Street Song

by Wilkinson, Sheena;

  I sat until my tea went cold and the waitress gave me the kind of unfriendly look I was getting used to. Then I picked up my bag and guitar and moved on.

  51

  ‘Hello? Sir? Can you hear me?’

  I poked my head out of my sleeping bag.

  It was a girl wearing a fluorescent tabard. Behind her was a guy about my age.

  ‘We’re from Homeless SOS,’ she said. ‘Sorry to disturb you. Would you like some hot soup?’

  ‘Or a sandwich?’ the guy asked, like I was in a restaurant.

  I shook my head. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’

  ‘Honestly, there’s help available,’ the guy said. ‘Nobody has to be on the streets.’

  ‘I’m not on the streets,’ I said. ‘I’m a travelling musician.’ I tried to remember what Toni had called me. A trouba-something, but I couldn’t. I stuttered out a few attempts at the word and abandoned it.

  ‘There’s a lot of danger associated with rough sleeping,’ the guy went on. ‘But there are services for homeless people. There aren’t any hostel beds tonight, but tomorrow – you can get advice and help with any issues that might be contributing to your situation.’

  ‘Alcohol,’ suggested the girl. ‘Or drug addiction.’

  The guy handed me a card. ‘Here’s our contact details,’ he said. ‘There’s an address on the back – there’s a drop-in centre there.’

  They left in a white van and when I woke in the morning there was no sign of the leaflet. Maybe I dreamed it. I was having trouble working out what was real and what wasn’t.

  The hours stopped joining up. I couldn’t keep thoughts in my head for long. I tried to sing but it hurt to breathe. And I made hardly any money even at the best busking spots. It seemed like the more you needed it, the less likely people were to give it to you.

  * * *

  Shopping centre toilet. Stripped to the waist, washing my armpits. Cold. Looking forward to being clean. Hating the smell of myself. Hard squeezing out the soap from the dispenser. My fingers slid off the lever. A fat kid came in with his dad and screamed.

  ‘This isn’t a public washhouse,’ the dad said. ‘Come on, son.’ He pulled the kid’s arm.

  ‘I’m wetting myself!’ the kid wailed.

  ‘We’ll go in the disabled,’ the dad said.

  * * *

  A girl sang ‘Oh Holy Night’ in the arcade. She had a backing track. She got loads of money.

  * * *

  There was a wall between me and normal people. I’d always been on the other side of it before.

  You’re nothing.

  * * *

  Dizzy. Enough money for a Burger King meal. I queued up in the one opposite the City Hall. I ordered my meal and sat in a corner where nobody would look at me. I unwrapped it. The smell of salt and fat made my stomach fizz. I chewed on a chip for ages. It wouldn’t go down. I drank the Coke, all of it, even when the ice cubes melted into watery slush, but every time I tried to swallow the food I gagged. I wrapped it all up and shoved it into the bin and went back outside. Probably I’d regret it later, but that was nothing new.

  * * *

  I hit down on the strings hard and one of them twanged into my eye. I cradled my guitar. It was useless with five strings but if I put it down I didn’t know what I would be.

  I remembered the girl in the fluorescent tabard. Had I dreamed her? There are services for homeless people. But that’d be saying I actually was homeless. Which would be ridiculous. I just had to get through this rough patch.

  My guitar was too heavy. I had to set it down. As I bent over to put it in its case a fit of coughing seized me so suddenly I crashed to my knees. My guitar broke my fall with a sickening crack and a jangle of strings.

  Street level. Ugg boots and men’s shoes. Jeans and woolly tights. Someone sidestepped. Tutted. I could just keel over now. Give up. Someone would have to do something. Take me to hospital. Take over.

  But there’d be questions and forms. Maybe Ricky would come. Maybe Mum from Spain. To see how badly I’d messed up.

  I fought hard to breathe. And after a bit the coughing stopped and I could sit up, leaning against the shop wall. The lights round the City Hall sparked in my eyes. I didn’t try standing. I was scared to look closely at my guitar. I stuffed it into the case and clicked the clips shut.

  Two girls in uniforms like Toni and Marysia’s walked towards me. One of them was Jess, her mane of hair flowing down the back of her school blazer.

  I opened my mouth to call to her, to tell her – I don’t know what. Then closed it again. She hadn’t recognised me.

  Her friend pulled her arm. Jess rummaged in her bag and threw a couple of coins on top of the guitar case. As soon as they’d gone past I looked and it was two two-pound coins. I couldn’t believe I’d got to the point of being pleased by earning four pounds.

  Except I hadn’t earned it. I hadn’t been playing. Which meant I’d been begging. Not deliberately, but that’s what it amounted to. Someone had given me money because I was down and out. Because I was nothing.

  52

  I stayed leaning against the shopfront and watched the two girls go down the street. The pavements were starting to glitter with frost. And I knew, with a clarity I hadn’t felt in a while, that I had to do something. I couldn’t face another night outside. Maybe I’d have gone to the drop-in centre if I’d known where to go. Maybe not.

  Drop in. Drop out.

  Ricky used to call me a drop-out.

  You’re nothing.

  But if I could get through the next few days, surely things would get better? Things seemed worse because I was sick – it wasn’t just a cold, it was some kind of flu thing, and being outside all the time wasn’t helping it. But it wouldn’t kill me. I could buy some paracetamol with my four quid. If I could just go and sit it out somewhere.

  I knew where.

  53

  It took me a while to find the right garden, walking along the back entry beside the railway line – we’d always gone through the house before. I kept having to stop to cough, but at last I was pushing open the shed door. I’d expected it to be locked; I’d been prepared to break in, but the padlock hung open from the lock.

  Inside it was warmer than the street. I fell over something and risked putting on the light. Maybe they’d see it from the house. Maybe I sort of wanted them to.

  I set my stuff down in a corner. I didn’t open my guitar case to see the damage. I felt like I could never open it again.

  What I’d tripped over was Marysia’s practice amp. What was it doing out here? Marysia was always so careful with her equipment. And on the windowsill was a pile of stuff that had never been there before – a jumble of guitar strings and picks and a couple of leads. And the programme for the Backlash final. I picked it up and then set it down again without reading it. In the middle of the pile was the shell. Still perfect, cool in my hand, filmed with condensation from the damp air. I picked it up, rubbed it dry then set it back. I remembered Toni wrenching it off her neck; Marysia bending down to pick it up from the street outside the Ulster Hall.

  It looked like Marysia had stashed all this stuff in here because she couldn’t bear to look at it. I knew how she felt.

  And beside it was the bottle of Polish vodka. I lifted it, wiped condensation from its red-and-white label. The cold smoothness of the bottle reminded me of the night I’d taken a nip of it in here. I remembered how the vodka had burnt its comforting way down through me. The night when things had seemed so hopeless after a miserable day. The night I’d had friends to help me out, and a clean room in the Crossroads to go back to, and the prospect of going to the seaside with Toni the next day.

  The night before I’d messed it all up.

  And every time I’d made a mess of things I’d always made it worse by getting off my head. I set the bottle carefully back on the windowsill.

  I unfolded the garden lounger Marysia and Toni always sat in, and unrolled my sleeping bag. It felt dampish
and it didn’t smell great. There was a spare cushion on the old deckchair too, and a pile of dust sheets beside the paint pots on the shelf. It was pretty makeshift but it was a hundred times better than a doorway. I took out the bottle of water I’d bought on my way here, and the packet of paracetamol. I took two because that was what it said to take. They were hard to swallow.

  And then the coughing started again, worse than before, wracking me, choking me.

  For the first time I thought it probably wasn’t going to be grand.

  54

  Someone was saying my name.

  ‘Cal?’

  It must be a dream. I was in Joe’s and Shania was knocking at my door.

  Someone was touching my shoulder. Gently at first then shaking me.

  ‘Cal?’

  Somewhere in the mix of damp and stale body odour, a scent of roses and something sharp. Toni.

  Definitely a dream, then. I didn’t move. Didn’t want to wake up and lose her, like I had so many times. I breathed in her scent but next second the cough gripped me. I struggled to sit up because it was worse when I lay down, and through the horrible burst of coughing I could see that it was her, the real Toni, not a dream.

  ‘Oh God, Cal, what are you doing here?’ she said. ‘What happened you? You’re freezing. Here.’ She pulled off her thick duffle coat and put it round me. She didn’t take her arm away and I let myself relax into her when the coughing stopped, let myself enjoy the feeling that she was holding me even if it was just the way you’d comfort a sick child.

  She touched my forehead with her cool fingertips. ‘You’re burning up.’

  ‘It’s just a bad cold.’ I closed my eyes and breathed in her scent. ‘What are you doing here? Is it – a rehearsal?’

  She gave a brief unamused laugh. ‘Nothing to rehearse for.’ Then she said, ‘Actually, I came for this.’ And she reached up to the windowsill and lifted down the shell.

  We both looked at it in her hand, small and perfect.

  ‘It’s – I’m being stupid,’ she said. ‘But I was getting ready to go to Oxford and – well, it didn’t seem right not to take it. I remembered Marysia had it. She’s away this weekend but I knew she’d left it here and so I decided to come and get it.’

  ‘I hope – it brings you luck.’

  ‘Have you been staying here?’ Toni asked, as if she couldn’t believe it. She looked round at the dusty, grubby space, my backpack, the bashed guitar case. I saw her eyes light on the vodka bottle.

  ‘I didn’t drink it,’ I said. ‘I’m stone-cold sober.’ And I tried to laugh, but she didn’t join in.

  ‘Sleeping here?’ she asked.

  ‘I sort of ran out of options.’

  ‘But you were at that guy’s – Joe’s?’

  ‘No.’ I started trying to explain why, but it brought on the cough again, worse than ever, jackknifing my body, ripping me apart. I saw fear in Toni’s eyes, and I remembered her once telling me she was squeamish. Remind me not to get sick, I’d said, and it had all been a joke. I tried to tell her it was OK, it was just a cough, I’d be OK in a minute, but the more I tried to speak the more it wracked me. Finally I coughed up a lot of green gunk that spattered over my sleeping bag.

  And then I pretty much just wanted to die.

  I didn’t though. I started being able to breathe better and experience a few feelings. Mostly mortification.

  ‘Sorry,’ I rasped, trying not to look at the mess, trying not to look at Toni’s face. She stroked my hair back from my forehead and I remembered doing exactly the same for Shania. Though Shania’s hair had been clean. Where was she now? Was she OK?

  ‘I’ve got Mum’s car outside,’ Toni said. ‘I’m taking you to hospital.’

  55

  The doctor took us into a cubicle and pulled the curtains. I could see what she was thinking: that Toni and I looked wrong together. I looked and smelled like a down-and-out, and Toni was obviously a nice middle-class girl.

  ‘Now, the nurse is concerned about your breathing,’ she said. ‘And your temperature’s very high. Let’s have a listen to that chest. Sit up on the bed for me. Take off your coat.’ She was middle-aged, bossy and kind. She reminded me of Queen Jane.

  She listened to my chest and lungs, her stethoscope cold on my skin. My breathing was harsh and loud in the small space. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘You’ve a nasty infection there. A touch of pneumonia.’

  ‘So much for a bad cold,’ Toni said.

  The doctor went on, ‘Have you had a drink today, Cal?’

  I shook my head. I don’t know why she had to ask that – but then again, it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption.

  ‘Have you been sleeping rough?’ She said this as if it wasn’t a big deal, as if she saw people in this state all the time – maybe she did.

  ‘Few nights.’

  ‘Where?’ Toni asked, her voice a hoarse whisper.

  I shrugged. ‘Just – wherever. A doorway.’

  She bit her lip. ‘No! I can’t believe—’ She took my hand and I thought of how often I’d wanted to take hers. But this didn’t mean anything; it was just pity, just like me looking after Shania. Even so, I couldn’t help gripping hers quite hard.

  ‘Well, you’ll be in a nice warm hospital bed for the next few nights,’ the doctor said. I could feel her looking at us, at our joined hands, mine grubby, Toni’s clean, and wondering. ‘You’ll go up to the ward as soon as we can get a bed sorted out. For now, we’re going to get some antibiotics into you, and some fluids. You’re severely dehydrated. When’s the last time you had something to eat?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘And is there anything else I should know about? Any HIV? Drug use?’

  ‘No!’ I bent over to cough. ‘I haven’t taken anything,’ I said when I could talk again. ‘Not for months. I promise.’

  ‘Well, you rest now.’ She looked at Toni. ‘You can stay if you want. Get him to drink some water. A nurse will be in soon.’

  When she had gone, pulling the curtains behind her, Toni filled a glass with water and held it out to me. It reminded me of Joe the first night I’d met him. ‘Take it slowly,’ she said. It felt wonderful. I lay back against the cool pillow, eyes shut. For now, it was enough to be here, with Toni holding my hand again as if, maybe, I wasn’t that disgusting.

  ‘Why didn’t you come to us? Me or Marysia? You know we’d have helped! Christ, Cal, I can’t bear to think you were on the streets.’

  ‘I was too – ashamed.’

  She didn’t say anything for a long time. I kept my eyes shut and willed her just to stay there, not to let go of my hand. But something pushed at the edge of my memory. Something that had made me feel good, but was now starting to worry me. I sensed a restlessness in her, as if the Florence Nightingale act was starting to lose its novelty, and when I heard her mouth open I knew she was going to say she had to go.

  But she didn’t. She said, quietly, ‘What was the worst thing?’

  ‘The loneliness,’ I said without even having to think about it. ‘It was really fucking lonely.’

  And then I remembered. I snapped my eyes open. ‘Your interview!’ I said. ‘You said’ – I tried to remember through the feverish fog – ‘you were getting ready to go to Oxford. When?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tonight. But it’s OK,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I even want to go. And maybe they’ll let me reschedule or something. Or maybe I’ll just forget about it. It was more Mum’s dream than mine …’

  ‘You went to the shed to get the shell?’

  ‘Well, yeah, but …’ She sounded embarrassed, like she’d been caught out in some great foolishness.

  ‘You went to all that bother for something you say doesn’t matter to you? Toni! Are you sure you’re not only saying this in case you fail?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ I pulled myself up on the trolley, trying not to start coughing. ‘What time’s your
flight?’

  ‘Half eight, but I don’t have to—’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘But I’d feel so guilty leaving—’

  ‘I’m grand here.’

  ‘You’re not grand! What would have happened if I hadn’t found you? You were on the streets, Cal. You could have died.’

  I looked up at the clock. It was nearly half six. ‘I’m not wrecking another dream on you,’ I whispered.

  It was the first time either of us had even hinted at Backlash. Toni looked at me with shock, and then puzzlement, and then something I couldn’t read.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘When I let you down last week I had a reason – a really good reason.’ I wanted to explain but I was so tired, and I was coughing every couple of words. She had to lean in and I knew she’d be able to smell me. ‘I can’t tell you now because – oh God, it’d take too long – but part of me was glad of the excuse.’

  ‘Why?’ Her eyes were wide and puzzled. ‘You were so into it. I thought it was the only reason you were staying in Belfast?’

  ‘I was, but – it’s complicated,’ I said after a pause. ‘But Toni – don’t do the same thing. Don’t use me as your excuse. Go to Oxford. Do your best.’

  I pulled my hand away. ‘Go on,’ I said. She looked into my face then, and her eyes darkened with something I couldn’t quite read, but it was something I hadn’t seen in anyone’s eyes for a long time.

  I don’t know how easy it was for her to walk away from me. I know how hard it was to let her go. But when she turned at the door and looked back at me, I knew what that look in her eyes was.

  Respect.

  56

  I’ve always dreaded being in hospital, but compared to the streets and the shed, it was bliss. They kept coming in and apologising about how long it was taking to get me a bed, but it was warm, and dry, and there were people around. Voices and movement at the edge of my consciousness. I still felt lousy, the room coming and going round me, and my chest on fire, but they gave me something to help the cough and now that I wasn’t alone I wasn’t so scared of it. The worst thing about that time in the shed had been coughing and coughing and thinking I’d never get a breath again, and then lying in a pool of icy sweat.