A Twist in the Tale (18 page)

“What would you
like to drink?” I asked.

“I’ll stick to
wine, if you’ve a bottle already open,” she replied, as she walked slowly
round, taking in the unusually tidy room. My mother must have dropped by during
the morning, I thought gratefully.

“It’s only a
bachelor pad,” I said,
emphasising
the word
“bachelor” before going into the kitchen. To my relief I found there was an
unopened bottle of wine in the larder. I joined Amanda with the bottle and two
glasses a few moments later, to find her studying my chess board and fingering
the delicate ivory pieces that were set out for a game I was playing by post.

“What a
beautiful set,” she volunteered as I handed her a glass of wine. “Where did you
find it?”

“Mexico,” I
told her, not explaining that I had won it in a tournament while on holiday
there. “I was only sorry we didn’t have the chance to have a game ourselves.”

She checked her
watch. “Time for a quick one,” she said, taking a seat behind the little white
pieces.

I quickly took
my place opposite her. She smiled, picked up a white and a black bishop and hid
them behind her back. Her dress became even tighter and
emphasised
the shape of her breasts. She then placed both clenched fists in front of me. I
touched her right hand and she turned it over and opened it to reveal a white
bishop.

“Is there to be
a wager of any kind?” I asked lightheartedly. She checked inside her evening
bag.

“I only have a
few pounds on me,” she said.

“I’d be willing
to play for lower stakes.”

“What do you
have in mind?” she asked.

“What can you
offer?”

“What would you
like?”

“Ten pounds if
you win.”

‘‘And if I
lose?”

“You take
something off.”

I regretted the
words the moment I had said them and waited for her to slap my face and leave
but she said simply, “There’s not much harm in that if we only play one game.”

I nodded my
agreement and stared down at the board.

She wasn’t a
bad player – what the pros call a patter- though her Roux opening was somewhat
orthodox. I managed to make the game last twenty minutes while sacrificing
several pieces without making it look too obvious. When I said “Checkmate”, she
kicked off both her shoes and laughed.

“Care for
another drink?” I asked, not feeling too hopeful. “After all, it’s not yet
eleven.”

“All right.
Just a small one and then I must be off.”

I went to the
kitchen, returned a moment later clutching the bottle, and refilled her glass.

“I only wanted
half a glass,” she said, frowning.

“I was lucky to
win,” I said, ignoring her remark, “after your bishop captured my knight.

Extremely close-run thing.”

“Perhaps,” she
replied.

“Care for
another game?” I ventured.

She hesitated.

“Double or quits?”

“What do you
mean?”

“Twenty pounds or another garment?”

“Neither of us
is going to lose much tonight, are we?”

She pulled up
her chair as I turned the board round and we both began to put the ivory pieces
back in place.

The second game
took a little longer as I made a silly mistake early on, castling on my queen’s
side, and it took several moves to recover. However, I still managed to finish
the game off in thirty minutes and even found time to refill Amanda’s glass
when she wasn’t looking.

She smiled at
me as she hitched her dress up high enough to allow me to see the tops of her
stockings. She undid the suspenders and slowly peeled the stockings
offbefore
dropping them on my side
ofthe
table.

“I nearly beat
you that time,” she said.

“Almost,” I
replied. “Want another chance to get even? Let’s say fifty pounds this time,” I
suggested, trying to make the offer sound magnanimous.

“The stakes are
getting higher for both of us,” -she replied as she reset the board. I began to
wonder what might be going through her mind. Whatever it was, she foolishly sacrificed
both her rooks early on and the game was over in a matter of minutes.

Once again she
lifted her dress but this time well above her waist. My eyes were glued to her
thighs as she undid the black suspender belt and held it high above my head
before letting it drop and join her stockings on my side of the table.

“Once I had
lost the second rook,” she said, “I was never in with a chance.”

“I agree. It
would therefore only be fair to allow you one more chance,” I said, quickly
re-setting the board. “After all,” I added, “you could win one hundred pounds
this time.” She smiled.

“I really ought
to be going home,” she said as she moved her queen’s pawn two squares forward.
She smiled that enigmatic smile again as I countered with my bishop’s pawn.

It was the best
game she had played all evening and her use of the Warsaw gambit kept me at the
board for over thirty minutes.

In fact I damn
nearly lost early on because I found it hard to concentrate properly on her
defence
strategy. A couple of times Amanda chuckled when
she thought she had got the better of me, but it became obvious she had not
seen
Karpov
play the Sicilian
defence
and win from a seemingly impossible position.

“Checkmate,” I
finally declared.

“Damn,” she
said, and standing up turned her back on me. “You’ll have to give me a hand.”
Trembling, I leaned over and slowly pulled the zip down until it reached the
small of her back. Once again I wanted to touch the smooth, creamy skin. She
swung round to face me, shrugged gracefully and the dress fell to the ground as
if a statue were being unveiled. She leaned forward and brushed the side of my
cheek with her hand, which had much the same effect as an electric shock. I
emptied the last of the bottle of wine into her glass and left for the kitchen
with the excuse of needing to refill my own.

When I returned
she hadn’t moved. A gauzy black bra and pair of panties were now the only
garments that I still hoped to see removed.

“I don’t
suppose you’d play one more game?” I asked, trying not to sound desperate.

“It’s time you
took me home,” she said with a giggle.

I passed her
another glass of wine. “Just one more,” I begged. “But this time it must be for
both garments.”

She laughed.
“Certainly not,” she said. “I couldn’t afford to lose.”

“It would have
to be the last game,” I agreed. “But two hundred pounds this time and we play
for both garments.” I waited, hoping the size of the wager would tempt her.
“The odds must surely be on your side.

After all,
you’ve nearly won three times.”

She sipped her
drink as if considering the proposition. “All right,” she said.
“One last fling.”

Neither of us
voiced our feeling as to what was certain to happen if she lost.

I could not
stop myself trembling as I set the board up once again. I cleared my mind,
hoping she hadn’t noticed that I had drunk only one glass of wine all night. I
was determined to finish this one off quickly.

I moved my
queen’s pawn one square forward. She retaliated, pushing her king’s pawn up two
squares. I knew exactly what my next move needed to be and because of it the
game only lasted eleven minutes.

I have never
been so comprehensively beaten in my life. Amanda was in a totally different
class to me. She anticipated my every move and had gambits I had never
encountered or even read of before.

It was her turn
to say “Checkmate”, which she delivered with the same enigmatic smile as
before, adding, “
You
did say the odds were on my side
this timed’

I lowered my
head in disbelief. When I looked up again, she had already slipped that beautiful
black dress back on, and was stuff-
ing
her stockings
and suspenders into her evening bag. A moment later she put on her shoes.

I took out my
cheque
book, filled in the name “Amanda Curzon” and added
the figure “£200”, the date and my signature.

While I was
doing this she replaced the little ivory pieces on the exact squares on which
they had been when she had first entered the room.

She bent over
and kissed me gently on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said as she placed the
cheque
in her handbag. “We must play again some time.” I
was still staring at the reset board in disbelief when I heard the front door
close behind her.

“Wait a
minute,” I said, rushing to the door.

“How will you
get home?”

I was just in
time to see her running down the steps and towards the open door of a BMW. She
climbed in, allowing me one more look at those long tapering legs. She smiled
as the car door was closed behind her.

The accountant
strolled round to the driver’s side, got in, revved up the engine and drove the
champion home.

T
HE first occasion I met
Sefton
Hamilton
was in late August last year when my wife and I were dining with Henry and
Suzanne Kennedy at their home in
Warwick
Square
.

Hamilton was
one of those unfortunate men who have inherited immense wealth but not a lot
more. He was able quickly to convince us that he had little time to read and no
time to attend the theatre or opera. However, this did not prevent him from
holding opinions on every subject from Shaw to Pavarotti, from Gorbachev to Picasso.
He remained puzzled, for instance, as to what the unemployed had to complain
about when their dole packet was only just less than what he was currently
paying the
labourers
on his estate. In any case, they
only spent it on bingo and drinking, he assured us.

Drinking brings
me to the other dinner guest that night – Freddie Barker, the President of the
Wine Society, who sat opposite my wife and unlike Hamilton hardly uttered a
word. Henry had assured me over the phone that Barker had not only managed to get
the Society back on to a proper financial footing but was also acknowledged as
a leading authority on his subject. I looked forward to picking up useful bits
of inside knowledge. Whenever Barker was allowed to get a word in edgeways, he
showed enough knowledge of the topic under discussion to convince me that he
would be fascinating if only Hamilton would remain silent long enough for him
to speak.

While our
hostess produced as a starter a spinach soufflé that melted in the mouth, Henry
moved round the table pouring each of us a glass of wine.

Barker sniffed
his appreciatively. “Appropriate in bicentennial year that we should be
drinking an Australian Chablis of such fine vintage. I feel sure their whites
will soon be making the French look to their laurels.”

“Australian?”
said Hamilton in disbelief as he put down his glass. “How could a nation of
beer
swiggers
begin to understand the first thing
about producing a half decent wine?”

“I think you’ll
find,” began Barker, “that the Australians -”

“Bicentennial
indeed,” Hamilton continued.

“Let’s face
it,
they’re only celebrating two hundred years of parole.”
No one laughed except Hamilton. “I’d still pack the rest of our criminals off
there, given half a chance.”

No one doubted
him.

Hamilton sipped
the wine tentatively, like a man who fears he is about to be poisoned, then
began to explain why, in his considered
view,
judges
were far too lenient with petty criminals. I found myself concentrating more on
the food than the incessant flow of my
neighbour’s
views.

I always enjoy
Beef Wellington, and Suzanne can produce a pastry that doesn’t flake when cut
and meat that’s so tender that once one has finished a first helping, Oliver
Twist comes to mind. It certainly helped me to endure Hamilton’s pontificating.
Barker managed to pass an appreciative comment to Henry on the quality of the
claret between Hamilton’s opinions on the chances of Paddy Ashdown reviving the
Liberal Party and the role of Arthur
Scargill
in the
trade union movement, allowing no one the chance to reply.

“I don’t allow
my staff to belong to any union,” Hamilton declared, gulping down his drink. “I
run a closed shop.” He laughed once more at his own joke and held his empty
glass high in the air as if it would be filled by magic. In fact it was filled
by Henry with a discretion that shamed Hamilton – not that he noticed. In the
brief pause that
followed,
my wife suggested that
perhaps the trade union movement had been born out of a response to a genuine
social need.

“Balderdash,
madam,” said Hamilton.

“With great
respect, the trade unions have been the single most important factor in the
decline of Britain as we know it. They’ve no interest in anybody but
themselves. You only have to look at Ron Todd and the whole Ford fiasco to
understand that.”

Suzanne began
to clear the plates away and I noticed she took the opportunity to nudge Henry,
who quickly changed the subject.

Moments later a
raspberry meringue glazed with a thick sauce appeared. It seemed a pity to cut
such a creation but Suzanne carefully divided six generous helpings like a
nanny feeding her charges while Henry uncorked
a 1981
Sauternes. Barker literally licked his lips in anticipation.

“And another
thing,” Hamilton was saying.

“The Prime
Minister has got far too many Wets in her Cabinet for my liking.”

“With whom
would you replace them?” asked Barker innocently.