33 West Page 7

  I looked back at the board. Chess is a game I have only a slight knowledge of. I know the moves, and I had a little spell when I played quite a few games with a friend, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a whiskey in one hand and the room filled with his cigarette smoke and the music of Gil Scott Heron. But that had been years before and it had taken me a long while studying the position drawn on the paper before I could fathom out my next move.

  2.15pm I took the Metropolitan Line northbound two stops to Pinner and then walked. The library was only a few streets away – a neat brick and glass affair with red railings. Inside the atmosphere was somewhere between a charity shop and a primary school. I tried to look slightly bored and wandered past some battered looking children’s picture books and a large woman carrying a basket before I hunkered down behind a terminal. Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro was on the shelves.

  I pulled out the white spine and immediately saw there was an envelope jammed into the pages. I withdrew it, crumpled it into my pocket and walked to the exit trying not to move too fast but I was aware of the woman with the basket, staring.

  On the tube home I watched the houses slip by, one after the other. Joanne had had all kind of plans. She wanted to move to Hatch End, not because she especially liked the area, in fact I’m not sure she had actually ever even been there, but simply because she liked the name. There were plenty of places she would have refused to live I’m sure. I remember her refusing to go through Ipswich one time, and we had to detour around because she thought the name sounded all wrong.

  ***

  I sat on the sofa in the living room and turned the new envelope over in my hand. It had ‘your move’ written on the front exactly as before. I compared it with the first envelope and the writing was identical. Inside was a sheet of paper with the chess game drawn out by hand, including the move I had left in the lift at the Civic Centre and a new one from my opponent. Underneath was written, ‘Leave your next move for the white pieces in an envelope taped to a pillar of the temple in the grounds of Canons Park by 5pm The deal remains the same.’

  ‘The deal remains the same.’ What deal was this? What was I involved with? I had no idea and looked at my watch. It was 3.30pm now. I had never been to Canons Park and got out the A to Z. It wasn’t that far away but it was complicated by tube. It would take about twenty minutes in the car if there wasn’t traffic but anything up to an hour if there was. I hadn’t been on my bike for months and I went out through the kitchen to the small terrace where it sat leaning on the fence and gave it an inexpert shake. It seemed like it would work.

  I set off with the deadline thirty-five minutes away. I partially memorised the route but trusted mostly to my sense of direction. If dolphins and sparrows can navigate between entire continents I reasoned, then surely I could get as far as Canons Park. Sadly my logic was flawed and I had to twice get out the A to Z. I guess sparrows don’t have anything as complicated as the Honeypot Lane contra-flow system to worry about on their way to Africa or they’d be extinct. It was another warm evening and Canons Park looked beautiful. I left my bike against some railings and wandered through the grounds until I saw the crisp, white temple standing deserted in the languid evening light.

  The envelope was taped high up on the back of one of the pillars. I had to jump up to pull it down and then I taped my own move slightly lower down. Afterwards I sat on the low step looking out over the grass and felt the sun on my arms. The pick up point for the next move was the following morning in a record shop in Pinner. The envelope would be tucked into a CD of Bruch’s violin concerto. In the distance I could see someone walking a small dog.

  On the journey home I passed a couple of bookshops on St. Anne’s Road. At the second I stopped. I lent my bike against the glass and returned to it a little later having bought a copy of Remains of the Day. I hadn’t read a novel in years.

  3

  I slept well and woke early. I went out and bought pain au chocolat, fresh fruit and yoghurt for breakfast and phoned the office bang on 8.30am to tell them I wouldn’t be in that day and probably not the next. The idea of going to work seemed ludicrous and my act on the phone was less convincing than ever. Then I studied the chessboard. I was a knight up and couldn’t see any imminent threats.

  I cycled to Pinner. The envelope with the next move was tucked into the CD case, just as it should be, and on a whim I bought the Bruch album. The next deadline was tight. Headstone Manor in less than an hour, and I realised what I really needed was a pocket chess set, along with some envelopes and paper so I didn’t have to go back home each time between moves. I got what I needed in Pinner and the rest of the morning I continued with the game. I found myself at the Roger Banister Stadium as well as the Harrow Arts Centre where I picked up an envelope with a key inside. It was for a locker in Hatch End swimming pool and the only way I could see to get access to the locker to retrieve the move was to actually go swimming. So I had to make a detour via home to pick up my swimming things. There was a message on the answer phone from the office. My hand hovered over the receiver but I decided not to call back. Then I headed off to the pool. I hadn’t been swimming for years and the feeling of release when I got into the water was terrific.

  6.00pm I was sitting on the sofa staring at a sheet of paper from the latest envelope feeling numb. I had played several more moves since the swim and the chess game was going well. It wasn’t that that was causing me a problem. My opponent’s position was hopeless. I was now two pieces up with a pawn threatening to queen. No it was something else. ‘Your final move,’ it said on the paper. ‘The running track Harrow School, 7pm sharp.’ For the first time I felt genuinely scared. Maybe I shouldn’t go. Maybe I had taken this whole thing far enough. What did it all matter anyway?

  I normally like this part of the walk. You finally leave the buildings behind and slip down the narrow lane through the trees. The sun was just setting and I stopped to look out over the deserted tennis courts and the running track. I could just make out a tiny figure standing on the far straight. I strained my eyes in the deepening dusk and it seemed they were wearing a long, light coloured raincoat.

  ‘Come along Mr Beagle,’ said a voice and I turned. It was the same woman I seen before hauling along her small brown and white dog. I opened my mouth but couldn’t think of anything to say and she simply walked on not even making eye contact this time and I watched her yanking along her dog until she was out of sight.

  I headed down the path, trying to make sense of it all. I turned right at the bottom and came out near the tennis courts. The figure was still there, standing alone on the running track. I followed the path around and then walked down the small flight of steps to the track. The man turned. ‘You play a mean game of chess, Martin.’ It was the same person I had met here two days before.

  ‘You again? You’re not – what is this? Was this all a trick?’ I said.

  ‘No, no of course not. Not a trick. Thank you for your participation. I’m from a company called Perspective. We’re funded by a Government Arts Organisation.’

  ‘A Government Arts Organisation? What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘Our remit is to keep people feeling properly alive in areas serviced by the Metropolitan Line.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Relax, it’s all right Martin, please. We have funding to improve the use of public and cultural services in this area. It’s part of our remit to keep people feeling tip top. Otherwise living in London can get you down without you even noticing can’t it?’

  ‘Can it?’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes. So I need you to sign here to say you have significantly increased your use of public services in the last two days.’ He waved a sheaf of papers and slipped a pen from his top pocket.

  ‘Are you telling me this was all about improving my use of public services?’

  ‘That’s partly it of course, but it’s also about making sure Londoners haven’t lost that fighting spirit isn’t it? To begin
with we tried putting leaflets through people’s doors but no one takes any notice of those these days do they? And I think on your file it said you had a friend pass away quite recently didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, well there you go. Coh! Death eh? That can definitely be a downer. Anyway, sign here… please?’ He pushed the papers toward me and pointed.

  ‘You’re serious?’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes. Sign here please to say you used the swimming pool and park and so on. And sign there to say how much more fully you now embody the spirit of London with particular regard to the area serviced by the Metropolitan Line.’ I paused and then scribbled my name across the papers because it seemed as though he was actually telling the truth. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘So, these are some complimentary egg cups and sports socks.’

  ‘Right.’ I took the gifts and clasped them awkwardly to my chest. ‘So you’re telling me this whole chess game was just something to make me feel more a part of London?’

  ‘Exactly, exactly, very well put, I must remember that.’

  ‘I can’t quite believe it.’

  ‘Well it’s amazing what great work is done to keep traditions alive.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes. By the way, I wanted to apologise that I’m so bad at chess. I did try to get them to change the game to Chinese Chequers but the creative department were very much against that.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Yes. Well, I’m sorry about this, but I have another client now, so I’ll have to ask you to run.’

  ‘Run?’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Run. If you wouldn’t mind? That way.’ And suddenly blood came from his mouth.

  I stepped back.

  ‘Run. If you wouldn’t mind?’ he said collapsing onto the ground.

  ‘Right,’ I stared at his face, which had gone a horrible shade of white and then I turned and sprinted towards the cover of the trees just managing to cling onto my egg cups and socks. When I’d unhooked myself from the brambles I looked back through the heavy dusk. Another person was already on the running track walking tentatively toward the collapsed figure who held one hand in the air clasping something small and white in his fingers, and it looked to me very much like an envelope.

  HAMMERSMITH & FULHAM

  Brook Green

  Daisy Goodwin

  It must be the first day of term, thought Miss Frobisher. On summer mornings you could make out the birds in the plane trees, the thwack of tennis balls and the swish of a passing cyclist. But in the first week of September nothing could be heard above the grumble of car engines inching slowly around the Green. She usually arranged to be away this week, since she found the anxious voices of the mothers and the monosyllabic replies of their children too painfully reminiscent of the time when her job had been to say firmly, ‘Goodbyes at the gate, please.’ The girls had usually been relieved by her interventions, the mothers being the tearful ones. But this year the Lake Windermere hotel that ran fell-walking holidays for the visually impaired was full, and she was bound to stay in London.

  She had hoped that by now, fifteen years after she had left the school, the rhythm of the terms would no longer disturb her. But she found it difficult to keep her white stick steady as she inched along the pavement to the newsagents.

  So many schools, six of them crowded around the isosceles triangle of green between the Shepherd’s Bush and Hammersmith Roads. In the old days she had made the Year 8 girls do a project on local history. ‘Brook Green,’ she would tell them, ‘was covered in market gardens, where vegetables were grown for the people living in the City of London. These days the nurseries of Brook Green produce a very different kind of cabbage.’ She would pause, and then deliver the punch line: ‘Or do you consider yourselves turnips?’ Occasionally one of the kinder girls would laugh at this feeble joke, but generally the girls would stare back at her sullenly. At twelve their dignity was too fragile to brush off comparisons with brassicas. It had almost been a relief when she could no longer make out the exact contours of their doughy faces. In a year or two they would be all angles and shine, some of them beginning to get that big-eyed look that meant they had stopped eating properly. No, the gradual darkening of her vision had not been without its benefits.

  She stepped carefully through a throng of voices speaking French. The Ecole Maternelle Française had the most fragrant parents. The scents, which Miss Frobisher had decided were worn by both sexes, were expensively dry and elusive. At the Catholic primary school across the road the perfumes were sweeter and more pungent. As she tapped her way towards her old workplace she began to make out the aroma of patchouli, vanilla and Clearasil that announced the proximity of teenage girls, and to hear the flap and slap of their sheepskin boots as they shuffled along the pavements and the tinny buzz of the headphones they wore in their ears. She would have liked to cross the road to avoid them, but she knew there was no pavement on the other side, so she put her head down and swung her cane wider than usual, hoping it would register in what she knew was the very narrow field of teenage vision.

  As she approached the school gates she heard shouts of welcome peppered with acronyms and abbreviations. ‘OMG, you didn’t?’ ‘Eeeugh. TMI.’ ‘Laters.’ ‘Felix is over BTW.’ Everything they said ended on a rising note, as if they were not stating but venturing. This change of cadence had only just started by the time she finished teaching, but now every young voice she heard on her daily outings around the Green uttered sentences that ended not with a full stop but with a question mark. They sounded more than ever like baby birds clamouring to be fed.

  There was a tap on her shoulder. ‘Miss Frobisher?’ This voice was loud, clear and adult. ‘It’s Sophie Luxton, Ward-Bishop as was. I was in your history set. I’m here with my daughter Ruby, she’s in the fourth form now. GCSEs next year, unbelievable how quickly they grow up. Say hello, Ruby.’

  ‘Hello.’ A small, sullen voice, quite unlike that of the mother. Miss Frobisher wondered why this woman was talking to her so loudly. Did she assume that because she was blind she must also be deaf? She turned her head towards the voice and said quietly, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name. But I usually remember faces. Why don’t you describe yourself to me?’ She had used this ploy before when accosted by former pupils. The girl, now woman, would always hesitate, unsure whether to describe herself in her current matronly incarnation or as the girl that had once gazed slack-mouthed at her as she explained the niceties of Stuart finance.

  ‘Well, I had brown hair then, long and straight, and I still have blue eyes. I suppose the thing you might remember about me are my dimples. I used to get teased about them.’

  Miss Frobisher heard the girl say, ‘Muum, I’ve got to go.’

  ‘All right, Ruby, you go on in. I’ll see you tonight. Hang on, aren’t you going to give me a kiss?’ There was the sound of mouth brushing against reluctant cheek.

  ‘Sorry about that, Miss Frobisher. She gets so impatient. But then so did I. People are always saying she is the spitting image of me at that age.’ There was a little pause. Miss Frobisher had a policy of not reacting to these unwitting faux pas, like the visitors who would climb the seventy-three stairs to her flat on the other side of the Green and exclaim, ‘Oh, how lucky you are to have such a wonderful view.’ But Sophie Luxton, nee Ward-Bishop, was not easily abashed.

  ‘I’m surprised you don’t remember me, really. For all the wrong reasons. I’m afraid I made your life something of a misery. I feel embarrassed just thinking of how naughty I was.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you weren’t as bad as all that. And teachers are resilient souls.’ She knew that all her former pupils were convinced they were unforgettable. But she could remember very few individuals now – only the shapes of girlhood from eager prepubescence through sullen plumpness to shiny-haired condescension. ‘Goodbye, Miss Frobisher, I’ll really miss you,’ the shiny-haired ones would coo on the last day of term.

  Suddenly, however, a mem
ory returned, and she did remember Sophie Luxton, nee Ward-Bishop, after all.

  When the macular degeneration had set in she had concealed its effects pretty well. After nearly twenty years at the school it was not so very hard to find her way around the corridors in the twilight of her deteriorating sight. She recognised her fellow teachers by their voices and by the sound of their walks. The Head, who always wore heels, made a brisk tattoo on the marble floors that was quite unlike the tentative rubber-soled perambulations of the junior staff.

  Of course homework had been a problem – she could no longer read the girls’ essays. She had told them she couldn’t be bothered to figure out their atrocious handwriting, and had ordered them to read their work aloud. This had been quite successful, as the prospect of being given a B or worse in public had made the girls work harder, and they could no longer copy each other’s work. Indeed Miss Frobisher had dared to hope she might finish her twentieth year at the school with her finest set of results.

  ‘Do you live near here, Miss Frobisher? It’s funny, I can’t stop myself calling you that. I suppose I should call you Celia now. It is Celia, isn’t it?’ Sophie Luxton, nee Ward-Bishop, leaned towards her, and Miss Frobisher smelled shampoo and expensive leather.

  ‘Miss Frobisher is fine,’ she said. ‘I live across the Green, opposite the school, on the top floor.’

  ‘Oh, how nice,’ said Sophie. Miss Frobisher heard the jangle of keys. It seemed her ordeal was about to be over. ‘Well, I’d best be off. Makes me feel seventeen again seeing you like this. How funny that I should be coming here with my daughter now. Goodbye, then.’