The Chequer Board (27 page)

He paused, looking out over the wide river. Over the Pegu Yoma in the far distance the great thunderheads of the monsoon were massing for another storm; a little wind blew past them on the verandah, cool and refreshing jungle rats scampered up and down the trunk of the banyan tree, their tails held high; on the river beneath them sampans drifted by.

“There was an American lieutenant in the Army Air
Corps who’d been stationed at this place Trenarth,” Morgan said at last. “He came in one day in a B-25, and at lunch I heard him telling the other goddams all about it. I guessed it was our nigger when I heard him telling them.”

Mr Turner asked, “What did he say?”

The American had said, “Colonel McCulloch sure has got himself a mess of nigger trouble dowm at Trenarth. It’s got so the boys down there don’t just know who they’re to take orders from, the Colonel or the landlord of the pub.”

It had been just before closing time when Sergeant Burton blew his whistle as he raced around the corner of the White Hart in pursuit of Private Dave Lesurier. In the bar Mr Frobisher had already said, “Time, gentlemen, please,” to a room full of Negroes, beaming at them as he did so. He used the words that he had used for twenty-seven years each evening to warn his patrons at five minutes to ten that they must drink up and go, at the conclusion of his licensed hours. He beamed, because he was well aware by now of the simple pleasure that the Negroes got from the words which were his common use. They would grin back at him, and drink up, and go quietly on the stroke of ten o’clock. The bar of the White Hart was therefore reeking with Anglo-American goodwill when Sergeant Burton blew his whistle and the jeep came screaming to a standstill in the street outside and the fun started.

The Negroes went tumbling out into the street to see what was going on, and because they had to go anyway.
After the last had left, Mr Frobisher walked slowly round the bar, wiping it down with a rag. Then he walked to the front door, to bolt it for the night, and stood for a minute looking out into the street.

In the moonlight he could see the street was full of American soldiers, white and black. There was whistling and the arrival of more cars with Military Police; somebody was standing up in the back of a Command car and ordering the troops back to their camps. There was a good deal of confusion, but the doings of the military did not interest Mr Frobisher very much. He bolted the door and retired into his parlour, and put on the wireless and lit his pipe, and sat down for a quiet smoke before bed.

Within five minutes the U. S. Military Police were hammering on his door. He heaved himself out of his chair and went to open it; he was faced by a sergeant with a couple of soldiers at his back, all armed to the teeth.

The sergeant said, “We got to search this house for a nigger. You got any niggers in here?”

“Nobody in here but me,” said Mr Frobisher. “Not unless my daughter’s upstairs in her room.”

“Well, we got to search this house,” the sergeant said, and made as if to come in.

The landlord said slowly, “Here, steady on a minute. What’s all this about?”

“One of your village girls got raped or near raped by a nigger,” said the sergeant. “The lieutenant said, search all the houses in this block.”

Mr Frobisher said, “You got a search warrant?”

The sergeant stared at him nonplussed. “We don’t need no warrant.”

Mr Frobisher said, “Well, you can’t go searching houses in this country without you’ve got a warrant. You ought to know better. There’s no nigger in this house now, anyway. They all went at ten o’clock.”

“For crying out loud!” the sergeant said. “You going to let us in here, or not?”

“You got to have a warrant if you’re going to search my house,” said Mr Frobisher firmly.

One of the men behind pushed forward. “Let me see if I can do it, Sarge.” The sergeant gave place to him. Private Graves had lived and worked in England for five years.

“Mr Frobisher,” he said, “we’ve got no warrant to search your house. But one of your young ladies has complained that a nigger stopped her and did something to her in the street, and he’s run away. We thought maybe he might be hiding in your back yard or some place. Mind if we come in and have a look?”

“Sure,” said the landlord, “go ahead. Why didn’t you say that first of all?”

Slightly bewildered, the sergeant led his men into the house. They spread out quickly, looked in all the ground-floor rooms, and went out into the yard. Mr Frobisher said to Private Graves, “Take a look upstairs if you want to.” He went with him and knocked on his daughter’s door.

She answered from inside, “Who’s that?”

“Come on out a minute,” her father said.

She appeared in a kimono, and saw her father standing with an American soldier. He said, “This gentleman wants to know if you’ve got a nigger in there.”

She said, “Why, Daddy, what a thing to say! You’d better go to bed.”

He was quite unmoved. “Well, that’s what they want to know.” In a few words he told her what was happening. “You’d better let him take a look.”

A very much abashed military policeman put his head in at the door and looked around, while Bessie regarded him as so much dirt. He went downstairs again with Mr Frobisher, and the girl slammed her door.

The sergeant left one military policeman in the yard and moved on to the next house.

A few minutes after that there was the noise of a jeep being started up, a challenge, and two shots. In the street outside there was turmoil. Cars filled with running men and roared off in the direction of Penzance. Quite suddenly the street was quiet again, still and deserted in the bright moonlight.

Mr Frobisher shut the street door carefully, and shot the bolts, one by one. Then he turned, and Bessie was standing halfway down the stairs, in her kimono.

“Was that shots fired?” she asked, and there was wonder in her voice.

“Aye,” said her father heavily. “It won’t do no good, that.”

The girl said, “Lor’! …” And then she asked, “Who was it got assaulted, do you know?”

“I dunno.”

“Do you know which of the boys did it?”

“I dunno. One o’ them called up from the cotton fields, I should think. Some o’ them don’t seem ever to have been educated at all, not to speak of.”

She tossed her head. “Even so, a girl what’s got her head screwed on right doesn’t have to get assaulted, not unless she wants to.”

“Aye,” he said, “that’s right.”

They went to bed.

Lieutenant Anderson of the U. S. Military Police did not get a great deal of sleep that night. He was a decent man, and secretly concerned at what he had found in the air-raid shelter. Easing his way cautiously around the buttress, gun in one hand and torch in the other, with a sergeant back of him carrying a submachine gun, he had found a young Negro sitting on a seat, his head bowed down on his knees, and drenched in his own blood. He put away his gun in favour of a first-aid kit, and rushed the lad in a Command car to the nearest hospital, in the next street, and left him there under guard. He had then an awkward five minutes with a British police sergeant who turned up and wanted to know all about it. Lieutenant Anderson was well aware that the British civil police had funny ideas about shooting. They went unarmed themselves, and seemed to have no difficulty in dealing with the pansy British criminals that way.

This police sergeant was a man of fifty, unimaginative and difficult. “Was that your men shooting in the street just now?” he asked.

“That’s right,” said the lieutenant.

The sergeant said ponderously, “Well, you can’t do that here.” He reached for his black notebook. “Can I have your name and unit?”

“Say, what is this?” said the lieutenant unhappily.
“We’re the Military Police. We don’t have to make any report to you.”

“Maybe not,” said the sergeant equably, “but I got to make a report about you. You can’t go shooting off guns in the street like that, not in this country you can’t. You might ha’ killed somebody.”

Lieutenant Anderson realised that some explanation was required from him. “Maybe you wouldn’t know about the color difficulty,” he said patiently. “It’s kind of different when you are dealing with a nigger. They don’t react until you show a gun.”

“Was this Negro armed when you found him?” asked the sergeant.

“Only just his knife,” said the lieutenant. “But the boys wouldn’t necessarily know that.”

The sergeant wrote it all down laboriously in his notebook. Again he demanded the lieutenant’s name and unit, and got it, and wrote it down. “It doesn’t seem to be anything to do with us,” the sergeant said at last. “I’ll have to make out a bit of a report because of the firing, but I don’t suppose you’ll hear no more about it.” He went away at last, leaving Lieutenant Anderson irritated and slightly worried.

He drove back to his camp and, before going to bed, questioned Sergeant Burton rather closely. The sergeant, fat and forty, did not know the name of the girl, but he had seen her in the street several times, and knew where she lived.

It seemed to Lieutenant Anderson that before he made out his report to Colonel McCulloch he should make the
matter water-tight by getting evidence from the girl, and at half-past eight next morning he was knocking on her cottage door, with Sergeant Burton at his side.

Mr Trefusis, signalman on the railway, had already gone to work. Mrs Trefusis opened the door to them, full of feminine indignation. Gracie had come in crying shortly after ten o’clock and had been closely questioned by her mother. She had told her mother that she had been grabbed and kissed by a Negro soldier, and that she had screamed, and a sergeant of the U. S. Military Police had come running up and saved her. In her confusion and distress she thought that this was true.

“And let me tell you,” said Mrs Trefusis, arms akimbo, “if you think you can bring them black savages into a decent town like this and let them run amuck, you’re very much mistaken. It’s just the mercy of Providence the poor girl isn’t lying in her grave this very minute, and a lot any of you would care about it. But you ain’t heard the last of this, you mark my word. Fine goings on, when decent girls can’t go out after dark ’n come home safe! Fine goings on!”

Lieutenant Anderson’s spirits rose; this was just what he wanted. If there was any difficulty about the charge or the shooting he could bring the Colonel down and let him listen to the mother of the victim. “I guess we’re all real sorry this has happened, lady,” he said meekly.

“And well you might be, young man,” she replied indignantly. “This is a decent town; we don’t have them goings on here, you know, however you may carry on at home where you come from. We don’t want any o’ your Wild West manners here. What do we have to do? Keep
our girls in of an evening ’cause the niggers get them? I never did hear such! The poor child hasn’t slept a wink all night and didn’t eat no breakfast, and now late at the shop and all. I told Mr Trefusis, I did, I said we ought to have a doctor to her, that we did. That’s what I told him. But he didn’t pay no attention to me.”

She stopped for breath.

The lieutenant said, “You don’t have to worry any more. We got the nigger, and you can depend upon it there won’t be no more trouble of that sort, no ma’am. He’ll be up for court-martial, that nigger will. He’ll get sent up for about ten years. As for your daughter, ma’am, I’m here to tell you that we’re real sorry in the U. S. Army this thing had to happen. I guess there’s nothing we can do will ease the little lady’s feelings, but if there’s anything she needs, or anything that we can get her that’d take her mind off it, I’d be real glad if you’d tell me.”

Mrs Trefusis said, “I dunno. If you’ve got him and he’s going to be court-martialled …”

The lieutenant laughed shortly. “Don’t you worry about that. We’re going to make an example of that nigger. This isn’t going to happen again.” He hesitated. “Could I see the little lady for a minute? I’d like to know if she can identify him.”

“Come in.” She showed them into the parlour, and went to find her daughter, who was hurrying to go to work.

“There’s a couple of American officers come in about last night, dearie,” she said. “Ever so nice they are. Come on in for just a minute and talk to them.”

The girl said, “I don’t want to see them, Ma.”

“Come on, dearie—they won’t hurt you. It won’t take you long. They just want to know if you can identify the nigger that they’ve caught.”

“I don’t want to identify anybody. Why can’t they leave it be?”

Her mother said firmly, “The guilty have to take their punishment. Now come along. It won’t take but a minute.”

“Oh, Ma!”

When she appeared behind her mother in the parlour she was practically inarticulate with embarrassment and fright. The lieutenant glanced at her, pretty and blushing and very young, and a momentary wave of fellow feeling with Lesurier swept over him; she certainly was a lovely little piece of work. This conviction was succeeded by a virtuous resolution to make very sure the Negro got the limit.

He said, “I’m here for the U. S. Army, Miss Trefusis, to apologize for what happened last night. We’re all real sorry about it, and we hope you won’t think too badly of us over it.”

The girl blushed, and was silent. Her mother said kindly, “She don’t bear no ill will, do you, Gracie?”

The girl whispered, “No.”

The lieutenant said kindly, “Did you ever see this man before, Miss Trefusis?”

Her mother said, “Speak up, Gracie, and tell the gentleman.”

She whispered, “I see him in the shop.”

“Did you ever go out walking with him, Miss Trefusis?”

She shook her head. Her mother said, “She don’t go out with boys. Gracie’s always been a very good girl, Captain.”

*

The lieutenant thought, but a darn sight more backward than some. I could teach her plenty.

Aloud, he said, “Do you know his name, Miss Trefusis?”

She shook her head, and whispered, “I heard someone call him Dave once, in the shop.”

Sergeant Burton said, “That’s right, Lieutenant—Dave Lesurier.”

“You’re quite sure it was the same one that troubled you last night?” the lieutenant asked.