Black Queen Read Free

she went on.
    “We all do,” I told her. “My father really likes it. He says it’s the best game in the world – good for the brain, helps you to think, he says. I can beat Rula and Mum every time. Never beaten Dad though.”
    “So you’re a bit of a chess nut too then,” she said, smiling at me. “You got a name?” she went on.

    “Billy.”
    “Billy the Kid,” she laughed, and I laughed with her. I was beginning to like her. She asked all sorts of questions about me and my family, about where we’d come from, what school I went to; and all the time I felt her eyes on me, as if she was reading me like a book. From time to time she’d have a quick look to see how my hand was doing. “I hate those lousy bees,” she said. “Nothing to do with me. They kind of came with the property. I only rent the place. I’ve asked a dozen times for them to be taken away but no-one seems to want to do it. Still, at least you zapped one of them for me. They die, you know. If a bee stings you, it dies. Did you know that?”
    I didn’t. By the time the Black Queen lifted my hand out of the water a while later, I think she knew just about all there was to know about me. But I still knew very little, if anything, about her.
    “There,” she said, giving me back my hand. “It looks all fixed up to me.” And it was too. There was hardly a mark left, and all the pain had gone. It was amazing.
    We were on our way out of the house when I felt her hand on my shoulder. “Billy,” she said, “I’ve been thinking. You could be the answer to my prayers. You want to help me out? It’s no big deal, honest. The thing is: the day after tomorrow I have to go back home to America for a while, to New York, just for a couple of weeks. I have to see my son, the chess one. I have to go to visit him; but I can’t, not unless I find someone to cat-sit Rambo.”
    “Cat-sit?”

    “Feed him, keep an eye out for him. That sort of thing. Would you do it for me? I guess I could put him in the cat home, but I wouldn’t feel right about it. He’d just hate being all shut up like that. He’d curl up and die, I know he would.”
    “OK,” I said. If I was thinking at all when I said it, I suppose I must have been thinking that one good turn deserves another. All I know is that I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. I was about to find that out.
    “You’re a real nice kid, Billy,” she said, as we went down the steps into the garden. “But there’s a little problem. Like I told you, Rambo doesn’t take too kindly to strangers. He’s kind of wild, I guess. The only person in the entire world he gets on with is me. I mean, he’s sort of real fixated on me. Hates everyone else, loves me. So if you’re going to feed him for me, you’ve got to pretend to be me, else he’ll just run off some place, and then of course he won’t have anything to eat at all. So, Billy, do you think you could do that?”
    “How do you mean?” I asked.
    “Well,” she said, “I guess you’ve just got to sound like me a little. And of course you’ve got to look like me too.”
    “You mean I’ve got to dress up? Like you?” I simply could not believe what I was being asked to do.

    “Well, it worked just fine before. I had a friend who came over a while back, when I was real sick. I had the flu pretty bad. He just put on my hat and my glasses and my coat and then he called him just like I do. Rambo never knew the difference. Came running for it, sweet as pie.”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure.”
    “You’ll do just fine,” she went on. “Just once a day for a few days, a couple of weeks. What d’you say?”
    I was in so far now that I didn’t know how to get out. “All right,” I said, weakly.
    She ruffled my hair. “I knew you were a great kid. I saw it in your eyes, first time I met you – that’s the kind of kid I can trust, I thought. I’ve only got to look in a person’s eyes and I know just what they’re