Westpoint Tales
by Kiwi
Going Back - 1
They were mates, Cameron Peters and Shannon Davidson, friends and neighbours - had been for years.
Neither of them remembered it, but it had started when Cameron threw a basketball at Shannon and bounced it off his head. Making friends was easy in those days; they were 8 years old.
It was Cameron's first day in town, he'd come to live with his granddad. His mother didn't want him, she had a new live-in boyfriend and he didn't want a "snot-nosed kid" around. His father didn't want him either; he was in the navy and he liked it there. Cameron didn't care, he wouldn't, much, miss either of them. He'd sooner be with his granddad - he loved the old man and he knew that he loved him too - never doubted it for a minute.
He'd arrived, and was welcomed. He got settled in and then went out to check out the backyard. Next door a boy was playing with his trucks in the sand-pit. He had his back to him and didn't see Cameron looking over at him, so he threw the ball and bounced it off his head.
That made for an ice-breaker, and 10 minutes later both boys were playing together in the sand-pit.
Making friends was easy then and they never looked back - 7 years later they were still hanging out together. Both of them were social misfits, they never quite fitted in, in school and around the town. This was partly because, in a sports-mad town, neither of them was very interested. They couldn't give a toss about sports. They didn't care, they had each other.
They didn't live in each other's pockets, they had their own lives, but whenever they wanted company they only had to climb over the fence in the backyard.
Speaking of giving a toss - they never did that. They never got around to masturbating together, as boys do. They both did it, of course, but separately, in the privacy of their own homes and they never talked about it or admitted to it.
They were just friends - best friends, neighbours and mates.
Cameron loved his granddad's attic. Very few houses in their town had a second storey, let alone an attic as well, but his granddad's did. It was Ace. It was exactly what an attic should be - dark, dusty and cluttered with a thousand mysterious objects shrouded in dust-sheets.
It was his favourite place in the world and had been ever since he came to live with his granddad all those years ago. He was nearly 16 now and he still hadn't explored every corner. And it was all his to explore too - his granddad never came up thee these days, the stairs were too much for his old legs.
The only person he ever brought up there was Shannon, and that wasn't often.
The best thing about the attic was not the objects it contained, though they were fascinating enough. The number one attraction up there was the window - the small, round window at the front of the house which looked down and into the Square - the park and sportsgrounds across Russley Street.
He'd spent many hours up there and looking out. It was like his own private spyhole in the sky where he could watch, and dream about, the sporty types and other teens who hung around there. No-one ever saw him up there watching them. No-one ever looked up.
It was a shame that he couldn't see into the swimming-baths behind the grandstand - they wore even less clothes in there.
His granddad was always on at him, telling him to get outside and get some sunshine. He claimed that all the hours Cameron spent indoors were turning him into "a pale little ghost-boy." Maybe that was part of it, but he always was going to be pale. He was small for his age, blond-haired and very, very fair.
He looked like his granddad did in the old photos - exactly like. He could almost believe that they were photographs of himself if they weren't all black and white, and small, and very, very old.
Many of the photos in the albums were mutilated - heads, and sometimes whole figures, had been cut out of them. It was always the same figure; Cameron had figured that out by studying them and the faded writing on the backs.
The missing face was always that of Danny, his granddad's best friend when they were boys. He was cut out of more photos than not. He must have always been around, back then.
Cameron asked his granddad why he'd done that. Were they enemies now, or something?
"No," the old man replied. "I regret doing that now. I was just young and silly. Danny moved away and was not part of my life any more so I didn't want to look at him again."
Sad really. They must have been close once, even closer than he and Shannon were.
Actually, now he thought about it - maybe the window wasn't the number-one attraction up there. Maybe it was only number-two and the photos were number one. The photos and especially the photo. There was one unmutilated photo that he'd found, a framed and under-glass portrait of a laughing boy.
He had a sunny, happy expression, big round eyes and longish dark hair. On the back was written, "To Kim, from Danny. Merry Christmas 1945." He was a beautiful boy, all those years ago.
Cameron had never told his granddad that he'd found that photo. He was afraid that he might destroy that one too, and it was the only one of Danny that he'd found. He really didn't want him to do that - it fascinated him.
He did share it with Shannon. Or, tried to, Shannon wasn't very interested. He was obviously not gay because that was one beautiful boy in the photo. It was Cameron's greatest treasure.
That just showed what a sad and lonely git he was. Cameron had no great romance in his life. He wished he did, but he didn't. All he had was an old faded photo.
He was in love with a photograph of someone that his granddad used to know, like, a million years ago. Pathetic!
Thinking about it now, he had to get it out and gaze at it again. The beautiful boy of his dreams. Cameron was gay, (Well, Duh!). There were some good-looking boys around the town but there was no-one, no-one who fascinated him the way the boy in the old photograph did.
Danny was no boy anymore. Wherever he was, he'd be an old man now. Where was he now?
Not that far away actually. Though he had no way of knowing it, the "boy" in the photo was about 5 kilometers away and getting closer by the minute.
"Wake up, Boy. We're nearly there." The old man, driving, prodded the half-awake kid beside him.
"At last!" The boy sat up and looked around. "I still can't see anything out there. What an empty country!"
"Empty? It's not empty. This is farmland we're passing through now and we've just come down the Gorge and through the Southern Alps. That's some of the greenest, most spectacular scenery in the world. How can you call it empty?"
Because it is, Grandfather. There's nothing out there but fields and trees - thousands, millions of bloody trees. Where are the towns? Where's the life?"
"Ah, Nathan. You're a true townie, aren't you? Some people would kill to live in a landscape like this."
"They're welcome to it. There's nothing out there. Where's the shops? What do they do at night?"
"Sleep, maybe? Anyhow, here it is - my old home-town. Beautiful, isn't it?"
He pulled over and stopped on the side of the road and they looked down the small hill where the highway swept down to the river, across the bridge and into the town spread along the north bank.
"That's it? Damm, it's small! Hardly a city is it?"
"No-one said the Westpoint was a city, Lad. It's just a small town, a great wee town, and it's home."
"Home? This is not your home. We live in London."
"Yes, we do - now. But this is where I was born and where I grew up. This is my real home - always has been, always will be."
"That was a long, long time ago. You know what Father says don't you? He reckons that you're getting dotty in your old age - coming all this way, looking for your childhood. The town you knew is not there anymore. Things change - it was a long time ago, sixty years at least."
"Sixty-two years actually. It's been a long time, but some things don't change. My town is still there. Some of those trees out there will be older than that. I probably climbed some of them when I was a boy."
"Well I hope you don't think that you're going to do that now. They'd have been a lot smaller then and you are not a boy anymore. Hell, I'm not a boy anymore and I'm your grandson."
"Nathan, I'm nearly 80 years old. When you get to my age, anyone under about thirty is a boy, or a girl. You are just 16, that's a boy in my book."
"Well I'm not. I've been in a relationship already - a sexual relationship."
"Yes, you have, and look what a disaster that was! That guy was old enough to be your father, and now he's gone back to his wife."
"Liam was 12 years older than me. That's not old enough to be my father."
"It would be possible. There have been young fathers before. Anyway, Lad, if you're gay - and I suppose that you are - it's hard enough as it is. For goodness sake, find someone your own age. If a relationship is going to work, first you have to be friends. You can't be real friends with someone 12 years older than you are, not at your age anyway."
"Yeah, yeah, I know. We've been through all this before. I'll find someone, someday."
"You will. There's no hurry. Enjoy your youth, Nathan. It soon passes. Anyway, enough of this - let's go and look at Westpoint, and we need to check into the hotel."
"Right. It shouldn't take long to find it anyway."
"We don't need to find the Australasian Hotel - I know exactly where it is."
"You know exactly where it was. They might have moved in 60 years."
"We saw it on the website. The Australasian is exactly where it's always been. It's on the corner of Brigham and Russley streets, right opposite the Memorial Gates at the entrance to the Square. I've got a surprise for you there too - just inside the Square. Something that you don't know about."
"A surprise? Cool. But how do you know it's still there after all these years."
"It will be there, you don't move a statue that easily."
"A statue? Of Who? Queen Victoria? Every town in New Zealand seems to have a statue of her."
"No, not Victoria. A statue of someone else - your great, great, great grandfather actually.'
"My great, great, grandfather? How can that be? We're Brits aren't we?"
"Great, great, great, and we're partly Brits. I was born here, as was my mother and her mother before her. You'll see, I'll tell you when we're there. A big, dark secret in your family tree."
"If it's still there. It is possible to move a statue - maybe those 12 year-old fathers moved it."
"Shut up, Nathan."
The old man started the car and, after 62 years, Daniel Richard Thomas went home, to Westpoint.
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