The Chequer Board (39 page)

Mr Turner and Mollie looked around them. The room was fairly spacious for the size of the house, being practically the whole of the ground floor. The furniture was aged but adequate; a bright fire burned in the small kitchen range; the room was cosy and cheerful, with bright, rather gaudy colours in curtains and loose covers. The lamp stood on a large kitchen table still littered with the remains of tea, but the tea things had been pushed to one side, and a pencil and cheap exercise book, and a thin book of trigonometrical functions, and a slide rule, and a copy of a book called
Transient Phenomena
by Steinmetz, with a library tag on it, showed that the draughtsman was
learning the oddities of alternating-current circuits. Then there was a clattering down the stairs and Dave appeared again.

“She’ll be right down,” he said. “Say, I’m mighty glad to see you, Captain. You know,” he said, “it’s been bothering me quite a bit I never got to know what happened to you, with that wound you got, and everything. It seemed to me sometimes that we was all in a bit of a tough spot, even the pilot, with his fancy wife, and we ought to have kept up. But I never heard no more of you, nor of the pilot, either.” He laughed. “The way I was fixed myself, I didn’t get much chance to make enquiries.”

“Well, I can tell you what happened to Flying Officer Morgan,” said Mr Turner comfortably. “He …” He checked himself, and looked up at the Negro. “I met him out in Burma,” he said quietly. “It’ll interest you, this will. He got rid of that wife of his and married a Burmese girl.”

“No!”

“Fact. I met him out there, only a couple o’ months ago.”

“A colored girl?”

“That’s right.”

Lesurier burst out laughing, and slapped his thigh. “Well, what do you know about that! Say, Captain, do you think there could have been something ‘catching’ in that ward? You know, I married a white girl?”

“So Mr Frobisher told me,” said Mr Turner. “Maybe it is catching. For all I know, it may be going on all over the world. If so, I shan’t lose any sleep about it.”

Lesurier said, “Tell me more about Mr Morgan, Captain.
How did he come to meet this colored girl he married?”

“He met her out in Burma,” Mr Turner said. He settled down on the worn settee to tell the Negro all about it. In the middle of their discussion Grace came downstairs, and they all stood up and were introduced. She said, “I’m ever so pleased to meet you. I’ve heard Dave talk about you, Captain Turner, ever so many times when Mr Brent was here, and they were wondering what happened to you.” She turned to Mollie. “I just been putting down the baby. Like to take a peep at him before he goes to sleep?”

“Oh, I’d like to do that.” The two women went upstairs, and Mr Turner turned to the Negro. “Did your wife say something about Brent?”

“That’s right,” said Lesurier. “Duggie Brent. He’s the only one of the four of us that I knew anything about, till you came in this evening.”

“What’s he doing now?” asked Mr Turner.

“Got a job at Camborne, with a butcher,” said the Negro. “Drives all round this end of Cornwall in the van, selling in the villages. I’ll tell you about him. But go on about Morgan.”

Mr Turner went on talking about Flight Lieutenant Morgan and Nay Htohn in far-off Mandinaung.

Upstairs in the little bedroom, the two women bent over the cradle. The face of the baby showed as a yellowish-brown patch on the white pillow.

“He’s ever such a darling,” said the mother softly. “He knows us both already, and he’s ever so intelligent. Got all his father’s brains, he has. He’s going to have a little brother or sister in May.”

“Fancy,” said Mollie. “My dear, I am so glad.”

Grace said, “Well, we thought as he was kind of dark that it’d make things easier if he had two or three brothers ’n sisters of his own sort along with him, besides our wanting them as well.” She straightened up over the cradle. “I dunno how you think about these things,” she said. “Lots of folks, they think I done something terrible, marrying a Negro. But they never talk that way after they get to know Dave.” She laughed. “Most o’ them say then he’s exceptional, ’n not like the others. But I dunno. I never had no regrets.”

Mollie stooped over the baby. “He is a darling little chap,” she said, wistful at her own childlessness. “Do you suppose he’ll have much trouble at school, when he gets older, with the other children?”

Grace shook her head. “Not if we keep him to school here,” she said. “There’s one or two more like him in Trenarth, sort of souvenirs of the Americans.” She laughed, and then she said, “Of course, Dave says he will have trouble on account of his colour. Like he has himself. But I dunno—I don’t think trouble hurts people so much. I think it kind of brings out what’s the best in them, don’t you? I know it has with Dave.”

Mollie nodded. “I expect that’s right.”

Grace said, “My dear, I must tell you what the Vicar said about him—it was awful! He’s ever such a queer man, Mr Kendall—says the queerest things, right out in the pulpit, sometimes. I suppose that’s why he’s only vicar of a little place like this, they wouldn’t give him a bigger parish. Well, I asked him to come and see baby here before the christening because I thought he might not like
it about the colour, and he came, and I asked him. And he said, he was about the colour of babies in the Middle East, in Palestine and that, and then he said, ‘about the colour of Jesus Christ.’ My dear, wasn’t that a terrible thing to say? He’s ever such a queer man, Mr Kendall. I shouldn’t think he’d ever get to be a bishop.”

Downstairs, Mr Turner was again asking about Duggie Brent. “He’s getting on all right,” Dave said. “He comes by here with the van Mondays and Thursdays, and always saves us a nice joint. Grace gets all her meat from him. It’s better meat, and cheaper too, than any she can get in Trenarth or Penzance. Of course,” he said reflectively, “I dare say he goes out of his way with us, because it was through us he kind of got the job, you see.”

Mr Turner asked, “How was that, then?”

It seemed that Badcock’s Fair had come to Penzance in the previous autumn, and Dave had taken Grace to it, and they had been to see the Wall of Death, and there was Duggie Brent, red-headed, dashing round and round on a motorcycle, and when it was over, standing, bowing, at the bottom of the saucer, while the audience, encouraged by the compère, showered pennies down on the riders. They had met him after the show and had been introduced to his wife in the pay box, who was evidently going to have a baby pretty soon. They had all gone to the local for a drink, and had got on so well together that on Sunday when the show was closed down for the day, the Brents had come out to Trenarth for tea with the Lesuriers.

“That was soon after our baby was born,” Dave said. “They were kind of envious of us having a home like this,
although it’s not much. Phyllis didn’t want to go on in the show business, with the baby coming and all that, and Duggie—say, that boy certainly was fed up with the Wall of Death. But there wasn’t anything else he could do except butchering, and his father’s shop in Romsey, that was sold. Well, they went on with the show, but we kept thinking about it and how nice it would be if they could be neighbours, because Grace and Phyllis, they hit it off all right. So then I got to hear that Mr Sparshatt over at Camborne was starting his van round again—and say, was it wanted! The meat supply around these parts has been just terrible, for all that it’s a country district. Well, Grace knows Jane Sparshatt through being at school together. And Jane spoke to her father, and I wrote to Duggie at some hotel in Edgware saying that there was a job there if he wanted it, and he came right down, and Mr Sparshatt took him on for the van round. So now he drives the van around all week, selling the meat, getting back to Camborne every night, of course. He says it’s a darn sight more fun than the Wall of Death, or the Parachute Corps, either.”

“Got a house at Camborne, has he?”

“That’s so. Got a little girl, too, Julienne Phyllis. Got another coming pretty soon, too. He’s fixed up all right. Take over the shop someday, after Mr Sparshatt’s time, I’d think.”

“Well, that’s fine,” said Mr Turner. “We all come out all right then, all the lot of us. You’d never have thought it, back in 1943, would you?”

“No,” said the Negro. “We certainly did seem a no-good
bunch of bums around that time.” He glanced at Mr Turner. “You got on all right, then?”

“Oh, I done fine,” said Mr Turner. He hesitated for a moment, and then said, “I had a bit o’ trouble after I left hospital, but after that I went ahead in business, ’n never looked back. I got a nice house now in Watford, paid for, too, ’n a good job. I been mighty lucky, taking it all round.”

“Say, that’s great,” said Lesurier. “You don’t ever get no trouble from the wound?”

“Not so’s you’d notice,” said Mr Turner briefly. “Throbs a bit, now and then, but nothing to signify.”

Lesurier did not feel that he could ask for more detail. To him, his visitor looked to be a very sick man indeed; there was a thin grey look about him that Dave did not understand but which seemed menacing, and he seemed to have only partial use of the right hand. He said, “You made a mighty fine recovery, you know. Back in the hospital, one time, they didn’t think you’d live.”

“Born to be hanged,” said Mr Turner comfortably. “That’s what it is.”

The women came downstairs, and Grace Lesurier made a cup of fresh tea while Dave and Mollie washed the old tea things and they sat talking for an hour. At last the Turners got up to go.

“It’s been real nice seeing you again, Captain Turner,” said the Negro. “It’s a pity Duggie Brent couldn’t have been here, too.”

“Don’t matter,” said Mr Turner, “s’long as I know he’s all right; that’s all I care about. I never did see him, you
know. I was all bandaged up. All I ever did was hear his voice. I wouldn’t know him if I met him, now.”

“Fancy …” said Grace.

“I’ll tell him about you and Mr Morgan when I see him next,” Dave said. “I reckon he’ll be mighty glad to hear you’re going on so well. We got kind of worried, him and me, thinking we ought to try and find out what had happened to you. It didn’t seem right when we was both fixed up so nice that we shouldn’t try and find out about you and Mr Morgan. And now, you’re better fixed than either one of us!”

“The pilot out in Burma,” Mr Turner said, “he’s better off than all the lot of us together.”

They said good-bye at the door. “Let us know when you’re down in these parts again,” Dave said. “That likely to be soon?”

“Oh, aye,” said Mr Turner. “I get down here once in a while. Next summer, maybe.”

Grace said, “Be sure and let us know.”

They got into the little car and drove off to Penzance. At the wheel, Mollie said, “Why did you say we’d be down here again, Jackie?”

“Got to say something,” he said heavily. “You didn’t tell her nothing, did you?”

“No,” she said quietly. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t want it.”

“That’s right,” he said. “No good getting folks upset about things they can’t do nothing about.” He paused, and then came out with his favourite cliché, “All be the same in a hundred years,” he said. “That’s what I say.”

They drove into Penzance.

A
FTER
his holiday in Cornwall, Mr Turner went downhill rather rapidly. They got back to Watford without incident, but he was tired by the journey, and when his wife suggested he should stay in bed next day he made no protest. He had breakfast in bed—“like a lord,” as he put it—and looked at the pictures in the paper, especially “Jane.” But reading was now difficult for him except for the very large headlines, and he had soon done with The Mirror. His wife brought him up the wireless and he lay listening to that while she cleaned and tidied the house and washed the breakfast things. She went out presently to do her shopping, and on returning to the house about half-past eleven, found that he had turned the wireless off and was lying in bed doing nothing at all. As she took her coat off, she said, “Didn’t you want the wireless any longer, then?”

He said, “I turned it off. Kind of stops one thinking.”

She sat down on the bed for a minute before going down to start to cook the dinner. “What you been thinking about?”

He said, “Oh, all sorts of things. Seems like I never had
time for any real thinking before, thinking things out, I mean. I been having a grand time. Ought to ha’ got sick like this long ago.”

“What sort of things, Jackie?”

“I dunno.” He paused, and then he said. “I keep on being ever so glad them chaps got themselves fixed up all right, all the lot of them. And all having babies, too, right and left, every one of them. All the whole boiling of them. Sort of makes up for you and I not having any, don’t it?”

“I suppose so,” she said slowly. “I suppose it does.”

He said, “You aren’t sorry that we never, are you, now?”

“I dunno,” she said. “Sometimes I kind of wish we had.”

“I’m glad we didn’t,” he said. “Things being like they are, with you having to work again and that, I’m glad we never. But lying here and thinking, I’m glad them chaps don’t think about it like we do.”

“They’re not so sensible,” she said thoughtfully.

He grinned. “That’s right,” he said. “Chaps with a dud napper like I got ought to be sensible about not having kids, but they don’t have to be.”

She went downstairs to get on with the cooking, and presently she brought him up his dinner in bed while he lay listening to the wireless. And when she came, he turned it off and said, “I been thinking, I’d like to write a letter to Mr Morgan out in Burma to tell him about Dave Lesurier and Duggie Brent. I know he’d like to hear, ’n Nay Htohn, she’d like to hear about them, too.”

So after lunch Mollie got her pad and he lay dictating a very long letter all about Trenarth and Grace Trefusis
and the disease that was “catching,” and about Jones and Porter, and about Duggie Brent. And, tired with the effort of so much dictation, he sank into sleep while Mollie was downstairs typing it, and slept till it was time for tea, and then got up and dressed and had his tea with her downstairs, and went out with her to the pictures. That was a prototype for many days that followed, perhaps the happiest of their chequered married life.