B-SIDE
The thought of telling Lennox was unbearable. As Michael came out of the sports hall it was Lennox he thought of, his skimpy eyebrows, the round spectacles that always reminded him of Leon Trotsky. Lennox had warned him many times that believing you could win at chess and assuming it as a given were not the same thing. Now, when it really mattered, Michael had let all his teacher’s advice fly out of the window. His mistakes had been shameful and stupid and he had lost the tournament. He had let the old man down.
The only mercy was that Lennox had not been there. There had been a hospital appointment, something he couldn’t get out of. Michael had been disappointed when the old man broke the news of this – now it seemed like a gift from the gods. For some moments he felt consoled, safe in the knowledge of his teacher’s absence. But in the time it took him to walk from the hall foyer to the school gates he recognised the stay of execution for what it was: not a reprieve but a postponement. Lennox would find out what had happened soon enough.
“There’s no escaping disappointment in chess,” Lennox had told him. “Failure is there as a safeguard. Use it properly and it will help you improve. Losing to a better player can be more valuable than any number of victories against weaker opponents. It is only in losing that you find out who you are and what you are made of. This is something you will have to learn the hard way if you are serious about becoming a grandmaster.”
Michael had listened and nodded in agreement but the truth was he hadn’t believed a word. He had known disappointment before in small things, things with no connection to chess. He thought he understood how failure would feel but really he hadn’t a clue, he saw that now. True disappointment had nothing to do with missing a school trip to Lapland or losing your iPhone. True disappointment made you question your whole idea of yourself. It ate you alive from the inside, like one of the necrotising parasites in The Puppeteer, the film starring Ludo Henry and Ruby Castle. Michael would watch anything Ruby Castle was in, although it was her horror films he liked best. His mother told him he shouldn’t watch so many horror films, that they would give him bad dreams, but while it was true that Michael did sometimes have nightmares, none had compared with the horror of what had just happened to him in broad daylight.
The parasites in The Puppeteer were spread by monkeys in a carnival sideshow, wide-eyed lemur-like creatures dressed in red blazers that had a talent for stealing money out of people’s pockets. Ruby Castle played the monkey trainer. Michael had read she did all her own stunts. He wondered what it was about carnivals and circuses that made them such popular settings for horror films. There were the freaks, of course, but it was not just the freaks. Mostly it was the sense that nothing was exactly as it appeared. The carnival people had a special way of speaking, not another language, but a tone of voice. They told you what you wanted to hear. They talked you into deceiving yourself.
Michael had loved the fair when he was younger. Most of all he had loved the dodgems, his father’s arms around him, his plaid shirt spicy with the scent of tobacco. Each time they bumped another car Luis Gomez had laughed unstoppably and so had Michael. It was the only time he remembered them sharing a goal.
* * *
His rival’s name was Douglas Coote. Michael had spotted him as the main threat immediately, though they hadn’t been drawn together until the knockout stages. There were forty other competitors but it had only ever been about the two of them. Coote’s eventual opponent in the final, an overweight senior from Bexley Grammar, had resigned the game in less than half an hour.
Coote was nervy and thin with hazel eyes. He had the habit of clearing his throat after each move, sipping incessantly from his water glass. What hurt was not so much that he had won, but that he was good. Michael imagined an alternative scenario in which their positions had been reversed. He saw himself shaking Coote’s hand, congratulating him on a fine game and shyly suggesting they get together sometime and go through some openings. The picture was so plausible Michael found it difficult to relinquish. He began to walk faster, scuffing his trainers against the tarmac. He was anxious to get away before the others started coming out of the hall, pushing and chattering and conducting excited post-mortems of the various games. As he passed through the gates and into the road he felt a surge of relief. The appearance of Jackson and Pullen caught him off guard.
“What are you doing here on a Saturday, Gomez? Old Lennox keep you chained to your desk?”
“Shut up, Jackson,” Michael said. “Bugger off.” He mumbled the words, blurring their edges, affecting the language he knew Jackson and Pullen would best understand. He wasn’t about to run he didn’t want to hang around arguing with them, either. What Steven Jackson wanted was an excuse for a fight. It would be foolish to give him one. Michael hunched his shoulders, hugged his bag to his chest and tried to push past. Jackson and Pullen weren’t normally dangerous. They took the piss out of his glasses and his skin colour, his closeness to Lennox, but they had never pushed their abuses further than verbal taunts. There were times when Michael thought they might even be afraid of him.
“What’s the big hurry?” said Jackson. “Had a row with your boyfriend?” He made a grab for the strap of his bag, which Michael had left dangling. “He’s an ugly bastard though, isn’t he, old Lennox? I’d have thought that even Specky Gomez could do better than that.”
Michael scowled. It occurred to him that they might know, that they had learned about Coote’s victory and had come to torment him with it. He knew this was unlikely – what Jackson knew about chess could be written on the back of a postage stamp – but Michael hated them to make fun of Lennox. On any other day he would have ignored them anyway but his failure at the tournament had worn away at his defences.
“Get lost, moron.” He yanked on his bag strap, snatching it from Jackson’s grasp. Jackson looked down at his hand while Pullen started doing his inevitable chimpanzee impression. Michael’s heart sank. Gareth Pullen was a weakling and a coward but he and Jackson together still made two against one.
“Who are you calling a moron, you frigging queer?” There was a red, painful-looking stripe across Jackson’s palm. Michael felt laughter coursing through him, threatening to burst forth. He forced it back down.
“You,” he said. “You’re a fucking moron.”
He swung his bag at Jackson, catching him a walloping blow to the side of the head. He was surprised how good it felt, how delicious, to lose control. He told himself he was doing it for Lennox, but even as Jackson came for him he knew his action was payback for Douglas Coote.
“I’ll kill you, you fucking geek.” Steven Jackson surged forward, his right fist aiming for the centre of Michael’s face. Michael ducked away to one side and almost tripped over. At the same moment Pullen cannoned into him from behind. Michael went down like a sawn-off tree, sprawling full-length on the tarmac. As he fell he noticed Jackson’s nose was bleeding. Hot gravel sank its teeth into his palms.
He scrambled to his knees but Jackson shoved him backwards and he was on the ground again. Pain flared in his side like a struck match and he realised Gareth Pullen must have kicked him. He was frightened but also furious. He knew he had brought the whole thing on himself.