Thursday Was Chess

Ved’s week had five things in it.

Swimming was Monday, and the wet towel came home in the bag and stayed there. Keyboard was Tuesday, with the book of scales and the pencil for marking the hard bars. Maths class was Wednesday and Saturday. That counts as one thing and takes up two evenings, which is a swindle. Football was Sunday morning, boots by the door on Saturday night.

And Thursday was chess. Bag, stairs, table, clock, two hours, home in the dark.

He was not bad at chess. He was somewhere in the middle of the group. Better than four of them, worse than three. He had once, in a real tournament, drawn against a boy with a rating.

Mr Pinto ran it. He was a good teacher and an entirely nice man, with a flask of tea on the table and a long way of saying “ah” when you moved too fast.

The trouble was that Ved’s father had taught him.

They had a wooden set at home, in a box with a sliding lid, and it had been his father’s when he was eleven. The pieces had green felt on the bottoms, worn through to the wood on three of them. The board was a square of folded card with a soft split down the middle. The white king had a chip out of the crown. His father had shown him the moves on that set when he was six, sitting on the floor. He had let him win for about a year. Then he had stopped letting him win, and Ved had noticed on exactly the day it happened.

His father talked about chess more than he talked about most things. He knew games from forty years ago by heart. When Ved got the draw against the boy with the rating, his father made him go through it move by move on the wooden set. Twice. Then he told two people about it on the phone.

In April, Ved worked out that he did not want to go on Thursdays any more.

It was not one thing. It was that Thursday came round and something in him went heavy at about two o’clock, every week. By four he was carrying his bag up the stairs to Mr Pinto’s flat like a boy going in to sit a test he had not studied for. Four flights, a green door, a shoe rack on the landing. And then the boards, and the clocks on the table, and two hours.

Working it out took an afternoon. Saying it took three weeks.

Week one, he decided to say it at dinner and did not. His father was tired and there was a thing going on at work.

Week two, he got as far as “Papa,” and then said something about a school form instead. He lay in bed afterwards being so annoyed with himself that his ears went hot.

Week three was the Thursday his father came home early and said he would drop him at Mr Pinto’s. They went down to the scooter together. Ved stood by it holding his helmet.

“Papa. I don’t want to do chess any more.”

His father stopped with the key halfway to the lock. The scooter had a dent in the leg shield from a wall, from years ago, and Ved looked at the dent.

He did not shout. He did not say anything at all for about four seconds. That is a long time when you are standing next to somebody holding a helmet.

Then he said, “We’ve paid for the term.”

“I know.”

“Get on.”

So Ved got on, and put the helmet on, and they went. He played chess for two hours at the table by the window, and lost two and drew one.

Nothing else was said about it for two days.

On Saturday night his father was watching the news with the sound low. Ved was doing the maths that Saturday class always sent home.

“Finish the term,” said his father, to the television. “Then that’s it, if you want.”

Ved said okay, to the table, with the pen still in his hand.

His father said nothing else, and did not turn round, and after a while he changed the channel to the cricket.

The term finished on the fourteenth of May.

The first free Thursday, Ved did not know what to do. He had thought about the free Thursday for six weeks and had not once thought about what would actually be in it.

He did his homework at the table, which took forty minutes. He put the pen in the bag and the bag by the door. Then it was ten past five and there was nothing at all.

He went out onto the balcony and sat down on the floor. Back against the rail, legs out in front of him. Down in the street a man was setting up his cart under the tree. A dog went along the wall on the far side. There was washing on a line on the balcony below, one shirt and a lot of socks. Somebody two floors up was practising the same four bars of something, over and over.

The tree, the cart, the dog, the wall, the wire. A crow on the rail.

It was, honestly, quite boring.

He did it again the next Thursday, and the one after that.

The wooden set stayed in its box with the sliding lid, on the shelf in the front room. Some Sundays his father got it out and they played one game. The white king still had the chip out of its crown. Neither of them ever mentioned Thursdays at all.