“Then sit. I have not lost gracefully in years. I could use the practice.”
I sat.
We played for almost two hours that first afternoon.
Arthur had someone from the private kitchen bring us imported tea in delicate porcelain cups. I tried to hide my worn slippers beneath the table, but he noticed.
“You keep apologizing for your shoes,” he said.
“They are old.”
“So am I.”
“They are also all I have.”
Arthur leaned back and studied me.
“Shoes carry people to interesting places,” he said. “Yours carried you to me. That makes them valuable.”
I did not know then how important those afternoons would become.
Day after day, we met beneath the oak tree.
We listened to old jazz records on his portable player and played chess until the shadows stretched across the courtyard.
Arthur told me about his late wife, Margaret.
He spoke of her with tenderness, but also with regret. He had spent too much time building companies, traveling, and chasing success. By the time he understood how precious ordinary evenings were, she had become ill.
I told him about my late husband and the children we never had.
“You have children,” I reminded Arthur once. “Three of them. Where are they?”
His hand paused over a bishop.
“Waiting.”
“For what?”
“For me to die.”
I frowned.
“That is a cruel thing to say.”
“It is a cruel thing to know.”
He moved the bishop and stared at the board.
“My eldest son, Gregory, is patient and polite when other people are watching. But he is planning something. I can feel it the way you feel a storm before the clouds arrive.”
“You may be judging him too harshly.”
“No,” Arthur said. “I know my son.”
There was a bitterness in his voice that sounded far older than the argument itself.
I reached across the table and covered his hand with mine.
“Then let us play chess today and worry about storms tomorrow.”
He smiled, though the worry remained in his eyes.
“You are the only person in this place who wants nothing from me.”
“That is not true.”
“What do you want?”
“I would like to beat you before one of us dies.”
Arthur chuckled.
“That, my dear, you will have to earn.”
His daughter Evelyn visited once during those weeks.
She stood near the courtyard entrance watching us.
Arthur raised a hand and called her name, but she shook her head and walked away.
“That was Evelyn,” he explained. “She is not entirely like Gregory.”
