The Garden Key

Rohan

Rohan Barrett stood in his mother’s kitchen in Vineyard Town with a bin bag in each hand and twenty-six years of Birmingham still in his vowels.

The zinc roof banged in the rain and the louvres stuck in the damp. His mother had died in August. He had flown in for the funeral, flown back to his council desk the week after, and come again in October with two weeks’ leave to clear the house. The fridge was empty except for a jar of pepper sauce and a box of baking soda. Three days of cupboards had made him efficient and stupid at the same time. He still kept his beard trimmed neat because she had liked him neat in the photographs she stuck to that fridge.

On the third day he cleared her bedroom. He folded dresses into garment bags and found a Bible with a photograph of him at twenty-two tucked into the Psalms, taken the summer before he left for England. He sat on her bed with a towel that still smelled of her soap and held it in his lap until it smelled only of towel, and then laid it on the keep pile.

He found the garden key on a nail by the back door, with a paper tag in her handwriting: Ozzie, beds. He had met Oswald Campbell on a Christmas visit years ago, shaken his hand and forgotten his face. At the funeral a broad man in a borrowed tie had stood at the rear of the church and left before the repast. The name he had not forgotten. It was in every letter. Ozzie fixed the pipe. Ozzie sat with me when the lights went. Tell him thank you when you come.

Every morning at seven he had heard a broom going beyond the fence and thought it was a dream of her.

He took the key across the yard at half past four, when the heat had begun to lean toward evening and the zinc next door ticked as if it were talking to itself.

Oswald

Oswald Campbell saw him coming through the hibiscus and wiped his palms down his trousers. He had been on his knees regrouting his own back step, which was the size of job his back allowed now, at fifty-six, after thirty years of hauling block. He had known Miss Barrett sixteen years and watered her beds since her knees went, and he had held her hand the afternoon the doctor called. He had expected lawyers next, or silence.

The man at the gate had her eyes and somebody else’s mouth, and he was sweating through a shirt that had been ironed for a cooler country. He held the key out like an apology.

“Mr Campbell. I’m Rohan, her son. I found this on the nail.”

“I know who you are.” Oswald turned the key over once. “That one is her spare. Mine is on my ring.” He gave it back. “Keep it. You need it for the side gate. Garden still want water even when the house empty. You staying long?”

“Two weeks. Clear the house. Then sell, maybe. I don’t know yet.”

Oswald nodded and kept his opinions about selling behind his teeth. “Come. I show you what she like in the beds. Then you decide if you keep them.”

Rohan

The garden behind the house was crammed with colour. Callaloo stood in a row by the standpipe with thyme gone thick beside it, and the mango leaned over the fence and dropped its fruit on Oswald’s side on purpose, Oswald said, smiling with half his mouth. Rohan had not known his mother grew thyme. The years she lived with him in Birmingham she kept one spider plant and forgot to water it. Here the air smelled of turned earth and of rice and peas from a yard two doors down, and somebody’s radio played dancehall low enough to be polite.

Oswald showed him which bed took the most water and which mango branch needed propping before the next heavy fruiting. His hands kept moving while he talked, pinching off a dead leaf, brushing soil from a root, and Rohan watched the hands more than the plants.

“She talk about you,” Oswald said, not looking up. “Said you work hard. Said you don’t call enough. Said you were happy, she thought, and then she would go quiet.”

Rohan’s throat closed. “I called.”

“I know. I hear the phone through the wall. She put you on speaker and bang pots so you would think she was busy.” Oswald glanced up. “Sorry. That is heavy for a garden tour.”

“It’s true, though.” Rohan laughed once, and it came out ugly. “I’m forty-nine and I still don’t know how to be a son at the right distance. I sent money and photographs. I came for the funeral and flew back the next week.”

“You here now,” Oswald said. “Distance is a British invention. Stay for the beds if you can’t stay for anything else. Go sit on the veranda, sun going. I bring sorrel from my fridge. Yours have nothing in it but pepper sauce.”

Rohan laughed properly at that. He went in through his mother’s louvred door and out to her veranda and sat on the daybed that had held her afternoon naps for a decade, and a few minutes later Oswald came round by the side gate with a cold jug and two glasses.

Oswald

They sat on the daybed under the ticking zinc with a mosquito coil smoking at their feet. The sorrel was cold and sweet-tart, and Rohan drank as if he had forgotten what sugar was. Oswald watched his throat work and looked away at the breadfruit tree.

He had not planned to want the son. Miss Barrett would have laughed at him for it. But the man sat there soft and lost in his ironed shirt, and Oswald’s hands remembered the weight of men he never mentioned at church, and the evening leaned in.

“You have a wife in England?” he asked, careful.

“No. A flat and a job. Men, sometimes.” Rohan stared into his glass. “Is that a problem for the garden key?”

“Garden key don’t care who you kiss.” Oswald set his glass down on the boards. “I ask because I have a thing to say, and I want the ground clear first.”

“You first, then,” Rohan said. “Since we’re clearing ground. Do you have somebody?”

“Sometimes. Nobody on this road.” Oswald turned his glass on the boards. “Your mother knew. Ten years she ask me when I going to bring somebody to eat, and I tell her mind her callaloo. Church don’t know. My brother guess and keep quiet. Mi prefer it plain with you.”

“Then say it.”

“I liked your mother. I like her garden. And I like the look of you on this daybed like you might stay an hour. If you want company of a particular kind tonight, I’m here. If you don’t, I water the beds tomorrow same as always. The key stay the same either way. Nobody owe nobody. You hear me?”

Rohan’s hand tightened on the glass. “I hear you. What’s the word if I want to stop?”

“Stop,” Oswald said. “You say it, I stop.”

“Stop’s fine.” Rohan breathed out. “And yes. I want company of a particular kind. I’ve been alone in her house with her pepper sauce for three days. Yes, Oswald.”

“Ozzie,” Oswald said, and smiled, really smiled, for the first time. “Come here.”

Rohan

Ozzie kissed the way he built walls, square and sure and in no rush, and Rohan opened under it with the coil’s thin smoke drifting past their shoulders. Hands found buttons. The ironed shirt came off, and Ozzie’s work shirt smelled of cement dust and sweat. Rohan’s soft belly met Ozzie’s harder one, and he heard himself make a sound he would never have let out in Birmingham, plain undignified want.

“Tell me how you like it,” Ozzie murmured against his mouth.

“I like somebody else steering. Holding me where they want me.” Rohan’s ears burned. “I’m not small. I still want that. Is that all right?”

“That is what I want too.” Ozzie’s hand cupped him through his trousers, firm, the thumb tracing his shape until Rohan pushed into it. “We go slow. The fence high and the zinc loud, so the road hear the roof and not us, if we keep sense. You say stop, we stop.”

“Yes. Ozzie, yes.”

They got trousers open and kicked their shoes under the daybed. Ozzie slid down until he knelt on the boards between Rohan’s knees. “Mi want to taste you first. Yes?”

“Yes,” Rohan said, and because one word did not feel like enough, “please.”

Ozzie pinned Rohan’s hips with both hands and sucked him in long slow pulls, and Rohan’s head went back against the louvres with a thump. The heat of that mouth was unreasonable. “Ozzie,” he said, too loud, and then lower, “oh, keep doing that. I’ve thought about nothing else since you knelt down in the callaloo.” Ozzie worked him without hurry, his tongue flat along the underside, coming off to lick the head and going back down until Rohan was shaking and saying his name to the veranda roof. “Ozzie. God. Ozzie, I’m going to…”

Ozzie came off him and kissed his belly instead, slow and wordless, until Rohan’s breathing settled and he was nearly mad with it.

He spat on his fingers and worked Rohan open, patient, one finger and then two, crooking until Rohan jerked and bit his own wrist to stay quiet. Rohan lay back on the cushions with his forearm over his eyes and his other hand on Ozzie’s shoulder, feeling the muscle move. Ozzie kissed his chest and stroked him slowly in time with his fingers. “Hear how you breathe for me,” he said. “Two fingers and you already pushing down on them. Easy. We have all night.”

“I don’t want easy,” Rohan said. “I want more.”

Ozzie smiled against his belly. “You still want this?”

“I still want it. Ozzie, please. I need you in me. I’m tired of empty rooms.”

Ozzie added a third finger and held still so Rohan could feel the full stretch. “You holding on to my fingers so. Easy now. Again.” He crooked them and Rohan’s back came clean off the cushions. “That is the place. I going to find it with my cock and stay there. You want that?”

“Yes. I want you to fuck me on her daybed, and I don’t even feel guilty. Isn’t that terrible?”

“Not terrible,” Ozzie said. “She would say about time and go inside and turn the radio up.”

He drew his fingers out. Rohan sat up to make room, and Ozzie lay back along the daybed with his head on her old bolster, spat into his palm and slicked himself, thick and dark and ready. “Come up here. Sit down on me, then lie on me. I hold you. I do the work.”

Rohan climbed over him with his knees spread on the cushions either side of Ozzie’s hips. Ozzie held himself steady, and Rohan sank, slowly, the burn flaring and then turning to heat as he took him. Halfway he stopped to breathe. “You’re big,” he said, and laughed shakily at himself. “God, you’re big. Give me a second.” Ozzie rubbed his thighs and waited, and told him low to take his time, nobody was going anywhere.

“Last time I ask before all of it,” Ozzie said. “Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

Rohan let himself down the last of the way. Ozzie took him by the shoulders and drew him down until they lay chest to chest, Rohan’s soft belly pressed flat to Ozzie’s and his cock trapped between them, and Ozzie’s arms came round his back and locked there. The zinc ticked above them. A dog barked three yards over. Rohan’s mouth fell open against Ozzie’s throat on a sound with no accent in it at all. “Oh,” he said into Ozzie’s skin. “Oh, you’re all the way in me.”

Oswald

Oswald planted his feet on the daybed and moved up into him with steady deep strokes, and the frame took up a creak older than either of them. He had built half the verandas on this road and knew how wood complained. He did not care tonight. Rohan lay on him with his knees spread wide and his face in Oswald’s throat, and every push up into him squeezed Rohan’s cock between their bellies, slick already with sweat.

He kept his voice low because the fence was high but not that high, and he let it go filthy because Rohan’s breathing asked for it.

“That’s it. Take me. Soft man from England open on top of me. You feel good round me, hot, pulling me in every time I draw back. You hear the noise you making? Your backside was made for this daybed. I going to keep you on it till the coil burn out. Tell me what you need.”

“Don’t stop talking. Right there, Ozzie. Deeper. Do that again.”

Oswald slid both hands down to Rohan’s arse and held him down onto his cock and ground up into him instead of drawing back, small hard circles at the end of every stroke, and Rohan’s whole body went taut on top of him.

“There,” Rohan said into his neck. “Oh, God. Stay there.”

“Mi deh yah. I’m staying.” Oswald stayed, grinding up into him while Rohan’s belly slid on his, and then he slowed until he was barely moving. “Lift your head. Let me see you.”

Rohan lifted it. His eyes were dark and dazed and a little frightened by how much he wanted. The careful man from the gate was gone. This one was flushed from his throat down to where their bellies met, his beard damp and his mouth swollen, and his hips kept rocking back every time Oswald eased off. Oswald drew out until only the head was inside, held him there with both hands, and watched Rohan’s face fight itself.

“Ozzie. Don’t tease. Please.”

“Say what you want, then. Say it plain. You not at work.”

“I want you to hold me down on you and fuck me till I lose my words. I want you to come in me.”

Oswald hauled him down by his hips and, in one long push that made them both swear, drove up into him.

“Still yes?”

“Yes. God, yes. Don’t stop asking. I like you asking.”

“Then I keep asking.”

He shifted his angle, found the place that made Rohan’s toes curl against the cushion, and stayed on it. “That is me in you. Kingston holding Birmingham for a while. Breathe. Take it.”

“I’m taking it. Don’t go gentle on me now. I didn’t cross an ocean for gentle.”

Oswald laughed out loud, one bark that sent a lizard off the rail, and gave him what he asked for. “Like that?” he said. “You like that? Feel how you leaking on me. Every time I go in, you squeeze. You going to make me lose my head.” He fucked up into him hard and fast with his heels dug into the cushions, and the daybed walked half an inch toward the rail with every stroke while Rohan rocked on him and his cock dragged between their bellies. A cushion slipped to the boards and neither of them caught it. Rohan’s mouth would not stop. Yes, he said, and there, and you’re so deep, in a voice that had lost every one of its careful council-office vowels. “Fill me,” he said. “Ozzie, go off in me. Don’t you pull out of me.”

“You going to come?” Oswald said into his ear.

“I’m going to. Ozzie, nobody’s even touching me and I’m going to…”

“I touching you all over. Come. I holding you. Squeeze me when you go. Let the garden hear if it must. I hear worse from the zinc in a rainstorm.”

Rohan came lying on him with no hand anywhere near him, shuddering, wet heat spreading between their bellies while he gripped so hard it pulled a groan up out of Oswald’s chest. What came out of Rohan was half curse and half prayer and would have horrified the council office. Oswald drove up through the aftershocks, lost the careful rhythm he took pride in, and spilled into him with a long low sound against Rohan’s temple, both arms locked round his back.

They stayed joined until the shaking passed. A breadfruit leaf fell somewhere in the dark. Rohan laughed once, low, at the plain improbable fact of being held, and Oswald felt the laugh in his own ribs.

When the coil had burned down to a grey curl, Oswald fetched a wet cloth from the kitchen and cleaned them both with the same care he gave his trowels, then sat with Rohan’s head on his thigh and watched the light go out of the garden. The callaloo hung still.

“I water tomorrow,” Oswald said. “You clear cupboards. Evening time, if you want sorrel again, you knock. If you want quiet only, knock for that too. I can sit and not talk. I practise that.”

“I’ll knock.” Something of Kingston had come back into Rohan’s vowels, and Oswald heard it and did not say so. “Ozzie. Thank you. For the beds. For her.”

“The beds were her and me.” Oswald’s hand rested on Rohan’s shoulder, heavy and warm. “Two weeks is short. We don’t have to spend it all with bin bags. And when you go back to Birmingham, you call me for yourself. I will answer.”

“I will.”

Rohan smiled, and Oswald felt it against his thigh. Somewhere a zinc roof ticked, cooling. The garden key had slid out of Rohan’s trouser pocket onto the boards beside the empty sorrel glasses, and neither of them picked it up. It belonged to both houses now, to the man who watered the beds and to the one who had come home long enough to notice the thyme.