Can't Anyone Help Me? (26 page)

I had never seen anything like it – dim lights, red walls, black floor, sweat glistening on the bodies of the whirling, jumping, spinning youngsters with their bottles of water clutched firmly in their hands. The building seemed to vibrate with the mechanical sounds of the music that Dave told me was a combination of house and techno. ‘It’s great,’ he said. ‘You can only listen to it for so long without drugs, so it’s good for business.

‘I supply the dealers in here,’ he told me. ‘Safer that way – only they know who I am.’ ‘E’, I learnt, was the name of the pills that were popular at the raves.

‘Keeps them awake all night,’ Dave said, but when I asked for one, he categorically refused. ‘Stick to nice mellow dope, Jackie,’ he told me sternly, each time I asked.

I personally thought he was overdoing the kid-sister bit, but decided to leave it alone.

Those Saturday nights we were out until the early hours. Then it was back to Earl’s Court, where we consumed a late-night or early-morning greasy hamburger from one of those places that never seemed to shut.

On Sundays we slept late before making breakfast. Then, as I lolled around in an oversized T-shirt drinking coffee, I could hear the squeals of children playing and music – rap, pop or even the background jingle of commercials – coming from other flats and smell the aroma of different foods, curry, frying fish and others I didn’t recognize, that wafted through my window. By summer I felt I belonged to this place where people from faraway countries and different parts of Britain had, for whatever reason, made their home.

Dave and I went to bed together just once. How can I describe that time? It was – well, what can I say? Sweet. His body was smooth, his chest free of hair. His legs entwined with mine while his hands stroked me gently; warm hands that made me feel safe. I still remember kissing his neck, that soft place just behind his ear. But he never got an erection.

‘Dave, it doesn’t matter,’ I said and, truthfully, it didn’t. ‘It’s just nice to be held.’

But he, of course, saw it as a failure, and refused to try again.

When it was cold, as English summers often are, we would walk under a leaden sky, oblivious to either wind or rain, my hand tucked into his pocket, his fingers over mine. When we went for a drink I would sit as close to him as I could and, in the midst of other people, my head would rest on his shoulder.

When I went to bed he would kiss me on the cheek and say goodnight, and when he thought I was asleep I would hear him leave. He believed he had fooled me, but I knew every time.

There were mornings when he couldn’t meet my eyes and I would chatter brightly so as not to face him with his deception.

Oh, I wanted him to stay in, to come to my bedroom again. I wanted it to be all right.

‘You loved him?’ my therapist asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I loved him. He was the only man I ever did love.’

Then there was the night he came back very drunk and his stumbling around the flat woke me. I got out of bed, walked into his room and turned the light on.

He put his hand up to shield his eyes from the sudden glow, stood there swaying slightly, and I saw he was crying. ‘Dave, where have you been?’ I asked. Afterwards I thought it was strange that I asked that, not what the matter was. I reached up to his shoulders, pressed them slightly till he finally sank down on the bed. Then I saw the blood. Splashes of it were all over his T-shirt, and when I lifted his hand, I saw the knuckles were raw. There were scratches on his face, a bruise by his eye and I knew something bad had happened.

He told me then where he went at night.

It was to the bars, the ones where leather-clad men with hot, hungry eyes went in search of sex. There would be a dark back room where they went with partners they wouldn’t have recognized in the light. They were not men who wanted to share a drink and talk before going back to a flat and calling what happened next lovemaking, as though that was possible with someone unknown. They wanted nameless sex in the dark with complete strangers.

‘There was a boy in the bar,’ he said. ‘He was different. He didn’t want to go to the back room, he wanted to talk. He had blond hair and the most amazing green eyes. Nicky, he said his name was. I went with him, went back to his flat.’

‘And?’ I asked.

‘We fucked. He said it was special for him. That I was different and that he wanted to see me again. I wanted him to stop talking, to just let me leave, but he tried to stop me and then it happened.’

‘What, Dave?’ I asked. ‘What happened?’

‘I hit him. It was seeing that pleading look on his face that did it. He was beautiful and I wanted to hurt him. To take away that look of innocence. How could I – how could I have let him do what my father did to me, Jackie? How could I have enjoyed it? I hurt him,’ he said, ‘broke his nose, worse maybe, and I left him there.’

I put my arms round Dave and held him as he sobbed for the boy Nicky and the boy he himself had once been.

I was only fifteen but I felt old, so old. I wanted to tell him that everything would be all right, but I knew that nothing was going to be all right again. Instead I made him take his shoes off and get on to the bed. Then I lay beside him. I pressed myself close against his body until my breath mingled with his. Our eyes held each other’s until he reached over and turned off the light. That night in patches of silence, in wordless darkness, we spoke to each other without uttering a sound, of pain, bewilderment and hurt.

As the dark of night gave way to the violet shadows of dawn, we fell asleep. He was heavy against my arm but I didn’t move. I wanted his weight pressed against me and his breath on my face. I wanted to be the first thing he saw when he woke.

He left me. He was frightened the police would look for him, frightened of what he had done but, more than anything, frightened of himself.

‘Go home, Jackie,’ he said, when I begged him to take me with him. ‘Don’t you see what I am?’

But I only saw Dave, the boy I loved.

‘You’re not safe with me any longer.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Because.’ His hand ran through my hair, wound some strands around it and tightened. ‘I seem to want to hurt whoever loves me.’ I felt the strength of his fingers.

He gave me money, enough to take me back to my parents. ‘They’ll look after you,’ he said. ‘You’re not bad like me, just fucked up a bit. Tell them you need help, tell them the truth. But go back.’

I said I would, not because I meant it but because I wanted to please him.

He left that day and my heart broke. That was when I wanted to cry, to shake with sobs and be soaked with anguish, but even then I was still unable to shed a tear. Instead I burnt myself. I used candles and the lighter, bit down hard on my lip till the blood poured between my teeth, cut underneath my foot, but nothing stilled my inner pain.

‘Did you hear from him again?’ asked my therapist.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I did, but not until the end of the next part of my story.’

‘And you saw him again?’

‘Just once,’ I said.

When the landlord realized I was in the flat on my own, he told me that I had to get out. I knew that Dave had paid a deposit and, again summoning up my courage, I asked for it.

‘It’s not yours, is it, girlie?’ he said, and laughed in my face. ‘When Dave comes and asks, I’ll give it to him. Less damages, of course,’ he added, looking round the flat with a sneer. I knew that he knew that that was not going to happen.

He stood over me while I threw into my bag as many of my possessions as would fit into it. Then he put his hand out for the key. I did not know that he was breaking the law by making me leave in that manner. Even if I had, I would have been too scared to protest, so I just left.

I had the money Dave had given me, which I thought would buy me time. I tried the YWCA. It was full. I went to a small bed-and-breakfast where the manager, seeing my youth and that the only luggage I had was a scruffy duffel bag, demanded money up front. It was too much, more than I could afford. I said I’d come back later and, clutching my bag, I wandered into the streets. I knew that trying to find a room was hopeless: however much makeup I plastered on, however hard I tried to look confident, no landlord would rent to me. Not only did I not have proof that I was old enough to live away from home, I did not have enough funds to pay a month’s rent plus a deposit.

I must have walked miles that day – walked until I reached an area where there was only one doorbell on the large houses. Then I passed red-brick mansion blocks of flats and eventually came to Harrods, the huge department store. After gazing at the magnificent window displays, I continued walking towards the West End. I went with little purpose and no plan of what I was going to do next. Before I knew it, I was in Piccadilly Circus. It was then, knowing I had become one of them, that I really saw the homeless.

Some were huddled in sleeping-bags, for the chill of autumn was in the air, with a cap or a piece of cardboard lying in front of them as they begged for money.

A girl, not much older than me, dressed in a thin denim jacket and patched jeans, crouched in a doorway. Long, greasy hair partially obscured a pallid face as, with eyes cast down, her shaking fingers rolled a thin cigarette. A few coins lay on a plastic plate beside her, to give further encouragement to passers-by. Without looking up, she repeated over and over her refrain, ‘Spare any change,’ to every pair of legs she saw.

‘Help with food for my dog,’ was the next plaintive request from a youth wearing a khaki combat jacket and army-style boots. His faithful friend, a placid brindled Lurcher, whose large head rested on outstretched paws, lay on a grubby blanket by his master’s side, paying little heed to his surroundings.

Prancing on the pavement inches away from them, a small white dog, wearing a diamanté leather collar and a doggy ‘designer’ sheepskin jacket, stopped, cocked one leg against a nearby lamp post, then continued walking. His owner, a woman in her early twenties, her long, streaked blonde hair flying and high-heeled boots clicking, clutched his lead tighter in her gloved hand and looked straight ahead.

London, a city of contrasts: to that woman, the homeless were invisible, anonymous, annoying whiny voices coming out of the shadows of doorways.

I went to a camping shop, bought a sleeping-bag, dark blue with a bright yellow lining. That night, too frightened to sleep, I sat in a doorway with my legs against my chest and my arms tucked into the bag. Hidden at the bottom of it were my purse and my few possessions.

That was when I thought I had hit rock bottom.

For my first few days on the streets, I was clean enough not to look destitute. I went to coffee shops, with my sleeping-bag wrapped in the bag it had come in. I used their amenities to wash my face and brush my teeth. But gradually the dirt of the streets clung to me and, with it, the acrid smell of the homeless.

Unless someone has slept on the streets, it is impossible to visualize the dehumanization it brings. We spent nights quivering with fear lest our few goods were stolen or even worse that we were murdered or raped. In the morning, the sound of traffic woke us and we could hear voices and footsteps of people walking past – past us, the invisible people.

It was a week before I, too, whined from a doorway, ‘Spare any change?’ then seized the coins dropped on to my piece of cardboard. My hair became lank; grime crept under my nails and into the creases of my hands and neck. Now the smart coffee shops barred my entrance. ‘You can’t come in here,’ they said. To them I had ceased to be a person – I was just an unsightly something that they did not want on their premises.

I moved around, as we all did in our search for sites where the people were generous. Shaftesbury Avenue, with its theatres, restaurants and bars, was where I headed at night. There, people flocked from the theatres or pubs, faces flushed with bonhomie.

‘Spare any change?’ I said, time and again, and as my voice scratched irritatingly on the edge of their consciousness, coins were tossed down carelessly before the man or woman climbed into a taxi that would take them back to their centrally heated home.

The worst were the ones who thought they had a duty to lecture me.

‘I don’t give money,’ they said self-righteously. ‘You should get a job.’

But by then I had learnt how hard it was for the homeless to achieve that. We had no address to give and nowhere to make ourselves look presentable. Social Services would not pay out to people without accommodation, and even if they had, I was still under age and a runaway.

Over the weeks, I blended in with the vast invisible army of the homeless and met others who, like me, had run away. Young and broken, they had escaped from bullying stepfathers, drunken parents who beat them, foster families who abused them and children’s homes that had failed them. Everyone had a story – and few seemed to think it would ever have a happy ending.

I found a certain comradeship. Sometimes it was just the sharing of a doorway, being shown where the best café was for a cheap breakfast, and taken to the places where at night volunteers came round with free food.

We tried to avoid the older ones who, shapeless in their bundles of tattered clothing, stank of cheap alcohol, bad teeth and unwashed bodies.