CHAPTER 15 DECEMBER/JANUARY                                                                The Giuoco Piano          This venerable opening which was played as long ago as the fifteenth century derives its Italian name (meaning slow or mild game) from the contrast it offers to the various gambit openings; but as a matter of fact, it can be as violent as the most perturbed of all these openings.                   Allan read the words again. Harry Golombek - The Game of Chess. The book was one of his most treasured possessions. He had found it when he was thirteen while rummaging in the loft at the Maryhill flat - now Jean's flat. It had been their family home. The flat was on the top floor and so, unlike the others in the building, they had a loft . The loft was his den. A small section of the floor space had been laid with planks but most of it was just rafters and dust laden plasterboard, and water tanks and water pipes lagged with brown carpet felt. It was a glory-hole with cardboard boxes full of papers, rolls of lino, a wicker-basket full of old pots and pans, a chip-pan, a wok, a box of tools.          The book was in a tin box of his father's things - a dog-eared, musty smelling paperback covered in dust and cob-webs, but it had small neat handwriting in the margins which could only be his father's hand. Suddenly he had been filled by a need to read and understand the book so that he could read and understand those margin notes. Through them the father he had never known, spoke to him.          He had found a small travelling chess-set in the same box, and spent many an afternoon there in the loft under the dim glimmer of the skylight reading, playing through the games, trying out the variations - especially his father's variations - until the light faded and the rafters had compressed a groove in his bottom.          And now he read the words again, sitting in his own kitchen at Burnside Cottage by the fading light of the evening and to him the Giuoco Piano seemed exactly right. For in the same way he and Rosa had opened gently, mapping out the problems, preparing the ground, preparing the weapons, circling the heart of the problem preparing themselves to strike.          The light faded early for it was coming to the end of the year. With his departure to South America planned he had taken some days of his holidays to give himself a real break at Christmas and New year. Dianne had gone to Austria to ski with a group of her swinging friends. Rosa had gone with Maurice and her loathsome step-children to Dunbar to stay with her in-laws, Ian had flu and Hamish had gone to a conference in Geneva. A deep depression had swung into the North Sea and was drawing gales and sleet down from the Arctic. Floods were reported at Fort Augustus and Inverness. He had been to see Jean and Uncle Roddy the previous weekend. He had laid in a stock of logs, and food and batteries for his computer. So now he could stretch himself into the old armchair, snuggle down before his log fire and look forwards to days of solitary work on the ‘problem’.          The preliminary work he had now done and he was ready for the head-on attack. The logs stirred. He threw another on the fire, settled back and fell asleep thinking of the Giuoco Piano ... which was just right ... as violent as the most perturbed of all these openings.          He worked and slept and ate and worked and slept and ate without regard to the chronology of the days and nights. He slept on hard problems - short sleeps measured in minutes, drank tea when his brain grew fuddled and refused to think of anything else for fear of disturbing the geometry of his thoughts.          The speed of his mind increased. He paced the room when excitement drove him and woke from his cat-naps with new thoughts and new urgency.          His mind was loaded now with the problem. As in a chess game he had all the alternatives simultaneously present - right there, bouncing and rubbing against one another.          The periods of sleeping and waking merged into one so that it was difficult to remember when he had eaten or slept last. He tried each possibility in turn, exhausting every angle and nuance of it before discarding it and trying the next. Each was tested with his new theoretical tools and each was found wanting until - on the eighth day - or was it the seventh night? - or the morning of the ninth? - he was not sure which but he knew for certain that he had the answer. He had the method by which the correctness of a certain kind of program could be checked automatically. He had the litmus test. He had Rosa's Holy Grail and he was as pleased for her as he was for himself. She had seen the possibility. She had equipped him for the task and had handed him the torch. And with that thought he slept.          He woke with a start to find the fire out and the cottage as cold as death. It was black dark. Something had roused him. He heard again the knock at the door. It was Andrew Jamieson the farmer and his wife, come to bid him a happy New Year. Mrs Jamieson was shocked to see the state of the cottage and was set to light a fire and cook Allan a meal, but her husband took her away with a reminder that they had others to visit. They toasted the New Year - the Jamiesons with whisky and Allan with water straight from the tap, in a tin mug.          After they had gone Allan kindled a fire, washed himself, cooked himself beans which he ate from the pot and then fell asleep again.          It was light when he woke again. A light snow had fallen and the ploughed fields were ribbed in white and brown and the dark grey clouds were pierced by a bright metallic glitter. The fire was out again but there was still a glow in the embers which caught the fresh supply of logs. He set about tidying the cottage with more determination and got the place looking reasonable by the time he heard another knock at the door.          This time it was Rosa.                   *      *      *      *      *          Rosa poked the logs with a stick.          ‘That's it Allan. You've done it.’          There was sadness and tiredness in her voice, like the sadness after love. They were sitting on either side of the fire, Rosa deep in the old armchair, a lock of her hair straggling free from the tortoise shell clasp. Allan was on an upright chair. He sat leaning forwards, with elbows on his knees.          He corrected her. ‘We've done it.’          After a long look into his face she said, ‘No. You've done it.’          She tended the fire again. ‘I've waited a long time for this.’          All afternoon, until the light faded, she had checked through his working while he found chores to do. Sometimes she brought him over to her side from the sink to clarify a point, sometimes she stopped him as he hung clothes to dry on a string across the fireplace and pointed to a line on the computer printout and sometimes she just looked up caught his eye and smiled.          ‘I said it could be done and it has been done and I am not at all worried that it was you rather than me who finally did it.’          Did she mean it? He wasn't sure.          ‘We did it. The concepts were yours. I put them together.’          The last of the light was fading over the fields. Moving to the window she stood, arms folded, leaning against the wall watching the vanishing of edge between hill and cloud.          ‘I'm sad you're going to go to South America, but I'm also glad. It's right for you now. I'm more or less at the end of my creative life at least as far as computing is concerned. I'm all washed up at MCI. I will have to find somewhere else and some other field to work on.’          ‘Nonsense!’          ‘No. It's true Allan and I don't care now.’ He knew that wasn't true. She went on. ‘I've reached the end point - the objective I set myself. So its right for you to go now. I'd really like to get back into academic life. A fellowship perhaps.’          He did not know what to say so he said nothing. And then Rosa said, ‘Can I stay the night here? I mean I won't be getting in the way will I?’          The flames in the old range held their attention as they talked. Rosa suggested that Allan should publish.          ‘You haven't done any work on this field for them. You still need their approval before you launch into print, but there is no reason why they should withhold.’          ‘I can't publish without you. Don't be silly. Anyway they would never give their approval.’          ‘You wouldn't need their approval if you resigned - after you've been to Ocean Springs. It's worth getting them to pay for the trip. It'd be a good experience for you. But afterwards they would have no hold over you the way they have over me.’          The thought made him uncomfortable - taking the credit for what was really a joint effort, but he let it lie - better not to stir the idea.          Later when he was making ready to pull the mattress through to the kitchen she laid a hand on his arm and said, ‘No Allan. Leave it. I'd rather just sleep here in the chair tonight.’          So he built up the fire again and left her there with blankets. Before she left in the early morning she said, ‘I came here one night a few weeks ago and you had company. I saw some cars in the lay-by, so I went away.’          ‘Oh that would be some of my climbing friends.’          He had prepared the lie, justifying it to himself with the thought that Steve was a climbing companion of a sort and that it was best for Rosa not to know. Knowledge was dangerous. The logs had burned out and cold gripped the cottage. He lifted the log basket and opened the door.          ‘Be careful Allan. I don't want anything to happen to you.’          ‘Why should anything happen to me? I climb very carefully you know.’          ‘It's not the climbing that worries me,’ she said. ‘I keep thinking about Tommy Harkness and wondering why he died. I don't believe it was suicide.’          He didn't speak. She went on ‘You didn't hear the news last night did you? There was an item about a man who gassed himself in his car with the exhaust pipe. He was found in a lay-by on the AI somewhere in Yorkshire. This morning I heard that it was John Seaton our assembly line manager.’