The Chequer Board

by Nevil Shute

  When the question of payment arose, they offered chits drawn against the paymaster for the Fourteenth Army, and these were accepted gladly by the Chinese banker they dealt with. In the office he beamed at the tattered scarecrows of men in stained jungle suits facing him across the table. “I am very glad to assist English prisoners,” he said. “But also, this is better money than the Japanese paper money we have now. In helping you I help myself, gentlemen. Do not thank me.”

  The major asked, “Is the currency situation very bad?”

  The Chinaman laughed. “I cannot describe it. During the occupation the inflation was twenty times—not less than that—twenty times at least. But last night when the Japanese left, the mob broke open the banks down in the English quarter and stole all the Japanese notes. A friend of mine who has been there this morning says that notes of fifty and a hundred rupees are lying piled like dead leaves in the gutter. If that is true, then this Japanese money is completely worthless. I would rather have your chits.”

  He made them drink tea with him from fine cups without handles, and then showed them out with every courtesy. In the street outside, surrounded by the crowd, the major said, “Like to take a walk up town and see if what he said about the banks is true?”

  They went, walking in the middle of the street, the automatics ready to their hands. The streets were indescribably filthy; great heaps of rotting garbage lay on all the pavements. They went slowly, stopping many times to receive the greetings of various brown men in native costume who spoke excellent English. Before them, rioting and crowd activity died down, and the crowds melted away; behind them a long tail of interested citizens followed. They went carefully and steadily down the middle of the street, ready for anything.

  They reached the banking district, and it was as the Chinaman had said. Every bank had been broken open and the looting was still going on. The crowds melted away before them and resumed their reprehensible activities when they passed. Five- and ten-rupee notes were everywhere in the gutters and lying on the pavements; these were chicken feed, not worth the trouble of picking up. They went into several of the wrecked banks, pistols in hand, flushing the crowd before them. Great stacks of unissued paper money in bundles were standing ripped open and scattered, heaved from a burst strong room. They stood and stared in wonder at this curious sight.

  “Better take a little of this back with us for current expenses,” the major said. They filled their pockets and the blouses of their jungle suits; then they commandeered a tonga and drove back to jail to rest their swollen legs. When Morgan got back to the jail he found that he had 12,860 rupees, about £950 at par, in his possession. He gave a good deal of it away that evening.

  He lay awake for a short time that night before sleep, thinking deeply. The better food that he had eaten during the day, and the rice wine that he had drunk, had revived him, had increased his clarity of thought. Within a day or two now the British and Indian troops would reach Rangoon; messages of encouragement had been dropped into the jail by aircraft flying low that evening. When that happened, the prisoners would be evacuated by air at once to India, and from there they would be sent back to England, probably to be demobilised. The last thing that Morgan wanted to do was to go back to England, into the sordid mess that was his marriage. What he wanted to do was to get up into the Irrawaddy delta and find out what had become of Nay Htohn, and to meet her again. To hell, he thought, with going back to England—at any rate, for a bit. He wanted to stay in Burma.

  In the circumstances, discipline was very lax in Rangoon jail; parties of prisoners walked in and out of the town freely next morning. Morgan took stock of his possessions. He had his one worn jungle suit, his haversack with a few small articles of kit, his boots, his scarf, a blanket, about 5600 Japanese rupees, and a good automatic pistol with fifty-three rounds of ammunition. He felt footloose and free. He went down to see the Chinese banker who had helped them the day before, and asked him the best way to get to Henzada. He said that he had to get in touch with a man called Utt Nee.

  The Chinaman knew all about Utt Nee. “He is Colonel in the Independence Army,” he said. “You will be able to find somebody at Henzada who can direct you to him, if you can get there. His father is very well known in Rangoon, Maung Shway Than. He is at Henzada, or he was last month. If you find Maung Shway Than, give him my very kind regards.”

  The pilot asked, “You know him, do you?”

  “Oh yes. Maung Shway Than had many important business interests in Rangoon. He has several children; Utt Nee is the eldest son. He was at Rangoon University.”

  They turned to the consideration of the journey. “You will have to go by river,” said the Chinaman. “I do not know the situation with regard to the Japanese, but I think there are very many up by Henzada still. You can go to Yandoon in a sampan fairly easily from here; I can arrange that for you. At Yandoon you should ask for Mr Liu Sen, who is a banker we have dealings with. I will give you a letter to him, and he will help you if he can. I do not know what conditions are from Yandoon up to Henzada.”

  Morgan did not go back to the jail. The Chinaman was as good as his word; he bustled around and produced a letter in Chinese for Mr Liu Sen at Yandoon. He left his office and they walked down to the waterfront. From the hundreds of sampans he picked one and they made their way from boat to boat to reach it. It was manned by a family of Chinese Karens, a man, his wife, and two small children. They could not speak a word of English, of course.

  The banker talked to them for some time, then turned to Morgan. “These are people of my Kong,” he said. “You can trust them. They will take you to Yandoon for two hundred Japanese rupees; it will take two days, or a little longer. I have arranged that you will pay one hundred rupees at Yandoon, but give them a hundred and twenty. The other hundred I will pay them when I get a letter from Liu Sen that you arrived there safely. Now we must buy food for the journey.”

  He bought rice and vegetables and fruit for Morgan and had it taken down to the waterfront by the woman. For payment for his services the banker wanted a letter to the officer commanding the Fourteenth Army, saying that he had given the prisoners great help. Morgan guessed that he had had many dealings with the Japanese during the occupation and was uncertain of his own position and anxious to establish credit. The pilot gave him a note of gratitude willingly, and left Rangoon by water at about three o’clock that afternoon.

  By all civilised standards the discomfort of the sampan was extreme; to the prisoners just out of Rangoon jail it was delightful. So much do standards change. The Chinese Karens took little notice of him, treating him mainly as a piece of cargo, as they laboured at their sweeps to bring the sampan up the river in the slack water by the river banks. Morgan sat playing with the children and watching the unaccustomed scene. He kept his money out of sight and his pistol very much in sight, and he had no trouble. The river was thronged with sampans, but when they left the main stream and entered the narrow chaungs to reach the Irrawaddy, the natives motioned him to stay inside the bamboo mat shelter, in case a roving band of Japanese seeking to escape towards the east should notice him and take a shot at him.

  He slept two nights in the sampan, lying on the bare boards, and eating with his hands out of a common bowl, with the family. They got to Yandoon on the third day, without incident. He found Mr Liu Sen, and paid off the Chinese Karens. Mr Sen introduced him to a young man called Maung Boh Galay, who held an indeterminate rank in the Independence Army and who spoke a little English. This man sent the pilot on by sampan up to Henzada, with two armed Burmans, as a bodyguard, with instructions to deliver him to Utt Nee. Morgan arrived in Henzada six days after leaving Rangoon, having experienced no special difficulty on the journey.

  On the way up river he had learned from various people that Henzada had been bombed, but he was distressed and saddened by what he found there. It had been a Japanese Headquarters; sometime in April the Royal Air Force had been turned on to it. In two or three sharp raids they had prac
tically obliterated the town. Once it had been a thriving place of close on to twenty thousand people; now fire had swept across it, more devastating than in Europe since so much was built of wood and bamboo mat. A native town destroyed is sadder than a British city, for there is so little help for the people. These people were stricken by a clash of greater nations than they in their land, and little could be done to help them in their trouble. Here were no army doctors and nurses to help them; here were no gifts of clothes and food from other prosperous communities. A native town blitzed means an end to civilisation in that district for the time; the survivors must disperse, to live as best they can from the wild fruits of the jungle; or if fortunate, to work as labourers in the paddy fields.

  Morgan’s bodyguard made enquiries from the local people, and hearing that no Japanese were in the town, took the pilot to the headquarters of the Independence Army, a native house that stood undamaged in a palm grove on the outskirts. A young officer received him here with sullen suspicion; amongst considerable coming and going in the little house, Morgan was put through a sharp interrogation. The Independence Army at that time was worried and not a little frightened. They had been fighting for the British after fighting against them, and now that the British were back in the country, the Burmans were by no means sure if they would think in terms of 1945 or 1942. Morgan was the first Englishman to reach them in the district, with the exception of transient guerilla officers, and they were distrustful of him till the policy of the British became known. They were by no means sure in Henzada that they would not have to turn and fight the British all over again, and if so, here was Flying Officer Morgan for them to make a start on.

  In the middle of all this a young Burman passed by them. Morgan glanced at him, and he at Morgan. The pilot said, “Thet Shay?”

  The other stopped and stared, then broke into a beaming smile, and came and shook him by the hand. In the babel of Burmese that followed, the interrogating officer melted and became genial. “Everything has been explained,” he said. “I have heard of you from Colonel Utt Nee, and from Maung Thet Shay. The Colonel is away up the river; we expect him back here tomorrow.”

  The pilot said, “Can I stay here till he comes? I want to see him before I go back to England.”

  The Burmese talked together for a time. Then the interrogating officer turned to him again. “It is very uncomfortable here,” he said. “Maung Thet Shay will take you to the father of Utt Nee, who is here in Henzada and has a good house. He will be glad to put you up. His name is Maung Shway Than.”

  Morgan nodded, “I want to see him, too. I have a message for him from a business friend in Rangoon.”

  Thet Shay took him through the ruined town, a place of miserable desolation and burnt posts, to a residential district out beyond what had been the railway station, to the west of the town. Here they came to a large Burmese house surrounded by a fairly well-tended garden. Thet Shay escorted him up the steps on to the verandah, and paused at the entrance to the main living room, furnished in European style, with cane chairs and tables. The pilot saw an old man with grey hair sitting there smoking a cheroot, a brown old man, clad in nothing but a longyi. There was a very young man, or boy, reading a book.

  Thet Shay said something in Burmese. Morgan stood hesitant at the entrance, feeling rather a fool. The grey-haired old Burman got to his feet, listened to Thet Shay for a minute, and then turned to Morgan. “I am very pleased to meet you,” he said in good English. “I remember my eldest son spoke of you.”

  The pilot said, “I’m afraid this is a bit of an intrusion, but I didn’t want to leave Burma without seeing your son again. He was very kind to me when I forced-landed last November, and he did his best to get me back across our lines. It wasn’t his fault that I got taken by the Japs. It was just one of those things.”

  Shway Than said, “Are you free to leave Burma now? Is the port of Rangoon taken by the British?”

  Morgan told him what the situation had been in Rangoon when he left. The old man said, “So you have been in Rangoon jail. I am very sorry. You must need rest now, and good food. Come in and sit down.”

  Thet Shay slipped away. Morgan dropped his haversack in a corner, and sank down into one of the cane chairs. He was already tired. “I’m very sorry to turn up like this,” he said, glancing down at his soiled, threadbare jungle suit, and feeling the stubble on his chin. “I’ve been travelling since Monday.”

  The old man said, “You will want clean clothes and a bath. I can provide what you need.” He spoke a few words in Burmese to the boy, who went out to the back of the house. The old man turned to Morgan. “I am beginning to understand this now,” he said. “You are the Englishman who surrendered to the Japanese at Bassein after the English Major had been killed, are you not?”

  The pilot said, “That’s right.”

  The old man said, “You saved my daughter and Thet Shay from a bad situation.”

  “It was the only thing to do. I didn’t want them to get into a mess with the Japs on account of me.”

  The old man wagged his head. “Some men would not have seen it in that light. In this house we are very grateful to you.” He struggled to his feet. “I do not show great gratitude by keeping you talking when you are tired and dirty. Come with me.”

  He took the pilot into a cool bedroom with a bathroom opening out of it, with water in a great red chatty. On the string bed a Burman servant was laying out clothes-fine drill trousers and a shirt, and a longyi. Shway Than said, “There are both English and Burmese clothes for you to choose from. Here are towels and soap—only Japanese soap—very bad—I am sorry. But we have English tea; it will be ready when you are.”

  He went out, and the pilot stepped gratefully out of his clothes and sluiced himself with water. He thanked his stars he was not verminous. After the jail and the sampan, the bedroom with the huge chatty of cool water was utter luxury; he stood about, wet, with the water drying on him as he shaved, and sluiced himself again. It was nearly an hour before he could tear himself away from it, till he appeared in the living room in the shirt and trousers. He had not dared experiment with the longyi; he did not know the knot that keeps it up around the waist.

  There was no sign of the old man or the boy when he looked around, but the table was laid as if for afternoon tea in England. In the entrance leading out to the verandah, with her back to him, Nay Htohn was standing. She was dressed in a green longyi and a little short cream-coloured jacket over a white shirt; she had a dark red flower in her hair. He stood silent, watching her for a moment; he had not known before quite how badly he had wanted to see her again.

  He made a movement, and she turned at the slight sound, and saw him. She smiled, and moved towards him quickly, and took his hand. “My father said that you were here.” And then she stooped before him in a sort of curtsy, and kissed his hand.

  He touched her on the shoulder, half blinded with a sudden watering of the eyes. “I say, you don’t have to do that,” he muttered. Then they had separated, and were staring at each other in wonder, and laughing.

  She said, “Were they cruel to you?”

  He grinned at her. “They had me in the bloody prison up till now. Not crueller than that. Nothing like—like they are sometimes. Nothing like that.”

  She said, “We had them here—they only went away last week. They lived like pigs.”

  He said quickly, “Did they trouble you?”

  She shook her head. “They were quite correct—actually, we saw very little of them. But in their officers’ mess! When first they came, they were short of plates and crockery. They used to mix up all their rations—tea and flour and sugar and meat and jam and vegetables and salt and biscuit—they used to mix this all together into a sort of swill—and they served it on the table in a bedpan!”

  He laughed, “No?”

  She laughed with him. “It is absolutely true. For weeks they ate out of the bedpan. They saw nothing wrong with it. But that was the Army. The civilians were
more civilised. Still, we were very glad to see them go.”

  He said, “You got back from Bassein all right?”

  She said, “Thanks to you we did. We walked back in twos and threes, as local villagers. I carried a basket of mangoes on my head until we were past the Japanese patrols, with the revolver and all the rifle ammunition underneath the mangoes. It was terribly heavy. We had to bury the rifles, but we got them all back later on.” She glanced at him. “You will stay with us for some days?”

  “If it won’t be too much nuisance, I should like to,” he replied. “I’m a bit groggy still. My ankles keep on swelling up.”

  She made him sit down in a chair, and knelt at his feet, and pressed the swollen flesh with her slim fingers. Her touch was infinitely soothing. She said, “They gave you very bad food in the jail.”

  It was a plain statement of fact, competent and comforting in its efficiency. He nodded.

  “Beri-beri, isn’t it?” he asked.

  She said, “It is in an early stage; it will get well soon, with better food and rest. Our people get this sometimes when the crops are bad and they have to eat the old rice. But you must stay with us till you are well.”