Review: The Chequer Board by Nevil Shute (1948, 278pp.)

This review is fairly safe to read if you haven't read the book (i.e., it doesn't give away any major plot points or twists in the story) but offers an interpretation for those who have.

Those familiar with Nevil Shute through his more famous books probably won't be surprised to hear that aviation, engineering, and entrepreneurship all feature in The Chequer Board, which nevertheless presents a story told in his usual, accessible style.

Mr Turner is a British war veteran who has lately been having fainting fits. He goes to see a specialist called Mr. Hughes who tells him that there are pieces of shrapnel from an old war injury lodged irretrievably in his brain and that, as a consequence, he doesn't have long to live. He begins to think about what he would like to do with his remaining time and reminisces about the hospital where he initially received treatment for his wound. He remembers the three patients he shared a ward with: two Englishmen — a commando wanted for murder, a snobbish pilot with an unfaithful wife — and an American — a black man who has slit his own throat and also stands accused of rape. When he realises he doesn't know what happened to them he decides to find out and, with the assistance of his somewhat sceptical wife, to see if he might be able to help them in some way. It's a simple premise but one that Shute uses to build a complex narrative of interlocking stories.

The Chequer Board manages to address racial tension, considers and compares Buddhism alongside Christianity, and successfully depicts something of British character, all in under 300 pages. It must have been a somewhat unconventional book upon its publication in 1948.

Readers made sensitive by political correctness may be somewhat taken aback by the racial slurs (as I was, at first) as they come from essentially good and otherwise polite characters. And here would normally be the place to insert some platititude about context — "It was a different time", etc. There is an "innocence" to the book, which may have something to do with the time of its writing. However, such excuses maybe aren't necessary in this case.

One of the most memorable and eccentric parts of the book involves a U.S. Army unit being stationed in rural Trenarth, Cornwall. Among those stationed are a number of black troops who have been brought in for manual labour. Many of the villagers have never seen a black person before and, though their reactions vary, they are mostly welcoming to the visitors who consequently enjoy much of their free time sampling the local pub. It is only when the white soldiers arrive that tension surfaces and trouble begins. This spurs the pub's landlord to put a sign up in the entrance:

THIS HOUSE IS FOR ENGLISHMEN AND COLOURED AMERICAN TROOPS ONLY

This upsets some of the white American soldiers somewhat, who are already dismayed by the inter-racial relationships that have formed between girls in the village and the black visitors. The landlord's sign only exacerbates the tension. When violence breaks out, the landlord feels compelled to write to General Eisenhower about the situation in his army — and receives a reply, of sorts. This is just one of the surprising stories told in the book's shifting focus, and yet the narrative never feels restless.

Part of that is down to Shute's choice of narrator. As with Shute's most famous book A Town Like Alice, the story begins with an account from a middle-class professional who is not himself directly involved in the events he relates, but has become informed enough afterwards to report on them. Unlike A Town Like Alice, which was to come later, the story here unfolds through the telling of multiple stories, some within others: Hughes tells us, the readers, about Turner and his diagnosis; Turner talks to his wife about the patients he met at the hospital; Turner visits Burma to seek out the pilot from the hospital, Morgan; and Morgan then seems to take over and give his account of how he came to be married to a native woman... Yet the main prose of the narrative always refers to the characters (the male characters at least) in the most formal manner possible. This is an indication that Hughes is actually narrating throughout. With several stories unfolding on top of and within one another, it feels like quite a stretch to have to believe Hughes would be able to give an accurate account in the kind of detail described. The reader is increasingly required to put their trust in a suddenly omniscient figure of authority and profession to tell the story. It is only with the very last line that Shute gives a sly wink and the novel's seeming innocence in this regard seems suddenly more like cheekiness.

Hughes' status as narrator is important though; it requires of the so-called postmodern (read: self-aware or self-conscious) reader a trust they're not used to giving but his presence throughout the novel invites other opportunities that Shute does well to exploit in places. Take, for example, the following passage concerning Morgan's travels in Burma, having just escaped a Rangoon prison:

On the way up river he had learned from various people that Henzada had been bombed, but he was distressed and saddened by what he found there. It had been a Japanese headquarters; sometime in April we had turned the Royal Air Force on to it, and in two or three sharp raids they had practically obliterated the town. Once it had been a thriving place of close on twenty thousand people; now fire had swept across it, more devastating than in Europe since so much was built of wood and bamboo mat. A native town destroyed is sadder than a British city, for there is so little help for the people. [138]

There are two twists in this short excerpt. Morgan learns of the facts of a bombing but is nonetheless underprepared for what awaits him. It is the 'but' in the sentence which provides the first turning point. He learns and then he sees for himself — it is 'what he found' that distresses and saddens him. Simply put, it's one thing to find out about something, it is another to find it for oneself.

Yet, from that sentence, there is then another turning point which implies not only Morgan's complicity in the event but Hughes' and the reader's too. It is the sudden introduction of the first person plural 'we' that makes the following sentences more than a reportage of facts and into an admission of conscience. For British readers, this is perhaps as interesting as it is uncomfortable. The beauty and ambiguity of the word 'we' allows it also to be read as an exclusive first-person-plural (ie. not including the listener or reader or audience) so it proves interesting for non-British readers too, be they the "natives" themselves or people belonging to a third party. Shute has executed with his choice of narrator and his use of this word a 'double simultaneous postulation', to borrow Baudelaire's idea (via Sartre also writing around 1948); he is writing for a 'split public' [1]. 'A native town destroyed' might indeed be 'sadder than a British city', especially when we, the British, are responsible.

It is Nay Htohn, Morgan's Burmese wife, who adds to this admission a responsibility for Shute's British readers. On leaving, Turner promises he will try to explain to Morgan's mother how well her son is doing:

Mr Turner said: "I'll try. I'll go and tell her just how you live, and what you have for dinner, and how you run the house, and that. But you mustn't expect much. she's old and she's an invalid, too. I don't think she ever goes out."
She smiled. "That is the trouble with the English," she said. "They so seldom go out to see for themselves." [214]

One of the best characterisations of British-ness or English-ness, however, is the aforementioned pub landlord of Trenarth, Cornwall. While he may symbolise exactly the kind of parochialism that Morgan's wife describes, he also embodies the stoicism, or reticence, and tolerance that is both a British failing and saving-grace. When confronted with the crude racism of some white American soldiers (most of whom, Shute reassures us, are perfectly polite), his first response isn't to write the sign or the letter to Eisenhower, or in fact to do anything; this is our first real impression of him:

Behind the bar the English landlord stood mute, faintly hostile. [55]

If the book itself has failings, it's down to a strange kind of innocence. Shute tries to illustrate that good people can speak and behave in an ugly fashion and that this is often down to ignorance. This is the central problem at the heart of the lives of all three patients whom Turner visits. Yet this optimism seems very naïve in places — as for example when he seems to dismiss the lynchings of blacks in the U.S. as freak occurences. This is supposed to be an explanation for the blacks' initial paranoia in alien, all-white Cornwall; Shute tries to cast it as gullibility on their part for believing too many scare-stories from back home. Unfortunately, it only makes Shute himself seem naïve.

Instances like this aside, The Chequer Board is an enjoyable novel and full of surprises (only one or two of which have been "given away" here — there's also a murder, a court case, a love story, and other treats besides). It's also perhaps an overlooked contribution to British literature on colonialism and integration, not to mention war and its habit of uprooting all sorts of people in all sorts of ways.

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[1] What is Literature? Jean-Paul Sartre (1948), pp60-61. [Translation: Bernard Frechtman (1950)]