Black Queen (8 page)

I was right! It
was
him! It was her son, Greg McInley, world chess champion – with the same shy smile on his face, holding a silver cup above his head. There was one of him standing on the porch of a house under snow, his arm around his mother – she had much longer black hair in those days and of course she looked a lot younger – and another of him as a boy proudly
showing
a medal and grinning happily through gappy teeth.

Suddenly Rambo was on his feet springing down off the bed. I soon saw why. In the door stood Mrs Blume, the Black Queen, Greg McInley’s mother, and she did not looked pleased.

Chapter 8

Checkmate

“I WAS ONLY
looking,” I said. She didn’t look as if she believed me. “It was Rambo. He came upstairs. I couldn’t stop him. Honest. He wouldn’t come down.”

She said nothing, but just looked at me, frowning. I was glad I wasn’t having to lie, because I knew her eyes would find me out. Rambo was rubbing himself blissfully up against her leg, and I wondered how long it would be before he realized that two of us couldn’t be the same person.

Still the Black Queen said nothing. I hated the silence, so I went on, “It’s him, isn’t it? In the photos. It’s your son. It’s Greg McInley. We’ve been watching. Everyone’s been watching. All those chessboards, and you said he was a chess nut. And you told me you were going to New York to see your son. I guessed it all along. That’s where you went, didn’t you? He won. He beat Purple. My dad says he’s a genius, a pure genius.”

Suddenly her face softened, and she laughed. “It’ll take more than some fool machine to beat my son,” she said. I was so relieved to hear her speak, that she wasn’t angry at me. She walked past me towards the window and looked out. “Good to be home. Hey, Billy, come see what I see.” I went to look. “That’s your bunny rabbit again in my backyard, isn’t it?” she said. And sure enough there was Matey nibbling away at the grass by the sundial. “I reckon he likes the grazing
better
over my side of the fence.”

That was when my hand accidentally knocked over one of the chess pieces – the queen, the black queen. She stood it up again. “This was Greg’s first chess set,” she said. “He learnt all he knows on this board. Just a little old cardboard chessboard, cheapest one we could find down at the store. We had a lot of snow that winter, I remember. Too cold to go out. Nothing else to do but play chess. Only five at the time – took to it like a duck to water. We didn’t know what we were starting, I guess we never do.”

She still had her hand on the black queen. She tapped it three times, tap, tap, tap. Then she moved it.

“Checkmate,” she said, her voice soft, deep, calm. She smiled down at me. Suddenly I knew. Suddenly I understood. It was a man’s voice,
his
voice. I knew it too from the shy smile, from the tapping finger. It was difficult to take it in at first, just unbelievable. Unbelievable but true. She wasn’t his mother at all; she was the
son
, she was him, she was Greg McInley, chess champion of the world. And she knew I knew. I could see it in her eyes, she could see it in mine.
Still
smiling at me she took off her glasses, and then her hat, then her wig.

“Sometimes, Billy,” said Greg McInley, “sometimes I reckon my mum taught me too well that winter. The
pieces
on this board, they became my family, my whole world. And now it’s the only world I really understand, where I can be happy, where I can be myself. The other world out there, the real world, I don’t want any part of it, not the money, not the fame, none of it. You understand me, Billy?”

I was beginning to.

“I never like to stay any place longer than a few months. Safer that way. And besides, I’m happy on my own. I play my chess, play my music. Bach – I could listen to his music all day and all night. It’s all I need. I do it all in my mind, Billy. I’ve got a game of chess going on every board in this house, but up here in my mind. I play myself – that way I always win and I always lose, if you know what I mean. Do you know something, Billy? You’re the first person I’ve ever wanted to tell. I reckon it’s because you remind me of me when
I
was young. Sometimes you want to share your secrets, you know what I mean? But you can only do it with someone you really trust.”

He reached out and took off my hat and coat. “I guess you won’t be needing these any more, will you?” he said. “Now, you’d best be getting that rabbit back home where he belongs, where you belong too.”

We went downstairs together. “And thanks for looking after Rambo for me. Don’t you worry, I’ll be taking him with
me
when I go. We can’t have you dressing up like a wicked old witch for the rest of your life, can we now?”

“Are you going?” I asked.

“Better be moving on, Billy. I’ve been in this place long enough, I reckon.”

We said goodbye in the dark of the hallway, and that was the last I saw of him.

Matey was easy enough to catch. When I got back Rula hadn’t even realized he’d gone missing. Then she clapped her hand to her mouth and hooted with laughter at me. “You’re wearing glasses,” she screeched. And so I was. I said I’d found them in the garden shed, and she believed me.

No-one ever saw the Black Queen again after that, or Rambo. Within days a
TO LET
sign went up outside Number 22. Mrs Watson told Gran over the fence that the Black Queen had gone, that no-one had seen her going. My father joked that maybe she’d just flown away on her broomstick.