He was waiting by the door when we arrived. I tried engage him in conversation (a way of alleviating my my awkwardness, not his). I don’t know that he feels obliged to respond any niceties of behaviour, why should he, he lives on the street, after all. I mentioned that I hadn’t seen him sleeping in the doorway of the ex-barber shop. No, he said, I’ve got a house near the castle. Yes, I said, I suspect it has been too cold to sleep out. (I saw him this morning though, back on the street clearly, but this time lying under his blanket in the doorway of the Barnado’s shop. Perhaps he prefers to be out. He had his violin in pride of place, standing up in it’s case with a single tulip resting against it.) The chat (one-sided though it was) soon tailed off, that is after he offered to buy him some food from SPAR. No, he said, I’ll get something in here. There is no thanks, again why should there be. He is graceless, not rude but empty of the need or the desire to please. Again, why should he wish to? He is freer than me. Then she arrived.
Her movements were jerky. They were the first intimation that something was awry. Then there was her voice. She shouted, but it was if she couldn’t manage the controls, as if she made a noise without being able to perceive it’s possible effect prior to making it. She asked the time, of the homeless man first. He ignored her, no doubt sensing that she was off the rails before I did, and turned his face away. I answered the question and told her that the coffee shop would open in about 5 minutes. That’s good, she said, stamping her feet, I’m dying for a drink. Her clothes were a cacophony of pattern, her leggings, with their psychedelic swirlings were particularly so. She had a huge rucksack on her back and another holdall in her hand, and draped around her neck hung a cloth bag. She’d clearly spent the night on the street. I watched as she opened her little bag and pulled out a half bottle of brandy, took a swig and then another. Did he see? I felt him he stiffened.
Once inside she marched over to where we usually sit and I tensed. Not our table? NO. And then ashamed of my smallness, I saw that she’d thrown her bags by the one next to it. Everything was wrong about her. She jerked and writhed and then grew sad. I heard her phone conversation with a man called M. And how he put the phone down on her when she told him that she was there, her voice unnaturally high. She sank then. I smiled at her when she looked back but she did not respond. Her eyes were sad, lost, scared. Unlike his, azure-blue though they are, they are dead behind the light. Gone.
