| The
Rules of Chess
by Rebecca Kershaw
Every morning Sarah went to the park to watch the chess. She packed her
stripy shopping bag with a flask and a novel and carefully locked the
apartment door behind her. She saw no-one as she made her way down three
flights of stairs. She rarely bumped into her neighbours, and when she
didthey usually threw her a quick greeting and a smile before hurrying
on.
As she strolled towards the Hofgarten, her face lifted to catch the rays
of Spring sun, Sarah reflected that the pace of life here in Innsbruck
wasn’t so very different from back in Sheffield. Her rarely seen
neighbours might live in a beautiful alpine town but they still hurried
to the office in a morning; had arguments behind locked doors and went
shopping on Saturdays. Sarah gave a rueful smile and walked on. There
must be more to their lives than that, but if there was they weren’t
sharing it with her.
It was a lovely walk at any time of year but especially, she thought,
on Spring mornings like this, when the snows of winter had receded from
the mountains and the sun was putting out tentative fingers towards the
earth. As she passed through the market square, the sun was striking off
the famous Golden Roof, sending shards of fractured gold light into the
air. Whatever the season there was always a group of tourists gathered
to stare up at Emperor Maximilian’s folly. A beautiful folly, though,
Sarah thought, as she passed on and into the park.
She liked to stroll around the Hofgarten before she went to see the chess.
Today the cherry blossom was out and she wandered down winding paths,
smiling at the fluffy blossom billowing in the breeze, too impossibly
pink. There had been a cherry tree in their garden in Sheffield. Only
the one, but still she had smiled every spring when the blossoms unfurled
and she felt that winter was behind her. The blossom had been in flower
when John died and it felt like winter had only just begun.
When she first visited Innsbruck, as a schoolgirl, she was fascinated
by the Hofgarten’s outdoor chess. Now, remembering John’s
love of the game she was drawn back to the giant boards with their matching
giant pieces, lined up for play. The first games started at breakfast
time and progressed throughout the day.
There were benches set around the boards and Sarah found her place there,
settling her coat around her legs to keep off the breeze, laying her book
beside her and unscrewing the lid from her flask. She sipped hot coffee,
watching the steam curl into the air, as the players moved their Queens
in a courtly dance.
Sarah was as fascinated by the other spectators as she was by the play.
She had been coming here long enough to recognise many of them. One board
always seemed to attract a group of vocal gentlemen in their seventies,
with checked scarves and caps. They watched the other men play and gave
their views on every move. They were rarely satisfied but never volunteered
to play themselves.
Nor had Sarah ever volunteered to play chess although sometimes she had
tried, to please John. He was fascinated by the ancient game, a member
of the local chess club. His friends would come to the house to challenge
him to a match and two of them would spend the whole evening hunched over
the table, occasionally moving the pieces, but mainly staring at the board
as if it could reveal the secrets of the universe. John had been eager
to initiate her into the secrets of the game and early in their marriage
Sarah had tried to learn. But the rules seemed too complicated, the permutations
of a move too mathematical for her. Besides John was far too advanced
for them ever to have a proper, evenly matched game. So she gently refused
his offers to teach her and left him to his fascination.
John had been looking forward to playing more chess when he retired while
Sarah saw it as the opportunity to travel more, visit all those places
they had never seen as a couple. Innsbruck was top of her list. She had
fallen in love with the tiny town, nestling among the mountains, as a
teenager and always wanted to take John there to share the magic. She
had tentatively suggested it for their honeymoon but it was beyond their
budget and instead they went to the English Lakes. Somehow after that,
Innsbruck had never risen to the top of the travel agenda. New York, Vancouver,
Prague and Venice had been visited and marvelled over but Sarah always
nursed an affection for her Austrian jewel.
She opened her book but as usual let it lie, unread, on her lap. The kind
looking gentleman was here again. He must be retired. Retired and alone
like her. Or else he had a wife at home who preferred that he was out
from under her feet. She had never felt that John was under her feet.
She took another sip of her coffee. Ugh. It was cold. She pulled a face
and forced herself to swallow the liquid. She looked up and saw the kind
looking man was smiling across at her. She smiled back. He usually smiled
at her. She always smiled back. Most days he was there before her, on
others he would arrive later, seeming to hurry as though afraid of missing
something. He must be a keen chess fan, always staying on to watch the
game after Sarah had drifted away home. Every day she thought of having
her lunch in a café and almost every day she went straight back
to the apartment and scrambled some eggs or dropped bread into the toaster.
What, however, she really wanted to do was to eat strudel and drink coffee
in a café and then go and listen to Mozart in the afternoon.
Funny, when she retreated to Innsbruck, even through all the sadness she’d
pictured herself strolling to cafés and eating strudel with her
neighbours; attending concerts where her tears could be explained by the
music; accepting invitations to mountain chalets and learning to ski,
turning her face to the future. Instead she found herself watching chess,
with all its memories.
Although she blamed herself afterwards, Sarah had no idea there was anything
wrong with John. Right up to the day he collapsed and died, one endlessly
terrible Wednesday in April. He’d never complained of feeling ill,
and if sometimes he looked pale or strained, she put it down to the stress
of his job and told herself that six months of retirement would make a
new man of him. One breath of Austrian air and he would be well. But it
wasn’t to be.
Everyone expected her to soldier on, live the life she had always lived,
without the most important part. Instead, the day after the funeral, she
drew her savings out of the bank and asked her son, Anthony, to find her
a flight to Innsbruck and an apartment she could rent for at least twelve
months. Anthony had always understood her. He knew she needed to go away,
to nurse her grief alone. So he found the apartment and paid for the flight
and when the house was sold he wired the money into her account.
She moved out of the original apartment after nine months. It was part
of a holiday complex on the outskirts of Innsbruck, in the shadow of the
famous ski jump. It had been easy to hide there. The other residents came
and went every two weeks, without noticing that the slight fair haired
woman in Apartment Six rarely left her rooms, even more rarely spoke to
anyone. When she moved into what she thought of now as her permanent home,
in the town itself, she was almost ready to start life again. And now,
a year and a half after John’s death, she felt she was ready but
somehow life didn’t seem ready for her.
Sarah sighed and, as she did, caught the eye of the man opposite again.
He was looking at her with a sad half smile on his face. Sarah pushed
away her own sad thoughts, about John, about the new life she had not
quite caught hold of and smiled back. He stood up and crossed the chess
board towards her. She’d been so lost in thought, she hadn’t
noticed the game had finished and the players had moved away. He stood
in front of her and she had to look up, into his face. When he spoke it
was in German and she felt a thrill that for once she had not been recognised
as English, an outsider.
‘I noticed that you always watch the game. Would you like to play,
perhaps?’
He gestured towards the abandoned board.
‘Oh I couldn’t. I mean, I watch but really I have no idea
how to play.’ She was flustered and hoping that she wasn’t
being rude.
‘Maybe I could show you. Teach you the rules of the game?’
He was smiling so kindly at her and his brown eyes were so warm, so friendly.
She placed her book and flask in her bag and stood up. She looked at the
chess board behind him, the black and white squares pristine in the spring
sunshine, the pieces lined up waiting to show her how to play.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said and she saw the disappointment
flicker behind his eyes. ‘You see what I’d really like to
do is to eat strudel and drink coffee in a café and then listen
to Mozart in the afternoon.’ She smiled up at him.
For a moment he seemed taken aback. Then he laughed, throwing his head
back so the laugh rolled up into the sky, ‘What a wonderful idea.’
He held out his arm and she took it. And as they left the park and the
chessboards behind them, Sarah smiled and listened as her new friend explained
to her the rules of chess.
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