Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  “Aye,” he said, “it’s a long, dreary time. I think I’ll find her hanging on for me in ‘Frisco still. If not, well, that’ll be too bad. But any way it breaks, I’m real grateful that you’ve given us the chance to set up house again.”

  “If I were you,” I said, “I should think up a cablegram and send it off to her. You’ll have a month to do on this side, getting hold of the job. I should think you’d be in San Francisco some time in February.”

  He left me soon after that, and I went on with my work. I saw him again a few days later, when he looked in to show me the answer to his cablegram. He was as pleased as a dog with two tails, and insisted on me reading it. It said:

  Got your cable but where you been all this time Billy died last autumn guess colic George and Mary send love will we live Oakland some dandy new apartments fifteenth street since you left oceans of love stop now no more dough — Junie.

  “Billy was her cat,” he explained. “I’m real sorry about Billy. He was a good, tough kind of cat, ‘n a match for any dog.”

  I handed him back the cable. “I should send her some dough to be going on with, if you’ve got any,” I remarked. “I’ve been finding out about your marriage allowance. They cater for a case like yours. You can draw it, but you’ve got to make a declaration. Look, this is what you’ve got to do.”

  I went through the Admiralty Fleet Order with him and explained it to him in detail. “I did hear something about this,” he said at last.

  Thinking of the girl in Oakland, I was a little short with him. “You might have done something about it,” I said.

  He looked abashed. “Guess I never had a commander that I’d care to talk it over with before,” he said.

  I told him he was a fool, and sent him away to make out his declaration.

  About a fortnight later McNeil rang me up. “You might look in some time,” he said. “I’ve got a couple more flimsies in about Geneviève.”

  I went round to his office after lunch. He took them from a drawer and passed them to me. “Not very good news, I’m afraid,” he said.

  The first one read:

  RENNES. A British officer named Charles Simon was executed at the rifle range to-day. This man was convicted of an act of espionage at Lorient last spring, at which time his status was that of a civilian. It is believed that the severe damage caused to the U-boat base was due to information passed by this man to the British. Ends.

  I looked up at the brigadier. “I’m very sorry about this,” I said.

  He nodded. “So am I.” He paused. “I was very much afraid that this would happen,” he said quietly. “It would have been a miracle if they hadn’t spotted him.”

  “You think some German recognized him, and remembered?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Something of the sort. I don’t suppose we’ll ever hear the details now.”

  “He must have known what he was doing,” I said slowly. “When he gave himself up, he must have known the risk.”

  McNeil said: “He was probably thinking of the hostages.”

  “Of course.” I sat there staring at the message in my hand, and the slow anger rose in me. “We’ve been a couple of bloody fools over this,” I said at last. “We should have managed better.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “I mean just this,” I said. “Simon was the best officer for working on the other side this country ever had, or is ever likely to get. And now he’s dead. We should have thought more deeply before risking him again in Douarnenez.”

  “It’s not so easy to rope in these chaps,” McNeil said heavily. “The better they are, the more difficult they are to manage. You know that.” I did, and I was silent. “He was a damn good man,” he said. “But there are others just as good.”

  “You can’t have so many Simons as all that,” I replied. “We’ve gone and wasted one of them.”

  “Wasted...” he said thoughtfully. “I’m not sure that you’re right.” He glanced at me. “Did you read the other one?”

  I turned to the other flimsy. This one said:

  BREST. The civil population have devised a means of harassing the Germans which is proving very effective. The name Charles Simon is written upon walls or chalked on pavements. This device is spreading rapidly, and has been observed as far away as St. Brieuc. In every case the Germans have reacted angrily, and show concern at the spread of the movement. A man of this name was executed recently at Rennes. Ends.

  I stood there reading this again, and as I did so I could feel the hate swelling and seething on the other side. I put down the flimsies, sick of the whole miserable business.

  “In any case,” I said, “this winds up Geneviève. Simon was the last of them to be accounted for, and now that’s over.”

  The brigadier nodded. “It’s all finished now. I’ll let you know if anything else turns up.”

  “I shan’t be here,” I said. “I’m going back to sea.” It was a relief to talk of cleaner things. “They’re giving me one of the Tribal class destroyers.”

  “Glad to go?”

  I said: “Yes. Somebody has to do this Admiralty work, of course, but I’d rather be at sea with a definite job to do. Here you work all day in the office, and nothing ever seems to be achieved.”

  He stared at me. “I don’t know what you want,” he said. “The operations that we did with Geneviève have been a most successful show.”

  “We lost the ship and all her crew,” I said bitterly.

  “We lost a fishing vessel and two officers,” he retorted. “Against that, we destroyed three Raumboote and damaged a destroyer. We killed not less than ninety Germans. We landed seventy machine-guns, and put fresh heart into a town that needed it. And not the least part, we drew off a division from the Russian front.”

  “A pretty scruffy sort of a division,” I remarked.

  “I grant you that,” he said. “It was a very tired division. But it was a division, none the less, taken from the Russian front at Rostov.”

  He turned to me. “Who knows what that may mean?”

  The Chequer Board (1947)

  The Chequer Board was first published by William Heinemann Ltd in 1947. The novel was written between September 1945 and February 1946. By this stage Shute was a well-known and commercially successful author, who even during the war had continued to write a novel a year. The plot centres on Jackie Turner, who was injured during the war and is now told that he only has a year to live. He decides that he would like to reconnect with three men with whom he spent time in a military hospital. He had learned about their struggles and goals in life, but lost contact with them after the end of the war. He sets upon a quest to find them again to see if they are happy and content. All three men have faced great difficulties, including being falsely accused of crimes, enduring terrible marriages and suffering under the weight of racism and bigotry. Despite the protagonist’s failing health and Shute’s use of topics such as prejudice and injustice, the novel is surprisingly optimistic and uplifting.

  The first edition of the novel

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  Shute at the height of his fame, c. 1950

  ’Tis all a chequer board of Nights and Days

  Where Destiny with men for pieces plays:

  Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,

  And one by one back in the Closet lays.

  ‘Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.’

  EDWARD FITZGERALD

  CHAPTER 1

  I SAW MR John Turner first on June 25th last year. He came to me on the recommendation of a general practitioner at Watford: I have the letter before me.

  Dear Mr Hughes,

  I should be grateful if you would make an appoi
ntment to see a patient of mine, Mr John Turner. Mr Turner has been suffering from attacks of vertigo and fainting: I have been attending him consequent on a fall which he suffered in the Strand Palace Hotel, when he was unconscious for some minutes. I have found some apraxia, and the sight of his left eye appears to have become subnormal in recent months. In view of a severe head injury which he incurred in the year 1943 I feel that an intracranial lesion may be at the root of his trouble, and it is upon this diagnosis that I would like you to see him.

  Mr Turner is married, but has no children. He is in some branch of the food business, and lives in a style corresponding with an income of £800-£1000 per annum.

  Yours very sincerely,

  V. C. Worth, mb, bs

  Mr Turner came to see me by appointment that afternoon; the first thing that I noticed when my receptionist showed him in was the scar. It stretched as a deep indentation from a point about an inch above the left eyebrow up in to the hair on the crown of the head, over four inches long. It was a deep cleft in his forehead, red and angry looking.

  The rest of Mr Turner was not very prepossessing. He was about forty years old with a fresh complexion and sandy hair, going a little bald. He had a jaunty air of cheerfulness and bonhomie which did not fit in well with my consulting-room; he was the sort of man who would be the life and soul of the party in the saloon bar of a good class pub, or at the races. He was wearing rather a bright brown suit with a very bright tie, and he carried a bowler hat.

  I got up from my desk as he came in. “Good afternoon, Mr Turner,” I said.

  He said: “Cheerio, doctor. How’s tricks?”

  I smiled. “I’m all right,” I said. I motioned him to the chair before my desk. “Sit down, Mr Turner, and tell me what you are complaining of.”

  He sat down with his bowler on his knee, and grinned at me with nervous cheerfulness. “I’m all right,” he said. “You won’t find much wrong with me, doctor. May want a bit of a tonic. You know,” he said confidentially, “this wound on my napper frightens people. I tell you, straight, it does. Every doctor that I go to gets the wind up and says I ought to see a specialist. They’ll none of them touch me. If I want my corns cutting, they say I ought to see a specialist.” He laughed heartily. “I’m not kidding you. They get the wind up.”

  I smiled at him; one has to create confidence. “Does the wound give you any trouble?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “None at all. Throbs a bit, now and then. The only trouble I get is at the hairdressers’ when they come to cut my hair — it don’t half fox them.” He laughed again. “Not that I’ve much to cut, now.”

  I pulled my pad towards me. “Let me get down the preliminaries first,” I said. He gave me his age, address, and occupation; it seemed that he was a flour salesman. “Cereal Products Ltd.,” he said, “I went to them in 1935, and then went back to them again after the war.”

  I picked up the letter on my desk and glanced it over. “I see that you told Dr Worth about attacks of giddiness,” I said. “Do those come very frequently?”

  He said: “Oh no. Might be two or three in the last month. They don’t last long — just a few seconds, or maybe half a minute.” He laughed nervously. “Sort of make you feel you want to hold on to something. I think I want a tonic, doctor. I told Dr Worth.”

  “Yes,” I said, writing on my pad. “How long since you had the first of those, Mr Turner?”

  “I dunno. Couple of months, maybe.”

  I glanced again at the letter. “Dr Worth says that you had a fall in the Strand Palace Hotel,” I said. “How did that happen?”

  “Well,” he said, “it was like this. We have to do a bit of entertaining in my line — it all goes on the firm, you know. Well, to cut a long story short I was in the American Bar last Thursday with Izzy Guildas and another Portuguese — Jew-boys, you know, but good types all the same — and I suddenly passed out cold. Fact, I’m telling you. I passed out cold, and fell down off the little stool on the floor, clean out. When I came to I was in the lavatory lying on my back on the floor with somebody splashing water on my face, and my collar all undone. I wasn’t half in a mess, I tell you.”

  I said: “How long were you unconscious, Mr Turner?”

  “I dunno. Maybe three or four minutes.”

  I made a note upon my pad. “When you came to, did you feel any pain?”

  “I had the hell of a headache. I was sick, too.”

  “What time of day was this?”

  “About eight o’clock in the evening. We were just going to have dinner. I was looking forward to that dinner.” He laughed.

  “What did you do? Did you see a doctor in the hotel?”

  He shook his head. “I sat about in the lavatory for half an hour or so till I felt better, and then I went home by Underground and went to bed. The wife made me stay in bed in the morning and see Dr Worth.”

  “I see,” I said. I made another note. “Had you been drinking heavily, Mr Turner?” I asked. “Forgive me for such a question, but I have to have the facts.”

  He laughed again. “I been tight often enough not to mind talking about it, doctor. You ask anyone who knew Jackie Turner in the war. But, matter of fact, I hadn’t had a lot. I had a couple of pints at lunch, and then nothing till we went to the American Bar that evening. I had one dry Martini, and Izzy was just ordering the second round when I passed out.”

  “That’s quite moderate,” I said.

  He took me up. “I wish you’d tell that to the wife. She don’t half carry on about the beer I drink. But I think beer’s best. I started to lay off spirits the thick end of a year ago. I got a sort of throbbing, so I stick to beer, mostly.”

  I made a note. “You get this throbbing with whisky, say, but not with beer?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where is this throbbing, when you get it? Under the wound?”

  “No — sort of right inside.”

  I made another note. Then I passed him the silver box of cigarettes; he took one. I lit my own, and absentmindedly slipped the lighter back in my pocket as I glanced over my pad. “Were you very tired that night?” I asked.

  He looked up at me quickly. “Funny you should ask that,” he said. “I was just about all in. I dunno when I felt so tired.”

  “You’d had a very heavy day?”

  He shook his head. “I’d not been doing much. I think I want a tonic. A good, stiff tonic, doctor — that’s what I need. I told Dr Worth, ‘That all that’s wrong with me,’ I said.”

  “Do you get this feeling of exhaustion very often, Mr Turner?”

  He did not answer; he was fumbling with his lighter. The cigarette was held between his lips. He had taken the lighter from his jacket pocket with his right hand and held it for a moment as if to strike it with his right thumb, but his thumb did not move. The little finger waggled to and fro instead. Then he took it in his left hand and with some difficulty rotated the knurled knob, and made a flame, and lit his cigarette. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What was that you said?”

  “I asked if you felt tired very often.”

  “I do sometimes. I didn’t used to. I’m a bit run down.”

  “Are you left-handed, Mr Turner?”

  He stared at me. “No.”

  I said: “I saw you had some trouble with your lighter. Let me see you light it again.”

  He pulled it out of his pocket. “You mean, light it with my right hand, doctor?” He was flushing a little.

  “Yes. Can you do it with your right hand?”

  He said awkwardly: “Well, I always used to, but it doesn’t seem to go, now.” He was fumbling with it. “I don’t seem able to put my thumb on to the knob.”

  “How long have you had this trouble with it?”

  “I dunno. Couple of months, perhaps.”

  I did not want to frighten him. I said: “All right, never mind that now.”

  He stared at me uneasily. “Rheumatism, that’s what it is. I knew a chap once lost the use of
every finger on his hand, every bloody finger, doctor, all through rheumatism. He got it right by taking Kruschen salts. Every morning he took salts, much as would go on a sixpence. He never had no trouble since.”

  He paused, and then he said: “I got some salts last week, and I been taking them.” He glanced at his thumb. “It’s much better than it was. It’s only the lighter I can’t seem to manage.”

  “I’ll make a physical examination of you in a minute,” I said. “First of all, though, tell me about that wound. You got that in the war?”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “Mortar?”

  He shook his head. “It happened in one of them aeroplanes. Twenty millimetre. It burst right in front of me, right inside the cabin.”

  I made a note. “You were in the Royal Air Force in the war?”

  He shook his head. “I was in the Royal Army Service Corps. I was on my way home from Algiers,” he explained, “by air. In 1943, that was. We come by Gib and then straight from Gib to the UK, four of us, in a Hudson with a crew of three. A Jerry jumped us over the sea somewhere around Ushant, a Ju 88. He had four goes at us, but he couldn’t get us down. Over and over again he come at us, and his shells bursting on the wings and in the cabin every time. I got put out on his second run, so I didn’t see the end of it. They said some Spitfires came and drove him off.”

  In the quiet peace of my consulting-room I made my note. “You got back to England all right, then?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Mr Turner said. “The second pilot made a belly landing in a field by Penzance. There was him and me and another chap all in hospital together when I come to. That’s all that there was left, out of seven of us.”

  I wrote again upon the pad. “What was the hospital?”

  “Penzance General Hospital.”

  “That is the normal civilian hospital, is it? Not a service hospital?”