Kenny : Part Two

*** Author’s Foreword.

For all the fans and readers who have asked for part two, here it is.....finally!

Thank you all for following Kenny’s saga, and your interest in my stories.

And this IS a STORY, containing characters with emotions and feelings. If you only want to read the sex, there isn’t any until Page , - so you might as well skip forward………

To those dear readers who have not already acquainted themselves with “Kenny”, the first part of this story, I recommend that you read that first. It will make more sense when you read this, and explain why the first section of this story begins the way it does…….

And for those of you who have already met “Kenny”, here’s what happened next, and how it came to pass…….

KENNY : PART TWO

I glanced at the clock. It was ten minutes before midnight, and my legs ached. I hadn’t sat down for the entire evening since the doorbell had rung, and that seemed a long, long time ago. It WAS a long time ago, and I hadn’t spoken a single word in that time, either. I shifted my position again, leaning on the bookcase, and tried to ease the stiffness in my legs.

Kenny and his mother sat on the sofa. Kenny had his arm round her and had finally, after all this time, managed to reduce his mother’s tears to just huge sobs. The box of tissues, newly opened some hours ago, was now nearly empty;- a mute testimony to the floods of tears that had necessitated their use by Mrs Noble.

“Mum, please,” Kenny said for what seemed like the hundredth time. “Don’t cry now, please.”

***

She had pushed straight past me in the hallway after those two resounding blows to my face even as Kenny himself had appeared from the living room, his eyes open wide and his cry of “Mum!” echoing as he flung himself forward and into her arms. They had hugged each other very tightly for a while, Mrs Noble making crooning noises like, ‘it’s alright son, I’m here now,’ and ‘I’m so glad I’ve found you.’

And then she had grasped his arm and stared into his face and said, “Go and get your things, Kenny, whatever you have, and let’s get out of here.”
And that’s when the fan had really received a huge dollop of the brown mess.

“Wait, Mum. You don’t understand!”
“Oh, I understand perfectly!” She’d turned to look at me and spat the words in my direction before looking at him again. She gave his arm a little shake. “Believe me, Kenny, I understand! Now come on. Get anything you want to bring and let’s go.”
“No, Mum!” and he pulled his arm free and took a step back from her. Confusion, hurt, resolve and anger had all flashed across her face in an instant as she took a pace towards him.

“What do you mean… no? I’m here! I’ve finally found you and you’re safe and we can go home.”
“Mum, wait! Wait!” Kenny had pleaded, holding his hands up in front of him as if to ward her off. “Mum, you must let me explain!”
“There’s no need to explain, my darling,” she said, turning to give me another hate-filled look. “You don’t have to explain anything. You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to.”

“But I do! I do!” Kenny wailed. “That’s the point! I do want to explain! I need to explain! Won’t you listen?”

He’d backed away until he was at the end of the hall, just outside the living room door. “Mum, please! Let me explain?” he said again in a quieter voice. “Won’t you come in and sit down for a few minutes? Please?”
Once more she had turned and looked at me and if looks could have killed………and then she took a step towards Kenny and said, “I won’t sit down Kenny because I don’t want to sit in this…this…hovel! But if you want to say something before we go, alright, I’m listening.”

I’d seen the flash of anger in Kenny’s eyes, but it was just a flash, and his voice was very quiet indeed when he said, “It isn’t a hovel. You’re talking about my home.” And he turned and went into the living room.
Mrs Noble hesitated, looking down the empty hall, turned yet again to glare at me, and then slowly followed Kenny into the living room.

I followed too, having decided that I would not say a word. It was not for me to intervene in this, even though the outcome would affect my life.... whatever the outcome turned out to be. I followed them, standing just inside the door. Kenny was sitting on the sofa, twisting his fingers together. His mother stopped and faced him, crossing her arms and looking down at him.

“I’m listening,” she repeated.
“Mum,” Kenny said quietly, “I am so glad to see you. You don’t know how I’ve missed you and thought about you. I wanted to contact you so many times...but I couldn’t. I don’t know how you found me. I wasn’t hiding from you. But now you’re here and-----”
“And now I’ve found you we can go,” she interrupted him, reaching out one hand to take his arm again.

“NO MUM!” Kenny yelled, and stood quickly, brushing her arm aside.

I heard her gasp with shock as she stood looking at him. His face was suffused with anger, and he was glaring at her much as she had first glared at me. I had never seen this side of Kenny before.
“No, Mum! I am not leaving with you now! Now, you can either listen to what I have to say, or you can leave, alone, and I will write a letter to you and explain, because you won’t LISTEN!” And Kenny stood there, breathing hard, his expression one of anger and frustration.

Mrs Noble had simply staggered and raised her hands to her face as she burst into tears. Kenny immediately put his arm round her and led her to the sofa where he sat her down and then sat beside her, his arm going round her and rubbing her shoulder as he tried to comfort her.
“Sorry, Mum,” he said, “But I had to make you understand.”

“Understand what?” she cried out, lowering her hands and turning to look at him as the tears coursed down her cheeks. “I’ve spent a week hunting for you here and now I’ve finally found you, you don’t want to come with me? What am I to understand? You don’t care about me and you want to stay with this --- this ---- this----” and she waved an arm in my direction without looking at me and then covered her face again, crying afresh.

I moved out of the room and into the kitchen as I heard Kenny say firmly, “Friend, Mum. That’s what he is. A very, very good friend and he’s been very nice to me.”
I heard her ‘hmmmph!’ of disapproval and disgust as I returned with a large brandy which I set down on the table in front of her. I signalled Kenny with my eyes and he gave me a little nod.

“Oh, I bet he’s been nice to you!” Mrs Noble said in a scathing voice, partly muffled by her hands. “But what has he wanted in return? Eh, Kenny? What has it cost you in return, my son?”
“Nothing,” said Kenny quietly. He left the word hanging in the air. Mrs Noble continued to cry.
I fetched the new box of tissues which I placed next to the brandy and then went to lean on the bookcase.

Kenny pulled a couple from the box and pushed them into his mother’s hands. She bunched them up and stuffed them against her eyes as her shoulders heaved and she cried and cried.

“Mum, being here has cost me nothing I wasn’t happy about.” He rubbed her shoulder and gave it a squeeze then looked at me. I gave him a look with my eyes and a slight twist to my lips, telling him, ‘you’re doing okay, kid’, but I remained completely silent. I knew instinctively that if I uttered a word, she would flare up and turn on me again, and that would undo the good that Kenny had managed to achieve...at least getting her to sit down and listen to him.

“Mum? Mum?” Kenny said quietly. He pulled the sodden tissues from her hand and gave her some new ones. She shook her head, whether because she didn’t want to hear him, or whether because she was utterly confused and shocked I didn’t know.
“Mum, listen please,” Kenny whispered. He took the brandy and put it near her lips. “Here, have a sip of this.”

He had to physically take her fingers away from her eyes and wrap them round the glass, covering them with his own as he raised the glass to her lips. She took a sip and coughed. Kenny waited and then gave her another sip, setting the glass down again.
“Mum, I’ve got lots of things to tell you. And I bet you’ve got lots to tell me. Can’t we talk now?”

Mrs Noble’s shoulders continued to heave as she blurted from between her hands.

“I can t-t-tell you that I know what’s happened to you since you ran away. I can tell you that I left your f - father after I got your letter and confronted him with it. I’m living with my sister now. And I can tell you that it breaks my heart to think what has h – h - happened to you and what you’ve ---you’ve ---been doing.” And she burst into an even more anguished bout of crying, rocking herself back and forth as she pressed the tissues to her eyes.

I moved to lean on the other arm. I felt very, very sorry for Mrs Noble and I could understand her hate for me and her confusion and hurt that Kenny hadn’t immediately leapt for the front door with her when she came for him.
But Kenny had never been a prisoner in the flat, and he was free to choose with whom he stayed, or with whom he went. I didn’t envy him the task of making his mother understand that.

“How did you find me, Mum?” Kenny asked. I wasn’t sure if the question was to deflect her thoughts from their current train, or if it was because the question was burning at him the way it was burning at me. Although Kenny had let my name slip at when we went to collect his meagre belongings, he hadn’t mentioned an address, and I didn’t think he would have carelessly given it out to any of his old ‘clique’ of rent boys. But I was mighty curious to know how it was that Mrs Noble had managed to appear at my front door.

She gave a short, harsh laugh, and I knew where Kenny had inherited his from. She dabbed at her eyes with the tissues and one hand wandered vaguely in mid air. Kenny gave her the brandy glass again and she took a swallow, coughing a little as the fiery liquid hit her throat. Kenny put clean tissues in her other hand.

“By the skin of my teeth,” she answered him with another short, dry laugh. She took a second drink of the brandy, and this one went down smoothly. Kenny took the glass from her unresisting fingers and put it back on the table.
“How?” he asked her softly.

She patted a pocket of her jacket – another mannerism that her son had inherited from her.

“I carry your photograph with me. All the time. I happened to ask at the station one day if they’d seen you and they remembered you buying a ticket here.” She paused to sniff and wipe at her eyes with the tissues. “So I arranged a holiday from work and caught a train here too. I went to a hotel, and for the last week I’ve been asking people in the street if they’d seen you. I’ve been out all day and not going back to the hotel until late at night.”

She shook her head and fresh tears welled up in her eyes and trickled down her cheeks.
“Not one person said they recognised you, or had seen you. I used to go to the hotel every night and cry myself to sleep. I would lie awake, wondering if you were near, if you were safe. Sometimes...”
and at this point she erupted into a new bout of heartfelt crying, “---sometimes I w- w- wondered if you were even still alive!”

Kenny renewed his efforts to calm her down and once again replenished the tissues.

“I’m alive, Mum. I’m here with you now. I’m safe. Don’t cry now, don’t cry.” And he put his other arm round the front of her, pulled her to him and rocked her gently. After a while she sniffed again a few times and continued in a broken voice.
“Today was the last day. I left the hotel and went to the station to get the train home. I thought about throwing myself under it. But I still asked people if they’d seen you. And there was a boy. No, a man, I suppose. Dirty, horrible, sniggering creature. He said yes, he knew you. So I asked him....where were you, what were you doing, how could I find you?”

And there were more tears, and new tissues, and another sip of brandy before she could go on.
“He – he – told m-me what you were. He told me w-w-what you’d been doing. He said if I g-gave him some money he would take me to you. I was frightened of him, but I wouldn’t give up the chance to find you. I wanted to know h-h-how I could be sure he knew where you were, and n-n-not just lying, and he said he’d seen you and ---and ---”

And for the first time she raised her eyes to look at me, but then looked hurriedly away and buried her face in her hands again.
“He’d seen you walking one evening and followed you home. So he b-brought me here. He wouldn’t stop t- talking about – about the things you – the things his sort of boy d- does. Graphic details. It was just horrible. I t- tried to make him stop but he said if I wanted him to show me where you are, I c- c- could listen to what he had to say.”

Her anguish got the better of her and she had to stop. Kenny wiped her tears away again and crooned “Don’t cry Mum, don’t cry.”
After a while she managed to carry on.

“When we got here I g- gave him the money and he went. I just d-d-didn’t know which flat it was.”
Which explained the rings at Freddie’s doorbell upstairs. I looked Kenny and mouthed the word ‘who?’ at him.
“What did he look like, this man?” Kenny asked in a soothing voice.
“Dirty, scruffy, revolting,” she said and shuddered. “He had bad teeth and one was broken.”

Jed.

I went to the kitchen again silently and made coffee. I could hear Kenny’s voice, and his mother’s, but now they were telling each other how they’d missed each other and Kenny was soothing her that it was okay, and she didn’t have to worry, and it was lovely to be with her and many other soothing words and phrases, and I thought to myself, not for the first time, that for eighteen years old Kenny could often show a surprisingly adult character.

I made the coffee in a pot and used the best china and placed it all on a silver tray, usually reserved for high days and holidays, but I thought if there was a faint chance of making Mrs Noble realise that this wasn’t really a hovel, serving the coffee that way might help. I placed it quietly on the table and selected a cigarette for myself, then returned to the bookcase.

“What about your things?” Kenny was asking her. “Where’s your case, or your bag?”
“I left it just outside the front door,” Mrs Noble sniffed.

I went to check, and it was there, -- luckily for Jed, I thought grimly -- tucked against the wall on one side of the door. I brought it inside and left it in the hallway and padded back to my bookcase.
Kenny signalled me with his eyes to come and sit down, but I gave a slight shake of my head and a big frown. He nodded.

“Mum, can I tell you about me, now?” Kenny murmured, taking yet more tissues and wiping her cheeks tenderly.
Mrs Noble finally removed her hands from her eyes and sat, twisting the tissues in her fingers. Her eyes focused for the first time on her surroundings as she looked down at the table and saw the brandy and the coffee things. She picked up the glass and gulped down the last swallow.

“Thank you, Kenny,” she muttered pointedly.

I saw his shoulders slump a little, but his voice was steady as he picked up the coffee pot and said, “Have some coffee, Mum. I’m going to have some.” His eyes raised to me questioningly and I nodded, so he poured three cups, added cream and sugar and handed one cup to his mother. I stepped forward and took mine from the tray then returned to the bookcase.

And for the next half hour Kenny explained what had happened since he had boarded that train, admitting he’d become a rent boy but glossing over the details quickly. He explained how he’d met me, and what I had done, the meal, the whole story right up until she’d rung the doorbell.

There were pauses as his mother lapsed into fresh bouts of anguish and crying at some points of his tale, but finally he finished and sat back, pouring himself a fresh coffee and lighting a cigarette.

Mrs Noble made no comment on this so I assumed Kenny had smoked at home. Or perhaps she just hadn’t registered the fact that he’d lit up. She sat with her empty cup and saucer in her lap, looking at Kenny.
“He- he- bought you a meal before – before---”
“Yes,” said Kenny firmly. “And asked nothing in return.”

Which was true up to a point.
“And when you came back h-h-here,” she questioned him disbelievingly, “n-n-nothing happened? He didn’t t-touch you?”
“Refused completely,” Kenny said firmly. “And I slept in my room, alone.”

Which was also quite true. The fact that he had only ever slept in his room that once, he sensibly didn’t mention.
She reached up and caressed his cheek as he gave her more coffee.
“My son,” she sobbed. “My only child. What’s happened to you?”