by R. A. Spratt
‘Chess!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘I hope they’ve got paramedics with defibrillators on stand-by, just in case anyone’s heart stops beating out of boredom. Could there be anything more dull?’
‘What about ‘I-spy’?’ asked Derrick provocatively.
‘Hah!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Chess makes I-spy look like laser tag. And I mean real laser tag, played with lasers so powerful they could melt a house brick.’
‘That’s a shame,’ said Michael, still looking at the noticeboard.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘The prize for the winner of the chess championship is a thousand dollars and –’ Michael had to stretch up on his tippy-toes to read the next bit – ‘a year’s supply of cheesecake.’
Nanny Piggins leapt to her feet (violating the time-out she had been given). ‘A year’s supply of cheesecake!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘Why, cheesecake is one of the seven most delicious types of cake in the entire world. Rising to the top five when it is chocolate cheesecake.’
‘Really?’ asked Samantha. She was tempted to ask what the other six were but decided not to, in case it led to a seven-hour lecture on the subject.
‘And do you know what the best thing about cheesecake is?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘Um . . .’ said Derrick. The children were afraid to answer. Nanny Piggins could get quite upset when she discovered the true level of their cake-related ignorance.
‘It contains no cheese whatsoever,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘I thought it contained cream cheese,’ said Samantha.
‘Yes, but that doesn’t count because it is much more creamy than cheesy,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I remember the first time I tried cheesecake. I was so delighted to discover it contained no lumps of cheddar at all. Come on, let’s go!’
‘You can’t go,’ said Samantha. ‘You’ve been given a time-out. You’ve got seven more minutes to sit on the bench.’
‘Piffle to that!’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘But what about the cappuccino chocolate?’ asked Michael.
‘I’ll come back and buy it later,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘But you’ll be banned,’ protested Samantha.
‘I’ll disguise myself as a bullfighter,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘They’ll never know it’s me. The new batch of fake moustaches I ordered arrived in the post yesterday. Now come on. We’ve got better things to do. I’ve got to go home and learn how to play chess.’
‘Chess is sooooo boring,’ complained Nanny Piggins.
She had been sitting in front of Mr Green’s chess board, reading a book about how to play chess for all of four minutes.
‘It’s based on the principles of warfare,’ said Michael, ‘and you like warfare.’
‘Yes, but the fun thing about warfare is all the leaping about and yelling,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But as far as I can see from reading this book there is no leaping about and yelling in chess at all.’
‘You could always give up,’ said Derrick.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Not when there is a year’s supply of cheesecake on the line.’
‘But maybe chess just isn’t the thing for you,’ said Samantha. ‘You can’t be good at everything.’
‘Why not?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘I always am good at everything. Name one thing I’m not brilliant at!’
‘Waiting patiently,’ said Samantha.
‘Sitting still,’ added Michael.
‘Listening quietly,’ chipped in Derrick.
‘Thinking logically,’ continued Samantha.
‘Arguing reasonably,’ added Michael.
‘Eating vegetables,’ said Derrick.
‘All right, all right!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘So there are a few things that I am slightly less good at. But they are all silly things that don’t matter. I’m sure I’ll be good at chess if I just wing it.’
‘I don’t know, Nanny Piggins,’ said Derrick. ‘There is a lot of strategy and tactics to chess. Maybe you should read a book or two.’
Nanny Piggins slumped across the table. ‘But I don’t want to. They are such long, thick, dull books, with no pirates or penniless farm girls falling in love with dukes dressed as highwaymen. Plus The Young and the Irritable is on in six minutes and I’d much rather watch that.’
‘I suppose you could try winging it,’ said Michael. (He wanted to watch The Young and the Irritable too.) ‘If chess is based on warfare then I’m sure you’ll be a natural. You’re better at attacking people than anyone I know.’
‘Thank you,’ said Nanny Piggins, giving Michael an affectionate hug. ‘The trick is to attack them brutally when they don’t deserve it.’
‘Don’t you mean when they least expect it?’ asked Samantha.
‘Exactly,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘And they least expect it when they don’t deserve it.’
And so Nanny Piggins and the children watched television, then ate cake, then went down to the supermarket dressed as bullfighters. (The supermarket manager was not fooled by the outfits or the moustaches, but who was he to turn away such a loyal customer?) Then they did absolutely no preparation for the chess tournament. Except for carbo-loading. If eating lots of carbohydrates was good for marathon runners, Nanny Piggins felt sure it must be good for chess players too.
When they arrived at the community centre the next day, Nanny Piggins and the children were surprised. They expected the regional championships to have some grandeur – after all it was regional, and chess was a noble game. But nothing could be further from the truth. The folding picnic tables, plastic chess pieces and refreshments served in styrofoam cups could not be less impressive. The only thing less impressive than the surrounds was the players themselves.
‘I’ve never seen so many grown men wearing anoraks before,’ marvelled Nanny Piggins.
‘It isn’t even a cold day,’ observed Derrick.
‘Do you think they are smuggling in something under their jackets?’ guessed Nanny Piggins.
‘What? Like bombs?’ asked Michael.
‘I was thinking better refreshments,’ said Nanny Piggins, eyeing the stale pastries on the trestle table. It was rare for her to come across a baked product that even she could not get excited about.
‘Are you here to register for the competition?’ asked a frumpy-looking man in a grey anorak and carrying a clipboard.
‘Yes, I am,’ declared Nanny Piggins. ‘My name is Sarah Matahari Lorelai Piggins and I have come here to trounce you all and take home the year’s supply of cheesecake.’
‘What’s your rating?’ asked the clipboard carrier, not looking up because he was too busy spelling Matahari.
‘Rating?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘What do you mean? I was given 11 out of 10 stars by Cannon Blaster’s Monthly when they judged me to be the World’s Greatest Flying Pig ever. Which is quite an accomplishment because in the fourth century the ancient Celts had an impressive pig called Boudica Piggins who once flew 800 metres out of a catapult in the siege of Camulodunum.’
‘I mean your chess ranking,’ said the clipboard man. ‘Everyone who plays competitive chess gets a ranking.’
‘Do I look boring enough to have entered a chess tournament before?’ asked Nanny Piggins, bristling.
The man looked Nanny Piggins up and down. He was not an observant man, but even he could see she was not wearing an anorak. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘Well, you’ll have to go in the qualifying tournament then, to prove you’re good enough to play in the main competition.’
‘Very well,’ said Nanny Piggins, resisting the urge to teach this man some manners with a short sharp nip to his shins (not out of generosity but because he did not look like he washed his clothes very often). ‘Lead me to the chess player you would like me to trounce.’
Nanny Piggins was assigned a player number, a table number and a start time. When she sat down to play her first game she was not a happy pig. For a start she had been told (rudely) that she was not allowed to t
ake refreshments to the chess table. It shows considerable dedication to her principles that she risked passing out from hunger, by wasting energy yelling at the refreshment provider for a full twenty minutes.
When she got to the table it did not cheer her up to see just how ugly her competitor was. He was a man in his late fifties with a beard. But to call it a beard was not strictly accurate. It was more that he had let all his facial hair (from his head, face, ears and nose) grow unchecked and uncombed for three decades. He did not look like he shampooed it very often either.
Nanny Piggins was beginning to regret eating so many stale doughnuts earlier in a show of defiance to the refreshment provider.
Nanny Piggins was playing the black pieces so she had to wait for her hairy competitor to move first. He picked up a pawn, slammed it down two spaces forward on the board and slapped the button on the chess clock alongside the board. This was the first time Nanny Piggins had noticed the clock.
‘What’s that?’ she asked.
‘I don’t have to talk to you, you stupid pig,’ said the man rudely in Ukrainian.
‘Yes, you do, you smelly ignoramus,’ replied Nanny Piggins in flawless Ukrainian. (She had learnt Ukrainian one summer when the Ringmaster had tricked her into taking a nap inside a shipping container, which he then nailed shut and shipped to the Ukrainian circus he sold her to.)
‘We each have forty-five minutes to make our moves,’ explained the hairy man. ‘I take two seconds to make my first move. You are taking two minutes and have not yet made yours.’
‘Pish!’ said Nanny Piggins. (Her tone of contempt was universal so the Ukrainian understood her perfectly.) She looked at the board and concentrated hard. She knew how all the pieces moved. She understood about trickier moves like castling and turning a pawn into a queen. But now that she focused all that knowledge on the decision of what to do next, one answer clearly emerged in Nanny Piggins’ mind. Her brain told her loudly and clearly that there was just one thing to do. And she did it.
Nanny Piggins stood up suddenly, slapping the underside of the table with her trotters and flipping the table, board and all, over entirely. The pieces flew up and got stuck in the Ukrainian’s beard. The chess clock spiralled through the air and landed in the pile of stale Danishes that had built up in a nearby pot plant.
‘This game is ridiculous!’ yelled Nanny Piggins. ‘I refuse to play anymore.’
‘Hah!’ scoffed the Ukrainian. ‘I win. You default. You lose, pig.’
‘You may win the game of chess,’ said Nanny Piggins proudly, ‘but when it comes to the game of life, a man with such a sorry grasp of the principles of hygiene will lose every time.’
The Ukrainian did not care. He was too busy pumping the air with his fists and saying rude things in Ukrainian.
‘But what about the cheesecake?’ asked Michael.
‘Some sacrifices are not worth making,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Much as I like cheesecake, it was not worth sitting opposite that yucky man and playing this tedious game a moment longer.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Samantha, knowing how much her nanny really did care about cake.
Nanny Piggins looked defiant for three seconds longer and then she burst into tears. ‘No,’ she wept. ‘I think I’ve just made a terrible mistake. But I just couldn’t concentrate on the chess pieces. It was like doing a maths exam.’
‘You’ve never done a maths exam,’ pointed out Michael.
‘Thank goodness,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘From what I’ve heard they really should be listed under the Geneva Conventions as a form of torture.’
‘Come on, let’s go home,’ said Derrick. ‘We can always make some cheesecake.’
‘It won’t be the same,’ sniffed Nanny Piggins. ‘Cake that is given to you always tastes nicer because you can really enjoy not having had to make it.’
‘Don’t worry, Boris borrowed Father’s Rolls-Royce and he’s coming to pick us up,’ said Samantha.
‘I’m lucky to have such a sweet bear for a brother,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It almost makes up for not getting to eat ten times my own body weight in cheesecake.’
‘There he is,’ said Michael.
Boris pushed open the glass doors and entered the room. Now, normally when a large group of people are shocked, they fall silent. But the chess players had already been silent. So when Boris entered they started mumbling, which is about as loud as a chess player gets.
‘What’s the matter with you lot?!’ demanded Nanny Piggins. ‘Haven’t you ever seen a ten-foot-tall Kodiak bear before?’
‘Come on, Sarah,’ said Boris. ‘I left the engine running. Let’s get out of here quickly.’ Boris grabbed Nanny Piggins by the trotter and started to hurry her to the door. But they never made it because the man with the clipboard leapt in front of them.
‘You are Boris Bearovski!’ he exclaimed.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Nanny Piggins, fighting the urge to stamp on the impertinent man’s foot. ‘His name is Boris the Ballet-Dancing Bear.’
‘I know Boris Bearovski when I see him,’ protested the clipboard man.
‘You obviously don’t know a bar of soap when you see one,’ accused Nanny Piggins, ‘so I wouldn’t trust your judgement on recognising anything else.’
‘Well actually,’ said Boris, ‘when I was a little bear cub in Russia I did use another name.’
‘Was it Lillibet?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘If I wasn’t already called Sarah Matahari Lorelai Piggins I’ve always thought I’d like to be called Lillibet.’
‘Maybe you will some day,’ said Michael optimistically. ‘The chances of you having to go into the witness protection program or run away from the police and change your name are much higher than they are for a normal person because of your colourful lifestyle.’
‘True,’ agreed Nanny Piggins.
‘You are Boris Bearovski!’ accused the clipboard man, again.
‘Are we still talking about that?’ asked Nanny Piggins, starting to get annoyed.
‘Boris Bearovski, the world’s greatest chess-playing bear!’ declared the clipboard man.
‘What?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Boris, are you secretly brilliant at something without telling me?’
‘I don’t know about brilliant,’ said Boris. ‘A lot of people are good at chess in Russia. They take it very seriously there.’
‘You have a ranking of 2602,’ gushed the clipboard man.
‘Is that good?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘Anything over 2500 makes you a grandmaster,’ said the clipboard man.
‘That does sound good,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘I wouldn’t mind having the title “grandmaster”. It would look very good on business cards, right after “World’s Greatest Flying Pig”.’
‘There’s no need to make such a fuss,’ said Boris, blushing.
‘Why didn’t you ever mention that you were a genius at chess?’ asked Samantha.
‘It never came up,’ said Boris. ‘Being good at chess is kind of like being good at watching paint dry. It’s not exactly a scintillating conversation starter. Besides, I forgot.’
‘How could you forget that you’re a chess grandmaster?’ asked the clipboard man.
‘Well, I might be a genius at chess but I’m much better at ballet,’ explained Boris, ‘so I spend most of my time thinking about that . . . and honey sandwiches. Speaking of which, has anybody got a honey sandwich?’
‘You have to enter our chess tournament,’ said the clipboard man.
‘My brother doesn’t have to do anything,’ declared Nanny Piggins, starting to puff herself up, ready for a fight.
‘But he’s the only one who could beat Olga Svinya, the top-ranked player in the tournament,’ said the clipboard man.
‘Olga Svinya,’ scoffed Boris. ‘That hack? She’s your best player?’
‘She’s a grandmaster,’ said the clipboard man.
‘Standards must have dropped since my day,’ said Boris. ‘I’d rather not pl
ay, thank you. I’ve got a nap scheduled in half an hour and I don’t want to miss it.’
‘Come along then,’ said Nanny Piggins. They started to make their way towards the door.
‘But what about the thousand dollars?’ called the clipboard man.
They kept walking.
‘What about the cheesecake?!’ he called again.
Nanny Piggins froze. She turned to her brother. ‘Boris, would you mind terribly beating all these people at chess?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Boris.
‘Please,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I really like cheesecake.’
‘Do they have honey-flavoured cheesecake?’ asked Boris.
‘If they don’t we could always just tip a bucket of honey over a cheesecake as soon as we got it home,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘All right,’ said Boris. ‘I’ll play.’
There were 256 players in the tournament (who would have guessed that there were so many dirty, anorak-wearing chess players in Dulsford?), which meant that that Boris had to play and win six games to make it through to the final. It turns out this was not a problem because he really was a chess genius.
There was a scare in his first game, when it looked like he was going to fall asleep and slump across the chess table. But by playing an audio recording of a babbling brook, Nanny Piggins was able to lure Boris out to the toilet and, once he was there, she forced him to drink ten litres of honey (which he enjoyed enormously). That perked him up, so he played much more quickly from then on.
Boris concentrated so hard he did not even notice the ‘smack talk’ from the other players. In official chess tournaments it is, of course, against the rules to say mean things to other players. But since at least half the players were from Eastern Europe, they were able to say all sorts of horrid things to each other without the organisers knowing.
‘You are great big fatty,’ one player told Boris. This would normally make such a soft-hearted bear cry for a week. But he did not even notice because he was concentrating so hard on how he could capture his opponent’s rook, take control of that quadrant of the board and force a checkmate.
In Boris’ fifth game, his opponent became so incensed that he was going to lose that he tried leaping up and hitting Boris. Fortunately for him, Boris did not notice. Being ten foot tall and 700 kilograms, a little thing like a right hook felt like nothing more than a tickle, especially when he was concentrating on capturing his opponent’s bishop, employing the Bearovski gambit and forcing a checkmate.