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.I guess the bottle must have a greenhouse effect too, keep the insects off and help it ripen sweetly.When this bottle’s empty, I’m going to break it open and have a taste, see what it’s like inside.You want to share?”I felt my whole face twitch and shook my head rapidly to hide it.“No, no thanks.Um, I’m not a fan of preserved fruit,” which was a lie so direct, I thought so naked that I felt myself blushing as I said it, just to reinforce itsflagrancy.I turned back to the board in my confusion, to find that white’s first move had been made already.“I know you like to play the Ruy Lopez, which is unexpectedly old-fashioned of you.Let’s see how you like to play against it.”Ordinarily not a problem, but my mind was full of bottles, broken bottles, and my mouth tasted formaldehyde though I wasn’t even drinking any more.I lost the game, and my lifelong undefeated status; and in twenty-nine moves, which was a capitulation.“You’ll stay for the decider,” he said, not a question.“Play black again.We know you can beat me as white; I want you to do it the hard way.Concentrate, this time.No need to drink your coffee if you don’t want to, but don’t keep staring at it.”“Uh, sorry.Something on my mind.”“I know.One thing at a time.Bottle it up for now,” which was maybe the worst way he could have found to say what he meant, but he wasn’t to know that.Even chess isn’t truly telepathic, which was how come I’d kept my crown so long, because Small couldn’t really read my mind.Neither could Quin.Not yet, and not later.I was and am determined on that.I took a sip from the disregarded mug and felt that same sweet, heavy, oily-bright bite, to work against what I wasn’t really tasting, fear and formaldehyde; and I closed my mind down like shutters slamming, and I narrowed my gaze till it took in the chessboard and nothing more.I can concentrate for England, if I have to.So could he.That game ran to fifty-three moves, and for the last twenty there was precious little left on the board to play with.Neither one of us suggested a draw; that would have been too easy, where there were still opportunities for both.In the end I was too savage or he was too subtle, or else his energy failed him, betrayed him, ran to me.He made a mistake, and I tore him apart.And looked up then, finally, to find a stranger standing over us and oozing disapproval.“Quin, you’re doing too much and it exhausts you.Do I have to ration chess too?”A big hand closed around a thin wrist, feeling for a pulse, but was shaken off abruptly.“Don’t make like a medic, leave that to Dr John.You wouldn’t know what to do with a pulse if you could find it.And I have been rationed for months now, baby-chess, like a diet of Enid Blyton and tinned spaghetti.At last I find someone who understands, or at least plays better than I do.Him I can coach, and you’re not taking him away from me.Michael, this is Gerard: never Mike, I gather, and never ever Gerry.”That same big hand reached for mine and folded itself around my fingers.I thought I could feel the effort he made, not to go for a bonecrusher grip.“It’s Michael’s birthday,” Kit said from the window, where he was apparently back on drinks duty, filling glasses.“Sixteen today.Yesterday,” with a corrective glance at his watch.“Is it indeed? Well, and how do you come to be here, Michael?” Playing chess with my sick friend, he meant, exhausting him beyond the limits of his strength, when you should be off somewhere with your own friends and testing your ownlimits.“Uh, Kit found me out in the lane.I was going home but he brought me in, he knew I played chess and said Mr Quin would like a game,” and never mind what else he’d said.If he could forget about that I was the last person to remind him.Right at that moment it didn’t matter what anyone else might have said.I’d clearly said something that was acting like acid on an ulcer, the room was so full of sudden twitches and sharp breathy sounds.“If you’re Michael,” Kit said, “and Gerard is Gerard, then Quin is very definitely and always only Quin.If you mister him – well, actually, I don’t know what would happen if you mistered him deliberately, I’ve never known anyone stupid enough to do it.One time brings the awful warning; after that, you’re on your own.Cast into the outer darkness, probably, expunged from the family bible, I don’t know.I just wouldn’t go there, is all.See what I’m saying?”I did see [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]