No Fixed Abode

by Charlie Carroll

  'I've read about people who were so embarrassed about the state they had ended up in that they didn't want to admit it to any authorities who might be able to help them,' I said.

  'That's something outreach teams come across quite a lot, especially with people from Eastern European countries, people who've come over as migrant workers,' she replied. 'One man I met had come to London to work as a builder. He'd done well while the construction project was going, and was making enough to live and send a sizeable portion back home to his family each month. But then the project finished and he was let go. It wasn't so much that his family expected the money, it was more that he was too ashamed to admit to them that things weren't going well and he wasn't able to help them. It wasn't long before he exhausted his money, so he had to leave his flat, and rather than appeal to his family for support – in his mind, he was the one who gave support to them – he broke off contact and started living on the streets.'

  For some people, it was not possible to return to families – they might have been the problem in the first place – or there might have been significant psychological problems which meant supported housing was needed.

  'That doesn't mean that people always want to stay with us, though,' my guide said. 'Our main focus is recovery, and we do that with the offer of accommodation and support. But for those with unresolved psychological issues, coming here can be a step they don't want to take.'

  I thought of Stan, of his refusal to enter the channels available to him because, in his mind, they would only serve to limit the few enjoyments he believed he had left. His chosen style of life corroborated what my guide told me: that stepping out of society and sleeping rough could in fact lend an inimitable freedom to one's life, with no responsibilities save those base necessities which ensured survival. Stepping off the streets and into a hostel meant tackling the problems which led one into homelessness in the first place and, for many, that could be too much to bear. Recently, the staff at St Mungo's had conducted a survey amongst rough sleepers and their residents about their sense of well-being, and had discovered that some rough sleepers rated themselves as feeling better than people within hostels.

  'That's kind of understandable when you think about it,' my guide said. 'If people are in a really distressing situation, rough sleeping can be an opt-out solution, a way of leaving problems behind. Then, all you have to concentrate on are the basics: keeping warm, eating, staying safe, staying alive.'

  Keeping warm had been one of my biggest preoccupations since leaving Sennen. Eating had not, for I had a stove and mess tins and cans of beans and enough money to buy more when I needed them. But what if I did not? That – pure sustenance – was surely the fundamental difficulty of living and sleeping rough. I asked my guide how anybody coped with the problem.

  'I don't know what it's like in the rest of the country, but here in London there's soup runs, there's cafes and supermarkets which throw away unbought stock at the end of the day, there's people who will be generous and buy you a sandwich or a cup of tea. As long as you're not picky, you can find enough to sustain yourself. I'm not saying it's easy on the streets – it definitely isn't, of course – but it can be possible to survive.'

  Once the rough sleeper entered a hostel and committed to it, however, new issues arose which may have lain redundant for years: seeing the doctor, managing benefits, getting on with the person next door, looking for jobs, working at those jobs, managing rent when you got rehoused, your utilities bills, managing your life. These were things that most people took for granted. But for those who had not had to deal with them for, say, the past five years, they were complicated and they were tough to assimilate.

  'Plus, perhaps the hardest thing of all,' my guide continued, 'when you enter a hostel you are acknowledging that there's a problem, and even that you need support tackling it. There can be sometimes a "revolving door" where clients come but can't settle and end up back on the streets. Tackling your demons can be hard.'

  I looked about the reception area at the dozen clients sat there. 'But some manage it,' I said.

  'Some do manage it,' she replied, 'when they're given the chance, when others don't give up on them. We try and make St Mungo's hostels places where you can be yourself, where people will tell you you're all right, where you can get your basics, your own space, where you can settle and start to be who you want to be. I know it doesn't sound like much, but it can be the start of a transformation. You have to start small and listen – it's only from there that you can help people rebuild their lives.'

  This process of rebuilding, in terms of staying in a hostel, could take anything up to two years, and, in a Britain where many government-led initiatives focused on the quick fix, St Mungo's offered that time but also sought to move people on, rather than maintain or 'park' them.

  We took a brief tour of the hostel's ground floor – the reception, the pool table, the quiet study areas behind floor-to-ceiling glass walls – ending at the outdoor smoking area.

  'We do our best to offer support and assistance when nobody else does,' my guide said. 'Because nobody else does. It's about safety nets. If one of the four per cent of our clients who works is sacked because they didn't show up for work for three days, the last thing they need is someone else telling them they've screwed up and they've got no place here, either. How would that help? We'd try and work out what happened, what led to them not showing up, and how we could help them salvage something. Rebuilding is not easy, no matter who you are. But you cannot do it for people. The last thing we want to do is institutionalise people, make them dependent on us. Like I said to you before, our main focus is recovery, and that means ultimately leaving here and going on to lead independent lives.'

  She came to a halt and pointed towards a poster on the window which advertised cookery classes. 'See that? Pret a Manger drop off any sandwiches to us that they have left over at the end of the day. As kind and generous as that is, you can't live on sandwiches all your life. So cookery classes are all about helping people to learn or relearn the skills which will make them self-sufficient, capable. It comes down to our recovery approach – everyone should have a decent place to live, enjoy good health, have something meaningful to do, and also have satisfying relationships.'

  Two men came through the door to appear out in the smoking area. The first, Alan, was a hostel resident; the second, Matthew, was a friend who did not stay at the hostel but who came regularly to offer support and encouragement to Alan. Alan clocked me immediately.

  'What's your name?' he said. When he spoke, he leaned forward with his head but not his body, and his pupils darted with a firm focus from my left eye to my right and then back to my left again. He had dirty teeth and a dirtier cap, thin legs, and a bulge around his midriff which looked like he was concealing a football beneath his coat.

  'Charlie,' I replied, offering him my hand.

  'What do you do?'

  'I'm a writer.'

  Alan's eyes widened. 'I'm a writer, too.'

  'What are you writing?' I asked.

  'Leave him alone, Alan,' Matthew called from the seat he had taken. 'Come and have a fag with me.'

  'He's a writer, Matthew,' Alan said without turning around to look at him. 'I'm telling him about my book. He's fascinated, look.'

  Matthew leaned back and sighed. 'Go on, then.'

  'It's real crime,' Alan said, staring at me intensely. 'About the Clerkenwell murder.'

  'What's that?'

  'What's that, he asks! I'll tell you.' And he did, though with such rapidity that I found it hard to keep up. It involved a case he had intimate and personal knowledge of, and he assured me he had cracked it. 'Next month, I'm starting a computer course. Then I'll write my novel. I'll let you know when I launch it.'

  'Do,' I urged.

  'There's more I could tell you. I used to work at the Palace. I know all about what happened to Di. She ripped them all right off.'

  'Come on, Alan,' Matthew remonstrated. 'I'm here to s
ee you. We were going to talk about getting you into a new place. You don't want to live here all your life, do you?'

  'No, mate, I won't, I'm just having a chat,' Alan implored.

  'I mean, it's nice enough here.' Matthew looked at me, gestured towards the tall windows, and then turned back to face Alan. 'But you need to move on with your life.'

  'Diamond, he is,' Alan said, nodding at his friend. 'How long we known each other, Matthew?'

  'Forty years.'

  'Forty years,' Alan repeated. 'Diamond.' He shook my hand again and walked towards his friend. Matthew lit a cigarette for him. It was all part of the St Mungo's philosophy: support by whatever means, helping the client feel valued again. Alan, I thought, was lucky to have a friend like Matthew, a regular visitor who gave him personal and frequent encouragement to rebuild his life. It was a boon I suspected the staff at St Mungo's wished upon all their clients. As I left the smoking area, and St Mungo's with it, I heard Matthew say to his friend: 'Now, tell me about your computer course. That sounds good…'

  9

  It's all right, I thought as one night in the London house morphed into two and two into four and four into an entire week. I'm not paying, I'm couch-surfing. Tramps do this all the time. For as long as their friends will let them.

  I was fortunate that my friends were good friends and would have let me stay for as long as I wanted. But as much as I helped with the washing-up and did my best to keep out of their way, rising and showering in the morning long before they needed the bathroom to prepare themselves for an honourable day of work while I skulked and roamed about the city with my knapsack on and my hood up, an unerring sense of guilt pervaded. How long could a tramp take advantage of a friend's hospitality in this way before the friendship was ruined? Perhaps some waited until the last moment. I would not.

  Seven days passed, and in that time the conversational exchanges grew shorter, the novelty diminished, the cooked dinners and proffered pints at the local pub dissipated, the smell of my clothes intensified, and I knew I was risking things. One of my friends was a teacher, and when she returned home to work further hours planning and marking, the guilt I felt at taking up her couch after her long days of pursuing a profession I had dropped out of to tramp became insurmountable. She, of course, betraying the saintliness of most teachers, never said a word, but I knew full well how I would feel if some scrounging, stinking freeloader slept on my couch each night without offering to pay a penny while I worked a difficult job each day to make ends meet.

  As I left the St Mungo's hostel, I resolved that the coming night would be my last at the house, that it was time for me to learn London from the rough sleeper's perspective. I still had no clue where I might spend my nights, but less fear surrounded the prospect than it had when I walked beneath the M25. Tramping London's streets over the last seven daytimes had bred a semblance of familiarity with them, and the visit to St Mungo's had helped, too: the homeless people it took in had slept rough in London, and had survived it.

  I reflected further on St Mungo's as I walked back to Hackney. It was a far cry from Orwell's spikes of almost a hundred years ago: with their iron gates; tiny, barred windows; the ambience of, at best, a blacking warehouse and, at worst, a prison; stone cells; two bathtubs and one towel; chamber pots; a thick wedge of buttered bread and a cup of cocoa for dinner and breakfast. St Mungo's, on the other hand, was modern, it was efficient, and it was worthy. Between all the St Mungo's hostels and all the staff who worked at them, they had helped thousands off the streets and back into houses, back into work, back into life. I was about to take the opposite trajectory – out of a London house, and on to London streets.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LONDON STREETS

  1

  I walked away from the house and followed Kingsland Road south towards the river, through Shoreditch and along Bishopsgate, turning right at Monument and then heading west past St Paul's and along Fleet Street. It took hours, for I stopped every few metres to investigate alleyways and alcoves, entrances and exits: the dark spaces of Central London hidden in and amongst the thin tributaries of the city's throbbing pedestrian network. Most were too well lit, too noisy and too noticeable for the secluded anonymity I craved, and the few spots which met my vague criteria, which seemed likely, were already earmarked by the telltale signs of a mattress or sleeping bag. Almost all of the latter, I noticed, were behind wheelie-bins, enveloped by the necrotic odours of rotting litter. It was not the smell which put me off these places, but the potential for hand-to-hand turf wars.

  I joined the Strand after dark. Though it was growing late, there were few rough sleepers, outnumbered by the plethora of businessmen who clustered outside bars drinking from wine glasses and ranting into their phones, lit by the ethereal glow from the night-time Royal Courts of Justice. One homeless man begged helplessly at a junction, offering a hostile nod as I passed, and two others wandered with slow and curving footsteps, perhaps waiting for the employed to leave so they could bed down amongst the orange bin bags.

  As the road progressed towards Charing Cross and its street lighting grew stronger, the homeless increased in number – some solitary, others in pairs or groups, some with dogs, some with cardboard cups of takeaway coffee, underneath cash machines and outside restaurants, the repeated refrain 'Spare some change please' not so much a question as a needful command.

  I walked on to Trafalgar Square. What was it that made me keep coming back here? Orwell, probably. I remembered the Clergyman's Daughter scene as I waited at the pedestrian crossing for the green man to appear. Perhaps I would find my Deafie, my Mrs Bendigo and my Mr Tallboys here. Perhaps I could be their Charlie.

  It was possible: the square at night was an emaciated counterpart to the square at day, but life flickered across it with a brave appreciation for the midnight shadows and empty flagstones. A Louis Armstrong impressionist crooned over an amplified backing track to the tipsy delight of his small audience, who clapped at the close of each song with gloved hands, lo-fi approval for the lo-fi performance. Behind him, bodies lay sprawled across the small patch of lawn in front of the National Gallery's east wing. I moved softly amongst them: young American and European backpackers sharing bottles of white wine in disposable cups; kissing couples, many same-sex; one middle-aged man with his duffel coat undone to reveal a suit beneath, his eyes a revelation of heartbreak and loss. In a corner, eight rough sleepers lay in a tangle beneath a web of sleeping bags. They had their backs to everybody else and, when the crooner stopped between songs, they were the only ones who did not applaud.

  I found space beside the wall of the National Gallery's steps and settled there, untying my sleeping bag from my knapsack and shrouding myself in it, sat up with my knees to my chin and my back to the wall. I was paid no attention, and this pleased me. As the hours passed, the couples, the crooner and the backpackers slowly filtered away into the streets. The duffel coat was the last to leave, though his departure followed a haphazard trajectory which took him to the foot of Nelson's Column, around a lion, and then to the lip of one of the shallow pools, which he leaned over, using his hips as a pivot so that his feet left the ground and his face dangled over the water. I readied myself to spring should he attempt a half-hearted and ludicrous suicide in the foot of water, but he righted himself again and drifted away towards Admiralty Arch.

  Traffic diminished, and Trafalgar Square became as quiet as it perhaps ever was. Mumbles and the occasional fart percolated out from the web of sleeping bags, sometimes succeeded by an arm, leg or hooded head. I remained sat upright, and I did not sleep.

  2

  Frank was in his early fifties: gaunt, toothless, four thick black hairs sprouting from the bridge of his nose. I bought a Big Issue from him at his regular pitch in Covent Garden.

  'I've been on the streets on and off for about twenty of the last forty years. I got these headaches. I didn't know why they came and I couldn't control them. Killers, they were. And they always happened when I was
getting settled back into housing. So I would go back on the streets, and they would stop. After a while, I thought I'd got them licked, and would try getting housed. Sure enough, the moment I had myself settled in a place, the headaches would start again.'

  'Migraines?' I asked.

  'Much, much worse than that. I used to get migraines when I was a kid, so I know what they're like. These ones, though, they were damning.'

  I noticed he was speaking in the past tense, and asked if he had managed to find a cure.

  'Not a cure, but I've finally got them diagnosed. Imagine that! Forty years of the killers, and they've only just worked out what they are. Some people call them "suicide headaches". You ever heard of them?'