AUTUMN ENDGAME [serial]

By John Roycroft whose comment and explanation is as follows --

"Very much on the theme that you christened (spot on!) 'Have chess set, will travel'. If you have space on the site, and the inclination, do spread the episodes out in time - the remaining five are ready when you are. "

episode 1

Scene. House in London suburb.

Wife and mother had stationed themselves by the kitchen table, as they usually did after breakfast. Talking, naturally.

"With all these fashion models it must be that men like thin women."

Later, John could not recall which of them had uttered.

"What do you think, John? If we can drag you back from your trigonometry or wherever."

John, seated at the table with a cup of coffee at his elbow, was indeed thinking of other things, the implications of a quite different ordeal to be faced later in the day. He looked up, though, and long-sufferingly addressed his mind to the question set - the compulsory part of some examination paper.

"Well", and after a pause, "what I think is that that is what men will say but if you ask them to switch their minds from the visual to the tactile..."

At this point, with John still talking, wife and mother turned back to each other, just as if John hadn't opened his mouth at all. The two women resumed their own private dialogue. Where they had left off.

John's hair began to stand on end, but he did not let it show, even if he wished he could have. They might have noticed then. He continued talking "... I'm sure, if they are honest, men will say something very different ..."

It had no effect.

John's mind raced. A part of it, anyway. Left brain hemisphere continued on autopilot with the already planned answer, while right brain hemisphere tackled the realtime emotional crisis. The corpus callosum's complete bandwidth was engaged, on the brink of overload. How to handle the situation? How indeed? There were several options open. Option One: raise the voice, hit the decibels foghorn, force them to listen. After all, he'd given their question due thought, the question that had been addressed directly to him, there was no one else in the kitchen, they should at least let him deliver his reply, pay him the courtesy of listening. But no, he decided, that would be out of character, and might itself be rude. It was rude to shout. "... if men dig deep into what they want, it's something to ... " Option Two: raise a hand in a policemanlike gesture and pronounce in a calm but authoritative, and distinct, tone, "Now hold on. You've just asked me a question, and I'm in the middle of answering. Do please listen to what I have to say. It'll take no more than 30 seconds." But, John decided, this wasn't his style either. It smacked of the smug, priggish and pompous, of which he had sometimes been accused and of which he was very conscious. It would, again, have been no different from 'their' rudeness.

Instinct took over with Option Three: John continued to speak, with no change in tone or volume, but, instead of English he switched into gobbledy-speak, a trick that came easily to him, though he had never developed it into a party piece. The noises came from the back of the mouth-space, almost from the throat, and could be maintained indefinitely.

Option Three had no effect whatever. Five full seconds of gobbledy-speak and zilch reaction.

John glanced at his watch. My God, round two would start in 90 minutes' time. Serikov, the brilliant youngster, graded 200 points above him, would be waiting, and as white. John moved fast, grabbed what he needed, and strode out. The front door thudded to behind him, with satisfying finality. It wasn't until he was seated on the tube heading towards central London that John remembered the sheets of prepared analysis still lying by the bedside lamp. And there was coffee still in the mug.

 

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