“I’m sorry,” he said. “Where’s Dad?”
“Driving around the streets looking for you.” She mock-cuffed him then ruffled his hair. She walked away along the hallway and a moment later he heard her on the phone to his father, telling him he could come home. He hung his bag on the coat rack and went through to the kitchen. Micaela Gomez was bending down, taking something out of the oven. As he entered the room she straightened up, wiping her hands on her jeans.
“Are you OK?” she said. “I mean really?”
“I’m hungry,” he said. He remembered the corned beef hash that Wilkes had made and he had not eaten. It seemed like ages ago.
“The headmaster said you seemed upset.”
The idea of Bassett calling his home seemed composed of equal parts glamour and shame. Quite suddenly Michael felt exhausted. He wanted to be alone in his room with his chess books and his computer and his film DVDs. More than anything he wanted this day to be over and done with.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m going upstairs for a bit.”
“Wash your hands while you’re up there,” said Micaela. “Supper’s nearly ready.”
Normally the darkness of familiar places did not bother him, but this evening he turned on the landing light, just to be sure. The house felt steady and quiet. Michael found it reassuring and somehow miraculous that his mother had continued preparing the supper as usual, believing and trusting in his return.
He went into his bedroom and sat down on the bed, his body still aching from all the running and falling. Everything was exactly as he had left it that morning – only he and the world had changed. He was contemplating this fact, wondering whether he should try calling Wilkes immediately or wait until after supper, when he noticed that not everything about his room was the same, that something had been added to it in his absence.
The shelf above his desk, which normally carried only a jar of pencils and his current homework projects, now also held a medium-sized parcel. The parcel was square and wrapped in gold paper. Michael stared at it stupidly, wondering what it was and how he should deal with it. It was not Christmas or his birthday. There was certainly nothing to celebrate. The parcel seemed out of place, a carol singer at a crematorium.
Michael lifted it down from the shelf and placed it on his desk. It was surprisingly heavy. He stroked the shiny paper then edged his nail under the Sellotape and tore it off.
Inside was a wooden box. Michael thought it might be mahogany, though he was no expert in these things. The box’s front panel was made of glass. When Michael looked inside he saw the box contained a model of two people sitting at a table, playing chess. The room they sat in was furnished like an old-style parlour, with a Persian rug and a standard lamp, a miniature sideboard with a tiny crystal decanter. It reminded Michael of Queen Mary’s dolls’ house, which they had watched a documentary about once at school, though he understood that this construction was not a static model but a clockwork automaton. The two figures were exquisitely made, the hands and faces finely detailed. Michael thought they were probably made from wax. One was a hunchback, dressed in an embroidered silk waistcoat and velvet breeches. In spite of his misshapen body he was strikingly handsome.
The other figure was Colin Wilkes. The scar on his cheek had been exaggerated slightly, giving him the look of someone accustomed to violence. He was wearing miniature copies of Lennox’s tartan slippers.
Michael stretched out his hand towards the ornate winding key. He gave it three or four tentative twists, then turned it steadily until he could feel the spring was fully loaded. When he released the key, the lamp came on and the hunchback and Colin Wilkes came grindingly to life. Their movements were slow and jerky, and Michael could hear the clockwork beneath the brass panel. The hunchback opened the game with the Sicilian. The Colin Wilkes figure followed this with an error so basic it made Michael gasp. Wilkes’s error allowed the hunchback to play Levenson’s Ruse, a trick move that inevitably led to mate in five.
The box was a minor miracle. While the game was in progress it played a tune, which Michael recognised immediately as Santa Fé Nights. At the end of the game the two figures froze, then snapped back to their original positions. The music ended in a final flourish and then fell silent. Wilkes’s grey eyes seemed to fix on him, pleading. Michael could think of nothing more humiliating for a chess player than being forced to fall for the Levenson Ruse over and over again into eternity. It was grandmasters’ hell.
Michael gazed at the motionless figures. Their features were so lifelike that after a while it became unsettling to look at them. It was difficult to believe that under their clothes they were just an assemblage of tin plate and clockwork. It was difficult to believe the box existed, even when it was standing right in front of him. He stretched out his hand, meaning to wind the key again, but at that moment his mother started calling from the foot of the stairs.
“Michael, the food’s on the table.”
He ducked into the bathroom, ran his hands briefly under the tap then went downstairs. His father had returned. Michael saw him exchange glances with his mother, and knew she had made him agree not to question Michael about the tournament.
“Did you like your present?” Luis Gomez said instead. His face was falsely bright, overeager in exactly the way Michael had known and feared it would be.
“It’s great, Dad. It’s amazing.”
“It plays a real game, you know. Levenson’s Gambit.”
Michael almost retorted that a cheap trick like the Levenson would never be dignified with the title of gambit but stopped himself just in time. “I know, Dad, I saw. But you shouldn’t have. It must have cost a bomb.”
His father’s face fell. “It was meant to be a surprise. For after the tournament.”
“But I didn’t win, Dad. I don’t deserve it.”
“Michael, you know we’re proud of you whatever,” said Micaela. “You’ll win the next one. Now eat this before it gets cold.” She placed a shallow bowl in front of him, filled with the bean and chorizo stew that was their Saturday night favourite. He marvelled at the calm confidence of her statement. You’ll win the next one. Michael knew she believed this as completely and unquestioningly as she had believed he would arrive home safely that evening. He felt himself grow suddenly lighter, the bright balloon of his thoughts bobbing up from his head, primrose-coloured and translucent and free. He listened to his father make a few tortured remarks about the weather then gave him what he wanted and told him about the game.
“I was stupid,” he said in the end. “I underestimated Coote. I won’t make the same mistake again. I’ll learn from what happened. That’s what Lennox would say, anyway, and I believe him.”
Saying Lennox’s name out loud made his stomach churn. Could Lennox really be dying? On the plus side, his father looked much happier.
“Would you like to watch a film after supper?” he said. “You could bring down one of those monster videos of yours?”
Michael couldn’t help smiling. He knew his father couldn’t watch a horror film without switching on every light in the house. “No, Dad, that’s OK. I want to go over the game.”
Luis Gomez put on his serious face, a look that was always tinged with anxiety.