The words guardian angel flashed through Michael’s mind, piercing its trembling surface like an azure dart. He kept staring at Wilkes, waiting to see if anything would happen, but Wilkes seemed almost to have forgotten Michael was there. He stood at the kitchen counter dishing up the food, his body swaying slowly in time to the music.
“Lennox loves Billie Holiday,” he said. He opened his eyes, fixed Michael with his steel-grey gaze. “You do know he’s dying?”
Michael stared at him.
“He might not even come home from the hospital,” Wilkes continued. “He’s known for weeks but he didn’t know how to tell you. That’s what I meant when I said he hates to talk about his private life.”
Wilkes brought the steaming plates to the table. He had found an oven mitt somewhere, a long yellow gauntlet. There was corned beef hash and fried bread, a golden mound of scrambled egg. Michael gazed at it dumbly. Wilkes sat sideways in his seat and began to eat, lowering his head towards the food, shovelling egg into his mouth with the back of his fork.
“He said he’d see me next week for the lesson,” said Michael at last.
“He has liver cancer.”
There was a long silence, filled with the rich scents of corned beef and onion. Michael still wanted the food but he felt it would be wrong to touch it. He resented Wilkes for spoiling his meal. He experimented with the idea that Wilkes was lying, but the experiment refused to take off.
“Look,” said Wilkes. He got up from the table, scraping his chair noisily against the linoleum. “He told me to give you these.”
He disappeared into Lennox’s bedroom and came back with a brown paper bag. Inside the bag was the carved wooden chess set Lennox had told him once belonged to Nicolai Maslanyi, Lennox’s own well worn copy of Turati’s Great Chess Openings, and a book that was called simply Chess by a writer named Stefan Zweig.
“He gave me a copy of that once, too,” said Wilkes. “I read it so many times the covers fell off.”
“I can’t take this,” Michael said. Mostly he meant Great Chess Openings, which Lennox rarely let out of his sight. The gift seemed like a sign, Lennox’s way of telling him that Colin Wilkes was speaking the truth. A hard lump came into his throat. He realised he wanted to fight Wilkes, to knock him to the ground and start kicking him the same way Gareth Pullen had laid into Michael.
“I’m sorry to spring it on you like this,” Wilkes said. “But maybe it’s for the best.” He licked his fork and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “You won’t believe me, but I learned to play chess by watching it on television. I grew up in a council care home. They used to show the British chess championships on BBC2 back then. One of the housemasters noticed my interest and encouraged me. Before long I was beating everyone I played and they didn’t know what to do with me. When Lennox came along it was like being reunited with a long-lost father. I was like you once. I loved him, and I lived for chess. The only problem was that I wasn’t good enough, not for the world circuit anyway. When I began to lose it almost killed me. I had no idea how to live in the world, and Lennox could never admit that he had failed. Eventually we stopped talking about it. He’s cared for me like his own son but I sometimes think it would have been better if he’d put me out on the street.” Wilkes paused. “I envied those wankers today. I envied them their simple-mindedness. When I saw what they were doing to you I almost kept walking. I wanted them to teach you a lesson, you see. I didn’t want you to end up like me.”
“I won’t,” Michael said. “It was just that one game.”
“That’s exactly what I would have said. Aren’t you going to eat your corned beef?”
Michael shook his head. Quite suddenly he didn’t feel hungry. “I have to go home.”
“Did you like the record?”
Michael nodded, his mind far away.
“I have it on CD. I can burn you a copy if you like.” Wilkes put his hand on Michael’s shoulder. “I don’t like you leaving like this.”
“I have to go,” Michael said, getting up. “My dad will be worried about me.”
“I’ll be sticking around for a while if you want to talk. You know the number.”
Michael nodded. The lift was broken again so he used the staircase. He did not look back.
* * *
The sun was setting, the clouds along the horizon a candyfloss pink. It would soon be dark, Michael realised. He thought about catching the bus then decided to walk. Wilkes’s news had shaken him badly. He needed time to think. It was not just Lennox’s illness, it was the other things, too – Wilkes’s suggestion that his gift might not be sufficient to fulfil his ambition, the kind of fear you didn’t dare contemplate in case it came true. Until today Michael had never doubted his talent. But first there had been Douglas Coote and now there was this.
What he wanted was to talk to Lennox but Wilkes had told him that Lennox was dying and might never come home. Michael suddenly realised he didn’t even know which hospital Lennox was in. He came to a standstill, wondering if he should return to the flat and ask Wilkes about visiting hours. Then he realised he had left Lennox’s gift behind, the chess set and the books. He longed for these things, as if they somehow represented Lennox himself. He ached to go back, but both his father and Lennox had warned him never to hang about the estate after dark. Michael made up his mind to telephone Lennox’s flat as soon as he got home. If Wilkes was still there he would pick up. He had even suggested that Michael should call him whenever he wanted.
He struck out across the heath. He had read that Blackheath Common was once haunted by highwaymen and that the vast oak forests of Shooter’s Hill once stretched all the way to the English Channel. Not now, though. Oxleas Wood was where families went for picnics on Sunday afternoons, and the heath itself was just a patch of rough turf, spread out like a blanket across the ground between Blackheath and Greenwich. People flew kites there, and walked their dogs. At night the main pathways across the heath were illuminated by electric light. Michael never felt he was in any danger, although it was true that once it was dark the heath seemed bigger, slipping back a little in time perhaps, to when it really was a heath instead of a park.
He began to pick up his pace, heading for the part of the heath where he could cut across the road then down Crooms Hill and into Greenwich. There were two men on the pathway ahead of him, strolling side by side and deep in conversation. Michael walked a little faster, thinking he would overtake them, but just as he was about to go past, one of them edged over, blocking his path. The movement appeared casual but Michael sensed it had been deliberate. The other man laughed briskly, and once again Michael suspected it was him they were laughing at. He had a bad feeling, the same as when he knew Pullen and Jackson were in the vicinity. He wanted to shake off these men, to get far away from them. He would run if he had to, but his ribs still hurt from the beating earlier. He knew he wouldn’t get far.
Michael stepped off the pathway and on to the grass, meaning to bypass them that way, but there was more of a rise than he thought. He tripped to his knees with a hard thump. Fresh pain jolted his ribs, filling his mind with memories of Jackson and Pullen.
You’ve had it now, you moron, he thought. Only this time, he was talking to himself.