One For The Rude

In an affluent London village, a man of no fixed abode has been caught sleeping at Lloyds bank on the high street.
He got away with it for a while but was finally apprehended by police on Friday, following a swarm of complaints concerning his presence in the cash-dispensing lobby of the bank.
At night, people using the cash machines described their ordeal as uncomfortable. In the morning, staff were angry that they had to clean up after him, although he never left any mess.
I’d often see him strolling around the village in the mornings but we’d never spoken to one another.
He’d buy a tinny or two and sit on a bench watching the world go by as beady-eyed residents monitored his whereabouts.
On Saturday, I was having a bet and thinking about what had come of his arrest when he came bowling in to the betting shop at the bottom of the hill with a lady friend.
It was a hot day but he still had on his black leather jacket, a thick black jumper and black trousers, carrying a holdall and a shoulder bag.
His friend looked like a decent sort. Maybe she’d taken him on as a rescue-operation. Maybe she was his sister. I didn’t know.
They sat perched on the screw-in stools together, near to where I was standing.
‘Jan Vermeer’s gone into five-to-two,’ he said, cranking his head round to me. ‘Do you reckon it’s worth it?’
The Epsom Derby was at the post.
‘It is if it comes in,’ I said, as a wave of stale lager hit my nasal passage.
Up until then, I’d really wanted to talk to this man about why he hung around the village when clearly the residents despised him. The way they talked about him, you could safely say that some even wished him dead.
The well-off folk were much more interested in propping up house prices than people. Keeping up appearances was essential, as was churchgoing.
Perhaps, in a biblical sense, undesirables were an eyesore in the village and were therefore cast out.
But what did that say about them, and what was this man trying to prove? Why couldn’t he just leave them to it and stay away? Surely he knew how impenetrable it was. He could teach these people nothing, so why bother trying?
Had he lived there as a child or during a relationship? Did he see the village as an asexual version of Sodom?
Why was he homeless and what had made him so angry? Did he want to do something about it or was he destined to join the infamous man who’d taken to living in a tree-house at the bottom of his garden, drinking to excess, and now banished from the village for the rest of his life? He was only renting, after all.
I was curious, too, because I am effectively homeless, albeit in a hostel.
Staring at another stretch of rehab and sobriety after a dozen years back on the sauce, but this time with two amazing daughters to work and strive for, it’s an imminent and necessary passage of time. I’m doomed without it.
The moment I smelt the man’s breath and saw the anger in his eyes, I knew this wasn’t the right time to get to know him.
It was through fear, or a sense of guarded self-protection, that I lost interest. I couldn’t afford to be associated with him, most probably because I knew I wasn’t far behind.
His swimming pools of eyes were crystal blue (even the booze couldn’t dull their incredible depth of colour), but the whites bled into a fragmented red and were encased inside the carved, blackened rims of a restless man.
I looked into his face to see myself but I couldn’t. I felt grateful.
We heard a loud banging noise and saw the mob baying for the death of a machine in the corner of the room.
‘Show me a bad loser and I’ll show you a loser,’ I said, trying to see the funny side.
But he was having none of it. ‘They’re fuckin’ arseholes, mate,’ he replied with crinkled, bloodless lips.
There were about eight of them, probably cash-builders working for rich English homeowners or just plain criminals.
I went to place a bet to diffuse myself but he followed me to the till. His friend had already left.
‘I’m not staying ‘ere with those wankers around!’ he shouted. ‘They’re fuckin’ scum!’
All afternoon, the East Europeans had been busy smashing and kicking the roulette machines after losing.
A lot of the old boys had come and gone, appalled by their behaviour and amazed that staff let them get away with it.
Dragging himself and his bags out, he left shouting and waving at the mob as he went. The mob at the machines laughed and spat at him. One said that he wasn’t even worth killing and the others quietened down.
In the old days, I’d have left with him and gone for a drink, had a laugh and shared some scandals. These days, I generally keep myself to myself.
Besides, I have nothing against foreigners. It’s the government’s fault for letting too many in.
After the race, I went outside to take a call from my sister, who told me she’d had a bad dream the night before.
She was fearful, because in the dream I’d been hit over the head and my eyes were dangling out of their sockets.
‘Where are you living at the moment, Rick?’ she asked.
‘At a hostel.’
‘You need to get out of there. Have you been getting in trouble? The dream was in a pub or somewhere.’ Her voice was strained and it sounded like she was shaking with worry.
I’d never received a call like this from her before.
‘I’m not in any trouble, Luce, but I have been mouthing off about politics in some quite nasty places.’ I said. (It’s no secret that I hold strong beliefs, which I give out when drunk in certain pubs, that the present system of government is corrupt from top to bottom and that Parliament needs to be scrapped.)
‘You mustn’t do that, Rick. Just stay out of pubs. Fergus and I are really worried about you.’
‘I’m going to rehab soon but I know what you mean.’
I told her I was fine and not to worry, then I went to the pub, not to drink to excess but to play the fruit-machines, which is what I do when I’ve got a trickle of money left over from paying the maintenance. I’ve been hooked on gambling since I was seven.
I had a pint and won, then I went to another pub, bought a pint and lost, and then I had another pint and lost the lot.
When I got back to the hostel, I bumped into a female resident in the lift who told me she’d been mulling over suicide the last few days.
‘I know it’s the drink,’ she said, looking down in shame. Her eyes were drawn on a sheet of pinched facial skin. ‘It’s killing me. I’ve been sleeping on the streets the last week.’
‘Why do that when you’ve got a room here?’ I asked.
‘I’ve been getting so drunk that I can’t even walk back. I just sleep wherever I am. I’m going to see my doctor tomorrow.’
‘Are you going to ask for help?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, I’ve got to.’
Personally, I don’t know which of us will die first but it’s bound to be the one who doesn’t get sober.
The next morning, I bumped into another drinker/resident who takes his food to a homeless guy currently residing in a car park down the road.
‘There’s this funny noise there, bruv,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how he stands it. It’s a really high-pitched zinging noise. Drives me mad.’
‘It’s to stop people sleeping there. Came out last year. The inventor made a mint,’ I said. ‘Did he eat the sausages?’
The sausages are a bit of a joke here, because they taste like salty cardboard and look like a shrivelled elephant’s penis. No one eats them if they can help it.
‘Yeah, he said they tasted like chicken but I’m sure I got him the pork ones.’
‘I can’t tell the difference.’
‘It’s the water I’m worried about,’ he said, going back to his room.
‘Don’t drink it, then.’
There’s an understandably high level of paranoia at the hostel; the longer you’re here, the more you see how wrong it all is. It’s wrong for a reason, of course, which is why the guy in the car park elects to live alone with the noise rather than being brainwashed.
It’s society’s greatest sin, but undeniably true, that the homeless and vulnerably housed, those closest to the mouth of the abyss, are the very same people almost entirely responsible for keeping house prices buoyant in this country.
I think we should be given a pat on the back for that, don’t you? If it wasn’t for us (and all the workers, students and asylum seekers from overseas), those with second homes would never have been to achieve the extortionate rent they charge. So, bravo, homeless people and foreigners! Welcome to the false economy.
If the homeless were allocated lodgings, demand for housing would reduce to a bare minimum. With supply met, prices would decline to a natural level accordingly.
But how could Joe Bloggs (with a mortgage, little equity and no or little provision for a pension) be prepared for any such ‘adjustment’? Would he be forced to accept that homelessness needs to continue at its current level in a vain attempt to justify the price of his property? How bad is that?
As it has stood for well over a century, the government feed off the rich and tax the many to the hilt. Conversely, the rich return the favour by feeding off the many and not the government. The middle-classes (uncomfortable as part of the many) scrabble and scurry through life to make ends meet while the poor and the homeless bumble along until the final hit over the head knocks them into the next life.