People who have been on the streets for days or weeks, rather than months, smell different. It was still overpowering but it was just stale sweat, greasy hair, maybe urine. Other people’s urine, often. Guys on their way home from trendy wine bars sometimes pissed on the homeless for sport. Toma knew this. It had happened to him.
‘Thank you.’ He took the tea, made eye contact. It was important. Back in the day when he had a home, a wife, a child, people had called him handsome. He knew his large brown eyes were considered intelligent, even sexy. He wasn’t trying to flirt with this woman. That was absurd. All that had gone. Those compulsions: desire, hope, fun. Now he existed, nothing more. And he existed to get justice. He made eye contact with this woman because maybe she could help, and she was more likely to help if she could see that his eyes were not clouded with drugs or alcohol. She would judge him. This nice woman with a wet arse who gave him sweet tea. She would try not to, but it was instinctual. She would feel hopeful if the eye contact was good.
‘I’m Lexi.’
‘Toma Albu,’ he replied. ‘My authentic name.’ Few homeless people give a surname and even first names are often made up. He wanted to show her he was different.
‘So, were you waiting for me to open?’ she asked. He shrugged, unwilling to expose himself by committing so immediately. He was scared to ask for help in case she wouldn’t give it to him. In case she couldn’t. This was his last hope. If this didn’t work, he didn’t know what else he could do. Find a tall bridge over a deep river, perhaps. Because why not? What did he have to live for? ‘Have you any plans for today?’
He shook his head, tutted. She left him to drink his tea, went back inside and then, about five or ten minutes later, returned clutching some leaflets. ‘There’s a place you can go to get breakfast and a shower. It’s about a ten-minute walk. Here’s a map and the address, OK?’ She was asking if he could read the leaflet. He nodded. ‘I’ll telephone them, tell them you are on your way. Come back here afterwards and we can talk through some options.’ He slowly got to his feet, picked up his filthy, torn sleeping bag that was heavier than usual, bloated with rainwater. ‘I realise when I ask people in your position to come back to see me that there’s only a ten per cent or less chance of them doing so,’ said the woman.
‘Then why risk it? Why not talk now?’
‘We don’t open until nine thirty and you’ll concentrate better if you’ve eaten something. Besides, I’ve worked with wilder odds. I’m secretly a bit of a gambler.’ She smiled. He liked her. She was joking with him, appealing to him. Treating him as a human being.
Toma spent the morning in the hostel she had recommended. He ate the breakfast they offered and took the opportunity to launder his clothes. As he waited for his clothes to wash and dry, he showered and then – stood in a borrowed, baggy tracksuit that countless men must have worn before him – shaved. He imagined how easy it would be to use the razor to slit his wrists. He thought that maybe he’d come back to this place and do exactly that tomorrow if the woman didn’t listen to him. If someone didn’t listen to him.
He returned to the office just after midday. He looked through the glass door and saw that it was a very small place, the desks were practically on top of one another. He no longer smelt so didn’t dread being close to people as he usually did, but there would be no privacy. He waited outside until she emerged. On spotting him she said, ‘I can skip lunch if you want to come in.’
‘You shouldn’t miss lunch. I’ll walk with you to get your lunch.’
She smiled again. She was definitely the sort who was fast to break into a beam. ‘Well, that’s a strange inversion of the usual order.’
‘You mean a homeless man concerned that an office woman misses her lunch is comment-worthy?’ He was suddenly irritated by her. Couldn’t she understand that he used to be someone responsible, thoughtful, caring? Couldn’t anyone imagine that?
She grinned. ‘I mean anyone being concerned with me missing lunch is an inversion of the usual order.’ He thought she was too thin. He imagined she regularly worked through her lunch break because she seemed concerned, committed. His irritation subsided. Her boss ought not to let that happen, her husband should encourage her to look after herself as well. There was a husband, she wore a ring. He had checked. He hoped she had children too. It would help.
They walked to Boots, she bought them each a sandwich, crisps and a drink. They sat together on a park bench. It wasn’t warm but it wasn’t raining.
‘Where are your things?’
‘Things?’
‘This morning you had a sleeping bag.’
‘It fell apart when I washed it.’
‘Oh.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ He’d once had lots of things. Big things and small things. He’d had a life where he would sometimes be home from work in time to kiss his wife, tell her he’d take over. He’d carefully lower his son into a bath full of bubbles and toys, where the boy would babble, bathe and play. Toma would then gently lift Benke out – dry him carefully and thoroughly with a big towel between the toes and behind the ears – dress the child in Peppa Pig pyjamas and then place him softly in a bed. There was a night light that threw out a golden light. It had small motifs twirling around the shade: cars, tractors and trains. Toma would read to his son from a colourful book, which lived with other colourful books on a shelf, until the son fell asleep.
They’d all gone.
The bath toys, the soft pyjamas, the night light, the colourful books, the wife, the child. Many things. Everything.
He should squirrel away the sandwich. He’d had breakfast. He didn’t need it. Or more accurately, he might need it more later. Being on the street demanded constant forethinking and planning. He bit into it anyway.
‘Can you tell me your story?’ she asked gently.
He took another bite. He wanted to tell her. He had to, but he hated pulling the words forward. At first, he had not been able to believe they were dead. For months he kept expecting to come home from work and find his wife behind the ironing board, or in the kitchenette, his son in front of the TV. He would open the door and see them both instantly, there was nowhere to hide in their tiny flat. He would expect them to run to him, kiss him, hug him. It sounded old-fashioned. Him at work, her at home. But she was studying too, a correspondence course in accounting, she had ambitions. She had plans to go out into the world. Be something. Do something. But Benke was young and she had to get the qualifications first, so she stayed at home, did her best to make the small, neglected flat into something that was not awful. They didn’t have much. They didn’t have enough. The place they lived in was a disgrace really. Damp on the walls and in the beds, everything broken – locks, taps, cupboards, windows – and they couldn’t get warm. Toma doubted an Englishman would have ever rented the place. It was all they could afford.
For months he had not accepted they were dead and so never looked for the words to say that they were. When he did finally accept that he’d never open the door to their smiles or sulks, their laughter or their grumbles, he fell into a profound, prolonged depression. He existed in a fug of antidepressants and alcohol. The months slithered by like black slippery eels. There were warnings at work. He was reluctantly let go. Someone who knew his story and felt sorry for him found him another job. More tablets, more whisky. The same solid grief. The warnings were brusquer the second time, the letting go less reluctant. He couldn’t pay his rent. An eviction notice. Then there was a bed at the YMCA. No permanent address to write on application forms meant that there was no gainful employment to be had. Then finally there was another flat. Even worse than his home with Reveka but better than the streets. He shared a bathroom. It was a cesspit. The place was horribly overcrowded. People and mould spores jostled for somewhere to rest. One day he tried to talk to the landlord about what needed to be done. That was the end of that, out on his ear, no notice period. Throughout this time, people asked him to explain himself. He wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t trade Reveka and Benke’s lives and deaths for sympathy. For a bed, for an extra coin. Their names stuck in his throat, choking him, five years on.