The Woman Who Took His Knight

By the time Nessa took his knight, Martin had decided he liked her. This complicated an already poor position.

“You left it there,” she said, lifting the piece from the board.

“I was offering you a difficult moral choice.”

“You should have offered it somewhere safer.”

Around them, the upstairs room of the sports club filled with the quiet aggression of a weekend chess tournament. Clocks clicked. Someone unwrapped a sweet with extraordinary persistence. At the next table a woman leaned forward as if trying to intimidate a bishop.

Martin had entered because his nephew, who usually came with him, had developed a social life. Nessa had entered because she had moved to town and disliked introductions that required her to explain what she did for work before deciding whether she could relax.

He learned this afterwards, once she had beaten him in thirty-four moves.

“You might have told me you were good,” he said as they reset the board.

“You might have looked at the rating list.”

“I was hoping for an element of surprise.”

“Then your preparation was excellent.”

The tournament ran over three Saturdays. Players were paired within a small field, with enough flexibility that anyone could still have a dreadful afternoon. Martin enjoyed that. As a solicitor dealing mostly with property, he spent his working week ensuring surprises happened to other people as rarely as possible.

Nessa designed museum displays. Her current assignment involved making a collection of ancient farming tools interesting to children without pretending the tools had personalities. She considered it a worthwhile challenge.

They spoke by the noticeboard while the organiser calculated the next pairings. Martin found himself wanting the arithmetic to take longer.

He was forty-one, divorced, comfortable in the practical parts of his life. For two years he had accepted invitations to dinners where friends placed an unfamiliar woman beside him and left the conversation with conspicuous excuses. Nobody had yet asked whether he wanted to meet someone over roast chicken beneath the pressure of their collective optimism.

Nessa asked whether he always moved his knights so enthusiastically.

“Only when I’m trying to look as if I have a plan.”

“Useful professional skill.”

“Not a reliable chess strategy, apparently.”

She smiled, and the organiser called their names for different tables.

Martin lost his second game too. This one he could not blame on attraction. His opponent was a retired surveyor who smelled of peppermint and refused to make any unnecessary move, including facial expressions.

At the end of the afternoon, Nessa was waiting at the stairs, examining the club’s ancient trophy cabinet.

“Do you think they polish these?” she asked.

“Only the parts visible from the door.”

“Carefully managed expectations. I approve.”

He asked if she wanted something to eat. She said she had promised to help her cousin move a sofa. Then, before he could manufacture an unconvincing expression of indifference, she asked whether he would be there the following Saturday.

“Yes.”

“Good. Practise your knights.”

He did, which his nephew found hilarious when he discovered why.

“Has she asked for lessons?”

“No.”

“Then don’t prepare a lecture.”

“I was preparing not to lose.”

“Much more romantic.”

On the second Saturday Martin arrived carrying two pastries. He immediately regretted this. One pastry would look like breakfast. Two looked like a declaration involving butter.

Nessa came upstairs with a banana and a folder of work drawings. She saw the bag, raised an eyebrow and accepted the extra pastry before he explained.

“I considered flowers,” he said.

“Difficult to eat between rounds.”

She showed him a drawing of a display case containing three wooden rakes. He read the draft caption aloud. It was clear, informative and almost aggressively sensible.

“Is this where you give them personalities?”

“Not if I want to remain employed.”

He suggested asking children what they thought the tools might be for before giving the answer. She considered it.

“That could work.”

“Please record that somewhere. I don’t often receive the phrase without a bill attached.”

They were paired again in the final round of the day. This time Martin took longer over each move. Nessa watched him with a concentration that made him forget, briefly, that the rest of the room existed.

He found a combination he had missed the previous week. She recognised it after his second move and sat back.

“Well,” she said quietly. “Look at you.”

He won the game. It was a narrow, untidy victory. She shook his hand without the slightest attempt to make him feel embarrassed about being pleased.

Then she took out the folder and wrote on the edge of a page: Martin has learned something.

“I asked for a record,” he said. “Not a museum exhibit.”

During the break, the organiser, Graham, asked Martin to help move tables after next week’s presentation. The club had found a sponsor, a local business offering a small cash prize and enough money to repair the room’s heating.

Graham was delighted. Membership had fallen. Winter sessions were becoming difficult. A sponsor meant they could keep the children’s club running without raising the fee.

“Their representative’s playing,” he added. “Alan Pike. He likes being involved.”

Martin knew Alan from business meetings. He had never disliked him, but he had noticed how quickly conversations became accounts of things Alan had paid for.

After the tournament, Nessa and Martin walked to a small restaurant near the station. It was not introduced as a date. Halfway through dinner, Martin decided the omission was becoming absurd.

“I would like this to be a date,” he said.

Nessa set down her water glass. “I was beginning to wonder whether you invited everyone who beat you.”

“There’s a capacity problem with that approach.”

She laughed. Then she said yes, it was a date, and reached across to move his fork out of the path of his sleeve.

They stayed until the staff began laying tables for the following day. On the pavement she kissed him, briefly, before asking whether he always looked so astonished when something went well.

“Not usually,” he said. “But the sample is small.”

For a week their messages became the most interesting thing his phone did. She sent photographs of tools with increasingly ridiculous possible functions. He sent examples of strange wording from public estate-agent advertisements, carefully removing the addresses because he could not quite stop being himself.

On the final Saturday the pairings placed him against Alan. Nessa was one table away, playing the surveyor.

Before the round Graham took Martin aside.

“Alan’s had a difficult tournament.”

“So have several of us.”

“Yes, but he’s been very generous.”

Martin waited.

Graham looked toward the sponsor’s banner. “Nobody wants a fuss. Perhaps keep it friendly.”

“It is friendly.”

“You know what I mean.”

Martin did. He wished he didn’t. Losing a game deliberately would cost him very little. Graham would be grateful. The heating might get repaired. He could even call it tact, a skill for which he was professionally rewarded.

At the board Alan shook his hand and asked about his week. He seemed perfectly cheerful. Nothing suggested he had asked Graham for protection from a chess loss.

They began. After fifteen moves Alan made a mistake. Martin saw the piece he could take. He also saw Graham standing by the window, rubbing his hands together in the cold.

For half a minute he considered choosing another move.

Then he thought about Nessa shaking his hand after losing. About the uncomplicated respect of taking another person seriously enough to try.

He took the piece.

Alan looked at the board, grimaced and laughed.

“That’s going to be expensive.”

He played another twenty minutes and resigned. They discussed the position afterwards, pointing at alternatives neither had chosen when they mattered.

Graham approached while Martin was packing the pieces away. His expression was strained.

“Good game,” Alan said to him. “I should sponsor a sport I’m better at.”

Martin watched Graham try to decide whether this was a complaint. Alan asked when the heater would be repaired and whether someone could send him the invoice.

After Alan left, Martin took Graham aside.

“Please don’t ask anyone to do that again.”

“I didn’t actually say—”

“You didn’t need to.”

Graham looked tired rather than angry. He explained that he had spent months worrying about the club, worrying that any small disappointment would make somebody withdraw an offer.

“I understand,” Martin said. “But he offered to support a chess club. Let him play in one.”

Graham nodded slowly. He apologised, first to Martin, then later to Alan. The apology was awkward and necessary. Alan looked offended for three seconds before apparently recognising that outrage would make it seem he had needed help losing gracefully.

Nessa had won her game. The result placed her second overall. She accepted a small wooden trophy and held it up to inspect the underside.

“Please tell me you’re checking whether they polished it,” Martin whispered.

“Someone has to maintain standards.”

They stayed to fold tables. Nessa asked about the conversation with Graham. Martin told her without making himself the hero of it.

“I nearly played the wrong move,” he admitted.

“Nearly is where most choices live.”

“Do you think I should have told you sooner?”

“I think we’re allowed to finish an afternoon before holding a formal review of it.”

They carried the last table into the cupboard. The room looked surprisingly large without the boards. Downstairs, the bar television was showing a football match nobody seemed to be watching.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Dinner?”

“I meant the tournament. It’s over.”

Nessa looked at him patiently. “Martin. You have my number.”

He laughed, then took her hand as they went down the stairs.

Two weeks later she invited him to the opening of the museum display. Children stood in front of the wooden rakes, arguing about their possible purpose. Nessa had included a space for visitors to draw their own guesses before lifting a panel to find the answer.

One child had drawn an extraordinary machine for combing a giant.

“Your contribution,” Nessa told him.

“I’ll put it on my professional biography.”

Afterwards they went to her flat. On a shelf beside the window, the wooden trophy stood between two plants. Beside it was a small travel chess set.

“One game?” she asked.

“Shouldn’t we talk about something else?”

“We can do both. I’m versatile.”

They sat at the kitchen table. She gave him white, then reached for a biscuit while he considered his first move. He did not attempt anything clever. There would be time for that, and for mistakes, and for ordinary evenings that did not have to become anything more impressive than themselves.

When he moved his knight, she looked at it, then at him.

“Are you sure?”

“No,” he said. “But I’m interested.”