The Money That Money Can't Buy

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The three men in the Volkswagen talked mostly about chess, to which they were all devoted. From time to time the conversation veered to ballet and thence to football—one of them had a son who hoped soon to have a trial for his factory team— but mostly they spoke of chess. The landscape did not interest them: lakes, undisciplined woodland, mountains dusted with snow—these were no novelty, and could be ignored; but chess was at once stimulating, familiar, and abstract. It was pleasant to talk of chess when you were on your way to do a job, and pleasant to drive with the windows open after a spell in a deep-sea trawler that had bumped and smashed its way through the North Channel to Whitehaven. The three men were technicians of the highest class: they were used to better transport and accommodation, but grumbling didn't occur to them. Not one wholly trusted the other two, except in the performance of their essential and highly specialized duties.

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