by James Bowen
The first inkling I got about how much people had been missing us came when two friends from the Tube station appeared, Davika and Amy.
‘Hello, you two, where have you been hiding? Somewhere warm I hope,’ Davika said.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her we were living in an igloo.
I explained what had happened earlier and showed them my rather sad-looking guitar.
‘Hold on a minute,’ Amy said, disappearing inside the station.
She soon reappeared with a large roll of gaffer tape.
Between us we had soon fixed the front panel. The rear of the body of the guitar was now wrapped in about ten layers of thick tape, but I didn’t care. It made a reasonable sound again, so I could go busking later if necessary.
As it turned out, it wasn’t necessary. Quite the opposite. We didn’t need to go anywhere.
As the rush hour began to build we began to see a lot of our regular commuter customers making their way home from work. One of the first was a lady called Angela, one of our most loyal supporters. I saw her approaching from a distance. She’d been walking along with her head down, looking a little bit down in the dumps but had then spotted us. Her body language had immediately changed and she’d almost broken into a jog, which was quite impressive given that she must have been well into her seventies.
‘Oh, what a lovely surprise. I didn’t think we’d see you again before Christmas, what with this awful weather,’ she said, excitedly.
‘No, we will be here now for a few days,’ I said. ‘Need to earn some money to get us through the holidays, you know?’
‘Ah, yes,’ Angela said, suddenly digging around in her handbag. ‘Oh where is it? I’ve been carrying this around for a fortnight, hoping to see you. Aaah, here we go,’ she said, producing a white envelope.
It was a Christmas card.
‘Oh, thanks a lot,’ I said, immediately feeling guilty again that I didn’t have one for her.
‘I put in a little something to help you through Christmas. I know it’s a hard time of the year.’
‘Angela, that’s really thoughtful.’
I was dying to open it, but fought the urge to do so in front of her. She kneeled down and stroked Bob for a while as we chatted. She stayed with us for at least ten minutes.
My curiosity got the better of me almost as soon as she walked away. I opened the envelope and saw there was £40 in there. I felt a strange mix of gratitude and relief. I couldn’t quite believe that someone had been so generous.
‘Up we go, Bob,’ I said, treating him to a snack, a broad smile on my face. He stood on his hind legs immediately, drawing the usual ooohs and aaaahs from the thickening crowd outside the Tube station. There was even a flurry of flashes from people’s camera phones. We had often created this kind of atmosphere during the summer but it was rare at this time of the year. It felt good to be back in the limelight. It felt good to be making some money too.
I’d barely put the money from Angela safely inside my coat when another regular visitor appeared.
‘Aha, the dynamic duo. You’ve ventured out to see us before Christmas,’ she said.
She too produced a card. ‘Nothing much, but I just wanted to show you that I am thinking of you at this time of the year.’
By now I was feeling quite emotional about this seemingly spontaneous outpouring of kindness.
‘Gosh, everyone is so kind. I can’t believe how many people are giving me cards today,’ I said to the lady after seeing that her card contained another £10.
‘That’s what Christmas is all about, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Showing kindness to each other, especially those who are less fortunate than us.’
In the space of the next two hours I received another half-dozen cards. One contained a voucher for Marks & Spencer, which was lovely. I’d never have been able to afford their food in ordinary circumstances. Three of the others contained money. Every time I opened a card and found a fiver or a tenner inside, my spirits soared. But it wasn’t just the money that touched me; some of the messages inside the cards almost reduced me to tears.
It was soon clear that a lot of people had been planning on giving us cards in our absence. By early evening I reckoned I’d accumulated close to £100. I was ecstatic. It felt like a minor miracle. And it hadn’t happened on 34th Street, or wherever that Hollywood movie about Father Christmas had been set. It had happened here on Upper Street.
All the worries of earlier in the day suddenly dissipated. I’d even forgotten about the throbbing pain from my fall. My mind was already flying ahead in time, wondering what delicious treat I was going to buy in Marks & Spencer when I spent the voucher.
‘Isn’t life strange,’ I said to myself. ‘Twenty-four hours ago I was convinced we’d have to check into a shelter or go to a food bank for Christmas dinner. Now I’m fantasising over sticky toffee pudding.’
I didn’t want to keep Bob out in the cold any longer than necessary, but I hung around for an extra half an hour so that regulars who tended to arrive home from work a little later could see us. It was crazy really, but a small part of me now felt guilty that I’d denied people the chance to wish us both a Merry Christmas. It was clear that a lot of people had been disappointed not to see us lately. I didn’t want to disappoint them again.
Sure enough, a handful of others came over, as delighted as everyone else to see that we were alive and well.
‘Someone told me you’d moved away from London,’ one guy said.
Another lady said she’d heard I was very ill. It felt like some kind of homecoming. We were being welcomed like returning heroes, almost. The temperature was approaching zero again, but it warmed the cockles of my heart.
Bob and I eventually got away about 7.30 p.m.
So much had happened that I’d forgotten about my disfigured Oyster card. As I climbed on the bus I tried to shape it back into some semblance of normality but almost succeeded in snapping it in half.
Some bus drivers wouldn’t have allowed me to travel with the card in that state, but fortunately the driver this evening was a decent soul.
‘Give it here,’ he said, when I tried unsuccessfully to scan the card on the reader.
After a few moments manipulating the card carefully, he got it straight again. To my amazement it made the usual ping sound when he ran it along the reader.
‘There you go,’ he said with a smile.
‘Cheers, mate, you’re a saviour,’ I said.
The bus journey was slow again, but I didn’t care. My mind was working overtime as all sorts of thoughts raced through my head. I felt elated. But I also felt touched beyond belief. I’d known we were popular at Angel, but I didn’t realise that we were held in quite such deep affection. There was no other way of putting it: we were loved. And that made me feel quite emotional.
I also felt incredibly blessed.
As I looked out at the rows of houses with their bright Christmas decorations lit up in the windows, I realised how lucky I was. Yes, I’d had a rough life and suffered a lot of setbacks, many of them self-inflicted. But throughout, one thing had been consistent. I’d been the beneficiary of so much kindness, often from completely random people, from care workers to drug counsellors, outreach workers to ordinary people who took the time to talk to me when I was on the street. London had such a bad reputation but its streets were filled with good souls. The man driving my bus at this precise moment was another. There were so many of them. On their own, their acts of kindness didn’t amount to much. Taken together, they had probably saved my life.
What had happened today outside Angel was a prime example of this. I thought about all those people coming up to me and giving me cards and money. None of them needed to do it. They’d done so out of the goodness of their hearts, they’d done so in the spirit of Christmas. That mysterious, magical thing that had previously eluded me. I was so grateful.
That gave way to another thought, however. I felt bad that I’d not really shown my gratitude
properly. Not just today, not ever. When I was younger that had been a little more understandable. I hadn’t been in a fit state to do so. I was usually either too angry or too high to even say a proper thank you. But that was another time, almost another me. I was a different person now. Now I had no excuse, now I could say thank you. And it was the perfect time of the year to do so. As I sat there on the bus, I made a resolution. I had an opportunity and I was going to take it. It felt like a small epiphany.
On the way back to the flat I called in at the convenience store and topped up both the electricity and the gas. I put £80 on, £40 on each. It was enough to get me through Christmas and beyond, I felt sure. I couldn’t help shaking my head at the changes that had come over me. A few years ago there would have been no way I’d have done anything as sensible as this. I’d have blown that money on drugs. But now I had a different perspective on life. I also had someone else to care for.
Bob was standing patiently on my shoulder, but I could tell he was tired and cold. I was looking forward to warming the flat up so that he could thoroughly thaw out by the radiator.
I picked up a pint of milk and a snack for Bob and put them on the counter.
‘Is that all?’ the guy next to the till asked.
‘Oh. No, hold on,’ I said, suddenly remembering the resolution I’d made on the bus.
I headed over to the small stationery section in the store. It didn’t have a great selection of Christmas cards. I guessed that most people had bought their cards weeks ago. Eventually, however, I found a stack of boxed collections of cards, each with simple seasonal messages on them. There were six boxes in the stack, each containing a dozen cards. I took two.
‘You have a lot of friends,’ the guy behind the counter said as he rang the boxes up on the till.
It was an innocent enough comment, he was only trying to make polite conversation, but it made me think.
‘Actually, you’re right. I do,’ I said smiling.
I ran over to the stack of Christmas cards and grabbed the other four boxes.
‘I’ll take these as well,’ I said.
Chapter 5
Smiley Faces
The Arctic weather was making all the news again. When I flicked the television on the next morning, the breakfast bulletin was claiming it was the coldest winter in exactly a century, since 1910. The programme was full of dramatic stories of people’s troubles in the past twenty-four hours. Cars and lorries had been trapped in giant snowdrifts, flights had been cancelled, shopping centres and motorways were being forced to close. According to one bulletin from Heathrow, there had been fist fights as distraught travellers realised they were stranded in London, possibly over the Christmas holiday. Someone called it the Christmas from hell. A day ago, I could have related to that. Yesterday, however, had been a heavenly release from my worries.
I wasn’t entirely out of the woods. I wanted to get Belle and Bob some half-decent presents and needed a little bit of spare cash to cover contingencies during the holiday. I also wanted to top up my phone so that I could try to call my dad on Christmas Day. Most of all, however, I wanted to get to Angel today. I had something I needed to do.
I gave Bob his breakfast and made myself a bowl of hot cereal.
‘Central heating for kids, the adverts call it. Let’s see if it works for thirty-one-year-old kids, shall we, Bob?’ I said, as I spooned the bowl down.
The television was still broadcasting weather news. When one of the meteorologists began predicting even more atrocious weather with lots of temperatures below minus ten degrees centigrade later this week, I decided I’d heard enough.
‘Let’s go, Bob. The sooner we get out there, the sooner we get home again.’
The landscape was still as white as it had been yesterday, but at least London seemed to be moving again. The roads had been cleared pretty well so the bus journey was a million times better than the previous day.
When we got to Angel, I laid out our pitch as normal, with one exception. I had four boxes of Christmas cards with me. I had spent the previous night writing messages in about half of them. I’d gone to bed with a sore arm to go with my sore backside. The rest remained blank, although it didn’t take long for that to change.
As had happened yesterday, a lot of people reacted to us as if they were being reunited with long-lost relatives.
‘Ah, that’s cheered me up seeing you two back,’ said one regular, a young girl called Bernadette who worked in some offices not far from the Tube station.
As she kneeled down to stroke Bob, I took a blank card out of one of the boxes and started scribbling:
To Bernadette, have a great Xmas, luv James and Bob.
I then drew a heart shape under my name and a smiley face with whiskers and pointy cat’s ears under Bob’s. She seemed genuinely touched when I gave it to her.
‘Oh that’s absolutely lovely,’ she said, holding her hand to her face as if she was going to shed a tear.
‘I do love seeing you two, you know. It really does make my day. Especially when I’ve had a belly full of that lot in there,’ she said, pointing at her office block.
‘It’s our pleasure, honestly,’ I said. ‘Have a great Christmas.’
‘You too,’ she said.
As I watched her walk off I kneeled down and gave Bob an affectionate stroke.
‘There goes one happy customer, mate,’ I said. ‘Let’s see how many more smiles we can put on people’s faces today.’
I had decided that I was going to give a card to everyone who bought a Big Issue today, regardless of whether they were a regular customer or not. I had two boxes of blank ones to make out personally to regulars whose names I knew. The other two boxes contained the ready-signed ones that I would give to everyone else we saw today.
One or two people looked a bit perplexed at being handed a Christmas card by a Big Issue vendor. One young guy who bought the magazine off me looked at it as if he’d been given a letter sacking him from his job. I was pretty sure that he would dispose of it in the first dustbin he found. I didn’t mind. I’d made the gesture and that was more than enough for me.
A few people came along having seen me the previous day with cards of their own.
‘I saw you here last night but didn’t have this with me,’ one regular, Mary, said, producing a large blue envelope with James and Bobby written on the cover. I had no idea why she had renamed him, but I didn’t mind.
‘Thanks, Mary,’ I said. ‘Talk to Bob, er, I mean Bobby, for a second will you, I’ve got something for you.’
Her face lit up when she saw the personalised message.
‘Now that is getting pride of place on my mantelpiece this Christmas,’ she said.
Another lady, a rather quiet and timid soul who often stopped just to admire Bob, arrived clutching not just a card but a little present as well.
‘It’s just a little catnip mouse for Bob,’ she said.
‘Oh, that’s very kind of you, he will enjoy that,’ I said.
She seemed chattier than normal and stopped for a couple of minutes.
‘So what are you two doing for Christmas?’ she asked.
‘Nothing much, just the two of us in front of the telly eating something nice, I hope.’
‘Sounds lovely,’ she said.
‘Not much compared to the big day that other people have.’
‘Yes, but you will probably be a lot more content than a lot of those people. You are spending the day with someone who makes you happy and who won’t argue with you, so I’ve got a feeling there will probably be more love in your living room than theirs.’
It caught me off guard a little. I’d never thought of us in those terms, but it set me thinking. When I looked at all the people rushing past us each day, I often wondered what sort of lives they led, what sort of homes they were heading back to each evening. To judge by the expression on some of their faces, I felt sure a lot of them were leading pretty empty, unhappy existences. They looked completely stre
ssed out. She was probably right. Their homes might be bigger and contain a lot more material possessions than mine. That wouldn’t be difficult, I had next to nothing. Yet since I’d found Bob my home had always been full of that precious commodity that, as a certain foursome once sang, money can’t buy you. Love. It was a lovely thought, one that stayed with me for most of the day.
I had brought fifty cards with me. I was soon panicking that it wasn’t enough. Nothing could detract from the happiness I was feeling, however. The amount of money I was earning had suddenly become a minor consideration. I was having a great time handing out cards, enjoying people’s reactions. I was too busy having a good time to analyse what it all meant. Someone else did that for me, as it turned out.
As the afternoon turned into early evening I was aware of a guy handing out leaflets near me. He was smartly dressed, in a grey suit and a dark blue tie. He wasn’t pushy or noisy. In fact he seemed a very gentle soul. He would quietly extend his hand in front of people as they approached then nod and mouth ‘Thank you’ if they acknowledged him. One or two people had engaged him in a chat. It all seemed very friendly, which was a pleasant change, especially after my confrontation with the chugger a couple of nights earlier. We’d exchanged glances a couple of times during the first hour or so he’d been there.
It was coming up to the busiest time of the day, rush hour, but, in a lull in activity around the Tube station, he came over.
‘My, that’s a lovely cat you have there, my friend,’ he said. ‘Hope you don’t mind me coming over and saying hello to him. What’s his name?’
‘Bob.’
‘Bob,’ he said, dropping to his knees. ‘Would Bob mind if I stroked him?’
‘No, go ahead, just make sure you stroke him on the back of the neck.’
‘Sure,’ he said.
He had an accent I couldn’t quite place. There were hints of American in it, but there was something else there as well.