I captured a white pawn earlier this month, quite by accident.
The piece was appropriated from my cousin’s living room. It must have been swept indiscriminately from the floor when my daughter’s Lego bricks were tidied into a travel tub on departure. Earlier that afternoon, she had played a game of ‘Chess’ against a relative, in a temporary playspace she’d staked out on the carpet. (I use the quotation marks advisedly: she played according to a partisan ruleset of her own design.)
Days later this errant pawn resurfaced in our house, bobbing to the surface during a tidal movement of multicoloured plastic.
The irony was clear to me immediately: this piece – extracted by blind fate from the ranks of the weak and numerous – had suddenly become the most important of them all.
Obviously, the pawn had to be returned immediately. If not, I would either forget it, or lose it, by the end of the week. My cousin’s family would be forced to substitute the lost piece with a demonetised coin or some other inelegant signifier. That memento of familial larceny and incompetence would undermine their enjoyment of every subsequent game.
It was essential that I mail the lost footsoldier back to its barracks at my earliest convenience, rather than making a start on my tax return, or finding a tradesperson to fix our rear guttering.
Yet, having summoned the discipline to walk to our local post office, I was confronted by the sinister visual implications of my task. Only two types of people send chess pieces in the mail: spies and serial killers.
Clearly, if any documentation was to accompany the pawn, it should be either a telex containing military grid references, or a note glued together from an assortment of newspaper typefaces (YOUR MOVE, DETECTIVE).
My lifelong vegetarianism would probably assist in ruling out the suspicion of murder. However, on the topic of espionage my reputation was somewhat endangered.
At home, my library includes several Soviet-era paperbacks, including a copy of Instructions from the Centre: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations 1975-1985. There could be no hiding that fact from the authorities, who would quickly locate the book’s special photo section: ‘KGB Dead Letter Boxes and Signal Sites across London.’
My knowledge of the strategic placement of blue chalk marks on Mayfair lampposts – formerly just a bit weird – would look deeply incriminating in the light of the cryptic package I was about to send.
I approached the counter and opened negotiations with the postmaster. Proffering the smallest padded envelope bag I had been able to find – still far larger than required – I requested a second-class stamp. (I figured my cousin couldn’t be that desperate to play Chess). The postmaster demanded more information about what I was about to deposit in his mailbag.
Despite the presence of another unidentified patron nearby, I brazened things out. “Well perhaps you can help me,” I declared, producing the pawn from my coat pocket and slapping it down onto the countertop between us. “This is all that I need to send,” I announced – a man keen to demonstrate he has nothing to hide.
Cowed or confused by my boldness, the postmaster asked no further questions. We completed our transaction and I moved to the packing area to complete my furtive duties.
I slid the pawn into its comfy and capacious living quarters. But the nagging imperative remained: how to offset the lingering weirdness and comparative emptiness of this package? I composed a brief note of apology to the family and dropped it into the envelope, along with a single, strawberry-flavoured Fruit-tella, still in its wrapper.
I understand that, in the lexicon of Chess commentary, this qualifies as ‘an interesting move.’
