Kane

The first time I clapped eyes on Kane was in the park or square, call it what you will, just after Michael and l had come back from the hospital after he had had the tests. He and l had gone for THE walk. The one you go on to discuss bad news that's going to rip a huge fucking hole in your life. Kane was standing about five metres away from the path we were on, in the flowerbed, his forearms braced against the wall of the public toilets that were locked of an evening. He glanced at us, and once it was apparent we were no threat, looked away at the railings further up, as if counting them. Light grey sweats and white undies were bunched around his ankles and a middle-aged punter was fucking him. Or doing his best to! The roundness of both Kane's buns and the guy's paunch were obviously making it tricky for whatever lack of inches the guy was packing!

I can't honestly remember which of us mentioned calling Social Services but to our shame neither of us did. Kane certainly looked under age although he wasn't at the time as I later found out. 'When we get home.' was what one of us no doubt must have said, without specifying which home we meant. The London townhouse that Michael had bought, gutted and revamped back into an elegant single residence from the four flats it had become in the 1960s? Or the quirky, ultra modern bungalow he'd built for us in Cornwall using the considerable profits from the various real-estate projects he'd developed up and down the UK? Cornwall was our real home but that changed as Michael's health deteriorated. The London townhouse was nearer the specialist cancer unit.

The next time we saw him, he was on his knees giving a blowjob to a bloke as dark as Kane himself was. We had Missy with us and she barked and bared her fangs when she saw the punter slap the side of Kane's head and had it not been for the leash, she would have had the face off the guy in seconds. The low growls of an unmistakably irate Alsatian had the desired effect and the guy left, rapidly, in the opposite direction, chucking a note on the ground as he hightailed it out of the park. Kane hollered his thanks, laughing and waving the note at us.

We took more and more walks in the park, albeit shorter and shorter ones, always taking Missy with us. Sometimes we saw Kane disappearing into his pop-up tent with a client, sometimes outside against the wall. But Missy's tail always wagged and if he failed to wave, a single bark was usually all that was required for him to raise his head in greeting!

It was when I first took Michael out in the wheelchair than we actually spoke. He wandered over, feeling decidedly awkward but clearly concerned at this development. Missy, always ultra-protective of her Michael, normally growled a warning whenever a stranger approached her master but Kane received his single bark as a greeting, accompanied by frenetic tail-wagging. He gestured at her:

'l guess l must be okay then after all, eh? Dogs can sense that, you know.'

His eyes went from Michael's gaunt face to the wheelchair and opened his mouth. Then he closed it, clearly thinking it best to ignore the elephant in the park. Missy came to the rescue and dropped a branch at his feet as unsubtly as only a mutt can.

'Can l?', he asked, grinning, his eyes alive.

'Be my guest! I can't play with her anymore and she misses that!'

Kane's teardrop face lit up at Michael's words and the two spent the fifteen minutes I took to push Michael around the outside path playing an energetic game of fetch.
We got back to the park entrance to find Missy flaked out on the path, tongue lolling out, and Kane filling an old takeaway tub with water for her.

'I used to have one like her, but my father ...'

His voice trailed off quietly. 'What's her name?'

Michael looked up, happy to have a conversation that wasn't about his illness.

'Missy. What was yours called?'

'Tyson. After the boxer. I chose the name.'

The proud memory brought a smile to Kane's handsome face, although but a fleeting one, for his mobile rang just then and we went our separate ways.

Missy and Kane had quite a few more opportunities to play fetch in the next couple of weeks but I lost Michael a week before Good Friday that year. The Easter Egg I'd bought to give him, more out of defiance than hope, almost threw itself at me from the store cupboard shelf when I got back late from Michael's wake. Not having the strength to shed more tears, l grabbed it and my coat and headed for the park. Missy was no longer with me as I'd passed her to the housekeeper and her family in Cornwall. She was too much part of Michael and Michael too much part of her and she needed space and a complete break with her past life. At that moment, for some strange reason, l had a compulsion to let Kane know about Missy, that l'd done right by her. And giving him Michael's Easter Egg would let me address that matter too.

Hindsight can scream all it likes but, at the time, it didn't even cross my scrambled head that going after dark into a park that was infamous for dealing might not actually be a good idea. I'd just arrived at the spot where Kane 'lived' and watched him crawl, panther-like, out of his tent at my calling out to him. Too late I heard footsteps behind me, turned and was felled by a punch that had me spread-eagled on the path in the space of seconds. Before l could even register l was being mugged, the owner of the punch was sat on my chest, pinning my shoulders down with his knees and screaming for my wallet, watch and phone. That was when l did register that I was in trouble. All three were in the house and something told me the 18-stone brute on my chest would not take kindly to learning that!

I stared up at his ugly face, pupils dilated and nostrils flared, wondering how to break that very disappointing news to him without getting bones broken when he lifted his head up at a noise coming from behind me.
The next thing I saw was a frying pan connecting with the side of his face and beads of sweat spraying in all directions before it was his turn to be lying on his back, out cold, but breathing. Fortunately.

Kane waved his frying pan above me, grinning.

'My anti-twat protection device!'

'Effective device, I see!'

Kane was already going through the guy's pockets but shouted back at me 'He's my pimp! But ain't gonna forget me for this! Need to scram before he comes round!'

Still carrying his frying pan, he ran out past the exit, then stopped and ran back to the bin he'd passed, overbalancing it and then scrabbling away a thin layer of soil underneath and yanking out a battered tin stashed underneath.

'Hide both of these under your coat and COME ON! He's waking up!'

We walked out of the path and crossed the fortunately deserted street. We were both trying not to run, conscious that it would draw attention to us, though there was nobody about that we could see. Not knowing that Michael and l lived in the area, Kane walked straight past our gate and I had to grab his shoulder and pull him into the shadows under the steps up to the front door. It was just at that exact moment we both heard my assailant's voice bellow out:

'Your ass gonna regret that Kane! Show yourself or do I have to come find ya?'

Then, the unmistakable sound of a heavy metal bar being tapped menacingly against the ground.

'Shit! How we gonna get away now?'

I looked at him, wide-eyed with sheer terror and clutching my arm in desperation. Almost dropping the anti-twat protection device, l put my finger to his lips to shush him and whispered,

'Take these. Carefully!'

Once he had the tin and his pan safely, I fumbled in my trouser-pocket, took out my keys and slipped one into the basement door that would have been the entrance to the scullery and kitchen at the time the property was originally built.

'You live here?' His eyes wide through amazement instead of fear this time. 'Fuck!'

Once inside, the door closed softly, the fear of seconds ago was replaced by suppressed laughter:

'Ug's gonna think I'm Harry Fuckin Potter, disappearing on him like that!', he said, snapping his fingers in the air in triumph.

'Ug????'

'We all call 'im that, behind 'is back, 'coz 'e's ugly by face and twice as ugly by nature!'

I reached for the light-switch and then thought better of it. No point in drawing the lovely Ug's attention to any one house in particular and there was sufficient light for us to make our way along the hall and up the stairs to the first floor where l had left the lights on anyway.

It was now it hit me. I went to the drinks cabinet and only just managed to pour the gin into the glass. The two ice cubes weren't so lucky, one dropping onto the wooden floor and one on the Persian carpet.

'Let me do it!'

Kane scooped up the ice cubes from the floor and deposited them in the plant pot on the top of the cabinet.

'Help yourself to one too!' I added apologetically.

'No.'

His answer was accompanied by such a look of disgust, l didn't dare argue.

'You want it wiv' anything?', his words were almost spat out at me.

'Tonic, please. There are small cans in the fridge below. Just open the doors underneath.'

He did as asked but all the time keeping my glass at arm's length as if he was handling noxious chemicals in a lab.

'You don't drink?'

'I got my reasons.'

I looked over at him and the euphoria at outsmarting Ug was gone ... he was just a young man in dirty, outsize, shabby clothes doing his best to survive in dirty, horrible circumstances. With a past, something told me.

His stomach let out an unmistakable groan and he looked at me sheepishly:

'Sorry. Can l order a pizza? I got money!'

I hesitated. Instinct screamed 'Feed him, you idiot!'. My natural pessimism, so perfectly balanced by Michael's instinctive optimism for the last 26 years, was whispering 'It's unfair to shove your wealth under his nose when he's either wearing all he has or he's carrying it in a battered tin box'.

I rose to my feet, grateful for the gin having done its job and banished my shakes, and turned to retrieve my mobile from the hall table. The photo of Michael goofying about next to a poker-faced me set me off. Again! And brought Kane out out of the lounge like a shot and he just instinctively put his arms around and hugged me.

'I'm sorry. It's still so raw.'

'You don't ever apologise for what you and him had.', came his reply, said in the calm, flat tone of a universal truth that brooked no argument. I could hear Michael too, whispering that Kane had never hidden where he was in life and neither should we.
I headed to the kitchen, leaving Kane no choice but to follow. Within minutes, I had rustled up a plate with Michael's favourite, an omlette with slices of smoked salmon, pastrami, parma ham, cherry tomatoes. I put an empty glass next to it with a carton of fruit juice and a beer next to it. The beer remained. The food didn't.

'What was the orange meat?'

'Smoked salmon.'

'Bang goes me not liking fish!', he responded with an exaggerated lick of his lips, followed by his huge grin.

'You want to see the rest of the house?'

The house was essentially on three levels with a large extension on the ground floor out into the still quite substantial garden at the back. Behind the kitchen was Michael's small study and opposite that, overlooking the garden, a dining room which folding doors connected to the lounge where we'd been previously. A small bathroom opposite the entrance completed that level.
The ground floor where we had come in had the scullery, now a washroom come utility room, and behind it a small gym that had Kane's jaw on the floor. The opposite side had the guest bedroom which linked to a bathroom/ wetroom which at the same time gave direct access to the extension with the swimming pool. Kane's eyes, normally almost Asian in shape, became quite round, mimicking his lips which went to say 'Wow!' but forgot.

Realising I was watching and smiling at his surprise, he grinned, then feigned a look of indifference and said 'Huh! Can't swim anyway!'.

We climbed up the two flights of stairs, with him in front and me trying, with only moderate success, not to notice his narrow waist and how his bum was small and round.
At the top of the stairs he paused to look out of the window and the extension with its decking and bbq area, then the lawn then some, which we'd never actually got around to deciding what it should become. That was the moment indecisive me decided Kane was staying. End of. Period.

I opened the door to the bathroom with the tub that overlooked the garden through a huge window. It had seen quite a lot of naughtiness over the years and l left quickly, suddenly overcome by the knowledge that could not reoccur.

'Yours is on the left, ours ... mine is the one on the left.'

'What?'

'Bedroom! The one downstairs is still full of Michael's medical equipment and the like. It was easier ... groundfloor and all ...'

'Yeah, I s'pose.' He stood there, rooted with the paralysis that hits when you can't take it all in as quickly as it happens.

I went back into the bathroom, turned on the bathtaps and took two fresh, white towels from the cupboard which l stuck in his hands.

'Toiletries are under the sink. I'm sorry but we've nothing specifically for black skin or hair ... you're probably the first black guy we've ever had to stay. To our shame!'

I turned and not giving him the chance to think, just left, closing the bathroom door behind me.