4: The Second Day: Daniel
It was a perfect summer morning. At eight am tourists were already in the square outside of the hotel, sipping coffees, nibbling at croissants at the tables laid out on the polished stone paving. They glanced at the cathedral and the fairy-tale towers so distinctive of the ancient Cité, and watched a few of their fellows embarking on the mandatory walk along the walls.
The beauty of Carcassonne, famed throughout the world.
Daniel Brown was oblivious to secular beauty, ambient weather and any affaires du jour. In his room he attacked his breakfast tray of cereals, toast and tea, planning his morning. He did not ‘hang-out’ on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram - he left those sorts of things to his PR team to get on with. In fact this morning would be like all his mornings: he would roam his favourite chess websites and blogs, explore some intriguing positions and perhaps continue his study of chess variants. He was looking forward to it.
But Daniel could not remain forever within his own head. As the current holder of the French championship he had to show himself, at least a little. The second game was at 2 pm and so he would lunch in the hotel restaurant at 12.30.
The restaurant was a repurposed former ballroom in a hotel which had been a former château. The maître d' stood at the server end amidst the plate-counters and racks of patisseries. The long, high-ceilinged room stretched out before him, light and airy, arched with filaments of cast iron. To his left a corridor ran parallel to the restaurant, a walkway visible through ranks of glassed arches. The corridor provided visibility to the main square through its own long window. As it was lunchtime he could see a busy crowd of tourists outside: visitors to the many cafés.
To his right, the maître d' observed similar arches and windows which gave a view to the hotel’s botanical garden with its ferns and massive brown-ceramic pots. It was all thoroughly in keeping with the hotel’s nineteenth century theme.
Straight ahead were circular, cast-iron tables, widely-spaced permitting guests their privacy. Many of these tables were beginning to be occupied by journalists, camera crews and the logistics teams for the event.
Sweeping his gaze slightly to the right again, a faint frown touched his lips. You can carry privacy too far, he thought. The two screens which had been placed against the right-hand wall half way down disrupted the room’s symmetry. The maître d' felt a stab of aesthetic pain.
A solitary dining table was positioned midway between the two screens. Sat at this table, his back to the botanical window, was Daniel Brown. The screens, large wooden rectangular contraptions covered in felt, functioned as did horse blinds. All Daniel could see was a narrow wedge extending across the width of the restaurant, across the corridor and to a sliver of the square outside.
Eating his burger and chips - a special order - Daniel was, as usual, oblivious of his surroundings. In particular he failed to register that Hans and Anne-Marie Schelling were sitting at a table for three within his eye-line.
They, however, favoured Daniel with intense scrutiny.
At twenty to one a hush descended on that part of the restaurant near the entrance marking the entrance of Petra Schelling. English does not really have a good word to describe Petra: ‘zaftig’ comes from a German-Jewish tradition; the French could say ‘bien galbé’ but naturally have many other terms; we Anglo-Saxons are stuck with words such as ‘voluptuous’ or ‘curvaceous’: mere tabloid fare.
This lunchtime the voluptuous, curvaceous Petra Schelling wore a little black dress that had been crafted by a minimalist genius. She ignored the cameras, the rapt faces of the press and slowly sashayed between tables, passing that of her parents without acknowledgement and entering the cubicle containing Daniel at his table. He had not yet noticed her, being a daydreamer and also engrossed in his bun.
She stood in front of his table, her back to that section of the audience which could actually still see her (a number that was growing by the second). Her posture was erect and respectful, her legs slightly apart, her hands at her sides and her attention fully on him. After a few seconds, Daniel’s eyes focused and he stared up at her. Petra’s unexpected appearance startled him, and this aroused both annoyance and withdrawal. His first reaction was to shrink back into his seat.
A tiny part of him, his conscious part, processed what he was seeing. A full-figured girl with thick red curls tumbling onto her shoulders, shoulders which were bare and glistening. He could just make out earrings, large black pearls pressed against her lobes.
He studied her black dress, which swooped down to barely contain her ample breasts. His eyes descended further, noting the way the dress tightly followed the curve of her body. It reminded Daniel of the shape of a cooling tower, a hyperboloid of revolution. A fabric remnant flared over her hips and quickly ran its course as if exhausted; the whiteness of her thighs pressed against his table just a few short feet away. He looked up at her face: finally he recognised her, his opponent Petra Schelling. He sought for self-control, brought his breathing under control, reined in a desperate need to call for help... and steeled himself for whatever came next.
“Daniel,” she said gently, with a friendly little smile, “we haven’t really got acquainted.”
(She knew him better than he might have thought - those extensive analyses with her mother).
“But I think we do have some responsibilities to the organisers and to the public,” she continued, “don’t you?”
This was a clever ploy. Daniel was under the impression the game started at 2 pm but unbeknownst to him, Petra had already begun it. Her question hit Daniel at a weak spot. He hated tournaments: the travel, the platitudes and hype, the having to meet people. In an ideal world he would have been left alone to further explore the infinity of chess. But public contests paid the bills. So having no good answer, he simply sat there, saying nothing.
Petra now took a spare chair, slid it round to Daniel’s left and decorously sank upon it. She, like Daniel, was now facing a spellbound set of diners (people had left their tables and moved into the centre of the restaurant, others were coming in from the corridor to see what all the fuss was about, phones were switched to video mode, little cries of ‘shush’ facilitated audio recording).
Petra’s eyes were only for him. She leaned sideways so that her arm pressed against his - he could not escape without making a scene - and stretched her right hand across to lightly grasp his tie.
“Honestly Daniel, you do look rather… uncared for. It’s not good for your reputation; for either of us really.”
These sensible words were uttered in a low, husky, pleasantly-accented voice that would in years to come seduce a million male fans, though it only made Daniel more panic-stricken. Petra watched his head turning this way and that, saw incipient catatonia in his eyes and did not require the subdued cue which buzzed in her pearl earring.
She glanced briefly up to where her father sat and saw him give the briefest nod. She whispered, “Let me come up to your room at half-past one, before we’re on. I could look at your shirts, your ties and help you dress to impress. Wouldn’t you like that?”
She pressed her hand, still holding the tie between finger and thumb, into his chest and rubbed it there ever so slightly. Trapped and almost paralysed, Daniel could only stutter: “No…, no thank you.”
“”Such a shame,” she breathed and released him. With practiced decorum she stood and sauntered casually out of Daniel’s enclosure, stopping briefly at the entrance for the pack of photographers, before making her way to her parents’ table for a well-earned lunch.
Mission accomplished. Daniel was most thoroughly intimidated and rattled.
The full story text (part two of my novel) is also available here:
- "Donatien's Children" (2022) - as a PDF, and
- "Donatien's Children" (2022) - as a formatted book on Amazon for easier reading.
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