"Got a spare fiver?"
"No."
"Go on. Just a fiver. I'll make it worth your while."
"No."
"Please!"
I had already walked on a couple of paces, but now I slowed and stopped. There was something about that "please". It wasn't what you might expect;- what I had heard before by young boys, and girls, of similar age, who, when they finally realise they are not going to get a penny out of you by accosting you in the street, hurl a mouthful of abuse and epithets at you. This "please" was different. It had a note of real desperation in it. A note of hopelessness, of weariness, and of resignation too, a cry for help not from the twisted and devious mind of a youngster trying it on, but a cry because the mind that uttered the word was at its wits end;- a forlorn, pleading request for deliverance from something. I turned round.
The boy had also turned away and had begun to walk back in the other direction.
"Hey!" I called. He turned and stopped, then came towards me again. He was dressed in grubby jeans and jeans jacket, unzipped as it was a warm evening, with a pale yellow, and also grubby, T-shirt under the jacket which bore the logo "I'm good!" On his feet he wore the de rigeur trainers for a youngster of his age. They had obviously seen better days.
"Yes, Mister?" he queried eagerly. "You got a fiver for me?"
I regarded him for a moment. I am rather tall, and his head just about came up to my chest. He looked quite young, with dark hair and brown eyes which in turn were regarding me hopefully. He had long, dark, rather girlish eyelashes, which made his face look young and innocent. His teeth were even, white, and clean. He was slim, almost thin, and his skin had a faintly dusky look. What surprised me most, however, was the fact that his complexion was completely clear. I had fully expected to be faced with "a wretched, pimply-faced horror" which is what most of his ilk usually looked like. But not this boy. He looked different to the run-of-the-mill rent boys.
He glanced round and lowered his voice.
"I told you I'll make it worth your while. Whatever you want. Hand job, blow job, a fuck? Whatever you want."
I said nothing but continued to watch him while several different thoughts went through my mind.
"Come on, Mister," he pleaded again. "Only a fiver. You look as if you can afford that." He paused, and when I still didn't answer he said, "Okay. A couple of quid then. But no fucking for that price. Just a hand or blow job. Come on. I haven't eaten since yesterday morning and I'm starving hungry."
He turned his head to look at the hamburger bar across the road, and I followed his gaze.
"Yesterday morning?"
He nodded. "That's right. And that was just a lump of cold chicken."
"I see," I said. "Come on then."
I led the way across the road and into the hamburger bar. I sensed him following me and as we entered the place I heard him sniffing appreciatively.
"Order what you want," I said.
He ordered a mountain of food -- two cheeseburgers, two hamburgers, a large fries and a drink. I settled for a hamburger and a coffee and we went to sit at a table away from anyone else. At that time of the evening there weren't that many customers anyway, but I didn't want to be near enough to anyone for them to overhear us.
The boy dived into his food and if I'd had any doubts about when he really had last eaten, they were dispelled by the way he attacked the food. He really was very, very hungry. I let him eat for a bit as I finished my own burger.
"So," I murmured eventually, "you're offering me any sex I want for a fiver."
He nodded, his mouth too full to speak.
"The bill for this was double that," I pointed out. "So what else are you offering? Anything else?"
He paused in his chewing and looked at me, then swallowed.
"I can only do what you want," he said. "But this is great! Thank you for this." And he attacked the next hamburger with equal gusto. I sipped my coffee as I watched him.
"How old are you?" I asked him.
"I'm eighteen," he replied through his mouthful.
"Of course you are," I said conversationally. With that clear, slightly dusky complexion, short dark hair and the slim body, and the fact that he was slightly on the short side, he looked to be about fourteen or fifteen.
The boy sighed, and without stopping his chewing he unzipped the top pocket in his jeans jacket. His none too clean fingers fished inside and he withdrew a folded piece of paper which he held out to me. I unfolded it and read it as he resumed his meal.
It was a birth certificate, in the name of one Kenneth Noble. Son of father so-and-so and mother thus-and-thus, and if it was to be believed and wasn't a forgery, which I had no way of knowing, then whoever Kenneth Noble was he was certainly eighteen years old. I refolded the paper, something that had obviously happened to it several times in its existence and offered it back to him.
"And who is Kenneth Noble?" I asked him.
He nodded as if he had expected just such a question next. Once again the grubby fingertips fished inside his pocket and this time they withdrew a passport. Silently he held that out to me.
Whatever I had expected, it wasn't this. I opened the back page, and there, sure enough, was a photo of the boy sitting opposite me. A year or so younger, but unmistakably him. The passport had been issued fourteen months earlier, and still had almost nine years to run.
I handed the passport back to him and he pocketed it with a nod.
"I apologise, " I said. "Lucky you have the passport, but you don't look eighteen."
"I know. It's come in useful sometimes."
He used his fingers and thumb to collect the last remaining crumbs of French fries and ate them. Then he sat back with a contented sigh and started on his cold drink.
"Thank you," he said again. "You have no idea how good that was."
"And what happens now?" I asked. "Having eaten your fill free of charge, you make a beeline for the door and run off down the street?"
"No," he said to me. "I sit here until you either tell me to get lost, or we go somewhere and I repay you for the meal. And your kindness," he added.
A strange feeling went through me. My initial reaction on hearing that "please" from him had been right. There was something different about this rent boy, this youngster, this down-and-out. He was polite, he had manners, he looked and responded as if he had some intelligence, but more to the point, he had actually sat there and said, in his own way, that he was not going to rip me off.
