The Chequer Board by Nevil Shute

Author:Nevil Shute [Shute, Nevil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780307474049
Google: EHDKFAC8B0oC
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 1968-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

He smiled gently, thinking back to the tenseness of that bad time from the ease and friendship of his chair on the verandah. He was touched that she should have thought it worth while to keep so trivial a scrap as a memento. He said, “You must teach me some more words while I’m here.”

She hesitated, and then said, “Have you looked inside?”

He turned the paper over, and saw that it was an old air letter, addressed to him; the sprawling, unformed handwriting gave him a great shock. He opened the tattered folds in silence, and read,

PHILLIP DARLING,

This is going to be a dreadful letter to write and I really don’t know how to begin but it’s not as if we ever had been married really is it I mean had a home and all that. I know when Jack was killed you were too sweet in looking after me and of course he wanted it and so we simply had to and it’s been marvellous and I’ll never regret one minute of it will you?

He read on in silence, in a wave of sudden misery.

… and it’s horrible being sort of neither one thing nor the other in spite of it having been all a mistake to start with hasn’t it? I do hope we’ll be frightfully good friends for dear old Jack’s sake.

Ever your loving,

Bobby

“My Christ,” he said quietly. “I thought the Japs had got this one!”

He glanced down at the girl beside him; she was gazing up at him, and there were tears in her eyes. “This is an old letter from my wife,” he said. “Did you read it?”

She said, “I read it, but I did not let anybody else read it. It seemed so private. I thought you would not like people to see it.”

He said, “That’s terribly nice of you. I wouldn’t like other people to see this. I didn’t realise what it was when I wrote that message on the back of it.”

She gazed up at him. “It meant so little to you?”

“Yes.” He thought for a moment, and then said, “We didn’t match up very well, my wife and I. And then other things happened that were more—more sort of real, like crash-landing the Spit, and getting taken by your people, and all that. I just didn’t think about it. The Japs took all the papers in my wallet when they searched me at Bassein, and I thought they’d got this one, too.”

She took the letter, and turned it over curiously, holding it between the very tips of her fingers. “Did she really write this filthy thing to you in India—when you were so far from home, and fighting in the war?”

“I got it a few days before I crash-landed the Spit,” he said. “She wouldn’t have thought of it like that, of course.”

She looked up at him and met his eyes. “It is a vile letter!” she said. “I should like to see it burnt.”

“Burn it, if you like, Nay Htohn,” he said gravely.

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