Human Interest
We found him on a bench by the river. Lovely morning. Prince bounded up, kissed his hand. He lifted a worn face, scratched a nose ring, thumped a clogged chest. Sleeping rough, you could tell.
Over breakfast – cereal, toast, chunky marmalade – I tried fishing, but the catch was slim. Not exactly a talkative type, more a stubborn victim of lockjaw. Still, a ragged tale emerged at last from torn fragments. On the run, of course. But from what? The Law? A broken home? I cleared the breakfast table. This way to the bathroom, I said.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, but let’s be clear: I never touched him. Or not in that way. He made quite sure of that. He always locked his door at night. Just once, though, I caught him sleepwalking in the small hours, the rose window staining his shy nakedness. He fixed me with a blank stare, a stone-eyed Apollo trembling on the verge of waking. But as my heart leaped to enfold him, he turned away.
Always glad of a bit of company, of course. Since Mum died, just me and the Faithful Friend. My home is your home, I tell them. But the answer is always the same: Must be moving on.
When the Big Knock came, I knew who to thank. It’s Curtains Twitchville round here. Uniforms? The place was crawling. Then that keen young face, bursting in from the garden, sweating with news.
News. That’s me and Old Chum now. We are the news. We’ve made it all the way to the Front Page. Mum would have loved it. She devoured the papers. Never read them myself. They depress me.
I predict an outbreak of stunned disbelief. Quiet sort of bloke. We scarcely knew him. It’s a carry-on for us. I’m under the doctor now and Kath’s on tranquillisers.
But the deeper the night, the brighter they shine. I see a morning, flame-red with promise. A leaf-strewn lawn. A boy beneath a tree. And thrilled birds wheeling in great flocks through a blown sky.
Les Brookes lives in Cambridge with his partner Phil. He is the author of Gay Male Fiction Since Stonewall (Routledge, 2009). He has worked as a teacher, waiter, taxi-driver, member of a workers’ co-operative and lecturer, but writing has always been his central passion – Phil aside, of course. He is now 10,000 words into a second novel, while continuing to seek publication for his first. He would love to paper his room with rejection slips and finds it dispiriting that they are often replaced in these hard times by no response at all.
