Kings Pawn

Kings Pawn

Dinah didn’t know what made her stop at the pawn shop that day. She had never stopped there before but the moment she saw the chess set she knew it was fate.

Dinah was a chess fanatic, collector, player, queen of her local chess society. Which was rare, even in the modern era the chess world was still very male dominated. So why stop at this store, she didn’t know. But she didn’t care when she saw the set in the window!

It was a classic black and white marble board and there was a classic style to the pieces, however, one side was a dark, charcoal grey, not black and the other side was a creamy white and it was the way they caught the light that attracted her the most. Small crystal flecks glittered when the light caught them. Instantly, she knew exactly where it would fit in her home office. There was a table with a Tiffany lamp she had bought a while ago. The flecks would catch the light from that lamp beautifully.

She bought the set from the tall, creepy guy in the store. Pretending to browse while he packed it carefully into a box. Nothing else appealed to her but she didn’t want to chat to him, she never really had much in the way of social skills. Didn’t take part in “girl talk” at work because she had no interest in fashion, men and god forbid, babies!

Dinah’s world was numbers and chess. As a high earning accountant she saved her rich clients millions and that paid well. That gave her time to feed her passion, her love, chess. Her first set had also been bought second hand, when she was just thirteen. Two of the white pieces were missing and she had roughly carved out replacements from a candle and had literally made her own board from a piece of white card she had stolen from an office supply store, along with the black marker she had used to painstakingly mark the squares before colouring in the black ones.

She had learned to play from online sites, she had a cheap phone that her parents didn’t know about. Not that they would’ve cared, actually that was a lie, her mother would’ve used it to go crazy at her. Her dad didn’t care one bit, he drove a truck and that was the only thing he cared about and the only thing he ever talked about, to Dinah or anyone who was close enough to listen. The only thing she ever learned from him was how to repair a truck, clean a truck and siphon fuel. He was hardly ever at home anyway, leaving Dinah stuck with her mother, who’s hobbies were drinking and taking out her frustrations on Dinah.

As a teenager she retreated into her own world, did extra work at school, especially in her beloved maths and joined the chess club where she got beaten mercilessly for months until she started to get the hang of it all. Everyone else in the club was male, of course, it was nerd central. But then, everyone thought she was a nerd anyway so, no big deal. Finally, when the other club members had all stopped hitting on her, by then she was fifteen, she started to win games. The next term she won the school tournament and started to earn some grudging respect. After that there was local college. Her father died, heart attack, she hardly registered it. Her mother drank more heavily and got more abusive, but by then Dinah had a lock on her bedroom door and just avoided her.

Now, she was in her late thirties, had a nice, two-bedroom apartment with two cats and her mother was in a home, sober for the first time in years but mostly out of it because of a combination of a stroke and dementia. Dinah played the good daughter, paid the bills and never visited.

She parked her Honda in her allotted space, a sensible car for a sensible woman and carried her bag, Gucci, one of her few luxuries, along with the boxed chess set up in the elevator to her apartment.

Garry and Bobby trotted over to meet her as she entered. Garry, named after Garry Kasparov, was white and Bobby, named after Bobby Fischer, was black.

“Hi guys!” she greeted their attention and deposited her bag on the sofa. “Back in a second” she carried the box to her office.

It was actually the larger of the two bedrooms and was at the back of her apartment, she gave more importance to chess than sleeping and so gave in more room. Closing the door behind her, no cats allowed in here, she placed the box on the desk. The room was a shrine to chess. Shelves and tables were covered in various sets from classic marble to tacky Disney. One wall was clear of shelves and it contained her gallery, signed pictures of the chess greats. Kasparov, Karpov, Fischer, Morphy, Steinitz and even Capablanca, the last three sadly not signed. Plus, her most recent acquisition, Magnus Carlsen.

She placed her new purchase on the desk, she would unwrap it and place it later, she passed back into the main apartment and fussed over her cats. Taking off her shoes she went into the kitchen area and poured cat food into two bowls, one white and one black of course, although the cats themselves had no preference and bent their heads to eat, purring loudly. Having made sure they had plenty of water she washed her hands and moved into her bedroom, there she changed into comfortable pajamas and slippers before returning to the kitchen, where the cats were still milling around, retrieved a prepacked salad from the fridge along with the remains of a glass of Chenin from the night before and snagged a fork from her cutlery draw before sitting on the sofa and turning on the TV.

All she got was news about market rate increases, she frowned, the housing market was getting tight and was going to get worse. Dinah was an accountant to some pretty high earners and would have to get some of her clients to think about their mortgages.

She switched channels until she found an old sit com to watch while she ate, then she cleaned up and re-entered her office. There was a table with a lamp on it against the wall beneath the shelves, the table already had a set on it of course but, she carefully moved that to a space on a shelf and unpacked her new purchase.

As Dinah laid the set out she was pleased to see that the quartz like flakes in the pieces did indeed catch the light as she had hoped. Finally satisfied with its position she switched on the lamp and smiled broadly; the effect was stunning. Thoroughly satisfied she switched off the lights and went back to her wine, cats and television.

The next evening she came home with a purpose. One of the online chess club members had published a puzzle on their shared site, the usual format, several pieces set out on a board, white wins, checkmate in five moves. Dinah had seen it first thing this morning but hadn’t been able to look at it since and it was driving her crazy.

She swept into the apartment shooing cats as she went, dropped coat and bag, retrieved her laptop and dumped food and water in the cats bowls, spilling some. Tutted at the litter tray, which was a mess, but would have to wait, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, kicked off her shoes and almost ran into the office.

Half an hour and two thirds of a bottle of water later, she moved the white queen into place. Checkmate in five moves, done, she would submit her solution later after she had

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Texte: Gerry Chadwick
Cover: Gerry Chadwick
Lektorat: Gerry Chadwick
Korrektorat: Gerry Chadwick
Satz: Gerry Chadwick
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 21.09.2022
ISBN: 978-3-7554-2097-2

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As always, for Debbie