The Story of Us

by Barbara Elsborg

Zed bristled. “What?”

  “All that time you were beaten and I thought at least my father doesn’t do that. Only one blow but he shouldn’t have done it.”

  “No, he fucking shouldn’t have.”

  “Apparently, if I’m gay, I can forget getting any support for one of my inventions. Be a straight guy and he’ll help me. My mother was okay about me being gay. I’d hoped my father… Shit. I don’t want to be here anymore.”

  Zed pulled Caspian’s head to his chest and kissed his forehead. “I’m going to help you. I’ll figure out a way for you to leave here and live with me.”

  “Who was the guy who came to see you?”

  “Jackson. The one who got us into the same YOI. He brought me a driver’s licence. I told you I had to change my name but I can’t sort out anything to do with my father without ID in my birth name. Jackson got me a copy of my original birth certificate, but I needed a driver’s licence too. I’d have introduced you if you’d stayed. Why did you disappear?”

  “Panicked. You still have something to do with MI5?”

  He nodded. “I think I always will.” He looked straight at Caspian. “I want to tell Jackson that Lachlan was driving. I think he can help you.”

  Caspian sagged. “How? Does he have a magic wand?”

  “He might.”

  “Not one that would make everything right. Help me up.”

  Zed supported Caspian’s weight as he struggled to his feet.

  “Nothing broken.” Caspian reached for Zed’s hand and squeezed his fingers. “I know you want to help but don’t say anything. I don’t want all this to have been for nothing. I think Lachlan’s changed. He’s doing work with disadvantaged kids. Something with a LGBT group according to my father. My brother’s married now. How can I knowingly destroy his wife’s happiness?”

  “But your happiness matters too.”

  “I am happy.”

  Zed thought about challenging him on that but let it go. “Did you lose consciousness?”

  “Yep.”

  Zed groaned. “For long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You should go to hospital.”

  “No. I’ll be okay. Help me back to the house.” Caspian’s voice was flat.

  “Let me stay the night.”

  Caspian smiled. “I don’t think my father will allow you inside.”

  “How old are you? Fifteen?”

  “Still his house. His rules.”

  “Since when did you follow the rules? Well, apart from when you were locked up.”

  Caspian’s smile widened, which was a relief.

  “Sneak me in,” Zed said. “You have your key?”

  “Yes.”

  When they reached the house, Zed slipped his fingers into Caspian’s pocket and pulled out the key.

  Caspian groaned. “That was far too easy to find. You could have groped for a while.”

  “You’re not in a fit state to be groped.”

  “I’ll be fine by tomorrow.”

  “I look forward to plenty of groping.”

  Once they were in the entrance hall, Zed could hear the sounds of people laughing and something snapped. Instead of leading Caspian to the stairs, he tugged him towards the voices.

  Caspian sighed. “This is not a good idea.”

  Zed pushed open the door of the dining room to find Caspian’s parents and presumably his sisters sitting at the table.

  He glared at Caspian’s father. “Enjoying your dinner? Is this how much you care? I thought my father was a shit but you—you’re actually worse.”

  Caspian pinched his backside and Zed got the message.

  “What’s happened?” Caspian’s mother pushed to her feet.

  “He fell from the treehouse and was knocked out. Would he have lain there all night without you even looking for him? Yeah, I think that’s exactly what would have happened. You should be taking care of him.”

  Caspian’s mother rushed to his side. “Shall we call the doctor?”

  “I’ll be okay,” Caspian said quietly.

  Caspian’s father stood up. “Thank you for bringing him back. Now get out of my house.”

  Zed looked at Caspian. But Caspian nodded, so Zed left. Confronting Caspian’s father had cost him the night in Caspian’s bed, but he was glad he’d said what he had. He stomped back across the fields. He understood that this was a battle Caspian needed to fight on his own though he didn’t regret firing the first bullet.

  Well, not until he’d reached the house. Then he worried he’d gone too far.

  Zed wasn’t sure Caspian would come in the morning, but he turned up just as Zed finished breakfast, looking far more delicious than the toast he’d just consumed.

  “That’s a big skip,” Caspian said.

  It had been delivered an hour earlier. “There’s a lot of crap to put in it. Sure you feel up to helping me?”

  “I’m fine. I’m looking forward to the grope.”

  Zed laughed. The bruise on Caspian’s cheek had turned an unhealthy shade of yellow but his eyes were bright, his smile wide.

  “Where do you want to start?” Caspian asked.

  “His clothes. I bought black plastic bags yesterday. The things that are in reasonable condition can go to a charity shop. The rest can go in the skip.”

  Caspian followed him up to his father’s room and paused on the threshold. “Looks like he’s just stepped out.”

  “That’s what I thought too.” He pulled open the wardrobe door. “Check all the pockets just in case he’s stuffed them with twenty-pound notes.”

  It didn’t take them long to clear the rail.

  “Seventy-three pence and a button,” Caspian said. “That’s very disappointing.”

  Zed smiled. “I’ll take the bags downstairs.”

  “Leave the one for the skip. We can put more in that.”

  When Zed got back to the room, Caspian had stripped the bed, bagged everything and was now dealing with his father’s underwear and socks.

  “I should do that,” Zed said.

  “It’s okay. Who puts stuff away dirty?”

  “But he was sick. He might have.”

  “Euuw. I’ll wash my hands before I touch you.”

  Zed had brought up a smaller plastic bag and swept all the medicines into it. “This has to go back to a pharmacy. If there’s anything similar in the bathroom cabinets, that can go too.”

  “Look what I’ve found in a drawer, under the lining paper.”

  Zed took the photo from his hand. A wedding day shot of his father in a dark suit and his mother in a long white dress. They were smiling at each other. She looked beautiful and happy.

  “They loved each other.” Zed swallowed hard. “At least they did then.”

  “You can always cut your father out.”

  “Yep.” Zed put the picture by the door. The only thing he wanted to keep from this room, though he put the Quran aside for Tamaz, if he ever had chance to give it him.

  Between them, they dismantled the bed and hauled it and the mattress down to the skip. The bedside cabinets and chest of drawers were still in good condition. Zed assumed whoever came to collect them would carry them downstairs.

  “You want to get rid of the curtains?” Caspian asked.

  “No, leave them.”

  “Now which room. Yours?”

  “It’s on the right. Take a look.” He followed Caspian and heard his snort of laughter.

  “I wonder if he disinfected the walls.” Caspian walked into the room and turned in a circle. “When I got back, mine was exactly as I’d left it. Well, they’d probably changed the sheets. My drawings were still on the walls. Teddy on the bed.” Caspian sat where Zed’s bed had been, the carpet still bearing indents from the wheels. “This is where you slept.” He lay down and wriggled his backside. “Oh yeah, yeah, yeaaahhh.”

  Zed dropped down next to him. “I used to like going to bed. I’d lie in my cave of sheets reading books, but after my mother died, I
had one ear primed for my father coming up the stairs.”

  Caspian reached out and let his fingers drift across the wall. “This is where you planned your life. Where you dreamed. Where you wanked. Where you looked at yourself in the mirror and decided who you’d be.”

  “When I looked in the mirror I wondered when my spots would disappear. I used to turn and look over my shoulder at my backside, wondering if it was too small, too big, or just right.”

  Caspian laughed and threaded his fingers with Zed’s. “Just right.”

  “I was desperate to know how long my cock would keep growing. If it was going to be as big as I hoped.”

  Caspian raised his eyebrows. “Theoretically, it could still be growing.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’ve gone through puberty.”

  “I’ll let you into a secret. I have a guaranteed way of making it grow. Ready?” Caspian slid his hand over Zed’s already hard cock. “Damn. You did it without me.”

  “Opening the door and seeing you was all I needed.”

  Caspian laughed as he let him go. Zed wanted his hand back.

  “Your cock is just right too, by the way,” Caspian said. “Not too short, not too long. Course I might rethink that when you fuck me.”

  Zed swallowed his groan.

  “Did you know that Indian mystics, called sadhus— and doesn’t that name say everything? —used to stretch their cocks right from when they were kids by hanging weights on them?”

  Zed winced.

  “And the Topinama tribesmen of Brazil encouraged poisonous snakes to bite their dicks to enlarge them.”

  “That is far too much information. Where did you read that? Why did you want to know that?”

  “My brain works in a mysterious way. Ask me to decline the word jugarum in Latin and I’m lost. Ask me for some strange fact about cows and I’ll tell you that there are some people in the world who think they’re cows and live their lives like they’re cows. It’s called boanthropy.”

  Zed widened his eyes. “I’ll save that one for Henry. He loves weird trivia. You’ll really like him. And Jonas. Is jugarum a jug of rum?”

  Caspian laughed and Zed’s heart leapt. “Sadly no. It’s a measurement of land.” He rolled onto his stomach and humped the carpet. “I like to think of you lying here, wanking.”

  “While I was thinking about you,” Zed whispered.

  Caspian squeezed his fingers. “So you do have some good memories of this place.”

  “Yeah. Most of them are from just after we’d moved here, before my mother found out she was sick. She was so excited to be out of London, living in the countryside. I remember the food she used to cook, the cakes she made and let me decorate. I licked out the bowl. Raw cake mix was the best thing ever.”

  “Better than wanking while you thought about me?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “Mum was fun. She helped me learn how to do handstands and cartwheels. We made dens with sheets and blankets. She taught me how to swim when I was five. She’d read a book that said just duck your kids under and they’ll pop up. I didn’t pop up and she was mortified. She took me swimming three times a week until she knew I wouldn’t drown.”

  Zed smiled when he thought about how determined she’d been. “She wrote down all the funny things Tamaz and I said. When I was four, I’d asked her—What’s a virgin? She asked where had I heard that? I said—You told me in the car we had to make a die virgin. I don’t know where that little book she wrote in went.”

  Caspian rolled onto his side. “Did she tell you she was dying?”

  “Eventually. Only when she was sure that death was all that was left for her. She told us separately. I was last. I think I knew when I saw Tamaz crying in the garden. He was never a boy who cried. Not like me. She told me how proud she was of me, that I was a good, kind son and whatever life threw at me, I should stand tall and do the right thing. Whatever you are, wherever you are, be happy she said. That’s all that matters in the end.”

  “She was right.”

  “I asked her how she could love me so much when my father hated me. She said he didn’t hate me.” Zed let out a strangled sob. “But she was wrong.”

  Caspian pulled him over and kissed him. A sweet, gentle kiss. He tasted of orange juice and melon and Zed wanted more, wanted to go further, his cock was desperate to go further, but Caspian stood up.

  “What next?”

  You’re next. Though Zed felt Caspian was mentally pulling away as well as physically. “The bathrooms, Tamaz’s room and the attic. I need the mattress leaving in Tamaz’s room for me to sleep on.” For us to fuck on.

  They found nothing hidden. Zed wondered if Caspian had noticed how thoroughly he searched, though he had no idea what he was looking for. But there was little trace of Tamaz ever having lived there. A few pieces of clothing but nothing in the pockets.

  The skip was filling up.

  Finally, upstairs at least, only the attic remained. Zed pulled down the ladder and climbed up, reaching for the light switch on the left. He crawled onto the boarded floor and Caspian followed.

  “There’s more up here than I’d thought. At least it’s all boxed.”

  “You want to sort it out downstairs?” Caspian asked. “Why don’t you go down the ladder and I’ll slide the boxes to you.”

  “Okay.” Zed went back to the landing.

  It took them thirty minutes to clear the attic. He went up after Caspian had come down to make sure there was nothing left and there wasn’t. Zed switched off the light and pushed the ladder back into place.

  They carried everything downstairs into the living room. Zed got them both glasses of water, then they sat together on the floor.

  “We’ll go through these and then have lunch,” Zed said.

  The first one they opened held Christmas decorations.

  “I thought your mother converted to Islam.”

  “She did but we still had Christmas until she died. She didn’t want us to miss out. I’m not sure my father approved but he didn’t argue with her on that. We always had a tree and stockings and a Christmas meal.” Zed took a packet of gold baubles out of the box, then pushed them back.

  “You should go through properly and see if there’s anything you want to keep.”

  He did. There wasn’t. The box joined the pile for the charity shop.

  Another box held board games and jigsaws. “She loved jigsaws.” He’d forgotten that.

  “Someone will buy these.”

  There were boxes of Tamaz’s computer games magazines. Old clothes. Buckets and spades for the beach. Baby clothes. Zed knew most of this had been kept by his mother, not his father.

  Inside one plastic container they found two boxes, one marked Tamaz and the other Zed. Tamaz’s was empty. Zed’s held school reports issued prior to his mother’s death, things he’d made for her, wonky clay bowls, Easter cards, Christmas cards, ones for Eid. There was a folder of paintings from primary school—ones of her with huge ears, long legs and a yellow triangle dress. And the book of the funny things he’d said. His throat closed up, his eyes filled with tears and Caspian’s arm wrapped around his shoulders.

  All his school diaries were there. A collection of coins for the year of his birth. A set of stamps for the same year. A plastic box with shells and stones he’d collected and given to her. An envelope of pictures Zed had taken with a disposable camera. Funny, often distorted images of her and Tamaz pulling faces at him or laughing.

  He opened one of the diaries. “Today my mummy took me to see her mummy.” Zed had drawn a picture of his grandmother. “She hugged me very hard.”

  “I like this one,” Caspian said. “Today I ran away from a dinosaur. It wanted to eat me.”

  “I remember that. I was shit scared.”

  Caspian laughed. “You have to keep all these.”

  Right at the bottom of the box was a brown envelope with his name on it. Inside was his birth certificate. It looked as though
it had been screwed into a ball, then flattened out. Zed sighed and set it aside.

  “You think your father did this and your mother rescued it?” Caspian asked.

  “Probably.”

  “I think you were right about not being his son. Or he thought you weren’t.”

  The moment Zed opened the last cardboard box, his heart rate doubled. “This is all Mum’s.”

  “That box was right at the back in the corner behind the chimney breast. I almost missed it. Do you want to go through it on your own?”

  “No. I want you to stay. There might be spiders.”

  “You haven’t worried about spiders so far.”

  “Because you were here.”

  Zed took everything out very carefully. He clenched his teeth when he saw the photo albums. The first one he opened held pictures of him and Tamaz when they were babies, toddlers, growing up. There was one of Zed in his dad’s arms in the hospital, a big smile on his face. What went wrong after that? More with his dad on the beach, at the park, playing football. Everyone looked happy. But photos never told the complete truth. You had to smile, that was the rule. Say cheese. But it was a happy time. Remembering that brought some comfort.

  “You were a cute baby,” Caspian said.

  “’Course I was.”

  “I mean it. You were gorgeous. I was not gorgeous.”

  “You are now.”

  “Well of course.”

  His mother’s school reports were there, her exam certificates, her university degree. Postcards, birthday cards, and letters were held together with a red ribbon. Zed undid it and flicked through everything. He opened a letter at random. It was from a girl called Sandra, apparently his mother’s friend at school who’d emigrated to Australia.

  One envelope was addressed to him. Zed opened it. “From my mother. And there’s a will.”

  He read the letter quickly and groaned. “She wrote this before we moved here. She’d just been diagnosed with cancer. I didn’t know she knew then. She says she chose this village because she knew a teacher in the secondary school Tamaz and I would go to and he’d look after me. He’d been her friend when she’d been in the sixth form. Mr Carter. My music teacher. He never said he knew her.”

  “He was nice to you. I remember you telling me that.”