The Chequer Board (40 page)

On his good days he would get up soon after breakfast, and walk out with Mollie to help her in her shopping, and come back and write one or two business letters. He shifted the last of his parcels of cheroots during these weeks, and on casting up his accounts came to the conclusion that he had made a profit of about £340 on them, which more than covered the cost of his trip out to Burma. That pleased him very much.

They did not lay the little car up for the winter, but kept it in commission for his outings. On his good days, once or twice a week, Mollie drove him to the Barley Mow for an hour before closing time. He no longer had the energy to lead the party, but these short evenings, drinking beer and listening to the gossip and the stories in the warmth and light of a crowded bar, were a great pleasure to him. He would talk of them next day with reminiscent pleasure, and make plans for the next outing.

He did his football pool religiously every week. He could no longer read the small print of the announcements, but Mollie read it all out to him each week and they would make out the coupons and send them in, one for him and one for her. He did not win anything, to her
regret, but she won two pounds fifteen shillings one week, and this gave them both a great deal of pleasure.

On his bad days, when headache forced him to his drugs, he stayed in bed all day, sleepy and thoughtful.

About the middle of October he had a fall in the kitchen. He had walked all morning, shopping, with Mollie. On coming into the house the vertigo seized him; he reached for the kitchen dresser and missed it and fell, hitting the back of his head heavily on the fender. He brought down the soup tureen with him and three plates, and Mollie, hurrying downstairs to the noise, found him lying unconscious on the floor in a litter of smashed china.

She called Mrs Pocock from next door to help her, and together they managed to carry him upstairs and put him to bed. He had come round by the time Dr Worth arrived, two hours later, but after that he did not walk out in the street again.

Mrs Pocock was devoted to good works. For want of someone to confide in, and for help in getting Mr Turner up the stairs, Mollie told her the facts of his illness; she relayed them to the Vicar. They were not regular churchgoers by any means—indeed, neither of them had very often been inside the place, but the Vicar was a kindly and broad-minded man, and called one afternoon when Mr Turner was in bed and thinking of getting up for tea to take a run out to the Barley Mow.

Mollie brought the Vicar up to the bedroom. “Here’s Mr Holden come to see you, Jackie,” she said. To the clergyman she said, “It’s ever so kind of you to call.”

She left them together, and went downstairs to get on with the ironing. Half an hour later she heard the Vicar
coming out of the bedroom, and went to meet him in the hall, to open the front door for him.

Mr Holden said, “He seems to keep very cheerful, Mrs Turner.”

“That’s right,” she replied. “Nothing seems to get him down, does it?”

“No; he seems very composed.” He thought for a minute. “Of course, it’s clear that he has never been what one would call a religious man,” he said, and smiled. She wondered apprehensively what Jackie had been saying to him. “If I can do anything practical to help you, Mrs Turner, let me know. And if you find a little later on that he would like to see me again—that sometimes does happen, you know—I will come at once. At any time.”

She said, “That’s ever so kind of you, Mr Holden. I’m sure he’ll like to know that.”

He left, and she turned off the iron and went up to the bedroom. “I just let Mr Holden out,” she said. “Like to have your tea up here, Jackie, or are you going to get up?”

“Oh, I’ll get up,” he replied. “I’m feeling all right now. I reckon we can go out, like we said.”

She asked, “What had Mr Holden got to say?”

“I dunno—all about having Faith, and that.” He paused. “I asked him straight out what was going to happen to me—’Where do I go from here?’ I said. But he don’t know nothing, really. He talked a lot of stuff about Judgment, ’n Heaven, ’n Hell, only he don’t seem to believe in Hell himself, not properly. What it all seems to boil down to is, you just got to have Faith that God’ll put you where you belong, but he don’t know where that is or what happens to you there. It don’t seem very satisfactory to me.”

Theological discussion was a new thing between them. “I wouldn’t bother my head about it too much. Jackie,” she said gently. “Just take it as it comes.”

He was silent for a minute, deep in thought. “I been thinking about this,” he said at last. “I kind of like the idea them Buddhists have the best—what Mr Morgan and Nay Htohn believe. I don’t want to be judged, not yet. I done a sight o’ mean things in my life; things you probably don’t know nothing about, in business and that. You got to these days, or you can’t get by and build up any security at all, with taxes like they are. If I come up to be judged now, ’n it’s either Heaven or Hell, I know which it would be.”

“You can’t know that yourself, Jackie,” she said. “That don’t make sense.”

“Well, I’ve got a pretty good idea,” he replied. “But these Buddhists, what they say is, if you haven’t done so good in this life then you get reborn again a bit lower down, maybe as an Indian sweeper, or lower down still, as a horse or a dog. That gives you another go, like, to have another shot at it ’n try and do a bit better. And however low you get, they say, you always get reborn, and you can always have another go, and work yourself up again by living a better life. That’s what Nay Htohn said. I’d like to think that it was going to be like that.”

“Maybe it will be like that, then,” she said quietly. “
I
wouldn’t worry about it, anyway.”

Mr Turner said, “I don’t. Can’t do anything about it now, so it’s no good worrying. But I kind of like the Buddhist idea—that’s how I’d like it to be.” He grinned
up at her. “So if you see a little dog about next year you haven’t seen before, ’n you call ‘Jackie,’ ’n it comes, just give it a nice bone.”

“And put a bottle of beer in its bowl, too, I suppose,” she said. She turned, laughing, to the door. “Come on and get up, if you’re getting up today. I’ll go and put the kettle on for tea,”

Another time, he said, “I had been thinking about these darker-skinned people that I got to know about, Nay Htohn and Dave Lesurier. You know, there don’t seem to be nothing different at all between all of us, only the colour of our skin. I thought somehow they’d be different to that. They got some things we haven’t got, too—better manners, sometimes. I reckon we could learn a thing or two from them.”

His wife said, “You got to remember that those two were different to the general run of dark-skinned people, Jackie. They were educated ones.”

“That’s so,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe there’s some sense in paying for all this schooling.”

On October 30th Mr Turner came to my rooms in Harley Street, by an appointment made for him by his general practitioner, Dr Worth. I saw him at four o’clock in the afternoon on a day when I had no further appointments, thinking that I might find it necessary to take him to the hospital for further radiological examination.

My receptionist showed him in. His wife came in with him, one hand lightly guiding his arm; she seemed to be afraid to let him move a step without her. She watched
him as he lowered himself into the chair, and then said, “I’ll wait outside, doctor.”

“No, you can stay if you want to,” I replied. “That is, if Mr Turner doesn’t mind?”

“Suits me all right,” he said.

He spoke thickly, with a slurring of the consonants. He still possessed his jaunty air of cheerfulness, but one glance told me that I would have little need of radiological examination for him. Paralysis of the right arm was far advanced. The left eye was fixed and evidently useless to him, and the right one was already much affected. He had lost a great deal of weight, so that his clothes, once tight upon his body, hung on him loosely. He still had colour in his face, but around his eyes and temples there was a grey tinge to his skin. It did not seem to me that he had very long to go.

I have been over thirty years in specialist practice. Some men say that they get hardened to these things, but I have never overcome that sadness of compassion that one must feel for a man in his position.

I offered him a cigarette, and reached over, and lit it for him.

I said, “Well, Mr Turner, what have you been doing since I saw you last?”