The Chequer Board

by Nevil Shute

The Major said, “You think this attempted rape is part of the same picture, that the colored boys got swelled heads?”

  The Colonel said, “That’s right. If you treat the colored boys too well, they’ll start thinking about white women right off. That’s always the way.”

  The Major smiled. “I come from Maine,” he said. “I wouldn’t know about a thing like that.”

  “I come from Georgia,” the Colonel said. “I do.”

  “You’re pretty sure about the evidence?” the Major asked.

  “Oh, sure. Lieutenant Anderson, he’s interviewed the girl—you’ve got it all in his report there, in that file.” He turned the pages and picked out a paper. “This one.”

  The Major read it through again. “I’d like to have a talk with her myself,” he said. “And with the colored man in hospital. The Staff Judge-Advocate, he’s very anxious not to get anything irregular in these mixed cases with the British. We’ve got to be right all along the line.”

  “Sure,” said the Colonel. “The man is in hospital in Penzance, and I’ll give you a driver who knows how to contact the girl. You like anyone to go along with you?”

  The Major shook his head. “Guess I’d better see them alone. They’ll talk more freely.”

  “Any way you like,” said the Colonel.

  He put a jeep at the disposal of the Major, driven by a sergeant in the Military Police who knew the district.

  That afternoon Major Curtis drove into Penzance. He went with an open mind, realising the limitations of his knowledge and wondering a little why the Staff Judge-Advocate had picked him for the job. He knew very little about Negroes. He came from Portland, Maine, and had been through the law school at Harvard; he had practised for a time in Albany, New York, and later had become junior partner in a firm of attorneys in Boston. Once he had defended a colored janitor on a charge of stealing coal, and got him off; he could not recollect any other occasion in his legal life when he had been in contact with a Negro. It seemed to Major Mark T. Curtis that in all the Staff Judge-Advocate’s department there were few officers less suitable than he for this assignment; but he was an open-minded man and quite prepared to do his best with it, working from the elementary first principles of law. It never struck him that this was why he had been sent.

  He found Private Dave Lesurier sitting up in bed, with a dressing round his throat; he seemed to have boils all over him, and he was looking thin and ill. The guard on the door arranged with the sister for a screen around the bed, for there were other men in the ward. The Major sat down on a chair, by the Negro, behind this screen, and said, “I’m from the Staff Judge-Advocate’s office, at Headquarters. You know there’s been some talk about court-martialling you, Lesurier?”

  The Negro said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, that’s all in the future,” the Major said. “If you have done anything very wrong, you will not get away with it without being punished. If it comes to a court-martial, you will have a couple of officers who know the law to help you. Before it gets that far, we’ve got to make up our minds if you’ve done anything so bad as to make it worth while putting you on trial. That’s why I’ve come to see you, to get your story of what happened. Do you understand me?”

  The Negro said, “Yes, sir?.”

  “Well, now, would you like to tell me what it’s all about?”

  The Negro said, “I guess you know that already.”

  The officer was silent for a moment. “Maybe I know some of it,” he said. “I’ve seen a statement Miss Trefusis made. I’ve seen nothing from you.”

  The boy said, “If you’ve seen what Miss Trefusis said, I guess you’ve seen everything, sir.”

  “There are two sides to every question, Lesurier. I want you to tell me yours.”

  There was a long silence. The Negro sat studying the grey blanket spread over his bed, with the red lettering on it, PENZANCE GENERAL HOSPITAL. “I guess there’s nothing much to say,” he said at last. “I don’t want to deny it. I just grabbed a hold of her—’n kissed her. That’s all there is to it.”

  Major Curtis said unexpectedly, “Have you got a girl back home?”

  Lesurier looked up in surprise. “No, sir. Not one regular one.”

  “How long have you been over here?”

  “Four months, sir.”

  “Got to know many girls since you got over here?”

  The Negro shook his head.

  “None?”

  The boy hesitated. “Not unless you count Miss Trefusis,” he said.

  “Apart from her, Lesurier, have you been out with any girls at all since you got over here?”

  “No, sir. I haven’t spoken to one since I left Nashville.”

  “How old are you, Lesurier?”

  “Twenty-two, sir.”

  The Major thought, a mighty long time for a boy of twenty-two to go without speaking to a girl. He said, “What were you doing before you got drafted?”

  He sat patiently, asking a question now and then, building up the background to the case. He heard all about the Filtair Corporation and the James Hollis School for Colored Boys back in distant Nashville, and about the garage, and the truck driving, and the bulldozer. He had very seldom probed into a Negro’s life before. In his home in Portland the help had all been white. Except in sleeping cars and shoeshine parlors he had not come much in contact with the coloured people. He sat patiently making the boy talk, realising the imperfection of his own knowledge, anxious to learn.

  At last he said, “Well, now, tell me about Miss Trefusis. Where did you first meet her?”

  The boy said, “In the store.”

  “I see.” The Major glanced at him, and there was humour in his eye. “Like to tell me what you said to her?”

  “Sure,” said the Negro. “I asked her for ten Players.”

  “That all you said?”

  “That’s all, sir.”

  “Well, what happened next time you met her? Where was that?”

  “In the store again, sir. I asked for another ten Players.”

  For an instant Major Mark T. Curtis felt that he was being trifled with; then, suddenly, he was almost sure he wasn’t. He said, “Apart from asking her for cigarettes, when did you first speak to her?”

  “I never did, sir. Only to buy Players.”

  The officer stared at him. “Do you mean you never said a thing to her before you grabbed hold of her and kissed her, except to ask for ten Players?”

  “That’s right, Major. I know it sounds mighty dumb, but that’s right.”

  “I’ll say it sounds dumb.” The Major sat in silence for a moment, conning the evidence so far. Amongst white folks there were nuances in these affairs; sometimes the spoken word did not count for so much. He had not known before that coloured folks knew anything about nuances, and he was incredulous now. But his duty was to ascertain the truth.

  He thought very deeply for a moment, and then said, “Was she nice to you?”

  Lesurier said evasively, “She never spoke to me except to give me change and that.”

  “I know. But when she did that, was she nice to you?”

  Their eyes met for an instant; the Negro dropped his glance down to the grey blanket with the red lettering. “She was mighty nice,” he said quietly.

  “I see.” There was a short pause. “Well, now, Lesurier, what happened in the street that night? You’d arranged for her to meet you?”

  “No, sir. I told you, I never said a thing to her except to buy things.”

  “Well, were you waiting for her?”

  “That’s right, Major.”

  “What for?”

  “I wanted to ask her if she’d care to take a little walk with me one evening.”

  The Major felt that he was getting on to firmer ground. “You could have asked her that in the store,” he pointed out. “Why didn’t you?”

  “There was always other folks around,” the Negro said. “I didn’t think she’d like it if I asked her that with other folks a
round.”

  “I see. So you waited for her in the street to ask her. Why did you pick ten o’clock at night, though?”

  “I didn’t pick it, Major. I started waiting for her around six, when I came down from the camp.”

  “You hung around from six o’clock till ten to try and get a chance to speak to her alone?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Have you got any way of proving that, Lesurier? Did you tell anyone what you were doing?”

  “No, sir” The Negro thought for a minute. “I walked down from the camp with Corporal Booker Jones,” he said. “He said to come on into the White Hart and have a little drink, but I said I guessed I would stick around outside. That was around six o’clock or soon after. He might remember.”

  Major Curtis made a mental note of the name. “Well, now,” he said, “in the end she came along. Was she alone?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What happened then?”

  The Negro hesitated. “I went up to her to ask her,” he said at last, “and then I thought it was kind of late to ask her if she’d like to take a little walk, and I didn’t know what to do—after waiting all that time, and that …”

  “What did you do?”

  The boy said, “I give her a kiss, Major. That’s all I did.”

  “Kind of sudden, wasn’t it?”

  The Negro said wearily, “I guess so. It sounds mighty silly now. The only thing I got to say is that it didn’t seem so silly then.”

  “I see. What did she say about it?”

  “Called me a beast, ’n started struggling,” the boy said heavily. “I let her go.”

  “You let her go as soon as she struggled?”

  “Of course, sir,” the boy said. “I wouldn’t want to do nothing she didn’t like.”

  Major Curtis sat with him for some time longer, drawing out the rest of the story. He questioned the Negro very closely over the attempted suicide, feeling that it must have some connection with a guilty conscience over Miss Trefusis. All he got was, “I was just plum scared of what those M.P.s would do if they caught me after messing with a white girl, sir.”

  In the end, Major Curtis said, “You realize that what you did was very wrong, Lesurier? You just can’t go around treating women that way, any women, white or colored. And especially a British girl over here. You realize that?”

  The boy said, “Sure I done wrong, Major. I know that. Will they send me up for a court-martial?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to see Miss Trefusis and the Military Police and then write the whole thing up, and make out a report. The Staff Judge-Advocate decides if you’re to be court-martialled, not me.”

  “I don’t want to make trouble,” the boy said. “I did wrong and I can take what’s coming.” He hesitated, and then said, “Would I get a chance to tell the little lady I’m real sorry about what I did?”

  “I don’t know,” said the Major thoughtfully. “That might help.”

  He went down to his jeep and drove out to Trenarth. He knew from his own experience, as every soldier knows, that sex-starved men may not be altogether normal; that justice is not served by trying to apply civilian standards to conditions they were not set up to govern. It seemed to him that Miss Trefusis was a casualty of the war. If she had lived in one of the big cities of Great Britain, she might have been shattered by a bomb; as she lived in the country, she had been kissed against her will by a Negro soldier. Both were very unpleasant experiences, and both were due entirely to the war. The landlord of the pub had described this case as a bit of humbug; Major Mark T. Curtis was inclined to agree with him.

  He said to the sergeant driving him, “Take me to the White Hart.”

  “It ain’t open yet, Major. Not till five-thirty.”

  “That’s okay—take me there. I want to see the landlord.”

  His ring at the creaking bell wire roused Mr Frobisher from his afternoon nap. He came slowly to the door and shot the bolts back. He stepped aside when he saw a strange American officer, who said, “Mr Frobisher? My name is Curtis, Major Mark T. Curtis, from the Staff Judge-Advocate’s department at Headquarters. Mind if I come in and have a talk with you?”

  Mr Frobisher took him into the back parlour.

  “You wrote a letter to the General,” the officer said, “about the situation here, and about Private Lesurier. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Aye,” said Mr Frobisher. He figured for a moment in surprise. “Monday I wrote it. What’s this—Thursday. I didn’t think they’d act so quick as that.”

  “We don’t like to leave things to get worse,” the Major said. “I’ve got nothing to do with the general situation between whites and colored in this place. I’m here to look into the evidence for this court-martial. I want to see Miss Trefusis this afternoon, if I can, but before doing that I thought I’d come and have a talk with you. I’d like to know about the background of this girl, what sort of family she comes from, what they say about her moral character. It all adds up, you know.”

  “Aye,” said the landlord. “Well, sit down ’n make yourself comfortable. Can I get you anything? I got some whiskey, Major.”

  Major Curtis was not the man to refuse a Scotch; he gave Mr Frobisher a Lucky Strike and they settled down to talk. “What sort of girl is this,” he asked the landlord. “What does her father do?”

  Mr Frobisher told him.

  “Run around with boys much?” asked the officer.

  The landlord shook his head. “She isn’t old enough,” he said. “I know they start young these days, but not so young as Grace Trefusis is.”

  “How old is she, then?”

  “Let’s see,” said Mr Frobisher thoughtfully. “She was going to school when war started, ’cause she used to pass this window every morning with the other children. Yes, ’n she was still going to school when we started the Home Guard, the L.D.V. we called it then, because I remember seeing her pass when we was drilling with pikes ’n shotguns out in the Square. Summer of 1940, that was. Well, now, she was under fourteen then. She’d be sixteen-and-a-half now, at that rate. Maybe just on seventeen.”

  “Some of them get going by that time,” the Major said.

  “Aye,” said Mr Frobisher, “but not this one.”

  “Anyway, you wouldn’t put her down as a girl of loose character?”

  Mr Frobisher was rather shocked. “Nothing like that,” he said a little curtly.

  Major Curtis felt the situation needed easing a little. “I wanted to be sure of your reaction to that,” he explained. “There have been cases, not very many, but a few, of British women of loose character blackmailing our colored soldiers by threatening to charge them with assault. It’s pretty serious with us, you know, when colored men assault white women.”

  “Aye,” said Mr Frobisher, “you’ll likely get a bit o’ that in the slum parts of the big cities. But not here in Trenarth.”

  They discussed the girl a little more, and then the Major said, “Say, Mr Frobisher, just what did you mean in that letter by saying that you reckoned this case was a lot of humbug?”

  “Well,” said Mr Frobisher, “she come to no harm.”

  “Isn’t that because there was a military policeman there?”

  “Not according to what her father said to me. He said the Negro let her go as soon as she struggled.”

  Major Curtis eyed him keenly. “That’s not what she said next day when Lieutenant Anderson went to see her.”

  “Aye?” said Mr Frobisher. “Well, she was with her mother then. You’ll have to sort the truth of it out for yourself.”

  Major Curtis made a mental note to do so. “You’ve got no strong feelings about colored men associating with white girls, then?” he asked.

  “Wouldn’t be no good if I did have,” said the landlord comfortably. “If a girl takes a fancy to a black fellow and likes him, well, there’s nothing you or I can do to stop it.” He turned to the officer. “One thing about these black fellows o’ yours,”
he said, “they’re ever so kind and considerate to the girls that go with them. Everybody’s been remarking about that. Not spending money—I don’t mean that. But doing things for the girls, putting themselves out for them, thinking ahead of ways to make them happy. That’s the reputation that they’ve got in this place, and there’s no good blinking it.”

  “Have there been any attempts at marriage?” the Major asked. He felt he’d better know the worst.

  “Not yet,” said the landlord thoughtfully. “I dunno that there may not be some, though. The way your coloured fellows go talking in the bar of an evening, a lot of them would like to come back here to live when the war’s over.”

  Major Curtis got up to go. “Well, thanks a lot for what you’ve told me, Mr Frobisher,” he said. “And thank you for writing to the General the way you did. We certainly did appreciate that very much. Say, where would I find Miss Trefusis now?”

  The landlord glanced at his watch. “You’d catch her at the shop, if you’re quick,” he said. “Robertson’s grocery shop, just up the street towards the cross. On the left-hand side. He shuts in five minutes, but you’ll find her there if you go now.”

  The officer said, “Which had I better do, see her there or see her in her home?”

  Mr Frobisher said, “If you see her in her home, you’ll have her mother to deal with.”

  “I see,” said Major Curtis. “I’ll go to the shop. Well, thanks a lot, Mr Frobisher.”

  He went out into the street, and telling the driver of the jeep to wait for him, he walked towards the shop. He felt himself to be in very deep water. Even in Portland, where he had been brought up, no white girl would go out with a coloured man; a marriage would have been incredible. In this village things were different. Probably never very strong, the colour bar in Trenarth had collapsed entirely with the influx of large numbers of coloured Americans. According to the landlord, marriages of black men and white girls would certainly be tolerated and the girls would not lose much in social caste. In some respects the villagers seemed to find the coloured men desirable.

  He entered Robertson’s grocery shop with the feeling that he must be very careful not to offend. His duty was to get a fair statement from the girl of what had happened that he could put in a report for the Judge-Advocate; it would not help him to secure the truth if he showed revulsion from the standards of the village. He felt at a loss in another respect. He was there to question a very young girl, a good girl by all accounts, on a very intimate matter. He knew practically nothing about British girls; he had very seldom spoken to one in his life. Certainly he had never spoken to a British village girl like this; he had no idea how she might react to any of his questions. He felt that quite unknowingly he might defeat his object by his ignorance and clumsiness, fail to secure the truth, and make the matter worse. Still, he must do his best.