Free Being Small by Chaz Brenchley

rationed for months now, baby-chess, like a diet of Enid Blyton and tinned spaghetti. At last I find someone who understands, or at least plays better than I do. Him I can coach, and you’re not taking him away from me. Michael, this is Gerard: never Mike, I gather, and never ever Gerry.”
    That same big hand reached for mine and folded itself around my fingers. I thought I could feel the effort he made, not to go for a bonecrusher grip.
    “It’s Michael’s birthday,” Kit said from the window, where he was apparently back on drinks duty, filling glasses. “Sixteen today. Yesterday,” with a corrective glance at his watch.
    “Is it indeed? Well, and how do you come to be here, Michael?” Playing chess with my sick friend, he meant, exhausting him beyond the limits of his strength, when you should be off somewhere with your own friends and testing your own
limits.
    “Uh, Kit found me out in the lane. I was going home but he brought me in, he knew I played chess and said Mr Quin would like a game,” and never mind what else he’d said. If he could forget about that I was the last person to remind him.
    Right at that moment it didn’t matter what anyone else might have said. I’d clearly said something that was acting like acid on an ulcer, the room was so full of sudden twitches and sharp breathy sounds.
    “If you’re Michael,” Kit said, “and Gerard is Gerard, then Quin is very definitely and always only Quin. If you mister him – well, actually, I don’t know what would happen if you mistered him deliberately, I’ve never known anyone stupid enough to do it. One time brings the awful warning; after that, you’re on your own. Cast into the outer darkness, probably, expunged from the family bible, I don’t know. I just wouldn’t go there, is all. See what I’m saying?”
    I did see. I didn’t understand, either Quin or Kit himself – why be a monosyllable where you can go the other way, why chop back when you can stretch out, accumulate, titles and honorifics and all the names in the book? – but adolescence is good cover sometimes for bewilderment. Unsure whether to apologise or to whom, whether to gloss over it or be casual, assume that same equality that Kit was proposing – “Quin, right you are, Quin it is,” as easy as a grown-up – I came over all sixteen and said nothing at all.
    And was rescued unexpectedly by Gerard’s murmuring, “It’s not that hard. Come on, practise; say ‘Goodnight, Quin,’ and get out of here. You too, Kit. Take your drinks with you. He’s had enough for now.”
    Something in me expected Quin to protest like a child at bedtime, “one more game, I’m not tired yet,” like that. In fact he only made a gesture, a little sweeping wave of his long hand that seemed to mean he’s right, take this board away and leave us be. It was a beat later, still not too late that he smiled at me thinly and said, “Come back, Michael. Try me any time.”
    I nodded, and promised that I would. Kit said, “Later, Quin,” moved the board off the bed and led me back to the kitchen.
    “You get used to that,” he told me, and it sounded like an invitation or a prophecy, you will get used to that. “He’s sharp as a needle, and then suddenly he crashes. Gerard’s the one who spots it, often as not, if he’s around. You’d expect that, I suppose. I’m learning, but I still can’t chase people out the way the big man does. He’s the only one Quin listens to, anyway. You try saying ‘Right, that’s your lot,’ when Quin’s saying, ‘Sit, stay, I’m not done with you yet.’ It’s not possible. I’ve all but given up trying.”
    I could imagine. I had been imagining, indeed, exactly that; it was only Gerard that I hadn’t accounted for.
    “You need more coffee?”
    “No. Thanks, but I’ve not finished this,” and thought I was not now expected to, thought I was on my way home.
    “Not to worry, it’s just as good cold on a warm night. Come through and sit