The Chequer Board

by Nevil Shute

  He said, “When I come back, will you marry me, Nay Htohn?”

  She looked up at him, laughing. “I would marry you now. You know that very well.”

  He said, “I’ve got a wife already.”

  She tossed her head. “I do not call that being married. She has not given you a child, and when you are away fighting she goes with other men. You are not married at all, really. I would be a better wife to you than that.”

  He stroked her hair. “I know. But I am married all the same, and I’ve got to get that straightened out. After that, Nay Htohn, I want to come back, if you’ll have me.”

  She breathed, “Have you …” and rubbed her cheek against his knee again. And then she said, “It is eight thousand miles from here to England, and she has another man. Why must you go away at all? I think that you could just forget about her, and stay here with me. We could be married very soon.”

  He said, “No.”

  He got to his feet, and raised her up. She stood up obediently and went and stood with him at the verandah rail. “I want you to understand,” he said. “I like this place; I like your people and your country, and I love you, Nay Htohn. I think we could be frightfully happy together, living here in Burma. And because of that, I want to start off properly, without any mess in the background. I want everything to be all tickety-boo. I want to marry you properly according to the English law so that your people will know that I’m playing straight with you. If we just married now it wouldn’t be legal, and I could beat it any time and leave you flat, and Utt Nee would know that, and so would Maung Shway Than. That’s not the way I want to start in Burma. I’ll have to go back to England.” He thought for a minute. “Besides, there’s a war on. I think they’ll probably demobilise me now, but if they want me to go on in the R.A.F. I’ll have to do that till the war is over. But after that I shall come back to Burma. I shall want you very badly then.”

  She said softly, “I want you very badly now.” He took her hand and held it, and they stood together for a minute in the dusk.

  Presently she said, “I think that you are right. Our people are suspicious of all Englishmen, and rightly so, and although I would marry you tonight and be very happy, I think that you would get on better with my people if it was a legal marriage by your laws. And there is another thing.” She hesitated. “I think you ought to go back home to England and think carefully about this. You Westerners are brought up differently from us, and many of you have very strange ideas about your colour, and mixed marriages. I do not want to rush you into anything. If when you have been at home in England for a little you come back to me in Henzada or in Rangoon, I will marry you the day you land, Phillip. And I will make you a good wife.”

  He grinned down at her. “Nay Htohn, would it be all wrong by your standards if I was to give you a kiss?”

  She glanced up at him, eyes dancing. “You mean, in the Western fashion, as they do on the movies? I have never done that.”

  He said, “Like to try?”

  “Not here.” She hesitated. “We do not do that in Burma. Even married people do not kiss in public. We could go into your bedroom.”

  “Does that make it all right? It would make it all wrong in England.”

  She said demurely, “It would be perfectly all right.” So they went into the bedroom and shut the door, and she came into his arms, and he kissed her mouth and neck, feeling her slim body lissom in his arms. And when at last he let her go, she said, “I understand why we do not do this in Burma. It is too exciting.” And they smiled together, and kissed again more gently, and went out again to the verandah, and sat talking quietly in the dim light of the stars over the flame tree. The fireflies flickered about them, and the great noise of frogs made a continuous background to their talk, and they talked on for hours.

  At about ten o’clock at night a man came to the verandah and asked for Utt Nee. In the dim light they could see that he wore the brassard of the Independence Army. Nay Htohn said that her brother was down at headquarters.

  The man said, “Five British gunboats have arrived.”

  The girl translated this to Morgan. She asked, “Where are they?”

  He said, “They have not landed. The ships are lying in an ambush by the ferry, anchored close under the bank, in the shadow. We have a picket out around them. Utt Nee has sent a party two miles up the river, to the paddy mill, to watch for Japanese boats coming down the river. Then we are to warn the British by the little radio.”

  She said, “You will find Utt Nee at the headquarters.” The man slipped off into the darkness.

  Morgan said, “How far off is the ferry where the gunboats are?”

  She said, “About a mile.”

  “Like to walk down and see if we can see anything?”

  She agreed, and they set out together by the shadowy paths towards the railway terminus on the river bank. They went rather slowly, hand in hand; it was about a quarter to eleven when they reached the place. Standing on the bank by the wrecked railway trucks they could see the gunboats just below them, not a hundred yards away, five Fairmile B type motor launches, anchored and silent, their guns trained up the river, without a light of any kind showing. They gave the pilot a great thrill, the first British forces he had seen for seven months. It was with difficulty that he restrained himself from hailing them.

  He squatted down on the bank, with Nay Htohn by his side, watching the ships. They stayed for half an hour, and were about to walk back to the house when things began to happen. There was a movement on the vessels, and a faint jangle of bells, and then a deep rumble, as the engines started up. Ship after ship started engines, all down the line. The leading two weighed anchor and moved silently out into the middle of the stream; the other three also weighed and moved a little way upshore, keeping close in to the bank. All five lay there silent, just stemming the stream, making a great L across the river.

  “Christ,” breathed the pilot, “they’ve given us a grandstand seat!”

  They waited tensely. There was a faint rumble of engines from up river. From the farthest of the Fairmiles a searchlight blazed out, swept a little, and focussed on three landing craft about a thousand yards away, and coming down the river. A spurt of small-arms fire came from them, and the heavier beating of a 37 millimetre automatic gun. Morgan pressed Nay Htohn down on to the grass beside him and they lay flat, watching a naval battle. It was over in a couple of minutes. The Fairmiles turned their broadsides to bring all the guns to bear, and opened fire with Oerlikons and Bofors in the glare of their searchlights. One by one the landing craft were hit and went on fire, and headed for the shore. Two came to the Henzada bank and one to the far side. At Henzada the Independence Army were lining the bank. There was much shooting, which presently died down; the fires died out upon the craft, and the Fairmiles slipped back and anchored in their old stations, to watch again.

  Morgan and Nay Htohn walked back to the town, tense and alert. The walk was not without danger, for the pilot was in his jungle suit and might have been mistaken in the darkness for a Japanese or fired at by a fugitive from the boats. They went to the headquarters and found Utt Nee there, in the centre of a group of officers. He detached himself to talk with Morgan.

  “What happened to the Japs?” the pilot asked.

  “We have two prisoners,” the Burman replied. “Two who were so badly wounded that they could not do their hara-kiri. The rest were either killed, or else they killed themselves. I do not know anything about the other boat; that landed on the other shore. They have got away.”

  The pilot said, “Mind if we walk down and see the boats?” An idea was already forming in his mind.

  Utt Nee sent a young officer with them, and they walked down to the shore with a hurricane lamp. There were many bodies of dead Japanese where the battle had taken place. Morgan looked at them with curiosity; these were the first dead Japanese he had seen. They picked their way between them, going warily, with pistols in their hands in case any of the corpses
came to life and took a shot at them, as Japanese will do.

  The boats were separated by about three hundred yards. They were twin-hulled, flat-bottomed landing craft, with a ramp forward and a Diesel engine aft. They mounted one 37mm. gun as their sole fixed armament apart from small arms and mortars carried by the troops. The first one they went on board smelled badly of stale food and excrement and burning oil. Casks of Diesel oil on her deck had been on fire, but the fire had not reached the engine, which was flooded. She was holed in three places by the Bofors, and considerably punctured by the Oerlikon fire.

  Morgan said quietly to Nay Htohn, “We could repair this one.”

  She stared at him in wonder. “Repair it and use it?”

  “That’s right. The engine hasn’t been hit. It’s probably full of water, but we could get it going again. And we could patch up the hull with concrete until we can get it done properly.”

  She said, “Could you do that?”

  The pilot said, “I’d have a stab at it.”

  They went on to the other landing craft. This one was in a worse state than the first, for the engine compartment had been on fire, and that engine was probably done for. The hull, however, was not so bad as the first one.

  Morgan said thoughtfully, “I wonder what the one over on the other side is like?”

  In the morning he sat in conference with Maung Shway Than, Utt Nee, and Nay Htohn. “This is good-bye for the moment,” he said quietly. “I’ve got to go and report myself on board these gunboats now, and go down to Rangoon with them; from there I shall be sent to England. I want to come back here as soon as ever I can. I want to come back and marry Nay Htohn, if she’ll have me.”

  Maung Shway Than said, “I should be very glad for you to do so. How long do you think it will be before you can get back to us?”

  “I don’t know—it may be three months. It should not be longer than a year. But I shall write every two or three days, and let you know what is happening with me.” He paused. “Before I go, there is one important matter that we must discuss. These Jap landing craft can be repaired. The one down the river is the best of the two, but they must all be pulled up out of the water, and above high-water level at the monsoon. If you can get them going, they’ll be something to replace all the sampans that have been sunk.”

  Maung Shway Than said, “I will take them over and see that they are salvaged as much as we can. We can use the sampan builders on the work.”

  The pilot said, “Get somebody to go up and down the river and look at every one of them that you can find. Get the engines taken out and kept in a dry place, and greased; there’s plenty of grease up with the locomotives, in the shed. Get the sampan builders to patch up the hulls if they can do it. I shall hope to be back here directly after the monsoon, and I’ll get down to it myself then. I’m quite sure we can get some of those boats running again if we tackle it the right way. Out of the lot we might get two or three going, putting the best engines into the best hulls. If you find that we need tools, write to me in England by air mail and tell me what we need, and I’ll bring it out with me.”

  The old man said, “It would be very profitable if we could get one or two of those boats running. There is no transport on the Irrawaddy now. All the river steamers have been sunk.”

  Nay Htohn said, “I will see that it is done. I will make Maung Bah Too go down the river and see every boat. I will go myself and see that it is done. Every boat shall be pulled up out of the water and the engine shall be dried and greased, and then when you come back we will go and see them, and you can decide on each boat which parts we can use.”

  Morgan thought for a moment. “If you find any boat mechanics, or men who have run Diesel engines at any time, get hold of them.”

  Utt Nee said, “There are not many of those in Burma. But our people are good with machinery; they only need to be shown how.”

  Maung Shway Than said, “I will take over every boat, and I will pay whatever costs may be necessary. I think it will be a very good business.”

  Two hours later Morgan was with Nay Htohn on the river bank. “This is not good-bye,” he said, holding her hand. “You need not be afraid; I shall come back. This is a happy place, and I shall be back here as soon as ever I can make it.”

  She said, with brimming eyes, “I have no fear, but make it very soon.”

  He went out to the leading M.L. in a dugout paddled by a little boy, and climbed on board her. An R.N.R. lieutenant commander met him on the deck.

  “I was in Rangoon jail,” the pilot said. “We’ve got the railway running halfway to Bassein, if that’s any good to you.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE first raindrops of the storm plashed on the path below the verandah; a cool breeze drifted around Mr Turner as he sat with Morgan in the darkness. The latter stirred. “Be time for supper in a minute,” he said. “I told Nay Htohn we’d have an English meal.”

  Mr Turner said, “You come back here pretty soon, then?”

  “Lord, yes. I shot back to England and out here again like a scalded cat.” He smiled. “I had an advantage, of course, because I knew everybody in Transport Command. I saw the A.V.M. in Calcutta and told him I wanted to take my discharge in Burma, and about the landing craft and everything. I got flown to England in a Liberator and back to Calcutta again in a York, as part of the air crew. I was only seventeen days in England.”

  “Fixed up your divorce, then?”

  “Yes. There wasn’t much difficulty about that. I got the solicitor cracking on it before I left England. It wasn’t legal for about two years, but we didn’t wait for that. I got back to Henzada in seven weeks, seven weeks to the day from the time I left, and we got married right away. Our first kid was nearly a year old before we could get married properly, but we did it then.”

  Mr Turner grinned; it was all very deplorable, but in the circles that he moved in in England he had heard of similar doings. “What about the boats?” he asked.

  Morgan said, “That turned out pretty well. Nay Htohn had seen to that.” He turned to Turner. “You know, Burmese girls are very good businesswomen, better than the men. There’re no flies on any of them. Nay Htohn had got all the boats pulled up out of the water, seven of them, some of them pretty badly shot up. Maung Shway Than gave them to us as a wedding present. One down by Zalun was practically undamaged, and I got that going in a week. I got another going a month later, and the third sometime after that. That’s all we salvaged, just the three of them.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “I ran them for two years,” Morgan said. “We ran a regular service from Rangoon right up to Prome, and made a packet of money out of it. You see, the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company was short of vessels and it was some time before there was much competition; we got in on the ground floor.” He mused for a moment. “God, they’ve done some work, those boats!”

  “Are you still running them, then?”

  “No, I sold out last year. They’re still running—you’ll see one of them go down tomorrow about midday. But I sold out.” He turned to Turner. “I’m in the civil service now. I stayed out for some time, because I thought an Englishman wouldn’t be very welcome—Burma for the Burmans, and all that, you know. But I got mixed up in a lot of local things. Then last year Shway Than’s brother, Maung Nga Myah, had a long talk with me and persuaded me to take this job—he’s in the Government, you know-Minister for Education. He said they wanted me, so I said I’d give it a crack. I think it may pan out all right.”

  Mr Turner wrinkled his forehead. “I don’t get that. I thought they wasn’t taking English people now.”

  “It was a kind of compliment,” Morgan said. “They’ve spent the last two years getting rid of all the pukka sahibs from the civil service as quick as they could, and then they came along and wanted me to join it. They sort of count me as a Burman now, I think.”

  “Funny sort of set-up,” said Mr Turner in wonder.

  Morgan got up from his chair a
nd collected the glasses. “I’ve got my roots deep in this country,” he said. “Wife and kids and work and friends. I’d never want to go back and live in England again, after this. When this country gets Dominion status, I’ll probably take out naturalisation papers. Make a job of it.”

  They went into the house to dinner, a meal served by candlelight, with silver on the table; a meal of soup and casseroled chicken, and a savoury. Morgan and Ma Nay Htohn were genuinely glad to have a visitor from England. In the friendship of their interest Mr Turner expanded, and talked fairly lucidly to them about conditions in London. He talked so much that he became very tired, and was glad to sit quietly after the meal, with a cheroot, in a long chair. The white cat, Maung Payah, walked in as soon as he sat down and jumped up on his lap, kneaded a place for himself, and settled down to purr.

  Nay Htohn looked at it in wonder, and spoke again to Morgan in a low tone, in Burmese.

  He laughed. “My wife can’t make out about that cat,” he said. “He never does that with anyone. He won’t sit with her, or with me, either.”

  Mr Turner was pleased, and rubbed the cat’s ear; it pressed its head against his hand in pleasure. “Took a fancy to me all right, he has,” he said. “What was that you said you call him?”

  “Maung Payah,” said Nay Htohn. “In our language that means Mr Holiness, or ‘Your Reverence.’”

  “Why d’you call him that?” Turner asked the question with sincerity.

  The girl hesitated, and then laughed shyly. “My people have a superstition,” she said. “Just like in your country, if you spill salt you throw it over your shoulder to avert bad luck. You do not really believe it, but you do it. Well—like that, the country people here say that a white animal—any white animal—is a very beautiful soul on its path up the Ladder of Existence; so fine a soul that it will one day be the Buddha.” She smiled. “It is not part of our religion, that one—you will not find it in our holy books. It is just what the country people say. My nurse told me, when I was a little child.”