch of violets. “Don’t these smell sweet?”

  He put his nose to them. “Like that place in Piccadilly,” he said. “Coty, or some name like that.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “They make scent out of violets. Other flowers, too. I don’t think they get it right, though.” She buried her face in the flowers again. “Not like these.”

  “Give yourself hay fever if you go on like that,” he said. “What about getting along to the Barley Mow?”

  A shadow crossed her face. “If we’ve got to. But I’m not going to stay there all night.”

  “They shut at ten,” he said briefly. “It’ll be quarter-past nine by the time we get there. That long won’t kill you.”

  They drove for half an hour, and drew up at the pub. The Barley Mow is a large modern public house strategically placed at the junction of two arterial roads; it stands on the corner in two acres of grounds, one-and-a-half acres of which is car park. Inside, the saloon bar is a discreet mixture of imitation Tudor oak and real chromium plate; it is warm in winter and cool in the summer, and the place is split up into little corners and alcoves, where a man can tell his friends a blue story without telling every lady in the room. Mr Turner loved the Barley Mow better than almost any other local he frequented.

  For one thing, there always seemed to be people there whom he knew. That night there was Georgie Harries and his wife, and Gillie Simmonds with a new girl friend who was on the stage, and fat old Dickie Watson, the bookmaker, with a party. All these greeted Mr Turner—“Jackie, you old sod!”—“What’s it to be Jackie?”—“Jackie, you get home all right last Friday? (Sotto voce) Never see anyone so pissed in all my life!”—“Evening, Mrs Turner; got him on string tonight? What’ll you take for it?”

  It was the atmosphere that Mr Turner loved. He drank pint after pint of beer, while Mollie stood in bright, forced cheerfulness with a gin and ginger, one eye on the clock. Smoke wreathed about them and the voices rose and the place grew hotter and the atmosphere thicker as the minute hand moved forward to the hour. Mr Turner stood red-faced and beaming in the midst, mug in hand, the great wound pulsing in his forehead, telling story after story from his vast repertoire. “Well, this porter he went on the witness stand and told the Court of Enquiry that it was his first day with the Company. The Chairman asks if he see the accident. He says, ‘Aye. I see the express run right into the trucks.’ The Chairman asks him what he did next. ‘Well, sir, I turns to the ticket collector, and I says, “That’s a bloody fine way to run a railway!”’” In the shout of laughter that followed, the manager said, “Time, ladies and gentlemen, please!” and turned out half the lights. One by one the company went out into the cool night air; starters ground in the car park, and lights shone out in beams, and the cars slipped off up the road to London.

  At the little Ford, Mollie said acidly, “Good thing I’m driving you, after five pints of beer.”

  “Four pints,” said Mr Turner. “I only had four.” The air was fresh on his face, the moon clear above him in a deep-blue sky. It was perfect in the night. He felt relaxed, as if all his fatigue and distress were soaking out of him. A week was a long time to go without a bit of a blind.

  “It was five,” said his wife. “I counted them myself.”

  He was relaxed and happy, and now she was nagging at him. He turned on her irritably. “What the hell does it matter if I have four or five? I’ll have fifty if I want, my girl. I won’t be drinking anything this time next year if what they said at the hospital is right.”

  She stared at him. “What did they say at the hospital?”

  “They said I’m going to die before so long.”

  In the quiet serenity of the night that did not seem very important; it was only important that she should shut up and not spoil his evening. “Now you get on and start her up, and shut up talking.”

  She opened her mouth to give as good as she got, but said nothing. What he had told her was incredible; and yet it was what she had secretly feared for some time. Beneath her irritation with him she was well aware that his condition had deteriorated in the last six months; he was not physically the man he once had been. Moreover, it was no good arguing with him when he had just drunk five pints of beer; from past experience she knew that much. She got into the car in silence and started the engine; in silence he got in beside her and slammed the door, and they started down the long white concrete road to home.

  They did not speak again till they turned into the garage of the little house at Watford, forty minutes later. Closing the doors, she said to him, “What was that they told you at the hospital?” She spoke more gently, having had time to reflect.

  By this time Mr Turner was more firmly on earth. It was quiet and still and moonlit in the garden, and it was warm. “Let’s get the deck chairs out ’n sit a bit,” he said, “I got to tell you all about it sometime, ’cause you ought to know.”

  They fetched deck chairs from the cupboard under the stairs and set them up on the lawn. Mr Turner lit a cigarette as they sat down. “There’s bits of shell inside my head going bad on me,” he said. “That’s what they told me at the hospital. They give me about another year, as far as they can judge.”

  She said, “But Jackie, can’t they operate ’n get them out?”

  “They say not.” She had not called him Jackie for some time; it was what his friends all called him, and he warmed towards her. “They say they’re too deep in.”

  She said quietly, “I’m ever so sorry.”

  He laughed. “Not half so sorry as I am!” He thought for a moment, and then said, “I didn’t mean that nasty. But I must say, I got a bit of a shock when he told me.”

  “I should think so, too,” she said.

  He sat in silence in the deck chair, lying back and looking at the stars. Vega burned near the deep-blue zenith, with Altair on his right hand and Arcturu
s to the left. He did not know the names of any of them, but he found them comforting and permanent. They would be there when he and all others like him had gone on; it was good to sit there and lie back and look at things like that.

  “It’s time we had a bit of a talk about it,” he said presently. “I mean, I dunno how long I can go on working. These giddy fits and that, they won’t get any better now. Six or eight months maybe; then I’ll have to go in a home or something. That means you’ll have to start and think about a job again.”

  “I know that,” she said slowly. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  He said, “I got a little money saved, but not so much. It’s going to take a bit, seeing me finished off. There won’t be much after I’m gone—nothing to make a difference, really.” He turned to her. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” she said quietly. “I can brush up easy, ’n get another job.”

  He nodded. “I reckoned that you could.”

  She turned to him presently. “What about you, Jackie? Will you go on working, long as you can?”

  He said slowly, “I suppose so—I dunno. I got to sort of clean things up—one or two things I got to see about that might take a bit of time. I dunno.”

  She said, “What sort of things?”

  “One thing,” he said. “I got to try and find a nigger.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  SHE turned to him in astonishment. “For the Lord’s sake,” she exclaimed, “what do you want with a nigger?”

  It was quiet in the moonlit garden. The scent of roses was around them. In the white light the rows of similar, gabled houses were ethereal, the castles of a dream. The beer still had full hold of Mr Turner, freeing him of repressions and of irritations, making him both simple and lucid.

  “You remember that time I got in prison?” he enquired.

  She said quietly, “I do.”

  It had been one of the disasters in her life, that had made her both cynical and bitter. She had a good deal of excuse. She had married a young, vigorous man in her office back in 1939, when war broke out; they had lived together very little because he joined the Army almost immediately. He became an officer and quickly rose to captain, and she was terribly proud of him. Then he was sent out to North Africa.