'I'd like to come and live here for a bit,' I said. 'Ian's already told me I can pitch up next to him.'
'Who?' one of the men said. I pointed down the tents towards Ian munching on his Pringles, but the man did not follow the direction of my finger.
'Best to leave it for now,' he said. 'We can't recruit just at the moment. But Barbara's out tomorrow. Speak to her. She'll let you know.'
I sat on the kerb beside him and we chatted sporadically. He was in his late sixties or early seventies, wore at least five different layers of clothing and a woolly hat with a wilting bobble which looked like a cat had ripped a chunk from it. His bushy eyebrows were matted with seams of congealed blood. I asked him his name, but he would not tell me. The old man did not sleep on the square, but instead spent every daylight hour sat in his camping chair handing out tiny slips of paper with www.brianhaw.tv scrawled on to them to any passer-by who showed an interest. I was given five.
I asked him if all the tents were occupied, and he admitted that he did not know. There were different groups among them, he explained: his dominion was the four tents formerly inhabited by Brian Haw, Barbara Tucker and their compatriots; the few to the left of them had been set up in order to promote global peace in general; and the rest were 'just the leftovers'.
'Leftovers of what?' I asked.
'See this?' He tapped the metal fencing behind us which skirted Parliament Square's garden. 'This fence is recent. Only last year the whole garden was filled with tents. They called it Democracy Village. But they've all been chased off, and those lot are all that's left of them.' He pointed towards Ian and the tents behind him. 'I don't speak to them.'
CHAPTER EIGHT
LONDON TENT
1
I rushed back to Dalston to beg the use of a tent for a few days. The housemates were keen festival-goers, and I was offered a splendid array to choose from. I settled on a two-man dome, the kind which pops up into a habitable shelter within seconds. It would be ideal for the streets: I did not want to spend an hour on the edge of the road locking together poles and securing groundsheets.
Marcus had made dinner, and I was offered some, along with wine. It was late by the time we finished the meal. Outside, a rainstorm as tumultuous as the previous night's beat against the windowpanes.
'Stay the night,' Marcus implored.
The temptation to do so was irresistible. A large and heavy blanket – bought in some Eastern bazaar; more a rug than a duvet – lay across the couch, a pillow was produced, and the living-room radiator turned up to maximum.
'Here.' Marcus dropped his house keys on to the table. 'Have a lie-in tomorrow. Have a shower. I've got some pasta in the fridge you can have for lunch. Let yourself out whenever you want, lock the door and post the keys back through.'
I followed his instructions to the letter, grateful once again for these kind and wonderful friends of mine.
2
I left the house late in the afternoon the next day, so late that, by the time I arrived in Parliament Square with my knapsack in my hand and the dome tent strapped to my back like a tortoiseshell, it was dark. Nobody was around. The protesters' tents were zipped shut, and the line of other tents seemed shorter than it had the day before. Worst of all, Ian's tent was gone. I wanted to see him again, not just because I had liked him, but because I wanted to prove that I had kept my word and returned. I did not doubt that many had walked along these flagstones over the last ten years, promised to come back and join the fight, and then never been seen again.
From the occasional tent I could hear voices – one laughing, another speaking low and quick, a snorer – but most were quiet, all the doors were closed, and no one sat outside them. Since there were fewer tents than before, there was space at the end of the line next to a small grey bivouac leashed to the fencing with bungee cords. I unzipped my bag, pulled out the tent, undid the clasps, and it popped up on the ground before me, complete and habitable in a second. A mild wind bounced off the slopes of canvas behind me and, with no inclination to chase my tent out on to the busy road should it be lifted and then carried by the currents, I threw my knapsack into the far end for ballast and tied the guy ropes to the fence.
A beam of torchlight fell on my hands and then travelled up to my face. From within the square's garden, a silhouetted figure appeared and approached me.
'You can't do that,' the figure said.
I was ready for this, had rehearsed my defence for precisely this eventuality. 'Yes I can,' I began. 'I was invited by one of the residents. We all have the right…'
'No, no,' he interrupted. 'I mean you can't pitch your tent at that angle. You're obstructing the entrance.' He pointed at the pavement beneath the far end of my tent. The kerb dipped down to the road, allowing vehicular access to what I could now see was a break in the fencing. 'This is where the construction workers drive in. You're not allowed to get in their way.'
I looked around me. 'So what should I do? Can I pitch on the other side?'
'What is that?' he said, shining his torch on my tent. 'Let me see. Two-man. Not so big. You can turn that around. Vertical. Not horizontal. There's enough room. You won't be in the way, then.'
He was not a large man: of average build and no more. His uniform was pristine and ironed. An epaulette bore the words 'Security Warden'. Aside from the torch, the only other object he carried was a Thermos flask. His hat looked too big for his head, and I wondered if the wind ever carried that away.
'Here,' he said, stepping through the break in the fence and taking hold of one end of my tent. I loosened the guy ropes and he pivoted it around in one thrust. 'That's good.'
'Thanks for your help,' I said. 'But why are you helping me? Shouldn't you be encouraging me to leave? You probably could have convinced me. It's my first time here.'
He laughed. 'You lot are all right,' he said, then walked back behind the fence and into the garden.
Once I had unrolled my sleeping bag and fashioned my coat into a pillow, laid out the belongings I kept in arm's reach at night (bottle of water, matches, penknife, torch), assembled my cooker and made soup in a mess tin – in short, once I had arranged my little home and then eaten dinner in it, I sat outside with a can of lager. The opening of my tent held a little porch, which the security warden had helped me face towards the fence. Here, I had a small enclosure which I could duck in and out of at my leisure.
I mostly stayed within. Those moments where I moved outside to sit with my back against the fence, I found myself flicking my head back and forth up and down the street with each loud noise. Though this was far better than my 'bedroom' on the Strand, I nevertheless felt a vulnerability on this square, camping in the glow of the Houses of Parliament and the acoustics of Big Ben. It was all too open, too noisy, too famous to offer that solace which comes when night falls and one locks the windows and doors and shuts the world out.
I kept myself out of sight of the pedestrians who passed on the far side of the road. I wanted no one to see me and, in particular, wanted no one to see me alone. That would only serve to heighten my vulnerability. Inside the tent felt safer, though that rested on an illusion: the illusion that any number of people could be in this tent. That might keep any opportunistic intruders at bay, but the illusion hung on a gossamer thread.
At eleven o'clock, I closed the doorway for the final time and crawled into my sleeping bag. The noise from the passing traffic kept me awake and frazzled. I wondered if it would ever stop, and it did not. In that dark tent, with nothing to focus on but the surging, endless roar of engines, I became acutely aware of how delicate and fragile my shelter was. It rocked and shook in the wake of each passing car, bus and lorry, and headlights seared the canvas with a flashing light show of shadow and silhouette. I began to cultivate a paranoid fantasy. How easy it would be for a car, this late at night, perhaps a drunk driver at its wheel, to momentarily lose its trajectory, climb up on to the kerb and crush us all.
3
I woke in the mor
ning to the spasms which pressed into my bladder. The urge to urinate was indomitable. Opening the tent flap, I saw the impossibility of pissing out from that or anywhere along the street, and instead relieved myself into my water bottle. I could buy another later.
Big Ben chimed eight o'clock, and I left my tent to explore my immediate surroundings in the daylight. The snorer still snored, but the few other voices I had heard the night before were now silent, and any human presence was telescoped down to one man, the old protester I had met two days before, who sat outside the same tent with his fistful of paper. He held a strip out to me as I approached; he did not seem to recognise me.
'Please visit our website. It's important that you do.'
'We met two days ago,' I said. 'I told you I wanted to stay here for a while.'
'That's right,' he nodded, recollection blooming on his gaunt face. It was cleaner than before; the congealed blood in his eyebrows had been washed away, and his stark jawline was freshly shaven.
'Good news?' I hazarded. 'Is Barbara out?'
'Not yet,' he mumbled. 'We're still waiting. Best to leave it for now. We can't recruit at the moment. But Barbara will be out tomorrow and you can speak to her.'
'Actually, I already moved in. That's my tent over there.' I pointed through the fencing at the blue pop-up on the far side.
'Oh, so you're with the homeless lot, are you?' he asked, then swivelled on his chair, and would not speak to me again.
I walked back to my tent, took my sleeping bag from inside it, rolled it into a ball and perched on it out in the open. I studied my environment. My tent sat on the southern aspect of the square, facing St Margaret's Church and, behind that, Westminster Abbey. A panoramic sweep took in the Supreme Court, HM Treasury and Cabinet Office, Big Ben, the Palace of Westminster, and then the abbey again. Ten statues peered over the fencing at me, among them Churchill, Disraeli, Abraham Lincoln, and the youngest, Nelson Mandela. Way above them all, a multitude of cameras peered down at all of us from their rooftop vantage points.
Eleven other tents, all of different colours and proportions, stretched from mine up and around the corner to the eastern aspect of the square facing Big Ben. An invisible demarcation divided them from the two large Brian Haw tents, and then another divided the Brian Haw tents from the 'Peace Box' (a mock old-fashioned Police Box) and the two tents which clustered around it. Even this tiny community had ripped itself into factions: the peace protest (centred around the 'Peace Box'), the anti-war protest (centred around Brian Haw's old tent), and the homeless settlement (centred around nothing). Due to naught but the location of my tent, I was one of the homeless, and was considered accordingly. I did not mind so much.
By midday, still no one had surfaced from my faction's tents. My eyelids hung heavily, but I kept them open with cups of black tea boiled on my miniature stove. One of the security wardens, a different man from the night before, greeted me through the fence.
'You're up early,' he said.
'It's twelve o'clock.'
'That's early for you lot.'
'Do you want a cup of tea?'
'No, thanks.' He pointed to the flask against his hip. It looked identical to the one I had seen fourteen hours before. I wondered if it was part of the uniform.
'Were you here last night?' I asked.
'I do the day-shift. Me and my partner over there. The night guys take over in the evening.'
'I met one of them last night. He was nice.'
'Why wouldn't he be?'
'I don't know. Good question. I suppose I just figured that you lot were here to keep us off the green. I heard there used to be tents there, too.'
He nodded. 'That's part of it. At first, we had a bit of trouble keeping it clear. People jumped the fence at night and tried to sneak in. But that only lasted a few weeks, and it was months ago. No one bothers any more.'
'So why are you still here?'
'Have you ever considered,' he said, fingering the metal body of his flask, 'that we might be here for your protection?'
4
With no one around to talk to but the security wardens, I wandered away from Parliament Square. At the foot of the stairs down into Charing Cross Underground, I found a large sign which read: 'It is an offence to lie down in any of these walkways or to deposit anything intended to be used as bedding. The maximum penalty is a fine of up to £500.'
I stood before it, copying the script into my journal, when Justin appeared at my shoulder.
'What are you writing that down for?' His breath was soured with alcohol and his blonde hair hung limply under the weight of grease.
'It might be useful.'
'It might be useful,' he imitated. 'Who the fuck are you? That sign's not useful to anybody.'
I placed the journal in my bag.
'I don't like you,' Justin said. 'You got any change?'
I did not like him, either. 'No,' I said.
Justin looked me hard in the eye. He edged his body forward so that his left hand almost touched my right trouser-pocket. Try it, I thought. There's nothing in there.
'I know you,' Justin said. 'Don't I? I've seen you before. I know you.'
'We've never met. I'm sure of it.'
'We've never met, but I've seen you. I've seen you around.'
Perhaps he had. He may have seen me sleeping on the Strand, but it could have been anywhere. For almost two weeks, I had trawled the homeless hotspots in London, and it was not unlikely that our paths had crossed more than once, and that he had recognised me. I had nothing to fear, no cover to be blown: I had lied to no one about my reasons for being on the streets. But his surly, half-drunk aggression left me unnerved. I did not want a confrontation down here in this enclosed space.
'That's it!' he exclaimed, poking me in the chest with his finger. 'You're the little fucker who took out Penthouse, aren't you?'
'Penthouse?' I said. The magazine?
'Yeah, you knocked him on his arse at the soup run a few weeks ago. He pissed on your shoes.'
'That wasn't me.'
'Yes it fucking was. I know you. You're a little fucking smasher.' The noun seemed ameliorative, and I smiled weakly. 'You got a touch?' he added.
'What?'
'Fuck it. Don't worry about it. I'm just after a touch, is all. What's your name again?'
'Charlie,' I said. 'What's yours?'
'Justin. Sorry about all that, Charlie, but my head's mashed at the moment.'
'No worries,' I said, wondering how to get away from him. I decided to be direct. 'I'm off. See you at the soup run.'
'Where you going?'
I had intended returning to my tent, but I did not want him to know I lived there. Who knew at what hour he might turn up, perhaps with Penthouse, demanding a touch from the little fucking smasher. 'Victoria Street.'
'Hmmm, maybe I seen you there, too. I'll come with you. My pitch is outside Carphone Warehouse.'
'Do you sell The Big Issue?'
'Fuck off, do I! Nah, I just get the change.'
We climbed the stairs, circumnavigated Trafalgar Square and walked up Victoria Street together. 'What do you claim?' Justin asked.
'Nothing,' I replied.
'Me neither. The fuckers. Won't give me shit unless I break an arm, get a dog or admit to abuse. But then they've got you right where they want you. Cunts. But I play the system, see. Been on the streets since I was seventeen, so I've never paid a fucking penny tax. They hate that. Serves them right. I should be looked after. I'm a human fucking being.'
Two Asian women in prim dress-suits passed us. Justin obstructed their passage and yelled into their faces: 'Spare some change please.' The women looked at the ground and skirted around him.
'See that?' he said. 'They're over here, they're rich as fuck, and they won't give me shit. What's going on with this country?'
'They work for their money,' I said, tired of his self-aggrandising. I half-hoped he would hit me so I would have an excuse to leave him.
'Then the
y're fucking stupid, too. Wasting their lives working. I bet they live in a cushy flat,' he rambled on, 'and I've got to sleep rough every night. Where's the justice in that? We're fucked, you and me, Charlie. Sold down the river by those cunts in government. What the fuck did we ever do to them?'
I breathed a sigh of relief as we reached Carphone Warehouse. Justin stopped and sat down, propping his back against its window.
'You can stop here for a bit, if you want,' Justin said.
'No, I've got to go.'
'Where?' His eyes narrowed suspiciously.
I considered my options, only to find my mind blank. 'There's this girl…' I stuttered.
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