Black Queen (3 page)

By the time everyone came back I was sitting on the sofa with Matey lying beside me, his legs in the air – he loved having his tummy tickled. Rula hugged Matey half to death, and then she did the same to me. I told them it was the Black Queen who had found him, not me, but Rula kept on kissing me and hugging me and telling me I was the best brother ever, and at tea I got a double helping of ice-cream. It was good being a hero. I enjoyed it.

Later Rula was upstairs shrieking with joy in her bath. We all thought Matey was safely shut up in his hutch. I was filling in the hole under the fence –
my
mother’s idea – so that Matey couldn’t escape again. I don’t know what made me look. Just plain curiosity, I suppose. I scrambled up the fence and peered over into the Black Queen’s garden. Rambo was sitting on the sundial, his tail swishing. His gaze was fixed on something in the long grass near the beehive. Matey! I could just make out the white of his bobtail in the grass. Somehow, he’d got out – again.

Number 22 looked dark. No lights on, the curtains closed. No music. Not a sign of anyone. Perhaps the Black Queen was out. I didn’t much want to go over into her garden, not after what she’d told me about Rambo, about the bees. And she’d made it fairly obvious she didn’t like being bothered, so I didn’t want to go knocking on her door again either. I didn’t know what to do. Suddenly Rambo sprang down off the sundial. I watched him snaking his way
through
the grass towards Matey. I wasn’t sure whether or not cats can kill rabbits, but I wasn’t going to wait to find out. I shinned up over the fence, let myself down on the other side, and hurdled through the long grass, keeping as low as I could.

When Rambo saw me coming he arched his back and turned his tail instantly into a bottle brush. He didn’t run off, but stood his ground and hissed at me furiously.

Matey was sitting in the grass, either rigid with fear or completely hypnotized – I didn’t know which. I was aware now of the bees humming about me. I’d be as quick as I could. I crouched down, and was just about to pick up Matey when one of them landed on the back of my hand and stung me.

I was sitting there some moments later rocking back and forth in pain and nursing my throbbing hand, when I felt a shadow pass over me. I looked up. My blood ran cold. The Black Queen was looking down at me from out of the sun. Then she was helping me to my feet. “He stung you, right?” she said. “I did warn you, didn’t I? I’m telling you, these bees are mean, real mean.”

She was examining my hand now, and for the first time I could see her face properly. She was a lot younger than I
had
thought. Not old at all, more middle-aged. From her voice and from her clothes I had imagined her to be much, much older. The floppy hat looked as if it was made of velvet, the coat too.

“Come in the house,” she said. “I’ll fix up that bee sting for you. You’d better bring that bunny rabbit along with you.” I must have looked as reluctant as I felt. “Look, kid, I’m not going to eat you. And I’m not going to eat the rabbit either. I never did like rabbit stew.”

So, carrying Matey with me, I found myself following the Black Queen up the steps into the darkness of the house. All the time I was thinking: I shouldn’t be doing this, this is silly. But somehow I couldn’t seem to stop myself. It was
almost
as if I was being led up the steps by some unseen hand, as if I was under some kind of magical spell.

Chapter 4

Fixed Up

THE HOUSE SMELT
of coffee – that was the first thing I noticed. She didn’t say much, not to start with. She led me into the kitchen, and sat me down at the table. She filled a bowl with cold water, dropped in dozens of ice cubes, took my hand and plunged it in. Then she turned on the CD player, and the room filled with music.

“You’ve got to keep it there,” she said. “It’ll stop it swelling up. The music’ll help. Music always helps everything. You want a Coke?”

The Coke was ice-cold too. Everything was tidy and in its place – not at all like home – almost as if the place wasn’t lived in at all. Then I saw the chessboards. They were everywhere, hung on the walls like pictures, propped up on the sideboard. Just chessboards, nothing else. Each of them was different – marbles ones, wooden ones, all sorts. There were no pieces, no kings, no queens, no knights, no castles, just the boards. It was weird, really weird.

“My son’s,” she said, “they’re all my son’s. He collects them. I guess you could say he’s a kind of chess nut. Not a walnut but a chestnut.” She stifled a little chuckle, but it was a few moments before I saw the joke. “Do you play?” 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?”